“The dichotomy of men writing big, important books about war and women writing little, lapidary books about domestic life is shifting, simply because, of the new crop of bright young boys, not many have been soldiers. Most of them are writing about assimilation and identity, or families in crisis, or exploited children, or office politics. In other words, girl talk…or at least subjects in which women writers can claim equal expertise. Nor are today’s male writers behaving like the Great White Men of the past. They’re sneaking out of the house after curfew to write genre books under fake names, or superhero screenplays or appreciations of video games.”
– The irony of Jennifer Weiner writing a piece entitled “Why Can’t a Woman (Writer) Be More Like a Man?” aside, what feels like it was intended to be a cry for gender neutrality in literary criticism comes off like a backhanded insult to male and female writers. We think she serves a big, red zit sticker for this post.