how i decenter men in my reading

an easy guide

Feb 15, 2025

I think at times the idea of decentering men can feel daunting. As women, we’ve been raised in a world that applauds placing men before ourselves and encourages us all to consume media where men are the central creators. Men’s thoughts are treated as the blueprint, and women’s creative passions have often been considered “little hobbies.” Because of this, I’ve put in effort to ensure I’m consuming media created by women, and I want to share how I do so with others.

One disclaimer for this guide, I’m referring to reading mostly as the books I read, but this can apply to anything you read. Newsletters, blogs, magazines, and even tweets can fall under this umbrella.

Read books written by women.

It’s rare that I read anything written by a man. I’m working on decreasing my consumption of books written by men even further, as occasionally I’ll stumble upon one.

While this doesn’t apply to every woman across the board, we’re much more likely to write from a place of understanding of women’s perspectives. I’m sure majority of people have heard the “written by men” jokes, you’re much less likely to encounter anything similar from women’s writing.

It’s equally important to be sure you’re not only reading books written by straight white women. Enhance your reading list to include queer women, black women, trans women, and other women of color. Reading from writers with a wide range of perspectives will only benefit you and increase your knowledge.

Read books that aren’t focused on male characters.

I don’t recall the last time I read a book that featured a man as the main character. Even before I consciously decentered men, these stories bored me most of the time. Even in the singular series I read that was supposed to have a male lead, the woman in the story was actually the main character, so I kept reading.

I think it’s fine to read books where men are introduced as the secondary main characters, for example the male love interest in a romance story. I’ve noticed that when these books are written by women, the story is still mainly focused on the woman, her backstory, and her feelings.

I will read a book with male leads if they’re written by women occasionally.

Don’t read books with misogynistic narratives.

If I’m reading a book and I encounter misogyny, majority of the time I drop it right there. Sometimes, you’ll get three strikes, but I often don’t want to deal with it at all. There are far too many books out there for me to suffer through 400-800 pages of patriarchal rhetoric.

Some common narratives I’m talking about here are: Damsel in distress who is just too weak to handle anything and needs man hands to guide her, 19 year old woman with an immortal man who is 300 years old, man is constantly awful to woman but she loves this and chases him, and the booktok favorite, man literally stalks woman and rapes her but this is clearly what she wants. I’ve read enough of these shitshows, and if I see it the book is being placed squarely on my “go to jail” digital shelf.

Following the steps above will aid in avoiding these narratives. Unfortunately, there will be women who write this way. Internalized misogyny is very much alive and communities like spicy booktok normalize these stories focused on women’s trauma. You don’t need to read these books, even if they’re written by women.

Read feminist authors/scholars

Increasing your knowledge on feminist history and theory will subconsciously decenter men for you, to be very honest.

I’m bad at reading nonfiction, so I typically use audiobooks if they’re available. This is valid, no one come at me in the comments! As stated above, don’t read exclusively from white women. Read black feminists, trans feminists, marxist feminists, etc.

I also recommend reading nonfiction written by women in a variety of topics, not only feminism. I have a page of recommendations on my website.

I hope that this is a fairly easy guide to follow. It doesn’t take much, just being aware of how present men are in what you’re reading. This isn’t very groundbreaking, but I want to showcase that it is simple to decenter men.

My storygraph is linked on my website, and it’s under my usual username, catoochie. You can see the books I’ve read, want to read, shelves based on genre, and books I’ve dropped.

If you’re unsure how to get books, I recommend the Libby app if you have a library card. If you don’t, it’s very easy to get one.

I plan on writing how I decenter men in other aspects of my life soon!