I. Introduction
Being in book spaces, you might have come across a TikTok, Reel, YouTube video, or blog post somberly declaring the rise of “anti-intellectualism.” Usually, this is paired with complaints about the oversaturation of romance/romantasy books and the plague of tropes. God, tropes! Never before 2020 were works of media based on or marketed with tropes! Truly, we must be getting stupider as a society, and the only remedy is reading more “intellectual” books.
In my experience, the term “anti-intellectualism” is usually doing a lot of heavy lifting, being frequently deployed without the creator in question bothering to define what they mean by “anti-intellectualism,” or even what rubric they’re using to label the “intellectual” books they will often go on to recommend. They perpetuate the underlying narrative that because readers are choosing comfort or escapism over more challenging literature, the collective human attention span is rotting and critical thinking is on the downturn. Ironically, making an argument without defining your terms is a pretty widespread academic no-no, but I understand the inclination. I am also guilty of the impulse to confidently declare that everything is getting worse, but I also know that these takes don’t hold up to scrutiny.
This defeatist stance is contradictory, because when a creator accuses someone of “anti-intellectualism” for reading a book with a pink cover and set of tropes, ironically they are not engaging critically with the cultural context. They’re weaponizing a buzzword in order to disguise straight-forward elitism (and–if I may be a bitch for a moment–snobbery), as concern for the survival of critical thinking. Deeming something as “anti-intellectual” in most cases online is just a more acceptable way of saying: “I think what you’re reading is stupid, so you’re stupid for reading it and I can feel superior to you.”
Prepare for a (well-researched and informed) rant / essay on the weaponization of the term “anti-intellectualism,” explaining what the term actually means and how its meaning has been twisted into another tool for gatekeeping. By examining this discourse’s roots in misogyny, double-standards, and censorship, we can see the danger of creating this kind of literary hierarchy. Furthermore, we can see how the arguments made by the self-appointed defenders of intellectualism are actually making them the most anti-intellectual force in the conversation.
II. What is “anti-intellectualism”?
Okay, but what does “anti-intellectualism” actually mean, because I do care about defining terms before I start making claims. The concept of anti-intellectualism was solidified and popularized by Richard Hofstadter’s 1963 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. In this book, Hofstadter defined anti-intellectualism as a broad social attitude or belief system characterized by resentment and skepticism towards academic and scientific institutions. This attitude manifests as a rejection of nuance and a mindset he termed “unreflective instrumentalism,” which is the belief that art and knowledge have no value if they do not serve a practical, tangible, or political purpose.
When a reader picks up a romance or cozy fantasy, they are not trying to overthrow philosophical dogma or political regimes, learning a practical skill, or tangibly changing the world. They are resting and enjoying something. The critics demanding that every reader should be critically engaging with every book they read and that every book should be educational or revolutionary are actively engaging in unreflective instrumentalism. Based on their argument, a text has no inherent value or right to exist for entertainment, comfort, joy, or pure aesthetic appeal (in other words, vibes). Every book must serve some tangible purpose as a tool for self-improvement. You’ve probably picked up on this by now, but the great defenders of intellectualism and literary excellence are actively practicing textbook anti-intellectualism. They’re denying that art has inherent value outside of utility.
III. The Misogyny of it all
If these creators aren’t criticizing anti-intellectualism, what are they actually criticizing? Well, quite frankly, if you look at the types of books that these critics use as examples of “anti-intellectualism” you’ll figure out pretty quickly that the label is not applied equally across all genres. In fact, it’s overwhelmingly weaponized against genres whose author and reader communities are dominated by women. Romance, cozy books, and romantasy bear the brunt of the accusations. Is anyone surprised? Belittling anything that women enjoy is truly a centuries-old tradition. 18th-century women reading Gothic novels? Young women loving The Beatles at their peak? Historically, whenever a genre or work becomes especially popular with women, it becomes devalued in the eyes of society and is rebranded as silly, shallow, or, in this case, anti-intellectual.
When women, particularly young women, show enthusiasm online for a cozy romantasy novel or trope-heavy rom-com, their reading choices are pathologized online as proof of our decaying culture. Male-dominated popular media does not experience the same scrutiny. Wish-fulfillment military sci-fi, formulaic crime thrillers, and other genres popular with men might not be viewed as peak literature, but you don’t see people using them as an example of the rise of anti-intellectualism. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with reading those books either, but there’s a pretty egregious double-standard there. By labeling books in woman-dominated genres as anti-intellectual, these critics are both perpetuating misogynistic ideas and ironically making their arguments without critically engaging with the cultural context, the very thing they decry others for doing with their reading choices.
IV. The “literary tax”
Continuing with the thread of double-standards, there is a broader injustice in the standards that we hold different forms of media to, which I will refer to as the “literary tax.” Because books have been around longer than other forms of media and have become tethered to notions of education, sophistication, elitism, and personal enlightenment, we hold books and their readers to a higher standard of critical engagement than we do for other forms of media and their audiences. Through this mindset, books are not just a vehicle for storytelling, but a measure of the reader’s morality and character.
Contrast this with more modern, visual entertainment. Someone can come home from a long day at work and spend four straight hours binging The Office or some reality TV show, and this is largely acceptable. It’s seen as a valid way to decompress, with the understanding that TV can serve purely as entertainment and the choice to watch something purely for entertainment does not reflect poorly on the watcher’s character. Sure, people might give you a hard time if you only watch reality dating shows (see the above section on society’s utter disregard for anything women enjoy), but they’re unlikely to tell you that you need to be critically and analytically engaging with every show you watch. Broadly, I think we all understand that people just need to relax and decompress sometimes, and that not everything you consume has to be intellectually challenging or revolutionary. However, while this is acceptable in other mediums, books are held to a higher standard for no meaningful reason other than that they are a part of our schema of intellectualism. There is nothing inherent to the written word that justifies this standard, it’s functionally arbitrary and entirely culturally-designated.
V. What are “intellectual” books?
Often, after making their claims about the intellectual descent of society, creators will then recommend “intellectual” books. If we temporarily accept their definition of “intellectual” books as being books that demand deep critical engagement, nuanced interpretation, and independent thought, many of their favorite recommendations fail to meet that qualification.
A prime example of this is Babel by R. F. Kuang. For the record, I’m not an R. F. Kuang hater, in fact I probably liked Katabasis more than most of her stans. I think she is an incredibly smart person and a talented writer with little-to-no trust in her readers’ ability to come to their conclusions. The bookish community praises Babel as a dense, challenging, “intellectual” novel because it deals with academic themes like critical theory, colonialism, and linguistics, creating the illusion of intellectualism. Kuang introduces vital topics, but handles them with aggressive, patronizing heavy-handedness. The reader is not invited to think deeply and come to their own interpretation, because Kuang spells out her exact thesis over and over, dictating precisely how the reader should think and feel. Most egregiously, she does this in the footnotes, most of which could have just said “Colonialism is bad” for all of the insight they add to the text. The good characters are good, the bad characters are bad, and there is little grey area. I’m sure many readers, such as myself, with prior knowledge of linguistics and the way that imperial powers can weaponize academia and progress to control and erase colonized cultures felt like they were being talked down to. Babel does not offer any nuance or new perspectives on these subjects if you have any familiarity with them, and thus leaves no room for varying interpretations or subtext. If these subjects are new to you, Babel does the critical heavy-lifting for you and leaves you feeling superior for having come to the only possible conclusion that you could have.
Potential for true critical engagement relies heavily on ambiguity, friction, and questions without obvious answers or clear solutions. There are books that do an amazing job tackling similarly challenging themes while also trusting their readers’ intelligence. I haven’t seen any of these in lists of “intellectual” books, so here are a few of my favorites:
Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang is an absolutely brilliant high fantasy standalone that deserves every bit of praise it’s gotten. The novel explores intersectionality and the way that discriminatory social structures pit marginalized groups against one another. As a woman, Sciona faces immense challenges in pursuit of academic recognition, and yet she has been indoctrinated into the classist and xenophobic ideas perpetuated by her culture, leading to her bigotry towards Thomil, a poor immigrant. It takes work to reckon with the idea that the same powers who dehumanize Sciona for being a woman also dehumanize Thomil for being an immigrant, and that these powers have a vested interest in pitting both communities against each other to distract them from the people they should really be fighting. It also introduces the frankly very uncomfortable idea that there are levels of discrimination and that some marginalized communities suffer more than others, but allows the reader to sit with it and doesn’t force a conclusion on them.
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine captures the complicated reality of imperialism, exemplified by the dedication: “This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever fallen in love with a culture that was devouring their own.” The protagonist, Mahit, has a real admiration for the culture of the empire that has consumed and subjugated her own people. The difficult part is that, even as she uncovers the depths of the empire’s injustice and the reader comes to understand the extent of their corruption, you too will fall in love with Teixcalaan’s political and cultural system built around poetry. Both things can be true at once: The empire is monstrous and merciless, and the empire is beautiful and offers some genuine protection. Additionally, not every character hailing from the empire is evil, even those who (knowingly or unknowingly) perpetuate imperialist ideas. Three Seagrass is one obvious example, as she becomes the love interest despite being loyal to the empire and has to face her own problematic beliefs, but even Nineteen Adze who is at least partially an antagonist feels human and flawed. Unlike the characters in Babel, you’d be hard pressed to label any of these characters as staunchly good or bad. The reader is welcome to engage with the ambiguity and gain a greater understanding of imperialism through the genuinely unique-feeling perspectives of the characters.
But, no. These books aren’t considered intellectual in the same way that Babel is because they’re set in other worlds and not our own (yes, Babel has magic, but it’s heavily based in our world), so surely these themes have no relevance to reality, right? A Memory Called Empire has *gulp* KISSING and ROMANCE and HUMOR in it, which obviously have no place in intellectual literature, right?
Do not confuse a book’s genre or its subject matter with its capacity for intellectual and critical depth. Regardless of whether a book is a grueling literary dystopia or a grim historical novel or a cozy romance, a story that allows and trusts readers to sit with ambiguity and nuance can spark more genuine critical engagement and self-reflection than a denser literary “masterpiece” that refuses to let readers think for themselves.
To reiterate a few things, I have no problem with Babel, I’m not putting books like Blood Over Bright Haven and A Memory Called Empire on a pedestal above Babel, and I’m not generally putting books that allow for more critical engagement on a pedestal above books that don’t. I don’t believe that a book’s value depends on its utility or the extent to which it can be engaged with critically, because as previously mentioned this is the mindset Hofstadter labeled “unreflective instrumentalism.” My point here is that even when recommending “intellectual” books, the same creators who criticize other readers for their unwillingness to engage critically with every book they read will recommend books like Babel that really don’t allow for deep critical engagement and thus don’t even fulfill their own definition of an “intellectual” book. They recommend books that project the illusion of intellectualism and make you feel good for reading them over books in the genres they think are silly that could prompt genuine analysis and discussion over important topics.
VI. What’s the harm?
I want to stress that creating panic about “anti-intellectualism” and gatekeeping reading is not a harmless act. When people put down certain genres or groups of readers, especially when they incorporate this into their fear-mongering about the decline of intellectualism, over time this leads to stigmatization of these genres. They’re creating a community hostile to casual readers and people building or rebuilding a reading habit. Imagine the first book you read for fun in years is a cozy rom-com. You love it and go online looking for similar books and a community that can help you read more, and you find content functionally telling you that you’re an idiot and you’re contributing to societal collapse. There is nothing pro-intellectual about gatekeeping or discouraging people from reading. However you feel about genres like romance and romantasy, they have given the publishing industry a massive boost at a time when they needed it most. The success of formulaic, trope-heavy romance books enables publishers to take more risks with experimental and diverse literature, and it has increased patronage of libraries and independent bookstores that desperately need more support. It’s a win-win for everyone.
More concerningly, constructing a hierarchy of literature or labeling certain books as “acceptable” and others as “unacceptable” creates the foundation for censorship. The moment that people accept that some books are morally and intellectually elite and others are unworthy of existence or are a danger to human intellect, they have adopted a fundamental tenet of authoritarianism. The jumps from “This book is stupid” to “This book is anti-intellectual” to “This book is harmful” are terrifyingly short. I’ve seen people turn around books that they didn’t like in bookstores and libraries. When I worked at the public library, people would hide or throw away queer books which we had marked with a rainbow sticker, so we ultimately had to remove the rainbow stickers. This is what happens when someone decides that they have the authority to define which books are acceptable and which aren’t, and it is the product of messaging and fear-mongering not unlike these arguments about “anti-intellectualism.” There is nothing more anti-intellectual than censorship, full stop.
VII. Conclusion
Ultimately, the panic over “anti-intellectualism” in bookish spaces has little to do with protecting intellectualism and has everything to do with pretension and elitism. When people throw around the term “anti-intellectualism” at books and readers they consider to be inferior, they are not promoting critical thought. They are repackaging misogyny, snobbery, and social panic as scary, smart-sounding buzzwords without considering the implications of their arguments within the cultural context. Policing what people read and applying double standards like the “literary tax” only makes the bookish community a more hostile, gatekept space that devalues the role books play as art and entertainment.
It’s good to critique books, in fact I do it all the time, but saying “anti-intellectual” when you mean “silly” is harmful and ignorant. Honestly, “I think this book is stupid” is a perfectly valid opinion in my book (ha), but “I think these people are stupid for enjoying this book” or “I think that this book is stupid, so I’m going to say it’s harmful” are not things that should be said flippantly, behind the facade of academic language. Be negative, be a bitch about books you don’t like, but don’t treat books as a mechanism against which you can measure a person’s character or a means of controlling how other people think.
If you take anything away from this essay, it should be that we all benefit from more people reading, regardless of what they’re reading. You know what’s funny? I don’t really like romantasy, I can’t stand anything “cozy,” and I rarely read contemporary romance. I wrote a 3000 word essay defending genres that I don’t often read or particularly enjoy because I know how these things trickle down. I have been made to feel stupid for the things that I read, and at times that has discouraged me from reading or caused me to hide my reading because I was afraid of judgment. I’ve also seen the way that stigma leads to censorship, and given the state of the world, we should be resisting censorship in any form. Reading can be educational or enlightening or entertaining or depressing or revolutionary or smutty or exciting or boring or stupid, but the value of a book is up to the reader and only the reader. Ignore the critics. If they want to waste their time trying to read Ulysses and not enjoying a single page, let them. Read what you want, when you want, and do so without apology, because that’s what it means to love reading.
Happy reading!
Bibliography and Further Reading:
American Library Association (ALA). “Intellectual Freedom: Issues and Resources.” ALA Advocacy, Office for Intellectual Freedom.
“The Hidden Psychology of Anti-Intellectualism.” Psychology Today, 2026.
Hofstadter, Richard. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Vintage Books, 1963.
Barker, David, Ryan DeTamble, and Morgan Marietta. “Intellectualism, Anti-Intellectualism, and Epistemic Hubris in Red and Blue America.” American Political Science Review, vol. 115, no. 4, 2021.
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