Gender of writing, Chick Lit and Fantasy

[salinea]

There's a whole discussion that happened last week on Ran's Board which my friends from there most probably know all about, but about which I'd be curious to have some other opinions. (BTW, I use the nickname "Stranger" in those forums).

It all started with a post about Kushner's novel Priviledge of the Sword started by Pat, who beyond his activity on that forum also manages a Fantasy blog, which I think has a pretty good reputation.

Anyway, one of the thing that caught my eye was that Pat, among other things, called Priviledge of the Sword "chick lit through and through". Other people gave good or bad opinions about that novel or Kushner's novels generally speaking. Ran, notably, denied that it was Chick Lit, whereas Calibandar called it "the girliest books I've laid my hands on in recent years".

Discussions about the "male-ness" or the "girly-ness" of specific books is something I have seen often, and which I may have sometimes made use of myself, even though I don't like it, to refer to some hard-to-define aesthetics. So I started a thread about that subject, using Pat's thread as an example, in which I asked a lot of questions to people : Chick Lit, What is it? Why isn't there any Boy's Lit?

I had two agendas with this thread : pointing out the sexism in calling some books Chick Lit in order to dismiss their quality, and questionning which specific images and idiosyncracies were associated with which gender and why. The thread saw much more discussions about the first point, both in agreement and disagreement, although some people did good effort to answer my second point as well. The discussion grew in some points somewhat heated and even wanky, but wasn't uninteresting.

A certain amount of people did agree that "Chick Lit" described a specific genre of book about female protagonists in urban, modern setting with an irreverant tone and some sexual situations, that such a genre had nothing to do with Kushner's writing. Some people also agreed that Chick Lit wasn't a good name for such a genre because it described what kind of market the genre is aimed at instead of the content of the books; and because it can cause confusion about other books, like Kushner's. Although lots of people still disagreed about that, so I'd hardly call it a consensus.

Last part of this little debate, Pat's eventually posted his final review of Priviledge of the Sword at his blog yesterday. Unsurprizingly, he was still mostly negative about it, but also persisted in calling it "Fantasy chick lit" and "one of the 'girliest' novels [he's] ever read", moreover he extrapolated this description by saying :

"There's a very "girly" approach to the narrative. It focuses on undying/forbidden love, corny romance, flowers, jewelry, gowns, fabrics, and an inordinate amount of emo moments. For crying out loud, the characters shed more tears in this book than bridesmaids at a wedding! There is only so much crying one can take, after all. In addition, the emo male characters are not authentic."

You'd think he was talking about about badfanfics ^^ I'm not entirely surprised by this reading because earlier at Ran's Board, I'd seen ErrantBard, who appeared quite sane otherwise, say about Swordspoint :

what I would say classify it as "chick-lit" in my mind is, from memory:

Flowers and effeminate looking men with open shirts on the cover, first

Prominence of homosexuality in the relationships

Pure love

Invincible yet sensible, fragile, honourable hero.

Insufferable whiny useless support characters you're supposed to pity rather than wish dead, for some reason

A plot revolving around the feelings some people have for each other.

A number of which terms had me raise my eyebrow in regard of Swordspoint. But hey! People read books are see different things in it. It happens.

It makes sense that a certain lack of sensitivity about specific genres that one doesn't like mean that one blurs the distinction between those genres. Thus romance, mannerpunk, and Chich Lit elements are all confused and equally dismissed as if they were equivalent although to anyone looking into those seriously it's obvious they're very far from being the same. The fact that all these different elements are, for some reason, associated with female taste and female writing is of course what makes such confusion problematic and sexist.

The thing that really makes me angry there is that several people as well as Pat have defended their use of the term by saying "what is so bad about works written by women that cater to what women want to read?" even though they're very obviously using the word "Chick Lit" or "girly" to dismiss and criticize a specific type of writing : "corny romance", "inordinate amount of emo moments", "the emo male characters are not authentic."
That's not the description of a genre of writing that one doesn't like but that's still considered as legit. That's a description of bad writing, through and through. A bad writing that is typified as female.

Now, while I'm still infuriated about the structural sexism of such use of terms, I'm also still curious about which elements are associated with specific genders and why.

Comments

[silvertistel.livejournal.com]

Very good post, and I'll now have to dig up that thread. :)


I agree with you, I find the term "chick-lit" demeaning, especially when used to describe books in this way. This is something I have argued for in the past: if people use a word and load it with negative connotations, then it WILL be negative, even if they try to cover they arses by saying "Well, some people like this stuff". It's still wholly negative and wasn't meant in any other way.

It's also demeaning since it insinuates something aimed at a female audience is necessarily of worse quality and that women prefer inferior literature.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Yeap :(

[zakalwe7.livejournal.com]

Not seen this thread and don't have time to read it at the moment.

But just regarding the male version of chick lit - isn't this lad-lit, by authors such as Nick Hornby and Tony Parsons with an emphasis on a selfish male protagonist and a male centric view of the world?

[zakalwe7.livejournal.com]

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=w5nt0m56vb6544g9t4nl592zb66h49v0

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

If a man is saying, "things I like are masculine. Things I don't like are feminine--also inauthentic, annoying, and badly written--" how is anyone supposed to take them seriously? This is the very definition of sexism. The good stuff is boy stuff, the bad stuff is girl stuff.

I think there is a huge difference between complaining that a book is overly sentimental, corny, or inauthentic, and complaining that it's designed to appeal to women, ewwww feh, who have no taste. Creating a parallel genre, "bad books designed to appeal to men"--this fails to appease me.

The whole genre of the novel--and even genre novels--were created by women, for women, in nearly every language that novels exist. Go read some Latin religious texts, you manly men.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Creating a parallel genre, "bad books designed to appeal to men"--this fails to appease me.
Yeah, odd how they fail to understand this.

Go read some Latin religious texts, you manly men.
XDDD you're awesome!

[quietliban.livejournal.com]

See, I would agree that all those things are components of 'Chick Lit' but that doesn't mean that they're exclusive to only that genre of book. Just as a book full of violence, and blood and guts isn't necessary exclusive to say, Horror (or Crime or Fantasy or even some Classics). So, I think, perhaps I agree with you also.

Also, what 'ErrantBard' said in the list above could also be applied to Eragon by Christopher Paolini which is just appallingly bad, but I don't think would ever be called 'Chick Lit.' (Granted it is also YA, so it could probably be dismissed as that).

Sorry, I'm rambling without much direction, but interesting post.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Did anyone ever make experience of having books read to people, and having them say whether they thought the writer was male or female?

Yeah, of course one would never describe Eragon as Chick Lit!

I mean, how many fantasy books do you know that don't have any romance elements? I don't know any. However if the fantasy novel happens to be written by a woman, and to be written from the PoV of a female character, suddenly the romance is overbearing, even if there's not more of it than in random novel written by a male.

[after-nightfall.livejournal.com]

What I resent about that is the reverse implication, too. Ie: this is "girly", so girls would like it. Therefore, if you're a girl, you must like it. If you like it, you must be a girl. Let's for a moment leave aside the questions of plain bad writing (namely bad secondary characters, uninteresting plot, bad characterization) and just focus on that. It's like car salesmen exclaiming "Oh, we have that one in a wide variety of colours!" when a woman is buying. Because of course she wouldn't be interested in fuel consumption, or the terms of financing. :-p

There's a very small step between "I don't like it, but women do" and "I don't like it, women do, so women like bad writing". Some people seem to have taken it, and are likening "girly" to "bad".

[rockstarwookie.livejournal.com]

There's a very small step between "I don't like it, but women do" and "I don't like it, women do, so women like bad writing". Some people seem to have taken it, and are likening "girly" to "bad".

I have a feeling that this sort of thing is just very lazy criticism. They go "I dont like it, but somebody is buying this stuff" and then just say "it must be 'for' women." without thinking through what that means.
Of course, if this is all it is and the charge of sexism is levelled at them, they are likely to get defensive and use poor logic to defend a position they don't actually support.
I dont think Pat should have used that language in his website review, having known that people were questioning his terminology.

I'd hope that most people saying this sort of thing don't actually think that "girly" equals "bad", but as I say it's lazy thinking. And maybe this leads to such invalid conclusions being drawn (though I hope this isn't so).

[cygna-hime.livejournal.com]

*just wrote a paper more or less on this* There's a biiiig difference between saying "This story is overly sentimental, melodramatic, and poorly characterized," and saying, "This story is a typical girly novel." The former is addressing the story on its merits--the critic doesn't think it has many, but it is the story that matters. The latter is addressing the writer and audience as a measure of a story--the critic thinks that all books with the given characteristics are "written for" women, and that most books written for women have the given characteristics. That's sexist. It's sexist without meaning to be (giving the original critic the benefit of the doubt here--I don't think he realized he was being sexist). It's based entirely on cultural stereotypes of "women write like this" and "women like to read this"--self-fulfilling prophecies, since they affect what books a publisher thinks will sell, and therefore what books are published.

Besides, it's speaking for the tastes of a group (women) done by a member of another group. If he's going to presume that "women" have distinct tastes, as a group, then he automatically loses the right to generalize about these tastes (at least without a strong statistical backing), because he has no way of knowing if they are true. Speaking for "women" as a group, women have exactly the same range of tastes as men, although cultural influences weight the scale in a different direction. I myself am very fond of explosions and not so fond at all of romance. I despise most of the books sold under the heading "Chick Lit" (or for that matter "YA", bar fantasy, which has no age limit if it's good), because a)they're demeaning stereotypes, and b)most of them are poorly written. A book is not "Chick Lit" just because I like it.

If I referred to any book written by a man which I happened not to like as " typical penis-compensation", that would not be fair, or accurate. Likewise, it's unfair to lump all books written by women which one does not like under "chicklit".

Okay, end spiel.

[scriva.livejournal.com]

There's a biiiig difference between saying "This story is overly sentimental, melodramatic, and poorly characterized," and saying, "This story is a typical girly novel." The former is addressing the story on its merits--the critic doesn't think it has many, but it is the story that matters. The latter is addressing the writer and audience as a measure of a story--the critic thinks that all books with the given characteristics are "written for" women, and that most books written for women have the given characteristics.

I particularly like this argument. It angered me about the whole dicussion that the idea to use neutral and technical descriptions was dismissed, because of something like "what's the problem with having a word that describes the readers?"

[koyotesdaughter.livejournal.com]

I tried reading your thread over at Ran's and just got too angry halfway through page 2. I'm not going to respond to Pat either on his blog or the board because a) I'd just be bandwagon-jumping since I wouldn't have gone to either on my own, b) I've never engaged Pat in any discussions before, so chiming in this late in the argument doesn't seem very purposeful, and c) Pat obviously has no interest in this discussion and is patting the entire other side of the argument condescendingly on the head with comments like "men are from mars and the fairer sex is from venus".

All I'll say is that as a writer (since he decided to throw that phrase around in a response to Elio) he should recognize the enormous power of word choice, and not claim that he didn't intend to be inflammatory and derogatory with terms like "Chick lit" and "girly". I'm still not even sure what he meant by that, after reading the review and all the responses. Was it sappy? Melodramatic? Trite? Contrived? Lacking in developed characters? Printed on pink paper in a flowery font? Sporting a provocative tattoo near the base of the spine? Lacking in gore? Unrealistic in representing relative physical strengths of petite young women versus big, brawny men?

[koyotesdaughter.livejournal.com]

oh, and "the emo male characters are not authentic?" What is that supposed to mean? Were all the emo characters male? Were the emo female characters completely authentic? Does Pat think the female mind to be such a foreign thing that he feels he's unable to judge the authenticity of the emo female characters? Does Pat have so little actual experience with women that he forms his opinions on how they think and behave from trite fantasy that he's otherwise dismissive of?

Seriously. WTF.

[laurus-nobilis.livejournal.com]

That's not the description of a genre of writing that one doesn't like but that's still considered as legit. That's a description of bad writing, through and through. A bad writing that is typified as female.
Ugh. Exactly. It's not just literature, though - it's the same with Chick Flicks.

That one makes me even angrier, because there's always someone saying they're unrealistic (duh) and therefore horrible "examples" for women because their romantic life won't be the same as in the movies. Um. What? We do know it's fiction, world, we really do. We know they're full of unrealistic genre conventions. No one says action movies make men think they have to be just like an Action Hero, so why do people assume that women expect their real life to play out just like in a Meg Ryan movie? We're not stupid. *fumes*

... and, uh, I got on a bit of a tangent there. ^_^U

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

yeah, exactly :(

[mnemosyne-1.livejournal.com]

A number of which terms had me raise my eyebrow in regard of Swordspoint. But hey! People read books are see different things in it. It happens.

True... but I have to say I'm a bit surprised at ErrantBard's commentary on Swordspoint. I didn't see most of that at all... In fact, it felt a bit like Dumas' writing, with the mixture of swordplay, sex and politics. It just happened to have a homosexual couple as the lead couple (and yeah, don't get me started about the implied homophobia of ErrantBard's comment). But this probably isn't the time or place for literary analysis. *g*

I find myself even more offended at Pat's comment that Privilege is "girly fantasy". Because hey, I'm a girl and... I hated the book. So according to his generalization, am I not girly? I am a manly girl or simply an especially enlightened female?

The thought that good writing = male and bad writing = female is infuriating. Either you liked the book or you didn't - why is gender assignment necessary? I sincerely doubt Pat would have said the same things had the author been male.

I'm also still curious about which elements are associated with specific genders and why.

I think generally the implication is that writing designed for women is mediocre at best. I've seen more than a few comments that say, "It's a good book... for that genre (usually meaning chick lit or a genre that people believe mostly appeals to women)."

I think I'm also bothered by the idea that if a man gets emotional in a book, it's not authentic. Men are not made from one mold; they have different emotional capacities and reactions. Some men cry a lot and are very "emo", as the reviewer put it; some men never cry. Some women cry constantly; others never cry. One is not better than the other, nor is one more authentic than the other. Am I a bad female because I rarely weep? Because I tend to act rationally and logically the majority of the time? Does this mean I'm acting like a male? No, it means I'm acting like myself.

Stereotypically "female" book elements:

- an overly emotional hero/heroine (usually the latter. rarely do heroes seem to be in touch with their emotions)

- a romance or established relationship, which may or may not go through turmoil

Stereotypically "male" book elements:

- lots of action, usually featuring a hero with a stoic exterior

- the hero is often surrounded by one or more sexy women who fall all over him (heterosexual relationships only)

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

True... but I have to say I'm a bit surprised at ErrantBard's commentary on Swordspoint. I didn't see most of that at all...
Me either. To ErrantBard's credit, he said later in my discussion with him that he got convinced by my arguments against using "Chick Lit" as a category and about how sexist it ended up being. But it's still weird to see the different readings that people may have of a book.

The thought that good writing = male and bad writing = female is infuriating. Either you liked the book or you didn't - why is gender assignment necessary? I sincerely doubt Pat would have said the same things had the author been male.
YES! And of course not! Have you seen how outraged he was when I called Guy Gavriel Kay's writing (who's very flowery and lyrical, with lots of "emo" characters to use Pat's words) "Chick Lit"?

And yes to most everything you said. Thanks for your comment.

[indigestible.livejournal.com]

Of course there isn't Boy Lit, things written by men, for men, about men are for everybody! They're universal and neutral. It's that weird stuff with female protagonists and female authors that's "just for girls." Which is to say, I don't think Chick Lit is a problematic term if it's essentially short-hand for "modern, urban romance novel," but using it to disparage a fantasy novel is kind of like reading a detective novel and then saying "this was so unrealistic and poorly written, it was like reading a fantasy novel." It's a slam on the genre as a whole, and it's lazy reviewing besides. If you're going to write a review, tell me what you didn't like, don't just write it off as "girly" and feign wonderment when people call you a sexist.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I don't think that Chick Lit is good for "modern, urban romance novel" because people being people they were going to misuse the term sooner or later. As soon as you don't describe things by content but by destined readership it was doomed to happen :(

And yes, it's a pretty sucky review ^^

[metzhead.livejournal.com]

are you itchin fer a fight? cuz I used to rassle bears fer a livin.

big ones.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

female or male bears? ^_^

Either way, bring it on :D

[miss-sand.livejournal.com]

38 commentaires, je n'ai pas envie de chercher si cela t'a déjà été signalé :

"the girl cooties theory of literature" http://www.sff.net/paradise/girlcooties.htm

A cette occasion, j'ai appris l'expression "girl cooties", dont on m'a donné la définition suivante :
Les "Girl Cooties", littéralement les poux qu'on risque d'attraper en jouant avec les petites filles, désignent la crainte des petits garçons face à la différence mystérieuse de ces dernières, avec en sous-entendu, le risque d'une 'contamination' de leur virilité. Appliquée à un adulte (homme ou femme, d'ailleurs), cette expression désigne une attitude de distance prudente vis à vis de valeurs jugées réservées au sexe faible, et notamment la gamme des émotions qui court du romantisme au sentimentalisme.
(Je ne garantie pas la fiabilité de cette définition.)

Ca me parait un éclairage supplémentaire intéressant pour ton propos ^^

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Non seulement je connaissais, mais j'ai utilisé cette expression a un endroit ^^

[innerslytherin]

I'm at work and don't have time to go in depth, but... What bothers me the most about the whole discussion is that these men are categorizing literature with homosexual characters as chick-lit. Though I suppose slash fanfic is generally written by women, I was reading something in Writer's Digest just last week about how GLBT fiction is not considered a small market anymore--most GLBT markets have actually stopped publishing much coming-out stories because of the glut of such stories. So it makes me feel unsettled to see Kushner's novels about gay men characterized as chicklit.

(And yes, I agree, chicklit = contemporary, usually urban, setting with irreverant career women in their late-20s to early-40s, usually having casual sex and/or trying to catch a man, while shopping lots and facing career challenges. Chicklit, after its inception in Bridget Jones, bores me.)

[xraytheenforcer.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Then we get into the whole "what straight men dig" argument (FMF pairings and lesbianism are OK, anything else is grody) and it's just sad. What makes me sadder: having outright gay characters in speculative fiction (and literature in general) is still considered groundbreaking or unusual or it limits the appeal of a book.

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

Good for you! This whole drawing lines around things and declaring them "for boys" or "for girls" has all the maturity of the schoolyard.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

lol, yes!

[generalblossom.livejournal.com]

ah, that place, plus ça change, plus c´est la même chose. now and always! I don´t even want to look, from what you report I am pretty sure I heard it all ( from some of the same people perhaps) circa 2001, nothing I argued made any difference.

BTW definite book rec for you, coming out next year only though, chick lit and YA adult chick lit because it is a lot related to these gender issues ( and boarding schools, and rebellion and gender) The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. You would approve of the disreputable part. Argh.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Hey! I kinda convinced ErrantBard, I think! So it's not all lost ^^

Yay rec! Looks interesting if not what I'd usually read. I'm noting it down.

[ariss-tenoh.livejournal.com]

Funny, I wouldn't call that list of writing elements as chick lit, I'd call it "bad slash fic" XD

I've only read Fall of Kings by Kushner and it seems to have a lot in common with what this guy is describing in Swordspoint. It's sexist to call it chick lit but admittedly you get the feeling it was written and the characters portrayed that way for its female readership.

If there's a genre to be called "boy's lit", I'd give it to thrillers written by men. The male characters insult each other by saying "you're a fag!", the female characters exist only to adore the men and have sex with them, and racism and violence and misogyny fill its pages.

You raise an interesting point here, and I know I'm straying off your main point^^, but I think it's not the writers who are interesting as much as what each type of "lit" says about its readers.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I'd call it "bad slash fic"
My thoughts exactly.

It's sexist to call it chick lit but admittedly you get the feeling it was written and the characters portrayed that way for its female readership.
That would be an entirely different point ;) I don't remember denying that those novels would probably more likely to be appreciated by female audience. On the other hand, I wouldn't have described using the same term as Pat, or Errant Bard did, either.

The male characters insult each other by saying "you're a fag!", the female characters exist only to adore the men and have sex with them, and racism and violence and misogyny fill its pages.
Lol. That would be the Dick Lit mentionned by Calibandar.

but I think it's not the writers who are interesting as much as what each type of "lit" says about its readers
I like both violent and action packing fantasy and the ones full of gay sex, fancy writing and emo moments. Am I bisexued? :p

[redcandle17.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the novel in question but now I will if only to judge its "girly-ness" for myself.

Judging not only from that thread but others in that forum, I can only come to the conclusion that there's a significant number of people who think female authors are inherently inferior (in quality of writing) to male authors and that female fantasy authors don't write "real" fantasy. The implication is that real fantasy is by and for men. It doesn't even make me angry anymore, just tired.

Anyway, I agree that "chick lit" refers to a very specific genre and to extend the term to anything that has romance and "emo moments" renders the phrase meaningless. And it is a derogatory term. It certainly carries a dismissive conotation.

I'm also still curious about which elements are associated with specific genders and why.

I've read more books written by women than by men, especially in the fantasy genre. It's not a conscious decision on my part; unless it's an author I've already read, I don't look at the name on the cover when I pick up a book. Books that are character-driven rather than plot-driven appeal to me more, and it just happens that female writers tend to focus on characters more than male writers (or so it seems).

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

haven't read the novel in question but now I will if only to judge its "girly-ness" for myself.
I would very warmly recomand the reading of Swordspoint, and both Fall of the King and Priviledge of the Sword are very good sequels as well. Of course they're not to everyone's taste, but I think you'd managae ^^

that there's a significant number of people who think female authors are inherently inferior (in quality of writing) to male authors and that female fantasy authors don't write "real" fantasy. The implication is that real fantasy is by and for men.
Well, there's that other blog post by the loon claming women are ruining fantasy too. I'd rather laugh at it, but there's undoubtly a disturbing amount of people who think there's something true in it.
When you look at in the broad way, it's disturbing the number of female writers which are systematically lessened, less reccomended, less prized compared to male writers. I'm sure most people aren't even aware of it even as they perpetuate this state.

Books that are character-driven rather than plot-driven appeal to me more, and it just happens that female writers tend to focus on characters more than male writers (or so it seems).
That's probably not wrong. Although it's interesting to see that people like Joe Abercombrie, definitly a male writer, do claim to have a character driven story... yet I wouldn't compare it either with the kind of character driver story I understand you mean here. Where's the difference? What about GRRM's novels? They're both very well plotted and very well characterized.

[solesakuma]

Agh, even the whole 'You're reading too much into this!'. Damn, all sexism discussions are the same.
I agree with you: I hate it when 'for women'='bad writing'. Specially since many times you get things like 'It's for girls, but it's good!'. Because we have no taste whatsoever and we all like the same things.
I haven't read the books (even if I've heard about them) but 'girly' is mostly used as a derogative term and the same goes for Chick Lit.
Slightly OT anecdote: on Saturday I went to see Stardust (which I loved) and when my friends arrived (late) one of them realized that Resident Evil 3 was on too. So I said 'Yes, it is. If you had arrived ten minutes later, I'd have gone to see it.' And then he looked at me so goddamn puzzled, as if it were impossible for me to like fantasy movies and 'let's blow a zombie up!' ones.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

We need to think to add that one to the Feminist Bingo ^_^

'It's for girls, but it's good!'
Backhanded insults if there ever were one.

yay for resident evil. Yeah, I got this reactions more often than I care for :(

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

Here from Metafandom.

What I found fascinating was the willingness to lump Bishop, Carey, and Kushner all together, when each of those women is a complete step up from the other (in ascending order). It really is demeaning the genre instead of bad writing; there's no way to really compare Bishop's inability to build consistent emotional lives for her characters to Carey, or either of them to Kushner, who manages to acknowledge sex as a part of life but not become obsessed with it. That really smacks of "girl cooties are bad!" and not any actual complaint with how the book is written.

Your actual question (on what makes a book girly or not) is fascinating, but I'm currently rushed and hard up for answers anyway.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I totally agree :( Kushner's a master, Carey's a decent and enjoyable storyteller, and I've never read Bishop, yet they're all lumped together in one hand wave motion by virtue of their... female-ness. Ewww girl stuff.
Thanks for your comment.

[goodbyemyfancy.livejournal.com]

I teach media studies at the university level. I actually get into a breakdown of what is meant or understood by "chick lit" of "chick flicks" with my students - they get the negative gendering of the phrasing right away.

I balance it out by talking about "Dick Lit" and "Dick Flicks", which reinforce norms of masculinity such as violence, action, independence etc.

The students get a kick out of my playing with language ;)

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I bet they do XD media studies sounds like something fun to study *is envious*

they get the negative gendering of the phrasing right away.
Yeah I really find it appalling how some people can use a phrase with a negative conotation then flip back and deny it had a negative conotation.

[dianamcqueen.livejournal.com]

I think it's funny that guy is in denile about emo men being authentic. I know several emo men, and they are quite real...although, still unbelievable at times ;)

I see it as, Gender roles are tradition, and they make life simple, which is why they are so hard to shake. All women have never been the same, and all men have never been the same. There seems to be some innate desire to make them that way (as apposed to wanting to be that way). We don't want to think as a society (globally) that each individual should have there own set of expectations, and that gender does not create/destroy/define you in anyway other than physically and a group of typical behaviors. Society is the entity that sees these common threads and tries to create hard barriers of them.

All these gender assumptions do it allow one gender or the other to alienate and dominate the other. By assuming that some people of one gender suck at one thing, or accell, then all of them not only must do that, but they fall short of the standard set to them by society for not living up to their gender, even if they succeed in other areas.

I agree with you completely. The term "Chick-Flick" has been applied to several movies my boyfriend and his friend don't want to see because it'll either a) make then think, b) make them feel, or c) make them consider a woman's point of view, whic of the 3 is the most treacherous to them.

The flip side that most films directed at women are what this confused but convinced society thinks we all want. Thinks it's what the most of us would buy. But they are more often then not brainless, and stereotypical, and not uplifting because it's what men think women like..when really they have no idea.

I'm totally running off at the mouth so I'm gonna stop.

Femininity is not bad or worse than masculinity.
This idea that female writing is weaker than male writing has been around since before Jane Austen. There's that movie "becoming Jane" wherein the male love insterest tells her she must write more like a man with more thought and less feeling, because this is skilled educated writing, unlike what women would right, because feelings=bad.

And I'm spent. :P Awesome topic, and more people should be examining this!

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I know several emo men, and they are quite real...although, still unbelievable at times
lol

great comment. Yes society as some rather silly idea about what every women and men should be. I think it's even worse for women because we're the Other. maleness is default. Ridiculous.

[princessofg.livejournal.com]

here from cofax7's LJ.... There is a genre known as Boy's Lit or Boy's Own Stories that used to get dissed, and Tolkien was relegated to it by the literati -- breathless adventure, no romance, lots of manly bonding, guy going off with the horse not the girl.

can't win for losing, you know?

thanks for the linkage.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

lol, yes, dissing go all around.

Thanks for the comment :)

[tacithydra.livejournal.com]

This might be something of a tangent, but I actually had a female friend who refused to read science fiction because it was "all boy books."

She picked up Lethem's Fortress of Solitude in a bookstore with me once, looking interested in it. We were walking up to the register and she asked me if I knew of him - I made the mistake of saying he'd also written science fiction (or, to be exact, novels classified specifically within the science fiction genre).

She put the book back.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Some people are idiots, obviously. x_x

Odd definition of Chick-Lit

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Very interesting post - which you can blame or applaud oursin for pointing me at.

I've read actual "CHICK-LIT" or what is marketed as CHICK-LIT and the description above is not how I'd describe it making me think these people have never read it.

The most popular and the beginning of the whole "chick-lit" trend was a little book you may have heard of entitled "Bridget Jones Diary". This become an instant hit and resulted in a movie and a sequel being made. Book publishers started hunting for similar books - since clearly there was demand for this sort of thing and they gave it a category, because it is not exactly "romance" nor is it "general fiction or contemporary" so chick-lit became the marketing/bookseller category. They need categories so they know how to market them to the public in bookstores.

Books that followed suite were entitled "The Shopaholic" and quite a few by Jennifer Weintube or Weinzer? "Good in Bed". Most of these books were at first written by Brits - copying the whole Bridget Jones phenomena. Then Americans started writing them.

They are basically romantic comedies and you've probably seen most of them made into made for tv movies on Lifetime in the US. Although the better ones became what the movie world likes to call "Chick flicks".

They are humorous, poke fun at men, poke fun at women, and often star a struggling thirty-something sexually active singel woman who wants a career and a man.

If you want a good television example of chick lit - see Sex in The City.
That is chick lit. Not what you described above, which I would state is romance or fantasy romance. Chick Lit doesn't take itself very seriously.

Is there a male component? Yep. Guy fic - examples include About A Boy, High Fidelty, and well most of the pulply sci-fi and noir mystery novels by people like Robert Heinlein and Raymond Chandler (or at least I think he's the one who did Philip Marlow) and oh, least we forget, James Bond by Ian S (whose last name I suddenly can't recall, I keep wanting to say Spelling).
Guy fic - also has a sense of humor and focuses on well men being studly and having the girl fall for them. OR in the case of High Fidelty, being geeky and not getting the girl off the bat. Frank Miller did a comic version of what I'd call "guy fic" or a "guy romance novel" entitle "Sin City" - the film version was definitely a guy romance.

Guy fic tends to have lots of violence, blood, gore, and women who have tiny waists and huge busts. It often has covers with a guy holding a gun over a boxum babe.

Chick-Lit tends to have sex (not as much as most romance novels), tongue in cheek humor, and weird escapades. Very little to no violence.

From the description people have given of Privilege of the Sword? I'd call this a romantic fantasy novel - in much the same vein as the Mary Stewart novels about King Arthur. It is shelved however under fantasy, because the romance is secondary to the fantasy elements not the main point of the fic.

Men are weird about books. Most don't appear to read books, I've discovered.
Statistically Women read more than men on average or at the very least read more fiction. Why? I have no clue. But the men who do like to read? Mostly prefer books with a lot of action, very little emotion or relationship exploration, and a high body count. This is not true of all men of course, just the vocal majority. And is a stereotype. Just as it is a stereotype that most women prefer cozy mysteries, gothic mysteries or romance. There is a long standing view amongst publishers that a woman won't read a book that does not have a romance and a sex scene or at least the idea of one. It's silly but also true. Same deal with men - the view is that men won't read a book that has romance, emotion, and relationships and need violence or action. Both are extreme views and completely wrong - since I've met men and women who read things that don't fit those descriptions. Heck, I love guy fic but then I've read pretty much every genre out there.

Re: Odd definition of Chick-Lit

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

For a genre read by men that is often disparaged, there's always Westerns, written by authors with psuedonyms such as Jake Lonestar (I'm pretty sure I didn't make that one up). WEstern novels are very different from the average contemporary Western film. The latter are often possessed of a degree of artistic merit. The former are universally not.

They are, however, massively borrowed from public libraries, formulaic, full of flowery description, with pictures of rugged open-shirted men on the cover, have massively angsting heroes not showing their pain, and are often homoerotic. They are also en mass the worst-written genre I have ever come across. The average Mills and Boon is Joycean in the sophistication of its prose compared to the average cowboy novel.

/via oursin

[dizilla.livejournal.com]

I've been using that term a lot lately, though I don't mean it in a complete derogatory way. When I first heard the term, i thought my friends were saying chiclets which in my Latina mind translated as something light hearted and quick. Of course I eventually realize they were saying "Chick Lit." My friends were the ones that got me into "chick lit" beginning with Nanny Diaries, Devil Wears Prada, Can You Keep a Secret, Confessions of a Shopaholic (which I couldn't finish cause just reading about women OBSESSED with brand names and being broke b/c of it wasn't doing it for me), and then I went through most of Meg Cabot's "adult" books. And since I've bought books I would term as such to go against my sci-fi/fantasy epics and mini epics.

Although the definitions you quoted are extreme, for some badly or generic written ones of the genre, it would be correct. Though really they're just modern young adult written versions of school life shoujo manga (though most not as frilly as some shoujo manga can be).

I've read a lot of female oriented fantasy/sci-fi books and I don't think I've ever come across one that would be termed "girly" or even close to "chick lit" (though I'm sure there are ones made for it). I haven't read the book discussed, but I've flipped through it and I certainly wouldn't think of it as such. It's like calling the Tale of Genji chick lit. ¬_¬

But yes, I don't use is as a bad thing, mostly to quickly state a type of book (urban light romance with quirky charas/situations and almost always centered around her career).

As stated in the comments above me there are guy lit books too and I mostly don't care for them. I think in 12 years of schooling I got enough of the male coming of age stories to last me a life time. And I don't want to get started with chick flicks (in which I definitely *hate* that term as i'm probably as avid if not more of a moviegoer than bookreader) as a genre/review.

Sucks that you're surrounded by such male chauvinism when the discussions should really be about the books and story elements and such, and not constantly needing to defend female authors.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Chick Lit, the genre that has absolutly nothing to do with anything that Kushner's ever written.

I warmly reccomand Kushner's novel in general, especially Swordspoint. It's slashy, exquisitely well written, and the only kind of romance I actually like (that is, an unhealthy and twisted one). And there's a plot. I think you'd like it.

I don't think Chick Lit should be a negative term, just that it is how Pat (mis)used it there.