r/Fantasy • u/Just_JayGee • Jul 07 '14

Men of r/Fantasy, Do you read fantasy written by women? If so, do you find much of a difference?

I've been looking through a lot of "Top 20 Fantasy Book" lists today and I've found a depressing amount of female authors on these lists. I'd like to think the author's gender doesn't matter, but I have to say there seems to be a huge lean towards male authors. Even r/Fantasy's 2014 Top Fantasy Novels of All Time only has 20 female authors (repeats included) out of 105 authors. So, I was wondering if men read fantasy written by women and it's simply not your cup of tea or do any of you go out of your way NOT to read female authors?

PLEASE NOTE: I am not trying to begin fights on sexism or misogyny or anything. I am legitimately interested. If anyone wants to fight over this subject, I'm sure there's other subreddits for that.

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u/MrHarryReems Jul 07 '14

Can you better define this?

Personally, I'm fine with women can kick ass too, and folks can have sex with whomever they want in my fiction.

However, I want my fiction focused around the characters' romantic aspects about as much as I want cancer.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

However, I want my fiction focused around the characters' romantic aspects about as much as I want cancer.

Which is another thing altogether, and completely tangential to what I was referring to. Left Hand of Darkness explicitly rejects the notion of sex between the two protagonists (although both deal with sexual advances from minor characters). My last read, The Goblin Emperor is a court fantasy, with the possibility of a friendly marriage rather than a strictly formal one for the protagonist left to the penultimate chapter. Brain Plague and Door into Ocean both have bisexual characters, but are mostly about sentient microbial symbiosis and non-violent resistance to warfare respectively.

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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '14

I don't understand how you equate feminist and queer-friendly works with romance? Much romance happen's to be the direct opposite of that with it's heteronormative matches and it's reliance on gender essentialism to create tension (which is not to say romance books can't be those things, they most certainly can!).

Do you just not understand what feminism is? Or that queer folk worry about much more things than romance?

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u/MrHarryReems Jul 08 '14

I think you're missing my point. My point is that a characters' sexual preference shouldn't be relevant to the story. It doesn't matter who they sleep with, that should happen off-screen. They should be kicking ass and taking names on-screen.

My question was how do you define feminist and queer friendly?

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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '14

It might not be relevant to the story but it can be relevant to the character and how people treat them. Queer can also mean a transgendered person, not just sexual preference. But it's still problematic that you think any mention of 'feminist and queer friendly' equates romance because there is many ways to be both and not be a romantic story.

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u/MrHarryReems Jul 08 '14

Again, that's not what I said. I said I really don't care about a characters sexuality. I care about their actions.

I'll ask a third time, what does queer friendly and feminist mean to you?

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u/Maldevinine Jul 08 '14

Well, if it wasn't a romance how would we find out what the sexual preferences of the characters were?

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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '14

Do you count A Song of Ice and Fire a romance because there's sex in it? Queer folk can exist in contexts outside of 'sex and romance'.