Women/femmes/feminists: What commonly recommended books were you unable to finish due to distracting male gaze or misogyny?
For example, Haruki Murakami is recommended on here alllll the time. Years ago, I decided to pick up IQ84, but could not finish it because the way he writes female characters gave me the ick.
I am exhausted by the male gaze and centering of the male experience IRL, so I really do not need it in my fiction. To avoid repeating my Murakami journey, I'd like to make a time-saving list of books or authors not to read.
by _sweetpeaches_
15 Comments
Pillars of the Earth
Gabriel Tallent’s My Absolute Darling
Forth Wing, and the “female-gaze”
But I guess the “ick” I have is how the MC/FMC focuses on how hot the guy is when people fighting and dying in the vicinity.
[Fridging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_refrigerators) is my biggest feminist pet peeve. I really just do not enjoy a book where a woman has to be killed to motivate the male character.
For instance, someone recommended *The Alloy of Law* by Brandon Sanderson and I picked it up, this happens in the first chapter and I was done.
Project Hail Mary
I disliked these three series for similar reasons:
– The Book of the New Sun
– Dune (will probably get flak for this one)
– The Name of the Wind
All of them feature a male protagonist who is both “special” and a total asshole. Perhaps the point of some of these books is to critique that trope (I know Dune is intended as commentary on imperialism and its associated mythos) but I was so dramatically annoyed by the main characters, I didn’t get any satisfaction from these books.
Neal Stephenson has gotten genuinely better over time, but Cryptonomicon was a twice-DNF for me for years (I eventually did go back to it and finish it, because I actually quite like his Baroque Cycle and they’re connected). Snow Crash is worse than I remember noticing at the time, too. But Seveneves is great, so somewhere along the line he learned that women are people.
Heinlein is the king of ick
I hate 1Q84 and will tell anyone who will listen. lol. Not only does it feel like Murakami has never met a woman in his life but why on earth did he need to sexualise a literal child??
Most recently, The Vegetarian. It felt less like it was exposing the male gaze and more like it was revelling in it.
I’m sure there have been more.
Ready Player One and Dungeon Crawler Carl and Brent Weeks the Lightbringer. Whole chapter on the FMC having her period and it was not well done.
aztec by gary jennings…LOVE LOVE the historical exploration of it…the book made me physically uncomfortable with how it portrays it’s women characters and…some of the creative liberties in sexual freedom the author took. IYKYK. The main character felt so unrealistic with every woman wanting him and so much else.
I put down “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” by Marlon James because of this. I’ve been told the main character’s misogyny is a plot point though, so I may give it another go.
Grady Hendrix. Ugh. All his books focus on women, but he’s a man, and I 100% get the ick with the way he writes them.
I solved that. I read about 60 books a year and 10% or less are by male authors.