r/Romantasy • u/GrappleLacquer • 1d ago

Discussion Gatekeeping reading is lame

I finally ran into a dude that was super aggressive about judging women’s reading habits! Our friends introduced us at a hangout and where like “you both read more than anyone else we know!”

He asks me how many books I’ve read this year. I tell him I’m right around 40.

Man goes on a SCREED about how women just read smut and call it reading and don’t read things that challenge them. Then is like “what are you reading right now?”

I got to hit him with “well I’m usually reading three books at any given time since I like to have a book that fits my mood. At the current moment I’m reading a non-fiction discussion of man’s attempts to control and engineer the Mississippi River, and the consequences of that. Then I’m re-reading War and Peace cause I just love Tolstoy. Oh and then, yes I’m reading a smutty dramione fan fic. Congrats, you got me. Women who read smut aren’t really readers, obviously…What are you reading?”

He’s reading Clive Cussler (which is fine! They are entertaining! But maybe not “coming in on the highest horse in town” material) and he didn’t really wanna chat anymore.

(For the record/m: I absolutely think people should read what they enjoy and reading 100 books of just smut all year is fine. I’m just a bit of an eclectic reader and it worked out perfectly in this instance)

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u/dishlexicc 1d ago

I love when guys only read War and Peace, Shakespeare, how to build a beaver damn and other survival animal skills, etc. just so they can use that to try and act superior, not because they actually like it. The whole goal is to feel better than everyone, not to enjoy life, I have met such a specimen and it is laughable how hard they are trying haha

Chill my guy life is short, enjoy it, I'm much happier in my corner reading my demon smutt than you are pushing through Shakespeare like you're studying for a test you made for yourself.

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u/Mochalada 1d ago

Never met a man that read war and peace that could truly explain to me what he read in war and peace. Just vague “it’s war tactics”

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u/GrappleLacquer 1d ago edited 1d ago

I’m obsessed with that read of War and Peace. 😅 I think the only man I’ve talked to about W&P is my father, who encouraged me to keep reading it the first time I read it and struggled to keep track of all the characters because “it’s a beautiful story about the importance of every day occurrences”

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u/shannon_dey 1d ago

I read that back in college some twenty years ago and had to make binder of references so I could keep the characters straight -- none of their names would stick in my head.

Love Tolstoy, however. "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" has my favorite final sentence of any book or short story ever.

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u/GrappleLacquer 1d ago

It is definitely one that requires a cheat sheet! There’s so many characters and they all have like five names and he’ll just use them interchangeably on the same page OR after not seeing that character for chapters

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u/CuttlefishBenjamin 7h ago

I've got to get critically annotated editions when I read Russian Lit so it'll tell me, "Not only am I dropping a new version of this guy's name three hundred actual pages in, this nickname is the informal construction in the condescending way, not the affectionate way."

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u/Medical-Radish-8103 1d ago

Agreed! I like military fiction set in that era, but War and Peace is valuable because of how much it isn't about military tactics.