Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Gender of main characters

I have a bit of a rant I need to put out there.

Lately I've noticed several different book bloggers I follow say things along the lines of "I was intrigued by the idea of a male main character.", and it got me thinking: what universe are you living in and how can I get there?!

The only explanation I can think of is that these bloggers read primarily within the contemporary YA genre, which in recent years seems to be a lot of female authors writing a lot of female main characters. But still. The fact remains that even in these books that follow a female character's perspective, there is almost always a male love interest. And that love interest is almost always a huge part of the plot. To act as if women have reached a point where we have nothing to fight for anymore in the literature world is, to put it bluntly, absurd.

Not to mention the fact that women authors still often feel the need to use pen names or abbreviate their names (ala J.K. Rowling) so that readers won't know they're women. Yeah, that's still a thing. (Tangent: I just recently found out that S.E. Hinton [who wrote The Outsiders] is a woman. She abbreviated so her book would sell. That would have been nice to know, 8th grade teacher!! Maybe I would have liked that have that role model at a difficult time in my life!)

Anyway, feel free to offer up counter-opinions in the comments, and we can discuss. Because I really don't get what people are thinking on this one.

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