Conclusion Reached. Evidence to Come Later

Dazed, it seems, is living up to its name.

There's an attractive bit of writing there, under the title of "Why Don't Straight Men Read Novels."

I can't figure it out.

First of all, the writer (and likely the editors) decided they wanted to run novel-reading through the masculine tropes which proliferate on certain corners of the internet (they cite an anti-education screed by famed moron Andrew Tate as evidence of such) that if men are reading at all, it's non-fiction meant to improve their lives. (Why that's a bad thing, I don't really understand.)

They cite some evidence that women are the largest purchasers of fiction novels in the UK, US, and Canada. Conflating purchasing of books at the retail level with women being the only readers, I guess. Nevermind that people like me do most of their book purchasing on the used market.

But that doesn't fit the narrative.

And there may be some truth in the conflation, and some anecdotal proof that reading men are reading non-fiction over fiction. And based on my previous post, there are certainly some "uncomfortable truths and unexpected perspectives" that those who oppose Tate and his ilk and the "manosphere" are very uncomfortable with and would like to see "challenged" right out of existence.

Nor do they do what their headline suggests: They offer no evidence that gay men read more fiction than straight men, or that they read fiction at all. The article is here. I can find no reference to gay men, or homosexual men, in the article.

The thesis of the article in the headline is unsupported.

The thesis that men don't read fiction is supported marginally, but mostly anecdotally, and almost entirely by people who seem to have some kind of agenda or who want to conflate the useless "alpha male" movement with all males.

They also say this about the benefits of reading fiction: "reading fiction is the diametric opposite of the stale stoicism of the manosphere. It is a form of immersion therapy that demands you be present and forget yourself to a meditative end. You also become “part of a community,” which “helps you build mental companions as a bulwark against loneliness."

I've read plenty of nonfiction that has helped me become part of a community and helped me built mental companions as a bulwark against loneliness. Just because I'm reading about real things or real people -- you know, history and such -- doesn't mean I can't have those same feelings of community and mental companions.

Don't get me wrong: I love fiction. There's plenty of room, however, in my head for non-fiction as well.

I get the feeling, though, that I'm probably not reading the "right kind" of fiction (or non-fiction for that matter) to convince these others my argument is valid.

This is not journalism, it's tripe.