by Claire Vaye Watkins
MT: I also think gender affects the reception of the subject matter. A man writes a sex scene or a domestic scene and it's an element of a larger narrative—a function, an expression, a grappling-with. A woman writes a sex scene or a domestic scene and poof she's not a serious writer. She's writing homey soft shit that dudes don't want to read about. An irony here is that women buy and read more books than men, so if dudes don't want to read about something the publishers don't have to care. Critics and reviewers, on the other hand, are more often men than women, and are trying to sell their own ideas, not books. [continue]