I don't exclude books with female protagonists or written by women, but I know of some who do, and some who exclude male protags and authors on the other side of the coin.
I got into a discussion about this a while back, and unfortunately it ended up being pop!feminismed to death instead of considered seriously.
My point then was we as female readers (and viewers) tend to have a duality about discussing female protags.
We want to have strong female characters. OK, what's that mean? Everyone will have a slightly different POV about it, so right from the start we're comparing with different yardsticks.
The desire to have a strong female character, as I think of her, often means I nitpick the character's flaws in great detail.
That's not to say I don't nitpick a male character's actions if he's being Too Stupid To Live, but the pop!feminism folks often see that nitpicking of females means I'm not really being supportive of strong female characters.
They seem to overlook when I point out male characters are being idiots, but I usually discuss the women in greater detail because I am one and would like to see better yet varied representation of female characters.
This is where the duality kicks in for me. I want strong female characters, and discussing it often means pointing out the flaws. So am I overlooking strengths because I'm expecting flaws?
I think sometimes I prefer a male protag simply because I'm not male. Not because I'm anti-female, but because I can easily handwave a male's idiotic moments as macho heroics, lazy plotting or outright stupidity. If a woman did something similar, I might get stuck on an "I'd never do that!" reaction.
In tv and movies, the industry is dominated by male writers. Even if there's a female protag and/or female writers involved, it's very much a group effort. A group effort dominated by white men.
For fiction, it's not quite as bad, as there are men and women who write characters of both genders just fine. They have better control of their characters, though they can also lose control of them too under the pressure of a deadline, editorial input, etc.
One thing that irritates me in fiction are authors who try to hard to create a strong female character. They focus on a few aspects -- usually physical strength, magical mojo, and sexuality -- then amp it up and expect that to meet the requirements.
What it often does is show me a character with interesting potential, but with such lopsided creation and focus, she quickly burns out whatever makes her unique. She's not well-rounded and can implode as a character if the author hasn't balanced out strengths with some weakness.
Hopefully you can get some sense out of all that nonsense. It's something I can understand in my head in a vague sort of way, but putting it into actual words is very difficult. It's defintely more about "feeling" than logic.
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I got into a discussion about this a while back, and unfortunately it ended up being pop!feminismed to death instead of considered seriously.
My point then was we as female readers (and viewers) tend to have a duality about discussing female protags.
We want to have strong female characters. OK, what's that mean? Everyone will have a slightly different POV about it, so right from the start we're comparing with different yardsticks.
The desire to have a strong female character, as I think of her, often means I nitpick the character's flaws in great detail.
That's not to say I don't nitpick a male character's actions if he's being Too Stupid To Live, but the pop!feminism folks often see that nitpicking of females means I'm not really being supportive of strong female characters.
They seem to overlook when I point out male characters are being idiots, but I usually discuss the women in greater detail because I am one and would like to see better yet varied representation of female characters.
This is where the duality kicks in for me. I want strong female characters, and discussing it often means pointing out the flaws. So am I overlooking strengths because I'm expecting flaws?
I think sometimes I prefer a male protag simply because I'm not male. Not because I'm anti-female, but because I can easily handwave a male's idiotic moments as macho heroics, lazy plotting or outright stupidity. If a woman did something similar, I might get stuck on an "I'd never do that!" reaction.
In tv and movies, the industry is dominated by male writers. Even if there's a female protag and/or female writers involved, it's very much a group effort. A group effort dominated by white men.
For fiction, it's not quite as bad, as there are men and women who write characters of both genders just fine. They have better control of their characters, though they can also lose control of them too under the pressure of a deadline, editorial input, etc.
One thing that irritates me in fiction are authors who try to hard to create a strong female character. They focus on a few aspects -- usually physical strength, magical mojo, and sexuality -- then amp it up and expect that to meet the requirements.
What it often does is show me a character with interesting potential, but with such lopsided creation and focus, she quickly burns out whatever makes her unique. She's not well-rounded and can implode as a character if the author hasn't balanced out strengths with some weakness.
Hopefully you can get some sense out of all that nonsense. It's something I can understand in my head in a vague sort of way, but putting it into actual words is very difficult. It's defintely more about "feeling" than logic.