Knausgaard Writes Like a Woman
A survey in 2015 by Goodreads revealed that on average 80 percent of a woman writer’s audience is female as opposed to 50 percent for a man writer’s. In other words, men who write fiction have an audience representative of the world as a whole while women don’t.
.. Was the journalist who insisted that my husband had “taught” me both psychoanalysis and neuroscience (even after I told him this was most definitely not true, that my husband had little interest in either) a sexist idiot or just a man who wanted to believe his literary hero was more or less responsible for his wife’s education? The man wasn’t in the least bit hostile. He just seemed puzzled that in these subjects I was far better read than my spouse.
.. He gave two groups of students the same essay, authored by either John T. McKay or Joan T. McKay to evaluate. John’s was rated superior in all respects.
.. A 2008 study found that when academic papers were subject to double-blind peer review—neither the author nor the reviewer was identified—the number of female first-authored papers accepted increased significantly.
.. “The prescription for female niceness is an implicit belief that penalizes women unless they temper their agency with niceness.” In order to be accepted, women must compensate for their ambition and strength by being nice. Men don’t have to be nearly as nice as women.
.. After a few words had escaped her mouth, a man interrupted her, took the floor, and expounded at some length. After that, she launched into her point again and another man chopped her off in mid-sentence. At final count, four men had swooped into her remarks before she finally barged in and spoke her mind.
.. What fascinated me about this incident was that the men who interrupted the woman did not seem to recognize they were behaving badly.
.. Somehow, that woman became imperceptible to the men who were speaking in that room. I am wholly convinced that the men who talked over her would have been amazed and embarrassed had they seen a film of the proceedings.
.. he may simply be more honest than many male writers, scholars, and other menfolk who don’t see or hear a woman because she is not competition.