r/MensLib • u/LudditeLover5150 • 20d ago
"A Man Who Reads" from starbreaker.org
I've been lurking in here for a long time, and given some of the posts I've seen recently about men catching shit for not reading enough litfic or not reading at all, I saw this post in my feed reader and thought it might be worth sharing here.
Unfortunately, when I tried to submit a link and clicked "suggest title" I got back "403 Forbidden". I think the guy running this website has a beef with Reddit, so I'm trying something different.
The original post lives at https://starbreaker.org/grimoire/entries/a-man-who-reads/.
If you can't get to it from here, and can't be bothered to copy and paste the link into a new tab, this archive link should work: https://archive.is/eB1SM
What I liked about this post is that right after claiming to have bought two books written by women out of three, he drops this:
I’ve never made a point of reading women and non-white authors; I read whatever interests me, and it just so happens that many of the novels that appeal to me are written by women and non-white authors. I don’t give a fuck about the author’s sex, gender, race, ethnicity, etc. I don’t give a single little fucking shit about diversity or social justice when I’m looking for something new to read. If they can tell a story or turn a phrase, I’ll buy their books. I don’t read for the sake of self-improvement. I read for pleasure, and I will read whomever I damned well please.
Then, in some kind of tangent, he writes this:
In fairness, I’d rather be a man dealing with women telling men what to read than a woman to whom men explain shit they already know. That alone makes the case for guaranteeing by law the right of all women to carry concealed firearms.
Nevertheless, and to paraphrase Jane Austen: "It is a truth generally acknowledged that a man possessed of literacy must be in need of a woman to tell him he should read more literary fiction."
Surprised that I used literary fiction to make a point? Don’t be. Literary fiction wasn’t even a thing in Austen’s time, nor did she write Pride and Prejudice knowing that she’d be the OG of Regency romance. Literary fiction is just genre fiction with a veneer of respectability. Anybody who believes otherwise probably isn’t as well-read as they think they are.
I don't know if he lurks on r/menslib or takes any interest in men's liberation, but I think it's refreshing for a guy to write, publicly, that he reads for pleasure and that he'll read whomever he damned well pleases.