Men and Books: Why Men Aren't Joiners
In this post, Andrew McCullough ruminates on why men and book clubs aren't a match made in heaven. He has, however, overcome that stereotype with the 18-member Man Book Club, which celebrated its first anniversary this month. Congrats, Andrew!
There's a reason why book clubs are overwhelmingly populated by women. Men don't want in. They sign up for bowling leagues and rotisserie leagues (sports, not food). They join country clubs and cigar clubs. Whether it's a game of chance or a game of skill, they'll line up with complete unknowns. But most guys head in the other direction if you mention a book club. Especially those run by women.
After careful study, I think I've figured out why men don't join book clubs. The answer goes back to grade school, when men still felt intellectually superior to women. Somewhere around the fifth grade, girls stopped being totally dumb. By the ninth grade, most guys were holding their own in World Civilization and Biology. By senior year, we still had an edge in AP Physics. By college it was Game Over. Women were more articulate, they read more, and they used words like "archetype" and "trope" in conversations about books.
In those early post-college years, it didn't matter that women were smarter. We were willing to discuss books with them because it made us seem caring and sensitive. And it helped that our college reading lists were still fresh in our memories. But, with the passage of time, it got harder to keep up with women. They were more thoughtful, and they weren't afraid to bring emotion into the discussion.
Now that we're all grown up, we gravitate toward the comfort of all-male activities, where we can be mistaken without being inadequate. To venture into a book club filled with women only makes us wonder if we have anything original to say. And if the book is Eat, Pray, Love, let's be honest: we don't. No, it's much easier to stick with fantasy football, even if we're dead wrong about a Brett Favre comeback.
--- Andrew McCullough
There's a reason why book clubs are overwhelmingly populated by women. Men don't want in. They sign up for bowling leagues and rotisserie leagues (sports, not food). They join country clubs and cigar clubs. Whether it's a game of chance or a game of skill, they'll line up with complete unknowns. But most guys head in the other direction if you mention a book club. Especially those run by women.
After careful study, I think I've figured out why men don't join book clubs. The answer goes back to grade school, when men still felt intellectually superior to women. Somewhere around the fifth grade, girls stopped being totally dumb. By the ninth grade, most guys were holding their own in World Civilization and Biology. By senior year, we still had an edge in AP Physics. By college it was Game Over. Women were more articulate, they read more, and they used words like "archetype" and "trope" in conversations about books.
In those early post-college years, it didn't matter that women were smarter. We were willing to discuss books with them because it made us seem caring and sensitive. And it helped that our college reading lists were still fresh in our memories. But, with the passage of time, it got harder to keep up with women. They were more thoughtful, and they weren't afraid to bring emotion into the discussion.
Now that we're all grown up, we gravitate toward the comfort of all-male activities, where we can be mistaken without being inadequate. To venture into a book club filled with women only makes us wonder if we have anything original to say. And if the book is Eat, Pray, Love, let's be honest: we don't. No, it's much easier to stick with fantasy football, even if we're dead wrong about a Brett Favre comeback.
--- Andrew McCullough
posted by Carol Fitzgerald at
10:35 AM
4 Comments:
LOL Andrew! I got a kick out of reading your post!
Andrew,
Not everyone fits your model.
The last book club I went to was devoted mostly to reading classics, had no problem attracting men and women, and no gender was demonstrably more literary or intelligent than the other.
All of us simply liked great literature or at any rate liked discussing it.
I don't have the first thing in common with any of the men you know, and I've never met the women you describe.
Maybe it's an age thing. Trope wasn't a common word when I graduated from college in 1981.
RW,
You are absolutely right, but you are guilty of 1) missing my overly blunt point, and 2) taking me seriously. (Both of these transgressions, by the way, would have you ejected from my book group.) Yes, many men fit nicely into the discourse of book clubs run by or filled with women. But they are a minority. For every book club with male members, there are ten book clubs with only women. If you have a better explanation for this disparity, please share. But whatever you do, please don’t call attention to my age by querying my use of the word “trope”. I picked it for its timelessness (it dates back to the 16th century), hoping it would shield me from suggestions that I’m a product of another era. I guess it didn’t.
Nice work, Andrew - I'd eject that guy too. I do a column for booklist called He Reads, and have talked to library and other groups about men and reading with a similar sense of play, and so I feel yer pain about the Taking Us Seriously thing: don'tcha hate it when that happens?
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