Sulking in the Clubhouse

I have this game I play every Christmas. It's called, "Find A Book For My Little Brother".This game is much harder than it sounds, because while my brother is extremely intelligent he won't seek out books on his own. I've been playing this game since he was 14 years old, so I've gotten pretty good at it. He likes books with a lot of action, and he prefers them with a male protagonist. For those of you who have never tried to buy these kinds of books, they are sometimes hard to find in an age appropriate section. It's a struggle at times, that's why I spend a good few weeks thinking over before making my final purchase. The thing is, every year I find something. Some years are harder than others, and I'm not ashamed to say that The Lightning Thief series supplied a few Christmases, but every year I give him one and he reads it. I'm not saying he loves every single one, but I can at least get him to read it.


When I hear about how hard it is to get boys to read, I can sympathize with the concept. It's a struggle to get my brother, who doesn't outright hate reading, to read for pleasure, so I can imagine the frustration of parents with kids who actively avoid it. I get to hear about it frequently at work, as parents try desperately to find something, anything that will spark their child's interest. But again, I always find something. Most often the parent comes back, saying that he wants more of the same. Those are good days, made nicer because it was somewhat of a challenge.


So I hope I don't sound too dismissive when I say that this article by Robert Lipsyte was the whiniest and most self righteous article I've read in a long time, and that's saying something. This article is purportedly about finding the cause for the lack of boy readers, but it seems to be doing more blaming a large female readership than being concerned with how boys are taught at a young age that they should never try to understand girl things, including books. 
Lipsyte begins the article with a story about a panel at which he and some other male authors have been asked to speak, in hopes that they, as successful and talented writers, could enlighten the audience as to how they can reach out to boy readers. He says, 


"We guys had mixed feelings about the game plan: boys’ aversion to reading, let alone to novels, has been worsening for years. But while this certainly posed a problem for us male writers, we felt that we were being treated as a sideshow.

And so we turned from men into boys. Though we ranged in age and style....we easily slipped into a cohesive pack. We became stereotypes, smart-aleck teammates — and we were very much on the defensive. It was Us vs. Them. This is exactly what boys do, in the classroom and in the library, as well as in the clubhouse."

First of all, if they had intended to treat you as a sideshow, would there be a bunch of authors, any number of whom are probably talented, hardworking and have much better things to do with their time, be waiting to listen to you? If they didn't care to hear your thoughts on it, why would they be there? Oh, right, because it was an "overwhelmingly female audience", they must have just been there to cry and wave their dollies at you. Why did you feel the need to go on defensive? Why the "Us Vs. Them" mentality? If you really care so much about boys reading, why don't you want women to write those books?


Also, this is what boys do because they are children who don't know any better. Just like girls do stupid things when they are small, boys do nonsense that they eventually grow out of if they want to be treated like adults. This happens for both genders, and part of growing up is learning how to tell the difference between you feeling uncomfortable about a certain subject and someone attacking you for talking about it. You learn to distinguish the two and react accordingly. Except for when they are intelligent male authors being sincerely asked their opinions, apparently. 


I get that boys not reading is a problem, although I'd really have loved to see some statistics backing up these claims of lower reading numbers. Instead of this hard evidence, Lipsyte names the "standard answers" to why boys don't read, including that boys, "don’t feel comfortable exploring the emotions and feelings found in fiction. . . . Boys don’t have enough positive male role models for literacy. Because the majority of adults involved in kids’ reading are women, boys might not see reading as a masculine activity.”

I...what? No positive male role models for literacy? Are you kidding? Kids, think back to when you were in school, and since Lispyte writes YA, let's focus on high school. How many of the books you can remember reading were written by male authors? For myself, I remember mostly male authors, certainly most that are regarded as "classics" were written by men. I do remember reading a good number of contemporary books by women, but I went to an all girls school, and I've heard it is less like that at co-eds. Perhaps we are speaking of contemporary role models? While it is true that there are more women authors on the shelves of the young adult genre, there are certainly more than zero. Yes, James Patterson, I'm looking at you. 

My favorite part comes next, when having acknowledged the "standard" (and in my opinion, more pressing) problem of boys feeling that reading is an inherently effeminate activity, he moves on to what he feels is the real problem. What might that be, you ask? 

"The current surge in children’s literature has been fueled by talented young female novelists fresh from M.F.A. programs who in earlier times would have been writing midlist adult fiction. Their novels are bought by female editors, stocked by female librarians and taught by female teachers. It’s a cliché but mostly true that while teenage girls will read books about boys, teenage boys will rarely read books with predominately female characters."

TOO. MANY. GIRLS. How DARE these women want to write books that girls would relate to, and how dare women teach as they have been doing ever since we told them they couldn't join the business world?! Quick, run up to the tree-house until the sea of estrogen has ebbed! I also love the casual back-handed compliment paid to the female authors of YA, "talented sure, but they should really be writing in the male-dominated adult fiction section so that their works don't get as much attention". Then the diatribe reaches new levels by suggesting that female teachers don't take into consideration the needs and tastes of their male students, which is even more insulting, if that's possible. 

Lipsyte's ending solution is for people to buy/teach kids his book, or at least write things like it, which he apparently feels are the only good contemporary offering for boys. I don't doubt that his books have inspired children to read (after all people who win awards are ALWAYS suitable to be teaching life lessons to children), and I'm a fan of anything that gets kids reading, but seriously. The solution is to put MORE books by male writers on the syllabus? Especially ones that, oh gee, have sports as the main subject line? Well fellas, we could only reach you if we do it through sports, which if you don't like then clearly you are a girl. Christ man, it's almost like you'd rather not have guys learn to read books by women. 

This, I feel, is the real sticking point of the article. Rather than try to tackle the issues of shaming and gay bashing that are a staple of a young man's life by standing against them and insisting that there is nothing wrong with reading things from a female perspective, it seems that he would rather hide in his club-house and blame it on the girls. Ah, it is indeed amazing how many solutions are MORE SPORTS AND LESS GIRL, and how caring and intelligent the men are that suggest it. Again, I do believe that he believes in getting boys to read, he just seems to think that somehow this could be solved if women just wrote less, or if we had more books that are clearly not selling anyways. 

Are there a lot of female authors on the shelves in the YA section? Yes. Is a lot of it too focused on the romantic attachments between girls and their oddly elder supernatural boyfriends? I mean, I think so. But my definition of what makes a good book is my own, and it may differ from others. I have learned not to behave like a spoiled child if not everyone likes what I like. If it allows a bridge between the unrealistic Disney Princess movies into the realm of the written word, then, well, maybe that Vampire Diaries fan will read Paper Towns next. It will be interesting to see if this crop of girls who are growing up in this YA boom will be more active readers in the future. My guess is that they will. 


As with the last rant I did on critiques of an entire section, I would also argue that a good bookseller will help you navigate these apparently treacherous shores, and find something that will appeal to boys to recommend. Do I wish there were more authors who wrote for boys? Sure, but somehow I think they become less inclined to do so when the male author they go to for advice starts ranting about how their inherent female-ness gets his back up. I also think that this is more of a problem of how the books are marketed as opposed to their content, but rather than asking books to all conform to a male sensibility, there has to be a way to get to the root of the problem: our faulty gender stereotypes.


What infuriates me beyond belief about this article is how much it de-values the cognitive capacity of young male readers. Boys are just as capable of reading girl books as visa versa, it is only that we do not expect them to do so. Women don't have some special gene that allows them to enjoy reading from a male perspective, they read male authors because as Maureen Johnson says, "We have little choice in the matter." Women read things by and about boys because they must, but you might notice that before all those female authors burst onto the scene, girls read less in their teenage years than they do now. (If you don't believe me on YA reading rates increasing recently, check out this NEA survey on reading, which ironically has male readership numbers up as well as female.) It's just that there wasn't the ridiculous amount of shaming on girls who read "male" works, so they could at least read something. This is mostly due to the fact that men write good things, and women write girly things, which are not good. If you don't believe me on this, ask any bookseller why Nicholas Sparks is in the fiction section instead of romance. 


I propose that instead of shaking the finger at women authors and readers, who have every right to be proud of their success, instead ask why it is that a boy might hide the book he is reading for fear of being called a sissy. Ask why playing sports is a "male" activity, while reading is a passive and "female" activity. Then, stop asking why and start working to undermine that conception. After all, gender is a construct, so maybe we should be asking how to show boys that they won't turn into girls if they read about trying on dresses, just like girls don't turn into boys when they read about refusing to sleep with a prostitute. I may not have liked that book, but it gave me insight into the struggles that boys sometimes have. After all, isn't learning to read inherently the task of learning to view the world through another's eyes? Why is the female perspective on the world any less valued and needful than the male?


I'll give you a hint Mr. Lipsyte: it isn't. The sooner we come down off our fences and work together on this, the sooner we can get those sensitive grown men you so desperately desire. 

WTF Mate? Promiscuity = rape now?

A small warning: I talk about sex in this post. Nothing graphic, it's PG-13 for the most part, but if the subject of sex in general bothers you, you should not read this post.

A lot of people are angry about this post by Susan Walsh, specifically this chart (can we call it a chart? I'm pretty sure it insults the good name of charts everywhere). I can't really say anything better than Holly or Man Boobz, but I do think it's important to point idiocy like this out, mostly because it is dangerous idiocy.

For the record, rape is not a forgone and necessary conclusion to having habitual casual sex. That's like saying because you go out for walks, at some point you're going to have someone stab you for your wallet. That's just the way it is, people. In this country we have this thing about people getting to live life in the pursuit of happiness, and we have laws to protect us against people who would hurt us while we go about doing that. Rape is never excusable, never justifiable, and it is certainly never a guaranteed outcome.

Also apparently gay people don't count at all, since they can have casual sex without making babies, so it's fine? But probably also going to end with rape/ loosing money. I'm not sure where the idea that you're supposed to get money from sex that isn't prostitution came from in the first place. Does that make prostitution okay, since at least you're going to come out ahead financially?

I'm also not really sure where all of this "Women lose by having casual sex!" nonsense (also fisked by Holly) is coming from. I'm really not sure why it is that now some women, like Susan Walsh, feel the need to go about "helping" women understand this. If a woman wants to wait, then that's fine. If a woman wants to have sex with everyone on the god damned planet, then that's fine too. Why is it widely held that the woman who wants sex is hurting the woman who wants to wait? Can men only have sex with one woman and then they have to remain celibate forever, like some kind magic chest where sex is the treasure and once one woman takes it out THERE IS NO MORE FOR ANYONE ELSE! Then the cock-nabbing woman runs off into the night laughing maniacally while the "pure and celibate" woman cries at home alone. Then, these "pure" women are FORCED to go have casual sex to try to get a man, because the only way to get that treasure back is to sleep with them outside a relationship?

I know it's a hyperbolic metaphor, but I DARE you to try to make sense of this in a sane and logical way. It assumes that all men are stupid jack-asses who only ever want casual sex all the time, and that women who are saving it for marriage are limited in their choices for partner because of women who show men that they can have casual sex. This theoretically leads to women to feel pressured into having sex before marriage, and then are left crying and broken as Barney Stinson wanders off to fuck someone else. Because all most women are looking for is marriage and 2.5 kids. Right?

Let's be clear here. Sometimes people, men and women, will tell someone that they want to have sex with that they are serious about them when they are just trying to get into their pants. This is not in any way right, and I do not condone lying to someone to have sex.

That being said, I don't think that sex should ever be used as a bargaining tool. If you want to have sex, have sex. If you want to wait until you are in a committed relationship, then wait. Trying to convince someone that you should be in a committed relationship so that THEN you can have sex seems, well, silly. If all that your partner wants to do is have sex, then trying to bargain a certain amount of time or emotional attachment out of them is not going to work. If someone want to really be with you, they will wait for you. If they don't, then that's not what they are looking for and that's okay. It does not mean that they are a bad person OR that you aren't good enough. It just means that it's not going to work out.

Regardless, none of this is Random Evil Woman #3's fault for wanting casual sex. That's all that she is looking for, and the type of men that want to have casual consensual sex are not the kind of men that are looking for a committed relationship. There ARE men who want committed relationships, even if it seems like they are scarce on the ground. It is an unfortunate side effect of wanting to wait that, well, you have to wait. If you are jealous that Random Evil Woman is having sex more than you, then you can go get sex. If you think she is happier than you, and you want to be happy like her, have you tried having the casual sex? Having casual sex at one time doesn't mean that you can't later decide you want to wait, or that it ruins you for long-term relationships later. Just realize that the men who sleep with you casually are generally going to want to keep it casual. If you know that this won't work for you, then that is completely fine, you are not being judged by this ridiculous standard of how many people you've fucked.

News flash: women no longer need to choose between the Virgin and the Whore. We are people, not cardboard cut-outs who can only make stereotypical decisions. Our decisions about who we have sex with, or when we chose to do so, are no one's business and they are certainly not hurting other women who make different decisions. You may disagree with how one person chooses to live their life, but you should always support their right to have a choice.

Dark Thoughts about Young Adult Reviewers

I thought about doing an introductory post, but decided that intros are for suckers. Also they are probably too cool for me.

What better way to kick off this post than to respond to this article by Meghan Cox Gurdon. I do suggest that you read this in full, if only to realize just how ridiculous some people can get when they become "adults". To sum up, Gurdon posits the idea that the YA genre, a genre geared specifically for teens, is becoming darker. When I say dark, I mean that the themes and language used are adult and upsetting. So dark in fact, that parents should be steering clear of that section, and writers need to get off that depressing and violent crack they are on.

I will allow that she has some valid points. It is true that some YA books are incredibly dark. It is also true that "tweens" sometimes read YA because they are too advanced for the younger books, and sometimes come across things that are too complex for them. It is even true that parents need to become more involved with the content that their children are reading. You have no idea how frustrating it is when a parent buys Twilight for their 10 year old, and doesn't seem to mind all the anti-feminist content, not to mention the violence and the sex. I agree that there are some books that are not suitable for young children, and parents should be aware of this.

However, to suggest that the entire genre has been rendered useless is ludicrous. In her opening Gurdon tells of the woes of parents just trying to find books for their kids, beginning with this one,


She had popped into the bookstore to pick up a welcome-home gift for her 13-year-old, who had been away. Hundreds of lurid and dramatic covers stood on the racks before her, and there was, she felt, "nothing, not a thing, that I could imagine giving my daughter. It was all vampires and suicide and self-mutilation, this dark, dark stuff." She left the store empty-handed.

Um, what? If a parent is flabbergasted at the selection in YA, she should have asked one of the helpful booksellers who would have been happy to point out any number of titles that end happily, are done tastefully, or even ones without violence at all. No one expects a non-bookseller to have a handle on all the different YA titles out there. That's like someone staring at a display of shoes, and when they fail to see one in their size on display they leave, without asking one the people whose JOB it is to find them shoes. Would you blame the shoemaker? The person selling them in the store? Or would you blame the customer who apparently didn't care enough to ask. Must not have wanted that book that badly.

Leaving the fact that not all young adult books are dark aside, there is the issue with the actual dark books. As a bookseller, I am very aware of how dark the books can get. Most of the ones I've read are not violent for violence's sake, nor are they dark just for shits and giggles.

The books, and the authors who write them, are trying to grapple with the issues that face teens every day. This is the time that they are learning that no, Santa isn't real and yes, it is indeed possible that life sucks. Life sucks an unbelievable amount at this age, especially because it had never previously occurred to them that it could suck this much. All of the cute Disney tales they were fed as small children are revealed to be a hoax, nothing more than a lovely fantasy. Things don't just magically work out, and for many teens this realization is earth-shattering. The world doesn't give two shits that "they are really just children", and pretending that things are otherwise is unhelpful. Bad things happen to teens. It isn't fun and nobody likes it, but that's the reality. It's not even a matter of teens already being exposed to it in other entertainment mediums, it's that they see it every. day. On the news, at school, sometimes tragically within their own homes.

So, if you were a YA reader, do YOU want to read about happy fluffy bunnies, rainbows and how nothing bad happens to anyone ever? Probably not. Later you'll come to realize that life doesn't always suck and happy endings are possible if not magical. Right now though, you would gravitate towards those books which deal honestly with you and your life. Books like The Outsiders, which Gurdon references as the first YA book. This is significant because it is one of those books that is dark, deals with violent issues, and is one of the books most taught in schools. Are we saying now that half of America's teachers don't know what's good for kids to be reading? It is also one of the few books that is almost universally enjoyed. Ask a teen, any teen, why they liked Outsiders. They will tell you that it was honest and real, and that they could relate to the characters.

Most teens just want it told to them straight, so they know what to expect and can prepare themselves. When we give them otherwise we become Wendla's mother from Spring Awakening who fails to tell her daughter where babies come from for fear she'll go out and try it. But it is her ignorance of the subject that inevitably causes her to end up with, you guessed it, teen pregnancy! The lie damages more than the truth, and we would be lying to our children if we tell them that the world is never a dark place.

All of that being said, there are indeed some books out there that are gratuitous in their violence and sex. Still others fail to handle it tastefully, or the message of how to deal with it gets lost in the narrative. Being fair here, Gurdon has a point. Parents need to be aware of what their children are reading. Not so that they can forbid them from reading anything with violence in it, but so they can talk to them about it. Parents can and should be reading their teen's books with them so that they can be prepared for questions and discussions, so that they can, you know, do some parenting.

Or, if having read the book himself, Dad decides that the book has no redeeming qualities, then he should indeed prevent his son from reading it and explain why. I find teens react much better when they are told, "I read the book and I didn't like it. I don't think you would like it either, it's kind of gross for no reason, and the writing is awful. If you want to read something about this topic, try this other one which is much better." You know, talking to teens like they have something between their ears and can think and reason. The easiest way to ensure that the kid will find a way to read it on his own is to tell him, "No. I said no, I mean no, and that's a NO."

In the end, I don't blame the authors, as there are bad books in any genre. I don't blame the booksellers for keeping bad books in stock because, well, we still sell Wuthering Heights. I blame parents who are too lazy to read or too frightened of the dark places their children are in to help them deal with the process known as growing up.




Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed. - G. K. Chesterton