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Afternoon, all. Since my paid account expires in two days (and anyone who feels like funding a bit more of it would be much loved!), I'm writing polls while I can. This one's been done in a bit of a rush, I'll edit this post and put More Useful Thoughts in later.
Here's a topic I've been interested in for a while. Are people more likely to read novels written by authors of their own gender, are they more likely to identify with characters of their own gender, and how well do you find authors can write their own and the opposite gender? Jane Austen, for instance, is notoriously weak at writing men, and Dickens' women are even worse. Of course, if you're a woman reading a novel about a man, you can only guess how well he's written as a male character, you can't judge from personal experience, but I'm interested in hearing the guesses anyway.
Yes, I know I've gone for that troublesome binary gender way of looking at things. There are limits in a poll of this size. If you're intersex or feel yourself to be between genders in some way, don't answer the poll, write a good long comment instead. If you're transsexual, up to you but I reckon you're probably best off doing the same, as you'll have had more conflicting gender conditioning than non-trans folks.
I've split it roughly into pre-20th century and 20th/21st century, and by pre-20th I mean the modern period (let's face it, the novel really got going in the 18th century), don't base all of this on a couple of novel fragments from the ancient world such as the Satyricon. Hopefully the poll makes sense, I had to cram a lot into the last question in particular. If you don't understand a question, ask in the comments before answering, and you can always go back and change your answers by clicking on "Fill out poll" again. Obviously I'm not just interested in the stats, I want to hear why people read as they do and why they think these patterns occur.
Before you answer, I suggest you take a good look at your bookshelves. I'm finding that I remember the balance of authors completely differently; the proportion of male writers on my shelves, for example, turned out to be higher than I'd have guessed, and it's also easy to mentally filter out less "literary" authors. If you are particularly fond of any type of genre fiction, I realise that some of that is more biased towards one gender than another (e.g. romance novels/women, SF/men); all food for discussion in the comments!
[Poll #1003667]
Here's a topic I've been interested in for a while. Are people more likely to read novels written by authors of their own gender, are they more likely to identify with characters of their own gender, and how well do you find authors can write their own and the opposite gender? Jane Austen, for instance, is notoriously weak at writing men, and Dickens' women are even worse. Of course, if you're a woman reading a novel about a man, you can only guess how well he's written as a male character, you can't judge from personal experience, but I'm interested in hearing the guesses anyway.
Yes, I know I've gone for that troublesome binary gender way of looking at things. There are limits in a poll of this size. If you're intersex or feel yourself to be between genders in some way, don't answer the poll, write a good long comment instead. If you're transsexual, up to you but I reckon you're probably best off doing the same, as you'll have had more conflicting gender conditioning than non-trans folks.
I've split it roughly into pre-20th century and 20th/21st century, and by pre-20th I mean the modern period (let's face it, the novel really got going in the 18th century), don't base all of this on a couple of novel fragments from the ancient world such as the Satyricon. Hopefully the poll makes sense, I had to cram a lot into the last question in particular. If you don't understand a question, ask in the comments before answering, and you can always go back and change your answers by clicking on "Fill out poll" again. Obviously I'm not just interested in the stats, I want to hear why people read as they do and why they think these patterns occur.
Before you answer, I suggest you take a good look at your bookshelves. I'm finding that I remember the balance of authors completely differently; the proportion of male writers on my shelves, for example, turned out to be higher than I'd have guessed, and it's also easy to mentally filter out less "literary" authors. If you are particularly fond of any type of genre fiction, I realise that some of that is more biased towards one gender than another (e.g. romance novels/women, SF/men); all food for discussion in the comments!
[Poll #1003667]
