You Should Date An Illiterate Girl

Seconded.

cosign.

yup.

tears on my keyboard.

lol

you're really obtuse and annoying. also, a fangirl.

Don’t be a dick.

If you're going to say that, can you at least write what you think the person missed?

See my super long comment a bit above; it's all in there.

Actually seems pretty spot on to me. Phenomenal read!

thanks!

It's a well-written piece, no question. The message is the age-old curse of the misogynist… he hates the fact that he needs a woman.

feel like the sentiments here are universal; any person could experience anxiety and insecurity over not achieving an ideal; any person could just as easily spend their life with “someone who doesn't read” and feel the same sort of emptiness. i don't understand why this is misogynistic.

I agree. This doesn't read as misogynistic to me at all. Kind of perfect, though.

In this piece, he presents two options: a meaningless life with an illiterate or life with a reader whom he hates. His advice is to choose an illiterate “because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell.” How can you not see the misogyny?

He proposes hypotheticals, not options. In the end, the girl who reads has the control: they will not end up together because she is smarter, more confident, more perceptive, and more ambitious in what she wants for herself, (“You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied.”) She is the one unwilling to settle for and with this shallow but seemingly tolerant narrator; he doesn’t have any say.

And I don't think he hates her, either; I think what he hates is how she “makes” him feel–inadequate. He hates that he isn't enough for her. (“You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am.”) In other words, he recognizes that she wants and deserves more, and he validates it. Basically, this is a guy who hates himself.

If the piece were misogynistic, it would just rail against women in general, about all women, however vacuous, because misogyny is hating women for the mere fact that they are women. And, really, that's not what this piece does.

If anything’s being bashed, it’s elitism–and even that, for the wrong reason, entirely.

The term misogynist certainly stirs things up! It may be too strong a term, but I wouldn't assume that he would rail against women in general — if he were a misogynist. By strongly urging the path of least resistance, it appears he is addressing other men… even as a warning from his own failure to pursue passion.
I don't think we differ that much… in my original post I asked “Is it really the girl who reads that
he hates, or is it his own impotence?”

This comment seems highly ironic.

So this person's views on it are wrong, but yours are right? Your view and assumptions are right, and the other person's wrong?

You realize this is the Internet, right?

Oh yeah, I forgot that even people who can construct sentences and use words with more than three syllables act like pretentious know-it-alls here in the interwebs.

There's a difference between having a different opinion and misinterpreting what the author is trying to say. If you read this and think that he hates the woman simply because she reads, then yes, you missed something. I completely agree with Molly; he “hates” the reader because she makes him feel inadequate. In other words, he's admitting that she's better than him. That's not misogynistic, and to say so would be–try not to explode–wrong.

And who is to say YOU are interpreting what he said correctly? Why does this other person have to be misinterpreting it? God forbid that is you who is – try not to explode – wrong.

i must have missed the ceremony at which you were appointed thoughcatalog policeman.

maybe back the fuck off, billh, and an actual dialogue can develop. it will be that much easier if you can refrain from crashtackling anyone who seems to have gained something by reading the piece.

“i must have missed the ceremony at which you were appointed thoughcatalog policeman”

Kind of hilarious saying that to me, and then suggesting I should “back the fuck off”. You see the irony there? How about you back the fuck off with telling people what to do, yeah?

Boohoo! Someone doesn't agree with me or others, he needs to back the fuck off. Grow up, moron.

Well if you can point to evidence in the text that supports what you're saying then I would say you are more likely to be right? No one's claiming to know 100% here, but that doesn't seem so unreasonable to me.

Thanks, Thomas. I think we're simpatico, here. I'm with you on all of the above.

The idea that a reader is better than someone who doesn't is preposterous. There's far more to humankind than the ability to read.

I'm a little confused by your one-man crusade to extinguish the entire basis for any kind of debate, argument, discussion, conversation, or…really, any general exchange of ideas. It's not like we're arguing about a scientific paper, this is a written piece submitted as art, and therefore open to interpretations as varied as the people who are reading it. I asked you if you'd forgotten that this is the Internet, where pissants endlessly quibbling over nuances are pretty much de rigeur, and you should probably let it roll off your back.

i don't see this piece in terms of MEN WHO READ vs WOMEN WHO READ vs WOMEN WHO DON'T, but more in terms of PEOPLE WHO THINK vs PEOPLE WHO DON'T. feel like sex and or gender is pretty irrelevant—seems like it’s about confronting expectations/ideals that seem entirely unattainable (to the point they may not even exist) and also like it's really the idea that matters; even if it's not real; “the idea” is always going to make the protagonist feel inadequate and like he “choose” mediocrity, even if that's all there ever was.

don't see misogyny though; calling this “misogynistic” seems limited/missing the point

except you can't erase context. man writing about women as fungible accessories to their lives, as forces of good or evil, as one-dimensional, virgins/whores, etc has been done to death, for fucking ever. the author's reference to hemingway and other Important Writers, all of whom are white dudes (always!) is just another tell. you act as though this guy just sat down to write some totally abstract internets piece and flipped a coin and said “oh yeah, i guess i'll write from the perspective of a Nice Guy jilted by a Comlicated Woman because the penny came up tails.”

women, “literate” or otherwise are sick and tired of being reduced to stereotypical supporting cast roles in the Very Important Lives of Dudes, everywhere and that really is the problem.

The life in Purgatory is the life with the thoughtless dimwit. The life in Hell is the life without the woman who reads because she will not stay with him because she knows she deserves better. His Hell is that he is not good enough for her. He doesn't really hate her, he resents her for being too good for him. It is a deeply romantic piece and there is not an ounce of misogyny in it and I pity you if you cannot see that.

He hates the fact the he's not good enough for the girl who reads.

That he “needs a woman” doesn't much matter, one way or the other, because he can “get” one as long as he lowers his standards to…a girl of lower standards.

Yes. Because this person has an opinion different to you, this person must have “missed something.” Sure.

Oh, gods, why do we live in an age where every opinion is “equally valid” except the opinion that an opinion sucks or is–shock! awe!–wrong or missing some crucial element?

Because it's a freaking OPINION! It's not about it being valid, you buffoon, it's about it being an opinion. Jesus wept.

Saying someone “missed something” because they do not agree with them is not about opinion, it's about the person wanting to be right. They are right, their opinion is right, and therefore SOMEONE ELSE “missed something” to end up with a different opinion.

It is not that this other person read into it differently. No no, this person is not at fault. The other person MUST have missed something.

…well now, see, that's just your opinion.

NO.

yes

Perhaps, yes, but isn't there an implicit assumption that someone who doesn't match some threshold of education and worldliness ('Midwestern') isn't capable of deep emotional understanding?

weirdly agree

That's true. I really think we're not supposed to like the narrator.

There is if you assume that, but I'm sure the author didn't. As said by other posters, the thought of a girl who can't read is about how her illiteracy carries along with it a certain innocence. Girls (and guys for that matter), who don't read may not know of the cliche love stories that set the bar impossibly high for all relationships. Ignorance of these stories may be the only way in which we can truly FEEL love, and have that deep emotional understanding.

It's not the illiterate who can't understand love. It's the literate who MISunderstand it.

Fully agree.

Exactly! He's only using “girls who read” as a conceit about a woman thinks, wants, and feels, as opposed to one who merely exists. This shouldn't be read literally. It's a literary device, and you'd know it if you — gasp — read more. :)

Hmm, I felt the girl who reads is more someone who is aware of experiences beyond her own, possibilities beyond her own. Passion works too, of course.

Yes, how dare EWK think it was boring or irrelevant. Of course that is wrong. EWK just “didn't get it”. Right. YOU'RE missing the point, ZED. EWK can think what he/she wants.

What's to say YOU “didn't get it”, and that you're understanding is wrong. Presumptuous.

come ON- he obviously didn't get the blaring sarcasm and irony- it's pretty clear he DOES value the reader/thinker over the simple non- reader. reading it otherwise is simple lack of reading comprehension, not just a different “opinion”.

i pity on u 2 be smart

Yes! Yes this is the point exactly! Except I hope the man you're pitying is this character, as opposed to assuming the writer didn't realize the irony?