Why Can't Female Writers Write?

[Flor]

oh good grief it's hard to believe someone is still kicking this around in the 21st century. Eyez0nme it's time to open your eyes and your mind, dear.

 

[lady.cordelia]

i think you are right, smila!

i'll sum it up with this and just leave this post and for the first time put a person on my ignore list:

19th to 21st century authors, just to name a few:

Louisa May Alcott
Maya Angelou
Jane Austen
Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Bronte
Angela Davis
Emily Dickinson
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Colette
Alice Morse Earle
George Eliot
Fannie Flagg
Anne Frank
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Julia Ward Howe
Jean Ingelow
Madeleine L’Engle
Anna Leonowens
Francis Marion
Toni Morrison
Judith Sargent Murray
Sylvia Plath
Beatrix Potter
Ayn Rand
J. K. Rowling
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (hello – Frankenstein!)
Gertrude Stein
Harriet Beacher Stowe
Alice Walker
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Virginia Woolf

 

[Fantasy Moon]

There are many wonderful female writers, both in classical and contemporary literature. Certain members who seek to abuse their freedom of speech would do well to branch out and try more samples of female-penned literature before making such flammatory assumptions as to the quality and worth of female authors.

 

[beer good]

Why Can't Female Writer's Write?

Wh'y Can't Ma'le Trol'ls Use' A'p'o's't'r'o'p'h'e's Cor'rectly?

 

[Flor]

But he serves as a useful foil to sanity, don't you think? And he may be just trying to goad us.

Edit: This was in response to Ions suggestion that fucko be banned.

 

[Flor]

Wh'y Can't Ma'le Trol'ls Use' A'p'o's't'r'o'p'h'e's Cor'rectly?

oh this is too funny! Zing!

 

[tartan_skirt]

*slaps eyez0nme with a wet fish*

Oh hush you. There are plenty of good female writers out there if you just look.

I really believe you just try to make trouble...

 

[SFG75]

This isn't the USA?

*gasp*

You and Bush--go to hell.

Your theology sucks.

I believe thus was Benjamin Franklin who said... something to the effect: If you give up your freedom, your death somethin somethin somethin.

You must be referring to history. Theology is related to matters concerning religion.


This site(i.e.-the server) is in the U.K. They were tories in the conflict, had nothing to do with Ben Franklin.

 

[Poppy1]

*slaps eyez0nme with a wet fish*

Oh hush you. There are plenty of good female writers out there if you just look.

I really believe you just try to make trouble...

I so agree with you tartan skirt. eyezOnme is just a stirrer. You can just see him making these wild inflammatory statements, then sitting back and laughing his ass off when everyone starts frothing at the mouth.

 

[ValkyrieRaven88]

I agree. After reading other comments he has posted, I think he's just posting random things that he thinks will make people mad. I laughed so hard when I saw this thread, because I knew that's exactly what he was trying to do.

(And BTW, beergood, your comment--hilarious.)

 

[ions]

His purpose isn't lost on me. I know he's intentionally being provocative but he's just not good at it. Maybe if he were more provocative than stupid it would work. I love a good troll once in a while but he's not a good troll, he's just dumb.

To do this topic well mention that well over 90% of major literary awards have gone to male authors including the Booker, Pulitzer and Nobel. Mention that male authors sell more books or maybe that modern male authors have greater career longevity than most women authors....

He's not polemic. He's an idiot.

 

[ValkyrieRaven88]

I suppose that's a very valid point. Is that true, BTW, about the awards? Personally, I don't really pay attention to the what sex the author of a book is when I'm buying it. Unless you're reading a sex scene, you can't really tell the difference anyway.

 

[ions]

I suppose that's a very valid point. Is that true, BTW, about the awards?

Yeah off the top of my head it is true. My 90% number could be off by a small margin, I pulled it out of my ass. If someone wants to do the math on the ratio of reward winners go for it. It would of course be specious reasoning to use that alone as evidence that women are inferior writers to men. The gender bias in awards is changing though, women are receiving more and more literary rewards. 2006 Booker winner for example. Is this because women are becoming better writers or because women now significantly out-read men causing an influence? Are awards political?! Something else altogether? Hodgepodge? Dunno. Speculamitating.

The irony is one could use this sort of evidence to support, with some validity, shithead's argument.

 

[Fantasy Moon]

I usually don't pay attention to the gender of authors, and I forget a lot of the names later on after I've read the book even though their words remain with me.

 

[Smila]

Here is a list of some of those women who "don't" know how to write.

Booker Prize for Literature

2006: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
Kate Grenville, The Secret River
M. J. Hyland, Carry Me Down
Hisham Matar, In the Country of Men
Edward St Aubyn, Mother's Milk
Sarah Waters, The Night Watch

2005: John Banville, The Sea
Julian Barnes, Arthur & George
Sebastian Barry, A Long Long Way
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Ali Smith, The Accidental
Zadie Smith, On Beauty

2004: Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty
Achmat Dangor, Bitter Fruit
Sarah Hall, The Electric Michelangelo
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Colm Tóibín, The Master
Gerard Woodward, I'll Go to Bed at Noon

2003: DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little
Monica Ali, Brick Lane
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Damon Galgut, The Good Doctor
Zoë Heller, Notes on a Scandal
Clare Morrall, Astonishing Splashes of Colour

2002: Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters
Carol Shields, Unless
William Trevor, The Story of Lucy Gault
Sarah Waters, Fingersmith
Tim Winton, Dirt Music

2001: Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang
Ian McEwan, Atonement
Andrew Miller, Oxygen
David Mitchell, number9dream
Rachel Seiffert, The Dark Room
Ali Smith, Hotel World

2000: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Trezza Azzopardi, The Hiding Place
Michael Collins, The Keepers of Truth
Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans
Matthew Kneale, English Passengers
Brian O'Doherty, The Deposition of Father McGeevy

1999: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace
Anita Desai, Fasting, Feasting
Michael Frayn, Headlong
Andrew O'Hagan, Our Fathers
Ahdaf Soueif, The Map of Love
Colm Tóibín, The Blackwater Lightship

1998: Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
Beryl Bainbridge, Master Georgie
Julian Barnes, England, England
Martin Booth, The Industry of Souls
Patrick McCabe, Breakfast on Pluto
Magnus Mills, The Restraint of Beasts

1997: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
Jim Crace, Quarantine
Mick Jackson, The Underground Man
Bernard MacLaverty, Grace Notes
Tim Parks, Europa
Madeleine St John, The Essence of the Thing

1996: Graham Swift, Last Orders
Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace
Beryl Bainbridge, Every Man for Himself
Seamus Deane, Reading in the Dark
Shena Mackay, The Orchard on Fire
Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

1995: Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
Justin Cartwright, In Every Face I Meet
Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh
Barry Unsworth, Morality Play
Tim Winton, The Riders

1994: James Kelman, How late it was, how late
Romesh Gunesekera, Reef
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Paradise
Alan Hollinghurst, The Folding Star
George Mackay Brown, Beside the Ocean of Time
Jill Paton Walsh, Knowledge of Angels

1993: Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
Tibor Fischer, Under the Frog
Michael Ignatieff, Scar Tissue
David Malouf, Remembering Babylon
Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River
Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries

1992: Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient, and Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger
Christopher Hope, Serenity House
Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy
Ian McEwan, Black Dogs
Michèle Roberts, Daughters of the House

1991: Ben Okri, The Famished Road
Martin Amis, Time's Arrow
Roddy Doyle, The Van
Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey
Timothy Mo, The Redundancy of Courage
William Trevor, Reading Turgenev (from Two Lives)

1990: A.S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance
Beryl Bainbridge, An Awfully Big Adventure
Penelope Fitzgerald, The Gate of Angels
John McGahern, Amongst Women
Brian Moore, Lies of Silence
Mordecai Richler, Solomon Gursky Was Here

1989: Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye
John Banville, The Book of Evidence
Sybille Bedford, Jigsaw
James Kelman, A Disaffection
Rose Tremain, Restoration

1988: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
Bruce Chatwin, Utz
Penelope Fitzgerald, The Beginning of Spring
David Lodge, Nice Work
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
Marina Warner, The Lost Father

1987: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah
Peter Ackroyd, Chatterton
Nina Bawden, Circles of Deceit
Brian Moore, The Colour of Blood
Iris Murdoch, The Book and the Brotherhood

1986: Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Paul Bailey, Gabriel's Lament
Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone
Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World
Timothy Mo, An Insular Possession

1985: Keri Hulme, The Bone People
Peter Carey, Illywhacker
J. L. Carr, The Battle of Pollocks Crossing
Doris Lessing, The Good Terrorist
Jan Morris, Last Letters from Hav
Iris Murdoch, The Good Apprentice

1984: Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
J. G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun
Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot
Anita Desai, In Custody
Penelope Lively, According to Mark
David Lodge, Small World

1983: J. M. Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K
Malcolm Bradbury, Rates of Exchange
John Fuller, Flying to Nowhere
Anita Mason, The Illusionist
Salman Rushdie, Shame
Graham Swift, Waterland

1982: Thomas Keneally, Schindler's Ark
John Arden, Silence Among the Weapons (also published as Vox Pop: Last Days of the Roman Republic
William Boyd, An Ice-Cream War
Lawrence Durrell, Constance or Solitary
Alice Thomas Ellis, The 27th Kingdom
Timothy Mo, Sour Sweet

1981: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
Molly Keane, Good Behaviour
Doris Lessing, The Sirian Experiments
Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers
Ann Schlee, Rhine Journey
Muriel Spark, Loitering with Intent
D. M. Thomas, The White Hotel

1980: William Golding, Rites of Passage
Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers
Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day
Alice Munro, The Beggar Maid
Julian O'Faolain, No Country for Young
Barry Unsworth, Pascali's Island
J. L. Carr, A Month in the Country

1979: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore
Thomas Keneally, Confederates
V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
Julian Rathbone, Joseph
Fay Weldon, Praxis

1978: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea
Kingsley Amis, Jake's Thing
André Brink, Rumours of Rain
Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop
Jane Gardam, God on the Rocks
Bernice Rubens, A Five-Year Sentence

1977: Paul Scott, Staying On
Paul Bailey, Peter Smart's Confessions
Caroline Blackwood, Great Granny Webster
Jennifer Johnston, Shadows on our Skin
Penelope Lively, The Road to Lichfield
Barbara Pym, Quartet in Autumn

1976: David Storey, Saville
André Brink, An Instant in the Wind
R. C. Hutchinson, Rising
Brian Moore, The Doctor's Wife
Julian Rathbone, King Fisher Lives
William Trevor, The Children of Dynmouth

1975: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
Thomas Keneally, Gossip from the Forest

1974: Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist, and Stanley Middleton, Holiday
Kingsley Amis, Ending Up
Beryl Bainbridge, The Bottle Factory Outing
C. P. Snow, In Their Wisdom

1973: James Gordon Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur
Beryl Bainbridge, The Dressmaker
Elizabeth Mavor, The Green Equinox
Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

1972: John Berger, G.
Susan Hill, The Bird of Night
Thomas Keneally, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
David Storey, Pasmore

1971: V.S. Naipaul, In a Free State
Thomas Kilroy, The Big Chapel
Doris Lessing, Briefing for a Descent into Hell
Mordecai Richler, St Urbain's Horseman
Derek Robinson, Goshawk Squadron
Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont

1970: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member
A. L. Barker, John Brown's Body
Elizabeth Bowen, Eva Trout
Iris Murdoch, Bruno's Dream
William Trevor, Mrs Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel
T. W. Wheeler, The Conjunction

1969: Percy Howard Newby, Something to Answer For
Barry England, Figures in a Landscape
Nicholas Mosley, Impossible Object
Iris Murdoch, The Nice and the Good
Muriel Spark, The Public Image
G. M. Williams, From Scenes like These




[

 

[Smila]

And another:

Pulitzer Prize Winners for Literature

2005 Gilead: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson
2004 The Known World by Edward P. Jones
2003 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
2002 Empire Falls by Richard Russo
2001 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
2000 Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
1999 The Hours by Michael Cunningham
1998 American Pastoral by Philip Roth
1997 Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser
1996 Independence Day by Richard Ford
1995 The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
1994 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
1993 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
1992 A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
1991 Rabbit At Rest by John Updike
1990 The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
1989 Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
1988 Beloved by Toni Morrison
1987 A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
1986 Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
1985 Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
1984 Ironweed by William Kennedy
1983 The Color Purple by Alice Walker
1982 Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike, the latest novel in a memorable sequence
1981 A Confederacy of Dunces by the late John Kennedy Toole (a posthumous publication)
1980 The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
1979 The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
1978 Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson
1977 (No Award)
1976 Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
1975 The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
1974 (No Award)
1973 The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
1972 Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
1971 (No Award)
1970 Collected Stories by Jean Stafford 1969 House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
1968 The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
1967 The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
1966 Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter
1965 The Keepers Of The House by Shirley Ann Grau
1964 (No Award)
1963 The Reivers by William Faulkner
1962 The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor
1961 To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1960 Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
1959 The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor
1958 A Death In The Family by the late James Agee (a posthumous publication)
1957 (No Award)
1956 Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
1955 A Fable by William Faulkner
1954 (No Award)
1953 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
1952 The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
1951 The Town by Conrad Richter
1950 The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.
1949 Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens
1948 Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener

(From 1917-1948, the award was given as the Pulitzer Prizer for Novel)
1947 All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
1946 (No Award)
1945 A Bell for Adano by John Hersey
1944 Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin
1943 Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair
1942 In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow
1941 (No Award)
1940 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
1939 The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
1938 The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand
1937 Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
1936 Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis
1935 Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson
1934 Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller
1933 The Store by T. S. Stribling
1932 The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
1931 Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes
1930 Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge
1929 Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin
1928 The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
1927 Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield
1926 Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
1925 So Big by Edna Ferber
1924 The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson
1923 One of Ours by Willa Cather
1922 Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington
1921 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
1920 (No Award)
1919 The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
1918 His Family by Ernest Poole
1917 (No Award)

 

[Stewart]

Here is a list of some of those women who "don't" know how to write.

For your knowledge Smila, Pat Barker, Jan Morris, Penelope Lively, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings are also women.

I do prefer books by men but that's only because I find that the writing of men is less concerned with tattly minutiae. I don't prejudice my choices by the author's gender but when I look at the list of books I've read this year there is only one by a woman that I have rated above my average three stars and that was Carry Me Down by M.J. Hyland. The other women in my list were Jeanette Winterson, Margaret Atwood, Anais Nin, Nadine Gordimer, Amanda Prantera, Francoise Sagan, Muriel Spark, Louise Welsh, and Marilynne Robinson. I've also tossed books by Dorota Maslowska, Colette Paul, and Kiran Desai to the side after failing to be overly thrilled or taken by the prose.

When it comes to men, however, I find a far greater number of them are able to capture my attention with their prose and I have rated a much larger proportion of masculine authored books as above average. Philip Roth, Florian Zeller, Roddy Doyle, John Fante, Richard Yates, Sam Selvon, Nuruddin Farah, Patrick McGrath, Tim Krabbe, Gilbert Adair, Chinua Achebe, Ian McEwan, JL Carr, Vladimir Nabokov, John Steinbeck, Atiq Rahimi, John Irving, Yukio Mishima, Edward St. Aubyn, and Martin Amis.

The ratio of men I'd rate over female writers based on what I've read this year, once you convert it to percentages for statistical comparson, is quite a difference. I suppose, for me, men just have a better grasp of what writing is about. Not to knock those women who have had their success but I don't think turning literary awards into a battle of the sexes is much argument in either direction. It's a personal thing, pure and simple.

 

[Smila]

For your knowledge Smila, Pat Barker, Jan Morris, Penelope Lively, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings are also women.

I do prefer books by men but that's only because I find that the writing of men is less concerned with tattly minutiae. I don't prejudice my choices by the author's gender but when I look at the list of books I've read this year there is only one by a woman that I have rated above my average three stars and that was Carry Me Down by M.J. Hyland. The other women in my list were Jeanette Winterson, Margaret Atwood, Anais Nin, Nadine Gordimer, Amanda Prantera, Francoise Sagan, Muriel Spark, Louise Welsh, and Marilynne Robinson. I've also tossed books by Dorota Maslowska, Colette Paul, and Kiran Desai to the side after failing to be overly thrilled or taken by the prose.

When it comes to men, however, I find a far greater number of them are able to capture my attention with their prose and I have rated a much larger proportion of masculine authored books as above average. Philip Roth, Florian Zeller, Roddy Doyle, John Fante, Richard Yates, Sam Selvon, Nuruddin Farah, Patrick McGrath, Tim Krabbe, Gilbert Adair, Chinua Achebe, Ian McEwan, JL Carr, Vladimir Nabokov, John Steinbeck, Atiq Rahimi, John Irving, Yukio Mishima, Edward St. Aubyn, and Martin Amis.

The ratio of men I'd rate over female writers based on what I've read this year, once you convert it to percentages for statistical comparson, is quite a difference. I suppose, for me, men just have a better grasp of what writing is about. Not to knock those women who have had their success but I don't think turning literary awards into a battle of the sexes is much argument in either direction. It's a personal thing, pure and simple.

Stewart, thank you for pointing that out. I am aware of their sexes but apparently was clumsy in my highlighting as I went through the list. Of course it is a personal choice. It would make sense that men would be more attracted to male writers sharing a similar outlook and cultural experience. I, however, do enjoy an equal balance of "guy" books and "gal" books. Our discussion was not meant to be a battle of the sexes. It was in response to the ignorant comment that women do not write as well as men. I only hoped to prove my point with the above listed female award-winning writers.

 

[Stewart]

Our discussion was not meant to be a battle of the sexes. It was in response to the ignorant comment that women do not write as well as men. I only hoped to prove my point with the above listed female award-winning writers.

I understand, but I don't see how you can prove a point by posting a list of awards in which men have won the greater share.

 

[Smila]

I wasn't counting. The number is not significant. Only that female writers can and do write as well as men. As to why more are not acknowledged...its always been a male biased society. Its changing and in time perhaps women will overtake men in the awards categories. But for now I am content to simply point out that women are indeed in the same league with men when it comes to writing.