Romance fiction is unusual in that it is a genre written largely by women, for women. In their excellent book 'Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Fiction', Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan create Mavis, a caricature of what is imagined to be a stereotypical romance reader: she's undereducated, oversexed, rather dim, a bit chubby and wears cardigans with appliquéd kittens. However, apparently one in five women read romance fiction in the USA, and in Australia (where I'm from), it's much the same. And there just aren't that many Mavises in the world.
I remember walking past the racks of Mills and Boon category romances in department stores as a child and a teenager and watching people pretend they weren't looking at them. These books were bad and forbidden on account of they contained OMGSEX!!!1!!! and moreover, were books about OMGSEX!!!1!!! by women, for women. There's a reason people think that only Mavis reads romance fiction, and it's because no one admits to it. Female titillation is synonymous with shame. Mavis, the woman who reads romance, is someone to be made fun of.
When I picked up my first romance novel, it was not with the notion of busting stereotypes or proving that Real Women Read Romance or anything like that - or even titillation. It was to laugh at, pure and simple.
This was not especially big of me, I confess, but oh, I laughed at it. My first romance was called 'A Love Beyond Forever' and featured a Fabio-type cover model wearing exceptionally high-waisted jeans as he carried a dazed woman in a floaty white nightgown. I cackled madly through the whole dreadful thing - the ditzy New York girl getting transported back through time to Cromwell's England, falling in with (and losing her virginity to, in a fit of gushing orgasms) a Handsome Royalist Hero, being pursued by evil witches who would pop up occasionally to screech maniacally and who eventually tried to burn her at the stake for no apparent reason, before Handsome Royalist Hero rescued her helpless arse so they could have more multi-orgasmic sex after he came back with her to modern-day New York. It was, in short, awful, and hilarious in its awfulness. A wolfskin rug was involved. Comedy gold.
However, my interest was piqued, and the genre still continued to intrigue me. I was doing a degree in literature and had begun to identify very strongly as a feminist by this time, and so the idea of a genre that was almost, if not entirely, targeted towards women was fascinating. Why, thought I, were one in five women so into something so very dreadful?
I picked up a few more romance novels. And I read them. Sometimes, yes, I laughed myself stupid. Other times, I found myself genuinely going 'awwwwwwww'. And other times, 'ewwwwwwwww'.
However, speaking generally, several things began to disturb me.
Why, in a genre written largely by women for women, was Confession of Twoo Wuv, Marriage and (usually) Pregnancy considered pretty much the sole path to happily ever after?
Why was there such a strong focus on the heroine's previous sexual experience (or lack thereof)? This isn't true of all romance novels, but the amount of virgin!heroines getting together with ihavehadvastamountsofsexandwillinitiateyouintoitsways!heroes was completely ridiculous.
Why were heroines always getting themselves into stupid situations from whence they had to be rescued by their Big Strong Hero, or getting themselves into trouble from which their Big Strong Hero would protect them? Again, not true of every novel, but a common theme. Helpless damsel in distress saved/protected by Big Tough Guy. Because she can't do shit like that by herself.
Why wasn't anyone allowed to have had good, meaningful sex in the past? Occasionally, the hero might have an ex-wife with whom he slept, but no one arouses him like the intrepid heroine! The heroine is almost never allowed to have had good sex - or any sex - before. Occasionally, she might have had mundane sex, or have suffered some sexual abuse (which she is able to brush off once she has been cured by the lovin' power of the hero's mighty cock), but good sex? It might happen, but I've never read it. Only the hero's mighty cock can give her the orgasms of Twoo Wuv.
If I haven't disclaimed it enough, these things are not true of all romance novels. Not by a long shot. Like any genre, there are varying degrees of quality, execution and inversion of standard tropes within romance fiction. Some books are execrable, but some are actually quite lovely - I read one a little while back about a harried single dad falling in love with his next door neighbour and while it wasn't disturbing-trope-free by any means, it was a shy, sweet romance that left me with warm fuzzies.
But then I encountered a trope within romance fiction that made me so angry I started throwing books at walls. I would - and still do - walk around in a red haze of anger for days after encountering a book that included it. In a genre that is largely by women for women, how did we ever start to glamorise sexual violence?
Sometimes it's so insidious it almost flies under the radar. I remember raising my eyebrows at the first few 'punishing' and 'ravaging' kisses I read, but then, as I read more, it became so par for the course that I stopped noticing.
But then as I read heroes grabbing their heroines, forcing them into kisses, throwing them against walls, onto tables, the ground, any other available horizontal surface, tearing their clothes, pushing them into what is often described as 'forced seduction'... my ire began to be raised. This seemed to be a shorthand form for denoting a hero as alpha - by physically dominating their heroines, they convey their power and their Ultimate Manliness. And the heroines? They like it. LIKE IT. They're participants in their own sexual subjugation.
May I mention once more that this is a genre written by women, for women, and that an estimated one in five women is a reader? This isn't just Mavis. There are a whole lot of women reading this.
This casual glamorisation of what is basically indecent assault got me mad, sure. But then I read this shitful piece of dreck and I exploded.
This book, The Italian Boss's Mistress of Revenge, is a category romance telling the story of Dante Carazzo, an Italian businessman who seems to be some kind of a property developer, and Mackenzi Keogh, the manager of a hotel which Dante has just purchased. Dante, for some deep, dark vengeful reason of his own, wants to tear the hotel down. Mackenzi begs him not to. He says he'll think about not pulling it down... if she becomes his mistress.
Oh yes. Sexual blackmail is so hot right now.
I won't ruin the whole repulsive story, save to say that it is completely nauseating. But one of the worst bits (and oh, there are so many) is at the very beginning. In the second chapter of the book, Dante stumbles on Mackenzi asleep and naked in the bed in his hotel room. (He wasn't due till the next day; as the hotel manager, she's taken what she assumes to be a vacant bed). He assumes she is a prostitute and intends to wake her up and send her on her way, on the grounds that 'no-one decided who Dante Carazzo slept with'. However, after looking more closely at her naked body:
'What had been before no more than a general but suppressible interest in the fairer sex, had combusted into something much more carnal. Much more necessary. What would it take to wake her up? If she could sleep through a storm like this, it might take a while to wake her by conventional methods.
Which left him with the unconventional.'
Personally, I was unaware that indecent assault was a legitimate, albeit unconventional, way of waking someone up. But he is a Hawt Alpha Male Romance Hero, so he is above the law!
Dante makes the conscious decision to 'bury himself deep inside this woman', even though she is a) asleep and b) has never met him, because lo! she is in his bed and that obviously means she consents to fuck his brains out: 'her perfect breasts exposed for the taking. His taking.' He then goes on to remark:
'He was glad she hadn't awakened when that clap of thunder had rent the skies. This way would be much more entertaining. 'And much more satisfying,' he murmured as he gently knelt down on the bed alongside her.'
That's right. Sex with sleeping women is so much hotter than consensual sex. Choice is for wusses.
Dante proceeds to commit indecent assault upon Mackenzi by touching her and kissing her even though she is asleep and unable to consent.
'It was different, he realised, pleasuring a woman asleep, different and more arousing. There was something more evocative, more empowering.'
Empowering? Oh no, you did not just go there. Empowering for who, exactly? Certainly not Mackenzi, that's for sure.
But wait! There's more!
'He wanted her awake. He wanted her to realise just who it was making love to her... there would be time enough to explore later. His fingers scooped down her chest. Right now her breasts were at the top of his agenda.
"Time you woke up, Goldilocks," he said, before his mouth descended on one perfect nipple.'
Mackenzi - at long last - wakes up. She finds a strange man sucking her nipple and... consents to screw him. As one does.
Well, actually, it's a little more complicated. She wakes up, says that she should be going (putting it mildly there, Mackenzi) to which Dante responds by putting on a condom. Awesome logic, Dante! They then proceed to have earth-shattering, shake-the-walls sex, with orgasms and punishing kisses aplenty. And, in effect, her consent is a shorthand to negating any crime Dante might have committed - because he was OMG sexually assaulting her but she OMG loved it!!!!111! which makes all that stuff he did while she was asleep so hot right now because he is oh so very manly and alpha.
I don't know what reaction I was supposed to have. I was nauseated. I was furious. There is nothing sexy about sexual assault. And this book sets up a man who ought to be imprisoned as a romantic hero.
This opening scene is definitely not the only objectionable one in the book - in fact, it goes from bad to worse. This is before Dante blackmails Mackenzi into becoming his sex slave - sorry, mistress, before he knocks her up and tells her that she 'will not' have an abortion and that no child of his will be adopted out, before he decrees they're getting married to everyone he knows before actually asking her, before his Epic Childhood Trauma Oh Noes!!!!1! is revealed (thus abdicating him of any responsibility for any shitful thing he might have done at any point in his life) and his tragic inner pain is healed by the mystical power of Twoo Wuv.
And, guess what? This insulting piece of shit excuse for a book won the Australian Romance Book of the Year Award in the 'Short and Sexy' category.
I don't understand how a book that calls itself a 'romance' and a 'love story' can open with such an unromantic hate crime.
I hoped that The Italian Boss's Mistress of Revenge was some kind of aberration, that a line had been crossed that usually wasn't. But no. A little research revealed that the rapist hero is not uncommon. In fact, in romances of the early '80s, it seems like it was practically impossible to write a romance wherein the hero did not rape the heroine. Instances of the rapist hero are lessening, it seems, but he's still hanging around, and people still love him - for example, Whitney, My Love; The Flame and the Flower and Devil's Embrace all purportedly contain rapist heroes, and all remain popular. And Mr Punishing Kisses Sexual Assault Is So Hot Right Now, Captain Rapist's younger brother, is alive and well. Dante Carazzo is not unusual.
If men were writing this, fiction where women were sexually subjugated to men and sexual assault was glossed over by having women enjoy it, I don't think we'd be able to hear ourselves think for the uproar. But it's not men writing it. It's women. Women are writing for women, and they're glamorising sexual crime.
I've read a whole heap of justifications for this - that it's to do with moral panic (the virginal heroine cannot express sexual desire on her own, but if forced into it, well, it's not really her fault); that it's the other side of the coin to the sexualisation of violence (the violentisation of sex?); that it's an effort to 'reclaim the rape' (WTF?!) But you know what?
I don't care.
I would like to state again that this is not true of all romance fiction. It is definitely possible to write a romance novel without glorifying sexual violence. But this is a trope within the genre that cannot be ignored. I don't care how you justify it, I don't care that it's women writing for women and that somehow makes it 'safe'. In fact, it makes it worse - it makes us complicit in a dialogue of our own sexual oppression.
There is nothing romantic about sexual violence. And it is completely unacceptable to attempt to glamorise it. Even in fiction.
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I don't necessarily believe that these novels are meant to condone each of the specific acts contained therein. Ultimately, romance novels are simply sexual fantasies written for women, by women. They are, in some ways, the analog of pornography for the female consumer (though containing fewer problems than male pornography, which involves actual people).
The fact is, there is a significant group among women to whom rape fantasies are erotic -- particularly when couched in romantic terms and scenarios as typically contained in romance novels. The proportion of women who have rape fantasies may actually be substantially higher among readers of romance novels.
Just as common rape fantasies for women do not indicate condoning actual rape, written rape fantasies in fictional erotica do not either. I don't find this all that problematic. While they may be appalling if acted out exactly as depicted, scenarios depicted in fantasies are just that -- fantasy.
kbz
Right. It is just a fantasy so horrific violence is A-okay and nothing to be worried about. No one ever tries to turn their fantasies into reality.
This is erotica written for women specifically, and has virtually no male audience whatsoever. I spoke of rape fantasies from women -- not rapist fantasies of domination.
So, I would say that your presumably sarcastic remark about "no one trying to turn fantasy into reality" is actually correct. Women who have rape fantasies -- which I assume is the audience for books which romanticize rape scenarios that would be otherwise appalling in real life -- do not actually want to be raped, and thus do not seek to turn that fantasy into reality.
"Rape fantasies" for rapists is a whole different story ... but that's not what we're talking about here.
kbz
This is problematic because it isn't a few authors writing about what they believe will be titillating to some women. It isn't just in a particular genre of these books - it isn't a "fetish series" or a BDSM series.
It's an epidemic. Even some of the authors whose books I can usually count on to avoid this stuff have turned to the sexual violence trope. Nicole Jordan (I think it was her) wrote an entire TRILOGY of books in which every. single. female. was subjected to sexual violence - and when they said no, the male in question (not her husband*) refused to stop! There is no clearer definition of sexual assault and rape than "She said no, and he kept right on going." There is nothing remotely romantic about that.
These are written by women, for women, and to romanticize assault, rape, forced marriage and marital rape is appalling. Some of these books also romanticize/give the OK to marital infidelity - but only if the unfaithful person is the husband, of course. If it's the wife, she meets with a bad end so that the heroine can move in and take her place as a pure, virginal young lady. Occasionally the heroine is even a prostitute - but it's her very first time, so she loses her virginity to the John (the hero!), and never, EVER sells herself to another person, because said hero sweeps her off her feet.
Oh, and I read Whitney, My Love and the Flame and the Flower. I loathed them both.
*I think marital rape is horrific, but this series stands out to me because for some reason in this particular trilogy EVERYONE ELSE was A-OK with a guy sexually assaulting a stranger! In an historical romance it would at least make some amount of sense if the heroine was married to the hero and the secondary characters decided that the hero was exercising his "marital rights". It would still be awful, but it would be a little less ridiculous.
I think you'd like reading some of Mrs. Giggles' reviews of romance novels. She's fairly feminist. I don't always agree about which books are fun to read, but her reviews are almost always entertaining. (mrsgiggles.com)
As someone who enjoys acting out rape fantasies, I have mixed feelings about seeing them in pornography, video or written. Before I became truly engrained with feminist understanding/analysis techniques, I would really enjoy books where the fellow would seduce the woman in a more "forceful" way, for lack of a better word. And now, while there are still some scenes that I can still enjoy like that (for example, when the woman is perhaps just recalcitrant rather than completely objecting) there are also a lot of scenes I used to enjoy a lot that just creep me out. (Hot Gimmick is an example of an entire series that's been ruined for me.) I'm still a fan of rape fantasy, still engage in it when I'm with a partner I trust, but reading or watching it has become offensive.
Also, I read romance novels for fun. They're light, they're easy to pick up and put down, and they sometimes turn me on. What's not to love?
On a school trip my junior year of high school, me and my friends picked up a romance novel in a Duane Reade for giggles.
We bookmarked all the sex scenes and read them out loud to each other, which was funny because they were terribly written. It was also incredibly fucked up, because the first scene was a rape scene.
Virgin heroine is running away from a bad guy and ends up hiding under the hero's bed on a ship. (Or something like that.) Hero discovers her. It turns out he knows her -- his best friend died in a duel over her. As a result, he thinks she's a big slut and decides that since she's on his ship, he's entitled to rape her. So he starts, and then discovers she's a virgin and decides to let her go. (Raping virgins is bad, but raping a dirty slut is just fine, right?)
Of course, they later have a bunch of sex and end up married or something.
Gross.
Rape fantasies are just that, fantasies. And many, many women have them. Women who have rape fantasies do not want to be raped, will not liek being raped, and do not accept rape when it happens to others-- but they fantasize about it, and when they have a loving partner they trust, they may act it out in safe, sane, and consensual BDSM roleplay.
This is common, normal, and healthy. It doesn't mean they want to be victimized, it doesn't normalize violence-- it allows women to develop these fantasies in a way that is healthy and safe, and understand their sexuality.
Reports estimate that 31% to 57% of women have had rape fantasies, so it's not in the same category as normal fetishism-- it's extremely common, and completely normal. In the context of fantasy, rape is a way to feel like you don't have to worry, you don't have to be in control, you don't have to watch yourself. You don't have to be the perfect anything. It allows the person to completely submit themselves, and not have to second-guess their actions, even if consensual sex in those situations would be stupid.
Is this an accurate portrayal of sexual violence? NO. Of course not. It is not in any way supposed to accurately portray sexual relationships, it is supposed to portray sexual fantasies of women. Bodice-ripper romance novels are a way for women who have these fantasies to explore their sexuality. Because it's probably the most common sexual fantasy ever, it's a huge market. But these novels no more normalize sexual violence than a BDSM movie featuring a female dom physically tormenting a male sub. Anyone who genuinely gets off on it knows that they don't want to be raped, just like men know they don't actually want a strange random woman to come up and start beating them. Actual rape is horrifying. That's also why it tends to be a written genre, because watching these scenes would ruin the fantasy-- it would seem like rape, not a rape fantasy. It's not sexy if the people invovled are real.
Allow women who fantasize about rape to have their sexual fantasies without mocking or pitying them. They aren't hurting anyone, and they aren't hurting themselves-- they may even be more empowered and in control of their lives than you are. It's a healthy expression of human sexuality, not a horrible sign of patriarchy-- the same as all other sexual fantasies that remain firmly as fantasies.
I don’t have a problem with people having rape fantasies. It is certainly not my place or anyone else’s place to police people’s fantasy lives.
What I do have a problem with is sexual assault being used in fiction to denote a character’s masculinity. The more sexually dominant and forceful a hero is, the more alpha he becomes, the more manliness he exudes, and – which I find completely bizarre – the more desirable he becomes as a husband and, often, father. Notions of marriage as some kind of equal partnership don’t even really get a nod.
I think it’s important to view romance fiction as story. It’s easy to dismiss it as purely being for the purposes of titillation, but anything that does happen in a romance novel happens within the framework of a story, of a tale, of a plot. As the ‘trash’ of the literary world, romance novels are often seen as analogous to pure sexual fantasy. I think that’s unfair to the genre. It denies it any form of complexity (and it is possible for romance novels to be very compelling and, yes, literary works) and it also effectively absolves it of any responsibility. It is story, just like any fiction is story, and has its frame of reference in reality.
So if sexual assault scenes are to be included, that’s fine. However, it is not fine if sexual assault is used as shorthand for masculinity, and if the rapist is lauded as a romantic hero. Romance fiction doesn’t get a free pass just because it’s seen as enaction of sexual fantasy, because it’s also story; and it doesn’t get a free pass just because it’s written by women. Sexual assault is something for which people, even fictional people, need to be held accountable.
I've had rape fantasies for pretty much as long as I've had fantasies, and I still object to the way rape is treated in romance novels.
If there was a sexualized rape scene in a book of erotica, I would be defending it. If there was a sexualized rape scene with a rapist who weren't supposed to be a great guy and the hero of the story, I would be defending it.
When the hero is a rapist who finds a way to justify raping the heroine, and the heroine (and the reader) believe that the rapist is totally and completely a good guy, I have a problem.
Even Gossip Girl had Chuck apologize to Jenny.
Beyond Heaving Bosoms devotes a chapter to rape in romance novels where they discuss the various ways and possible reasons why rape played such a large role in some romances.
The most interesting bit in it to me was that heroines are changed into various creatures of the night in paranormal romance follow many of the same tropes as rape used to.
While I agree with alot of what you say I don't think you have to be so well, mean and condescending about it. Alot women enjoy romance novels and alot of women have fantasies like this. And while I agree it's problematic it doesn't feel very female friendly to make fun of anyone who enjoys these novels or to question how others may view such incidents.
I have to admit actually this post has got me pretty curious to read some romance novels myself.
I’m not trying to condemn romance as a genre, or people that read it. We have a complex relationship, romance fiction and me, but on the whole I’m sort of fond of it. And I certainly wouldn’t set out to belittle anyone who did enjoy it. I enjoy some of it. It can be good fun.
However, I don’t think there can be any genre that is exempt from critique, regardless of who wrote it and who enjoys it. If something like this casual romanticisation of sexual violence occurred in ‘mainstream’ fiction, I’m pretty sure it’d cause general outrage. Romance fiction, as fiction – story, literature – does not get a free pass here. I don’t take issue with sexual violence being presented in fiction – but for it to be glamorised and coded as manly and heroic? That I do take issue with. Which is why I make no apologies for anything I said about ‘The Italian Boss’s Mistress of Revenge’.
While some of the commenters brought up some very valid points about the validity of rape fantasy, I think many of them failed to see the point that this is about the normalising of sexual violence. Particularly in cases like this where many young women read these sorts of stories without the sexual experience or self-knowledge to differentiate sexual-assault-as-fantasy and sexual-assault-as-lived-experience. The disturbing fact is that the entrenchment of these ideas make it harder for women who experience sexual assault to understand their experience and be taken seriously by others. It reinforces the notion of 'grey rape' and muddies the water regarding consent, which people seem to find difficult to understand in any case.
I would say that this seriously underestimates young women. I would bet that most girls can tell the difference between a rape fantasy when they read it (particularly because romance novelists tell the reader exactly what the characters are thinking) and actual rape. I have read romance novels with actual rape scenes (and drug rape scenes) and the authors are very clear that the women don't want them.
I would say a lot of young women DO underestimate themselves. I mean even here on a femininst blog there are so many entries where women are questioning whether or not they were assaulted. Women underestimate themselves all the time because we often don't feel like we have all of the information.
The self doubt that many women say they are feeling about their sexuality and fantasies isn't something we are born with. Women are getting input from numerous sources and trying to put information in terms that make some sense. But that only goes so far when you don't have the complete picture.
What I'm saying is that there are plenty of cultural elements which collude to blur the lines of consent and desire in people's minds.
Of course the real problem is that we don't talk about anything in this country until it's too late. Too few parents take the time to discuss healthy sexuality and to help young folks put their fantasies into perspective and foster healthy consensual interactions.
If a young person happens along this blog entry and helps he get some clarity on things, then we need more of these blog entries. Because frankly we have a gagillian books, movies, and random shit on one side and very little down to earth analysis and critique coming from the other side.
Exactly. When a young woman is raped and doesn't realize what happened to her WAS rape, we have to look at cultural factors that may contribute to this.
I hate to break it to people, but not everyone is equipped with the knowledge that feminists or combatants against sexual assault have about situations like that. It's part of rape culture... where people believe what is really rape is just a not-fun form of sex.
If something is a particular fantasy, it should be labeled as just that fantasy clearly. It's about time we let this idea of everyone always knowing the difference between fantasy and reality go.
I don't know...a lot of Laurell K. Hamilton's teen readers flat out deny that anyone has raped anyone else in Hamilton's Anita Blake vampire hunter books. They just don't understand that supernaturally making someone unable to consent = rape, even when it's explained to them. Paranormal fantasy books often share a readership with romance fans.
So here's a question for all you commenters who rushed to defend your right to have 'rape fantasies': how many of your fantasies end with you falling in love with and marrying your imagined rapist? Romance novels are not porn. Finding rape fiction sexually arousing is one thing, but finding it romantic is quite another.
'The Italian Bosses Mistress of Revenge' was about middle of the range in terms of the amount of sexual content it had. It wasn't just meant to make readers aroused, it was meant to make them swoon...over an abusive, agressive man.
Romance novels are not porn. Finding rape fiction sexually arousing is one thing, but finding it romantic is quite another.
I dunno, for a lot of women isn't the 'romance' element there partly as an excuse so some customers feel like its more respectable reading? There isn't much difference between romance novels and pornography in terms of what they're used for.
"There isn't much difference between romance novels and pornography in terms of what they're used for."
I don't think this is true - certainly not in all situations, anyway. There are romance novels - the Harlequin 'Sweet' line comes to mind - that don't contain any sex at all. Romance draws a wide variety of readers and while, yes, some of them are there simply to be titillated, some are there for the stories. And when we frame romance fiction as story - fiction like any other fiction - the casual glamorisation of sexual violence that runs through some of it becomes very, very disturbing.
But even when we're talking about a romance novel which contains no sex, I don't think that it inherently means that it isn't used to serve the masturbatory interests of its readers. It may simply be that a segment of the market prefers to have a massive amount of sexual tension and to imagine their own 'perfect' encounter between their chosen characters. Evidence of the market for that particular type of masturbatory aide can be seen in a lot of fan fiction where to my understanding many fans lose interest in a relationship if it becomes cannon. Thus when I hear of a romance novel which doesn't have sex I'm not particularly inclined to believe that it isn't a masturbatory aide, merely that it is serving a different niche of masturbatory aides.
There are plenty of 'love stories' which are marketed as such which are not sold as romance novels. Romance novel is a very specific marketing of 'socially acceptable masturbatory aide'. I'd be surprised if any of them had a particularly compelling plot apart from that element, but it would seem to be icing on the cake. Not the main purpose but an added benefit which makes the book superior to others in its genre.
While romance fiction is certainly used as a masturbatory aide for some of its readers, I don't think this is the case across the board. The real appeal of romance fiction is, I think, that it's 'safe' - there's a guaranteed happy ending. No matter how bad things get or what messes the protagonists get into, things are always going to work out in the end. There's a certain justice which always plays out: the good guys get the prize (usually each other), the bad guy is defeated or, at worst, runs away, and the natural moral order is restored. It's a comforting genre in that way, I think - during the global recession, sales of books in general went down, but sales of romance increased exponentially. I think that can be attributed more to the guaranteed happy ending that romance offers rather than its function as a masturbatory aide.
Which, to tie it back to my original point - given that romance novels operate within this good guys win/bad guys lose dynamic, I find it so disturbing that rapists and perpetrators of sexual assault are often coded as heroic.
Very well written, and I completely agree. It's actually kind of sad how well romance and porn align with respect to their cultural narratives. Men want sex, they should be good at it, women want sex, but they don't know it. Men have to force women, and then they will realize how much they wanted it after all. The only real difference is that the men in romance novels are better looking than the men in porn.
I found an author who has been like a breath of fresh air with respect to the fact that her female leads all want sex as much as the men do and even initiate. It still has all the other problematic tropes brought up in this article, but at least the women are freaky, and no rape has taken place in any that I have read so far. The author is Stephanie Laurens.