on "male novelists," their plight, etc

it’s a steady job, but he wants to be a paperback writer

this is adam’s fault if you’re mad go subscribe to his substack

Some months ago on Substack there was a round of posts lamenting the difficulty male novelists¹ face in getting published. Since I have never tried to get a novel published, and also, am not male, I do not really know how much this feeling is rooted in reality. I do know people, male and female, who have had a difficult time getting fiction published, so my inclination is more to believe that getting published as a fiction writer is difficult, in general.²

But then that’s what bigots generally say, isn’t it…? So.

But for the sake of argument, I’m happy to grant the premise that male novelists are in some way uniquely discriminated against, that lots of fiction editors evaluating manuscripts are biased against them, that they get less respect, that their novels are covered less, and so on. Premise g…