This thread articulates the problem so well.
In past centuries, this centralization of the male narrative to the exclusion of female perspectives was a critical part of a feedback loop that caused prominent male thinkers and writers to speculate that women simply didn’t have an inner world or narrative, or even that women left alone without a man in the room had nothing to say to each other (I’ll pull out my sources if you guys need me to but you’ll have to give me time to sift through my old course work).
Even if logically these arguments are easily struck down today, the intuitive thinking that “people different from myself (most frequently white cis male) don’t have as rich an inner life as I do because I’ve never encountered it”. In practice, that knee-jerk, illogical, gut-response thinking informs our actions and worldview more than even easy logic unless we have the self-awareness to challenge it. That’s how our brains are built. And people who think this way frequently never will meaningfully learn from these narratives because the media that expresses those lived experiences is beneath their notice or “not for them”.
This is why so many of the books being removed from school curricula in the US are so damn vital. A more complete understanding of the human world and the people that surround us REQUIRES hearing all these voices, even when the stories are brutal or uncomfortable or go against our upbringing. My world is richer and truer for having read Beloved by Toni Morrison, and Howl by Alan Ginsburg, and Night by Eli Wiesel, books outside my comfort zone that I would likely have never picked up had it not been for a responsible high school and college.
This. This is the purpose of literature.
And the thing is, that male-centered (or white-centered, or cishet-centered) narrative default can actually mess with women’s (or other minoritized groups’) ability to read women-centered (or otherwise identity-centered) works. When you grow up having boys centralized in all the genres you like, it becomes the default in your head. When all the baby dolls at the store are white, a small child will come to prefer them. When heterosexual romance is the only plot on offer, you struggle more for not personally loving within that framework. As I approach my thirtieth year on this planet, I’m still trying to undo this early training.
PS- if anyone needs a source for any of the things I’ve referenced here just hmu. This post is brought to you by the fifteen minutes I had to finish my coffee, didn’t have time to cite sources too
