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I agree with Opt-out here. It's easy to point fingers at woke or DEI, but I think the cause is really just prosaic capitalism. Acknowledging I'm in a filter bubble, plenty of men in my orbit read; they just don't do it in a way that makes money for traditional industry.
They read Substacks, or they read Royalroad/web serials/fanfiction, or they "read" manga/indie narrative video games/visual novels, or they pirate all of their literature and the classics from Libgen and Anna's Archive. It's much easier than it's ever been to self-publish or release your work online without going via Big Publisher.
The difference is simply that female writers are disproportionately interested in the prestige of going via traditional Big Publisher, and female readers actually spend money with publishers and bookstores, driven by BookTok or whatever, and hence those industries move increasingly towards catering to the female userbases that actually make them money.
Trying to make men read in the same way that women like to read seems to me much like trying to make sports gambling appealing to women; perhaps in the interest of the industries trying to increase their profits, but honestly a waste of time for society at a whole to try and fit a square peg into a round hole.
I would believe it was it not for the fact that it is still happening even in male dominant subgenres like sci-fi and to some extent fantasy. Although there is significant part of female readers there (around 40%), the domination is almost complete and you can hardly find something for men and boys. There are some holdouts like Warhammer 40k that still hold 80%+ of male readership, but at this point the clock is ticking.
The point being that male readers are there, but they are not catered to. That is why they move over to other stuff. The situation is similar to what happened to superhero genre or comics, which also have majority male readership but that is increasingly catering to female readers. So men and boys react by going over to anime such as Berserk or Chainsaw man and not whatever gay/feminist slop is produced now in mainstream DC and Marvel comics.
The same goes for literature for boys. There is no replacement for old Cowboy pulp fiction or various adventure books or genre like The Three Investigators, where male/boy heroes only interaction with women is to get sandwich from them. Modern young adult writing is at best Harry Potter clone, where there has to be some know-it-all nagger like Hermione Granger or some female professor hero. The old style of literature of 100% male space is completely gone from modern publishing and especially Young Adult publishing, which became utter gay/feminist slop with mandatory diversity quotas for characters like in Hollywood.
To be fair to Rowling, Hermione being an obnoxious girlboss is mostly a product of the films. Book Hermione is written as book smart, but also as incapable of dealing with high pressure situations, dogmatic and uncreative in solving problems, and a clueless activist who prioritizes her own sense of moral outrage over the people she's ostensibly trying to help. She's constantly getting up-staged by her slacker male friends in every arena outside of pure academics (and even there, Harry mogs her in Defense Against the Dark Arts, clearly the most important and practical subject, and the only one he really cares about doing well in).
And remember, the hero of the story is an aristocratic white man jock who solves all his problems with violence and blind rebellion against authority, who faces his own death with manly courage and ends the story by marrying his best friend's hot younger sister and raising a big family.
Between that and a cast of secondary villains that includes a catty and deceitful female journalist (Rita Skeeter), the ultimate toxically feminine HR lady (Umbridge), and really the wizarding world's entire bureaucratic state (capitalist free enterprise, as exemplified by the Weasley twins, receives an almost exclusively glowing treatment, by contrast), Harry Potter is actually pretty based.
Sure, Hermione is not such a girboss in books - although that is arguably a little bit more grating to be honest at least in the beginning. However she shows quite a lot of growth, by the end of the series she is a monster who can cast every spell silently, she can best deatheaters in duels under high-pressure situation, she is genius in potions and transfigurations that she uses constantly to great effect etc. Harry on the other hand remains stagnant, from spellcraft he is one-trick pony using expeliarmus and patronus. Other than that he just utilizes pure gimmicks such as hic connection to Voldemort and psychic visions or pulling Gryffindor sword literally out of the hat just because. He is the series version of McGuffin, he is imbued asset managed and operated by Hermione according to Dumbledore's strategy. It is Hermione who does the heavy lifting such as actually researching on how to destroy horcruxes or painstaking training in spellcasting.
She's Basil Exposition, there to conduct the background research and dripfeed the reader useful information that's too tedious for the protagonist to bother with. She provides Harry with some of his cool gadgets. Harry is the one putting his body on the line. Harry is the one who has to systematically lose his parent figures in the process of growing into the leader his people need him to be. Harry is the one who figures out the last pieces of puzzles at the last second when it really counts, and then actually defeats the bad guy.
Yes, Hermione is a valuable asset and a character who grows throughout the course of the story. She is a technically more proficient magic practitioner than Harry is, and uses this to save him on numerous occasions. She is more organized and more responsible, as girls tend to be at that age.
But Harry isn't just some buffoon protected by main character energy. Set his special chosen one status aside for a second. He may not be a star student, but the books are pretty explicit that this is because he prioritizes the battle against Voldemort over academics. Yes, sometimes he's just slacking off with Ron instead of studying, but more often than not, he struggles because he spends his nights snooping around the castle and is constantly battling extra work and detention as a result of this (and vindictive teachers actively out to harass him). In the areas he is able/willing to apply himself, he consistently outshines Hermione. Harry is also much more well-rounded than Hermione (in the model of the classic English gentleman. Being a broadly successful dilletant is good; being a single-minded striver is gauche). He's exceptionally brave, loyal, and strong-willed in the face of institutional opposition. What he lacks in technical acumen, he more than makes up for in grit, determination, and leadership.
Hermione is a very capable (though flawed) character, but she's not heroic in the same way Harry is.
This is just matter of perspective. In practice, it is Harry who is Basil Exposition for Hermione, especially given the gimmicky nature of how he receives his knowledge. If the story was written from Hermione's perspective, it would be much more interesting. She is out there in the library researching Nicolas Flamel, creating plans and plots only for Harry to casually drop stuff like randomly waking up screaming, speaking to snakes, and seeing visions of Voldemort torturing people - only to obsess about quidditch the next day as if nothing happens, leaving all the work to main protagonist Hermione.
The story would shift toward Hermione managing this Harry moron, who refuses to communicate (e.g. when he refused to talk to Hermione about seeing Grim in Prisoner of Azkaban), who endlessly whines about how bad he has it and, who has some inferiority complex trying to hard to be a hero only to be rescued like damsel in distress by Hermione. You would get your standard YA story where the main protagonist manages his team of moronic sidekicks who more than villains are there to foil his plans. Just think about all the time when Harry talking to Hermione would solve the plot in couple of days instead of whole year.
No, he does not prioritize that. Like I said before, he wallows in his trauma and refuses to communicate. He constantly switches priorities to stupid stuff like quidditch instead of the issue at hand or even communicating with the group. Other than Hermione, it is his chosen plot armor is his main quality.
He never is more well rounded. He is myopic, lack any planning or true talent except of dumb luck. And it even gets worse as Hermione shores up her academic/theoretic leanings by raw experience. If anything, managing Harry in earlier yeas is her training wheels - much as in some story the main hero takes care of his younger sibling or ailing mother.
Also Hermione is much better leader and even possesses better character. Just compare these two scenes: Harry is tortured in Goblet of Fire and he decides to stand and face Voldemort by pure grit and defiance. He casts his stupid expeliarmus - there is nothing else in his bag of tricks - and the nature of predcicament makes it so that he resists Voldemorts curse by pure cosmic coincidence. Second scene: Harry is threatened by crucio torture in Umbridge office. Harrys instinct is stubborn denial. However Hermione keeps her cool, pretends to fold, invents complex story about Dumbledore's secret weapon in the forest thus leading Umbridge into a trap. This was the umpteenth time where Hermione bailed out that moron from deadly situation so that the Voldemort could actually be defeated.
Hermione is as brave as Harry, but she goes about it more intelligently. She is proactive, strategic, she can rely on backup plans. In terms of leadership she is communicative, competent, mature, she has high moral integrity and by the end of the book she is very versatile monster of a witch, true enlightened gentlewoman. Harry is isolated self pitying whiner, inept, prone to distractions like quidditch. His redeeming qualities are his stubbornness - the other side of the coin of introversion and refusal to communicate. He is for sure brave, even stupidly so and his main redeeming qualities are plot armor in form of being the chosen one.
If I wanted to select who would be my colleague or coworker or even friend or role model after the whole ordeal, I would take Hermione over Harry every time.
Have you read Leaders of Men? I think it gestures at some of what you're eliding as "gimmicks".
I did right now, and as far as I understand this is what counts?
So leadership is some je ne sais quoi, ability to get results via mysterious means? I think it can work from the outside, but it does not work in literature where you have access to internal monologue of main leader and his underlings. I actually think that people really underestimate how moronic Harry Potter was and how he was managed by everybody else. Here is one passage of angry Potter being called to professor McGonagall office after he had altercation with Umbridge:
Calm down, have a biscuit and let me tell you what to do right now before I lose my patience with you. A classical treatment of ancient hero in sagas of old, right? Achilles was known for his ability to take shit from bureaucrats like that, sit down and sip his tea waiting to be berated about how awful he is.
At best, Harry was treated as a loose cannonball, a moron to be managed by everybody: Dumbledore, McGonagall, Hermione and the whole Order of Phoenix. Even Draco Malfoy. Otherwise he would fall flat on his head and die instantly. Potter is no backroom manager moving chess pieces or anything like that. At best, he is a brute field player who has to be managed by the likes of Granger or McGonagall, who are Willie Randolphs of the story.
Moreover Potter does not even work as a traditional reckless hero like Beowulf or Achilles. He is literal subversion. He lacks any agency in achieving Kleos/Glory, all his victories are result of pure luck, his blood chemistry through his mother or through administrative support of whole organization with private armies. He is not an individual hero like Beowulf who gets angry, sails across a sea to tear arms of Grendel by his bare hands. He is no Conan the Barbarian who stands proud in defiance of gods, wizards and the world with his honor, strength and good steel in his hand. Neither is he Odysseus using his guile and cunning, or Batman devising strategies, plans and gadgets to put him on even playing field with monstrous villains of his world - if there is any such hero in that story it is Hermione. Potter is damsel in distress, a MacGuffin to be protected by multi-billion operation, the best wizard who ever lived and literal Order.
He is not a leader. If that was the case, any moronic lottery winner who is managed by his mom would be voted as a president of the country. That is why Potter is no hero for boys and men. He is subversion of heroic archetype and no sophism and mythical leadership je ne sais quoi will save that fact.
It's been ages since I've read that book, but I thought the "have a biscuit" was her way of showing approval of him telling Umbridge off, even if it was reckless.
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