If you’ve ever been on BookTok, you’ll find very quickly that the foundation of BookTok consists primarily of women and queer folk. The straight cis male exists on BookTok, but typically as an author. This may be why the women of BookTok so often jump at the chance to welcome straight cis white men into the community when said men are so often looking to exploit these women for clout.
The formula is almost always the exact same:
- The man makes his first post announcing his intent to join BookTok or desire for BookTok to find his video.
- The man then holds up a book that is popular on mainstream BookTok, typically CoHo or SJM.
- The man asks the community to suggest books to in a thinly veiled attempt to gain a large amount of engagement.
- When the man is called out for said stunt, he resorts to misogyny.
We are currently seeing this with Nate Lemke, author of Manic Pixie E-Girl. Nate introduced himself to the community by stating that he was reading a book written by females every day… and then quickly changed the verbiage to women when called out for it. What is interesting about Nate is just how quickly he fumbled in this little stunt by giving away his ulterior motive in his second post before building a dedicated enough audience of women who accept bread crumbs from men.
You see, Nate didn’t make it clear originally that he was reading these books in order to get HIS book on the NYT Best Sellers list. How those two are connected? Well, we are all unsure.
But the backlash was immediate upon posting his second video, which was promptly deleted.
Lemke blatantly admitted to never having read books written by women and attempted to claim that he was simply addressing a blind spot. Why not incorporate it into the challenge? Why not try to sell his incredibly misogynistic book by exploiting women? WHAT IS SO WRONG WITH THAT!?
Nate, like so many other men, has walked through life with a privilege that has made him become accustomed to getting what he wants. He likely expected to be fawned over like so many of the other men who use BookTok for clout, but was simply not clever or charming enough to hide his blatant misogyny.
Personally, I find it particularly interesting that Nate chose to call a group of women “mean girls” for explaining to him WHY he was wrong. In a video addressing the “booktok drama” he addressed the issues the community had with his work and asked if they were right- was he exploiting women?
The answer is that he already knows that he was.
By asking that question, Nate presented himself to his new fanbase as a reasonable guy just trying to unlearn bad habits. We’ve seen this happen before with the Matt Shaw situation. When Hailey left a bad review on a book Shaw dedicated to her, Matt argued with her in the comments of the review before asking her to come onto his podcast. Shaw presented this as a good faith move- one that would enable them to talk through their disagreements.
But Shaw KNEW that Hailey would say no- she had already stated that Shaw scared her. And Hailey was right to do so as this is a tactic misogynist men use to place women in front of their audience of incels in order to humiliate them and make them a target. And if the woman disagrees, then he can say that he at least tried. She was the one being unreasonable by refusing to talk about this like adults!
By asking the question to his audience, Lemke has made it so that he seems like the good guy. He’s just trying to learn and those damn women are just so mean and unreasonable!
It even more insidious when you consider that the women calling him out originally were WOC. We all know how easy it is to paint WOC as angry, irrational, unreasonable, and mean.
One creator did in fact read his book and stated, “this book is giving MRA lit fic.”
And that is incredibly unsurprising considering this man wrote a book about sex workers without ever having read a book written by a woman. One can simply imagine the care with which he crafts female characters considering he never considered our words valuable in the first place.
Even more unsurprising when you learn that the only feedback he cared to listen to was from another man (who is actually a valuable and wonderful part of the community, but the point stands).
This is exactly why we called for men in the horror community to stand up for women when the Shaw situation happened. The attitudes of these men range from casual misogyny to outright hostile and nothing a woman has to say will ever reach them. They only listen to other men.
And with the Shaw situation, we saw how that went. We saw authors such as Matt Lutton and Duncan Ralston actively stand up for a man who was escalating his dangerous behavior in a very public way. We saw them participate in misogyny and attempt to equate Hailey’s opinions of the genre to Matt trashing her online for months before publishing a book dedicated to her. A book carefully crafted to put fear in her heart and remind her of her place.
The reality is that misogyny is always violent.
And they are often incredibly aware of their misogyny, it is simply that they find no issue with it. They benefit from misogyny as it keeps them at the top of the pyramid. They get to play alpha while simultaneously crying victim as both Shaw and Lemke have done.
Oh wait, as Lemke is actively doing at the moment in a new video published crying about how he’s being hurt by review bombing. Always the victim.
Due to this, many members of the BookTok community are always suspicious of men- myself included. We are right to do so, as we’re often let down by the men we accept into our circle.
These men are not here to give to the community. They are not here for participation. They are not here to give to the community. To participate. To learn and grow.
They arrive on BookTok expecting the community to serve them.
And it often confuses and enrages them when they are met with hostility, because men like this love nothing more than to take from us.
For more information on this situation, please watch @readswithrachel’s video!
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