Daniel Wilson

This kind of retardation is why you cannot write, and thus why, in 14 years on this platform, you have only accumulated an audience of 2000. You don't understand what the basic task of fiction writing even is. It's empathizing in two directions at once. You have to empathize with the characters, to know what they are thinking and feeling, what they want and why, so you know what happens in the story. And you have to empathize with the audience, so you know how to tell it. Except you cannot empathize with half the human race, because your overt ideology prevents you from admitting its very existence. You cannot make the effort to understand how men and boys see the world, what men and boys want, what men and boys believe, what men and boys are interested in, or what men and boys will do, if you cannot acknowledge that "men and boys" is an distinct category of people that exist, and therefore is possible to know things about. Of course, you do not actually believe that boys are indistinct from girls. No one believes that. If you believed that, you would not be able to engage with the question "Why are boys not reading?" because the very question is an admission that there is something distinct about certain children that makes them boys and not girls. No, what you actually believe is "If I acknowledge the differences between boys and girls, I will be punished by my social group." This belief is true. But so what? It's entirely your fault that you chose a social group which makes such ridiculous demands. MY social group doesn't demand I pretend to believe silly things. You don't actually have to play this game anymore, you know. You can just stop. Sure, some people you know will say mean things to you, but you and I both know they kinda do a lot of that already just because of the kind of people they are. You and I also both know they would throw you under a bus in microsecond if some innovation in the mandatory belief system rewarded them for doing so. So, in addition to not having an audience, you don't even have all that many friends, for much the same reason. You may wish to reconsider whether the juice is actually worth the squeeze.