AIBU to avoid rereading classic misogyny

[Hypermasculinity]

Signed up for a short story course which starts in twenty minutes and it’s 70% white men (Hemingway, James Joyce, F Scott Fitzgerald, Dickens, Poe, Ray Bradbury and Gaiman) with Daphne du Maurier, Helen Dunmore and Kazuo Ishiguro.

I was so looking forward to the course, I’m retired and I last studied English literature at university over three decades ago when there was much greater diversity although it didn’t feel that way at the time. This reading list is not only disappointing it’s surprisingly distressing. AIBU to bail on this course?

YABU

surely you're there to study the craft, not the message?

Do whatever you want, it's your money.

You could feed back to them though, if you think the reading list lacks balance.

I’d give it a chance. There are some wonderful short story writers there, and maybe the course will throw up ideas for more diverse wider reading.

Ooh that sounds so fun, where the hell do you do a short story course?

Genuinely distressing?

I mean you can bail for whatever reasons you want, but they're all classic authors / books and any standard course normally covers a few of them. Tbh I'd give it a chance and see what it's like before bailing prior to actually seeing what the course is like.

Nothing to stop you suggesting additional authors or reading Katherine Mansfield or Edith Wharton in your spare time!

YABU. Do the course and point out the misogyny, and refer to your own wider reading, eg 'Toni Morrison covers this theme from a different perspective in her short story X'. You can't change lack of diversity by not engaging with it.

Distressing really?

You could always have enquired about the reading list before you signed up. Given that you didn't it's up to you whether you bail on the course or not. You don't need the opinions of a bunch of people on the Internet to make your decision surely.

Lacking in broader representation is fair enough and I can see why you'd be disappointed, but misogyny is a bit of a reach: it's not like they're making you read Milton.

I actually can sometimes enjoy reading and rereading books and spotting the misogyny. It gives me (sometimes) a nice reminder how far we’ve come.

If I read the books a very long time ago I will sometimes find it misogynistic when I didn’t before. I find it interesting to chart my own change in attitudes.

I also find it interesting to read books where I now find the level of alcohol being drunk seems excessive, the Fortunes of War, and The Raj Quartet spring to mind.

Give it a go, you can always bail later. You could be the awkward one and bang on about the under representation of woman.

YANBU. I’m so fucking sick of white men’s voices being the only voices in the room.

it’s your money. I would not pay for such a course (having already had so so many.) but if you quit, please be sure and tell them why.

Are you wanting to be a writer? Then you need to read stuff you don't agree with. If you want your voice to be at all interesting, you need to have a breadth of perspective.

Gaiman and Poe are brilliant anyway. So many horror films owe their existence to the Pit & the Pedulum

Probably too late, but - if you can bail and get a refund, follow your gut.

If not, perhaps go to the first session and then decide if it's worth your time? It's hard to say without knowing how the course was described; if it's a survey course and even more so if it covers a specific time period the male-heavy balance may just be a representation of misogynist reality, and a critical response to that may emerge during the course. If it's craft/how-to, the available examples are still male-heavy. Even now, there's still a widespread belief that influences publishing that while women will read male authors, men won't read women authors. While there are some brilliant (and/or lucky and/or connected) women who "break through", publishing is still biased against women in a lot of complicated ways besides and beyond representation by the numbers.

The professor/instructor may say more in the introductory lecture about the syllabus and selection of texts and if not, perhaps there's a way to ask the question either as part of the session or as a one-on-one follow-up?

Thanks, I suspected I was being unreasonable so I’ve decided to accept that, and possibly as a gift.

I promised myself after university that I would never have to read another heterosexual white man again unless I urgently wanted to. I find it unpleasant, almost as if I am reliving painful real life experiences.

I promised myself after university that I would never have to read another heterosexual white man again unless I urgently wanted to.

While I'm all in favour of fair representation I think you may have gone too far the other way 🙂

Ugh it’s disappointing and sadly unsurprising (but perhaps not distressing).
it’s also vitally important to accept literature within the context of the societal norms in place at the time it was written and not write off every historical text written by a man as misogynistic. Some are definitely worse than others (eg DH Lawrence who is VILE) but you could argue a case for George Eliot being more misogynistic than e.g. Thackeray.

I do think they could have included more modem female authors or authors of colour though. Switch out Bradbury and Gaiman. I’ve never read either so not saying they are misogynistic but would do this for balance. In place put Arundati Roy, Margaret Atwood, iris Murdoch, Margaret Drabble, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie etc etc etc