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View submission: Where Is All the Sad Boy Literature?
Not to be smarmy, but right here: https://x.com/guyinyourmfa?lang=en&mx=2
I, a cis, white male, was moderately involved in lit fiction spaces about a decade ago. Male vulnerability is pretty universally seen as tone-deaf, imposing, demanding, infantile. There are certainly unempathetic men who embody the Guy in Your MFA, the ones misunderstand everyone around them and insert themselves as the hero of every story and situation, who think they're *oh so brilliant and misunderstood*, when they're really misogynistic hacks. The problem was that this archetype became so ingrained in the psyche of literary types that it has become a knee-jerk response to any male emotionally or vulnerability.
I was raped by a woman in college. Writing a story about it caused me a profound amount of blowback.
I'm not really involved in the true literary community anymore. I love to read, I love my small book club. I have no respect for the American literary community at its "high" levels, as it has become almost incestuously insular in its worldview and personnel.
There's nothing here!