#and yes some trans men choose to be misogynists . not immune

[hotsugarbyglassanimals]

I hate talking about how men act like online . like we overcorrected man hating feminism so hard that i feel like we gotta just tiptoe around expressing any disdain for the common behaviors that men choose to engage with 😭

[kinosternon]

I agree with this argument overall but I think it might be leaving out any discussion of reasons alongside misogyny that fic-lovers might prefer focusing on men. For me, one big one is the (overall lack of) emotional availability of men IRL in our modern society.

I'm certainly biased in that, while I do read and enjoy female characters, both in original and fanfiction (when I can get it), I tend to gravitate towards (queer) men in fanfiction. Surface-level explanations for this include:

I'm biased. (Very fair! We live in a misogynistic society. I'm definitely not immune to it.)

I'm a trans man. I want to read about guys because I am one. (Also true and fair! Though I'm equally happy reading about a woman's perspective on a guy. I do on occasion read romance novels and m/f fic for this reason.)

So far so good, and it's possible that the rest of this post is projection.

But I think some of my reasons for preferring male-focused fic might be true of fic readers and writers more broadly, and well beyond the "most women are straight so they write about men" thing. (Which I find dubious to begin with. For one thing, aren't fic-reading demographics skewing queerer and queerer as the years go on? That's just an impression I get, not backed by hard data, but while I still believe that "fic as a community doesn't have very many cis men in it" is a straightforwardly believable assertion, I'd be hesitant to say that it has a majority of "straight" anything. But anyway.)

Whatever your (broad "you," not OP specifically) gender or sexuality, I'm interested in your answers to these questions, both for yourself and for what answers you would imagine as "typical" for your fan community:

Do you have many close friends and loved ones?

How many of those people are (for the purpose of this argument, cis) men?

For how many of the folks in #1 can you say that you have established a sense of trust and/or vulnerability that allows you to discuss their inner emotional lives?

Assuming both groups are extant, how do your relationships with men (number of people and depth) compare to relationships with folks who aren't?

(My answers, by the way, are: Yes, a few, thankfully many, and…well, it doesn't even compare. Collectively, it's an ocean versus a puddle, or perhaps a thimble.)

One of the main reasons I read fic is to access a sense of emotional closeness to men that I can't get enough of in my daily life, because I have trouble forming bonds with men in the first place—and even when I do, they're usually not intimate enough to allow for much insight into their inner thoughts, feelings, or lives. A lot of societal pressure (including, sadly, some aspects of feminism as well) encouraged me to fear a similar closeness with real men, even as it's discouraged men from opening up to anyone at all.

Meanwhile, I'm fortunate enough to have a lot of women and non-binary friends. If I want to have access to the thoughts and feelings (or, let's be real, sometimes there's a desire to hear about drama too) from a woman/nb person, I have actual people I can go talk to! No, that's not a replacement for fiction, but for me as an individual it's usually a preferable alternative. Many humans are wired to value in-person (and also, in this case, real) relationships over online ones. Moreover, I may have the chance to do actual good for a real, live person, if I choose to talk to them: advice, comfort, a listening ear, my time, space, money, whatever. It's wins all around...except, unfortunately, when it comes to representation.

Also, if we start from the assumption that a similar imbalance in emotional intimacy exists for a lot of the fic-loving community, I want to point out that there are possible knock-on effects in terms of standards:

Is it any wonder that we read female characters as flat, boring, or just off somehow, when we know so many more IRL women in greater depth than we do men? Especially since those women's inner lives are generally so much more complex and nuanced (not to mention cooler) than what many writers come up with?

Is it any wonder that we look at the male characters who are given any inner life whatsoever, and want to take them and run with them? (Or in the cases where we aren't given anything, is it so surprising that we might enjoy the license to go wild imagining our own?)

Like I said above, I don't disagree that most of these discrepancies are ultimately rooted in misogyny. If I'm right about these reasons, they're closer to compounding factors. We're primed to care less about female characters; writers are too, and spend less screen time and effort on them; and then even for those of us who want to read/write more women, it's easier for many of us to see where in-depth deptictions of fictional women fall short than fictional men. There's also not enough widely-known and lauded examples for original fiction writers to emulate or fic-writers to be inspired to build on. Simultaneously, patriarchy doesn't just mean that we're primed to value depictions of men over women; it also causes the limitations in our own lives and relationships that leave us hungry for portrayals of men that have a full emotional range and demonstrate (at least narrated) vulnerability!

I think that it can often be helpful to go looking for what else might be going on alongside (or above, or below, or mixed with) straightforward misogyny. That's no reason to hold on to factually incorrect excuses, or to excuse misogyny in general, but I do think it's a reason to keep looking for potentially legitimate additional factors, because:

Compared to the "people just hate women" answer, some causes are significantly easier to problem-solve about.

Thinking that it all stems from hatred alone can be more discouraging than helpful, and sometimes downright polarizing.

Do many people tend to avoid/ignore female characters because cultural misogyny leads to weird double-standards about women's characterization? Almost certainly, yeah. But might it also be because the literary tradition of writing women is widely underdeveloped? Because people can more easily develop emotional intimacy with IRL women than IRL men, and are seeking to fulfill their desires for the latter? Because many people have greater familiarity with women's inner lives, which would naturally lead to higher standards?

I wouldn't be surprised if it was a slightly different mix of these and other reasons for everyone, and I think that offering a menu of reasons could be helpful in some discussions, especially those with folks who might otherwise feel defensive about this topic.

every year the ao3 stats come out and every year people insist that the lack of women isn’t misogyny but because ‘most fic writers are female and therefore enjoy writing about men more’ and every year they don’t seem to understand that they themselves have just described a version of misogyny