I wasn't going to post this article

[conuly]

"Girls read more than boys, it's awful, how can we fix this!?"

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/09/why-girls-are-better-reading-boys/571429/

But the commentary I've seen elsewhere positively infuriates me.

I'm all for stocking schools and libraries with a wider range of books to appeal to a greater variety of tastes. We should definitely increase funding with an eye towards this goal.

But it absolutely kills me to see the same people who either a. earnestly explain that we can't have gender parity in films because men and boys won't watch movies about girls and women and then the filmmakers wouldn't make any money (women have to suck it up, I guess) or b. who huffily insist that pushing for more diverse books is insulting because only reading about people who are "like you" means you don't stretch yourself (reading about white people is automatically stretching yourself even if they're basically your clone) are now falling all over themselves to say that of course we can't ask boys to read about girls and never should have suggested it. Boys never have to stretch themselves and never have to suck it up, I guess.

Is this what they mean when they talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations?

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

It's the root of the kavanaugh thing

[conuly]

It's a whole messy knot of awful.

[siderea]

Is this what they mean when they talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations?

Not usually, no, but it certainly fits. :)

There's an argument to be made here that girls are better readers than boys because girls have, effectively, twice the number of books available to them – if it is indeed true that girls will read boy books as well as girl books, but boys won't read girl books, only boy books. QED: sexism: makes you dumb.

Slightly more seriously, we need to start talking about how one of the parts of toxic masculinity is anti-intellectualism and another is the cultural programming that being concerned with details and correctness is a fussy girl thing that is unbecoming of males and unnecessary for them.

[conuly]

There's an argument to be made here that girls are better readers than boys because girls have, effectively, twice the number of books available to them – if it is indeed true that girls will read boy books as well as girl books, but boys won't read girl books, only boy books. QED: sexism: makes you dumb.

Multiple female authors have complained that parents, librarians, and teachers not only won't promote their books to boys but, in some cases, will actively discourage boys from reading them. I have no doubt it is true, but I don't believe for one minute that it's inherent to the way boys are.

Slightly more seriously, we need to start talking about how one of the parts of toxic masculinity is anti-intellectualism and another is the cultural programming that being concerned with details and correctness is a fussy girl thing that is unbecoming of males and unnecessary for them.

We can talk, but the people who need to listen won't :(

[sabotabby]

This is exactly what I mean and it's something I rage against as an educator. I'm not an English teacher, so maybe they know something I don't, but when I'm standing in a children's bookstore with two English teachers and they're looking for "boy books," books with male protagonists because "there aren't enough of those in YA," when they're even giving YA to senior high school kids, I cringe. And said stuff, but of course I'm just a tech teacher, and a woman, so what do I know? Like boys didn't devour Hunger Games.

It's similar to the panic over boys doing less well in school comparable to girls. Well, hmm, could it be that the boys' achievement was inflated by girls being discouraged in maths and sciences?

[conuly]

And on that note, last night I compiled a quick list of "YA books + male author + male protagonist" for somebody making a comment along those lines of "there just aren't any waaa". No, wait, what he said was "I can't remember the last time there was a YA book or series that was easily accessible to boys", whatever "easily accessible to boys" means.

I'll agree that the offerings on a typical YA shelf in a typical bookstore/library are disproportionately female authors and/or protagonists (not that teens should be limited to just YA) but it's not like there aren't any, nor that the ones with male authors and/or protagonists aren't getting any press at all.

For your edification, and because I know that dude won't thank me:

Steelheart
They Both Die at the End
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
History Is All You Left Me
Shipbreaker
Zeroes
Randoms
Xeroboxer (female author, but I consider this author a positive gateway drug for reluctant teenage readers)
Release
Goodbye Days
All American Boys
The Lightning Thief (and whatever the heck the newest book in that sprawling series is)
Sunrise Over Fallujah
Kick
The Maze Runner
Looking for Alaska
The Knife of Never Letting Go
Booked
If I Ever Get Out of Here
American Born Chinese
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
The Walled City
Skink No Surrender
100 Sideway Miles
Guy in Real Life
Scythe
Ready Player One
Down and Across
Thieving Weasels
The Great Greene Heist
The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora (these two are more middle grade, but speaking of arbitrary categorizations...!)
Vodnik
Backfield Boys
Boy Meets Boy
More Happy Than Not
V is for Villain
First Day on Earth
Tyler Johnson was Here
Code Talker
Long Way Down
Refugee
The Stars Beneath Our Feet

Literally, this is all just off the top of my freaking head.

[zesty_pinto]

This article for some reason makes me think of the boomer/millenial divide where I am seriously convinced the former hates the latter because they're better educated in general, and how it also seems to apply to the sexes. It might be the Kavanaugh hearing doing this.

I should point out that (I can't find the article, I really want to but I don't think I can) that mentioned how Americans in general prefer films where they can shut their brains off and leave the theaters happy, so what would make a good number of them happier than a film that fulfills most of their own social biases? I'm sure most actors and actresses in general would prefer this didn't happen too since it's easy to get typecast (the industry itself though seems to have a thing about pushing typecasting anyway even for the people who work behind the scenes).

[conuly]

I've always chalked up the divide to a. Boomers can't stand not being the center of attention the way they've been their whole lives, the way that seems "normal" to them and b. their generation was marked by a much bruited "generation gap" between them and their elders.

[osewalrus]

Curious about the commentary.

This argument always pushes so many of my buttons that it infruiates me.

As for nature v. nurture, I will point to the Orthodox Jewish world where all males read massively because it is a hugely, culturally ingrained status thing. We drill it into boys starting as young as possible that we read. We read our prayers. We read the Law. We read the commentaries.

Now let me give a male perspective on the problem and as a father who raised a reluctant reader to a voracious reader and as someone who was a voracious reader growing up.

An overwhelming number of elementary school teachers and all elementary school librarians are women. This is fed by and feeds into so many sexist tropes that it is worthy of a major screed in its own right. But of relevance here is that boys have zero models for reading, and selections of books and reading assignments is driven by women (generally without too much consideration of literature types boys like). Boys are routinely pushed to more active play over anything that involves reading generally.

And then we have the exceptions. The boy who reads is the nerd. The geek. Or, more favorably, the "gifted and talented" or "intellectual." After all, if boys are not naturally readers, it follows that the boy who DOES read is exceptional -- in either a good or bad way.

[nicki]

You want more men teaching elementary school and as librarians? We'll need to pay everyone more. (about half of our 6th grade teachers are men and in my district that's elementary school)

[conuly]

But of relevance here is that boys have zero models for reading, and selections of books and reading assignments is driven by women (generally without too much consideration of literature types boys like)

This may be the case in some classrooms, but I've heard many people report the opposite - teachers were so convinced boys needed to be cajoled into reading that they only assigned books that the most reluctant male reader would be guaranteed to slog through. And this went on from elementary through high school. Lots of 1984 and Catcher in the Rye, not much Pride and Prejudice or The Bluest Eye, lest the guys get cooties from girl feelings.

[nocowardsoul]

I'm sure girls reading more than boys has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that parents are more likely to let boys leave the house than girls!

[osewalrus]

Is that true. Seems like everyone is hyper supervised until after 10? Even into tweendom, activities are planned and group social. Perhaps this varies by region.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

the soft bigotry of low expectations is rarely this when invoked, but totally is a shoe that fits.

When you don't allow boys to read about girls and women, girls and women are mysterious and easily turned into a magic lamp. When boys can't read about boys facing serious concerns, they think books aren't important.

I've got more (this is from readings in the subject) about problems that face weak readers, namely the starter books are "for babies"; I don't know if it's still true most weak readers are fluent language users, life's been getting more and more messed up, but at one point in addition to subject matter mismatch, the language was too simple. It didn't engage the weak reader, so they didn't see why to bother struggling.

When you drop into all of this the "most teachers are women because we can pay them less", the boys are good social scientists. They play the game and we all lose.

This is when you take a page from Erasmus and teach reading skills with a basketball or anything else hobby-valid that gets a boy's attention. I'd suggest them teaching their teacher a skill.

[greghousesgf]

brilliantly put, especially the first paragraph. This is exactly the sort of double standard that leads to the all too common male perception of women as if we were some sort of alien beings.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Girls read more than boys because girls have more to escape from.

Girls read more because they don't have to confront the world's expectations to read. (They can make even the hardest physics tome look like a romance novel if needs must.)

Girls read more because we want them quiet, clean and still.

[nocowardsoul]

Girls read more because it's one of the few things a child can do without an adult or peer showing up to harass them about doing it wrong.

[wpadmirer]

(sigh)

[silveradept]

I mean, they could talk about how girls are fairly quickly excluded and told they're not good at various other domains, regardless of the truth. They could also point out that there's still a prejudice to overcome about how reading certain formats isn't seen as real reading, that reading below your level is meant to boost confidence as well as enjoyment, and a whole bunch of other research that's been done on why "boys don't read" be that tends to conclude that it has very little to do with aptitude.

As for those other comments that say boys won't watch or read things with girls in them, that's been disproven since the Legend of Korra. Or Kim Possible. Or Xena. Or Sailor Moon (yes, even the terrible dub). Or. Or. Or. And yet, it still stays conventional wisdom that boys don't do those things. Except that they have been all the time.

The comment about how you have to read more perspectives to challenge yourself makes sense, if the only audience you apply it to are White, cis people, who can, in fact, go through their entire lives without having to read about a person of color if they so choose. For everyone else, there's not nearly enough representation for any of that statement to make any sense at all. And the publishing industry doesn't seem to have any want to change their percentages in any meaningful way, including in children's books.

Ugh, privilege.

[osewalrus]

Yes. Bad CW drives lots of idiocy in the world. It tells us a lot about the handful of decision makers.

[duskpeterson]

There is a heavy push by children's educational publishers to reach boy readers. (Educational publishers sell books to school libraries and classroom libraries.) As far as I can tell, nonfiction "boys' books" currently consist of the following:

Anything about joining the military.

Anything with the words "scary" or "gross" in the title.

Anything with the words "extreme" or "daredevil" in the title (usually in reference to a sport that boys can take up).

Frankly, it makes me shudder. On a different level, there are plenty of books about male athletes, male historical figures, etc. but these are usually in series that appear to be aimed toward both boys and girls.

When I was growing up in the sixties (though I was totally oblivious to this at the time), there was a clear differentiation between boys' novels and girls' novels. Boys' books were usually funny, about boys who tried, in a hapless manner, to accomplish feats such as mechanical experiments. Adventure books, such as science fiction, were also aimed at boys. Girls got the domestic fiction, and there were plenty of books aimed at both boys and girls. But I can't recall reading any books then that were as hardcore in advocating killing or dying as today's boys' books seem to be.

[conuly]

I wonder if the Department of Defense pays money to educational pubishing....

[gwydion]

I used to hand my Middle School boys books with girl protagonists and ones with boy protagonists with different race/ethnicity/religion/etc. than them when they asked for recommendations. I knew my kids and their tastes. I picked stuff they would normally like all things being equal, but which it wouldn't occur to them to try because not the same old white male protagonist. They loved it. They would hand the books off quietly to friends and let them know I'd recommended them. The friends would take be aside and surreptitiously ask for more like that. I'd spot them reading other ones by the same authors. Sometimes I'd spot them experimenting with books by other authors all on their own

They were fine.

All they needed was someone they trusted to hand them a book with a different sort of protagonist and a really good story. Pretending they can't do what everyone who isn't a straight white guy can do is lazy. Sometimes they just need a little nudge to open whole new worlds to them. Best to catch them young though.

[rhoda_rants]

I genuinely wonder how people are raising these boys who don't read, and why they keep getting it "wrong" somehow. My brother and I are both avid readers. So are our parents, and our stepparents, and we're all huge nerds who love sci-fi and fantasy and whatnot. He's never had a problem with female protagonists in books, and we give each other recommendations all the time. He generally reads more nonfiction than I do, but even then he doesn't shy away from stuff like the Bethany Hamilton story (a pro-surfer who survived a shark attack, and who is a personal hero of his along with the more dude-friendly surfer pros like . . . okay I don't know pro surfers apart from Bethany Hamilton, but you see my point, right?)

THE POINT IS--there was never a time when he had to be pushed to read, or railed against being given "girl books." He read A Wrinkle In Time before I did, and no one cared. What is going on in places where this doesn't happen?

[osewalrus]

We had a reluctant reader. Aaron was a perfectionist and if he couldn’t get it right immediately he avoided it. So we had to trick him.

He loved audio books. He just hated reading. So first we got his eyes checked (yup, needed glasses). That helped. Then we gave him a chapter a night of Harry Potter until Shabbat. “Sorry, no audio books Friday night or Saturday. But here is the hard copy if you want to read on your own.”

That worked.

[nodrog]

Strange to say, I can point to a direct example of this:  Shag: The Movie (1989)

Set in South Carolina in The Sixties™, it starred Phoebe Cates, Bridget Fonda and Annabeth Gish, all at the top of their game.  Knockout babes, retro beach movie, can’t lose, right?  Have you ever even heard of it?  I’d bet not…  Because it was a “weepy, overwrought chick flick,” a whiny soap opera, and the guys who went to see it for the babes walked out, while the girls were stopped by that same unlikely pulchritude of its stars.  It couldn’t win for losing!  [Being set elsewhere than California didn’t help either.  There was an entire Southeastern surf scene then also, with Folly Beach and Pawleys Island (“one of the oldest summer resorts on the East Coast”), Myrtle Beach and Sullivan’s Island - but who has ever heard of it?]

The point being, girls are not guys are not girls, what appeals to one doesn’t appeal to the other, and this film shot itself in both feet, driving away its audience as well as ever it could have tried.

[conuly]

Is it a good movie?