Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Funnily enough, the alpha man post got me reaching for one of my all-time-favourite romances last night just to see if I could still bear the hero.  It’s a 1970s Mills & Boon/ Harlequin by Charlotte Lamb called Dark Dominion.  It’s got an alpha hero who forces sex on the heroine (his wife) to the extent of leaving bruises on her.  So, not even a historical (unless you count the 1970s as a historical period)

I found that - yes, I still loved the book and could still empathise with the hero.  In fact, I think he is still one of my favourite heroes of all time.  This is because, the author just does such an amazing job of making you understand why the hero behaves as he does; making you see how much he hates himself for his behaviour and, ultimately, redeeming him.

(Also I love this book because the heroine is seriously considering an affair with another man - a fact that she discusses with the hero.  Cue line that you would never now see in a Harlequin romance: “I want you both”. )

Thinking about this book made me realise that the one type of alpha hero I really can’t stand is the perfect one - you know, the one that can do everything brilliantly and stands around benignly watching the heroine muck everything until she realises how fabulous he is (the Mr Knightly type).  I prefer ‘em flawed.  BUT they have to realise they are flawed and they have to change.  And they have to SHOW they’ve changed with their actions (a la Darcy) not just by saying Um, Sorry in the last few pages.

I think that’s my criteria.

And I guess it’s implicit in all of the above that I can deal with the forced sex thing if it’s intelligently written and takes place within a relationship (rather than being an early encounter between the hero/heroine - that just doesn’t work for me).

Say what you will about what makes a marriage a marriage…historically and even today IIRC, never having sex in your marriage can get it annulled. I don’t find it unreasonable for someone getting married to expect to have sex with her/his spouse.

Hmmm,
I need to think about this one.  I know I stopped reading anything by COulter because of her HRR (High Rape Ratio) in her books.  I can’t remember the last one I read, but I do remember feeling I needed a shower afterwards.

Same with To Have and To Hold.  I hate that book!  I threw sent it to Goodwill feeling guilty. 

I believe in changes in characters, but characters don’t change.  Maybe I know to much, but for someone to change really horribly bad behavior, they have to have a crisis or hit a wall—pretty much a near death experience or a Road to Damascus moment.  The reason for the change has got to be profound enough to cause the person to change in realizing the horror of past acts. 

They just can’t suddenly go “Oh!  Rape is bad!  I feel bad for having done it!  I won’t do it anymore!” 

It never ever ever happens that way in RL, and I can’t buy into it, even in an historical setting.

Interesting.  The second one you describe bothers me more than the first, and I think the key difference is his attitude.  Expecting sex within marriage, especially in a historical context, is one thing, but when he’s enjoying the fact that she doesn’t enjoy it, then it’s crossed the line (for me) into emotional sadism.  And that, I’m not cool with.

Marie,
You just described the mind of a criminal rapist.  They WANT the victim scared, upset, hating what’s happening. 

OR, they twist in their minds that she is enjoying it, but not admitting it to herself.

Either attitude or behavior in a book is instant Squick and in the trash.  These guys belong in prison, not books.

I…don’t know.

I take your point, Sarah. I really do. And you’re right. Sex is part of marriage, and a woman who married a man in any time should be aware that she will be expected to have sex with him in the bargain. It is, legally speaking, part of what seals a marriage, as Kassiana has pointed out.

But. But…historically, a lot of things didn’t count as rape. Even now, a prostitute gets raped, and I bet most people are like, “Well, she is a hooker. Why didn’t she just give it to him?” It does not make it any less rape that she is required to perform.

You could argue, I suppose, that a woman gave consent by marrying the man—and I would actually agree to that point.  (Which is why forced marriage makes me sick to my stomach—if she’s forced into it, then there is never any consent, and she’s being raped.)

I’m just dreadfully uncomfortable with the idea that spousal rape is okay because it was legal and because sex is part of marriage. I can agree that the hero in the first book is probably not entirely vile…but in the second case, I read the forced “conjugal relations” as part and parcel of his abuse.

After all, a lot of things were perfectly legal and even expected in marriages in the past—including physical abuse and male infidelity, and I think if we saw a hero doing either of those things, we’d be completely unsympathetic.

To make a totally dramatic and probably unfair comparison…slave owners were also totally within their rights to demand sex from their slaves. Women who were slaves had no choice but to agree—no matter what. But would we find it romantic or redeemable if the hero kept having sex with a slave (let’s make it his friend’s slave, who was loaned to him as a birthday gift, since we wouldn’t be able to find a slave-owning hero attractive, I’m sure) against her will? Even though she has no right to refuse?

Obviously, it’s a totally unfair comparison (I do not want to diminish the real horror of slavery in this comparison)—but in this ONE instance ONLY, married white women and black women in the nineteenth century had something in common. Neither could refuse the sexual advances of the men who legally owned them.

And I just realized my comparison breaks down b/c a slave does not consent to slavery, but a woman, again, consents to marriage. Usually. So, feel free to ignore and/or flame me. :/

Snark,
You are right, that especially in an historical setting, a woman consented to marriage and knew that sex was required. 

Granted though, she didn’t’ have much choice in some settings, it was either marry a or b, or go to a convent, or be thrown out of the house, or starve or whatever.

So often, the marriage was based on a primal survival and not a whole lot of choice.  And sex was, well part of the deal.  So the sex may have been an endurance issue (“I think I’ll paint the ceiling beige”) versus rape.

Coulter has a few other late 80s/early 90s novels that have incidents with spousal rape.  The Sherbrooke Bride was one of the first romance novels I ever read and I remember being shocked to the core that the hero kidnaps his own wife and rapes her. 

A later Coulter novel that I recently re-read, Night Fire, has a completely different take on spousal rape.  The heroine is brutally abused (physically, sexually and emotionally) by her first husband.  When the hero shows up, he bumbles along at first, trying to figure out why the heroine’s so prickly and skittish of being around him.  Once all is revealed (of course during a scene of extreme illness when it’s unlikely the heroine will survive - blah blah blah), he tries to enable her move beyond her past.  However, his methods at times really irked me, so it made me wonder: is outright spousal rape more effective than a man playing on his wife’s insecurities to help her “grow” as a person?  I don’t know ...

I mean “more effective” in terms of moving the plot, or offering a hurdle for the hero and heroine to get over.

... I think what irks me is something more along the lines of when historical heroines, spawned from the creative brains of modern-day women, think and act like modern-day women.  That is:  are somehow imbued with an anachronistic feminist understanding that even they they’re married, this is rape, and rape is bad.  It’s too easy—wouldn’t it be more realistic, and create a more complex heroine, if she, with all her red-headed fiery wit, came to that understanding/dealt with it in a unique way realistic to the time period?

I think this also brings up the interesting question of what we feel we should and should not get off on—during my senior women’s studies seminar in college, we read a passage from a textbook about feminist perspectives on sexuality that used a really kinky passage from an old Norman Mailer book as a means of demonstrating “rapacious” sexuality, a woman being coerced into sex by a chainsmoking Alpha male who calls her a slut and tells her to introduce a candlestick into her hoo.  The author of the article’s intention was for you, the educated pro-woman progressive thinker, to immediately recognize it as a mysogyny because A) the coersion and B) it was written by Mailer.
  And all of us sat there pretty quiet, until finally a friend of mine said—uh, I thought it was pretty hot, actually.  And one by one we all agreed, thus sparking a discussion of how we step into dangerous territory when we accept tabboos and regulations on what we can and cannot get off on.

Merchant & Ivory’s Maurice had similar issues gay romance wise. I mean who in their right mind would spend years hanging around with Hugh Grant, playing Clive, putting up with all that internalized shame and emotional abuse for a platonic “love that dare not speak it’s name”?

I just sat there through the whole thing watching the infrequent kissing and wondering why Maurice did not make a booty call down at the local gym he spent so much time at. There were guys there i am sure that would have given him a quicky.

Sometimes historical romance seems to have been written in a bubble that has no relation to the world I live in or even what I know of the time period.

*delurks*

Catherine Coulter’s “Midsummer Magic” is my ultimate example of the wallbanger. I have never felt more hatred for a romance novel before or since that book, and I have not picked up a Coulter novel since. To me, the hero’s behavior is so over-the-top, so cruel, so abusive that there’s no redeeming him. IIRC (and I did try to block the book out of my head, so I might be misremembering), the hero only starts using the cream after his father yells at him for hurting Frances so badly that the bed is bloody. Yuck yuck yuck. The only thing that could have redeemed the story for me would have been if Frances had left the “hero” either for his father or for his nice secretary. But to turn around and fall in love with the rapist? Did I mention yuck? I hate this book so much that it’s driven me out of lurkdom!

And yet so many people love it and I just don’t understand!

On the other hand, I agree that I do have a higher tolerance for unacceptable behavior when I find it in an historical. Jamie beats Claire in Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander,” and while that totally put off one of my friends, I was able to mentally justify it as historically accurate.

I think the heroine’s reason for refusal is also an issue.  I have little sympathy for a heroine who marries the rich duke to save her family and then locks the bedroom door every night because she despises her new husband.  Lady, he didn’t marry you just for the right to support you and your assorted impoverished relatives.

Now, if said heroine routinely submits to sex and then at some point is ill, or not in the mood or whatever and the hero won’t take no for an answer - THAT would be a deal breaker for me.  Yes, sex is expected in a marriage.  But there are limits, is all I’m saying.  The hero who expects his wife to lift her skirts whenever, where ever, just because he is the man and it’s her wifely duty, and woe betide her if she refuses. . .yuck.  I immediately lose any sympathy and any faith he can be redeemed.

Leslie:  totally agree with you on the historical accuracy part of things.  In pretty much all historical settings (especially those involving A) farming or B) fortunes) it was just understood that marriage = sex.  Women were expected to produce a kid, or preferably two.  Everyone involved knew it.  Depending on the status of the woman, she wasn’t necessarily expected to enjoy sex anyway. So I’m agree Sarah on not being quite as bothered by forced sex within a marriage as I am otherwise. 

Of course all the above depends on the definition of ‘forced’.  Outright brutality doesn’t cut it.

“I think the heroine’s reason for refusal is also an issue.  I have little sympathy for a heroine who marries the rich duke to save her family and then locks the bedroom door every night because she despises her new husband.” (Melanie Hayden)

An example of the unlocked bedroom door is Heyer’s “A Civil Contract” where couple marry with no romance but presumably have sex (Heyer doesn’t go into that, though the heroine becomes pregnant so you can guess!) and fall in love by the end. Not really rape I would have thought, since the characters are so matter of fact about their marriage and the lack of passion at the start but make an effort to be “normal”.

It all depends on the circumstances, morality at the time, morality now. No wonder we all like different books! Its all Fiction, so I give authors leeway to tell an interesting story whether I personally would like to be in that situation or not.

You know, I was already vaguely disappointed that the Catherine Coulter book I’m reading right now (_The Duke_) is so tame and now I’m really diasappointed! ;-)

Some historical writers write an expectation into their books that marriage is only for heirs and the husband will “leave the wife alone” and go to a mistress after awhile. How does that fit into this scenario?

The only book I’ve read with spousal rape was Olivia O’Neil’s Imperial Nights, and even then the heroine gives in, grudgingly, to her marital duties. I was more squicked out by the fact that she was in love with her stepbrother.

And all of us sat there pretty quiet, until finally a friend of mine said—uh, I thought it was pretty hot, actually.  And one by one we all agreed, thus sparking a discussion of how we step into dangerous territory when we accept tabboos and regulations on what we can and cannot get off on.

I can’t help myself from stating the obvious here, which is that “dangerous territory” can occur both in the direction of freedom of speech and in the direction of restriction of speech where taboo issues are concerned, and just because something turns people on doesn’t automatically make it right (just as something isn’t automatically wrong because it makes a particular individual uncomfortable).

Presumably, though, the textbook wasn’t arguing for the suppression of Mailer’s work, since it was reproducing it?

For me the reaction you and your friends had raises the question of why some people enjoy descriptions of “rapacious” sex (or rapist alpha heroes) and others don’t, but I’m not sure it’s a question that could be answered easily. It’s also interesting that every single one of you felt the same way. It makes me wonder if there was either something you all had in common which lead to you have exactly the same reactions to the material (because presumably there are people who would not have had those reactions).

And does peer pressure (in either direction) and/or what’s felt to be the norm, also play a part in people’s reactions to this sort of material? To get back to Sarah’s post, at a time when marital rape wasn’t recognised as a crime, that presumably affected the attitudes of both the husband and wife in the circumstances. And when rape was more prevalent in romance novels did that normalise it for readers and, in a sense, make them feel they’d been given permission to find it “hot”. Or did it actually encourage them to find something “hot” which some of them might have initially found distasteful? Again,there were probably a variety of different responses, both to historical marital rape and from readers of rape in romances.

I have a degree in history, so while I agree with the accuracy of what Sarah is saying, I still have to say I do NOT want to read about it in my romance novels. Flog me if you wish, but romance has a lot to do with fantasy (because not all Scottish women are fiery redheads, right?) and spousal rape is SOOOO not my fantasy. Bad, alpha male. BAD!

Laura Vivanco:

I should have mentioned that this was a class of six women, all women’s studies majors, representing the gamut of sexual orientations and backgrounds, etc.  And every one with a pretty big mouth.  It was a safe environment to talk about sex—this discussion was specifically about feminist writings on sexual desire, and whether having sexual fantasies based on some kind of power differential (the Alpha-heroes, for instance, or anything by Ayn Rand) signifies that your sexual fantasies are based more on “male desires” than your own—that your finding a non-consenual sex scenario in the least bit appealing is symptomatic of a “colonized mind.”

What was really intersting to me there was a) how each student answered the question of whether or not we were “bad feminists” for finding some pleasure in the Mailer scenario (overwhelmingly the answer was “fuck, no”), and b), questioning whether or not my sexual curriculum vitae has in fact been influenced by misogyny/societal expectations at large—and I would say that on the whole if we drink the water, we absorb the chlorine.  It’s unavoidable.  Which brings me to c), what do we do (or not do) with that?

I am with Crystal in the historical accuracy is great, but this is fiction damn it!

But can I hit to off topic button again here?...

“marital rape wasn’t recognized as a crime”

You know, I recently read The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln by C.A. Tripp. They have found a letter from Billy Greene, who coached Lincoln in grammar, writing glowingly while describing his wonderful thighs. They also note that Lincoln had a body guard during his years in the White House that slept with him when his wife was out of town.

The rest of the god damned book rested on trying to view Lincoln’s behavior while president in regards to him possibly being gay. LOL!

I was amazed that an obviously “somewhat” intelligent person who spent the time writing a book about this would not have at the very least attempted to view their findings through the cultural framework of the period. I personally would have added in all the evidence that Lincoln had mistresses too besides his rocky marriage.

My point is that unless you are talking about contemporary material you should be careful in using our post Kinsey Reports sexual morality point of view and try to leverage that evolved thinking in an attempt to understanding historical relationships even as recent as 200 years ago.

Calling Abraham Lincoln gay because he may have had sexual contact with male friends while they shared a bed back in their time is as silly and narrow minded as having an intelligent discussion about marital rape in regards to a whole culture that existed “way back when” and who were all raised with no understanding of such things as marital rape.

In their time a woman betraying the God given rights of such a “sacred vow” might be seen as the selfish, evil and most likely a nasty villain.

Sorry I just wanted to point that out.

Just to ensure that things remain clear, my comment above in no way endorses any kind of rape.

In fiction, I don’t mind forced-type scenarios at all…as long as the woman’s enjoying herself. When she stops, that’s when I stop, too.

Midsummer Magic…first half was almost unbearable. Second half was ... interesting. Personally, I prefer Calypso Magic, which had far less abuse and a nice spanking scene.

I’ve started to post this a couple of times but I simply cannot remember what happened in what specific books, but I think I’ll give it a stab.

Roberta Gellis has managed to take wife beating, forced marriage and marital rape and make them palatable within the historical context by the manner in which the heroine reacts to the circumstances.

One of her books Masque of Gold—I remember this one—had the heroine married by her father to an old man who had wealth and power in the merchant community of London—she was maybe 19, he might have been 50’s or 60’s.  While the section with the marriage does not last very long, Gellis manages to convey that the heroine decided she was lucky because he was not unkind to her and set out to make him a good wife (12th century). 

In another, the heroine is in the complete control of a sadistic monster, who marries her to a traumatized and maimed young man—part of a thoroughly dastardly plot.  Again the marriage does not last long but the heroine realizes that her best effort is to try to make the marriage work, which means having sex with him in order to legitimate the union.

Then there was the time that her heroine, who is already married to the hero, considers whether she should or should not have sex with King John in order to secure some protection for her lands (I think) when her husband was off fighting—probably as John’s vassal.  She rationally examines it from the angle of whether it would be a benefit or a detriment—and John is not an attractive proposition in this book.

Any way in each of these cases the woman acted in her own best interest rather than simply being acted upon. (Zomg, teh Sex—cannot has teh Sex.)  While her books are historicals with romantic content rather than romances, her resilient heroines make them a pleasure for me to read.

whether having sexual fantasies based on some kind of power differential (the Alpha-heroes, for instance, or anything by Ayn Rand) signifies that your sexual fantasies are based more on “male desires” than your own

Leslie, I would have had a problem with the way that discussion was framed too, because of the binary opposition that’s being set up between “male desires” and “female desires,” as though all men must be the same (and into power/domination) and all women must be the same (and into equality (or submission?)) and that that’s how it should be and otherwise there’s something “colonized” about the person.

As you say, “on the whole if we drink the water, we absorb the chlorine.  It’s unavoidable”, but clearly people do respond differently to the water with chlorine, and even if we all stopped drinking it/had never drunk it, and our responses were different to the ones we have now, I very much doubt that all women would end up having identical responses.

>>>That is:  are somehow imbued with an anachronistic feminist understanding that even they they’re married, this is rape, and rape is bad. >>>>

I see your point here - but don’t you think they still felt… ewwwhh.

These women knew they had to get married. They knew sex was a requirement. I don’t think they shouted “rape” but it had to suck in those cases where there was no physical attraction or the husband was a perve or abusive. 

It was Clan of Cave Bear where Ayla (???sp) knows she’s got to get down on the ground but feels a sense of wrongness about it. Rape is the word we use to define that feeling.

I didn’t have a problem with Hawk. And I think the poster who said it’s the man’s attitude toward the wife that makes the difference. He didn’t really take pleasure… well extra pleasure… from it. Get in, get out, get her pregnant. In his mind that’s what married sex was. And I felt it was more genuine than many other historicals where the heroine goes from virgin to sex goddess in one scene.

I actually have more of an issue with CC’s next rape in that series when Lyon rapes his wife because he sees another woman cheating on her husband.

I loved that hero and had to really get over what he’d done even after Diana (wife) forgave him.

For me, it’s all about the portrayal of marital rape (forced sex with no enjoyment on the part of the victim.)  I will never, ever find marital rape sexy, and it irritates me mightily when authors try to spin it that way.  Rape is not about being sexy.  Rape is about power, and if it shows up in a historical in that context I have absolutely no problem with it.  Men believed they had the right to take sex from their wife, and it was unpleasant and awful but it was a fact of life.  No issue with that.  But when an author writes a rape scene like a love scene, it turns my stomach.

>>>>But when an author writes a rape scene like a love scene, it turns my stomach>>>>

See I don’t know how you do that? If it’s rape - meaning she doesn’t want it - how can it possibly be sexy?

In my experience any time “rape” was used - there was always the intent that it was supposed to be bad, tense, punishment… whatever.

There are those times where the hero convinces the herione otherwise… but to me that crosses over into forced seduction.

I think that’s where the Flame and Flower falls. Did he ultimately convince her she wanted it…no not really. But I don’t know that I ever saw that scene as “sexy”. Their “sex” scene came out that end of the story.

But I think once she’s into it -  it ceases to be rape. Doesn’t it?

Wow that’s probably a very slippery slope.

I’m glad DS brought up Roberta Gellis, because one of the things I liked most about her books was how she made you feel the characters were historically authentic compared to other Romance heroines. 

One Gellis heroine was walking at night and was terrified of demons and other assorted evils.  She wasn’t a wuss, this was part of her medieval worldview.  Another heroine had a scene where she lovingly delouses her husband after he returns from traveling.

Gellis’ heroines would accept it as a matter of course that their husbands were entitled to “demand their rights”, just as the husband might feel free to make those demands, but it was always handled in an intelligent and true to the story fashion for a medieval setting.

the one type of alpha hero I really can’t stand is the perfect one - you know, the one that can do everything brilliantly and stands around benignly watching the heroine muck everything until she realises how fabulous he is (the Mr Knightly type).  I prefer ‘em flawed.  BUT they have to realise they are flawed and they have to change.  And they have to SHOW they’ve changed with their actions (a la Darcy) not just by saying Um, Sorry in the last few pages

I agree.  It’s great to have heros like Capt. Wentworth who can look up, halfway through, and go “Oh, huh.  I was blaming you for ruining my life, but now I realize that I was just in a grouchy mood and pissed-off that you dumped me nearly a decade ago, even though you thought that you were doing the right thing.”

Alright, bad example, but I totally agree with you.  Likewise, I don’t like “perfect” heriones (Mary Sues).  Everyone needs to have emotional growth, or the story isn’t good.

The talk of spousal rape reminds me of a few classica examples.  One is “Gone With the Wind,” and the whole “swirling darkness” scene.  Basically, a lot of femenists hate it because, though it doesn’t show the actual event, it shows Rhett literally carrying Scarlett off to bed, while she protests and tells him that he’s drunk; the next scene is Scarlett, in the morning, glad that what happened happened.  Most people assume that it really was concentual, after the charcters wandered off the page, but we don’t know.

It’s one of the biggest sticking points that I have with GWTW.  The other is the condonement of racism, but both really need to be looked at through the historical perspective, as said.  Society is shocked when they find out that Rhett and Scarlett have seperate bedrooms—a wife should sleep with her husband, whether she wants to or not.  No one is shocked that Scarlett’s family owns a huge platation with hundreds of abused slaves—what, you expect white people to pick their own cotton?  In THOSE shoes?

I think that spousal rape is forgivable if the husband honestly has no idea that he’s raping.  Yes, it’s hard to believe that anyone could be that clueless, but some authors can pull it off.  What makes spousal rape really, REALLY wrong is when the husband* knows that his wife is miserable, and continues to act, either for his own pleasure or to cause his wife MORE pain (for example, Niamh’s husband in “Son of the Shadows;” his emotional and physical abuse scar her for the rest of her life, though she recovers a little bit before her death in the next book).

Have any of you ever read a scene where a husband raped his wife in order to punish her (okay, this one bugs me THE MOST), even if he didn’t enjoy it himself?  There is something a bit like this in “The Notorious Mrs Winston,” but the husband can’t go through with it (not because it’s fucking wrong, but just because he’s a perv, and she’s not a small child).

Another classic example (remember when I was rambling about GWTW?) is King Arthur’s bith.  Arthurian legands are constantly being retold and reworked, over the years, so there are a lot of different versions of Arthur’s conception—probably more than there are variations on spelling the character’s names.

Generally it is said that Arthur’s mother was the beautiful Igraine, and in love with her husband, Duke Gorlois.  King Uthur decided that Igraine was pretty hot, and told her to sleep with him.  She refused, and ran away to tell her husband.  He decided that maybe it wasn’t such a smart idea for them to be staying in Uthur’s castle.

They sneak home, in the middle of the night, and when Uthur finds out, he declares war on the duke.  Gorlois is eventually killed in battle, and Merlin enchants Uthur to look like the dead man.  News of Glorlois’ death won’t reach Irgaine until the next morning, so she assumes that the dude who looks exactly like her husband is, in fact, her husband.  She doesn’t give concent, but only because she doesn’t know that she’s about to conceive the once and future king with a complete stranger.  I suppose that this is some of the “getting the herione into bed with trickery” mentioned above.

I think that some of the differnt version arise from how incomprehensable it is to modern folk that a man could order a woman to sleep with him, just because she’s his social inferior, and that a woman would marry a man who killed her husband and raped her, even though she would have protection for herself and her children only through having a husband.  In most versions of the story, Igraine and Gorlois have two to seven daughters, and Irgaine is already pregnant with Arthur when she remarries.  There is no way that she’s going to let eight kids die, just to prove a point.  If she didn’t concent to marriage, Uthur would just force her into it.

Think of all the arranged marriages, some made when the bride and groom were infants.  They never gave concent.  Maybe they weren’t even old enough to talk, let alone comprehend what was going on.  But concent would never need to be made later, because they were married.

*I can’t actually remember any female—>male rapes, in literature.  No one writes them, not because they don’t happen, but because male rape is thought by so many people to be a urban myth.  The man didn’t consent, but he could have overpowered to woman (unless he’s comatose, a la Candle and Lire), and anyway, look down—see?  He’s enjoying it.

PS: If you read all this, you are a saint.  If you didn’t, I’m basically just agreeing with everyone else that rape is bad.

I share some similar thoughts on historical accuracy issue.  I think that’s all well and good, but I don’t read the novels for historical accuracy.

Many, many women in the past did not enjoy sex, often because of the restrictions around sex which disallowed men or women to understand women’s bodies well.  And women in the past put up with a lot in marriage that they wouldn’t today.  My gr. grandmother, a mother of 12 children, told my mother, when asked why she just didn’t say no, “You didn’t say no…not then.”

I don’t want to read a book about a heroine who is timid and lives within a historically accurate model.  Then that would be no fun…for me or the heroine.

These women knew they had to get married. They knew sex was a requirement. I don’t think they shouted “rape” but it had to suck in those cases where there was no physical attraction or the husband was a perve or abusive.

They say that Victorian sex ed was just a mother’s warning to her daughter: “Lie back and think of England.”

Elizabeth—I do remember a female->male rape scene.  Don’t remember the author or the title, so perhaps the bitchery will chime in:

It was a medieval where a young wife with the aid of her men-at-arms captures a knight returning home from the wars.  She ties him to a bed and each night arouses him against his will so he can impregnate her, allowing her to deliver an heir to her impotent (or dead?) husband’s estate.

He eventually escapes and kidnaps her for revenge, but I can’t remember the name of it.

It wasn’t a keeper, but I remembered that bit.

I can’t actually remember any female—>male rapes, in literature.

Well, it’s not literature, but in one Johanna Lindsey book the heroine ties down the hero and de-virginizes herself on him, getting pregnant at the same time.  It was some convoluted old-man-husband-dies-on-top-of-her-and-she-needs-to-get-pregnant-so-she-can-keep-the-castle-so-her-maid-kidnaps-some-random-dude-for-her-to-rape plot.

Sure, the hero ends up kidnapping her and tying her to the bed to rape her, but we aren’t talking about that part.

I can’t remember the title, but I’m talking about the same one as Darlene.

Huh.  Now I need to find those books.  (That book?  Could they possibly be the same one?)

I’m quite impressed by the kidnapping maid.  Your book sounds interesting, too, Darlene, but I wonder why the herione bothered kidnapping a stranger, if she already had men-at-arms lying around?  Perhaps they weren’t cute enough.

It’s nice to know that there are books about female—>male rape.  (I don’t mean that rape is nice; it is in all ways evil.  But it’s nice to know that it is not a completely male-character-dominated literary convention, especially since most of the books that we’re talking about were written by women.  With the exception of “Maurice,” which was written by E M Forrestor, IIRC).

Thanks!

Oh, okay, now I’ve read your second post, Rosemary!  One book, got it.  And now I really need to find it.

The Lindsay book is “Prisioner of my Desire”

Jo Berverley’s Forbidden has an experienced heroine getting the sleeping virgin hero erect and mounting him.  He winds up enjoying it, but it is a rape.

From what I remember, (and I have obviously forgotten some parts) when her husband was young, he was some monstrously huge viking-style blonde, and the men-at-arms who she trusted enough to let in on the kidnapping were not the same size or coloring.

The hero was a monstrously huge viking-style blond.

Man, that book would have been an awesome Guess That Lonely Heart.

I have never bought the “rape is historically accurate” argument as a justification for the raping alpha “hero”. Sure, rape happened in the past (and it happens today), but just because the misty veil of time separates us from the act doesn’t transform rape into morally acceptable behavior. And I simply can’t accept as fact the idea that this was normal behavior. I just don’t buy it. Furthermore, just because something was legal doesn’t make it right or heroic. In fact, just the opposite. Often what makes a man heroic, IMO, is that he behaves better than his peers. If he’s such an alpha-stud, I’d like to see him put in the work to actually seduce his wife (or mistress, or whatever) into wanting him.

I agree with the person who brought up the equivalence to men having the ‘legal right’ to rape Slave women. I don’t care what the legal rights are.

In Victorian times, men could force maids to have sex with them too, and if the girl got pregnant, she was ‘turned off without a character’, presumably to take up prostitution.

If a man has sex with a woman, knowing she actively doesn’t want it, then it’s rape, and he’s a scumbag.

I share some similar thoughts on historical accuracy issue.  I think that’s all well and good, but I don’t read the novels for historical accuracy.

When I read fiction, I’m not necessarily looking for a history lesson.  But often I am looking for something different from my everyday experience and attitudes.  I wouldn’t want a steady diet of rape scenes, but I do want to read about a variety of interactions.  When I read too many similar books, I miss being stimulated to think about these issues.

Various thoughts:

Rape and rape fantasies are two very different things. But they often get confused and conflated in romances.

Our standards have changed since Charlotte Lamb wrote Dark Dominion. The violence level against women in romances has dropped quite dramatically since the 1970s, when marital rapes were a common outcome of marital fights. Even then, though, they were considered outre behavior and both parties knew it. The “I’ll drag us through the mud rather than admit an honest emotion” approach to romance is out of fashion. 

Sheila Bishop did a book about outright wife abuse years ago, and the wife was eventually told to go back and take it, that she was wrong to flee the situation, wrong to seek another man, and wrong to think that her husband should change his behavior. That book would not fly today.

The tolerable part of “close your eyes and think of England” conjugal sex was that the wife was neither expected nor encouraged to be enthusiastic. That took some of the burden off the encounter for the woman, who listened to an animal grunting on top of her, perhaps with disgust but perhaps with sympathy, but was herself sexually unmoved by the experience. That is very different from a rape in which the rapist is paying pleased attention to every flinch of his victim. Yuck. No to sadism. No to rape.

The average historical man from these eras wasn’t rich, or extraordinarily witty/intelligent, didn’t have thighs of steel, or a gorgeous face, or even a mouth full of good teeth. He probably didn’t even have very many baths a year. And, yeah, he also held some nasty freaking ideas about what he had the right to do to women.

I don’t want to read about that guy.

I don’t understand why it’s okay to break with historical accuracy by making the guy rich, hot, hygienic, and minty fresh tasting, but damn, ladies, we gotta keep teh historically accurate rape! ‘Cause it’s the TRUFAX!

If that’s a kink, okay. Cool. Enjoy. But enjoy it ‘cause it’s a kink, not ‘cause historical accuracy is dah bomb.

If it’s were all about the historical accuracy, we’d better have our martial rapes with a side of stinky underarms, unwashed cock, rank, fetid mouth, poverty, a potato-like face and a doughy body that, despite its unattractiveness, can still hold down and hurt.

I have never bought the “rape is historically accurate” argument as a justification for the raping alpha “hero”. Sure, rape happened in the past (and it happens today), but just because the misty veil of time separates us from the act doesn’t transform rape into morally acceptable behavior.

*nods* Yeah. As mentioned in the post, spousal rape is still considered a lesser crime, but that doesn’t *actually* make it less rape.

I’d agree that someone refusing sex in a marriage entirely is unreasonable, and grounds for separation. At the same time, that doesn’t make it right for the other person to force sex upon them, you know? And while it may be historically accurate (hell, history has nothing to do with it, it happens *today*) for a man to force sex on a reluctant wife, I’m sure as hell not going to like him for it. It doesn’t mean I’m going to think of him as evil incarnate, either (depending on how it’s portrayed- enjoying that she hates it? Yeah, no sympathy here.) but… I don’t know, I feel like you can sympathize with the hero’s situation to a point without turning around and saying “well, *she* should have known better.” It sucks for everyone involved, but placing the majority of the blame on the person with the least amount of power in the situation makes me deeply uncomfortable.

~The tolerable part of “close your eyes and think of England” conjugal sex was that the wife was neither expected nor encouraged to be enthusiastic.~

I agree with that and to add my two cents’ worth, wondered whether there is any historical romance in which the heroine ever thinks something like ‘I’m really not up for it tonight, but I’ll do it anyway so he’ll stop bugging me about not getting any, and let me go to sleep’? Or would that (perhaps) add too much realism to a historical fantasy?

I do agree that sex was considered to be a conjugal right, but there are other influences on the way sex regarded was even within marriage depending on which period and culture we’re talking about. A court-case springs to mind in the Early Modern period in France, in which a woman sued her husband for witholding sex and it was held that it was his duty. I’m afraid I don’t know whether she assaulted him in any way to get her ‘right’ or what happened afterwards.

Then there’s also the Western folk myth that was quite popular till not too recently that a woman can only conceive if she’s had an orgasm. Unfortunately this works both ways and in cases of rape always to the woman’s detriment, but since one of the reasons for marriage was procreation it leads me to assume that men were trying to make it good.

Again in the Early Modern period, this time in England, a book called ‘Aristotle’s Masterpiece’ was a bestseller. Basically it can be read as a sex education book, giving helpful hints for increased pleasure and also dealing with birth control. I’m afraid that I don’t know what the illiterate did.

What I’m trying to say in a roundabout way is that I find it difficult to read a historical romance which makes the equation ‘marriage=conjugal rights=marital rape is okay’ without taking into account the sexual mores of the time and the rather more complicated culturally or religiously determined frameworks of belief around it.

Apologies for ranting and thanks to anyone who’s read this far… ;-)

And another reason women consented to sex with their husbands is they wanted children.

Can’t say my thoughts are very organized about this topic, but a few things strike me after reading through the post and comments:

I have the impression that eras and cultures in which arranged marriages are/were common are also known for restricting unmarried women’s access to sexual knowledge and for segregating the sexes, so young women in these cases may have only a rudimentary understanding of what sex/marriage would be like for them. Someone with a broader knowledge of world history can feel free to set me straight on this, but arranged marriage is only part of a larger societal context in which certain women (for example, upper-class women in 19th c.) are seen as a sort of privileged class of assets which need to be protected to preserve their value. Consent might not exactly be informed consent for these girls. Not only are they likely to be sexually ignorant, but they rarely interact with men outside of their immediate families. Okay, Gwendolyn. You’ve been kept cloistered for 17 years, now choose whom you want to love, honor and obey for the rest of your life.

If women were aware of the vicissitudes of the marital practices, so too were the men. If a man married a woman who then refused to perform her conjugal duties, he was legally able to either annul or divorce her ass. Both women and men with any choice in the matter surely sought spouses with whom they thought they’d be sexually compatible, no? When I read something like “I fear we should not suit” in a 19th c. novel, I assume it was that era’s dating code for “I don’t think I could face sex with you without some risk of projectile vomiting.”

In most cases, you guys are talking about historical settings written by contemporary authors. When they write a scene where a husband forces the issue with his wife, they are fully aware of how that will read to a contemporary audience. If the hero can claim cultural context, the author surely can not. So, my conclusion when I read one of these scenes is that the author intends the scene to do one of three things: 1) remind us we’re reading a historical 2) introduce some bad behavior which can then be quickly excused by historical context 3) introduce some BDSM fantasy elements in a way which is acceptable in a historical romance setting. The first seems a rather cheap way of establishing cultural context; the second I don’t really buy, because rape has always been rape, even when it was legal; the third again seems like a lazy writer’s crutch. I rarely see a marital rape scene in Romance that I don’t think could have been either omitted or better handled through another plot device. If you want to feed BDSM fantasies, use a forced seduction if you must, rather than a rape. But there are much better ways to do it, even in a historical.

BDSM is not about rape. That is like saying Movies are about rape. Some, maybe, occasionally are, but most are not. BDSM is mostly about a lot of other things, consent being one of them.

Actually, forced sex in any circumstance whatsoever is to me completely unacceptable. A hero who does it once, no matter the circumstances, is not a hero to me, and I stop reading the book. No exceptions.

I don’t care if they’re married. I don’t care what year it is. I’d be more comfortable if he killed her.

Again, this is my personal bias and I don’t expect others to feel the same way.

I find it interesting in talk about fiction that people are so strongly opposed to even acknowledging a well written rape scene.

Believe me, as someone who has lived through child abuse I find it interesting because this is about fiction not reality.

I know that in reality the ages we consider children now were considered adult then. I honestly have no problem reading stories that do not hide that fact.

Ah, historical accuracy - bleah!

Centuries ago, it was legal to torture ‘infidels’ and burn them at the stake. But I don’t want to read about a man who does such things getting a happy ending!

That said, I do agree it’s ridiculous how many heroines marry an orphaned aristocrat hero whose only heir is an idiot cousin - and think that they’re not gonna have to do the mattress mambo with the guy.

To me, it’s a PC thing the authors do - “We can’t have a heroine who actually thinks about going to bed with a man she’s not in love with!”

Do you want TRUE historical accuracy? Have the heroine marry the dude, pop out a heir or two, and then go party with her own lover. THAT’S how the nobility often managed their lives back then.

Would a Romance containing “forced sex” that happens within a marriage in a modern country where a woman has no right to say “no” as a wife and very little choice in whom she marries in the first place not actually be rape? Sure, there’s blood, pain and humiliation, but the culture says “no!” so it’s okay?

And does this argument excuse the violation done to actual women who lived in historical periods where their husbands could legally rape them, and hated it? If she married him—even if she didn’t have another choice besides starvation, or even if she had no way of knowing he was a rapist—she asked for it? Even if she didn’t agree with her culture, and thought it was wrong?

Would a Romance containing “forced sex” that happens within a marriage in a modern country where a woman has no right to say “no” as a wife and very little choice in whom she marries in the first place not actually be rape? Sure, there’s blood, pain and humiliation, but the culture says “no!” so it’s okay?

Yes, it’s called OZ. I own all the seasons.

It was great!

Oops were they married?

God, I still remember when they were rehearsing the Shakespeare play and Keller ties Beecher up at knife point.

That was weird fucked up love there man.

Teddy, I didn’t mean to sound like I was equating BDSM and rape. I do think that some authors write scenes that read to me like rape but are obviously meant as “hot” sex that plays to those readers who have fantasies involving control/domination/pain/humiliation—what some here have called “rape fantasies” which I think is a misnomer—which I’m referring to as BDSM fantasies. The failure by these authors to distinguish clearly between rape and sexual power games is part of what I am objecting to. If it reads to me like the woman is being raped, it doesn’t really matter to me what the hell the historical context is, yadayada. There is still something about the scene that is not reading as consensual sex. Whether that’s in how I’m interpreting the writing is another story.

:D Oz? I’ve heard of this rapacious wonderland of dirtybadwrong non-con, though I haven’t visited there myself!

Personally, male rape in literature doesn’t bother me in the same ways that female rape does because (a)it’s not something that weighs over the majority of grown men the way it does grown women (myself included) because it’s just highly freaking unlikely that it will happen to them outside of prison, and (b) it hasn’t been socially and legally encouraged the same way female rape has. Heck, the failures of the American justice system to address rape justly means that there’s an ongoing almost-sanction, despite laws against it.

Well megalith,

You will not ever make me feel bad about my Christopher Meloni naked in the shower prison rape fantasies. If that is wrong I do not want to be right

Hey, Teddy, I’m not about making anybody feel bad! I’m just saying, you and I are in the driver’s seat for our fantasies, right? When an author takes the wheel, sometimes bad bad mojo happens…

Right but OZ had a writer involved somewhere. Beechum and Keller had a love that dare not scream it’s name.

Keller betrayed Beechum
Beechum betrayed Keller

Their love was whack
Their love had a violent head wound
Their love had a body count

But you can’t tell me after even after all the rape scenes and the betrayals and the murders… watching Keller tie Beechum up bleeding and hold a knife at his throat just to give him a big old sloppy kiss… well, right then and there secretly you have to admit you are hoping they get an HEA.

It’s wrong, you know it’s wrong, but you do.

Sorry, I’m one of those terminally uncool people who have never had cable, so I haven’t actually seen the show. But clearly that storyline worked for you. Which begs the question: Do people really get off on watching/reading about it when they see it as rape, or only when they read into the situation some tenderness, however twisted, like that sloppy kiss?

I do not think it’s any wholesale sure fire way to sell a violent love story which is what I think we are talking about.

This conversation proves it, I am not saying there are not bad examples all over the place. Just from experience I am saying that rape is not an absolute deal killer, nor is betrayal, nor is forced sex.

The only thing that seems true is making the characters and the relationship so intense, so epic, so positively life changing, that even with every nasty thing they do sorta pales in comparison.

Teddy,

Do you suppose you’d relate differently to your rape fantasies if you knew that in reality you couldn’t go around half of the human race (at work, at school, at the grocery store) without knowing that a significant number of them have—through mass media, genres of music, conversations they’ve had all their life, pornography—internalized the idea of you as a object for sexual domination by virtue of your body’s appearance alone?

You’ve suffered abuse; as a gay man, I understand that you’re also vulnerable to violence, murder, rape in ways that straight men aren’t, but you can pass for the class of people who don’t have to worry so much about having the boundaries of their bodies violated in ways that the women who post here can’t. When I read a story about these things, or interact with my own fantasies, it’s never just a fantasy; I’m relating to the historical present of mass violation, murder, rape and domination against women, and to the current social and legal realities of my world.

I don’t approve or disapprove of fantasies; I disapprove of arguing that “forced sex” is or ever was okay, or not really rape, because of what a culture that spoke with the mouth of the dominating class said. Women were not the creators of these cultural mores; they were the objects of them. If we accept them, we’d have to retroactively accept the righteousness of the abuses committed against women under them. That’s as unappealing as prospect to me as excusing a man who commits an “honor killing” because that’s part of the power his culture has given to him over the women of his family.

~~Women were not the creators of these cultural mores; they were the objects of them. If we accept them, we’d have to retroactively accept the righteousness of the abuses committed against women under them. That’s as unappealing as prospect to me as excusing a man who commits an “honor killing” because that’s part of the power his culture has given to him over the women of his family.~

Uh-oh, somehow I have the feeling that my argument about taking into account culture and historical mores didn’t cut it there.

Rape is rape, no matter what period or culture, in my opinion. What annoys me about historical romance is that it seems to be considered a given that heroes or otherwise would come up with the idea to rape their wife because it’s their conjugal right. No doubt about it then and now it does happen, and there’s no excuse for it.

But what I always find difficult to buy is that considering cultural values e.g. a woman has to have an orgasm to conceive etc, a hero’s first idea would be to rape his wife. If his idea is to have an heir that would be counter-productive and if that’s the extent of biological knowledge too, then it must seem like a means of birth control. Samuel Pepys incidentally thought precisely the latter after a consensual quickie in a carriage, noting in his diary that there wouldn’t be any consequences since she hadn’t had an orgasm.

Equally, I get irritated with a historical heroine who marries and expects not to have sex. Hello? Go forth and multiply?

My disbelief at the whole scenario stems from the assumption that is made in historical romances that a) just because some law says they can, all husbands would think it’s a good idea to rape their wives, b) even though sex in marriage is expected heroines would expect not to have any and c) - personal pet peeve…

c) Regardless of time, culture etc, I cannot imagine, regardless of what my environment tells me about conjugal rights etc to fall in love with some hero after he’s raped me. If I could - in the mindset of a heroine- convince myself that yeah, it was his right and actually manage to lie back and think of England from then on, maybe there’d be some sort of living in icy civility together. But it’s supposed to be a story about two people falling in love, right?

It fails me how a heroine can fall in love with her rapist after he’s hurt and humiliated her. For me that defies belief. Culture, morals etc aside, I just don’t buy it.

Sorry for ranting again, just got the feeling that I hadn’t made myself very clear in my earlier post. ;-)

I think I’m just going to be repeating some other people now, but I did want to say to Sarah that I didn’t mean to imply that you said marital rape was okay or permissible, even in the historical context.

However, I don’t know that I could read a book where the hero rapes the heroine—in ANY context—and be able to stomach the HEA.

In part, this is b/c, as everyone has already said, romance novels are fantasy. I also do not want to see an unfaithful hero or a slave-owning hero. I can imagine a book in which the unfaithful, slave-owning hero might not be a total unredeemable dick, but I don’t necessarily want to read it. If I want historical accuracy, I’ll read something really depressing.

That said…has anyone else read Jude the Obscure? What do you do with Sue Bridehead’s relationships? She’s never gotten over her horror of sex, but she slept with Jude and, in the end, forces herself to sleep with her husband, despite her terror. Her ending is nauseating to me. Her husband (whose name I am blanking on) isn’t necessarily a rapist, but it’s not exactly consent, either. Ugh.

Speaking of sex and marriage.  I have hens that I raised from chicks because I want fresh eggs.

I have a Chinese Silky Rooster (Puff Daddy) who’ve I’ve had for a while that has ignored these silly babies from day one. 

Until a week ago, when I hear blood curdling squawks in the back.  I’m thinking “There’s a stray dog in the yard! OH NO!”

So I run out to rescue my girls and there is Puff in a dead run behind Abigail Araucana—- she’s the one screaming bloody murder. 

In the process of all this, Puff also manages to peck one of the cats on the back of the head, turn on a dime and take off after Della Dominique.

I email a chicken raising buddy asking why Puff was chasing everyone…....

Uh, yeah, seems that’s chicken courtship, AKA Rooster Rape.  I thought there’d be a little more romance involved.  Silly me.

Do you suppose you’d relate differently to your rape fantasies if you knew that in reality you couldn’t go around half of the human race (at work, at school, at the grocery store) without knowing that a significant number of them have—through mass media, genres of music, conversations they’ve had all their life, pornography—internalized the idea of you as a object for sexual domination by virtue of your body’s appearance alone?

Angel, why do you think that men do not get raped in real life? They do you know. That scene in Deliverance *Squeal like a pig!* did not come out of no where. In fact male rape is still not addressed very well in our society.

You are making your statement in regards to fiction writing. My point is that there is very good writing out there even in regards to gay romance that includes rape and all sorts of violent acts that is damn good.

It does not mean in real life I condone those acts or the people who would actually act out such things. I am saying that it’s OK to like that writing and even those particular scenes and think they are hot.

They were written to be hot and if the writer is good and makes it work then I refuse to feel bad for admiring them.

I disapprove of arguing that “forced sex” is or ever was okay

Well then, you are gonna have an issue with most of history then. Your view point is not viable outside of this day and age. What you see as abuse in other times would be seen as just life and part of a lesson someone had to learn. That is just the way things were.

I bought that silly 300 dvd yesterday and was amazed that they never up front addressed the fact that entire culture was totally about the gay male relationship. In fact they were big on the man/boy love. The creators totally ignored what was really going on there and the why that they are well remembered in history.

It’s fine they did that, obviously people would have had an issue with a real depiction of that culture but in my opinion it made the whole work suspect and unrealistic.

Teddy, Angel never said that men were not subject to rape. What she said was that men, as a whole, do not have to be constantly aware of the possibility of rape in every situation. Men get raped. MEN GET RAPED. I do not want to diminish that, or the horror of it.

However, the fact is that, statistically (in the US alone—I just looked at US statistics), 1 in 33 men are likely to be raped or assaulted, where as 1 in 6 women face the same fate.

That doesn’t make rape or domination fantasies wrong. I think, however, that Angel was trying to say that SOME women MIGHT have different reactions to rape fantasies than men simply because rape is something most of us think about every day. Every time I walk to my car at night alone; every time I am alone in the huge university library; if I’m out on a date—rape is always a possibility. So rape fantasies? Do not do it for me.

But that’s me. Another woman might have an entirely different feeling about this, and that’s her perogative. No judgment from me. :)

What you see as abuse in other times would be seen as just life and part of a lesson someone had to learn. That is just the way things were.

Oooookay…so…burning heretics alive is not something I should look back and judge? I should be okay with it, b/c it was just “part of life”? What about apartheid? Female genital mutilation? Why is it that we can look to these horrific historical or contemporary events—events and customs that were and are justified at the time because they are considered to be not morally right, but important for the well-being of society and even foundational FOR that society, and say that they’re bad, but we can’t look back on forced sex and say the same thing? Why is it naive to say that rape at any period of time is bad, even if the people involved didn’t always think so, if it’s not also naive to say that burning heretics is bad?

In other words, just b/c rape is and has been a fundamental part of society for longer than history has been written, that does not make it RIGHT, and I, for one, refuse to accept it as such, just b/c my ancestors might have done. I accept that it happened. I do not accept that everyone liked it or that it was ever right.

In other words, just b/c rape is and has been a fundamental part of society for longer than history has been written, that does not make it RIGHT, and I, for one, refuse to accept it as such, just b/c my ancestors might have done. I accept that it happened. I do not accept that everyone liked it or that it was ever right.

I am saying that you should be careful in defining moral absolutes in regards to someone who struggled in context to survive in an earlier age.

If someone is struggling with starvation they most likely do not place a high priority on sexual child abuse they lived through, in fact they or their parents may have used that for them to have survived.

George Washington owned slaves and in fact took actions to maintain ownership of slaves during his lifetime. Despite all that we still consider him a great man. He is fascinating because there is evidence he struggled with this.

Why is it naive to say that rape at any period of time is bad, even if the people involved didn’t always think so

Because you are attributing a moral absolute, a universal truth to be used in all circumstances and judging based on current values not on the ones the people involved had in context to the culture in which they were raised and what was done to them.

I think bringing up the burning of heretics is interesting because they were also judged using the same reasoning of moral absolutes. Religion is like that.

Despite all that we still consider him a great man.

We do? That generally gets whitewashed along with the deaths of all the Native Americans he was ultimately responsible for.

It’s quite true that even today’s society tends to think that the rape of women is no big deal and is something she lied about or invited in some way. Since current rape isn’t all that much of a shock, it’s no real surprise that historical rape isn’t either.

Well Miranda,

That is like holding Junípero Serra in contempt for the loss of the Native Americans of California.

These people felt they were doing the right thing and just like most of us now whitewashing how we are polluting the environment faster than anyone in history thus bankrupting our future. It’s just easier that way.

Honestly, Teddy, I think you’re conflating arguments about historical reality with arguments about romance novels. Do I think less of Thomas Jefferson because he owned slaves and had children with at least one of them? Yes, I do, somewhat. But it does not diminish the good things he did, and I still regard him as a great figure in American history. (Don’t get me started on Andrew Jackson, however, unless you’ve got a year or so to listen to me rant.)

Just b/c I can respect Jefferson, though, does not mean that I want to read a romance novel about him and Sally Hemans. I do not go to romance for an accurate and morally relative view of history. I go to it for fun and romance and a bit of erotic fantasy.

I am saying that you should be careful in defining moral absolutes in regards to someone who struggled in context to survive in an earlier age.

True. But not everyone struggled to survive. Do we only excuse the lower classes, then? Is it okay to lynch African-Americans if you’re a poor white person who barely scrapes by and who is on the verge of starvation? Or is it only okay to rape if you’re in that situation, while the wealthier classes should not be excused from this?

I have never thought of myself as a moral absolutist. Nor do I think of myself as a moral relativist. Maybe I’m a bad liberal, but I do believe in right and wrong across time and culture—it’s just that the way those rights and wrongs were expressed may be different.

That does not mean, however, that the rape of the Sabine women isn’t going to make me ill. Or the rape of Nanking, for that matter, which may be justified from a certain (sick) point of view—it’s what happens in war, right? The problem with true relativism is that it doesn’t just span time—it spans cultures, too.

Is cutting off a little girl’s clitoris with a sharp rock okay just b/c it’s accepted in her culture? I don’t believe that. Maybe I can’t change it, but I refuse to accept that it’s right. Ever. Just like I refuse to accept discrimination is ever right, just because it was right at some point in time, or because some people in my own culture believe that it’s right and morally imperative to treat others like second-class citizens.

By that same argument, slavery was acceptable and necessary—because people really believed that it was. You still haven’t answered my question, either. Why is rape okay, if slavery and all of these other horrific events aren’t? Or do you believe all of those things were okay, too? You can’t have it both ways.

Why Snarkhunter,

When people use the appeal to emotion arguments and straw man arguments I just lob them back over the fence the same way they were thrown at me.

Snarkhunter,

You rant about Andrew Jackson and I’ll see you one Thomas Paine, whom I consider a putz.

The Rape of the Sabine Women always makes me think of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers but I did like the Axe Dance choreography.

Is cutting off a little girl’s clitoris with a sharp rock okay just b/c it’s accepted in her culture?

They have been cutting parts off boys for years first for religious reasons and then public health so try to include everyone in those arguments there.

Why is rape okay, if slavery and all of these other horrific events aren’t? Or do you believe all of those things were okay, too? You can’t have it both ways.

We were talking about writing and inappropriate actions in books not reality, I actually said this…

It does not mean in real life I condone those acts or the people who would actually act out such things.

Angel, why do you think that men do not get raped in real life? They do you know. That scene in Deliverance *Squeal like a pig!* did not come out of no where. In fact male rape is still not addressed very well in our society.

I put careful thought into wording my comment so that nobody could think that I was denying the existence of male rape. When you ask me “why I think men don’t get raped” after I just worked my butt of making sure that nothing I said would communicate that, I feel offended. This is an issue close to my heart, and I feel like you’re not even bothering to listen to the words I’m trying so hard and so earnestly to say.

Please, read what I said:

“You’ve suffered abuse; as a gay man, I understand that you’re also vulnerable to violence, murder, rape in ways that straight men aren’t, but you can pass for the class of people who don’t have to worry so much about having the boundaries of their bodies violated in ways that the women who post here can’t.”

I recognized that your position of privilege isn’t absolute; I acknowledged what you have to endure. I didn’t say “the class of people who don’t have to worry about [rape]” I said “the class of people who don’t have to worry so much” about it. I chose those words deliberately, because I didn’t want to say that men don’t have to worry about it, just that their worry isn’t as pervasive and continual as the worry women have.

Example: it’s normal for the female teachers I have who teach night classes to ask one of the night security guards to walk them out to their cars. They have to be conscious of their vulnerability in ways that male teachers never would, and then they have to expend time and energy protecting themselves, not to mention that they have to live with fear.

The male teachers have the significant privilege of moving through their days without being afraid like this, without having to plan their freaking schedules around the cultural reality of themselves as a victim class.

You are making your statement in regards to fiction writing. My point is that there is very good writing out there even in regards to gay romance that includes rape and all sorts of violent acts that is damn good.

My point is that a fully grown man who isn’t in prison or going to prison can enjoy a rape fantasy more freely than a woman can, because rape isn’t such a big part of his consciousness every single day. When another poster expressed discomfort with rape fantasy, you acted as if she was condemning your fantasies, without apparently realizing that the fantasy could cause her discomfort in ways it doesn’t cause you.

Example: two American men who both enjoy playing the slave in BDSM scenes. One of these men is white, and the other is black. The white man can enjoy acting out his slavery fantasy much more freely than the black man, because the reality of actually being made someone’s slave isn’t part of his consciousness; he doesn’t have to think about his ancestors who really were enslaved, or about the fact that by accepting this role, he’s putting himself in a degraded position that many people in the past, and some people in the present, think is his natural place.

My point: a man can enjoy a rape fantasy more freely than a woman because he doesn’t have to engage with (a) the fact that sexual assault is part of his daily consciousness (b) the historical reality that violence against women has been unending (b) the fact that there are a lot of people who think that rape is what a woman deserves.

Women have to endure these things. It makes our fantasies in these areas more problematic.

If you can’t listen and empathize with this, you’re exercising your male privilege to ignore and dismiss the sufferings of people who have less privilege than you.

And, damnit, that’s a nasty thing to do. I haven’t done it to you—I’ve tried to take into account your relative privilege as a person who is both male and homosexual—please extend me the same courtesy. Please listen to my heart felt attempt to share what it’s like to live and be sexual as a woman in this society. Please.

male privilege?

victim class?

Oh lordy, sorry you lost me there. I totally disagree with you even implying that all women are victims.

That is insulting.

Second, you really are ignoring the fact that I am a gay man who has been bashed. I am a gay man who watched his lover die because the Washington DC Medicare let him die from lack of proper medical treatment.

But… I am also not a victim.

Oh lordy, sorry you lost me there. I totally disagree with you even implying that all women are victims.

That is insulting.

By “victim class” I mean that women are socially constructed (by the media, by word of mouth, by the realities of assault statistics) as a group of people who are seen as open to having the boundaries of their bodies violated.

I’m not talking about particular people. I’m saying that anyone with a female identity in our culture is seen as a possible victim. Watch the nightly news, watch TV programs.

TV can and does represent women as people who exist to be victimized, not just matter of factly, but in ways that are eroticized. And that’s OUTSIDE of mainstream pornography, which is entirely about how women are made to be hurt and humiliated, how their hurt and humiliation is natural and inseparable from their physical and sexual identity.

I totally disagree with you even implying that all women are victims.

That wasn’t what I said, full stop. It wasn’t what I implied, either.

If you bothered to the experiences of women around you enough to read a Feminism 101 page, you wouldn’t be confused.

Obviously, you don’t feel you have to educate yourself. You don’t feel you have to be responsible for knowing and taking steps to work against your own privilege.

Since that’s the case, I don’t think we can have a productive conversation.

that sentence should read: “bothered to respect the life experiences of the women around you”

Also, I took the trouble to give you a glaring example of “male privilege” when I described the experience of male teachers vs. female teachers.

There’s a lot more to it, of course. But you have an internet connection and the power to Google, don’t you? But you can’t be troubled to read a Wikipedia article, apparently.

Obviously I was right when I felt like you weren’t brothering you read what I was saying at all, just skimming.

Teddy,

Here’s a very clear, concise article on male privilege. I did your Googling for you; by the way, it was the first result the search turned up, and it took less than ten seconds to find.

I’ll stop spamming the comments thread now.

When people use the appeal to emotion arguments and straw man arguments I just lob them back over the fence the same way they were thrown at me.

...I used a straw man? Where? Seriously, where did I use it? I’m not trying to be hostile—I’m genuinely asking here. If it’s my comparisons—rape, slavery, genital mutilation (feel free to include little boys in that, since you’re right, they do suffer as well)—I was not setting up a straw man. I believe rape is a heinous crime, and I do not necessarily think it is an unjustified comparison. Difference of opinion, maybe. Strawman? Not intentionally.

Appeals to emotion are not actually logical fallacies. In fact, the emotional appeal—known as pathos—is a key part of the rhetorical situation. Used effectively (and I do not claim to have used it effectively), it is the linchpin of a good argument.

You said: It does not mean in real life I condone those acts or the people who would actually act out such things.

You were talking about rape fantasies there and the use of rape in literature. You were not talking about critiquing rape in a historical/cultural context. But if you do not condone rape or similar attacks—even in a cultural context where it is acceptable?—how can you call those of use who find ACTUAL (not fictional, mind you) rape unsettling and/or morally indefensible in any context naive?

I have no actual problem with the well-written use of rape in fiction. I may choose not to read it, but I do not argue against its effectiveness. That does not mean, however, that I feel that rape/forced sex itself is EVER right. In ANY historical situation. Period.

That is all I am trying to say to you. I don’t want to get into some wanky, comment-spamming nonsense, and I’m afraid we’re coming dangerously close. But I feel like we’re talking at cross-purposes here, and I really am trying to figure out where you’re coming from.

I totally disagree with you even implying that all women are victims.

You don’t get to speak for women.

I am, of course, speaking class-wise, not as it pertains to this blog. Men have been trying to define women’s experiences and quarrel with their definitions since time (and patriarchy) began. Crimes against women are for women to define.

Snarkhunter,

Your strawman…(misrepresentation of an opponent’s position)

Why is rape okay, if slavery and all of these other horrific events aren’t? Or do you believe all of those things were okay, too? You can’t have it both ways.

I never said rape was OK. I said jumping to conclusions about historical facts without context is silly. Like calling Abraham Lincoln gay because some guy wrote a letter about how much he enjoyed his silky thighs.

Angel,

When my aunt worked as a archaeologist for UNLV she worked out in the desert often on her own. She went and purchased and learned how to safely use a gun.
When my best buddy Zeb goes out to the Goth clubs she carries a blade. I get the feeling they do not ask anyone to walk them to their car.

Neither of these women are the frightened creatures you are generalizing them to be because of media representation nor would I ever be insulting and use the term victim with them because they would frankly kick my ass. They seem to not have bought into your argument or maybe they do not watch enough TV.

My own series of awful experiences as a gay man has taught me if you want to be a victim it’s easy, then simply see yourself as one and you will get your wish. Jerry Springer has a parade of them on ever day.

I do not see how anything you have said leads me to not think if I can have my own rape fantasies then women can have them too. Maybe it’s my own bias of wanting to think they can like whatever the fuck they want?

I can google up a ton of crazy ass shit online it does not make it valid.

::headdesk::

I don’t know why I bother. You clearly refuse to address or acknowledge any points that we make except to get enough to set up your own strawmen.

(I know what the word means, thanks. And that example? Not a strawman, though I suppose it could be misread as such. That was (an admittedly over-the-top) rhetorical question. You said we have to judge forced sex in its historical context. I gave several examples of heinous acts that could be judged in their historical contexts, and asked if we should also accept those. I did not say (no, really, I didn’t—reread what I wrote) that you said rape/slavery/burning heretics was acceptable. I asked a question for dramatic effect—though I did phrase it badly. I SHOULD have said, “Are those things acceptable IN THEIR HISTORICAL CONTEXTS, too?”)

Want an example of your strawmen?

I do not see how anything you have said leads me to not think if I can have my own rape fantasies then women can have them too.

Not one of us here has said that you or any man or woman cannot have rape fantasies. No, really. No one said that.

Don’t believe me? Go back and read Angel’s post again. Actually, I’ll save you the trouble. Here’s what she said:

I don’t approve or disapprove of fantasies

She, like me and half a dozen other posters here, questioned a mindset that classifies forced sex as acceptable in any historical context. She NEVER questioned the validity of rape fantasies, though she admitted (as I did, as several others did) that they don’t work for her.

In fact, you’ve been using strawmen against Angel all day. (Your examples of ‘non-victims’ to criticize her use of the academic term “victim class” is another rhetorical fallacy, but I can’t be arsed to look up which one right now. Suffice it to say that you’re deliberately misconstruing her meaning…which is the entire point of what you’ve been posting, I suppose.)

Not one of us here has said that you or any man or woman cannot have rape fantasies. No, really. No one said that.

No but Angel did imply that…

I got the gist of rant right here.

TV can and does represent women as people who exist to be victimized, not just matter of factly, but in ways that are eroticized. And that’s OUTSIDE of mainstream pornography, which is entirely about how women are made to be hurt and humiliated, how their hurt and humiliation is natural and inseparable from their physical and sexual identity.

That’s a very wide assumption made there, especially since women are a strong force in the entertainment industry. They create pornography these days too, you know, run their own websites and such.

I suggest you find someone who will actually buy into those invalid statements.

That’s a very wide assumption made there, especially since women are a strong force in the entertainment industry. They create pornography these days too, you know, run their own websites and such.

I suggest you find someone who will actually buy into those invalid statements.

First, there’s nothing near gender parity in the entertainment business. Second, women who work in the business have to follow certain established standards or not work anymore; they’re voices are only as independent as their financiers allow them to be.

Third, when I said “mainstream” pornography, I meant just that. I meant the most widespread, corporate form of it, which uses genre conventions to humiliate and demean women. There are OTHER GENRES OF PORN which I do not disapprove of at all. Heck, I’ve enjoyed some pornographic novels, fanfiction, art, films, images… I’m not a prude, I just—for some crazy reason!—don’t like to see people who have bodies that are like my body, who are icons of my gender, systematically violated. I feel that way in part because it’s such a large part of my awareness for various social and personal reasons. I’m not saying you can’t enjoy the heck out of the idea; I’m saying that I have damn good reasons to find it upsetting.

When my aunt worked as a archaeologist for UNLV she worked out in the desert often on her own. She went and purchased and learned how to safely use a gun.
When my best buddy Zeb goes out to the Goth clubs she carries a blade. I get the feeling they do not ask anyone to walk them to their car.

Neither of these women are the frightened creatures you are generalizing them to be because of media representation nor would I ever be insulting and use the term victim with them because they would frankly kick my ass. They seem to not have bought into your argument or maybe they do not watch enough TV.

You talk about my implications. Look at your own! What are you implying here but that women who won’t arm themselves with guns or carry knives deserve what’s coming to them?!

As a woman, I should have to be armed with weapons, physically fit enough to protect myself, and morally willing to hurt or kill another person in order to have any safety? Why do we live in a society, if only men get to be protected by the law, and women have to live as if we were in a freaking dystopian film about anarchy?

The way you think makes me sick, and I am well and truly done talking to you.

Note: To be fair to you, maybe you didn’t mean that women who don’t want to turn to violence to protect themselves deserve to be assaulted. At the very least, however, what you said strongly implied that I and other women like me who are afraid are so because we’re weak, because we don’t have the backbone to pick up a knife or a gun.

That’s a really horrible thing to say to me and to all the other ladies here you’ve shared their fears and concerns with you. Who’ve tried to respect you and communicate. That’s a cruel slap in the face.

Angel,

I do not know if this is real or what from what you have said. But… If you are actually angry with me then I am sorry.

My aunt Evan was the first female archaeologist hired by a major oil corporation in the US. She is special to me, raised her son by herself (single mom), did all this wonderful university work on Native Americans (She visits her adopted family at a Hopi Mesa every year) and she also put her son through law school (He is very successful in Vegas).

She and her sister (my mom) did not teach me women were fragile or unable to do what they want out of fear.

So maybe my image of women as strong, determined, highly intelligent, no holds barred fearless go getter bitches from hell is a little off.

I love women like that, so I am sorry if you feel that image I use when I discuss stuff like this is wrong to you.

I’m pretty sure you’re a troll who knows exactly what he’s doing, Ted.

That said, I can’t let this particularly awful bit pass without addressing it…

So maybe my image of women as strong, determined, highly intelligent, no holds barred fearless go getter bitches from hell is a little off.

Saying that women are a victim class doesn’t mean that they’re *weak*. Not in the least.

1 out of 6 is a lot. It’s not just us “‘fraidy cats” who draw the bad mojo down upon ourselves with our negative thinking; strong, determined, highly intelligent women who aren’t afraid get assaulted every day. So do tall women, short women, quiet women, loud women… we’re all so very different, so beautiful and unique, and the one thing we share in common is that damn statistic. Or others equally as horrific.

Just as being demure and quiet isn’t any protection, neither is being dominating and strong. It’s impossible to be strong all the time, and we shouldn’t have to, goddamnit. Nobody should.

Punishments for rape offenders shouldn’t be slaps on the wrist. The percent of false accusations of rape is the same as false accusations of other crimes, that is, 2-3%. 8% of rape accusations are thrown out; this shouldn’t be so. Trials shouldn’t be turned into arguments for whether or not the victim was asking for it. Mainstream porn shouldn’t teach men that a woman’s pain is their right and their pleasure.

I’d also like to say that being afraid doesn’t make me weak; in a world like this, it makes me a realist. Not wanting to have to stab or shoot someone doesn’t make me weak, either.

Being apparently unable to disengage from this clusterfuck of a conversation? Now, that makes me weak, but only as far as it goes.

When my aunt worked as a archaeologist for UNLV she worked out in the desert often on her own. She went and purchased and learned how to safely use a gun.

Ah, yes. The “individual anecdotes about my plucky acquaintances trump class analysis” style of debate. Never mind genocidal rapes with machetes, video-taped honor-killings, or women who are arrested and jailed for defending themselves from sexual assault, MY AUNTY HAZ A GUN LOLZ.

Angel, I hear and agree with you. Unfortunately, TP’s words are a typical example of focusing on the actions of the victim (thereby blaming her for not being strong enough or wary enough or insufficiently armed) rather than the attacker.

This sort of attitude acts as if rape is like the weather, unavoidable, and only to be mitigated by the victims. It leaves out entirely where a man decided to rape because that would put the blame for all of these actions back where it belongs, on men.

Your right Angel and Miranda you are victims because that is what you want to be.
Good luck on that fucked up thinking there.

The “individual anecdotes about my plucky acquaintances trump class analysis” style of debate.

No it’s called “your theory does not match my reality”. Which generally precludes you swaying me with your argument no matter how much tinfoil you are using.

Note: The Mary Koss study that stated 1 in 4 women is raped was wrong. The researcher actually found that 1 in 16 women is raped, but decided to tell an additional number of them that they had been, even though the women themselves didn’t think they had been raped. Rape statistics are sometimes quite inflated for emphasis.

Further Note: No, I don’t support actual rape or people reading rape fantasies who don’t like them. I am a woman and don’t feel in danger of rape or assault often. I just thought that should be brought up because real problems should be backed up with real data, and if they’re not it is a LOT easier to just dismiss them as unimportant or irrelevant, all lies.

Well, Teddy, I ‘buy into’ Angel’s
‘invalid theories’ and so do many, many feminists and women. Also, do you realise you equated male circumcision with female genital mutilation earlier in the thread? I apologise if that is incorrect, but it sure sounded like you did. A better analogy to FGM is for the male genitals to lose the head and at least half the shaft of the penis. Maybe you didn’t realise that.
But there seems to be a lot you don’t realise, including the irony of declaring yourself free from male privelege and then going on to tell women here that their opinions and experiences are ‘wrong’ because you, a male, don’t see it that way.
Very classy, as well, telling women they are victims because they ‘wanted it’. Rapists use that excuse too, y’know.

Angel and Miranda, thankyou for writing so eloquently and having such patience. It made me feel a hell of a lot better about the entire subject.

On topic - I find heroes who withhold the love to be more alluring :) Sure, it’s great to overwhelmed by his FIERY UNCONTROLLABLE PASSION (so long as it is returned) but I’d love to see more clit-tease men. Additionally, reluctant sex scenarios can be very hot, but it leaves me cold unless at some point the woman starts to respond and really want it, as a genuine choice. I read one scene where a woman was drugged and lost her virginity and this was supposed to be romantic! Sounded more like the hero didn’t have any confidence he could get sex with her when she had full mental capacity.
Unless the man wants his partner to enjoy it, she’s just a piece of meat for him to wank into. I can accept many men didn’t believe women could or should enjoy sex in ages past but it doesn’t endear them to me - they’re just products of their time and rather boring for it. I like heroes and heroines who are clued into their own sensuality and gaining pleasure from giving it is a big part of that. But that can be done in so many creative ways :D
It’s one reason I loved the dark handsome villains in the movies when I was a kid/teenager, the ones who kidnapped the heroine, because they always looked capable of tying her up and giving mind blowing oral sex, prior to loosening her bonds, posing themselves seductively (and naked) and purring “Still saying no?”

As a woman, I should have to be armed with weapons, physically fit enough to protect myself, and morally willing to hurt or kill another person in order to have any safety? Why do we live in a society, if only men get to be protected by the law, and women have to live as if we were in a freaking dystopian film about anarchy?

To be fair to you, maybe you didn’t mean that women who don’t want to turn to violence to protect themselves deserve to be assaulted. At the very least, however, what you said strongly implied that I and other women like me who are afraid are so because we’re weak, because we don’t have the backbone to pick up a knife or a gun.

Angel, I hear and agree with you. Unfortunately, TP’s words are a typical example of focusing on the actions of the victim (thereby blaming her for not being strong enough or wary enough or insufficiently armed) rather than the attacker.

Fascinating stuff there, OK getting back to the argument I was speaking on “Is women having rape fantasies OK?”

Um yeah…

Kassiana—Interesting point on the Mary Koss study. I wasn’t aware of that, though I had noticed that the statistics had changed—reputable sources now are saying 1 in 6 women is raped/sexually assaulted.

I am a woman and don’t feel in danger of rape or assault often.

I don’t go around feeling like I’m about to be raped every second of every day. I don’t think anyone (outside of people suffering from severe psychological trauma) really does. Nor do I often feel like I’m in danger of rape. I live alone. I work late in the library. I walk to my car alone after dark. I do all of that on a regular basis, and for the most part? I feel fine.

But even though I do all of those things (and I don’t do them with my finger on my non-existent panic button, though I am careful to always have my keys out when walking to the car—that’s just good sense), I do them with mindfulness. It’s not that I’m afraid—it’s that I’m *aware*.

Actually, it’s the same way I wear heels. I’m a klutz, and I naturally walk on the sides of my feet. Wearing heels forces me to be constantly aware—even at a very faint level—of how I am placing my feet, so that I don’t fall down. It doesn’t mean that I believe I AM going to fall down. It just means that I am taking reasonable precautions so that I don’t. I don’t stop wearing heels, though.

That, to my understanding, is where Miranda and Angel are coming from. “Victim class” is an ACADEMIC TERM that is, perhaps, inaptly named. It does not mean that all women are victims. It does not mean that women who are aware of the dangers of the world are victims. I don’t think of myself as a victim—not ever—but I am aware of the world around me.

What it does mean—the only thing it means—is that in this particular instance, women are, generally speaking, the subset of the population in the vulnerable position.

But Teddy seems determined not to accept academic terms or theoretical constructions, or to allow for women to have differing experiences of the world than he does. That’s his perogative.

(Confirmation word: piece84, as in I’ve said all 84 of my pieces, and will stop.)

But there seems to be a lot you don’t realise, including the irony of declaring yourself free from male privelege and then going on to tell women here that their opinions and experiences are ‘wrong’ because you, a male, don’t see it that way.
Very classy, as well, telling women they are victims because they ‘wanted it’. Rapists use that excuse too, y’know.

There was a whole bunch of stuff brought into the conversation that surprised me.
I was accused several times of positions I never took.

I was talking about fiction here not rape statistics or women living in fear.
I was attempting to give my frame of reference of personal experience since I am not an expert.

What a mess!
I really can’t believe it. How did it turn to be such an argument?
I think that it would be more positive to make things change from the base, because even though times change quickly, there are always people who haven’t changed yet. Let’s see if I can explain myself:
For example, a few years ago one judge in Italy found not guilty of rape a man because the woman wore jeans, and he understood that the woman could not have been raped, that it must have been consensual.WTF? That type of shit should be changed
As another example of how times change quicker than society, I must say that I am from Spain. Our sunny country is now a democracy, I’ve been born in a democracy, but 30 years ago we were in a dictatorship. What’s more, a very catholical one. Do not get me started in that. But even now, you know that there are people with the “good old days” sentence in their mouth. That does not keep the country from going on and trying to be better.
Than said, what I think that I am trying to say is that there are people that are sure that their way is the right one, even though the change of times. Men had authority over women in Spain, and now they do not have. Some are so fucked up that they kill their ex-wives (who finally got rid of them). And they know it’s wrong, some are so coward that they then kill themselves
We have a new legislation, but if we do not teach in schools and such places, changes in legislation will be worthless. I do not want to be frightened. It’s not my fault.
I know that discrimination exists in modern society: women do not get paid the same salary, immigrants have more difficulties,...
Maybe those of us for whom this are touchy subjects can not speculate and be philosophers, because we can not accept certain facts now or in the past. But the fact is that morale is an adquired thing, and is flexible. For instance, the Germans elected Hitler. Nowadays they would not. All the horrible things that happened were legal because he was elected. That does not mean that they were right.
*Sighs* I think that we landed ourselves in one shadowy subject
Forgive me any grammar errors
my word: who31 -> who the fuck called you to this argument? I know

Godwin!

I did not know of Godwin. Bless the wikipedia
As I do not study law, choose the elected dictator of your convenience

Ines,

Sorry, that was out of habit.

theory does not match my reality”.

Male reality doesn’t match female reality. There’s news. 

I’m actually not writing to convince TPig of anything, since in my time on feminist boards, it’s proved a useless pasttime. My words were intended to women.

As for the ‘debunking’ of Koss, many women (and men for that matter) think of rape as occurring at the point of a weapon and performed by a stranger. Marital rape still isn’t recognized by many because women have a ‘duty’ to their husbands. Coerced sex by threat or intimidation, sex with someone unable to give consent due to drink or drugs, in fact any form of non-consensual sex is rape. Women are just socialized to think of these things as being their fault. “I should have said no more clearly, I shouldn’t have led him on” and so don’t believe that they were raped.

Anecdotally, one of my relatives back in the 50’s had to physically fight off her date in the car to keep him from having sex with her. I pointed out that he’d tried to rape her, and she was amazed to think of it that way. It was just something that ‘boys did’, and it was the girl’s responsibility to stop it.

As for the books, it isn’t illegal, certainly to write these scenes, but it’s irresponsible. It’s fine to say that you understand the difference between fantasy and reality, but on a sub-conscious, and certainly on a societal level, there’s a belief that women need to be ‘seduced’ (which borders on force quite a lot of the time) in order to have sex. We’re the gatekeepers of sex, withholding because we’re bitches or the guy hasn’t been manly enough, or whatever. Fantasies underlie reality.

Far from reality to think that I do not have my feminist vein. But, I think that one thing is reality and another is fiction. Of course one has responsabilities, but the reader has to be mature enough to discern. For example, I like to play computer games of various kinds. As much as I like to play shooters, where do you kill aliens or diverse enemys, I do not will go and kill anybody in the streets. BTW, I do not even believe in having easy access to arms. On the other hand, one boy here in Spain, a few years ago killed all his family with a katana. They blamed computer games, but the psicologists said different things.
One thing that I believe in controling is the age limit, because it’s then that the being is constructed, and it’s influentiable (?? not in the dictionary)

I do not like free violence, but I do not think that fiction should be censored. If some guy expects a porn show after viewing a porn film, he will be disatisfied. I repeat myself, I think that the change must be made in the society, so we can see that is fiction, created to amuse us, makes us laugh or turn us on.
And in spanish we say: para gustos, colores. Something like, for anybody’s opinions and likes, plenty of cholours to choose. So maybe I like the alpha male now and then. Or not. The thing is that nobody is obliged or hurt.

But, I think that one thing is reality and another is fiction. Of course one has responsabilities, but the reader has to be mature enough to discern

On that note Ines, I fully agree with you.

I guess my question here is: Are there really Romance authors who are writing rape scenes as entertainment? Because that would seem to posit that rape = hot sex.

Color me confused, but I still think that if we are meant to react to something in a book as a rape, that is an act of intentional sexual violence/violation against someone, and not some other sexual construct (rough sex? near rape? forceful seduction? not sure what to call this), the author needs to make that pretty clear. When they don’t it leads to the kind of reactions people here are talking about.

When I find myself questioning the consent of the heroine, I look for signals from the author that imply consent. If they are lacking, that really bothers me, because it leaves me with the feeling that the heroine may have just been raped by the hero, which is not a notion that I find “hot” at all.

As a side note and somewhat off-topic: I do wish that the term “rape fantasy” would be replaced with something more accurate. I find it extremely difficult to read the term without fearing that others will read it and blithely assume that women fantasize about actually being raped. It just seems to encourage misinformation, you know?

Oh, god: is that Patricia Gaffney’s ‘To Have and To Hold’ there under the rape paragraph?!  I’m new to the romance scene, so I really don’t know.  A co-worker gave me the book about a week ago, claiming it was the best romance EVER, and I’ve been wanting to read it, but…  is there rape?  Is it pretty bad?

For reasons I’d rather not go into, I have a difficult time reading about heroines being raped by heroes, and I’d like to know in advance if this book is bad in that respect.  Maybe I should just skip it entirely.  :/

Oh, god, ignore my comment on this page about ‘To Have and To Hold’.  I posted under the wrong entry.  Sorry!

As a side note and somewhat off-topic: I do wish that the term “rape fantasy” would be replaced with something more accurate.

Megalith—I was thinking the exact same thing this afternoon. “Rape fantasy” is something of an oxymoron. Sure, some people fantasize about forced seduction, but rape? Real, honest-to-God rape, wherein someone holds you down and forces himself inside of you, and takes enjoyment from your suffering?

Forced seduction fantasies, where there’s a real power struggle, and the person in the vulnerable position wants-it-but-doesn’t-want-it seems more realistic.

Just another $.02 from me…wish I had this much to say about my dissertation…

In BDSM the term is Rape Fantasy but if you want to use something more PC then Ravishment is the other accepted term.

I use the term due to my age. It’s just what we called it when describing a scene that was play acted as non-consensual.

Kidnapping and other such scenes.

Being raped by your husband happened then.  If course it happens now too both in the US and elsewhere.

I don’t finds the time period changes how unsexy I find it as a fantasy.  Others do, that’s fine too.

Oh dear.

I’m a woman, but not a feminist. I think terms like that are unnecessarily divisive, and encourage an “us against them” mentality. I am a “humanist”, though, and strongly disapprove of violence against anybody.

I work at night and walk alone to my car. It isn’t far from the exit, but the parking area is dimly lit and quite isolated. I never feel afraid of being raped. And no one is going to tell me that’s just because I’m one of the lucky ones who’s never been through it—I was sexually assaulted by two older teenage boys when I was thirteen.

I didn’t take self-defense classes, I don’t carry a razor in my stocking, I don’t even always lock my car. There are times when I have felt afraid walking at night, or even in daylight. I’m guessing that most men would also have felt afraid in those situations—maybe not of being raped, but of being assaulted or killed.

I can see why Teddy Pig would find the term “victim class” to be offensive. I find it offensive myself. I also detest the term “violence against women”. There’s plenty of violence against men out there, yet we’re not so horrified by it as to give it its own little title.

And if you can’t see my point, put yourself in a man’s shoes, afraid to walk to his car at night, and not feeling like he can ask a security guard to escort him because it would make him look like a pussy. Do you really think men are never aware of their own vulnerability to violence? Do you honestly think most men feel safe walking alone to the convenience store at 2:00 a.m.?

Violence of any kind sucks. People need to be better to each other. But that doesn’t mean I want my historical novels watered down with modern-day morality.

A line from Lenny on the Simpsons (I paraphrase): “Those Germans are pretty good guys. I mean, sure they started WWII, but that’s why pencils have erasers.” Well, if Germany is a modern, enlightened, agreeable country today, part of the reason is that pencils DON’T have erasers. You think they write books where the Nazis were all nice guys because to do otherwise might make someone feel uncomfortable? And do you think that a 14th century dude who shoves his unwilling wife down in the straw can’t possibly have any redeeming qualities?

Christ, if we don’t once in a while face the reality of what humanity once was, we’ll never know just how far we’ve come. Or how far other cultures still need to go. I’m not saying that kind of realism is for everyone, or that some women are wusses for being put off by it. I’m just saying that in the proper context, it has value.

In a historical, if the heroine forgives and comes to love her husband who raped her, because there doesn’t seem to be any decent alternative, it doesn’t make me feel like I deserve to be treated like that. It makes me feel lucky that today, in my culture, I have the option of pitching his no-good ass out on the stoop. And having him prosecuted. And then probably taking him for every penny he’s got.

I’m always in favor of being reminded how lucky I am.

And holy crap! What kind of “mainstream” porn are you people watching? Or am I just a naive Canuck? Because any pornography that depicts sexual violence or non-consensual sex is in violation of Canada’s obscenity laws.

Ditto Kis…..I’m a woman who would slap anyone who insulted me with the term ‘feminist’.

When the feminist movement started, it was a good thing….now it makes out that the only victims worth worrying about are women, that the majority of men are evil sex monsters and that nothing that happens to a man could be as bad as what happens to a woman.

Don’t get me wrong, I was and am still very active and vocal in women’s issues in Islamic states etc.  They do have it horrible, and we have little to bitch about.  I’m not saying there aren’t problems, but the me me me—-us us us attitude of so many Western females is tiresome.

What concerns me is that the ‘ideal’ world that some women want would have boys for men or at least those with teeny weenies, no chest hair, no muscles and itty itty schlongs that would never mess up or bother a delicate female HooHoo.  And men who aren’t men, just beaten down creatures allowed to live in the presence of the Princesses.

And sex would be this vapid, super quiet thing with the woman totally in control at all times, because if the man dares get passionate, she’s being victimized.

NO!  I am not advocating rape!  I know what it is, I know how the mind of a rapist works, and I’ve have the ‘pleasure’ of dealing with some.

All I’m calling for is a middle ground were testosterone is a good thing, where men are valued as much as women by their women.

But I do know that I’m seeing a trend that the books with the most vapid sex scenes and man not even acting like a man are getting high praise, and those that have the blind passion, out of control, ripping each other’s clothes off, man ‘possibly’ being stronger are getting trashed.

BTW, just about any TV commercial supports this belief men are stupid Neanderthals and women are the true ones with the brains—- reverse the gender roles and have a man talk to or treat a woman like she does on TV—— NOW would firebomb the TV stations.

PS, I don’t see ‘forced seduction’ as an accurate term either.

Rape is about a hatred of the gender of the other person (and often the rapist hates himself too) it’s about pain, degradation, humiliation, harm, hurt——and not sex.  A true rapist is an ugly, twisted person with very little chance of rehab or change…..which is why I don’t buy the personality change in whathisname in “To Have and to Hold”.

Someone who has been sexually abusing someone, aka raping them without emotion, doesn’t suddenly get bitch-slapped by a conscience and change.  It takes a trauma, a near death experience, severe physical or emotional pain OR extensive long time therapy for a person raping a woman in chapter 3 to start being a kind lover by chapter 20.

Since none of the above happened, the book was so wrong and unrealistic to me.  I could never believe in his change because, well, it wasn’t in his character to change to the degree he changed.

What I’ve read in many cases that have been described as ‘fantasy rape’ scenes are pretty much swept away by passion to the land of wild monkey sex.  Sometimes the guy is way ahead of the woman in desire and arousal, the woman may be a few beats behind, or even a bit cluelesss.  But they both have a strong attraction to one another—mental, physcial and emotional.  So the up against the walk, clothes ripping, banshee screaming sex makes sense and I can follow along and believe it.

This is a little off-topic, but since two people have said “I’m not a feminist, but…” I can’t help but add my own thoughts on that.

Feminism lost its battle when the socially conservative redefined it to mean “hatred against men.”

I love men. I really do. I believe that most men are good, honest people who hate the idea of hurting anyone. But I’m proud to call myself a feminist, because I recognize that men and women have been damaged—and continue to be damaged—by a cultural mindset that requires specific kinds of behavior from both sides, and that punishes those whose stray from those behaviors.

Maybe “humanist” is a better term, b/c most modern-day (Third Wave) feminists see the struggle for women’s equality as only one part of the larger struggles—equality for the LGBT population, for religious and ethnic minorities, etc. But “humanist” already has its own connotations, and I haven’t seen a better term rise up to take either word’s place.

Feminism isn’t about making women out to be victims. It does, however, recognize that the dominant culture still places men in more powerful positions. Of course violence against men exists—in fact, men are far more likely to be attacked by someone on the streets, and, I admit, I would not want to be a man faced with sexual harassment, b/c that is damned hard to prove, especially for a guy.

But you know what the difference is? Women are far, far more likely to be attacked by someone they trust—friends, family members, husbands, boyfriends. Those attackers are overwhelmingly male. You look at the domestic violence statistics—oh, yes, men get abused by their wives and partners, too, but numbers don’t even come close—and you tell me that violence against women, committed by men, is not a serious issue in nearly every culture.

Maybe we shouldn’t be afraid of walking to our cars alone at night. Maybe we should be afraid of the guy we asked to walk us home. (But I’m in a college town, where sexual assault is rampant, and where the overwhelming majority of those assaults are committed by friends of the girl or guy in question.)

And kis, in the US, pornography is by and large protected by the First Amendment. A lot of mainstream porn can bring in violence, though I think the majority of it simply goes for more subtle forms of degredation. (And, for the record, I’m a proponent of pornography—I am just aware that some of it can be offensive.)

To me, the ‘hatred against men’ aspect of feminism was created by the verbage and behaviors of many feminists themselves.  Which caused most mainstream women who

GASP! Wanted to follow the more traditional paths like being HORRORS!  STAY AT HOME MOTHERS! Loving wives, feminine high heel wearing, shave their legs, romance reading, love men who were masculine and protective kind of women…...

Well, it caused those chicks to run in droves, like me and my kindred, away from the term and the label.  It’s a pretty negative image, and getting all pissy about golf club memberships doesn’t make us any more fonder of the title.

I’ve always found it interesting that feminist would support a woman’s right to choose, as long as she chose what they approved of….. It’s not about supporting all women, just those who live up to our expectations of the new age perfect female who sees motherhood as no where near as valuable as working outside the home.

As for rape, I agree, it’s a woman’s issue primarily.  But it’s not ‘the’ most important issue on my agenda in life.  BTW, I was molested as child and had a rape attempt in college, so I do understand, believe me.

But I’m daily trying very hard not to let those events a.  Define me.  b. Judge all men by a few.    Believe me, its a struggle.  Maybe that’s why I read romance.  Maybe that’s why I’m attracted by certain types of males and totally cold about others.

Honestly, I’m try very hard to view men as having the same lives we do, with things they love and things they fear, and to respect that.

I hope that those who are insulted by the term ‘feminist’ don’t vote, work in any position of power), complain of sexual harassment in the workplace, use birth control, take maternity leave, participate in sports or have your daughters do the same, or have the need to recourse to a domestic violence shelter because all of these things were won for you by feminists.

Traditionally ‘male’ traits of strength, honor, etc that we’re supposed to be appreciating men for are good traits for anyone to have.

I’m not sure what ‘boys’ feminists are supposed to be wanting instead of men. Mutual respect, value, and kindness? Consideration of both spouses? I didn’t know what those were traits of boys. I’m still not sure what penis length has to do with it all unless it’s referring to the wacky notion that BOTH parties should want to have sex before the sex actually occurs, that it isn’t a chore for one that society has told her is her duty, along with a well-scrubbed floor.

It’s not about supporting all women, just those who live up to our expectations of the new age perfect female who sees motherhood as no where near as valuable as working outside the home

Except for some of us it is.

I firmly believe that staying home with your kids can be the toughest and most important job in the world, and if that’s what a woman wants to do, then she should be praised for it. Actually, if a man wants to do it, HE should be praised for it, too.

But I also want to have the option to not stay home, if that’s what I want. Or to not have kids. Or not get married.

I shave my legs every day. I wear lipstick and never leave the house without eye makeup. I prefer skirts to pants. My hair comes down to my butt.

A handful of

crazy

radical feminists in the late ‘70s and part of the ‘80s were co-opted (in part, I agree, through their own doing) as THE feminist movement. Never mind that the majority of feminists—yes, the majority—do not agree with them. At all. Sure, there’s disagreement in the ranks, but that isn’t a bad thing. Feminists should have dialogue and discussion—it’s all about that right to choose. To really choose.

Like any movement, feminism is not and should not be defined by one small group who claims its name. I’m also a Christian, and I struggle against those who would see me as reactionary, anti-gay, anti-evolution, etc., just b/c some people who claim that name are.

You are, of course, entitled to not call yourself a feminist. But as a feminist, I really, really resent being lumped in with a group of people whose ideals are downright offensive to me. And don’t tell me that it’s my fault, b/c I choose the label. Is it also my fault that some Americans are asshats, and therefore, b/c I am an American, I am by definition an asshat? I would rather fight to reclaim the real meaning of the word, just as I’ll fight to be a Christian and an American without having those things be defined only by their worst members.

Miranda,
I’ve worked since I was 16, I’ve voted in every election since Carter, I’ve worked in positions of ‘power’ since I was in my mid 20’s, had as many as 50 employees answering to me. 

And I would still take ‘feminist’ as insult.

I built the majority of my own house, from pulling wires to putting the drainage in the crawl space. I have my own collection of power tools, a gun, I fix my own mower.  I’ve carried 2 tons of flooring, one box at time and tiled my entire house.

I’ve fed cattle, been ran over by pigs, rendered lard, picked butter beans at 6am and was treated like ‘one of the boys’ on the farm.

And I would still take ‘feminist’ as an insult.

I’ve was the bread winner for most of my marriage, supported a sick (crazy mean) husband, worked at one point 70 hour weeks to see that we kept body and soul together.  And I’ve had sexually inappropriate coworkers.  I can honestly say the 3 bosses from hell I had in my 27 year career were all females who had no business being in the jobs they were in—- but they were ‘effin bullet proof and to this day, I’m not sure why.

I know the difference between boys and men.  And our current cultural icons, our current male ideals are light years away from the ‘men’ that I looked up to in my past.  Everything from height, weight, body hair and even vocal depth—- to character, values, attitudes and behaviors.  So yeah, we are a culture that has boys instead of men as our standard.

Even deeper, it’s now bad for a romance hero to rescue the heroine.  How dare he be protective, or the least bit dominant!  How dare he be stronger.  How dare he be her superior occasionally!  How dare he be better at anything than the heroine!  It’s bad if he’s truly male, because that’s suddenly ‘alpha’, which is why I find myself shaking my head when what I consider just plain ‘ole men labled “alphas”. That is what I mean by boys versus men. 

So yeah, my favorite men are those that most feminists would turn their noses up at….Good ole boys who call you ma’am, open doors for you, will tell someone to mind their manners in front of you, punch someone’s lights out if they hurt you, will lift the heavy stuff for you, and work a shit job so you can stay home to raise the kids.

All they want is respect (we are in agreement here) and be treated like a man, not a boy.

Then you dishonor the women who won you those rights. But don’t worry - the liklihood of you being called a feminist is practically nil.

As for staying home with the kids, that’s fine. Hopefully, your spouse will not become ill, get laid off, become abusive, or divorce you. At that point, you may wish you had a marketable skill.

I also hope that shit job hubby is working either has some good insurance or that no-one in your family becomes seriously ill. My mother’s cancer opened my eyes to medical bills and she had good insurance. Many people are one disaster away from bankruptcy. That must be a high-paying shit job if it can support a family on one income.

I wonder how those good ol’ boys treat women who aren’t you. Do they support the rights of gay women? Women of color? People of color, for that matter. Or just ‘their’ women?

As for the “OMG feminism won’t let you wear makeup!” argument, it’s pretty much a non-issue except for various individual philosophies (even among us ‘crazy’ radical feminists). However, what it might ask you to do is analyze your need to wear makeup in the first place. The cosmetic industry is built on the principle that a woman’s natural appearance is unacceptable. If makeup is so nifty, why don’t men wear it? Why are blue eyelids and lined lips the property of women? How do you feel about workplaces that require women to wear makeup?

I think you just made my point for me darlin’. ;)

*Sigh*  Some of us really old broads remember when men and women were paid different wages for the same work…but women were charged the same rent as men.

I became a feminist over 35 years ago and for most of my life have been a card carrying member of NOW and other feminist organizations.  And I wear makeup, shoes and handbags that match (or at least coordinate) and was a stay-at-home mom for part of my life.

My dear husband and I used to have wonderful fights over the ERA—he was opposed, I favored it.  Then he went to law school and his eyes were opened to the inequities under law between men and women.  He went on to be president of his FAWL (Florida Association for Women Lawyers) chapter, because he felt it was important for him to support women in his workplace.

I also remember when I became dependent on my husband’s salary to support me and the children, I said to him “I finally understand why women stay in abusive relationships.  I would put up with almost anything to make sure there is a roof over my children’s head.”

The fight’s not over.  As more women enter certain jobs, salaries tend to fall.  For example, bank tellers once earned a wage that could support a family, but that was when it was all men in that job.  Ask a modern bank teller if she can support a family on her pay. Some of us believe constant vigilance is still required to ensure the rights we’ve won for ourselves and our daughters are not chiseled away. 

So yes, I am a feminist, one who likes high heels, romance and HEA endings.

I’m an old broad too….I even remember when the first bra was burned in public.  I also became a member of NOW for a few years and was totally disgusted with the lack of respect women gave for women who dared not follow their ‘standards’. “What do you mean she wants to be a nurse! She should be a Doctor!”  But the girl really wanted to be a nurse.

And this woman has a Masters and wants to be a SAHM.  And this other one who adores her hubby and actually has told her friends off for being bitches when they sit around snarking about their hubbies. And so forth.

It goes both ways.  I was serious about TV and the commercials that make men out to be dolts.  Even here, it’s’ very rare (unlike other book boards) to have women talk about how they like men…their good traits.  Instead their bodies are mocked, their titties are silly and their schlongs are either too large or too small and our hoo hoos are gold plated.

I do agree there are inequalities and unfairness in the world but being a female isn’t what defines me.  I’m in a profession that isn’t the top of the food chain, but my salary is the same as my bosses, because of my degree and experience.  And I was damn serious that one of the bosses from hell that I had KEPT her job because she was female and the uppers where afraid of a lawsuit.

Again, IT GOES BOTH WAYS!

Life is not fair and I guess I pick my battles and prioritize.  I worked all my life because, well, it was either starve or work.  I went to college so I would be able to make more than washing pots. I built my house because it was cheaper than buying.  I couldn’t have kids and while I fostered a while, adoption was too expensive and yes, I waited ‘till it was too late.

If I could be born again, I’d love to have a house full of kids and stay at home with them.  I would still go to school, but there are several chances that I let pass me by because I thought I had forever.

But my life was and is my life and I guess I see the opposite happening. Lots of young women throwing away chances that won’t come again because they can’t see the blessings they have in the here and now.  The perfect man doesn’t exist, but a good one is there in front of you.  Yeah, that degree is good, but afterwards, have that life and kids you want!

Anyhow, my wars are different and my personal goal is to make it a point to love men, because it IS a war for me.  I can, and sometimes do slide into a bashing bitching mode and I don’t want that…..  And that’s why romance has been a great source of healing for me.  It helps me love men, understand them better and see myself in a different context.

Anyhow, my wars are different and my personal goal is to make it a point to love men, because it IS a war for me.  I can, and sometimes do slide into a bashing bitching mode and I don’t want that…..  And that’s why romance has been a great source of healing for me.  It helps me love men, understand them better and see myself in a different context.

Oh my, as a man who has dated men his whole life. They are pigs I tell you.
Do not try to understand them they will drive you insane! The best way to handle them is to just rent them out for the weekend.

Unfortunately they get attached to you and then the trouble begins.

LOL!
Teddy—why do I feel sometimes like you’re me with a penis?  Dayum!

I’m in a profession that isn’t the top of the food chain, but my salary is the same as my bosses, because of my degree and experience.

Then you’re extremely lucky—and I have no doubt that you’re also very good at what you do and hardworking.

But women do STILL get paid less than men for doing the same jobs with the same amount of experience and the same college and/or post-college degrees.

I’m sorry, Nadija, that you had such a wretched experience with the feminist movement. For what it’s worth, when I see so-called feminists who denigrate women’s choices, I get offended. B/c, in my opinion, they’re the ones undermining the idea of equality. They’re the ones furthering the racist and classist issues that have hurt feminism so badly.

But I’m not giving up my ideas of equality or the word that defines them for me just b/c I think those people are wrong.

(And I’m not trying to force a label on you, either. I just hope you can respect those of us who choose the label for ourselves.)

Miranda—awareness is important. But awareness of beauty standards does not mean we have to flout them if we choose not to. In other times and other places, men were the ones who wore makeup. Women who wore it were ‘harlots.’ Does that mean men at that time were oppressed by their society’s standards of beauty? Maybe. Who knows? I think that beauty standards are a relatively minor issue in the grand scheme of things (excluding issues of body shape and skin color, which are serious issues for me).

And when I referred to ‘crazy radical feminists,’ I really was thinking of the ones who genuinely hated men, or arguments like—was it Andrea Dworkin who said it?—“all hetero sex is rape.” I call bullshit on that. It’s exclusionary and damaging to the larger social issues at hand. No offense meant to you, Miranda, if you self-identify as radical.

What point is that? That an unexamined life is not worth living? Socrates said that, and he’s a guy, so it should carry some worth.

The workplace commentary is amusing, particularly given this study women’s anger in the workplace where the same behavior in men and women are honored in men and a detriment to women.

Plenty of people love men (especially men themselves). Society falls over itself to excuse their behavior with the ever-popular “boys will be boys”. When they kill their wives and children, they’re called ‘distraught’ if the killings are even mentioned beyond a paragraph. Men murdering women and children is so common as to be un-newsworthy. Women who kill are unnatural bitches, of course.

If holding men accountable for their actions is hating them, that’s fine with me. It seems more respectful of men, actually, than dismissing them with a pat on the head because they just can’t help it.

And fiction’s fine for entertainment, but I’ll stick to reality when it comes to understanding the world around me.

No offense taken, snarkhunter. However, Dworkin never said all heterosexual sex is rape. It was a misquote attributed to her and used by conservatives who didn’t care for her brand of feminism.

link

Miranda is right she did not write that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercourse_(book)

I love wiki, they actually show the parts of the book that show how people got that interpretation though.

That got munged go wiki and look up intercourse (book)

Thanks for the link, Miranda. Good to know that she didn’t write it, though I followed up with some other sites, and she did have a tendency to offer comments that could easily be construed as anti-male.

Anyway. I should really read Intercourse one of these days…

Although the recent posts seem to have traveled away from the original topic, I wanted to return to it long enough to say my peace. As a rape counselor (for both women and men), I see all forms of sexual violence, including spousal rape, more than most people. So I wanted to throw a few things out in regards to the question of whether or not spousal rape in historical romance novels is bad.

1) Spousal (or partner) rape isn’t a lesser crime than any other form of rape. It is just as traumatic, and violating, and horrific as any other form of sexual violence.

2) Rape fantasy is, as others have pointed out, an oxymoron, for two main reasons: 1) the fantasizer controls what happens, and 2) the fantasizer is, by virtue of dreaming up the fantasy, consenting to it.

3) Actual rape is not about sexual desire or sexual release—hell, it’s not really about sex at all. It’s about power and control, and the desire to violate someone else in the most intimate way possible because you feel entitled to.

Actual rape isn’t sexy, or steamy, or erotic, or enjoyable, and it sure as hell isn’t romantic. Rape survivors don’t fall in love with their rapists. Rapists don’t magically change through the love of a good woman (or man). Not then, not now. It’s historically inaccurate to claim otherwise.

4) For those who like these type of books, instead of trying to reconcile your guilt over your enjoyment of the book by hiding behind the pretension of “historical accuracy,” face the hard truth for what it is: some part of you is turned on by domination and submission sex. It’s okay—it’s just a fantasy. Just because this type of fantasy floats your boat, in no way means that you actually want to be raped. Nobody really wants to be raped in reality. Nobody. So make peace with yourself about it. 

5) See these books for what they are—FANTASIES based on an extreme version of the “girl reforms bad boy” plot device, with some D&S sex and HEA endings.

And for the love of god, stop claiming that these books are historically accurate—it’s an insult to the women (and men) who actually were and are raped by their partners.

P.S. I wanted to commend Miranda, snarkhunter, and Angel for your insightful and articulate posts.

Serendipitiously found this - Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, 1405

“Rest assured, dear friend, ... ladies… take absolutely no pleasure in being raped. Indeed, rape is the greatest possible sorrow for them.”

Real ‘historical accuracy’ is not that hard to find.

Gwynnyd

OMG what a fascinating discussion. There are SO many things to comment on here, from the nature of feminism to the Catherine Coulter phenomenon that I hardly know where to start.  So some random comments:

1.  Andrea Dworkin waged a relentless campaign against a New York prison where she was subjected to a brutal (read:  sexually abusive) body cavity search (after she was arrested for protesting the Vietnam War) until she managed to get the facility temporarily shut down.  She raised incredible awareness around the treatment of women in the prison system.  OTOH, I totally disagreed with her approach to pornography. 

In the whole course of history, though, more than one of those “crazy” feminists put themselves on the line in material ways for equities we IMO take for granted today. In other words, they greatly helped in carving an easier path for those of us who would classify ourselves as moderate feminists, as well as those who don’t consider themselves feminist at all.  I was watching a Dateline(?) special on polygamy recently, and one of the young girls being prepared for the lifestyle of plural marriage said she associated the word feminist with an abused childhood. I’m not making any judgment about polygamy, but I just thought that was interesting.  It got me thinking a lot about what “choice” really means, and abut how authentic choices can be constrained by all sorts of means, both ideological and material.

2. I read one Catherine Coulter book, Rosehaven, and what really pushed me over the edge wasn’t the repeated rapes, it was the way IMO the entire book conspired to justify the hero’s position.  At one point, the female servants tell the heroine how “proud” she is and that she basically deserved what she got.  I’ll never forget the ending of that book because the “hero’s” last act was forcing his wife to let him watch her breastfeed their child, after being separate from him and wanting privacy. That made me more uncomfortable, I think, than the actual forced sex.  And that was the END of the book. 

For some reason, in Romance I consider marriage LESS reason, not more, to find rape justifiable, because I expect a certain bond of trust between spouses to be even more acute at the point of marriage.  Because the world of Romance, no matter how historically authentic, is still a world of idealized love, IMO. 

Also, I don’t think the complexities of historical reality make it possible to say that men routinely forced women, that they had the social sanctioning to, or that rape was not recognized as something bad.  Long before the “marital rape exception” was prohibited by the Supreme Court in the mid-80s, many within our society and the legal and criminal justice systems regarded forcing a marital partner into sex as rape (and therefore as bad, if not necessarily punishable *per se* under the law). 

I think what Karly said in her post is SO important:  that there is a confusion (and I mean that in literal terms, a melting or fusing together) of the fantasy and the history in historical Romance, such that we tend to expect certain elements to be idealized but yearn for so-called historical accuracy in others. 

Because it IS difficult, IMO, to embrace the idea of sexual force in an idealized generic context, and the illusion of historical accuracy can soften the blow.  I get that, and I’m sympathetic to the impulse behind it.  But it also frustrates me, because it seems to promote certain myths about history, too.  Like that whole Lord’s First Night bullpucky, that, despite its exposure as a myth (see Alain Boureau’s The Lord’s First Night: The Myth of the Droit de Cuissage), still makes routine appearances in books and films as historical realism.  I so wish we could get to the point where the shame of enjoying a certain sexual fantasy would allow us to drop the pretense of history as a shield. 

That said, I also think rape appears in multiple ways in the genre, and we need to be attentive to the differences between sexual fantasy and real sexual violence toward characters (and yes, the line will differ for each reader).  I also find it baffling that we argue endlessly over the presence of rape in the genre, but not over the myriad graphic portrayals of other violence directed not only at women, but at others, as well, in various genre Romance novels. 

3.  Although I don’t want to get sucked into the whole ‘what constitutes a victim’ issue, I will offer one thing I learned in domestic violence law last year, which is that in over 25 years of studying the victims of domestic violence, there has emerged NO pattern of common characteristics in victims.  NONE (but isn’t it interesting that we started by studying those who are battered, instead of those who batter).  Now that research is being more comprehensively directed at batterers, though, it does seem that certain core characteristics can be identified consistently (including jealousy, need for control, manipulative—none of these things a surprise, I’m sure).  Really, the myths around domestic violence are SO extensive and deeply rooted in our cultural psyche that it’s scary. 

So yeah, when we get into this idea that history was such and such a way—ignoring cultural, temporal, geographic, ethnic, religious, class, etc. differences—I think ultimately that my fear of the perpetuation of certain myths outweighs my feeling that readers need a way to feel okay about being okay with certain things in Romance.  I don’t know what it’s going to take to change that, but I’d love to see that happen.

I also think it would free us up to talk about issues of historical accuracy and authenticity in ways that allow us to confront the places we expect authors to fudge the reality and places we want more realism.  Because clearly there’s a bit of both in the genre, but even that’s clouded with a sort of shared Romance historicism that we so often accept as “real,” when it fact it’s simply passed down from one author to another (like the way Heyer’s portrayal of the Regency has come to be seen as the gold standard of historical accuracy).

Jeez, Najida, if you talked about black people with as much accuracy as you talk about feminists, you could truthfully be called a member of the KKK.

So basically you’re saying if I don’t suck up to the status quo, I’ll get called names?  Do you happen to know the race of my first husband dear? 

Intersting….it seems that we all must be in lock step here, laugh at or bash men and support women, no matter how self-absorbed or how wrong.  No matter what our experiences, no matter how we look back on our own lives and give a bit of warning, no matter how many posts prove our point instead of disprove it.

I also think you just invoked Godwin’s Law BTW, via KKK instead of Hitler. ;)

No, I invoked the hatefulness of your ignorance about feminism. Also, try responding to what I actually said instead of the strawwoman who seems to be your forte. Lockstep? Try not spouting the sort of bull**** that sounds like it came from Rush Limbaugh. You sound, very simply, like a bigot talking about black people, an anti-Semite talking about Jews, or Rush Limbaugh talking about women who just won’t kiss his ass.

Godwin applies only to Nazis, by the way. Spout hatred and what do you think you’re going to get compared to? The Girl Scouts? You don’t have to suck up, you just have to get some facts correct. What you think is true for you is not true for lots of other women, including me and mine. What makes it hateful is the sheer breadth of your ignorance. All feminists to you are evil man haters and it’s significant to me that you appear to recognize only two speeds: man hater or man lover. There’s a lot more than that.

By the way, calling feminists man haters and bra burners comes from the anti-feminist movement. Those are insults that come from the same type of thinking as do any racist terms. Don’t ask why people take exception to your viewpoint when you use such words.

Oh, by the way, Najida? You’re the one who brought up man hating so don’t offer that to me as an option. It’s your term and your accusation. You have to justify it and I don’t want to see some googled non contextual quotes from Dworkin from thirty years ago. You’re the one labeling feminists man haters. You don’t get to set the terms of definition. It’s very apparent you got your opinion of feminists and feminism from people who hate both. That’s not an honest or fair perspective.

Again, you’re proving my point.  You’re calling me a bigot simply because I refuse to label myself to please you.  As for the man hating, again, I see lots of snarks in on lots of boards by feminists (including here) that seem to make out that a perfect world needs less male and way more female.

Any current sit-com BTW, find one where the wife isn’t in charge and leading here stupid husband around by the balls.  Seriously.  Same for commercials. It’s getting old fast.

I never quoted Dworkin, someone else did.  I

I’m purely telling my story from my POV. And I can honestly say this without a shadow of a doubt, that if I conducted a straw pole today with the women I work (the majority are black BTW) from assistant CEO on down, plus the women I’ve danced with, plus those on the various forums I hang out on…. Very few if any of them would say they are feminists. 

That dog don’t hunt and that label is not something I hear around the average working, raising kids female.  Face it, to the majority of American females, it’s negative label and Rush L. had nothing to do with it….You guys shot yourselves in your own feet, repeatedly.
As you are here….

In reading this thread, I can promise you that the majority of women I know would say “I believe in equal pay etc, but I don’t want to call myself that!”

You dear, are the bigot.  The world has to be the way you want it, we have to think the way you want us to, no matter what our experiences to the contrary of your assertions.  Again, it’s simply a label I refuse to wear.  Deal with it.

Najida, dearheart, you don’t get to call me a man hater and tell me I don’t get to object to it. You offer absolutely nothing in support of your opinion, no facts, no nothing, and yet you say that ‘most women’ support you. I sincerely doubt that. Do you have any facts at all? Any research to back up the stuff you keep pulling from your nether regions? Anything at all? Read any books, even? 

Your support for your opinion sounds like so much conservative claptrap. Don’t pretend it’s more intelligent than it is. You’re just revealing more of your ignorance.

Facts, dear. Nothing else. Your opinion is worthless, and that’s all you’ve got——fairy tales and opinions. I doubt like hell you know every woman in America.

Oh, and because you obviously haven’t devoted any thought to it: does the idea that a fat shlub of a guy gets a thin, gorgeous, competant wife who loves him strike anybody else as having a very different message from the “THAT POOR GUY!” version that Najida’s peddling? Incompetant males in commercials and on TV are invariably paired with gorgeous women who do all the work because the message underneath is that it’s realy women’s work and women should just shut up and go back to the kitchen. Meanwhile, every guy deserves a gorgeous wife.

I can reccomend several books to read, by the way, if you’d like read something besides fiction. But when it comes to feminism, that’s evidently all you’ve been reading.

Point taken. However, I won’t tolerate having myself and other women like me called man haters and so forth. That’s not up for debate. With that taken off the table, accusations of bigotry become at least superficially inaccurate.

  I will, however, read with interesting what Najida comes up to support her opinions, unless they come from the very sources I earlier pegged as starting the whole mess to begin with.

Here’s my suggested bibliography. Sorry, don’t know how to do links. Bibliography here.

Thanks!

  I’m going to have to join in the criticism of Coulter—-I got tired of the plot device where the hero thinks the heroine’s a whore and discovers it only when he encounters her steel hymen. The heroine in at least one case expressed reluctance which to my mind means the guy knew she didn’t want to.

  I just don’t read books or authors that use rape. They lose my sale. Then again, I also hate heroes who are the perfect man and have perfect bodies too—-where are they working out, exactly? Guys back then probably had muscles but not the stuff we see today in body builders—-I’m thinking whippets, although the Victorians did have some bodybuilders and the Greeks their wrestlers.

  Women in earlier times certainly did find rape to be distressing and onerous, though they expressed it in more delicate terms than we do now. There’s lots of witness statements from women that they were horrified at what was done to them. It’s just that nobody much cared unless the rapist was somebody not ‘entitled’ to rape them. There are lots of people who believe in that entitlement today. It’s not a rare attitude by any means.

Thank for the person who quoted Christine de Pisan. It irritates the fire out of me when see the claim that women just didn’t have feminist thoughts before the second wave of feminism- duh! There’s a reason it’s called the second wave. The first wave lasted centuries and was acround the globe as well.  The first woman shelter (where women could escape from abusive husbands, and be granted a divorce after three years even if the husband didn’t want it) was in 8th century Japan. Founded by Empress Komoyo.

I suggest reading 19th century feminists writings on the horrors of husbands abusing their wives. They talked about rape as well as phyical abuse. Those ladies weren’t just fighting for the vote. They wanted the vote because it would give them a voice in creating laws to protect women from all forms of abuse and expoitation.

For Leslie and a couple of others here who mistakeningly believe that feminist thought originated in the 1960’s here’s a link to read:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Senecafalls.html

1848 and the most of the issues are ones feminists are still fighting for. And the sentiments weren’t even new then. The majority of 19th century feminist activists had been inspired by Mary Wollestoncraft’s 1797 Vindication of the Rights of Women and Judith Sargent Murray. Before that there was not just Abigail Adams but Mercy Otis Warren, these ladies didn’t exist in a vaccum. Their beliefs were shared by any number of women, and some men…

Ah, Najida, Najida.

Please, continue to feel free to consider yourself not a feminist, and to consider the term an insult if applied to you.

As a feminist, I can truthfully say that I, too, would be insulted if anyone called you a feminist.

Najida, there’s a very good reason we feminists want the world to go the way we want it to go.  Women around the world are dying in droves, the ones who survive are permanently traumatized, and women here are not living up to our full potential at least in part because people like you think the word “feminist” is icky and you think it’s all about how much you are paid for working eight hours a day.  How about being treated like a full human being, not only under force of law but by the mores of society?  You really should pay attention to what even Dworkin has to say.  Not every feminist writer or scholar or activist is going to be right about absolutely everything, but they’re all thought-provoking.  And they make it about a hell of a lot more than paychecks, and for a good reason.  Because if money is all it takes to make us women content with the rest of our lot wherein we are not believed if we’re raped, we’re perceived as oppressing men if we go to college, we’re expected to caretake men’s sex drives by not appealing to them unless we specifically want those men (even if we’re frumpy and shouldn’t be appealing to them anyway!), and on and on and on… Do you get where I’m coming from?  The paychecks are important but they never were the ONLY issue.

V, Ginmar, Miranda et al,

Again, you’ve proven my point about why the average American female finds feminism a negative personna.

End of debate (Sorry SB)

So I guess no facts or bibliography will be forthcoming? Huh, what a shock.

Oh for cryin’ out loud!  I’m in a meeting!  I had just enough time to run to my office, make few calls and answer this! 

What do you want?  And yes, I’ll be honest, most of my experience is anecdotal——from being a member of NOW for a few years, from attending dance workshops with Tribal Feminist chicks, to my professional meetings, to my personal life, to hanging out with the wives/spouses/daughters of my ME bosses when I danced.  I’ve heard both sides of the story.

How dare you and your ilk assume I don’t know or care about women’s issues simply because I don’t make it my definer or the center of my universe?

I’ve worn a burqa, talked to a woman who had FMG performed on her, was part of a charity to get a homebound Morrocan woman medical attention that her father refused.

Again, deal with that I don’t want to be labeled like those I’ve seen wearing the label.  And deal with the part that no, while people have opinions and express them, they don’t keep something that isn’t important to them in their hard drive.  Why would I have a bibliography about what I’ve seen?

Now ask me about the western bastardization of ME dance and the misconceptions surrounding it—- I have data for days.

The plural of anecdote is not data. While we’re conparing resumes, here’s mine: learning two other languages, fighting in a war—-now I’m sure you wouldn’t stoop to saying I wear combat boots, would you?——living in foreign countries, talking to women in twenty different countries, getting shot at, getting harassed by men of my own country, getting injured in a war, and all the other things that come with sixteen years of world travel. I’ve also been a ballet dancer, a fast food worker, and security guard. At every level and in every country I’ve seen some of the same sexist behavior. And that was before I started researching. I’ve served in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq both. That enough of a C.V. for you?

God, I swear that is the last comment I’m going to make that’s off topic. My email is ginmarie at gmail dot com.

Thank you for your service.

I burned my bra years ago and it made a lovely flame.  But I couldn’t stand the jiggling, so I bought a new one. 

I think that Najida doesn’t like the term “feminist.”  However, since her pay is equivalent to men, she does enjoy some of the benefits women have been fighting for, lo, these many years. Kinda like an “independent” who always votes Democrat, but doesn’t like the label.

I’m ok with that.  I don’t think I’m a man-hater—been married for 28 years and raised two sons, all three of them still alive.  With an Irish temper, that’s saying a lot. 

I hope the day comes when young women completely take equality for granted and think that it was always the status quo.  Then me and my fella bra burners will have done our job.

Should add that many feminist bloggers are currently under an attack by a bunch of script kiddies, so several of ginmar’s links are currently down or private.  If you want further proof of the need for feminism, you might want to google around and view the death and rape threats that these women have received for daring to believe that they have the right to put their opinions on the internet.

I’m going to have to join in the criticism of Coulter—-I got tired of the plot device where the hero thinks the heroine’s a whore and discovers it only when he encounters her steel hymen. The heroine in at least one case expressed reluctance which to my mind means the guy knew she didn’t want to.

I just don’t read books or authors that use rape. They lose my sale. Then again, I also hate heroes who are the perfect man and have perfect bodies too—-where are they working out, exactly? Guys back then probably had muscles but not the stuff we see today in body builders—-I’m thinking whippets, although the Victorians did have some bodybuilders and the Greeks their wrestlers.

I think this is why it’s not really a tangent to talk about feminism in a thread like this—because really, what’s at stake here, IMO, is how we feel valued as women, and how our cultural expressions do or don’t reflect that.  And Romance cuts right to the quick of some of these issues, because it deals with women’s sexuality, with our social/class/cultural backgrounds, with our idealized images of love and marriage, with gender stereotypes, and with how society circumscribes our behavior and our choices.  In some ways, Romance can be incredibly subversive, especially when you have a woman or a couple who fight a system of basically arranged marriage for the choice of love.  Or it can be somewhat reactionary in, for example, presenting the notion that a woman’s virtue lies in her virginity.  And, of course, we’ll all likely argue about which books fall into which category.

Which is the fun.

But it’s also a big deal, because women put a ton of pressure on ourselves, and inadvertently, on each other, in part, I think, because we haven’t yet gotten to the point where we recognize a uniformity of purpose beyond our circumstantial and ideological differences.  I always, for example, have to hold myself back when the characterization of feminists as anti-male comes up, in the same way I have to restrain myself when the answer proposed to pornography is censorship.  And it frustrates me that we keep defining these debates in the extreme, even though I understand how much easier that is than actually parsing through the much more subtle distinctions that line the middle ground. 

So in a way, I think that when we can talk about Romance, at least, maybe we can start getting to some of these more difficult issues—to how we each do and don’t see this expansive genre reflecting those values we hold ourselves.  And how we can be engaged in that discussion and debate such that the engagement itself becomes its own uniformity of purpose.

Oh, Najida.

The ‘average American’ find feminism negative?

I didn’t realize that a world-wide human rights movement was also a popularity contest.

Certainly, since the ‘average American’ does not overly concern himself/herself with issues like the inequitable effects of poverty, war, literacy rates, sex trafficking, etc of women around the world, I, too, should be silent.

But as long as you have your paycheck, dear.

I put pressue on other women, I know, because after twenty countries and two languages, I know I can walk into a room of women and find common ground. It’s harder with men because often mens’ interests are in opposition to what’s good for me. Some groups of men who suffer from discrimination see discrimination against women as similar to what they go through. Sometimes they react by clinging to their manhood as it gives them the comfort of knowing ‘at least they’re not women.’

I have to tell you, there’s nothing more eye-opening than being in Iraq and wearing a helmet, gloves, combat boots, face goiter to protect my fishbelly white skin from the sun, goggles, thirty pound flak vest, carrying a rifle and pounds’ of ammo and then seeing a woman walking quite comfortably along in a burka and realizing there’s more than one definition of restrictive clothing—-and who knows, right? Her outfit sure looked a lot more comfy than mine, or at least more constrictive. Flak vests aren’t designed for people with boobs, let me tell you.

I have a hard time with romance because I’ve gotten used to being one of the boys, and I’ve questioned what’s feminine and loveable and what’s not. I just know I want to be accepted and loved for everything I am, soldier and ballet dancer and all, and I want to read books that reflect that. I mean, I have this weird idea that you can love somebody but that doesn’t mean you like them. And I think that’s what unnerves me about a lot of romance in this vein——how often do you see the Bogie and Bacall type banter that means the characters really like one another, that they find each other’s company incredibly entertaining and comfortable? Maybe that’s not possible where the guy’s an alpha, but I think I know some alpha females, too, and real alpha guys—-like the Special Forces guys I knew in Iraq——used to compliment me on being professional and stuff rather than find it threatening. My opinion might be weird because of my background but after reading lots of romance I just can’t shake the feeling that the heroes don’t like the heroines much, nor care for their welfare or feelings.

Najida, in particular, is an interesting case, because she seems to grasp exactly what rape is about on one hand, and then vociferously denies that what she’s read and enjoyed constitutes rape.

While I know this is “Kick the Shit Out of Najida Day” and I hate to interupt the parade on my way to the ER—- can you site what I like that you consider rape and I don’t?

Not saying that you might be right, I just don’t remember the specifics.  May the the head wound.

I have a hard time with romance because I’ve gotten used to being one of the boys, and I’ve questioned what’s feminine and loveable and what’s not.

I’m not and never have been in the military (thank you for serving, by the way, and I mean that most sincerely), but I also find that I have numerous problems with the way femininity and loveability are defined in Romance. Female characters, in particular, seem to have many restrictions on how they can be portrayed, although I think male characters are quite constrained, as well, even though we don’t talk about it as much. Jane of Dear Author wrote a very interesting opinion piece on this topic:
http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2007/08/07/romance-choices-falsity-alone-and-miserable-or-together-and-happy/

I mean, I have this weird idea that you can love somebody but that doesn’t mean you like them. And I think that’s what unnerves me about a lot of romance in this vein——how often do you see the Bogie and Bacall type banter that means the characters really like one another, that they find each other’s company incredibly entertaining and comfortable? Maybe that’s not possible where the guy’s an alpha, but I think I know some alpha females, too, and real alpha guys—-like the Special Forces guys I knew in Iraq——used to compliment me on being professional and stuff rather than find it threatening.

I don’t think it has to do with whether the hero is alpha; I think it has to do with how the author takes time to craft the relationship between the two characters.  IMO it’s much more difficult to portray characters who are bonded through more than sexual attraction or mutual appeal; showing real affection or respect requires a certain fleshing out of the characters, a marrying of different characteristics and a sense of emotional intimacy that grows over time.  While I don’t think such a thing is impossible in the factory farming publishing model currently in vogue, I do think it’s more difficult, and more often than I’d like, that sense of emotional and personality connection between the characters is shorthanded into sexual attraction or sparring or whatever.  To use one of my favorite analogies—food—I’d say that when that deeper connection between characters is missing it’s like munching on too much snack food—you may get an initial charge, but you feel hungry and tired again way too soon. 

Honestly, I think that people in any long term relationship go through periods where as much as they love their partner, they just don’t like him or her.  I don’t know if I want to read this in Romance where it’s intentional—that is, where you don’t have the hero patronizing the heroine to show how “alpha” he is.  That’s an interesting possibility, actually, but it would take quite a good deal of skill on the part of the author, I think.

I just finished reading Susan Johnson’s Forbidden (I’m working my way through her old historicals), and despite some REALLY over-dramatic writing I LOVE the way she portrays the real difficulty in having two strong (alpha) characters fall in love and try to carve out a satisfying life together.  Oh, it was so delicious to watch Daisy and Etienne become angry with each other, really angry, wanting sometimes to actually hurt each other but unable to go through with it.  And then to watch them struggle with their extreme feelings, and the inevitable compromises they each had to make to be together.  I so wish that more Romances today burrowed down into the protagonists’ personalities and ferreted out all those nuances of an emotionally and physically intimate relationship.

Let me be very clear….
I’m a big of Linda Howard,
I like some, not all of Woodiwiss,
and I stopped reading Lindsay and Coulter for the reasons being discussed here.

What is the kicker for me is the female’s choices and her own internal sexuality.  If she chooses, if shes attracted, if she feels safe and if the biggest battle is with herself than with him, I can buy the scene.

In THATH, the heroine has been previously sexually abused, horribly.  She’s pretty much a mess.  Then Sebastian comes along and well, continues the abuse in the same coldblooded vein.  And even, up until the very last second, is going to hand her over to his friend as a sex toy.

But like a car going 80 mph doing a bootleggers turn, he suddenly gets a heart.  It’s been a while since I read the book.  He may have had some squicking going on inside his head, but I didn’t buy the change.  It’s too sudden with too little trauma or motivation.

Humans do not work that way, usually (I’m not saying it has never happened in the history of humanity, but I don’t believe it’s a common event).

Even squickier is the heroine falling for her rapist.  Simply because she has had her choices taken away, and pretty much captive (if I remember, she doesn’t trust him for a very long time in the book).  And her sexuality is nil.

So her behaviors I don’t totally buy either.  So the book is a major ickfest for me.  Again, distancing himself, allowing her time to heal and THEN trying to seduce her I could have bought, but he was having sex with her I believe soon after his ‘change’.

I find it interesting that some people insist on reading those scenes as sex and sexual desire, and that the woman needed to be persuaded more forcefully.

Although I think the genre sometimes facilitates this ambiguity, Candy.  Take my favorite bandwagon example, Christina Dodd’s A Well-Pleasured Lady.  The heroine (Mary?) is forced by the hero, and at the beginning of the scene, she displays what reads to me like *real* distress, for quite a while, actually.  Then, of course, through the magic of the hero’s wicked wand, she’s converted to the astounding pleasure of her own magic hoo-hoo, and has the orgasm to end all orgasms.  And then, IIRC, she still demonstrates some sense of trauma right aftewards.  In any case, within several scenes (after she’s forced to marry said hero, with whom she’s found in the “compromising post-coital position”), she becomes the temptress/seductress, playing sexual dominatrix to the hero. 

It frustrated me, that whole series of scenes, because I never felt that there was an intent to thoughtfully examine the line between rape and rape fantasy; rather, there seemed an uncomfortable combination of elements that seemed aimed at titillating the reader and elements that reflected how a character like Mary(?) would react to forced sex. And on top of that, there was, it seemed to me, more than a hint of that old ‘she needed to be loosened up by the hero’s magic wand’ justification. 

I just think that there are more than a few occasions where rape or forced seduction or whatever you want to call it is used without a great deal of deliberate reflection (at least it reads that way to me, even if it’s not intended that way on the part of the author), and when that occurs, you get some real mixed messages. 

What works for me so well in To Have and To Hold is that I NEVER had the sense that Gaffney was being careless or confused in what she was doing.  It seemed to me that she understood exactly the line she was negotiating (well, more than one, really), and was writing deliberate ambiguity into those characters and those scenes.  And so I trusted her to bring me through that extremely uncomfortable reading experience safely, and to bring Rachel and Sebastian though safely, as well.

And let me contrast with why I didn’t like the romance in “The Windflower”.  I was almost buying up until the last few chapters.

BUT——
Lets see—-
You have a young innocent virgin who has those around her make choices for her without her consent, starting with her father, then her aunt, then some English nobleman and even the handiman manipulates events in her life!  Total loss of freedom and lack of respect by those around her.

Then she’s kidnapped and put on a pirate ship, nearly drowned, scared silly, and repeatedly locked or tied up.  Granted, she also becomes the dear of the crew and the hero, there’s lots of fluffy bunny happiness, gorgeous prose (yes, I noticed the prose), lots of wonderful characters….

But she’s also terrified out of her wits half the time and nearly dies of malaria also.

The ‘hero’ isn’t around much, he’s even missing for chapters at a time.  And often, when he comes in the picture, the heroine isn’t sure of what is going on between them.  He’s a very nebulous character for the reader, and unlike Anne Stuart, who can pull off “is he bad or is he good”, the tone of the book is too happy and light for him.

And the ‘romantic’ culmination of their relationship is her being taken somewhere by carriage, now scared spitless believing she might be hung.

Then, after trying to escape, and begging people to help her,  STILL scared spitless, then is tied up for the last part of the journey, sleep deprived. 

THEN she’s told that the hero is her intended from the get go, which doesn’t totally put her off, but she’s also pissed off enough to punch him.  Which he laughs at and THEN she’s married by being awoken repeatedly during the vows and ‘yes’ demanded of her.  Forced marriage?

And how do they have their first fluffy bunny sexual encounter?  By him using a marked deck of cards, because he admits later, he couldn’t have got her to do it otherwise.  Trickery to get sex?  Semi-sorta, kinda forced seduction.

PLUS you have exactly one sentence that I remember in the heros thoughts, where he actually acknowledges that ‘gee, I’ve been a rat bastard and she’s been scared spitless for a year.’  No remorse or not near enough for 80% of the book with him either being absent or an ass.

You have one more gratuitous sex scene and the book is over.

At no point does said virgin make a choice about her life, except well, maybe the last chapter…sorta.

Easy fix would have been to give her some choices and some time. Heck an apology and a chapter of groveling maybe (I’m being funny here!)....but I really think the authors wanted to hurry up and finish the book.

Having the balls to apologize for making mistakes is good, but I appreciate self-awareness as well.

Have you read Gaffney’s Mad Dash yet, Candy?  Because something about Gaffney’s Romances occurred to me when I read that novel.  Dash spends a good deal of the book referring to her marital separation as a “game,” knowing she’s walking a line but wanting to test the limits of her safety in a sense.  I think there’s some of that going on in THATH with Sebastian, too. So much of his behavior up until the Sully incident seems of that same variety—he’s testing out the limits of his power and authority, knowing it’s a dangerous game but unwilling to stop himself. 

And that dynamic is really interesting, IMO, because it creates an incredible dramatic tension, of course, but also because I think it polarizes readers in their reaction.  Some find it abusive, while others find that it can be forgiven.  I don’t know what marks that difference, and obviously it’s a combination of different things for each reader and each book, but I know that when I feel that the testing of a character’s own boundaries is a prelude to or part of that character’s ultimate growth, maturation, and ability to love fully and freely, it can really work for me.  Especially when I feel that the “victim” of the other character’s self-absorbed actions has his or her own power, too, and his or her own journey toward self-fulfillment to walk in the course of the novel.

Ultimately, I guess it has to do with how each of us view power in characters.  That a character sees him or herself as powerful doesn’t necessary make it so for me (same for a character who views him or herself as powerless).  I don’t mind differential power relationships in Romance when evening those out seems to be one of the journeys of the novel.  Or when I can see more in the characters than they can yet see in themselves and each other.

And that dynamic is really interesting, IMO, because it creates an incredible dramatic tension, of course, but also because I think it polarizes readers in their reaction.

I think that for me at least, it was that Rachel, for all intents and purposes, was a slave (he bought her, right?—-I’m trying to remember here). Or at least without choices and freedom.

For that, all aspects of the relationship are negated and tainted.  IOW, IF she’d been free to choose, or at least free enough to feel safe.  But Rachel breaks all my rules.  No choices, no freedom, lack of safety and fearing/distrusting the hero AND, the biggie that seems to be ignored, damaged and in need of healing that only freedom, safety, trust AND choices can bring.

I think that for me at least, it was that Rachel, for all intents and purposes, was a slave (he bought her, right?—-I’m trying to remember here).

Actually, Sebastian hires her on as a housekeeper when faced with the reality that otherwise she will be remanded back to prison and then likely to the workhouse until death because she is indigent upon her release from prison and the victim of theft.  No one else will employ her, and Sebastian is absolutely riveted by her, feeling both “pity” and sexual attraction, completely aware of his own hypocrisy and the “murky” motives he has for taking her on.  So at one level you’re absolutely right that Rachel’s “choice” in this case is somewhat illusory—at least for any sane person.  But what really gets to Sebastian is the quick flash of emotion he sees on Rachel’s face, the signs that she has not become so completely “hopeless” that she no longer cares enough to fear for her life.  And yes, at the beginning he taunts her for that, tries to draw the reactions out of her, wanting her to be responsive to him in ways that are incredibly suspect.

BUT, and to me this is the crucial but, Rachel NEVER appears weak to me, only so wholly “remote” from her experience that she is turning in on herself.  Right from the beginning, though, she shows Sebastian certain signs of defiance, refusing to rise to his bait, creating a persona of complete professional competency, wrapping herself in the mantle of her position.  There is resolution in the way she tries to hold herself back from him that, not surprisingly, makes Sebastian even more intent on breaking through that remote deference. 

Because, I think, Rachel is a mirror for Sebastian, a surface against which he suddenly must measure his own actions.  One of the first things he notices about Rachel is her eyes—he thinks she’s blind, in fact—because they are so light (“they looked like crystal,” Gaffney writes).  I don’t doubt Sebastian’s cruel self-absorption during those first few sections one little bit; and even when he’s squirming, as with Sully, he pushes beyond all points of acceptability in his behavior for me.  BUT, because of the change he effects in himself, and because I never saw Rachel as weak, I was able to forgive Sebastian as she did.  Because she does so, IMO, from a position of emotional strength, not from one of weakness.  Rachel, IMO, has great emotional strength but no power at the beginning of the book, while Sebastian has great power but not so much emotional strength.  And somehow, through their most difficult exchanges, they begin to furnish the other with that missing characteristic.  Instead of dying inside, Rachel comes back to life, and while I do not think Sebastian did that, his action catalyzed the process, forcing Rachel to make the final decision about her existence: to live fully or erase herself completely.  And she chooses life.

My reading of The Windflower is similar; what you see as disempowering for Merry, I see differently.  For example, the card game preceding their marital consummation.  At that point in the book, Merry wanted to sleep with Devon something terrible, but she was sort of backed into a corner, having told him how terrible he was, yada yada yada, and really having her pride at stake.  So the rouse of the card game, IMO, provided her an opportunity to do what she already wanted to do while keeping some of her pride intact.  She knows full well that Devon cheated, but by that point it doesn’t matter, because they are both so anxious and yet so full of bravado.  If I thought for one moment that Merry wasn’t really willing, I would have hated that whole set-up, but in a sense I saw it as a kindness on Devon’s part, an understanding that Merry needed to keep her pride. 

I basically see Devon as getting younger throughout The Windflower, as Merry gets older, which is one of the reasons that book works so well for me.  You correctly point out that during the beginning of the novel Devon does not treat Merry with the greatest respect, but I would suggest that he more than redeems himself later when he comes so very close to sacrificing his life for her when she contracts malaria.  They each have their moments of prideful bad behavior, IMO, but in the same way that Merry is “forced” to marry Devon to keep her safe, Devon is “forced” to marry Merry to save her reputation (and put an effective end to his holding on to the false belief that she betrayed him).  I actually thought it was quite brilliant the way the Curtises use some of those old Romance tropes not straight on, but as rouses to allow the characters to do that which they want to but cannot shed their pride long enough to admit to.

So yeah, these books generate great divisions among readers, often around the question of whether the heroine is powerless.  Same thing with Shana Abe’s The Smoke Thief.  I think it often comes down to how we read the heroine in these polarizing books, even more than how we read the hero.

Oh, and I forgot to change “rouse” to “ruse” before hitting submit.

I think very often we take things very literally and apply it to ourselves.  It’s that simple, and we look no deeper than “If this was me, how would I act?  How would I feel? What would I do?  What would I need?”

Nothing beyond that than the story on the surface.  And yes, I feel some kinship with Rachel and maybe a teeny bit with Merry.

In both books, WF and THATH, for me, the simple act of choice, time and freedom, if given to the heroine (by the authors!), would have made all the difference for me.  Then anything would go….

Instead, the off switch was turned for me in both books because I as a reader, wasn’t able to identify with, like or even understand the actions and behaviors of the characters.

I think very often we take things very literally and apply it to ourselves.  It’s that simple, and we look no deeper than “If this was me, how would I act?  How would I feel? What would I do?  What would I need?”

Nothing beyond that than the story on the surface.  And yes, I feel some kinship with Rachel and maybe a teeny bit with Merry.

This is why I think the discussions around rape in Romance can become so heated so very quickly.  Especially because I think that the genre is already so focused on emotional relationships, that it’s difficult sometimes not to read our own emotions into the books and the characters.  I always appreciate it when a reader says simply, ‘I cannot read/stand this book because I have too emotional a reaction to it.”  I’ve got a few of those, too, and sometimes that admission can save a whole lot of misunderstanding, IMO.

After your review of THATH and WF, I believe the major difference is I see the damage and assess the time needed for healing, and don’t see it being there.

You look at the medicine, believe it’ works quickly and see the healed wound.

Just two different views, that’s all.

You look at the medicine, believe it’ works quickly and see the healed wound.

I actually don’t see the healing as quick in either book (The Windflower, especially covers like a year, I think, maybe more?), but obviously, yes, we have different perspectives on how the process takes place and whether or not it’s believable within the frame of the novel.

I want to also explain why I like Linda Howard so much (not her newer stuff, but much of her older stuff was great).

Again, it has to do with the gut reaction I get when I read her books.  She writes about the kind of sexuality, desire and passion that I’m familiar with, it rings truer for me than with many or most authors.  Raw, cliche’, silly, but it more often real and believable than not.  And her men are truly alpha, which, dammit, I really like. 

And yeah, she’s written a few duds, but for the most part, I find that most of her books I can read over and over and still enjoy.

She also writes stories and characters as if she lives in my neighborhood.  It’s spooky, but like I said, a joke that’s been going around, a turn of a phrase, a recipe, even the manner and dress of the characters that are so familiar and comfortable in my world are in her books. 

Maybe it’s the southernness, but I also think it’s about personal make-up and the ability to feel those emotions that I’ve felt and recreate them on a page.  That raw lust tied up in admiration and friendship, body winning out over common sense at times.  And sex that’s like a drug that stays with you for days, it’s that damn good.  Few other authors have done that in their writing.

Now about the oft mocked and maligned “After the Night”—-
The big shlong issue I vaguely remember, but it was just one sentence in a very hot scene in a very good book, to me….

Why do I like this story and not the others?

Faith and Gray have multiple scenes that build on the sexual attraction between them, it’s a gradual burn that LH is a master at creating. 

And even before the big ‘scene’ there is a lot of internal thought processes the reader is privy to on Gray’s part that show his growing affection and most of all, admiration and respect for Faith.  The more he gets to know her, the more he truly likes her, and you as the reader, like him.  The POV changes enough that you know what each is feeling and you know they’re on the same page pretty much at any given time.

Again, you (OK, maybe only I) truly like both characters.

Faith made choices from the very first page.  She’s independent, self sufficient, owns her own business and most of all….  isn’t a virgin, she loved her late husband and enjoyed sex with him.  So she knows what she’s feeling for Gray—mentally, physically and emotionally.  She knows why she’s feeling it and the biggest battle, repeatedly is with herself, not him. 

Again, choice and time are happening.

The reader also knows that Gray is fighting his own attraction to her.  The reader is inside both characters heads enough to like them both, know them both and understand the arousal and sexuality building between them.

The reader as well as Faith knows that Gray won’t hurt her.  The reader knows Faith freely is making choices, even up to ‘the big scene’ where, at least in to me, it’s that her body won out over her mind.

No force as much as he was simply two steps ahead and she caught up….(and yes, he was an ass afterwards) 

At no point did I as a reader feel bothered by that scene.  In fact, for years, it was the benchmark for the hottest sex scene I’d ever read in a book.  Probably still is in my top 5 or so.

Maybe I know and like the primal sexual attraction where the mind is battling the body, and the body (both characters bodies) win.

The first time I read anything negative about LH was here.  The first time I read the term “forced seduction” was here.  But hey, I stayed, trying to figure out what was a good book by y’alls standards versus mine.

I find it odd that THATH is considered a good read—- where the female has no power.  Same with WF.  But again, it’s personal tastes and the overall tone of the board.  I can see why the book would be good to some, but it was a one time read for me.

And because I’ve toughed it out, I’ve read several very good books since then.  A few were disapointing, but even then, I could see why they were good to other folks.

Again, you (OK, maybe only I) truly like both characters.

I’ve never seen any online blog or board where Linda Howard is universally loved, but in any case, I agree with you that After the Night is one of her better books.  In fact, both her gothics are among my favorite Howards (although Diamond Bay will likely always be the pinnacle for me).  I liked Faith right from the start, and I grew to tolerate Gray.  I disliked the first sex scene between the two of them because it caused Faith physical pain (NOT a turn on for me), but I thought the bathroom scene was hysterical.  And I think Howard is in her twisty, melodramatic element with those gothics (ATN and Shades of Twilight).  BUT, I don’t find them romantic, at least not for me.  I love how twisted they are, but for me, Howard’s only real alphas are Grant Sullivan and Kell Sabin.  Yes, I love me those two guys.  Gray was, to me, a bully, even though I accepted he loved and adored and appreciated Faith. 

Now, Dream Man, on the other hand, makes my blood boil, for the very reason you dislike The Windflower and THATH:  IMO Marlie was magically cured of her incredible sexual trauma by Dane’s magic wand.  And there was one scene in which he threw her down on the bed, flipped her onto her stomach, and “drove into her with battering force” that REALLY bothered me.  Yeah, I understand that he’s not the bad guy and Marlie enjoyed it and by that point they had some trust, etc., but that scene still struck me as more insensitive than transformative on *Howard’s* part (not Marlie and Dane’s).  If she wanted to subvert the image of Marlie being tortured and raped in that scene, she did the exact opposite for me.  Many readers hate that he used her as bait, but for me it’s the way he’s intent on “healing” Marlie with sex.  Yes, I understand that he loves her, and yes, I get that he’s “The One,” and yes, I realize that her sense of inertia would need to be interrupted by an external force at some point, but I was not persuaded by the way Howard resolved that various issue.

Little warning—kind of long.

I don’t know if this conversation is still going or not, but I’m wondering if being a fan of Linda Howard is being equated with being anti-feminist. 

Wow.  The world is soooo not that black and white.  I like a lot of her books.  I find a lot of the men sexy beyond belief. 

But then, I’m getting a view of feminism here that I’m not familiar with.  I never, ever equated it with wanting to be better than men or as being someone who doesn’t embrace the differences in men and women.  No, to me it’s equality in rights, that sort of thing.  Jeez, my husband may be several inches shorter than I am, but he’s three times as strong.  That’s nature.  I Luuurrve that about him.  Just as I like that he’s man enough to be thought-derailed by me taking off my shirt.

But I like that he values my feelings and opinions as completely equal, too. I value that he saw the insult when I wasn’t offered the same amount of money for the same position. 

But with this LH discussion, I’m wondering at the separation of fiction vs. reality here.

I’ll give a for instance.  A friend of mine was getting married.  Her fiance left her in the vehicle with his wallet while he ran into a store.  When he came back, he opened the wallet to count his money. 

Appalled, I began to do my best to share how worried I was about this relationship and she blinked and said, “But I thought you love Linda Howard heroes.”

Whoa.  I thought we’d been talking reality.

It’s fiction.  But even in regards to those books, that remark didn’t fly.  Yeah, maybe a couple of those heroes might have done such a thing in the beginning of the relationship (Like Gray in ATN), but by the time they’d reached engagement?  No.  (And yeah, the bathroom scene in ATN was great!)

There are LH books I didn’t love entirely, but one never knows what little thing might turn a person off.

But my point is this friend had missed the ‘point’ entirely. 

She was equating alpha male with brutish, bossy and possessive.  I see it as strong, authoritative (in the world) and protective.  That sooo doesn’t make me any less a feminist.  We can want emotional, economic and political equality and still embrace what makes us gender different. 

BTW, my chapter had a ladies weekend retreat with Linda Howard.  She’s fantastic person who writes fiction, who understands men and shared great stories about her own.  But I didn’t get the idea she’d have a problem with feminism.  Not in the way I see it anyway.  Like her, I believe that we’re all hardwired for certain behaviors—that men and women do think and feel differently about things. 

But, the world evolves.  Maybe our population is such that we need less of the protective caveman type.  Do I think that means he’ll go away?  Of course not, but I also believe there’s room for all kinds of men—just as there is for all kinds of women.  It’s a great, big beautiful diverse place. 

Oh and yeah, Sabin and Grant.  Be-still my heart.  ;)

Again, I think it’s because I know too much (both personally and professionally yadda yadda yadda) to believe that a sexually abused woman like in THATH could be untraumatized by more sex by a nice man.

Uh, no.

So for me (and again, I thought a lot about this) at least from Rachel’s damage standpoint;  The book read the same as if someone got a spiral compound fx of the leg by by getting pushed out of the barn at 8 am, then someone slaps just a bandage on it, and takes them back to the barn at 10 am to jump off with them this time, with the attitude that the ‘together’ aspect of the jump will make it pleasant and it will to make the leg better.

And it does get better!  The next day they’re walking just fine!  Except the book is historical, not a paranormal.

That’s how believable the story line was for me.

I don’t know if this conversation is still going or not, but I’m wondering if being a fan of Linda Howard is being equated with being anti-feminist.

Well, I don’t think so.  I know I was responding to two things:  first Najida’s comment that the SB’s was the first place she saw any negative commentary on Howard (so not true for me), and second her almost perfectly inverse reaction from mine to The Windflower and THATH, especially with my reaction to some of Howard’s books precisely that which she found to be a problem with the Gaffney and Curtis books. 

I’m not one who finds much wisdom in measuring the political views of women by the Romance authors they enjoy.  On the other hand, I *do* think it’s valid to take a look at what kinds of images of women and gender and sexuality that different books seem to offer and to discuss those.  Not because they have any direct effect on real life women, but because they are an idealized representation of life and relationships that draw readers in based on a certain emotional authenticity. 

But then, I’m getting a view of feminism here that I’m not familiar with.  I never, ever equated it with wanting to be better than men or as being someone who doesn’t embrace the differences in men and women.  No, to me it’s equality in rights, that sort of thing.

There is, actually, quite a diversity in feminist thought, including vigorous disagreement among feminists, when it comes to various issues, ranging from the value of pornography to the politicization of female sexuality.  However, the only thing that I’ve seen here that really disturbs me is a fear among women to call themselves feminists, even if they support equality for women.  I know that many people say that labels don’t matter and that sometimes it’s more diplomatic to refrain from announcing that one is a certain “ist,” but I wonder how many people who really believe in Christianity, at least in the US, would make the same argument about announcing themselves a Christian.  Of course Christianity is the dominant religion in the US, so there’s a certain identified legitimacy. 

But with feminism, I think there’s an authentic anxiety around the word that comes from negative associations.  And when moderate, rational, intelligent women are saying they don’t want to call themselves feminists because of how it may appear to some people, that disturbs me, because it—completely inadvertently—can empower the negative images and those who promote them.  Which, to me, puts women back into a place where we must define ourselves relative to other standards.  Because feminism, IMO, is so broad—or should be—and so inclusive, and so capable of cooperating with every other pro-equality category or stance, that I hate to see it co-opted as something exclusive or negative or whatever.

I used to be one of those women who was afraid to call myself a feminist publicly, even though I had the core beliefs soldered to my consciousness.  I made all those rational arguments that people are making here for why that can be advantageous for women, etc.  But at some point, I came to feel that all those wonderfully compelling reasons were really a baseline justification for not wanting to be labeled in an unflattering way.  Personally, I’d rather reclaim the word feminist than bitch, for example, but that’s not to criticize those who are trying to reclaim the other.  It’s simply a reflection of my own feeling that feminism—at its heart—is about no more and no less than the recognition of women as deserving of equitable treatment and fundamental respect in every area of society.  It doesn’t, IMO, mean that you can’t also actively promoting class equity, racial equity, equity for gay men, whatever.  It shouldn’t, IMO, be seen as exclusive, even if there are *individuals* who use it that way.  There are plenty of folks who use Christianity in ways that frustrate many other Christians, as well. 

I think the turning point for me was when I started witnessing Muslims refrain from identifying themselves as Muslim for fear of hateful retaliation for the crimes of a relatively minuscule percentage of violent people who identify themselves with Islam.  Is the refusal to identify as Muslim helping or hurting the image of Muslims, promoting or assuaging understanding and acceptance of Islam as a perfectly legitimate religious belief?  I think as women we need to be vigilant about keeping current with our own rights, not simply the tangible ones, but the intangible ones, as well.  Not that I think every woman who feels uncomfortable with the label should use it necessarily, just that it concerns me to think about what a certain culture of fear around the word means for the empowerment of women *as* equals (or in the case of biological differences like the ability to bear children, equivalent treatment with recognition of circumstantial differences).

BOFH Excuse #56:

Electricians made popcorn in the power supply
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