Man Annoyed That GF Chooses To Read And Watch Fiction As It’s Not Making Her Any More Intelligent

If there were a hall of fame for universally approved hobbies, reading books and watching movies would surely have a spot. They offer an easy way to relax while giving your mind something stimulating to think about. That’s usually called time well spent, right?

Well, not according to this Redditor’s boyfriend. With what he considers very high intellectual standards, he believes that only non-fiction counts as real knowledge. Anything else, in his words, only lowers your IQ. Because of this, he told his girlfriend to stop consuming all fictional media and focus instead on things that aren’t “make-believe” and are actually worthwhile.

Stunned by this demand, she turned to the internet to ask how to handle such a wild request. Read the full story below.

The man demanded his girlfriend give up all fiction, claiming it was rotting her brain and wasn’t real knowledge

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Stunned by the ultimatum, she turned to the internet to ask what to do

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Telling women what to read comes from a long misogynistic history

At the surface, the boyfriend’s demand sounds so extreme it almost feels unreal. Telling a grown adult what they’re allowed to read or watch is, at best, wildly inappropriate, and at worst, a clear attempt at control.

While this situation may seem like a one-off case of personal arrogance, the thinking behind it is far from new. In fact, the idea that fiction is somehow “less” than other forms of knowledge has deep roots in history—and those roots are closely tied to gender.

For much of the past, reading was not simply a personal choice. It was treated as a reflection of who someone was allowed to be. Women were often excluded from formal education, which meant their access to certain kinds of texts was restricted from the very start.

In Japan during the Heian period, between the 9th and 12th centuries, men were formally trained to read and write using Chinese characters, a system known as kanji. This scholarly style of writing was often referred to as otoko-de, or “men’s hand,” and it was used for official documents, politics, and formal literature. Women were not given access to that same education, leaving them effectively shut out of that written world.

Because of this, women developed their own way of writing. Using simplified forms of Chinese characters, they created a smooth, phonetic script that came to be known as hiragana, often called onnade, or “women’s hand.” Unlike kanji, hiragana matched spoken Japanese much more closely, making it ideal for personal writing and storytelling. Through it, women recorded daily life, relationships, and inner emotions, and they also created long narrative works. One of the most famous examples is The Tale of Genji, widely considered the earliest novel in the world.

Over time, hiragana became a permanent part of the Japanese writing system and is still used today alongside kanji and katakana. The irony is hard to miss: one of the core building blocks of written Japanese was developed by women precisely because they were barred from the “official” system of writing. Yet for centuries, the literature created through it was treated as personal rather than intellectual, even though its cultural influence is now undeniable.

Much later, similar attitudes followed women into 18th- and 19th-century Europe—which, in the grand scheme of history, isn’t that long ago at all. Philosophy, politics, and science were still largely treated as male territory. Women, meanwhile, were expected to focus on marriage and home life, so their reading was tightly guided as well.

They were encouraged toward novels centered on morality and devotion, often showing what it meant to be a “good” wife and mother. Such books were praised not for expanding women’s thinking, but for reinforcing the roles they were expected to accept.

At the same time, there was growing anxiety about women reading too much fiction at all. Critics warned that romantic novels could overstimulate women and pull them away from their proper duties—a fear that later became known as the “novel-reading panic.”

None of this, of course, opened the door for women to freely explore those so-called “masculine” fields instead. They were still guided back toward reading that kept them within the narrow boundaries society had set for them.

And this is where the boyfriend’s attitude becomes especially clear. Even though he wants his girlfriend to avoid fiction altogether, he is still trying to control her choices through his own narrow idea of what being “smart” should look like. It’s simply a different expression of the same old misogynistic thinking.

The funniest thing of all is that fiction actually comes with a long list of real benefits. One of the biggest is how much it helps with empathy and emotional intelligence. Following a character’s thoughts and fears trains readers to understand other people’s feelings more easily and see situations from more than one point of view.

Fiction also strengthens critical thinking in a way non-fiction often can’t. While non-fiction delivers information directly, stories ask readers to piece things together on their own and draw conclusions without being handed a clear bottom line. At the same time, regular reading naturally expands vocabulary and improves language skills.

So when fiction is dismissed as useless “make-believe,” it ignores what stories have always done best: help people make sense of the world and of each other. And that’s exactly why attempts to control what someone reads are about far more than books. They’re about who gets to decide what counts as meaningful in the first place.

Commenters called the boyfriend’s behavior out of touch, and some advised her to seriously consider leaving the relationship

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