The Strange Death of Literary Women

Women are reading—but not for the reasons you think

We’ve heard all about the death of literary men. Let’s talk instead about the strange death of literary women.

In my popular 2024 essay “The Strange Death of Literary Men,” I argued that men don’t read anymore because the publishing industry—run today by young liberal white women—has shut them out entirely.

I stand by my word. Yes—men don’t read because the publishing industry has shut them out. Yes—the publishing industry has been overtaken by women writing almost exclusively for other women. But today, I’d like to take a look at a parallel phenomenon that has become increasingly apparent to me over the past year.

Women actually don’t read either.

But wait! Isn’t 70 percent of the publishing industry made up of women? Don’t women almost exclusively read books by other women? Aren’t women the only people who actually read these days?

Yes—women are “reading,” in the loosest definition of the term. But I would hesitate to categorize the activity they involve themselves in as “reading books.” They are, instead, consuming written pornography.

A 2024 roundup of book sales from Publisher’s Weekly found that seven out of the top ten books of the previous year were romance and romantasy titles, with both genres “continu[ing] to drive remarkable sales in the business.” As overall book sales decline, in fact, romance novels are on the rise, with “sales of print copies surging about 52 percent in the year 2022.” In fact, purchases of romance and erotica books have more than doubled in the U.S., “leaping from 18 million in 2020 to more than 39 million in 2023” according to a report from The Guardian. In 2024, romance was the highest-earning fiction genre, generating roughly $1.5 billion in book revenue in the U.S. alone—accounting for nearly a quarter of total adult fiction book revenue ($6.84 billion). Unsurprisingly, 82 percent of romance readers are women, who, as one reporter puts it, enjoy “just plain horny novels.”

Eager to capitalize on this emerging trend, literary agents today seek romance novels more frequently than any other genre, with over 50 percent of agents representing romance on their genre roster. Writers, similarly, eager to secure that coveted publishing deal, are trading serious deliberation for steamy sex.

In practice, these trends demonstrate that much of what now accounts for “women’s reading” is concentrated in a narrow band of commercially optimized romantic fiction rather than spread evenly across all other genres. In other words, women are reading primarily smut—about a third of which is sexually explicit. That’s not to say that all books written by women for women are pornographic in nature—there are, of course, many contemporary books that explore more serious topics, but these books are few and far in between. The fact is that the majority of women today read a disproportionate amount of smut and pornography—and the publishing industry wants them to.

While I reject the argument that women are simply shallow or cannot handle serious literature, the fact is that women have unfortunately allowed themselves to be infantilized by an industry that believes the female brain can handle nothing more than orcs and orgasms (or orc orgasms). After all, many of these books contain straight pornography, such as this passage from E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey that I must regrettably cite in order to prove my point:

If you want to attempt to write me a dissertation about how Fifty Shades of Grey somehow qualifies as serious literature, I am all ears, but until then, I must inform you that what you have in front of you is the purest example of written pornography.

Since the publication of Fifty Shades of Grey in 2011, women have been increasingly hooked on erotica in the vein of James’ writing, viewing novels that sacrifice style for kink as “emancipated, feminist, and progressive.” And while these women can make as many excuses for themselves as they would like, it is clear that these women are not reading for the sake of reading—they are reading in order to get off.

Countless studies have demonstrated that women prefer written erotica over visual pornography because it provides them with an additional layer of emotional context that pornographic videos otherwise lack. In other words, women read romance novels not because they are at all interested in their literary merit (these novels have none) but because it provides them with the same sort of satisfaction that men receive from watching porn.

As a society, we see no qualms in shaming men for watching porn. The data, after all, could not be clearer on the negative effect that pornography has on emotional intimacy, and women themselves frequently prefer to date men who do not watch porn. And if we are to hold men and women to the same standards—as women constantly insist on doing when it comes, for instance, to body count—why, then, do we celebrate female consumption of porn in its written form while denouncing its male visual counterpart?

Why is it empowering for women to be reading porn?

Author Kendra Hope, who devotes her Instagram page to helping young women overcome their smut addictions, is troubled by the rise of readers who view smut as “empowering.” “We live in a time where smut is celebrated and devoured without a second thought,” she writes. “There’s little caution given with this sort of explicit material. And to say there should be a warning label or to dare utter the words that it might be addictive is oftentimes considered non-inclusive and judgmental. But because I became addicted to it at just 11 years old, I know it’s not something neutral. It’s powerful, and I do believe we need to bring more awareness to it.”

Hope is one of few voices on the Internet tackling the ominous spread of “smut addiction,” which, for many women, has become synonymous with the act of reading itself. But as Gen Z in particular gravitates towards romance novels, they retreat into their own fantasy worlds (quite literally, in the case of romantasy) and eschew the formation of meaningful, real-world relationships.

In my current novel-in-progress, Blue Snow, in fact, I explore the detriments of male porn addiction and how obsession with “extreme” sexual acts, such as those depicted in James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, frequently precludes the formation of healthy relationships.

The fact is that many of these women are simply dissatisfied with their personal lives and turn to smut to fill a void. But reading fantastical smut will never replace real-world relationships

While it might be difficult to blame young women for reaching for romantasy—after all, in the groyper-infested world of misogyny and unreasonable demands, genuine connection is becoming quite rare—escaping into pornographic fiction only makes these problems worse, leading to an increasing number of women becoming as unbearable—or at least as lonely—as their “manosphere-addicted” male counterparts.

Today, as men are sucked into the world of Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, women are sucked into sex through smut. The result is not only a decay of serious readers but also a crisis in the sphere of meaningful relationships. And while we can partially blame the “manosphere” (and, indeed, we should), women are equally as complicit. As women mask their addiction to unrealistic and oftentimes even disturbing sex by claiming to be “bookworms,” they deflect attention from the real issue: that many of them read not for intellectual but for sexual stimulation. Meanwhile, they participate in increasingly fewer real-world relationships: Gen Z females, for instance, are having less sex than ever—and don’t even get me started on that viral Vogue article about how it’s now “embarrassing” to have a boyfriend.

In other words, women read smut because they are lonely.

But if we are to build a generation of thoughtful and self-respecting women, then don’t we have a duty to stop telling these women that erotica is empowerment? After all, women aren’t reading porn because they are “liberated”—they’re reading it because they’ve forgotten how to reach for greater meaning; they have forgotten how to bond and how to love precisely because they no longer read literature, which teaches us all to process life’s most difficult questions and points us towards “the good life.”

The tragedy, then, isn’t that women read smut but that they mistake it for literature—and, worse, that no one expects them not to. But the purpose of reading has never been to titillate (unless you’re the Marquis de Sade)—it has, rather, always been to enrich the soul. In the words of Matthew Arnold, culture acquaints us with “the best that has been thought and said.” Literature doesn’t only provide pleasure—it helps us lead our best lives and make positive decisions in our own journeys. After all, reading literature is known to increase empathy and social bonding, making it easier to enter a relationship and denounce smut in favor of real, meaningful sex.

So, ladies—put down the erotica porn novel and reach for Anna Karenina or The Bell Jar.

I promise you’ll be just as thrilled.

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