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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Women's fiction WH Smiths hmmm?

91 replies

planetpotty · 09/09/2011 20:54

Heard an article on radio 4 yesterday stating WH Smiths had been written to and asked to remove the shop sign (the ones that stick out from the shelves showing different sections) showing "women's fiction" as it was highly offensive to women to pigeon hole them with the fluffy kind of titles found there. WH Smiths agreed to remove the signs!
I understand the argument but personally think
think this is going too far and also am a bit peeved I will now have to ask the shop assistant for the books that men probably wouldn't read??!!
Interested to see what others here think and if I've totally missed the point.

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BecauseImWorthIt · 09/09/2011 23:14

Well in that sense, they are enlightened. Behaving in a way that suggests that they think women are stupid and inferior may well see them losing sales.

I have to say that WHS is the last place I would go to buy books.

Actually, it's pretty much the last place I go to buy anything, although that's a different story ...

DontCallMeFrothyDragon · 09/09/2011 23:15

Well, maybe it's time these book retailers carried out a little research and realised that low sales may be due to women buying from other genders... Rather than patronising us...

DontCallMeFrothyDragon · 09/09/2011 23:16

*genres, not genders...

BobBanana · 09/09/2011 23:16

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

planetpotty · 09/09/2011 23:17

I've got it all smiths need to do is marker pen the word "some" in front of women's fiction . Goodness me this must actually be a RL headache for some poor sod in smiths to sort out!

OP posts:

MillyR · 09/09/2011 23:18

I thought that women bought the majority of books (and quite a big majority at that), although I can't remember where I read it.

I certainly know women who read this genre; it is just that lots of other women have a greater interest in other genres.

fluffles · 09/09/2011 23:18

i would guess that 'women's fiction' means trashy "chick-lit"? see i know what i mean by 'chick lit' even though it's a horrible term, but i don't know what 'women's fiction' is - but it implies that 'here are the books women can read' so yes, i think it's silly and a bit patronising.

i am pleased they have removed it and re-classified their books. i don't think it is going "too far".

DontCallMeFrothyDragon · 09/09/2011 23:21

MillyR, I know that the English Lit degree at my uni is around 87% female students... And we're not reading "women's fiction" there.

How about they label it appropriately...

Twilight: Shit/Fantasy/Romance
Anything by Jodi Picoult: Romance/Misogynistic/Moral Dilemna (etc)

and so forth

MitchiestInge · 09/09/2011 23:24

why can't they have three fiction sections: classics, contemporary literary fiction and dross

MillyR · 09/09/2011 23:26

Well Twilight is in the teen section, although so much has this genre grown that it now has its own subsection in lots of shops. It is called something like 'dark romance' or 'supernatural romance.'

Jodi Picoult is definitely in the general fiction section in WH Smith.

Smiths has lots of bizarre sections - real life tragedy or whatever the misery memoir bit is called seemed to first appear in Smiths before other shops started setting them up.

I think I must spend too much time in bookshops to notice all this, and can't think why I did not notice this 'women's fiction' bit.

LRDTheFeministDragon · 09/09/2011 23:27

Has anyone else read this thread and thought of Carol Shields?

She wrote a novel called Unless (worth reading), which has a subplot based on her experiences but I don't know how closely. A woman author writes her first novel about a female main character and her life. She wins a prize for 'light' fiction and subsequently her publisher tells her she should really re-write the story, make the man the main character, and so on. He thinks female characters don't make for serious novels. (The she wins a prestigious prize - Shields herself has won the Booker I think - and he shuts up).

Sorry, that was a bit rambly, but the thing is, I don't find 'women's fiction' descriptive at all - it's not all 'light'. There's a pretty huge difference between some of the crap you can pick up in the train station that's clearly written by committee under pseudonym (like some Sci Fi I've read, too), and things like Marian Keyes' books, or Margaret Forster.

(Btw, sorry if this has already been said, but whoever it was who used the word 'retarded' on the first page, could you not, please? It's rude.)

DontCallMeFrothyDragon · 09/09/2011 23:28

I keep forgetting Twishite is in the teen section...

LRDTheFeministDragon · 09/09/2011 23:28

Mitchiest - I want a 'dross' section! I could head there and be like a pig in mud.

MitchiestInge · 09/09/2011 23:52

that would be good actually, they could muddle up all the genre books so it would be a sort of lucky dip - actually why don't they just have genre fiction?

LRDTheFeministDragon · 09/09/2011 23:59

Because people would ask 'what makes it genre not literature'!

It's not like you can't glance at the shelf and see which is which without a label. This is not a good thing either, but while it's true, I think having genre fiction arranged in alphabetic order would at least break things up a bit.

BecauseImWorthIt · 10/09/2011 00:02

Crime
Science Fiction
History
Romance
Classics

What's wrong with that?

As well as a general A-Z, for everything, so you don't miss a title.

MitchiestInge · 10/09/2011 00:04

there's too much overlap for all those sub categories though

MitchiestInge · 10/09/2011 00:05

ugh I can see my neighbour in the shower

BecauseImWorthIt · 10/09/2011 00:06

There will always be overlap - it's the same with film/DVD classification. (Although interestingly, I don't see HMV doing 'women's fims').

But a general A-Z as well as display by specific genre would overcome that.

DontCallMeFrothyDragon · 10/09/2011 00:06

MI... Ouch, really?

MitchiestInge · 10/09/2011 00:08

am looking away, I wonder if they realise anyone walking along our lane who happens to glance up can see?

that will teach me to smoke outside

chocolaterainbow · 10/09/2011 00:09

a bit off topic, but I get all my books from charity shops. Have you seen how cheap the are in there!!

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LRDTheFeministDragon · 10/09/2011 00:20

Mitchiest, I had a massive guilty shock when I read that because you can see in our shower if you look up at the right angle and I don't always bother remember to shut the window cos it gets too hot ... then I realized that as I'm sitting here in my dressing gown, I'm probably not your showering neighbour.

chocolate - I love seeing how books in secondhand shops are categorized - there's always a shelf or two that is a bit quirky. My local Oxfam used to have childrens' books grouped by how much the lady who did it liked them when she was a child.

MitchiestInge · 10/09/2011 00:30

haha, no, especially as he is a tall baldingly ginger man

talking of books, where did the book clubs go?

UsingMainlySpoons · 10/09/2011 00:34

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Message withdrawn at poster's request.

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