I spend a stupid amount of time worrying if my writing is good enough. But apparently what I needed was a good old-fashioned sexist attack to make me know my writing is a damn well just fine.
Have you seen the article about VS Naipaul?
NPR picked up the story from The Guardian. And Naipaul said that
He felt that women writers were “quite different”. He said: “I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me.”
He also said women can’t write at his level because they have a “narrow view.”
My head spins.
And yes, I think labels such as “women’s fiction” encourage this kind of thinking.
But as women do make up half the population, I’m not sure how anything that concerns them is narrow.
Really, I’m too irritated to write. I’m glad, however, that I’ve now been relieved of the effort of ever reading one of Naipaul’s books.
What do you think when you read stuff like this?
