It happened while I was reading a perfectly normal novel by a perfectly normal author: Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, to be specific. Although I had read The Corrections during the Oprah kerfuffle and responded with an equivocal “meh,” I finished this novel in a fit of gender rage. Have you ever met a woman who would be cool with her husband converting their vacation home into a bird sanctuary named after his dead girlfriend? I have not. As my self-righteous anger escalated, I started to wonder where this fury was coming from. Sure, Freedom is sexist, but so are scores of books, many films, and every show that has ever aired on CBS. Why the feminist rage? But then it hit me. Freedom was different from every other book I had read in 2013. It was written by a man.
I hadn’t planned to swear off men. It just happened. Reading women turns out to be an occupational hazard of starting a gender and culture blog. Shocking, I know. And there were just so many women to read. Zadie Smith, Shelia Heti, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Meg Wolitzer, Chinelo Okparanta, Rachel Kushner, Claire Messud, Susan Choi, Lauren Beukes—90% of all YA authors. I was enmeshed in a veritable cornucopia of lady talent. But when I finally emerged from this estrogen bubble—dizzy and smelling of vanilla lotion—everything seemed a bit off. Continue reading “The Year I Stopped Reading Men”