There’s been a lot of dire news about literacy lately about the low rates of reading among men. The general concerns about literacy are merited. Eighth-grade reading scores are at a 30-year low. Despite millions of dollars spent on literacy programs, one-third of fourth graders have not achieved a basic reading level. College students, even at elite schools, are showing up unable to read long-form.

And it’s no wonder: Every demographic surveyed reports a decline in time spent reading for pleasure. That means 4th-grade, 8th-grade, and college students’ parents. Nearly half of all adults did not read a single book in 2024. None of this is good. But the focus on men and their reading habits has taken a propagandist turn.

Much of it comes in the form of scolding, such as this warning from “queer, working-class Scottish novelist” Douglas Stuart about the “long-term hurt caused by men not reading” and numerous hysterical one-off essays like this beauty titled “Men aren’t reading fiction and it’s hurting all of us” in which the author actually comments on the necessity of fiction for men because it could “change their downward spiral of hatred.”

Then there’s this New York Times Style wrap-up of the topic that connects men reading fewer novels with “a variety of social maladies, up to and including deleterious effects on American democracy itself.”

It’s ubiquitous, this mainstream language about violence and “hurting” and hatred when it comes to stats about men and reading. Everything is framed in the lexicon of misogyny and toxic masculinity. Worse, I don’t believe the data that are being cited reflect the truth — where the alarmists bother to cite data, that is.

In fact, my own company’s data show the opposite trend. It’s men who are reading and talking about fiction. They’re doing it seriously, like it’s a job. The reason I believe the mainstream media don’t count them as readers? Many of the screeds like those above rely on these 2021 data points: “A study by Nielsen Book Research found that, of the 10 bestselling male authors, readership was roughly evenly divided by gender, with 55% male readers and 45% female readers. In contrast, only 19% of the 10 bestselling female authors’ readers were male, compared to 81% female.”

In other words, men’s literacy is being judged according to the number of modern novels they buy (Nielsen data tracks sales measurement) and — in the case of the Guardian author and article linked above — the number of female authors they read.

What if men actually are reading? They’re just reading work that wasn’t written in the past decade by New York Times-bestselling authors (most of whom are women who write romantasy and domestic fiction, by the way). Did anyone ever consider that? Apparently not.

“So why don’t men read fiction?” asks Natalia Albin Legorreta, the London-based director of a creative studio called Atarexia. “Well, and try not to gasp, one of the main reasons is misogyny. If we look at the numbers, more women being published in fiction means men are less likely to pick up a novel.”

The holes in her logic are Volkswagen-sized. Yet hers is a popular theory about men and fiction. The Margaret Atwood theory. I say it’s wrong.

A year ago, I co-founded a literacy platform with two partners. We were three open-school advocates from the Twin Cities in the pandemic years. We chose 13- to 17-year-olds as our target because they were arguably the ones who suffered most during the 2020-21 closures. Our goal was to help them love reading, starting with classic literature. On the advice of focus groups, we built in a social media discussion feature because it would appeal to teens.

In order to get to kids, of course, you have to appeal to mothers, so they were our secondary target. We drew up personas. A 14-year-old girl and her 45-year-old “CEO of education” mom. We worked with advisers in the ed tech space, even moving to northern Kentucky, where a group of entrepreneurs had set up shop to grow startups like ours.

Then we launched. It was June; traditional school had just gotten out. But first lady Usha Vance was launching her summer reading program. And homeschool groups assured us they were reading year-round. We had a list of interested mother/teen pairings, plus some education experts. Librarians, rec center coordinators. We released our product, and uptake was slow.

No time! 80% of our beta group said. On vacation! Kids at home! There was one phrase we heard over and over: Too distracted!

But there was one small group of users that signed on that first week and never let up: men.

We’d loaded the app with “Little Women,” “The Secret Garden,” and Oz books. Seeing the data, we shifted gears and published serialized versions of “Crime and Punishment,” “My Man Jeeves,” “Don Quixote,” and “David Copperfield.” Mark Twain, G.K. Chesterton, Herman Melville. The men, ranging in age from their mid-30s to 75, tore through these and commented.

But they also read “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” by Anita Loos, “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley, and, charmingly, the Oz books. I got half a dozen messages from manly family dudes who wanted to discuss Ozma and the wizard. Whatever we put up, these guys read. They debate with humor and invite friends to join.

We’ve had two users get so engaged in the app that they’ve taken literacy on as a crusade, leaving breadcrumb comments for younger users and uploading new stories for us.

“These are the men who want meaning,” one of our partners (the father of such a man) put it. “They’re the young, newly Catholic family men who really want to do things right. They spent a decade playing video games. Now, they want better.”

They’re the husbands who grocery shop and prepare the meals; middle-aged managers who’ve realized that career is ephemeral; or retired guys who aren’t into golf and want to exercise their minds. They’re courtly and curious, and I’ve learned a lot from what they have to say.

None of us is giving up on young or female audiences, but for the sake of our enterprise, we’ve had to concentrate on the group that loves us. Men. Those “misogynists” have temporarily abandoned their “downward spiral of hatred” to leave mordant comments on Jane Austen and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

I can’t speak to the world of men, of course, only to our small corner. But these are people who came to us organically, through word of mouth and random social media posts. They’re quietly reading the classics and hurting precisely no one. But that doesn’t sell Rebecca Yarros’ titles or make for breaking news.

***

Ann Bauer is co-founder of Storyalīz, a serial publishing platform and literary community.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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