What Reading Does to us.

Or, Why the Most Dangerous Woman in the Room Has Probably Read the Most Books

Disclaimer: while I consider this an original piece of writing, I did use ChatGPT to help me frame it along with a series of other posts to follow.  You will see the evidence of this support in the footnotes section, something I would increasingly like to offer, with further reading options.  This will help me rely less on unsupported assertion.  I’d be curious if any of you find the tone and style different.

There’s something erotic and spiritual about the quiet power of a person who reads.
Not just someone who “keeps up” or scrolls headlines. I mean someone who is shaped by reading—who relishes the changes which happen when you surrender to a good story. You can usually tell. Their voice is richer. Their questions are better. They know how to use silence. Their thoughts are clear.
And more often than not it’s a woman.
I’ve been thinking lately about what it means to educate oneself outside of institutions. I’m not anti-academic—I’ve studied with some brilliant thinkers, and I value the structures that protect learning—but there’s a kind of raw, ravenous reader who wasn’t made in the classroom. She built herself by flashlight, by stolen minutes, by waiting-room chapters, by underlined library copies she couldn’t afford to keep. She read not because she had to write a paper, but because she needed to understand something that no one else could explain. Plus, she just loved it. And maybe the escapist joy of a good book, uncomplicated love, feelings, ideas, is more necessary for women living in a society that throws up so many lived roadblocks.
And it strikes me, too, that women are the ones who most often read this way. In fact, the statistics are striking: **women read more books than men across nearly every format and genre.**¹ They are especially more likely to read literary fiction and fiction overall.²
They read more fiction, more memoir, more literary fiction especially—forms that require empathy, nuance, and long attention spans. Forms that don’t promise closure, can be ambiguous, are complex. That sit in contradiction. That make us listen.
What does it mean that women read more?
What does it mean that men, when they read, often default to nonfiction—to facts, takeaways, conclusions—while women surrender to story, to vulnerability, to emotional risk?
It is not a coincidence that our culture devalues novels as “women’s reading.” We know what that means. It means ‘not serious’. It means not real. But what could be more real than trying to understand the machinery of the heart, or having to piece together a world of ambiguity, nuance?
I went to all the right schools. Did I learn how to be in the classroom? No—at least not really. Critical thinking, yes, specific topics, yes. But life? Being a competitive and productive member of society has meant countless hours trying to prove I belong in rooms full of clever, pedigreed people who never had to explain themselves. Or did they? What I learned from fiction taught me more about who and how we are, than reading the Financial Times or from my teachers in school. What I learned was how to think.
And I am particularly interested in the idea that people who read a lot can overcome circumstances of birth. Become more educated. More aware. More nuanced. And ultimately, more competitive. It starts early: 40% of girls read at least 30 minutes a day, compared to just 25% of boys. That difference compounds. And what does it mean when reading—this quietly subversive act—is more deeply embedded in girlhood than in boyhood? And it is subversive.
When I think of the women who’ve taught me most—who have shaped my values, who have saved my life—it is always the ones who read. Deeply. Wildly. Secretly. And I meet more of them through women’s reading groups, a concept which barely registers in the manosphere.
And it’s not just the books. It’s the kind of inner spaciousness that forms when reading is a habit, a refuge, a practice. People who read well tend to speak better.³ They write more clearly.⁴ They are more likely to imagine another person’s reality.⁵ They’re harder to propagandise.⁶ They may take longer to weigh decisions—but they’re more likely to stand by them.⁷
In other words: reading builds our sense of agency.
A man who reads little is often full of conviction. A woman who reads a lot is often full of doubt—and therefore wisdom. And isn’t this already true? Can we not say this generalisation holds true to the agonising life of a woman in doubt—is this not a part of our respective ways of being? We might also consider this the epistemology of reading: that books rewire the brain not for certainty, but for nuance, for depth.
It doesn’t make you more correct. But it does make you more open.
And in the world we live in, what greater strength is there?
I have felt, many times, like I was falling behind. Like others had been given a map, and I was still stitching mine together from scraps. But reading reminds me: the map is inside me. It is forming still. And with every book I take in—every phrase that splits me open—some new path is lit.
Books are not just an escape: they are an invitation. Not answers, but companions.
And when I find myself in the presence of a woman who has read deeply—who has taken the time to learn not just about the world outside but within herself—I can feel her strength.
Because I know exactly what it takes to become that dangerous. The pen really is mightier than the sword. She’s dangerous in the disruptive, uncontrollable, radically free way that true knowledge gives a person.
📚 Sources
1. Pew Research Center, “Who Doesn’t Read Books in America?” https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/09/21/who-doesnt-read-books-in-america
2. Michelle Dean, Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion (New York: Grove Press, 2018). Also supported by Nielsen BookScan and publishing industry reports on gendered genre preferences.
3. Anne E. Cunningham and Keith E. Stanovich, “What Reading Does for the Mind,” Journal of Direct Instruction 1, no. 2 (2001): 137–149.
4. Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (New York: Harper, 2007).
5. David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano, “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind,” Science 342, no. 6156 (2013): 377–380.
6. Jim Kwik, “10 Brain Reasons to Make Reading a Habit,” Kwik Brain on Medium (April 2021), https://kwikbrain.medium.com/10-brain-reasons-to-make-reading-a-habit-aa628d4b498c
7. Philip Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).