I can’t understand why ppl are mad at this. Do women not have a right to feel alienated by a canon assembled without our input, when so many of us were barred from the male sign of authorship? Or a canon that largely represents an era synonymous with sexism & belittlement? https://twitter.com/shreyabasu003/status/1293363589970046976">https://twitter.com/shreyabas...

Women and black folks have talked about this for ages: do we have no right to miss ourselves in older texts, when we were both exchanged as property and denied literacy? The canon has always been a problem.

And sure, I’m not saying don’t read the canon. I’m not saying the most important thing about a literary work is who wrote it or who it represents. But should it not be obvious that many of these works are difficult for us to relate to—especially compared to men/whites/etc?

I feel like people complaining about this just reveal their absolute resentment for women and minorities. They go absolutely psycho trying to defend the canon from the assault of a single young woman—in this case herself an author.

There’s just zero empathy for young women growing up in a world that clearly isn’t built for us, where we have to silence ourselves to become the universal subject—where we have to essentially pretend to be male just to assume the role of reader or to ID with the protagonist.

I’m sick of this performative outrage about what young women are doing. It’s not fair, it’s not right, and it’s honestly just pathetic.

Your precious canon will be a-okay, I promise. It’s such a stupid fucking thing to be mad about. You end up no better than a trad reactoid.