Why Hardboiled Crime Fiction Belongs to Men

Shutting down the modern feminist fatales

Over the last few decades, feminist critics have taken aim at the gritty, violent, and unapologetically masculine world of mid-century noir and hardboiled crime fiction. These critics call it misogynistic, reductionist, even dangerous. They point fingers at the likes of Mickey Spillane, James M. Cain, and Gil Brewer for perpetuating what they describe as “toxic masculinity” and “female objectification.”

But here’s the uncomfortable truth for the modern literary world: pulp crime fiction was a “male space,” to use a play on current lefty academic speech. It was created by men, written for men, and unapologetically masculine in its tone, characters, and worldview. Just as women today dominate the romance genre by writing for themselves and about about their desires, mid-century noir was the masculine equivalent: raw, brutal, and deeply honest about the nature of violence, sex, and betrayal.

The Feminist Assault on Pulp

In her influential 1990 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, feminist critic Laura Mulvey coined the term "male gaze" to describe how women are often depicted in fiction and film through the lens of male desire. That idea seeped into criticism of crime fiction. In 1993, author Megan Abbott—who would later become an accomplished noir writer herself—wrote: “The classic femme fatale is less a character than a male projection. She exists only to torment the man and meet her fate.”

Others have gone further. Scholar Helen Hanson argued that noir's female characters “are either dangerous sexual predators or passive victims… expressions of male fear and control.” Such critiques treat the genre not as art, but as pathology.

But let’s be honest: crime fiction was never meant to serve as a moral guidebook or a feminist utopia. It was an exploration of human darkness, written for men dealing with the pressures of a collapsing world full of war, betrayal, poverty, and personal failure.

Men Made This

From Black Mask to Gold Medal paperbacks, the genre’s architects—Hammett, Chandler, Thompson, Goodis—wrote with brutal economy and emotional clarity. Their work spoke to working-class men who saw the world as it was, not as an ideal. These were stories about flawed men doing desperate things in a corrupt world where women could be lovers, threats, or both.

Were these women always “empowered” in the modern sense? No, and that’s the point. The femme fatale, far from being a sexist caricature, is one of the most realistic female archetypes in literature. She’s clever, dangerous, manipulative, and a survivor at any cost. The men who fall for her aren’t fools; they’re human. In the real world of crime, such women exist. To ignore this reality in the name of ideology is to neuter crime fiction entirely.

Just as the modern woman finds validation in smutty romance novels, filled with shirtless billionaires and orgasmic rape fantasies, men in the 1950s turned to noir at least for a reflection of their own inner turmoil—lust, guilt, rage, betrayal. Why is one genre celebrated, or at least mainstreamed in respectable circles, while the other is condemned? At least noir tackles emotions over lust.

A Literary Power Shift

Ironically, today’s literary world looks nothing like the male-dominated pulp scene of the past. Women now control the lion’s share of the publishing industry. According to a 2022 Publishers Weekly survey, over 75% of publishing staff are women. Most literary agents are women. The bestselling genres are romance, domestic thrillers, and emotionally driven book-club fiction.

Men, on the other hand, have been largely pushed to the margins, both as readers and as writers. Crime fiction has been softened, polished, and moralized, often stripped of the edge that once defined it.

Conclusion: Let Us Keep This One Thing

Mid-century crime fiction wasn’t feminist—and thank God for that. It was honest about male fears, male desires, and male weakness. That doesn’t make it dangerous; it makes it powerful. Just as we don’t ask romance writers to apologize for fantasizing about domineering men and endless orgasms, we shouldn’t ask noir writers to apologize for telling stories of betrayal, lust, and cold-blooded revenge.

Let the modern literary world have its feminist heroines, its trauma narratives, and its identity politics. But don’t erase the paperbacks that told hard truths about the world as men knew it. In a cultural moment obsessed with so-called ‘inclusion,” it’s worth remembering men built this genre, and they bled on the page doing it.