Why Everyone Should Read Fiction. Especially Young Men

How reading and storytelling can groom more masculine men in the age of equality

Every avid reader I have come across, read or watched on video usually has a storyline behind how they fell in love with reading. Although this goes accentuating unnoticed because people discover their passion for reading and go on to read more, more than they pause to reflect on how and why they started reading in the first place. 

In a rapidly changing world where boundaries are being redefined, the value of fiction often transcends mere entertainment. While many have extolled the virtues of reading as a universally beneficial endeavour, its impact on shaping identities, particularly among young men, is less explored. As conversations around gender evolve, there is a pressing need to understand and redefine masculinity in an age striving for equality. 

The books we read, and the stories we immerse ourselves in, hold a mirror to our society, reflecting our virtues and flaws. For young men navigating these nuanced terrains, fiction offers more than an escape—it provides a compass. Through the tapestry of characters, plots, and moral dilemmas, stories can foster emotional intelligence, empathy, and a deeper understanding of one's role in the broader narrative of life. 

This explorative essay aims to shed light on why fiction should be an essential part of everyone's life and, more pointedly, how it can aid young men in sculpting a balanced and progressive sense of masculinity. 

An introduction to the concept of 'Intersectionality' helped me to define myself through different lenses. Above all, I pick to be an Educated, Igbo, Black, African, Straight Man. As these are often how I feel internally. Externally, I am a Christian, ambitious young professional in my early career days/ladder, supporting the idea of feminism and sustainable society. 

My discovery of a passion for books, apart from those I read for school purposes or peer trends, started after completing secondary school. I was a sixteen-year-old man at home, waiting to be admitted into a university, and one day came across a worn-out briefcase which I curiously opened to discover an astonishing collection of different book varieties. 

Or should I declare that this was my first contact with erotica and romance and close-up naked people on the pages of a book... Also, this was how I became someone that hides to read a lot, developed a deep sense of cities and people of the world very far from me, and how they approached dating culture etc. At least, I can vividly say that I visited London through the pages of some of those books before I physically came. 

Soon, I started imaginatively performing some of the characters I read in books and used this sense of reasoning to judge people around me - even my romantic relationships. I waited for a couple of years to become of age where I could freely walk around with my kind of genre of books. But that age came with an understanding that there are genres of books different for young females and males. Furthering my need to continue hiding while reading some types of books. 

One would perceive that these differences have cultural connotations behind them. However, my engagement with younger men from across the world and living in England for almost five years demonstrated a subtle stigma regarding the kind of book a teenage male child should be seen publicly reading. 

This is not because they are erotica or romance but because they are considered feminine books. So to be on the safer side as a young male that likes books, reading nonfiction, like geographies, histories, memoirs, and self-help books, is your best call in public. Researchers in allied fields, like philosophers and psychologists, find issues of pretense and imagination of central interest. 

Conventional psychology argues that delusions and dreams provide interesting challenges to understanding the nature of imagination and its place in cognitive architecture. However, the involvement of imagination in dreaming has been especially neglected. Some psychologists suggest that dreams are born out of the hedonistic (pleasure > pain) nature of human beings, while imagination is formed through experiences and observations, to which reading and movies can be huge contributors. 

There are already a lot of studies on the subject of reading, especially fiction and an individual's emotional intelligence (EI). For instance, a study submitted to the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences administered the measured Multi-factor Emotional Intelligence Scale (MEIS in press) to Australian undergraduates along with a battery of IQ, personality, and other theoretically relevant criterion measures, including life satisfaction and relationship quality. 

Analyses revealed that EI was not related to IQ but was related, as expected, to specific personality measures (e.g., empathy) and to other criterion measures (e.g., life satisfaction, good relationship) even after controlling for IQ and personality traits. They tried to answer the question: What makes people emotionally intelligent?

Five main factors it appears - gender, lifestyle, personality, external circumstances and age. Commenting on lifestyle, women, by large, are slightly more emotionally intelligent than men. This suggests that women are more likely to pursue experiences and lifestyles that make them happier or that a few women are exposed to more harsh lifestyles than men. 

Another study finds that a combination of storytelling with group discussion is a potentially beneficial educational method for elementary school students. However, more females engage in such activities and maintain it as a lifestyle over the years than their male counterparts.  

These findings in lifestyle disparities between men and women in relation to reading fiction may best be explained through the term "The Default Men" by Grayson Perry. In his thesis in the book 'The Descent of Man', he postulated that every man has a masculine department in his head, which is preconceived through several sources that detect to men what is masculine and what is not and should not be. 

There are a lot of factors found to contribute to these disparities in gender empathy, life satisfaction, and emotional intelligent level, more than the solution for them. While there may not be a quick immediate-lasting fix for now, a solution could be to encourage more men to live outside the control of the masculine department, which categorises them as Grayson's Default men or not - to live in a way that authentically flows with being a human being. And this being a human can start with reading any form of fiction in private and public by more men, regardless of age, and unashamed.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels

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Many thanks for reading my perspective and giving feedback.

My fervent wish is for the personal growth of everyone and the success of all young professionals who put their hearts and souls into finding their purpose in life.

Copyright © Ekene Moses, 2023. All Rights Reserved.