Autumn’s answer to “do you agree this is an extremely misogynistic book?” > Likes and Comments

1) he does awful things to both men and women, but the way that the women are treated and talked about is extremely sexist. Every single woman in this book is introduced to us and evaluated on her fuckablity first and foremost in a way that the male characters are not. His treatment of his girlfriend is awful, but it was noticeable from the very first appearance of a woman in the book.

2) This is true, they're all awful. I don't like any of the characters or find them to have any redeeming qualities. This doesn't mean the book isn't also sexist.

3/4)Most people who are misogynistic don't think "I'm going to do this because I hate women and think of them as sexual objects." Misogyny often isn't purposeful and that doesn't make it excusable. Furthermore I'd argue that it's not just Quentin that is the problem but Grossman himself. I've read plenty of books that had misogynistic characters, but were clearly not misogynistic books. That is not the case here

I agree with you Autumn. I also don't think this is sexist. The main character is depressed and highly flawed. The views and images displayed are from Quentin's perspective. People love to search for sexism where it isn't warranted.

I love what Sarah had to say. I believe Grossman's heart was in the right place (he attempted to create a misogynistic, hateful, and emotionally stunted character that throughout a series grows into a decent person), unfortunately he forgot to first check his own privilege and painted a picture of a world where females are secondary to males, even in its subtlety.

How did he forget to "check his privilege" or paint females as "secondary to males? Alice turns out to be the one who defeats the Beast, not Quentin. Julia pieces together the ability of a master magician without any of the advantages of attending a school for it: She forges it out of the scraps of knowledge she finds and hard-worn determination. Both of them are better magicians than Quentin.

I have to agree with what Autumn has wrote.

I agree with Sarah Wingo's answer.

Throughout my reading I was getting some big "nice guy" vibes as someone else in another answer put it. I went back and forth the whole time of if this is a reflection of Grossman, or just Quentin. By the end of the book I came down on the side of it being Quentin when SPOILERS

Quentin goes on to cheat on his girlfriend. At that point I was like "aha! scumbag!" which was evidence to me that my suspicions of him being a little sexist shit the whole book were now confirmed and intentional on the part of the author. But yeah, like others have said a lot of the sexist thoughts he has early on are stuff that young boys/men do secretly think about. That said his shitty behavior towards women goes beyond pervy thoughts. Not many young men cheat; or at least none that can then try and claim to be "actually a nice guy I swear." (Plus his behavior towards Julia his "best friend who I know better than anyone" is despicable. disclaimer I haven't read past the first book).

*Although I feel MOST of the sexism of Quentin’s is intentional character traits, there are some instances of what seems to me like author sexism bleeding into the text. Namely, the first sex scene with them as foxes. There are some pretty glaring consent issues in the scene, the first way that Alice is described is as attempting to resist/fight him and only after that does she display pleasure (in between continued yelps of pain/resistance). I can already hear the defenders, “they were animals! They were acting like animals!”, and that is my point. If this was a sex scene as humans it would be as rapey as something out of The Fountainhead. By itself this doesn’t make Grossman seem kinda sexist, its only when Alice shows up later and says oh the sex was great. Its basically Grossman indulging in a rape fantasy without narrative consequences, but it is okay they are animals! (Bull I call, regular animals w/o human brains hump consensually all the time)