Low Testosterone Literature — or how the publishing industry hates men
Alternate title: Warhammer is for women.
A number of articles have hit my inbox over the last several days
First we have this article from Michael Mohr, who goes through the history and context of missing male writers.
Then there is Freddy deBoer’s recent piece talking about the schizophrenic reaction to these trends. Typically, the people who work at these establishments simultaneously claim that it's not happening, and that it's happening and a good thing.
Natasha Burge has two excellent pieces talking about how fantasy literature has lost its soul, and has now become an act of rebellion. She makes the astute connection that the sorts of wonders and ideals valorized in classical fantasy literature have now given way to the cold machinations of a bureaucratic state.
On YouTube, we have these videos from Echo Chamberlain and Man Carrying Things. These two videos are compliments of one another, as the former shows how literary prizes go out of their way to promote works only from female authors, while the latter video dissects how the media takes great pains to demonize male-centered fiction.
All of these pieces have their own angles, but it's very clear that they all center around a singular concept:
The fiction industry hates testosterone
I apologize in advance if I come across as though my pantaloons have been punctured, but I cannot help but find this politicization and gatekeeping both extremely irritating and completely unnecessary. It's almost as if these institutions go out of their way to demonize the masculine experience – and all the while deny that they’re doing so.
I’ve previously written about the unnecessary politicization of fitness, and how working out is now seen as a right wing activity for some reason — but now they seem to want to do the same thing with fiction.
More than anything there’s a deep hypocrisy; women and young girls constantly complain about how they are mocked or teased just for enjoying certain things, and yet when given the opportunity (as well as institutional power) they are more than happy to turn around and do the same thing to men.
Which raises the question: what are the components of this institutional bias?
By looking at the above links, we can see three categories.
Media
The Freddie deBoer post is referencing The New Yorker, and the Man Carrying Thing video is in reference to a website called Dazed. Regardless of the platform, however, there seems to be this pervasive sneering attitude at the average man, as if the types of books they read is a damning insight into the nature of their character.
Critics
This is separate but related to the media piece, and more has to do with the literary prizes. As the Echo Chamberlain video points out, the vast majority of these prizes are handed out to women.
I'm sure if you ask these people how they're coming up with the ranking and selection process, they'll simply say that they're trying to promote certain marginalized identity groups, but if the scope of such promotion encompasses such a wide variety of groups so as to be the majority of the population, it becomes closer to discrimination against everyone else.
Publishing
While media and the critics have a controlling hand in the surrounding discourse and narrative, the first barrier to entry for budding writers is that of the publishing industry itself, and there it becomes very clear that the sensibilities of these books have to cater to women, who comprise the vast majority of these positions.
When you combine these three components, what you end up with is a reinforcement cycle of gatekeeping and narrative — an apparatus that is completely decoupled from the views, values, and preferences of the average person.
So how exactly did this happen?
I believe the chain of reasoning goes something like this:
To work in the literary space, you need to be educated and well read, but the jobs in this domain pay like shit.
As such, the only people who can readily pursue a career in this space are those who don’t have a great deal of economic burdens These are people who can go and get educated for the sake of “expanding their mind” rather than having to make a cold calculation as to what sort of job is best for them once they graduate.
The type of people who pursue these sorts of degrees are going to be white women, as both men and minorities have higher societal obligations to make ends meet.
As such, these white women end up taking over MFA, creative writing, and literature – and once they graduate they percolate into other related industries, bringing all of their biases with them.
Roll forward this process for a few decades, and you get the current problems with the fiction industry. I’ve previously written about male flight, and how women have effectively taken over a number of domains through this process, but I think books and fiction writing are particularly bad.
Much like the Oscars, the Grammys, the Emmys, or any sort of gatekeeping body, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the opinions of these gatekeepers are not only completely detached from that of the average person, but increasingly irrelevant.
In the fiction industry, this detachment comes from several angles.
First, since women and LGBT folks tend to dominate the space now, they seem to believe that identity conflicts are inherently subversive, and therefore interesting. As such, very little action takes place, as the internal struggles of these characters are seen as enough of a compelling force for the plot.
Second is the inability to handle nuance. It’s this idea that characters must ultimately come away with the correct opinions and values – which happen to increasingly align with the metropolitan elite.
Third is the related assumption that people are static over time. Previously it was acknowledged that a young man or woman might go through a libertarian Ayn Rand phase, or they might read George Orwell and see dystopia in everything. Nowadays, the mere act of purchasing a book is seen as performative. If someone reads, say, Lolita, and finds meaning in the narrative, then that automatically assumes that they must inherently agree with Humbert’s world view.
Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, it’s very clear that the majority of these authors and publishers simply do not have a basic insight into the male experience. This becomes abundantly clear when they cannot make meaning of various actions that a male character might take — and how these actions are actually used to process their emotions, rather than a narrative that prioritizes “interiority”.
Ultimately we're seeing the phenomenon of the helicopter mom, applied to an entire industry. And, as with most helicopter parenting, these people are achieving the exact opposite of what they are intending.
A person needs to play in mud in order to develop an immune system. That same person needs to play with muddy ideas in order to do the same for his mind.
With this endless gatekeeping, judgment, and snark, the helicopter parents are facilitating the very sort of ideological sickness that they’re supposedly trying to prevent.
Once more, it's worth pointing out the complete double standard
The media goes to great lengths to promote acceptance of certain identities, struggles, and issues, so long as they fall in line with a generally progressive agenda. In fact, a lot of contemporary fantasy is nothing more than female centered erotica, and rather lurid and gruesome erotica at that. But this is a discussion that people (especially men) are not allowed to weigh in on, because it’s seen as overly harsh or judgmental.
And yet, as with a lot of things, it’s open season on men and boys; a man can be judged by what he reads, what he finds interesting, what characters he relates to, and the level he reads at.
In truth, the judgement itself is not a big deal; ultimately we live in a society where people have different values, and one group of people criticizing another group of people for the values and standards they uphold is largely legitimate.
What people increasingly find tiresome, however, is the idea that this judgement can only go one way.
As Freddie deBoer describes in his article, the people in these gatekeeping positions constantly flip-flop between two separate and irreconcilable arguments.
The first is an attitude of sneering dismissal — that claims to indignation are invalid, because this supposed discrimination isn’t happening.
But then, moments later, the very same people will turn around and acknowledge that it is happening, but it’s actually a good thing.
And of course, what adds fuel to the flame is the additional claim that anybody attempting to point out these double standards are only doing so because of jealousy — that, underneath it all, all these “fragile men” simply want the approval of these publishing houses.
This sort of reaction has all the same flavor as a severely overweight woman who claims that nobody wants to date her because men are “intimidated” by her body. Or a woman who claims that guys are “emasculated” by her career success.
Rather, most people who call out this issue have nothing but fondness for fiction and fantasy, and lament the fact that these domains are becoming increasingly politicized; that younger men are increasingly judged, mocked, derided, or otherwise ignored when they attempt to enter these spaces.
But you might ask the question: why do I care so much?
The other day I received one of the highest compliments I could possibly receive
At the time of writing this, I have a whopping two paid subscribers — they’re already calling me the next Brandon Sanderson (Rohan-don Sanderson?)
One of them told me that I actually convinced her to start reading the Warhammer books.
Warhammer is possibly the most testosterone filled fiction series that you can possibly get your hands on. And indeed, when you read these books, you’ll get all the typical stuff: battles, guns, swords, alien invasions, rockets, just about every form of war you can possibly imagine.
But you’d also learn about the story of a man who is effectively a demigod, whose job title is literally that of Warmaster — and yet you’ll watch him struggle with the fact that he feels as though he’s been abandoned by his father.
You’ll learn about the various space marines, and how they struggle to do the right thing, even when everyone around them is falling to the forces of chaos.
You’ll learn about the remembrancers, a group of men and women who attempt to record the histories, great and small, and how they try to grasp the greater truth of man’s nature.
You’ll learn about the Primarchs — a group of brothers who each have their own story, some great and valorous, and others tragic.
And most importantly, you’ll learn about my boy Sanguinius and his fucking sick wings.
The point is that Warhammer, and so many other fiction series, are more than simple stories – they are doors to other worlds
If I could go back to the younger version of myself, I think he would be extremely surprised at my love of literature. By the time I graduated college I had probably read only two or three books for my own pleasure.
But then I discovered Harry Potter, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, and other fantasy authors. This opened the doorway to other types of fiction, both literary and historical. And so I began to read people like Bernard Cromwell, GA Henty, Poul Anderson, Guy Gavriel Kay — and as time went on, people like Dickens, Jane Austen, and the Brontë sisters.
There's so many more; if I even attempted to describe all the books that inspired me, this essay would be five times as long.
And beyond the mere enjoyment of this sort of literature, I found that books gave me some mild superpowers. For one thing, it's the only type of entertainment that actually improves attention spans. Additionally, I almost never feel FOMO anymore, because I know that at any given moment, I can pick up a book and feel happy for an extended duration for absolutely no cost.
Fiction also had the welcome side of helping me punch far above my weight class when it comes to the fairer sex. Forget about Neil Strauss, if you want to learn game, then read Jane Austen.
And above all of this, fiction – along with lifting heavy shit – were the only things that were always there for me. They were relatively cheap, they made me feel good, and they were also good for me.
More than any other therapy, relationship, or medication, these two things – fiction and fitness – have always been there to help me whenever my life has been difficult. I knew that when I was down, I could always get myself moving in the right direction again by doing high rep squats and reading about the march against Mordor.
And that's why I'm such a crotchety old man about this relentless gatekeeping and double standards in the modern fiction industry. I shit you not, several of my teachers believed that I was illiterate because of how bad I was at reading and writing. It was only when people stopped breathing down my neck and allowed me to follow my own path that I developed my own love for books.
But in the modern landscape, especially with social media, it's becoming increasingly clear that the younger version of myself wouldn't have these opportunities — so it's no wonder that so many men don't read anymore.
Feminists constantly complain about patriarchy, but much like gym culture, it seems to be the hyper liberal and hyper feminist people that insist on keeping men and women in their little gender based bubble.
But unlike politics, technology, or economics, I’m optimistic about the future when it comes to the shifting culture in books
People have become tired of this endless identity politics. People are getting fed up with the relentless prioritization of superficial attributes at the cost of stories and narratives that are actually engaging.
Men are getting fed up with being relentlessly shit on, and even a growing number of women see how superficial this pandering actually is.
One interesting irony that I've noticed is that, for all that women want to “dismantle the patriarchy”, many of them use Aragorn as the prime example of healthy masculinity. Aragorn, a literal patriarch, a man destined to become king by virtue of his blood. Aragorn, a character from the kind of author the publishing industry is trying so hard to demonize.
And this is why the politicization in the modern publishing industry is both unnecessary and absurd. All the classics from Tolkien to Lewis are for women, just as much as they ever were for men.
Warhammer is for women as well.
On this platform, all of us are Remembrancers, fighting back against this heresy.
I think a lot of the love from the left for Aragorn comes from Peter Jackson's version of the character, who is much more the unwilling hero type than a King planning his return to the crown. It makes it more palatable to them that he is a supremely gifted, virtuous man since he doesn't *really* want his destiny. Both versions are good in their own right though!
As someone who was trying to publish a fantasy novel for over a year and got pretty deep inside info from Big Five authors and agents, this tracks. People often protest that the top sellers in SFF are written by men (Sanderson, Jordan, Butcher, GRRM, JRRT) note that none of these guys debuted recently and some are dead. If you look at what's coming down the pipeline of new authors, the picture is bleak.