A few days ago, I posted a meme on social media from Hopalong Ginsberg which I thought was a useful encapsulation of a long-standing problem in the publishing world — that publishers have been consciously neglecting the male reader, especially the young male reader, in favour of the female audience — and the often noted lack of interest among male students for reading assignments in school. I commented “It’s amazing to consider the power (mostly female) school teachers have to utterly destroy young males’ interest in reading anything“:
On X, MeWe, and Gab, it got a few likes and that was it. On Substack Notes, however, it got a lot of attention and commentary (mostly positive) and a few who took it as a personal attack or proof that there’s no anti-male bias in publishing today. It’s always eye-opening when audiences can get radically different interpretations from the same source.
All that said, here’s something vittorio posted to X which I think is also relevant:
this is also why boys are reading so much less now that children’s publishing has become female dominated
men write archetypes. women write about themselves.
men write about heroes, villains, gods, monsters, extraordinary characters who embody something greater than themselves, heroes that boys can admire and aspire to become
women write characters who look like them, think like them, have their problems and insecurities, characters they can identify with and project themselves onto
men use writing as a vehicle for self-transcendence while women use it as a vehicle for self-recognition
it’s the difference between wanting to become Batman and wanting Batman to become you
it’s then obvious why boys craving the hero’s journey would rather retreat into video games than read yet another piece of autobiographical, gossip-filled, moralizing turboslop
if you want boys to start reading again you need to let men write again
Sometime in jr high, around 8th grade, a teacher of mine assigned a series of horribly depressing and dystopian short SF stories to read. As I was then in my “300+ books to read” a year jag, I told her there was more out there.
She at least admitted she didn’t know. I doubt it took, though. Most schools should be burnt to the ground.
Comment by Clayton Barnett — November 13, 2026 @ 03:25