lierdumoa:

thedragonsbookhoard:

refrescorojo: parentheticalaside: thedragonsbookhoard: marionreadsbooks: thedragonsbookhoard: I know Tumblr will probably hate me for saying this, but not reading books written by male authors purely because they’re male is sexist as fuck. I never take this into account. I do read a lot of books by white male authors, but that’s not planned or anything; I just read the books that sound good to me. The author’s gender or ethnicity doesn’t really factor into my wanting of reading the book. Exactly. I judge a book purely by its content. No, you don’t. You operate within the same system as the rest of us, which is the one that packs the shelves with books by men, codes those books as being better when written by men, skews best books list to favor male writers, and disproportionately gives top writing awards and commercial success to white male writers. Female writers’ success is often restricted to YA or romance, both genres considered to be inferior to literary fiction, where male writers dominate. Female and minority writers are told their experience is not universal and will only be appreciated by other women and minorities, while men are considered the default experience and told everyone can appreciate their writing. All of that means you don’t judge a book solely by its content. You judge it through the same prism as the rest of us, and it’s a prism that happens to bring men into focus and blur out women and minorities. Upholding a system that puts men above women is sexist. Choosing to opt out of that system is not. Thank you for saying this far better than I ever could. Reading women or diversely does not mean not reading male authors, but saying you only read base on content fails to accept the point that most of the choices we have are from white man that are given more opportunities. I’d like to see some proof that the publishing industry (who I’m pretty sure largely consists of female employees) gives white men more opportunities, rather than the typical Tumblr assumption that’s there’s some secret sexist conspiracy happening.

This is a classic example of someone exhibiting the “just world fallacy.”

It works as follows. “I believe life is fair. If something bad happens to someone, they must deserve it, somehow. If something good happens to someone they must deserve that too. Because life is fair. ”

The gross majority of publishing companies are run by white men, the gross majority of published works are written by white men, the gross majority of judging panelists for book awards are white men, and the gross majority of book award winners are white men. These are documented statistical facts.

White men do not comprise a gross majority of the general population. This is another documented statistical fact.



You can look at these facts and draw the logical conclusion – “The the publishing system must be biased towards white men. That is the only explanation for this situation that makes sense.”

Or you can give in to your cognitive bias – “But, but life is fair. Life works exactly like a children’s fairytale. The good guys do the right thing and win. The bad guys do the right thing and lose. If white men seem to be winning all the time that must mean … well … I guess white men must just be … better, somehow. Yes! White men must just naturally be better at everything and more worthy of awards than anybody else! Other genders and races must not be achieving at the same level because they’re just … inferior.”

So you see, racism and sexism are not the product of active, deliberate hatred. They’re really just the product of childlike denial. People just don’t want to believe that bad things happen to good people.