(This is from a comment I posted on Dispatches from the Culture Wars).
I’m a cartoonist, so naturally I pay attention to comics. So I know from long experience, it’s hard to have a discussion of why the overwhelming majority of comic book readers are boys without someone suggesting that boys are biologically more visually-oriented. Since girls are language-oriented, it’s only natural that girls prefer reading prose, and boys like comic books more. It’s often suggested that folks who think that social factors are why so few girls read comic books are ignoring science in the name of feminist ideology.
Stop here. Before you continue, ask yourself if the biological explanation for why (on average) boys and not girls read comics rings true to you.
Because the truth is, I should have put the paragraph about comics in the past tense. Today, the majority of young comic book readers are girls – by far the best-selling comic books in the USA are manga (translated Japanese comics), which are read mostly by girls.
In retrospect, it seems obvious that whatever biological factors (if any) may make boys more natural comic book readers, they are utterly dwarfed by social factors. (In this case, what made the difference was a new publishing model for translated manga).
There was a time when many highly intelligent people of science thought that women were biologically unsuitable for higher education; that women were biologically less likely to make good lawyers (all that logical, rational thinking!); that women were inherently unsuitable for medicine (all that science!); etc.. Heck, there was a time when the idea of female schoolteachers was extremely controversial.
What would we have thought if we were alive back then? Most of us would have agreed with the consensus (most people do, after all) that apart from a few outliers, most women were biologically unsuited for (fill in the blank).
I recognize, of course, that there are biological differences between the sexes. Nonetheless, I don’t think it makes me a Luddite to suggest that, in physics departments as in comic books, lawyers and schoolteachers, it’s possible that the social factors dwarf the biological.
Pingback: APIA Blogs - The APIA Blog Network
Pingback: Racial Pro-File
Pingback: When Fangirls Attack
Of course, if it becomes well-known that more girls than boys read comic books, in less than a decade a new “biological” explanation will emerge–that women are genetically more inclined to be drawn to color and design, which of course is why we like to decorate more.
Sadly, here in the UK at least, the biological-explanation camp have latched onto the types of comics girls and boys read as a demonstration of apparent in-built differences; girls apparently prefer stories about other young women, indie comics about relationships (Jeff Brown!) and manga of the school story variety to “real” comic books about superheroes and guns and action. This, of course, is due to our more sensitive nature.
As an avid Xmen, The Authority and Stormwatch reader I have called bullshit on that attitude so many times; as ever, I’m considered the exception the rule (I get in way too many arguments in comic shops). I must have a “male” brain seeing as I enjoy actionous comic books over the emotional content of typical girly ones. Or something like that…
(It always surprises me how many self-professed male comic geeks like to label comics either “action” or about “emotions”. In my experience, they don’t fit nearly so neatly; but, hey, what do I know, I’m a girl!)
And I’m a guy who has absolutely no patience with “action” comics (the sole exception being Watchmen) but eat up the “emotion” comics. Maybe, thisgirl, our brains were switched at some point?
Give me my girl brain back!
(I have a secret stash of Jeff Brown, plus one of my favourite comics ever is Craig Thompson’s Goodbye, Chunky Rice. It messes up people’s theories to see it sitting between Usagi Yojimbo and Tank Girl on my shelf)
I used to be an avid comics reader, collecting dozens of the darn things a month. Now I only read on average about half a dozen a year (online and offline combined). Of course, as an ex-cartoonist, that probably has something to do with not wanting to revisit the scene of my failures.
I make up for it by being one of the more rabid music collectors out there, though. [shakes fist at ebay and amazon] New roof ? Who needs a new roof ?! And peanut butter three meals a day is GOOD for you !!
I have no idea what this says about how appropriately feminine my brain is…
Excellent post. I am the club advisor for the Anime-Japanese culture club at my school. I got the job because my daughter is an avid manga reader and loves to drow her own characters. I admit that I don’t read them or watch the anime but when thirty syudents begged me to start a club with the main purpose being reading and drawing art, I did it for free. Something disturbing though, the anime books that japanese children read and the japanes view on what children should be exposed to are not parallel with the viewpoints of certain members of the religious right and there are already some rumblings about censoring this type of media in the U. S. comics that show homosexualty as an ok lifestyle and show tolerance sheesh.
So, the massive popularity of “boys'” manga and anime among girls is just due to a whole bunch of outliers. Mmm-hmm.
I wouldn’t say that sensitive stories aren’t more popular among girls than they are among boys, but that doesn’t add up to girls prefering relationship-oriented comics. Most of my experience in manga fandom points to girls enjoying both, with a slight emphasis towards “boys'” comics. Girls are pretty open-minded about what type of comics they indulge in.
I think that “Why don’t boys buy stories about relationships?” is a better question to ask than “Why do girls buy stories about relationships?” If I had to guess, I’d say that the difference is due to boys not wanting to be caught with Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon in their backpack.
The original controversy was whether there are genetic factors influencing women’s ability to excel in science. It was suggested that genes or brain differences may be in part responsible for lesser incidence of the highest levels of scientific talent in women. You attempt to debunk it by giving an example of a gender difference that had been thought to be genetically determined but was recently reversed: the difference in reading comic books. The reversal certainly disproves the claim that boys’ greater interest in comic books was genetically determined, but does it also disprove the claim that boys’ advantages in sciences are? The fundamental difference between comic book reading and success in science is that the former is simply a choice while the latter takes more than that. You can choose to read whatever books you like regardless of your genetic makeup, but you cannot choose to be talented in a particular field. One’s choices and interests, which is all it takes for them to start reading a particular kind of books, can be influenced by society to a great extent, but it is not so with the objective presence of scientific talent in a person, which is required for them to succeed in science. This is why I think your analogy does not work.
we have a whole thread on that, full of all sorts of fun debunking of that asinine position, oh-vowelless-one.
and I think the reason boys are avoiding Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon is because it’s generally lacking in substance all around.
After all, the works of Rumiko Takahashi are nothing but relationship stories, though occationally with an extra genre or two thrown in. my count has two two straight romance series, one romance horror, one romance comedy martial arts, one, perhaps two romance fantasy, and a romance sci fi comedy. and that’s an incomplete list, I’m sure.
Hell, the infamous Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is basically constructed in three layers: an offbeat series of jokes, incredibly violent revenge fantasies, and a dash or two of relationship complicated by crippling mental illness. JTHM is also one of the few series I can think of whose rabid fans I personally know are gender split 50/50 (and, if I knew more people to sample, perhaps closer to the true 52/48 population divide)
but you cannot choose to be talented in a particular field
Didn’t Edison once say that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration?
Hello i really want Johnen Vazques to make another series of JTHM i seriously do. but since he is buzy making invader Zim cartoons he cant. that really stinks. JTHM is a really cool character (a lil on the psycho side) and he makes perfect points that i myself could have never said.
I’ve reading comic books since I was 7, and collect them as well, I love comic books, but when I go to a convention or a shop, girls are only into anime/manga, don’t get me wrong I liked anime like 12 years ago with the original Transformers, Saint Seiya, The Thundercats and all those really cool cartoons I grew up to, (back then we didn’t knew the word anime being 10 and all). But never found any woman that ever spoke the words: comics, DC, Marvel Image,not even MAD, it was like foreign language to them when I brought it up.
Few years back the idea of gamer chicks was like unnthinkable, and now they’re kickin pixel ass everywhere.
I don’t think is something biological, we’re not wired differently, girls can like comics and boys can like Sailor Moon or (insert any other stereotype here), we just haven’t been in the same place in the same time.
ello, i belive that now, that yes comicbooks are thought of as manga, real ones are still alive, but more scarce, i think that its just the point of drawing techniques, manga has more beauty to it, while american comics are more realalistic, and comics were made for the thought of escape, and as some one said on here, girls are more townds decarations, but still, guys will love comics in witch ever form, for an example me, im a guy, i love manga, and anime! (just to poit it out, i found this website off google trying to find the archives to jthm!)
and be for i forget it, i belive the comics of action, are dieing. which to me is a good thing, if any one has heard of it, i am a big fan of death note. veary little action.