Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Is it just me, or does Bindel contradict herself in this paragraph?

My horror at the genre is not directed towards either the women who write or, indeed, read them. I do not believe in blaming women for our own oppression. Women are the only oppressed group required not only to submit to our oppressors, but to love and sexually desire them at the same time. This is what heterosexual romantic fiction promotes - the sexual submission of women to men.

She’s not “blaming” women yet they are “the only oppressed group” etc.

Required by whom? Other women?

I don’t feel really oppressed by my husband, thanks.  And none of my sexual interactions or desires have anything to do with being oppressed—rather the opposite, thanks.

AND I can thank romances for a lot of my sexual dominance and self-confidence, because, in complete opposition to Bindel, I happen to think romances are all about teaching patriarchy to treat women as equal. But that’s just me.  What do I know—I’m mindlessly illiterate.

And Andrea Dworkin—don’t get me started.  As Naomi Wolf once said at a speech I went to, in response to Dworkin-esque condemnations of ALL heterosexual sex as patriarchal oppression, “Most women go home each evening and think the penis is their friend!”  Indeed.

While I was reading Bindel’s example paragraphs, I kept thinking, “I’d like to read that!”  (Is that sad?)

I just read a Jane Feather book in which the heroine had been engaging in affairs for some time (while still unmarried!) and chooses quite consciously to have an affair with the hero. 

Maybe Bindel needs to widen her study selection past the 20 M&B she read 15 years ago.  I think there are so many exciting and interesting things going on in the romance novel world.  She might find it drastically different…

Yes, aurianrose, absolutely!  And we also know how well the back-copy reflects the feeling and tone of the actual book—Not!

Help!  Help!

I’m being oppressed!

Although, apparently, as an M & B novelist, I’m not (technically) the oppressor of others.

What a relief.

Wow, what great journalistic commitment, to write an article about a genre you haven’t read for 15 years.  I expect on other pages of the Guardian there were articles despairing that there were no shiny sitcoms about New York twentysomethings, or perhaps praising the marriage of Paul and Linda McCartney.  Or…hell, I can’t remember anything else that happened since 1992.  My brain must be fried by too many romance novels.

(spamfilter: probably21…years since she read a M&B).

>>Help!  Help!

I’m being oppressed! <<

Ow- I just snorted chili.

I don’t buy it. People who quote Andrea Dworkin probably are mega pissed you are reading heterosexual romance.

So I say in the spirit of Christmas we compromise.
Everyone read a Gay Romance with a nasty Alpha Hero subjugating a man who deserves it so.

Let’s give the gift of buttsecks!

I read that article yesterday, and was actually kind of frustrated with both pieces.  But, in response to this discussion, a couple of things come to mind:

1.  I don’t think everything in the genre reduces to fantasy—there are, IMO, social, cultural, and ideological issues that merit discussion.  Or to refine that more carefully, not everything in the genre reduces to fantasy, and even some of those things we might refer to as fantasy (e.g. the savage “Indian” or the lack of Black heroes in mainstream Romance) also have ideological and socio-cultural implications that merit consideration.

2.  Sweeping generalizations about Romance—good or bad—make me itch.

3.  Andrea Dworkin has been demonized far, far beyond her own work both by those who claim to love her and by those who claim to hate her.  That makes me itch, too.  Not that her work isn’t problematic at many levels, but there’s also some important stuff in there (not the least of which was her actual physical protest work, some of which, for example, led to changes in how women prisoners were treated during searches). 

4.  Once again I’m underwhelmed by the defense of the genre in the following terms:  well, no one said it was literature.  Yawn and more itching.

So I say in the spirit of Christmas we compromise.
Everyone read a Gay Romance with a nasty Alpha Hero subjugating a man who deserves it so.

Name the title, Teddy!  That is right up my alley!

and more itching.

I’ve got a tube of cortizone cream here, Robin.  Want it? *g*

I dunno. Certainly I’m not in Bindel’s camp, but I have a very different view of romance novels than people who really enjoy them.

I’ve read maybe a dozen romance novels just for the sake of reading them, and skim-read perhaps a thousand more (yes, really) in my long career as a text designer.

I am not the target audience. (I hang around here because I adore smart bitchery.) I like some romance in my fiction, but I don’t like romance as the raison d’etre of a book.

What I don’t like about Romance novels is that, one way or another, the message is “The best thing a woman can achieve in life is a husband and babies.” Sure, she can be a detective or have wild affairs or run the plantation like no one else, but all of that is secondary to her ultimately finding happiness and fulfillment with her True Wuv and brood of offspring. If the book doesn’t end with that, it’s shelved somewhere else in the bookstore.

(Yes, there may be exceptions. But the overwhelming majority of category romance novels end with the (m/f) couple married, and children either in existence or in the near future.)

I’m not knocking the joy that spouse and children bring. But I can’t help but notice there are few books that say to men, “Hey, you need to find a good woman you can treat like a queen, and you will love taking care of your kids, I swear.”

Heck, where are the books that say, “Lady, thank goodness you never got knocked up, because you never would have found time to colonize Mars if you’d done that”? Or even, “Thank goodness you found a guy who wants to stay home and care for the kids, because the research lab really needs you”?

What I’m saying in that last paragraph is that “women’s fiction” (oh, how I hate that term!) is overwhelmingly about the joys of domesticity, with little balancing factor. Some days I want to kiss Elizabeth Peters, who gave us a heroine who says, “Sure, being a wife and mother is great, but I really want to go dig about in this tomb. Ramses, stay out of the way.” You go, Amelia Peabody.

Those of us who worry about social-structure feedback loops fear this genre as a giant propaganda machine. Maybe it’s so darn popular because so many women are glad to get confirmation that it’s okay for them to enjoy domesticity. Or maybe so many women enjoy domesticity because they’ve been told over and over and over again that it’s great and they should want it.

I think I might feel better about it if Romance weren’t so exclusively marketed to women. Elizabeth Peters’s readership is probably mostly female, but her books are in the mystery section, and no man would feel funny about picking one up. They aren’t ghettoized. Romance, by the nature of its segregation, says “this is what women should be reading. This is what being a woman is.”

But that again is one of the things I like about SBTB. I love that y’all cover much more than the “traditional” romance novels, and point out that smaller publishers and e-publishers are finding a demand for gay romance, group romance, and erotica. I also like that you discuss the romantic aspects of books that aren’t primarily focused on the romance. You range outside of the ghetto, to the place where books is books, and women are readers first and a gender second.

What’s new? Hmmmmmmm…

With Caution by J.L. Langley
From Samhain

or I recently enjoyed

Necessary Temptation by A.D. Christopher
From El Lora’s Cave

Blah, blah, blah…Barf and give me a great big-ass break.  She needs to get laid worse than I do.  Thrown on the floor and good, proper dirty done hard.  If not, then for god’s sake, stop the whining, go read some Plath, and leave the rest of us alone with our Anais Nin kindred souls.

It’s so unfortunate for us poor oppressed women that we can not distinguish fantasy/fiction from the real world!  Oh the pain and suffering we cause ourselves by reading a romance novel.

Yeah right, if my husband or any other man tried to “oppress” me, well, it’s just not going to happen.  I believe that reading my “trashy” romances have actually made me think and act more independently *gasp*.

// You go, Amelia Peabody.//

Hell yeah. 
Something I’ve noticed about Mertz-Peters-Michael’s work is that her heroines usually get the guy - but they get other stuff, too.  They get friends.  They get family.  A lot of the time, they get inspired and excited about a new career - which they get for being smart and tough and funny, as well as having a heart of gold.  (I wrote “loving and sweet”, and then deleted it.  They’re mostly loving, but a lot of them have a healthy dose of sarcastic bitch, and I love them).

What I’m saying in that last paragraph is that “women’s fiction” (oh, how I hate that term!) is overwhelmingly about the joys of domesticity, with little balancing factor.

ITA, although I see the domestication in broad terms.  And I still love the Romance genre and find many ways in which IMO it subverts all sorts of gender stereotypes, patriarchal assumptions, and culturally-determined values (including those of domestication itself).  And I also find many ways in which it conforms to some of those things, as well. 

I’ve got a tube of cortizone cream here, Robin.  Want it? *g*

Let’s see how the day goes, Lorelie, lol.

Right now I’m simply trying to understand why it makes me so frustrated when first wave feminist scholars are demonized, even though I don’t personally identify with much (if not most) of their work.  I think it has something to do with the way in which the distortion of their views seems, sadly and ironically, to kind of bolster some of their more radical paranoia about patriarchy.  And I really, really hate that.

Personally one thing I like about my favorite romance authors is that domestic life isn’t always the end goal, and that one way the Right Guy is identified is that he supports the woman’s career and kicks in his share of the housework.

Nora Roberts’s heroines always seem to have strong, interesting careers that their men totally support, though sure, children are often a part of the picture.  Paranormal romance heroines often don’t end up with babies (and of course, many of them don’t end up married or monogamous, either).

I’ve thought about this one a lot, ever since I had a major Harlequin reading period years ago. Was reading about women of very limited education, worldly power, and even intelligence an insidious way of training me to look for and accept less in my future? The answer was a resounding no. It was frustrating and made me want to do something to improve my own life. Reading about oppressed women (who nevertheless eventually achieved a kind of triumph) did not brainwash me into thinking that being a subservient, victimized person was the road to happiness. I’ve blogged elsewhere about this.

No, I wouldn’t want the Greek Tycoon or the Beastly Billionaire in my life, and I certainly won’t be making any Baby Bargains with anyone. But that’s the point of fiction, isn’t it? To check out something other than one’s real life? I couldn’t be that thin blonde who conquers him in a million years, either.

I, too, have worried that people take fiction for gospel. But books are a reflection of our values; they do not determine them. And when heroines are so obviously not us, how can we think that the heroes are for us, either? The worrying is a waste of time. If the reader wants a fairy tale, there must be a prince. And the Billionaire and the Oil Baron are modern princes, powerful, flawed figures who live their lives on a grand scale. And that’s all.

A stray thought. Romances are a moving target, developing and changing very swiftly. Which is why the criticism seems so often to be about Harlequin, the slow-moving behemoth that makes such an easy target. For cheap shots.

But books are a
reflection of our values; they do not determine them.

THIS! It’s blaming the tail for wagging the dog. Even totally missing the fact the tail is actually attached to an elephant.

Books and Video games and music does not create society. They tend to reflect it’s darker corners though.

If women need to turn to romance to assure them that it’s OK for them to enjoy domesticity, then I say “Go romance.”  Because if that is seriously what they want to do, they deserve some affirmation for it. It’s a hard job.

But I don’t think you give women enough credit, if you’re implying that romantic brainwashing is the only reason someone would choose family over career.

I was talking to someone (obviously more domestic than me) who looked at a daddy/baby romance cover and said, “What could be more sexy then a good looking man with a baby?”

And I was thinking, “A good looking man WITHOUT a baby.  Have you ever met a baby?  Do you know what comes out of them?”  But I also thought, “Whatever floats your boat, honey.” 

Because even though I’ve got the husband/dog/2 kids lifestyle, she has a totally different idea of a happy ending than I do.  And I read and write romance, all the time.  I just don’t usually read the ones that require a husband and kids.  I like heroines who have jobs, other than reproducing. There are plenty of romances out there for me.

I’ll admit to writing heroines who are obsessed with husbands and fertility, but the rules for a happy life were different, several hundred years ago.  My heroines get a HEA appropriate for their time.

But if any of those stories made someone throw over her PhD in astrophysics because I told her she should marry a duke and have some babies?

Well, sorry.  My bad.  But it’s the 21st century.  You should really work on your self esteem a little, if a couple of paperbacks can make you change the course of your entire life and roll back the clock to 1950, when there were fewer options for women.

We need to give all waves of feminism credit for the fact that we have much better life choices available than our grandmothers had.

But I cannot buy the idea that if we read books that we enjoy reading, it is a symbol of our opression by the patriarchy.  How dumb would we have to be as a gender, not to be able to recognize our own personal happiness, when we feel it?  Why do we have to measure it against what other people want us to have?

Of course, all this time, I’ve been reading these books because of the sex, and letting the housework go to hell. Because I like books with sex.

I guess the shut-up-and-clean-the-kitchen message has not been getting through to me.

-E said:

“What I don’t like about Romance novels is that, one way or another, the message is “The best thing a woman can achieve in life is a husband and babies.”

I don’t believe ALL of them say this.  I like my books that have kids and bliss, but I also like the ones where the woman is satisfied with her career. 

I also believe that being a Mom is one of the very most important/fulfilling/damn frustrating things a woman can do.  Face it, when we die and they’re carving a headstone, they aren’t going to put ‘one hell of an editor’, “One Smart Bitch”, “damn fine lawyer” etc.  They will put Beloved Wife/Mother/Daughter (or other connection).  So, if those are the truly important things then, why shouldn’t they be the important things in our books?

Sam

Damn it, I was going to say blah, blah, blah, but someone beat me to it.

So I say: I am oppressed. I am oppressor. I am WOMAN!

And women are not spineless, idiotic emotional pillows who can’t tell reality from fiction.

People who use novels that celebrate love, commitment, good sex as a whipping boy to imply otherwise just make me tired.

Actually, I do think that putting “She was a writer” on my tombstone would be very nice indeed. Because it’s saying something distinctive about me.

As for the beloved mother bit, I’m waiting for my kid to write a tell-all biography excoriating me for my inevitable lacks as same.

“She was a writer” sounds good.

I’m still giggling over Candy’s ‘magic hoo hoo’ comment of a couple of days ago.

Frankly, variety is the spice of life. Hearing that the books I enjoy reading and writing are someow subjugating me… I think not.

Someone brought up the tail wagging the dog syndrome. I agree completely. Doesn’t work for me, either.

My children play violent video games, but you know what? Not one of them have ever beat the crap out of someone afterwards.

I’m divorced and remarried, but not because of a romance novel.

Frankly, I like hetero sex. If only I had a magic hoo hoo!

As for that “primitive desire to be arrogantly bullied” - sure, that might be part of it.  I would argue that some women have it, some don’t; also, that some men have it, some don’t. 

I see no reason why anyone should have to apologise for feeling that desire, nor should they apologise for reading fiction that gratifies it. 

After all, fiction is different from reality, as the romance author points out.  What I want in my fantasy life is frequently totally different from what I want in reality.

//Of course, all this time, I’ve been reading these books because of the sex, and letting the housework go to hell. Because I like books with sex.//

Yes!

I do think the romance genre is intended to be a tool of oppression. The message that happiness (and happily ever after) is found in true love doesn’t do a damn thing to empower women, and seems to me, does quite a lot to distract us from other stuff that could be bringing us a whole lot of happiness and power.

What I enjoy so much about SBTB is that this group is snarky, irreverant, and doesn’t completely buy into the message the books are delivering. We take from them what we want. At least I’d like to think that’s what’s happening.  We’re subverting the powerful by using the tools of oppression to our own ends, as SB Sarah says, “wank[ing] off to whatever fantasy [we] want.”

The detractor was too lazy to read up on CURRENT romance norms.  Lazy writers don’t get to speak to me, thanks.

Do your homework if you want my attention.

aurianrose - I am just the same. Whenever I read excerpts, even from the mostgawdawful sounding books, I always want to read them.

I wonder if I am a total anomaly. I love romances and most of them don’t reflect my actual values in the slightest bit.  My husband is so far from Alpha he proudly proclaims his Epsilon status. I have one kid by choice and many days I wouldn’t mind having fewer. :-\  Politically I am about as left as you can get. Very little in romance reflects me or my life and I don’t care, I just love them. So sue me.

~I do think the romance genre is intended to be a tool of oppression~

I’ve been writing it for a long time and never intended that. I do believe in the power of love, and that it can bring great happiness—and doesn’t have to subvert other avenues of happiness or empowerment for women (or men).

I don’t believe that everyone who reads or writes in the genre—and enjoys it—has to feel exactly as I do. Or write or read Romance for the same reasons I do.

But I can’t agree the message that happiness can be found through love is oppressive—or a distraction.

Which is why the criticism seems so often to be about Harlequin, the slow-moving behemoth that makes such an easy target.

And yet, I’ve read some REALLY provocative Harlequins.  Lately, in fact, I’ve been gravitating toward category books because of the pleasant surprises I’ve found therein.  Just the difference between the latest Jessica Bird category and the J.R. Ward series is almost baffling to me, especially since I found her category so much more progressive.  And I’m STILL trying to figure out what I think about Charlotte Lamb’s vintage Vampire Lover.  Talk about pushing boundaries.

If women need to turn to romance to assure them that it’s OK for them to enjoy domesticity, then I say “Go romance.” Because if that is seriously what they want to do, they deserve some affirmation for it. It’s a hard job.

I think we tend to forget that “domestication” isn’t so narrow as to refer to women being SAHMs, but is rather about “taming” (i.e. domesticated animals) or about cultivation, both natural and social.  And I definitely think that Romance is about envisioning an ideal society, with the family (in whatever form that is created within the story) as the social microcosm.  Which goes back to that broader notion of domestication as the bringing of something natural, and perhaps potentially uncontrollable, into society as manageable and productive.  Like the way the indiscriminate passions of the rake become tamed and focused on the one woman with whom he can experience a “better” passion because it’s circumscribed by romantic love and socially sanctioned commitment (via marriage and children).

Thus you have the stories about the couple who buck what we see as reactionary or regressive social customs, through, say, marrying between classes or races or within genders or marrying for love rather than money.  And you have stories about the woman who longs to have children but can’t and who finally experiences fecundity with her perfect “mate,” as if in blessing of the wisdom of their union and promoting its reproduction (literally and metaphorically) through generations.  And you have the stories about love being a healing force (the traumatized hero or heroine) or a taming force (the reformed rake) or a liberating force (often in terms of the heroine being freed from a dictatorial and/or abusive) family.

None of these scenarios or any other in Romance is *inherently* good or bad, IMO.  Although they do reflect (and IMO sometimes validate) specific cultural values, some of which change over time.  Mostly, I think the genre is trying to work out a whole bunch of stuff on its way to imagining the “perfect” society, and that what binds the books ideologically into a genre is that the foundation of that idealized social structure is Love, even though different books provide various takes on the particulars of what the ideal looks like, whether it’s m/f + or - children, m/m + or - children, f/f + or - children, m/m/f, m/f/f/, etc.

“The message that happiness (and happily ever after) is found in true love doesn’t do a damn thing to empower women, and seems to me, does quite a lot to distract us from other stuff that could be bringing us a whole lot of happiness and power.”

What other stuff?

And E, you mentioned getting knocked up instead of exploring Mars.

Since when have we had to choose between love, marriage, sex, babies OR
a career?

Hell, Madame Curie managed to have a husband, two kids and later, a possible affair with a younger, married man.  Maybe she’d have gotten more done without all the mushy, ‘love and marriage’ stuff.

Of course, she worked with her husband, and I think, her lover, and one of her daughters also won a Nobel Prize (no pressure in that family).

So, what, exactly, is it, about romantic love, that is preventing us from being all that we can be?

Random ramblings:

I guess what irritates the crap out of me personally is the assumption that what makes Bindel—or whomever—happy/realized as a person/fill in the blank, should make me, in turn happy/realized/etc.

What if what makes me feel perfectly content is to be cosseted and protected and pampered and spoiled? Does that negate the next woman’s right to be the one doing the pampering, protecting, spoiling, whatever? or that of a third woman to do neither? Call me whatever but I don’t see the logic in that.

Wasn’t the whole point of feminism to give women choices???? Choices, plural.

Then again, there’s the whole “blame the patriarchy” crap. Perhaps it’s because I read less category and less variety that most of the bitchery, but the way I see it, most of my romances focus on the domestication of the hero at least as much as on that of the heroine. If she’s expected to “sacrifice her independence” or what not when they get engaged/marry/have kids/whatever floats your boat, then by golly he’s expected to adjust to the new situation.

From where I sit, there ain’t no happy ending if there’s no give and take from both.

Furthermore, the assumption that women by and large are weak enough to be influenced by the fiction they read to the point of “not only to submit to our oppressors, but to love and sexually desire them at the same time” is offensive beyond words.

There’s more I want to say, because the more I think about this the more indignant I get, but I’ll have to calm down a bit to be able to make any sense whatsoever.

For the love of the Arrogant Sheik’s Stolen Mistress’ Baby, why can’t pleasure just be pleasure and fantasy just be fantasy?

People who play video games are outcasts and violent miscreants who are just waiting for the chance to kill someone.  (I’m just waiting for it to be revealed that the young man who committed the Omaha mall shootings played Halo or Gears of War or something.)

People who read fantasy or play D&D are social misfits who live in their mother’s basements and dream of buxom elf babes because they have no hope of touching a real, live woman.

People who read romance novels are barely literate housewives who hate their lives or desperate spinsters who want nothing more than to be raped by a big, strong man.

Can you feel the shock wave that follows my head exploding?  I read fantasy and romance novels, I play video games and D&D, but I am none of those things.  It’s about having fun, not filling the terrible void in my soul.

Face it, when we die and they’re carving a headstone, they aren’t going to put ‘one hell of an editor’, “One Smart Bitch”, “damn fine lawyer” etc.  They will put Beloved Wife/Mother/Daughter (or other connection).  So, if those are the truly important things then, why shouldn’t they be the important things in our books?

For the most part, those epitaphs are written by those left behind.  The Husband/Child/Parent in question.  They become a reflection of what the person ordering it saw as the most important facet of the deceased’s life, which is usually the link the dead had with the survivor.  If we wrote our own, they might be different, like Poison Ivy’s “She was a writer” above.  Personally I’d like “Lived Life to the Fullest.”

See?  This is why I so love the Bitchery!  We go from romance novels to feminists to giant pink headstones.

“able71” - yeah, I hope I’ll still be able to at 71!

OH BARF-O-RAMA!

Some time ago I read a whole boatload of research on romance.  Here is the main thing that surprised me but the more I think of it the more right it seems:  Men do not “win” in a romance novel.  Women and the women’s view of looking at things wins!  The man is “tamed” to love.  Conquered by love.  Yes, possibly even enslaved by love.

Get a grip, Guardian.  Romance is even possibly (gulp)  FEMINIST!

Help!  Help!

I’m being oppressed!

Thanks.  There is a now a shower of diet root beer all over my keyboard.

Bindel is pretty much known in the UK for being crazier than a box of frogs. You want an extreme feminist view (with the emphasis on the extreme) you wheel her on.
She quotes blurbs from M and B/Harlequin books that are 20 years old, she admits to not reading them and yet she’s an ‘expert’?
Actually my response to the article is “yeah, whatever.” Daisy did a great job, but really Bindel doesn’t deserve this kind of attention

I’ve always wanted my headstone to say “She couldn’t eat just one…”

‘nuff said

You’re welcome. :-D

The best part about the whole thing was the Bindel’s argument was built on book blurbs and 40+ year old quotes. Oh, I chuckled and I chortled.

I found the positive defence only marginally better—seemed to be all fluff and pretty flowers.

Poor ol’ Harlequin. You’d never know that they had different lines which did not involve very very tanned sheikhs and “swarthy” Greek tycoons.

I spent several hours being oppressed by Nora Roberts and J. D. Robb in the past few weeks. Enjoyed myself a lot (and avoided harming monkeys).  Anyway, LaNora and my other favorite authors can oppress me any ole time they want.

My husband is very stubborn and determined to have his own way.  Since he is (literally) a genius, most of his decisions are good, so going along with them is just common sense.  When he does make a bad judgment, we have a fight and then I win, because he’s wrong for once.

I told him that romance novels are all a giant plot to make me a submissive wife.  He wants to be the first one to know when it starts working.  (Married 30 years in a couple of weeks, been reading romance for 40 years.)

E, you said:
“Maybe it’s so darn popular because so many women are glad to get confirmation that it’s okay for them to enjoy domesticity.”

Yes. Romance novels are about the only place I get validation for my choices in life.

I consider myself a feminist, because I don’t feel inferior or subordinate to men simply because of my gender. But the feminism I subscribe to is about choice - I made the choice to be a wife and homemaker. I made the choice to stay home with my child. I make the choice to indulge in a submissive sexuality, and I like reading books to which I can relate.

I can’t relate to people telling me I’m sexist and trapped and subjugated by my husband. I can’t relate to people who nitpick about romance novels but seem to completely overlook Bratz dolls and misinformation about fertility and all sorts of other things that are far more threatening to women as a whole, as a gender, than the choices of some of us to take on a traditional role that suits us, or to enjoy fiction about that role.

Articles like this miss the point completely. Feminism can’t be undone by fiction. It can be undone by the continued insistence of certain feminists who think men are and will always be enemies and oppressors and insist that those of us who love men, and love our lives, are just fooling ourselves.

I’m going to be very lazy and largely copy and paste the comments I made on the same topic on a different site (http://rapeandadverbs.blogspot.com/)

There is no doubt that some of the action and attitudes (certainly in the Presents line - which is the most popular line) are genuinely hopelessly out of date. (I mean, this whole concept of ‘mistresses’ that they use all the time: no-one these days thinks of a woman who is having a sexual relationship with a man as his ‘mistress’ - even if he is a billionaire and she’s a shop assistant. It’s absurd).

But for Bindel to label these books as misogynistic hate speech is ridiculous. And for her to suggest that the readers of these books regard them as accurately representing the proper world order is positively insulting.

I know that I buy (not many - perhaps 3 or 4 a year) M&Bs. I know (via blogging, not real life *grin*) that lots of intelligent professional women buy them. And I know that we all read these books with a particular mind-set: the same mind-set that I have if I watch an over-the-top soap opera. I don’t subscribe to the world-view (for want of a better term) put forward in them. I just read them for cheap, disposable entertainment.

I can’t say that I am a typical M&B reader. I honestly don’t know whether I am or not. But nor do I assume that everyone else is too lame-brained to make the same nice distinctions that I do.

One more thing….this Bindel chick has no clue As to what REAL hate in the world is today if she thinks that romance novels are hateful and oppressive. Hard for me to worry about what damage a romance novel is doing when there’s a war going on.

Good god…get a real problem, woman.

“The Boardroom Sheik’s Remodeled Kitchen With a Virgin on the Corian Counter?”

*snort*

Thank you Sarah! You made my day.

Colleen, off to research how bloody damn cold a corian countertop would be on a virgin’s virginal ass.

// You go, Amelia Peabody.//

Hell yeah.
They’re mostly loving, but a lot of them have a healthy dose of sarcastic bitch, and I love them).

And Vicky Bliss too!

Oh yay…other people who love Mertz/Peters/Michaels. She’s my all-time favorite.

SPAM Blocker=getting45. Oh no I’m not!

What robin,—E and MplsGirl said :)

I don’t think Bindle is as mad as a hatter. She writes challenging and provocative articles for the Guardian, advocates powerfully for the legal rights of women and generally pisses off a lot of people by saying what she thinks. Sounds like a smart bitch to me.

Here’s her profile on The Guardian: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/julie_bindel/profile.html

I don’t agree with what she wrote, but I think Mills & Boon in particular lends itself to this kind of critique in the way it brands itself. You can’t peddle books like “The sheikh’s captive wife” or “Virgin Slave, Barbarian King” and then express outrage when unflattering conclusions are drawn.

Now, of course, Brindle should have done her homework and based her arguments on recent releases, she should have toned her fiery language down (that’s not her style, though), but perhaps having read a few blurbs -

“Rashad was blackmailing her by insisting she pay up ... as his concubine!”

“As far as he’s concerned Ellie’s a little firecracker who needs to be tamed. “

- she felt she didn’t need to.

It’s all very well *saying* Mills and Boon/ Harlequin have moved on, why don’t they show it?

See, for me it’s not about whether M&B/Harlequin/name your publisher “has moved on” or not—I take offense to the assumption that women as a whole are meek little mindless sheep who are effectively oppressed by the patriarchy through the romance genre.

Women are oppressed, no doubt about it, all around the world—and without the benefit of a genre fiction subliminal campaign.

As far as advocating legal rights for women… I would feel better if more emphasis was made on the freedom of each individual person to choose whatever makes him/her happy—as opposed to having someone else decide what should make me happy. (In other words, what Baconsmom said above—thank you for articulating it so well)

Fiction has the power to undo or empower any movement—social or political—including feminism. Writing is a powerful thing and shouldn’t be underestimated. (It shouldn’t be banned, either.)

I don’t agree with Bindel and the stereotypes that she slathers on romance novels and readers, but I am thankful that the Guardian ran this article because it’s making us all think about women and oppression and feminism—even if it’s pissing the heck out of some.

IMO, awareness and knowledge at the keys to empowering women and it’s really easy to slip into our daily lives and not think about it. When that happens, the insidious acts of oppression can occur.

Some of the books written in the romance genre do perpetuate the stereotypes of cultural roles for women. I do not believe that we live in a highly educated world, and without a healthy does of skepticism (or bitchiness) it can be really easy to fall in to the trap of mindlessly conforming to the stereotype. It’s one thing to choose a traditional path and quite another to follow it without making a conscious choice.

It’s important that we have awareness—knowledge and education are the keys to empowerment and choice.

Ms. Roberts, I don’t believe it’s the writers who intend the romance genre to be a tool of oppression. I think it’s that mysterious “they” to whom we always attribute things (they control us, they oppress us, whomever “they” are) who intend that. I would say it’s a tool of the patriarchy, except I don’t know who the patriarchy is, either. And that just sounds so . . . pretentious.

I want to clarify. I think that romance as a genre is INTENDED as a tool of oppression, but I don’t think it SUCCEEDS as one.

Yeah, I’m overthinking this. The girls on my block and I (a group of 5 moms with toddlers to kindergarten-aged kids) talk about this sort of thing a lot. We need something to talk about while the kids are playing together. . .

Baconsmom said: “I made the choice to be a wife and homemaker. I made the choice to stay home with my child.”  Me too and I get so sick of people that tell me WHY I made that choice~I’m oppressed, the patriarchal society made me do it, etc etc etc.  Nope. I did it because it was the right choice for ME and MY family. Maybe not someone else’s and that’s okay. Isn’t that what the feminist movement was all about~having the choice to do what you wanted with your life?  Why does it now mean that the only way you can be fulfilled is to work outside the home?

What I don’t understand is why do people imply that someone who works a job outside the home that completely fulfills her is doing what she should with her life, but because I chose to stay home then I’m some sad sack, oppressed woman who just didn’t understand that she’d be much happier working outside the home. *snort* No thanks. I LOVE what I do and don’t feel unfulfilled thankyouverymuch.

And if my husband tried to rule me? bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha he could try, but *snorts again* he knows not to bother. *wink*

~Ms. Roberts, I don’t believe it’s the writers who intend the romance genre to be a tool of oppression. I think it’s that mysterious “they” to whom we always attribute things (they control us, they oppress us, whomever “they” are) who intend that. I would say it’s a tool of the patriarchy, except I don’t know who the patriarchy is, either. And that just sounds so . . . pretentious. ~

I don’t understand any of this. Just don’t. We who write the books don’t intend for them to be a tool of oppression, but the mysterious ‘they’ do. The they who can’t be identified.

The publishers? I know many publishers, and none I do know think about oppressing readers. Editors? Same goes.

I sit at my keyboard and write the books—as do many others in the genre. Yes, these books go through an editing and publishing process, a marketing process, but WE write them. I simply don’t see how you can say they’re intended as a tool of oppression (whether they succeed as such or not), but those who actually write them don’t do so with this intent.

I know what my intent is, every time I sit at the keyboard. It’s to tell a good, solid story to the best of my ability, and to tell a story which—at the core—spotlights love, emotions and the journey of two people toward each other.

I guess I’d like to know who they are who then takes that work with the intent of oppressing women.

Because if I believed this, I’d have to have a Come-to-Jesus talk with them. ASAP.

I don’t know who the patriarcy is either—because I had a father, four brothers. I have a husband, two sons and a grandson. You’d better believe none of them ever oppressed me. (Okay, maybe my Pop, but that was his job when I got out of line.)

I may not want to be The Billionaire Cowboy’s Secret Virgin Bride, but if I decide to read same, it sure as hell isn’t going to oppress me.

Ms. Roberts?
WORD!

And it’s oppresive to be “happy”? It’s opressive to read *fiction* about people being happy???

It’s opressive to think that two people being in a loving relationship, however it comes about, or ends up- is OPPRESIVE????

Color me totally clueless. Perhaps that’s what is so wrong with some people today- they are just too darned busy to think that “happy” has anything to do with them.

And just because I might read about vampires, pirates, or cowboys- doesn’t mean I *want* to be with one. That’s what *fiction* means. Going outside the realm of reality. If I want reality- I’ll take off my headphones right now and watch the news- thankyouverymuch!

( spamword- hospital91- may I never see one until…......)

Yanno, I wrote this whole brilliant response that has either been sunk by the mists of time of my Thursday-night post-pub-quiz-wine-intake or destroyed by the SBTB power thst be.  But the gist of it was this:

Bite me.  I’m 25.  Am I oppresed by M&B romances?  No.  Do I feel they undermine my feminist upbringing?  Oh Please.  Basically as a child of the nineties I’m espected to have half a dozen children who all play Beethoven sonatas and speak Mandarin by the age of 15 months, while I create cuisine-level meals for the whole family t breakfast.

Whereas, frankly?  I don’t have children, for which I’m grateful not just for their benefit but for mine (because my God, what a lot of work), but for their continued wellbeing (yes-dear-now-shut-up-mummy-wants-to-concentrate-on-her-Richard-Armitage-DVDs is, I fear, not a valid parenting technique).

I can barely bring up a pair of kittens, because I have no clue of how much of my 24 hours I’m supposed to devote to my career, my family, and myself.  24 hours of each seems to be the recommended average.

Romance novels?  Pah.  My History teacher told me true enough, I’d never be able to find a balance.  And you know what?  She was right.

So much to reply to… I’ll take this piecemeal in order, if that’s okay. Also, I want to thank everyone for being reasonable and civilized in this discussion. It’s a difficult topic for me, and I’m feeling a little leery of being jumped on.

Ginger said: Personally one thing I like about my favorite romance authors is that domestic life isn’t always the end goal, and that one way the Right Guy is identified is that he supports the woman’s career and kicks in his share of the housework.

—>I acknowledge that because the bulk of my exposure to the genre is with one publisher (who’s quite respected, and several of their authors are perennial favs here), I may well have a skewed perspective. Can you recommend a couple of books that have this sort of situation?  (Certainly that seems to jibe better with my reality. My male friends are all Good Guys.)

Poison Ivy said: I, too, have worried that people take fiction for gospel. But books are a reflection of our values; they do not determine them.

—>They can reinforce values, and thereby determine them (by eliminating options for change). See further discussion below.

Most people are the religion they are because it’s the religion in which they were raised. I submit that many (perhaps most) women who value domesticity, value it because it’s how they were raised. To my thinking, they never had a real choice, any more than an Episcopalian has a choice to be a Buddhist (or vice-versa). Sure, they could switch, but they’re not likely to. That’s 100% a matter of training and imprinting.

Like I said, being a wife and mother is a great gig for them who want it. But what gets up my nose is the number of young women who complain about the pressure they get from their mothers to hurry up and get married and have children. Or who agonize over how to snag a boy—any boy—when they’re teenagers. Where did they get those values?

(Don’t get me started on parents who buy their girls crap such as the Rose Petal Cottage, which offends me in ways I can’t even begin to describe. Where is the soft playset of a laboratory? No, the only option is the cooking-and-cleaning-in-Pinkville option.)

The “choice” is illusionary. There is no choice if the role-imprinting begins with baby’s first pink booties.

(And if you say that my choice to be a self-sufficient career woman is equally illusionary, the result of my upbringing, I would reply: Hell, yeah. And sometimes I get mad at my folks for encouraging me to swim upstream. That’s life.)

(See? Not saying anyone is weak or sheeplike. Just describing a situation as I see it.)

Christine Merrill said: If women need to turn to romance to assure them that it’s OK for them to enjoy domesticity, then I say “Go romance.” Because if that is seriously what they want to do, they deserve some affirmation for it. It’s a hard job.

—>Yes, it is a very hard job. No wonder half the population is happy to fob it off on the other half, eh? And then to undervalue it! That’s some trick.

But I’m torn. On the one hand, I do want people to have reassurance that they’ve made good, valuable choices in their lives. On the other hand, I don’t like reinforcing choices without critical evaluation of those choices. If one’s choice to be wife and mother really is right for her, then it will stand up to self-examination.

I repeat: I have nothing but tremendous respect for women who take the hard road of keeping house and raising kids (and working a cash-earning job as well, more often than not). I wish their job was valued more by our society.

But I don’t think you give women enough credit, if you’re implying that romantic brainwashing is the only reason someone would choose family over career.

—>That’s not what I said. My objection to most romance novels isn’t that the woman chooses family over career. It’s that Husband And Kids is set up as the best goal ever. Lots of romance heroines have jobs, but the books aren’t about how she can get the great job (sometimes that’s a subplot); they’re about how her HEA is brought about by having Husband And Kids.

Again, I’m not dissing people who read those books. I’m merely explaining why I don’t like these sort of books. Their value system does not interest or appeal to me.

We need to give all waves of feminism credit for the fact that we have much better life choices available than our grandmothers had.

—>Absolutely. But I don’t think we should get so self-congratulatory that we think the issues are all ironed out and the conflict is over. There’s still racial bias and hatred in the USA, but actual lynchings are rare. When rapes and domestic violence are similarly rare, then maybe I’ll relax a bit.

(NOTE: the above paragraph should NOT be read as an accusation that romance novels cause violence towards women. That is crap. I am merely pointing out that just because women theoretically have more choices in our society, it doesn’t mean that women are in fact valued or viewed equally with men.)

SamG said: I like my books that have kids and bliss, but I also like the ones where the woman is satisfied with her career.

—>I would love to read some of these. Please recommend some?

So, if [wife/mother/daughterhood] are the truly important things then, why shouldn’t they be the important things in our books?

—>My problem is the lack of variety in this one megalithic-and-growing genre that purports to be the genre for women. As a woman who doesn’t subscribe to that value set, I feel extremely marginalized. I get really sick and tired of societal undercurrents that say I have no right to exist.

This is why I gravitate to Science Fiction and Fantasy. (Sure, there’s sexism and all kinds of badness there, too. But at least I can find some books that don’t make me feel like I’m weird or miswired.)

Christine Merrill said: Hell, Madame Curie managed to have a husband, two kids and later, a possible affair with a younger, married man.  Maybe she’d have gotten more done without all the mushy, ‘love and marriage’ stuff.

—>Maybe she would have! Or maybe you would have more than one woman to list as an example.

Exceptions happen. I want successful, world-famous women to be unexceptional. How many world-class artists and scientists and statesmen has the world lost because they were discouraged in those pursuits?

So, what, exactly, is it, about romantic love, that is preventing us from being all that we can be?

—>A woman who is raised to believe that romantic love is the be-all and end-all is not a woman who’s likely to spend her energetic youth in pursuit of discovery, invention, or artistic achievement. Further, as long as we have a cultural more that says romantic love is the be-all and end-all, then women who do pursue other things will continue to be devalued for those pursuits.

Again, I support and value women who take the domestic route. You go right on raising well-adjusted, contributing members of society, and I will cheer you long and loud.

“Rashad was blackmailing her by insisting she pay up ... as his concubine!”

“As far as he’s concerned Ellie’s a little firecracker who needs to be tamed. “

I think I’m a good little feminist, but please, can’t we have a fun set up for sex once in a while?

Word Verif: must52.  See what I mean?

The “choice” is illusionary. There is no choice if the role-imprinting begins with baby’s first pink booties.

—>Yes, it is a very hard job. No wonder half the population is happy to fob it off on the other half, eh? And then to undervalue it! That’s some trick.

Yes!

And although I am a happy camper career wise, I still found this article in my paper today: http://education.guardian.co.uk/gendergap/story/0,,2222774,00.html
I don’t want to be comfortable and unquestioning. Discrimination isn’t something that happens “in many places,’ it happens where I work, when the higher you get in the organization, the more men you see.

~I don’t know who the patriarcy is either—because I had a father, four brothers. I have a husband, two sons and a grandson. You’d better believe none of them ever oppressed me.~

Well, I nicked it from wikipedia, but here’s a definition:

“Patriarchy describes the structuring of society on the basis of family units, in which fathers have primary responsibility for the welfare of these units. In some cultures slaves were included as part of such households. The concept of patriarchy is often used, by extension, to refer to the expectation that men take primary responsibility for the welfare of the community as a whole, acting as representatives via public office (in anthropology and feminism, for example).”

(emphasis my own)

Of course, it is worth pointing out that women *and* men are not free under patriarchy. Men have their own burdens of societal expectations they may wish to eschew.

Also - ” Decades of legislation and affirmative action have not yet changed the fact that western culture is male dominated, and that it remains patriarchal…. heads of state, cabinet ministers and the top executives of major companies are still mostly men. Also, women’s average income is still significantly lower than men’s average income. “

So, does romantic fiction - and more particularly the Mill&Boon Bindle was ragging - reflect this?

Who are “they”? Wish I knew so you could go have a Come-To-Jesus talk with them. :) You’d surely give ‘em hell.

—E, I’m in aggreement with your values discussion, especially; thanks for putting it so well.

And what you said about wanting world-class achieving women being the exception is exactly why Amelia Peabody (which I enjoy) is accepted in her society. She’s an exception with the illusion of having a man (her husband) who can/will control her. Even if she’s not really controlled by him, those on the outside will believe that she is and that makes the rest of her behavior tolerable. That, and she’s in Egypt. She’s a outsider in another culture and her behavior can be written off as non-threatening to the traditional role of women in that community.

Fair enough, Sherry!

~A woman who is raised to believe that romantic love is the be-all and end-all is not a woman who’s likely to spend her energetic youth in pursuit of discovery, invention, or artistic achievement. Further, as long as we have a cultural more that says romantic love is the be-all and end-all, then women who do pursue other things will continue to be devalued for those pursuits~

First, I think this is too black and white. I was certainly raised to believe love matters most—whether it be romantic love, or familial love, or friendship, and so on. But not that love replaces or pushes aside achievement, ambitions, personal goals. I don’t see why one replaces or takes away from the other.

But, beyond that, we’re talking reading—not how we’re raised. Reading for pleasure, for entertaining, for fun, for escape, or for whatever reason you chose. Reading about love, romance, emotions, finding a mate. Or wild and crazy sex.

I made the choice—a very deliberate choice—to marry and have children. Writing gave me the incomparable gift of not having to make a choice between making a living doing something I loved and staying at home with my children. It allowed me to do both, for which I remain—even though my boys are grown—incredibly grateful.

Had my passions focused elsewhere, I might have had to make a choice. In the end, choice is the key. Falling in love, getting married, having children, didn’t take away my choices—it gave me more choices to make. I might have chosen not to have children—and have friends who did just that. They’re as content with their choices as I am with mine.

I simply don’t believe their enjoyment of any genre of books influences their choice. They’re much too smart and self-aware for that. And I don’t think I’m that amazingly fortunate in my friends.

Very well said, E, particularly

“Yes, it is a very hard job. No wonder half the population is happy to fob it off on the other half, eh? And then to undervalue it! That’s some trick.”

Why is romance getting picked on again?  And by people who no longer read the genre?

If readers are a reflection of each and every single novel they read, what does that say about people who read crime novels?  No one ever says readers of crime novels want to go out and commit acts of violence.  That’s just STUPID!  So, why do they make inane comments about romance readers?

I’d take the damn Greek billionaire in a second, because then I’d be able to hire someone else to scrub the damn toilet. The problem with my fantasy is the reality. Yeah, I want to have it all. But that just means I get to DO it all, and speaking as a woman who just spent her vacation installing 300 square feet of laminate flooring in her living room while looking after three kids and tending a husband half-dead from the flu, I’m ready to say, I don’t want to have it all anymore. All I want is a Greek billionaire, a live-in nanny, a personal chef, groundskeeper, and a half-dozen maids.

Christ, if all I had to do was fall in love with some rich guy, start popping out the bambinos and let him oppress me missionary-style three times a week! Cause all this “having it all” is gonna kill me.

*Ducks to avoid barrage of rotten tomatoes*

~“Patriarchy describes the structuring of society on the basis of family units, in which fathers have primary responsibility for the welfare of these units~

No patriarchy in my house—not growing up where my parents functioned as a unit. I’m certainly not saying that the US isn’t patriarchial. Mostly men run the gov’t. And I’m far from happy with the job they’re doing.

I guess I’m stuck on the reading—the books, the M&Bs being a tool of oppression. How women reading about ridiculously rich/sexy/alpha/romantic-whatever your hero’s type—men equals oppression, or the tolerating of same in reality.

How Romance novels, or this particular spoke of the wheel of the genre can and does influence women to subjugate themselves and their careers or talents, their choices or their lives by reading fiction of this type.

I guess I refuse to believe I write for morons. Though that could be a good slogan.

I Write For Morons.

“Can you recommend a couple of books that have this sort of situation?  (Certainly that seems to jibe better with my reality. My male friends are all Good Guys.)”

Pretty much anything by Jennifer Crusie, especially Bet Me, which is a straight up romance with a hero who cooks, and likes the heroine plump.  They live HEA with no kids.

Any of her early Harlequin novels as well.  All category romances with smart women who aren’t defined by house, husband and kids.

“Maybe she’d have gotten more done without all the mushy, ‘love and marriage’ stuff.

—>Maybe she would have! Or maybe you would have more than one woman to list as an example.”

I gave you one example because this is a blog entry, not an encyclopedia.  If I have to list every powerful woman with husband/kids, from Hillary on down, we won’t have enough space.

Don’t get me started on Bill.  But if she says she loves him, we have to take her word.  And if you say her success is based on her successful husband, I’ll switch to Golda Meir or Margaret Thatcher.

I also think it’s unfair to say that Curie could have done more than two generations of Nobel wins.  When a woman does something exceptional, is it necessary to say:

“But you could have done more, dear.”

If there is negative programming that we have to overcome, I think this is an example of the worst of it.  And we are not getting this particular song and dance from romance novels.

E, I applaud your comments. They’re pretty much exactly what I’ve been thinking as I read the posts and the comments.

Didn’t this forum recently discuss the meanings of “bitch?” How the word is used against women, what it means, and whether it can be reclaimed?

To dismiss someone’s criticisms of romance because it’s fiction/fantasy/harmless/there are bigger fish to fry seems very disingenuous to me.

Novels both inform and reflect the values and norms of the society they are written in/to. Books have had a huge impact on my life, and the lives of others.

Just think of Ayn Rand’s books and how much of an impact they’ve had on people.

Books are powerful, and the romance genre is very powerful. I think it does reinforce certain norms, and I don’t think these norms are harmless or beyond criticism.

And last of all, to really ruin my argument, I like Andrea Dworkin. She spoke up and was vilified for what she said. When she said she’d been raped, people would reply, “She’s fat and ugly, what man would want to rape her?” This is the kind of thinking we still all have to deal with on a daily basis.

...Enough blithering from me, I think. Now to read more Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. ;)

As it happens, I just read about Rashad and his intended-concubine last night, as a result of some over-enthusiastic purchasing during the Harlequin sale.

I’ve been reading romances for 25 years or so, and my feminist instincts have survived, so I guess I’m not overly concerned about the fate of the movement. I think that if you want to get into a scrap about the Deleterious Effects of Romance Fiction on the Moral and Mental Health of Ladies, the conversation should move in a broader direction - what are the effects of all sorts of “disposable” entertainment on the people who consume a lot of it? In other words, why are there so many g.d. gossip magazines? Why do people know all about Britney and not about Darfur?

However, about romance specifically, there are some troubling elements. Sure, there are books that celebrate family and love and all sorts of things that are rewarding in life. I’m not one to gush, but that’s a noticeable characteristic of your books, Ms Roberts. Other books, like many M&B seem to be about keeping pure until seeded by the hero, who will then realize How Wrong He Was to Cast Aspersions for 150 Pages on the Girl Who Wasn’t Actually a Cheat/Slut/Con Artist but First He Has to Blackmail Her into Marriage. These are wearying. Not so much tools of oppression and tools of depression.

And I want my $2 back.

Another thought…Maybe Curie wouldn’t have done half as much without a loving man to lick her toes and play with the magic hoo-haa after a long day in the lab?
You never can tell what motivates and inspires people to be all that they can be, and I balk at the thought that it is somehow inherently anti-feminist or oppressive to enjoy the love of a man. Or a woman for that matter. Because I don’t think we’d be having the same conversation if someone said they thought Alice B. Toklas was oppressing Gertrude Stein.

As far as imprinting goes, well there is truth and fiction to that idea. Little boys in a daycare will gravitate just as frequently to the play kitchens as the girls. And if you think kitchens aren’t labs, then you need to watch more Alton Brown, lol. Point being, I loved my playskool “sweeper”, but that doesn’t mean I am doing a happy dance over the vaccuming today.

And last of all, to really ruin my argument, I like Andrea Dworkin. She spoke up and was vilified for what she said. When she said she’d been raped, people would reply, “She’s fat and ugly, what man would want to rape her?” This is the kind of thinking we still all have to deal with on a daily basis.

AND, she never actually made the comment people like to attribute to her—that hetero sex = rape.  The gist of what she was saying (which she had to defend and explain for years after she was branded as a man-hater) was that within a overtly sexist society hetero sex (penetration) had power implications that tended to cast women as vulnerable and passive recipients (which, when you think of the generation out of which she came, the 50s, makes more sense than it would now—without even considering her own molestation, rape, and terribly abusive husband).  Even thought that’s an argument that is most certainly debatable, it’s a far cry from what Dworkin has been characterized as implicating.

I don’t think Bindle is as mad as a hatter. She writes challenging and provocative articles for the Guardian, advocates powerfully for the legal rights of women and generally pisses off a lot of people by saying what she thinks. Sounds like a smart bitch to me.

I admire the hell out of people who can work in the trenches of protection/advocacy of victims without becoming completely bitter or strident. To face the ugliness of that kind of senseless and sometimes depraved violence/abuse without absolutely reviling society, or to maintain faith in humankind of society, is quite an accomplishment, IMO.

So I tend to give people who do this kind of work a bit of a break, figuring that they’re doing the heavy lifting I just don’t have the heart or the guts to do, and if they get cranky and strident over it, then I kind of understand.  Sometimes I think that those who are pure activists have to sort of exist on the extreme to keep pushing the line so the rest of us can follow in greater safety, equality, security, etc.

But I’m torn. On the one hand, I do want people to have reassurance that they’ve made good, valuable choices in their lives. On the other hand, I don’t like reinforcing choices without critical evaluation of those choices. If one’s choice to be wife and mother really is right for her, then it will stand up to self-examination.

Exactly.  When feminism talks about choices, that means informed, conscious, *authentic* choices.  Which is why talking about the cultural values reflected in and reinforced by the art and entertainment any society produces (including Romance novels) doesn’t equate to women being stupid or sheep. 

We’re ALL shaped by and part of ideology, else society would be incomprehensible to us (think about how jokes are funny only within certain cultural contexts, for example).  Whether it’s pink booties or the wisdom of free market competition or intellectual property rights, it’s all about what we do and don’t value, and how our cultural artifacts reflect and reinforce those values.

And, as has been discussed many times on this site, among many, many intelligent women, we ALL struggle with the values of our society, some of which we accept without question, others which we’re trying to outgrow, some we accept despite ourselves, and some we outright rebel against (although even in that there seems to be some recognition of their power).  I know, for example, that I am influenced by advertising, despite the fact that I think I’m reasonably intelligent and independent.  I know that I’m not influenced by a single book (I think that ‘one book influences one person’ argument is another red herring), but I also know there are books I can’t stand to read and others that feel quite comfortable to me.  And that’s not just about the plot or the prose style. 

That these discussions seem to hit such a hot spot with many of us (despite what “side” we come out on) is IMO ample evidence of the importance of cultural values and the influence of *ideas* in shaping those values.

So, what, exactly, is it, about romantic love, that is preventing us from being all that we can be?

—>A woman who is raised to believe that romantic love is the be-all and end-all is not a woman who’s likely to spend her energetic youth in pursuit of discovery, invention, or artistic achievement. Further, as long as we have a cultural more that says romantic love is the be-all and end-all, then women who do pursue other things will continue to be devalued for those pursuits.

Everyone seems to have missed the fact that for every woman who has fallen in love with a man, gotten married and had kids, there’s a man who has spent some of his youth in energetic pursuit of love and domestic bliss, as well. Problem with feminism as a science is that they consider men a control group, when they’re as much a variable as anything else.

“Yes, it is a very hard job. No wonder half the population is happy to fob it off on the other half, eh? And then to undervalue it! That’s some trick.”

I tend to think the feminist movement itself has contributed to the devaluation of unpaid domestic labor, which in turn allows men to avoid housework and childcare even when their wives work outside the home, increasing an already heavy burden for women. Just keep telling women it’s not worth doing, and in a few more generations, no one’s going to be willing to do it.

My grandmother (97 years old) was the quintessential modern woman. She was married (to a much younger man, I might add), raised three kids, ran a household and was postmistress of a small prairie town. She had it all—including days that started at 6 a.m. and ended at midnight.

In Canada recently, a wrongful death civil suit resulted in a “patriarchal” court system finally putting a dollar value on the unpaid labor of a “farm wife”. IIRC, the number was over $100 thousand a year. And as glib as my previous comment was, I know if my husband had to pay someone to do the shit I do around our house, it would cost him more than he makes.

The “choice” is illusionary. There is no choice if the role-imprinting begins with baby’s first pink booties.

So we’re all doomed then. Why would you then begrudge us our stupid-ass, delightful, unrealistic, fictional escape mechanisms? You think I was reading Jane Feather when I was in freaking nappies? If the damage is done in infancy, then it’s done, and no amount of “Pirate’s Luscious Booty” is going to doom me to a life of servitude and patriarchal oppession.

And BTW, when I was a kid, I played with Lego and my dad’s wrench set. Didn’t even own a Barbie. And I think Bratz are the devil.

“Novels both inform and reflect the values and norms of the society they are written in/to. Books have had a huge impact on my life, and the lives of others.”

You’re right, books are very powerful things.  I could point to several that changed my life (and not always for the better). 

But that was because of me, not the books themselves.

I fell into the trap of believing in the “perfect woman, wife, and mother” as a girl, but it wasn’t because of the books I was reading.  It was because of my family life.  The books reflected that image, but they didn’t create it.

I think it all comes down to family, and what children are taught.  I was so susceptible to the “perfect woman” model that my first romance novels espoused because the image was already in my head.  If I had been encouraged to be a strong, opinionated bitchlet, I doubt a bunch of romance novels would have changed my mind.

Books, however powerful, cannot change who a person is - unless that person lets them.

*steps off soapbox*

Christine Merrill said

I also think it’s unfair to say that Curie could have done more than two generations of Nobel wins.  When a woman does something exceptional, is it necessary to say:

“But you could have done more, dear.”

If there is negative programming that we have to overcome, I think this is an example of the worst of it.  And we are not getting this particular song and dance from romance novel.

Exactly!!! As samantha says a bit later,

Maybe Curie wouldn’t have done half as much without a loving man to lick her toes and play with the magic hoo-haa after a long day in the lab?
You never can tell what motivates and inspires people to be all that they can be, and I balk at the thought that it is somehow inherently anti-feminist or oppressive to enjoy the love of a man. Or a woman for that matter. Because I don’t think we’d be having the same conversation if someone said they thought Alice B. Toklas was oppressing Gertrude Stein.

But frankly, regardless of all this… I just fell in love with cecilia for this:

I think that if you want to get into a scrap about the Deleterious Effects of Romance Fiction on the Moral and Mental Health of Ladies, the conversation should move in a broader direction - what are the effects of all sorts of “disposable” entertainment on the people who consume a lot of it? In other words, why are there so many g.d. gossip magazines? Why do people know all about Britney and not about Darfur?

Frankly, I’m not trying to bash anyone whose choices don’t include children or marriage simply because those were my choices. Because for me the whole point is that everyone’s choices should be respected by everyone else. Otherwise there’s no point in struggling for equality, is there?

Well, yeah, Ann. Honestly, I thought when I sent this article in it was for all of us to have a big laugh at the crazy newspaper people trying to stir up a “controversy”. (“The Guardian” is especially good at these fake excitement.)

It is completely nonsensical, to me, to look at certain Harlequin lines that are tailor-made to present a particular lifestyle and ask them whether they’re “reflecting contemporary society” or if the women are getting equal pay or whatever. There is a huge element of fantasy in romance, albeit one that interacts with recognizable societies, but you’ve just gotta admit that there aren’t that many boss + secretary relationships in the world that end in happy marriage with a mansion.

You know how I look at it? I look at it as a narrow-minded viewpoint that wishes to deny our humanity and the inclinations of the human imagination in a typically harmless fashion. Time and time again it’s shown that humans are not only interested in things that, through evolutions of intellectual thought and values, are deemed socially acceptable. Violence, sexual perversions, oppression or exclusion of the “other”, whether through gender, class, race etc. all of it has been with us, and will continue to exist in various forms until the earth goes kaboom. Depending on the society these fall along a scale of most to least offensive; it’s also generally acknowledged that for some the level of harm and offensiveness largely has to do with how and in what forum they are presented.

Through creativity and the development of the arts we’ve been able to satisfy these impulses in fairly harmless ways. More importantly these various media are transparently over-the-top, campy and, let’s face it, executed in an average fashion. In other words, The Fantastic Four isn’t trying to be The Iliad and The Frito Lays CEOs Secret Mistress isn’t trying to be a Philip Roth novel (God forbid).

Harlequin, as a company, has already “moved on”. They have Blaze and Desire and all sorts of different lines that cater to all kinds of different tastes and values. They keep the Sheikhs and Australian cowboys because, like someone posted earlier, some people just want a fun romance. For some that definition of “fun” does not include female CEOs, butt-kicking CIA agents, or whatever more modern variation would reassure all the hand wringers.

Criticism of those texts is cool. Critical thinking is never bad and to gain a better understanding of what a book is doing, and what and why one responds to it can only improve self-knowledge and one’s reading experience. I think it is just as cool if one’s dippy reading material supports a “patriarchal” world view according to one school of thought, you’re aware of it, you still enjoy it and (shock! horror!) you haven’t felt any recent inclination to give up your right to vote. I know that may seem disturbing to some, but until it is proven on more than a theoretical level that such books are paving the way back to the 18th century, I’m going to dismiss it.

It’s predictable to think that if you have a certain philosophy in life then everything you do must or should logically fall in line with that, and if it doesn’t then something is *wrong*. No matter how harmless it may be (like 150 page over-the-top romance novels) or how cognisant you are of the line between fiction and reality, you and the books you enjoy are somehow still begging for ridicule because the *critics* don’t get it.

I call bullshit. Human beings are ambiguous and contradictory by nature. We’re not robots.

O.k., if you like historicals, I think there are a couple of Jayne Anne Krentz that the lady doesn’t stop her work.  I am drawing a blank on the titles though.  There is a ‘horrid’ romance writer whose new DH does not stop her from writing and gets angry at critics of her work.  There is one where a lady investigated men for other ladies and it doesn’t seem to me that she stops at the end of the book.  I don’t remember if babies in those two.  There was a series of 3 “Wicked Widow” was the first one and the lady in that one goes through 2 or 3 careers and ends up helping her spouse in his detective business.  I don’t think she has a kid either and she doesn’t stop working. 

For Futuristic, there is ALWAYS “In Death’s”, a series by JD Robb/Nora Roberts.  Eve (the heroine) is not oppressed by anyone…ever…or there will be ass to kick.

I’m just trying to pull these out of the air.  I think Julie Garwood has some contemporary ones(Mercy, Shadow Dance, Slow Burn, Killjoy and Murder List) where the heroine is employed in male-dominated fields and I don’t recall them stopping because of a baby or wedding.  Linda Howard’s Mr. Perfect;  I don’t believe they had babies.  She certainly didn’t quit her job.  LH’s “Kiss Me While I Sleep” has an assassin as the heroine.  She does reform and doesn’t kill anymore….but she certainly excelled in a male-dominated field and I don’t believe she starts sitting at home knitting booties.

I’m sorry I don’t have all the titles.  I just put a bunch of books into storage, so I don’t have ready access to get the details.

Sam

The gist of what she was saying (which she had to defend and explain for years after she was branded as a man-hater) was that within a overtly sexist society hetero sex (penetration) had power implications that tended to cast women as vulnerable and passive recipients…

I think there are power implications even without an overtly sexist society—one reason I don’t buy the argument some have expounded that m/m romance is popular because there is no inherent power imbalance. There is the penetrator and the penetratee—being a willing recipient will always require a degree of trust.

But this does not automatically mean we should view mothers and wives as victims of oppression, either.

What kind of society are we actually advocating here? If we scorn marriage and childbearing as beneath the educated, intelligent woman, whose responsibility do those tasks become? If all the smartest and most successful of us decide to stop having babies, well, check back in a couple of generations and let me know how it’s working out, would you? I bet there won’t be any Margaret Thatchers or Marie Curies in a hundred years. No Einsteins, either.

If I get the gist of what some are implying, we should just eschew the whole baby thing, and let the men figure out some way to have them without us? Or maybe we should stop demeaning and belittling the one thing we can do that they can’t.

hmm… interesting post. (And my first one to reply to! Yay!)

I will start out by saying that I define myself as a feminist. I will also say that I read and enjoy romance novels greatly. So… I guess I’m caught between both viewpoints?

As someone who is looking to start a graduate degree in English Literature, the notion that romance readers are dumb and/or illiterate is laughable.

However, I don’t think she was saying women are raped because of romance fiction. Nor do I think she is saying that romance fiction is even a main cause of women’s oppression. I think she was getting at, firstly the almost exclusively hetero-normative nature of the fiction (a valid critique), but also that identity is larely defined by myth. Is the myths and stories that we read, and teach ourselves are desireable, are male-dominated and male-dominating… well, it doesn’t help.

I think gender critique is important both for and within romance writing and readership. As a genre that focuses on male-female relationships, it is both interesting and important to examine the dynamics of those relationships, who holds power, and what power they hold.

All that said, I still read romance fiction. A lot. And with intelligent, educated, and “liberated” women both reading and talking about romance fiction (like we do here), the crtitical eye that is focused on the genre is good. Both for the readership, and also the writing, of romance fiction.

Robin, amen on the Dworkin comments (and the “strident” stuff. Why do “shrill” and “strident” always come up when a woman says something polarizing? It reminds me of a Joanna Russ poem).

This discussion is awesome.

But this does not automatically mean we should view mothers and wives as victims of oppression, either.

ITA.

What kind of society are we actually advocating here?

I think there tends to be broad agreement—here, at least—that we want a society in which men and women can make authentic and independent choices about their lives.  That women choose to marry and have children because that’s what they want, not because they don’t have access to something else or because that’s what their parents expect of them.  That women choose to pursue a certain career path do because that’s what they want, and not because they feel that’s the only route to autonomy and power, or because that’s what their parents expect of them.

I had a male student once, a University senior, who basically did everything he could to fail my class and piss me off in the process, openly flouting course policies in completely inexplicable ways.  Finally, after trying to get this kid to do what he needed to pass the class, I got him to confess that his parents expected him to go to medical school upon graduation, and he just didn’t want to do it, so much that he was willing to fail my class to forestall that fate.  That he felt so constrained by parental expectations that he felt that was his only choice really saddened me. 

So whether it’s parents or patriarchy or capitalism or whatever, I think we’re all arguing for choice as something we make with the fewest possible obstacles. 

I honestly haven’t seen anyone arguing that women shouldn’t be SAHM’s or that marriage and family are unimportant, or that women who enjoy hetero sex are oppressed victims. 

But I do think that some of us are arguing that hetero-married SAHMs and childless lesbians are both empowered through critical examination of our cultural values as expressed in, among other things, our entertainment.  That by paying attention to these things we can regularly check our progress.  And that paying attention isn’t about equating what happens in books to RL situations, because, we often enjoy scenarios in books we would never embrace in RL, but about doing the same kind of digging and symbolic analysis we likely do every day in our own lives (about our relationships, about our life choices, our dreams, etc.).

As someone commented earlier, just look at all the attention on Britney Spears in the gossip mags/tv shows.  And what is so fascinating about Britney?  Why her mothering skills, of course.  Is she a horrible mother, or is she just a young woman who doesn’t know any better?  Is she a spoiled brat who expects everyone to jump when she snaps her fingers, or is she bipolar and unmedicated?  IMO all of this talk-talk about Spears is reflective of so many conflicted ideas we have about family, about celebrity, about female sexuality, about marriage (remember how Kevin Federline was nothing more than flotsam to most people when he married Spears, and now people are praying he keeps the kids??).  And while I desperately wish there was more attention to the Katrina victims or Darfur or a hundred other issues, I think people are invested in Spears because she’s seen as both reflective and subversive of certain values with which our society continues to struggle.  As Romance novels are, and video games, and literary novels, and television shows, and every other form of cultural expression we react to in both positive and negative ways.

“But I do think that some of us are arguing that hetero-married SAHMs and childless lesbians are both empowered through critical examination of our cultural values as expressed in, among other things, our entertainment.  That by paying attention to these things we can regularly check our progress.  And that paying attention isn’t about equating what happens in books to RL situations, because, we often enjoy scenarios in books we would never embrace in RL, but about doing the same kind of digging and symbolic analysis we likely do every day in our own lives (about our relationships, about our life choices, our dreams, etc.).”

Amen, Robin. Amen.

Focusing a critical gaze on our fiction, even fiction we love and enjoy, and regognising the problems therein can only be a good thing. Both for ourselves, as readers and as human beings, and for the genre.

Are there problematic elements in the romance genre, as it currently exists? Yes. Does that mean we need to throw out the genre entirely and go read something else? No.

It means we have to have discussions like this one.

It means we have to have discussions like this one.

Yes, because inevitably (and thankfully!) we won’t all agree on any one interpretation of a text or a series of texts or even an issue.  And some of the things we uncover and look at we won’t really know what to make of (nor should we feel we need to deliver any verdict).  A lot of it will be just plain interesting, neither good nor bad, constructive or destructive.  Much of it will be ambiguous and contradictory and self-conflicted.  Which—for me, at least—is where the real fun of textual interpretation and analytical debate lies.  Not in the potential answers, but in the questions and the discussions and the process of discovery.

Hmmmmmmm anyone ever thought of a group read on SBTB? It would be interesting to have an in depth debate and some textual interpretation of an ACTUAL text. ( As in see here on page 84. Ok maybe its the nerd in me….)

Too often the discussion devolves into “That book didnt oppress me” without seeing how some of themes expressed in romance novels are reinforcing some of the same themes we find oppressive in our everyday lives ie she’s a bitch, she’s shrill, she’s emotional, she’s a ballbuster, she’s a whore.

Thanks to all the folks that have made a lively and thoughtful discussion. I, for one, think that for the most part romance is patriarchal propaganda. Want to see more propaganda walk into a toy store. There are so many examples of popular culture that reinforces patriarchal archetypes and stereotypes and many fewer examples of popular culture that tries to subvert it.

I may not be the most well read romance reader. But I know when I first came to the genre I was initially disgusted with the fact that the heroines consistently had one happy future. And that to be fulfilled and happy in a romance novel seemed to be you had to be married and having babies.

E asked for some examples of romance novels where a HEA with man and kids isnt the be all and end all. What does it say about the genre that the only well known author that is consistently subversive is Jennifer Crusie? What does that say about romance as a genre? What does that say about its readers?

Wow! All I can say is thank god I am a Gay man.

It’s like that old man in Fahrenheit 451. Just pile the books around me when you light the match…

I’m staying here.

Trumystique said “E asked for some examples of romance novels where a HEA with man and kids isnt the be all and end all. What does it say about the genre that the only well known author that is consistently subversive is Jennifer Crusie? What does that say about romance as a genre? What does that say about its readers?”

I don’t think it is just Crusie who has the nontraditional ending of the HEA heroine who gives it up for their hero.  A lot of the romantic suspense writers have very strong females who find their HEA with strong men and don’t necessarily stop what they are doing.  Add Allison Brennan, Kathryn Shay, Nora Roberts and Suzanne Brockmann to the list of authors whose females don’t fall in the traditional homemaker at the end of the book.  That is not even touching the paranormal realm where their are many females characters that are not looking for that hearth and home of a traditional romance. 

As a romance reader, I like that HEA.  I like knowing all will work out.  I know that it is fantasy.  I’m nothing if not a realist to know that things don’t tie up as neatly as a book, if only.  :)

Ann M.

Hey, we’ve yanked ourselves, by the shorthairs, out of the CLOSET with these damned books!  No more secret gardens.  Nuh-uh.  (I, for one, am finally able to admit to something an ex-boyfriend once accused me of—being a woman who wants to be a gay man.  So now I can say it loud: I want a weenie and I’m proud!  (Or, at least, I can read about willy-nuckin without having to buy really bad, overpriced smut from a place riddled with glory holes.)

Moreover, fewer and fewer HEA’s entail wrap-ture in a domestic package.  I actually take a perverse (or maybe not so) delight in refusing to let my heroines marry and immediately get down to breeding.  And I know I’m not alone.

Oh, bugger Bindel. She’s firmly stuck in 1984, and may she rot there. Leaving aside her name-checking of Dworkin as the holy-of-holies, cherry-picking a couple of dire books does not an argument make. And that’s true of most her statements.

There are just some feminists who give ridiculous amounts of ammunition to the idiots who believe in the “humourless sex-negative feminist” stereotype, and I wish their retrograde rantings were not portrayed by the media as the feminist mainstream. Of course, Bindel is a regular columnist for the Guardian, so we’re stuck with her for the foreseeable.

There are about 15 more comments I wanna read but I have to get the kids on the bus in 10 minutes and then get on to work.  So for now I’ll just say:

I Write For Morons.

Ms. Roberts - That is far and away better than “I Write About Morons,”
which wouldn’t at all apply to you. *g*

If we scorn marriage and childbearing as beneath the educated, intelligent woman, whose responsibility do those tasks become?

Why is marriage tied to childbearing? Marriage is an institution that is rooted in power over women, and is also denied to many. Whether you’re married or not is still used to bludgeon many women, as an unmarried woman is an object of pity in society. Although I’ve been married for 17 years, and our love is still strong, if I had it to do over, I wouldn’t go through a meaningless (we aren’t religious) ceremony.

I read and participate on many feminist boards, and at least half the women have children, although are not necessarily formally married. Much of the supposed conflict between mothers and non is manufactured by non-feminists. Take a look at the throat-clutching articles about how guilty women should be feeling for whatever crises is going on today: these aren’t written by feminists, who have been instrumental in matters such as obtaining maternity leave, daycare, and allowing for homebirth.

As for staying home: the only person I have seen flat come out and say women should not stay home is Linda Hirshman. Most of the problems come from her tone, but a lot of what she advocates is actually helpful for women - that men DO THEIR SHARE of the housework and childrearing, which face it, is considered the purview of women by society. I’d be leery of staying at home because even if your marriage isn’t one of the 50% that ends in divorce, all it takes is one medical crisis or a layoff. A frightening number of Americans are a couple of paychecks away from being in trouble.

My husband recently finished treatment for lymphoma. Despite having insurance, we were 3000 dollars out of pocket for just the initial scans. Plus, he wasn’t working. Fortunately, we had savings, plus I was working.

This is a great conversation, and I totally agree with Trix and others about feminism getting a bad name with this sort of condemnation. Originally, feminism was about freedom. This sort of feminist critique of romance novels feels more about removing freedom and limiting choices, not literally, but through shoulds and shouldn’ts. 

People often vilify those things they hate most in themselves, and I wonder if there isn’t a bit of that going on here. If these journalists aren’t comfortable with the full spectrum of their femininity, please, don’t take it out on romance novels!

Novels are a highly artificial construct. They’re like a play, with first, second and third acts and a nice neat resolution to end the story satisfactorily.
I ‘got’ a story the other day that I thought might fit in the Harlequin Presents line. Lord knows where it came from but I don’t question my muse any more.
So I asked a few Presents authors of my acquaintance what was the key to the line. “Fairy tales in a modern setting,” was the reply, along with some other great advice. These ladies are the best, you know, very generous and kind.
Nobody should take the books as anything but that. I love a stack of Presents if I’m ill in bed, for instance, or just tired and I want a break. What’s wrong with a good fairy story once in a while? And should the authors be taken to task for a reader who thinks this is all real and one day her prince will really come?
Clearly a reader who thinks that has more problems than an addiction to Harlequin romance, and the people who care about her should look a little deeper into her obsession, to find the root cause.
Like the kids who cite video games as their “reason” for committing senseless slaughter. That’s as much a symptom as a reason and on further investigation far more serious problems are usually discovered.
Simple reasons, simple solutions? Life is never that easy.

“Because for me the whole point is that everyone’s choices should be respected by everyone else. Otherwise there’s no point in struggling for equality, is there? 

AMEN!  I didn’t choose to stay home because it was my only option. I have a college degree and worked before having kids.  It was the choice I wanted to make.  Now that both boys are in school full-time, I am back to working part time. My degree is in Elementary Education, so I substitute teach now, which again is choice I made b/c it works for my family.

that men DO THEIR SHARE of the housework and childrearing, which face it, is considered the purview of women by society”

That is a really good point.  Even though I stayed home for 8 years my hubby still chipped in with the housework.  Since I was home I did most of it, but he would wash dishes if I was nursing one of the boys or throw a load of laundry in if he was heading for the basement anyway, etc. As far as childrearing goes, I married a man that is made to be a father. He loves to do things with the boys and I never have to ask.  So, my experience may be different than a large percentage of SAHMs.

But again, I think it goes back to Azteclady’s quote at the top of my post here~respect all around.  I think I just get frustrated with the automatic assumption that I stay home b/c I am uneducated and had no choice.  I’m not saying anyone here is doing that, but I’ve run across it enough.

I have to say that the one book I received the most email about in regards to the ending was one where my heroine leaves my hero because he’s established, wealthy, set in his ways and she’s just found herself after being a homeless grifter and she wants to explore her own education, life, career, et. al.  In the end, the hero chucks his jet-setting lifestyle, buys a house a few blocks away from the university she’ll be attending and begs her to live with him, though he promises not to get in the way of her pursuits.  No engagement, no marriage, no kids…but definitely the right HEA for that particular book.  And I did get a lot of mail on it.  I’ve written similar endings, but that is dictated not by any political leanings, but by the characters themselves.

I’m a stay-at-home writer—best of both worlds, IMO.  I’m very fortunate.  I do not, nor have I ever found romance novels to be holding up romantic love as an ideal that must be accomplished to the exclusion of all other things.  I grew up in a very traditional, Roman Catholic household and I was always encouraged to further my career and follow my dreams.  If I got married and had children, that was icing.  I’ve always looked at it as icing, not the cake and I’ve been reading romance novels since I was 13.

My point is, it’s not the novels we read that shapes us so much as the way we are raised and supported by our friends and families.  It’s the difference between fiction and reality!

Maybe instead of us females berating each other for what we all think each other should want, we should instead start requiring more males to step it up and be real men, the kind of men that a strong woman could lean on if she wanted to. 

Women are always trying to please men by fitting some impossible fantasy of perfection that the male oriented media shoves down our throats, whether it’s sheer physical perfection alone, or the super-woman who can look like Angelina Jolie, run a major corporation, take care of 4 kids and a 5000 square foot house, and then be a sexual olympian every night. 

But perhaps we should put a little pressure on the men to try and attain a female driven genre’s idea of the fantasy.  I’m not saying that men should start trying to be highland warriors or dark broody vampires, but there are obviously some common and attainable qualities in romance novels that women like in men.  Strong, dependable, nice, loving, honest, considerate, protective, etc.

There’s nothing wrong with loving a man unless you’re loving a jerk.  Females should stop nit-picking each other for their choices and make the men buck up.  Far too many people are settling for sub-par behavior from men, and it has nothing to do with whether they’re reading romance novels or not. 

Wow, I think I just sort of had a feminist thought.

What a terrific, reasonable, educated discussion.  Thanks bitches, I’m enjoying it immensely.  Yes we all want a society that values individuals for their individual choices.  And yes, these books by and large posit romantic love as the greatest goal/life changing force.

But if I’m honest about what I love about romances, a lot of it is the ability to re-live the sexual and emotional high of physical/emotional infatuation.  This is the fantasy for me.  I don’t really want to return to the full reality of meeting and trying to connect and being rejected by a potential lover, but that incredible buzz you get from a first attraction is the reason I’m addicted to these novels.  Am I alone?

“Too often the discussion devolves into “That book didnt oppress me”
without seeing how some of themes expressed in romance novels are
reinforcing some of the same themes we find oppressive in our everyday
lives ie she’s a bitch, she’s shrill, she’s emotional, she’s a
ballbuster, she’s a whore.”

This strikes a chord in me.  I get very uncomfortable with the portrayals of any women other than the heroine in some romances, particularly of the M&B variety. They are so often portrayed and literally described as harpys, man-eaters, back-stabbers, just out for money and men. (And of course, wanting money and men is the worst possible thing, though you are inevitably rewarded with them if you are a good heroine and DON’T want them.)  It’s very divisive.

One of the things I think tends to hobble these kinds of discussions is the framing of analysis of Romance novels within the context of “oppression” or something else negative.  I don’t know if there’s a fear that if we look too closely what we’ll see is negative, or if we just need to reframe the parameters of the discussion so it’s not all about those things we find destructive or negative or unpleasant in the genre.  Either way, I know I’ve had a number of pleasant surprises by looking more closely at certain genre elements and types. 

In any case, IMO it’s too bad we get into this groove of “readers can tell the difference between fantasy and reality” because IMO that’s not even on the table as a point of discussion.  To me this isn’t about fantasy v. reality or being shaped and influenced by books as opposed to family, peer groups, etc. 

It’s simply a matter of the way in which our literatures serve as cultural artifacts, reflective of society, not in a one book to one person way, but in a general set of cultural values kind of way.  Just looking at the evolution of the Romance genre we can see a gradual change in *some* values at work, whether it’s through fewer marriage/baby epilogues or kick ass immortal paranormal heroines or a number of other variable elements in the genre. 

Personally, I’d hate to think that the best we can say of the genre or believe of the genre is that it’s good fantasy.  That feels to me like a consolation prize somehow.

I think I just get frustrated with the automatic assumption that I stay home b/c I am uneducated and had no choice.

Yeah, I agree that this is a huge insult, as are those characterizations of successful corporate women as ball-busters.  And how often is it other women who levy these judgments?  Which just, IMO, is a reflection of the way we’re struggling with our own roles, and with what we think they do and don’t say about us as women and about our society. I tend to think that people are most prone to make condemning judgments when they themselves don’t feel particularly free and empowered.

Also, I think the women who are really caught in the SAHM/career vise are those who begin a career path and then pause to have children before trying to return.  Many of the traditionally male-oriented careers are not welcoming to women who return after having a child or two, forcing women down several pegs while men or women who don’t choose families sliding by them on the advancement track.  For some women, it really doesn’t pay to try to return to a career path, which is one of the reasons you don’t see women in greater numbers at high levels in certain professional environments.  And why those corporate cultures don’t change faster or more authentically.

And in the meantime, women STILL do the bulk of the housework and the child care even when they are working, and as for family leave, women take far more time than men, even in those societies that have much more liberal family leave periods than the US.  Whether it’s the stigma that still seems to attach to men who gravitate toward privileging family over work, or whether it has to do with similar penalties accorded upon return to men who take any significant time off, or whether there are other considerations has been debated by scholars and legislators. 

But whatever it is, it definitely seems that whether women are dinged for wanting to be SAHMs or for wanting to be totally career focused or for wanting both, there are powerful social obstacles in place for ALL of us that are not evenly distributed across gender lines.  That women have to formally marry to gain certain legal rights is also reflective of this conundrum (even in community property states for various reasons), because it’s still largely women who are disadvantaged socially and financially by divorce and widowhood.

When you consider that Romance is the biggest money maker of all genres, that it is 90% or more women writing it, and that it is probably 90% women exercising the buying power to make it such a juggernaut… well the idea of oppression sounds reather appealing.

Yes, please, with sprinkles.  May I read about women who have sex in a way that appeals to women, and may I send some of my money to some women who want to write for me? 

And I don’t give a damn what anyone says… it’s LOVELY to see SB discussing the issue.  The article was citing out-dated materials to make an out-dated point.

It’s a completely useless piece of crap.  THIS discussion is great… but the article that inspired it is C*R*A*P.

Do. Your. Fucking. Homework.

Until you do, sod off and get your lazy-arsed opinions off my back so I can concentrate on my dirty books.

Why is marriage tied to childbearing? Marriage is an institution that is rooted in power over women, and is also denied to many.

It isn’t in the greater context, but for the purposes of this discussion—the traditional HEA of the romance genre—they are tied together. I just hink it’s silly to read a book thats all about people falling in love—be it m/f, m/m, f/f, or more—and not have them end up together. And part of that “together”, in traditional m/f romance at least, is getting hitched and having children.

And it seems like fighting nature to me, when every other species on the planet has this fierce drive to pass on genes, and yet some of us (not all, to be sure, and not necessarily anyone here) look at procreation as something only stupid women would get stuck doing. After all, we should all be doing more important things like discovering uranium or running a country. Oh, wait, both women and men can do those things AND have kids? You learn something new every day.

foot55—I probably just put a size 55 foot in my mouth just now.

It’s simply a matter of the way in which our literatures serve as cultural artifacts, reflective of society, not in a one book to one person way, but in a general set of cultural values kind of way.  Just looking at the evolution of the Romance genre we can see a gradual change in *some* values at work, whether it’s through fewer marriage/baby epilogues or kick ass immortal paranormal heroines or a number of other variable elements in the genre.

Personally, I’d hate to think that the best we can say of the genre or believe of the genre is that it’s good fantasy.  That feels to me like a consolation prize somehow.

I think that path was inevitable because the Guardian article wasn’t looking at romance on a whole, but at Mills&Boons, a not even the entire spectrum of their published sub-genres, but one particular line. And then, contrary to a previous comment, ties it directly in with rape statistics:

Why do I care so much about books that few take seriously? Are there not more important battles to fight? Challenging the low conviction rate for rape certainly seems more urgent than trashing novels that perpetuate gender stereotypes, but there is no doubt that such novels feed directly into some women’s sense of themselves as lesser beings, as creatures desperate to be dominated.

As usual, Bindel the alleged feminists jumps on the bandwagon of centuries of critics eager to protect women’s vulnerable sensibilities from that exciting fiction.

And, admittedly, I’m not really invested in the kind of cultural studies critiques romance fiction lends itself so well to. Changing values in society, pop culture, all that stuff, don’t strike me as particularly “literary”, and that’s generally the sort of stuff I prefer.

But I’ll be happy to read some! It’s why I like SB so much: they do the heavy lifting with romance fiction that I almost never do, because I like to gobble down my patriarchal Lisa Kleypas and (old time) Linda Howard. ;)

For another suggestion on atypical romance authors, there’s always Emma Holly, although she might not be popular enough to count for some.

E asked about the kind of books I liked where men helped out and marriage/children weren’t necessarily part of the Happily Ever After…

Several people have already mentioned my two favorites (Nora Roberts especially in her J.D. Robb series and Jennifer Crusie).

I also really like romances by Katie Fforde - I think there is a nice career/home balance in her books and when there are multiple suitors the heroine always goes for the one who supports her career and personal goals.

Paranormal romances like those by Marjorie Liu, C. T. Adams & Cathy Clamp, and MaryJanice Davidson offer a number of strong interesting characters who don’t always choose to pursue marriage/motherhood (though I like that some of them do… I like to see some heroines pick that route and others not, based on their own character and the kind of relationship they get with their hero).

And Emma Holly books also spring to mind as ones where the HEA doesn’t necessarily involve monogamy, marriage, or children (though sometimes it does involve one or more of those).

The other big thing I look for, that pretty much all of these authors do - is I like the heroine to have female friends, that she cares about and doesn’t just ditch when the perfect guy comes along.  That’s part of why I like MaryJanice Davidson’s Betsy books so much, or Nora Roberts’s trilogies.

My ultimate position in this discussion comes down the famous Gloria Steinem quote:

“I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.”

Maybe it’s because the gentlemen aren’t liberated enough to feel confident asking for such advice, but I kinda doubt it.

Unfortunately, even now, in 2007, a typical woman has a lot fewer real choices about her career, if she chooses to have children. Realistically, she can:

-Bag the career and focus on the kids.
-Work herself to death doing both.
-Find a career that allows her time to be with the kids. (This is not a solution, however, for the women who want particular careers that they can’t do from home or bring the kids to, e.g. surgeon or corporate lawyer or busdriver.)

Now, in an ideal world, we would have:

-Husbands taking over fully 50% of the childcare and housekeeping. (Or couples hiring someone to help. Dammit, it’s not a failing if you want to pay for a cleaning service or babysitter! I acknowledge that it isn’t always fiscally possible, but I have friends who earn plenty of money, they complain about not having enough time, yet they won’t hire a cleaning service. WTF?)

-UNIVERSAL DAY CARE. (Fuck yeah, that, more than anything, would eliminate the dilemma right there. I think if I had access to affordable day care at my job, I would consider becoming a single mother.)

Also, I want to thank everyone for their reading suggestions. I wasn’t thinking of romantic suspense or paranormal as part of Core Genre Romance (I realize I’m coming awfully close to saying “those don’t count because they don’t fit the narrow definition I was pointing at”), but I will certainly give Jennifer Crusie a try.

Actually, I read a fair bit of paranormal, and I prefer the ones that aren’t romance novels, but rather are under the SF/F umbrella. I’m in the middle of the ARC for Kim Harrison’s next book and whoo! It’s great.

In contrast, my frequent reaction to midlist romance-as-paranormal is summed up by example in three of my blog posts, here, here, and here.

Anyone have suggestions for historicals? I loves me some historicals, but so far I like the “It’s a historical novel with a romantic subplot” books, but don’t care for the “It’s a romance novel with historical setting” books. I keep getting burned by the “really keen, complex plot is resolved quickly so we can move along to the marriage and babies in the Epilogue” sort of books. Those always smell of an author up against a deadline.

Robin, I get where you’re coming from—but for me, when it’s stated these books oppress women and/or rape statistics are trotted out, it not only hobbles discussion, it begs the answer women are not idiots and know the difference between fiction and real life.

I consider my books entertainment. I don’t consider that a consolation prize. Note I wouldn’t say *just* entertainment. I think good, solid, quality entertainment is valuable, is important. It’s what I try to provide—and what I look for when I sit down to read.

I realize you come at this not only as a reader, but as an academic. I’m all for academic and critical analysis of fiction, of Romance as a genre. I think it’s necessary, and discussions here and on other blogs can be just fascinating. 

I object when the genre—or M&B books (which aren’t even to my particular taste)—are criticized or vilified as tools of oppression. Or when the old and insulting chestnut: They create unrealistic expectations for women is hammered out.

I have too much respect for myself, my work, the genre and readers in general to accept that.

Examine a book for themes, style, craft, social commentary, whatever—that’s great. Pull out a specific title and tell me this book fosters patriarcal oppression, and I might agree. I’d still think the vast majority of women reading that specific title wouldn’t feel oppressed because of it, or chose to be oppressed because of it.

Any more than the reader who enjoys erotica, and elects to read about threesomes can’t wait until her husband or lover or boyfriend brings home his pal so they can all go at it.

Or maybe she does. But that would be about choice again.

E—I don’t disagree with you altogether either. But I do feel there are changes in the making. And some of us who raised kids helped make them.

My older son and dil have two young kids. He owns and runs a restaurant, she works in my husband’s bookstore. She’s his right hand. They’ve always parented those kids together—every element of parenting. He does as much housework as she does—sometimes more, sometimes less depending on their schedules.

He wasn’t raised to look at running a house, cleaning one, and all the crap work that goes with it as `woman’s work’. It’s just work. It’s life.

I might think he’s particularly special, being he’s mine. But I know others like him.

Like you, I wish this was just a given. It SHOULD be.

I’ve been lurking here wondering whether to post.  But what the hell, I’ll jump in, at least in response to a couple of earlier comments.

“~A woman who is raised to believe that romantic love is the be-all and end-all is not a woman who’s likely to spend her energetic youth in pursuit of discovery, invention, or artistic achievement.~”

Somehow I—a boy—was raised to believe that romantic love was the be-all and end-all.  It wasn’t by my parents, or by romance novels, unless you count “Little Women.”  Broadway and Hollywood musicals, Sam’s love for Frodo, Simon Tregarth and Jaelith in Andre Norton’s “Witch World,” and poetry, lots of poetry, by Yeats and Cummings and Neruda:  those pretty much did it for me. 

Did I spend my energetic youth looking for love, rather than in search of discovery, invention, and artistic achievement?  Yup.  Cost me a lot of time, money, and heartache—until I met my wife.  After that, well, I’ve spent much of my energetic middle age building a happy marriage and raising my children, again at the expense of my career and my artistic aspirations.  That’s just life—there’s only so much time and energy to spend. 

E, you say that you “have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.”  Not to play into stereotypes here, but no, I never thought to ask for advice!  I bitched and moaned, and other men did the same back to me, but we never asked each other (or anyone else) for advice.  I did listen up when my father told me, literally on his deathbed, that he wished he’d spent more Sundays at home with my mother and not at the office, and I did watch a friend ten years older than I am go through a nasty divorce, and think to myself—OK, let’s NOT do what he did.  But no, I never asked for advice, or saw any given. 

The assumption down at the office was frequently that I’d be much happier to ditch my wife and kids and come to work.  I wasn’t, so I didn’t.  After a few years of marriage I figured out that I had it in me to be either an average poet or an above-average husband.  I chose the latter, & gave up the writing.  No great loss to the world, and a big gain for me.

One other thought:  most jobs don’t entail being a scientist or an inventor or an artist.  Many are dull, unsatisfying, uninteresting, and call on very little of one’s strengths and talents and (for lack of a better word) soul.  Work can be pretty thin gruel when it comes to supplying your life with meaning and value, and many jobs (even professions) don’t offer much by way of deep, satisfying rewards for a job well done—except, perhaps, in the relationships you have with co-workers, students, and the like.  (At which point, they’re not all that different from romantic relationships, maybe.)

Courtship and marriage and family can turn out horribly, of course.  But I’d say that for many, many people these offer a realm in which the impulses to understand and create can be put to rewarding and amply-rewarded use, in a way that work simply doesn’t.

As for the sorts of novels that have been attacked—I’ll leave them to others.  Some good discussions of them, and of why folks read them, over at the Teach Me Tonight blog (http://teachmetonight.blogspot.com).  Check ‘em out, and feel free to chime in!

Sorry to rant so long—

“My ultimate position in this discussion comes down the famous Gloria Steinem quote:

“I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.” “

But people *are* starting to take note of how difficult it is to combine fatherhood and a career.  A very relevent issue for me right now, because my husband is away on a long business trip and he is really our son’s primary caregiver. He tells me he hates to complain about how long he’s been gone, because some of his coworkers have barely seen their families in a month, but the requirements of his career are really interfering with our family life.

“I think that path was inevitable because the Guardian article wasn’t looking at romance on a whole, but at Mills&Boons, a not even the entire spectrum of their published sub-genres, but one particular line. And then, contrary to a previous comment, ties it directly in with rape statistics:”

Exactly. My “fairy tale” comment didn’t refer to the whole of the romance market, just to that particular line, ie Presents (known as Modern in the UK). I don’t write for the line, but I love reading them and I see no reason to have to defend my choice of reading matter.

I write historical romance and paranormal romance and neither are fairy tales. I try to discuss dilemmas and situations many women face or have faced in the past (as well as providing a hunky male for her to get off on!) The idea I had for a Presents came out of the blue, so researching the line was a given.

Oops!  My mistake, E—I forgot you were quoting Steinem, and not speaking from your own experience.

I would say that just about the only time I did hear, in the media, about this issue (men trying to balance marriage and career) came when there was “Faith and Family First” push from the Christian right.  I’m neither Christian nor conservative, but I was glad to hear that discussion, however briefly it went on.

As usual, Bindel the alleged feminists jumps on the bandwagon of centuries of critics eager to protect women’s vulnerable sensibilities from that exciting fiction.

As much as I don’t agree with Bindel’s argument, I read her comments very differently.  What I think she’s saying is that M&B Romances end up “feeding into” what she sees as a pervasive system of patriarchal propaganda.  Again, I DISAGREE with her argument. 

I think she’s also saying that women are not to blame for this, because we are in an ambivalent relationship to the patriarchy, in that we fall in love with and marry those who represent patriarchal power, which differentially and substantially disadvantages women.  That, IMO, is a more interesting argument, but let’s just say for argument’s sake that I also disagree with that.

Removing the argument from the gender context, I think Bindel is saying the equivalent of this:  Romances featuring “savage” Native Americans or “wild” desert sheiks or “young buck” African Americans feed into a widespread system of racism and racist propaganda.  Which doesn’t for one second lead me to see non-white Romance readers as infantalized, stupid, or unable to recognize their own oppression.  To me, anyway, what Bindel is arguing is that she sees M&B novels as part of a larger ideological system in which women are oppressed.  Which, again, is an argument with which I DISAGREE.  But I don’t think her argument is itself paternalistic or that she undervalues the intelligence of women, and I absolutely don’t think she was advocating censorship or anything like it. 

Which is interesting because not that long ago Eileen Dreyer/Kathleen Korbel argued explicitly that rape should not be part of the mainstream Romance genre, and there didn’t seem much of a public response to what I thought was an incredibly provocative and potentially chilling assertion.

—E, I prefer Historicals, and I would recommend Jo Goodman’s books, many of which actually feature marriage in trouble plots, where marriage actually imperils the relationship for various reasons.  Try A Season To Be Sinful, One Forbidden Evening, and If His Kiss is Wicked to start, although my favorite is My Reckless Heart, which is an earlier book. 

Also Loretta Chase’s Miss Wonderful, Mr. Impossible, and Mr. Perfect are IMO quite unconventional, as well.  Judith Ivory’s Black Silk, Bliss, and Dance are great, too, as is Laura Kinsale’s For My Lady’s Heart.

Not that these books don’t include marriage and in some cases children, but they are, IMO, quite self-conscious in the way they deal with issues of gender, personal identity, and power relations within the couple and within the society.  Kinsale’s For My Lady’s Heart features one of the most powerful heroine’s I’ve ever read (as does The Dream Hunter, too). 

Christine Monson’s Rangoon is fascinating, IMO, as is Patricia Gaffney’s Crooked Hearts.  I also highly, highly recommend Joanna Bourne’s Spymaster’s Lady.

So lemme get this straight.  I should give up reading what makes me happy because some misty “patriarchy” is rubbing collective masculine hands together and setting me up for oppression with it, in favor of taking up what somebody else says *should* make me happy?  How is being controlled by the “patriarchy” different from being controlled by Julie whatsername?

E asked for some “examples of romance novels where a HEA with man and kids isnt the be all and end all. What does it say about the genre that the only well known author that is consistently subversive is Jennifer Crusie? What does that say about romance as a genre? What does that say about its readers?”

Not to belabor the point…but isn’t the relationship HEA one of the core definitions of a romance novel?  Romance fiction is about the relationship between the main characters (m/f, m/m, f/f, multiples, m or f/alien /giant robot /shapeshifting creature, etc.).  Just swing a book thong and you’ll hit books whose HEAs don’t include kids or conventional weddings.  In a previous post, someone (E again, I think) asked where were the books that identified home and family as being a goal men should strive for.  The answer there is in those same romance novels.  I’m having a hard time coming up with titles that didn’t end with heroes also coming to prioritize their relationships with the heroines.

Look.  My mother burned her bra in the 60’s and wore “dress for success” clothes in the 70’s so that I could have a choice.  Now I’m reading some comments here that seem to say that the choice I made wasn’t *really* a choice…because it wasn’t the “right” one.  So which is it?

Romance novels are my fantasy fiction.  Fantasy is often not politically correct.  We fantasize not about what we should think about, but rather what we do think about, appropriate or not.

Spamfilter: needs49 ::so not commenting on that one…:::

Xandra, I don’t think you should stop reading anything you want to read. I thoroughly enjoy the many, many romance novels I read each year and don’t plan to give them up anytime soon.

Robin said something that gets at what I’m thinking on this topic: 

“I know, for example, that I am influenced by advertising, despite the fact that I think I’m reasonably intelligent and independent.”

We can be influenced by themes and messages in the books and I suggest that as readers (and perhaps as writers) we bring a certain self-conciousness to what we read (and write).

It’s like when I pick up an issue of Cosmo or Vogue—most of the girls pictured in them are skinny and stunningly beautiful. It’s easy to be influenced into thinking we should be skinny and beautiful, too, unless we consciously are aware that this is one message being delivered and it’s not one that I have to buy into or follow. I can, if that’s what I choose, but I don’t have to.

I used the word oppression a lot earlier in the discussion and my intent wasn’t to imply that we’re mindless automatons doing what we’re told, and I don’t want to frame the discussion in negativity, though it is a polarizing word.

I guess what I am trying to say is that when we hear a message often enough we can start to believe it’s true. I want women to have freedom of choice.

My mom used to always tell me to enjoy whatever entertainment I wanted but to be aware that the images and stories that I encounter might make me feel that the choices I’m making in my own life are not right/proper. She would say, “trust in yourself”,
that she was raising a smart girl who made smart choices.

When Mom saw me pick up one of her Rosemary Rogers books she sat me down to have a talk about healthy and fulfilling relationships; when I brought home a diet magazine she talked with me about healthy body images and the messages girls are sent to be skinny.

My whole rant boils down to: read consciously. Which, based on this discussion, it seems like most of us do.

Np, first, you had a very smart, very loving and aware mom growing up. That’s a wonderful gift.

I guess I figure grown women don’t need to be told to read consciously. Or that grown women always *need* to read consciously. Sometimes a grown woman may just want to have fun with a book about a naked pirate with a big schlong who yo-hos his way into the heroine’s heart through her magic hoo-hoo. Or a billionaire CEO/secret agent who kidnaps her for reasons of national security.

Yes, advertising, images, books, movies, TV shows, any and all forms of entertainment can and do influence. And even the intelligent and self-aware can fall victim to wishing she were a size two and/or had shiny, perfect hair.

But I’m just not going to sit down with a novel—or urge my readers to do so—with a conscious and deliberate stipulation that I’m about to read some sort of propaganda.

Children and young people need to be guided and given direction. Grown women should have earned the right to make their own choices—and read what they want for their own reasons.

Myself, if I’m reading ‘consciously’, the story hasn’t pulled me in and taken me where I want to go while I’m reading it.

Nora said: “I might think he’s particularly special, being he’s mine. But I know others like him.”  Yep. My hubby is one of them.  And what’s funny is his dad is NOT. He’s very “old fashioned” and does not one thing around the inside of the house. Yet, my hubby helps out consistently. hmmmmm Interesting.

We also have a core group of 4 couples we hang around with. I don’t know about the housework aspect, but I do know that all the men are very involved fathers.  The men have gotten together to take the kids camping for the weekend, hiking, ice skating, sledding, etc while we women sleep in and relax! LOL

that seem to say that the choice I made wasn’t *really* a choice…because it wasn’t the “right” one.  So which is it?

More that choices don’t occur in a vacuum, and that the general societal expectations for women are that she be primarily responsible for housework and childrearing on top of anything else she may be doing…not to mention willing sex kitten whenever her man’s in the mood. Many of the ‘can this marriage be saved’-type articles that I see, even within the last year boil down to ‘women should have sex even if they don’t want to.

And part of that “together”, in traditional m/f romance at least, is getting hitched and having children.

Isn’t that part of Bindel’s point? That mainstream romance almost invariably ends with marriage and childbirth?

. This sort of feminist critique of romance novels feels more about removing freedom and limiting choices, not literally, but through shoulds and shouldn’ts.

Analyzing and critiquing doesn’t equal forbidding. Everyone needs to make the choices that are right for her. As I’ve become more familiar with feminism and thought about its theories, some of my choices have actively changed, not because of any order, but because my worldview has changed. For example, my reaction to some of the alpha heroes I’ve heard described is to want to kick them right in the ol’ windswept desire to quote Tanya Huff. :)

BEGIN So lemme get this straight.  I should give up reading what makes me happy because some misty “patriarchy” is rubbing collective masculine hands together and setting me up for oppression with it, in favor of taking up what somebody else says *should* make me happy?  How is being controlled by the “patriarchy” different from being controlled by Julie whatsername? END

Nope, read whatever floats your boat. But be aware that Romance (like other products of popular culture) is the product of a culture that has an ambivalent and sometimes violent relationship with women.

Patriarchy like any other system works because both men and women participate willingly/unwillingly
and consciously/subconsciously. Men can be perpetators and victims as well as women can. Think of the young man who is victimized for effeminate or “girly” behavior who is called a “sissy”. That man might be coerced into acting a certain way by teasing from other men or by women who tell him he isnt manly enough.  Or think of the man who doesnt have tens of female partners who is ridiculed by his peers because he is not a “stud”. Both men are being targeted because they do not conform to patriarchal ideals of manhood and masculine sexual expression. Think of the older women who uses intimidation to keep other younger women in line that are too “slutty”, overemotional or family-oriented in a work setting. These are examples of how individuals participate in a patriarchal system. A person can be both privileged and underprivileged in these relationships. And thats how patriarchy or any other system works. You dont have to consciously start rubbing your hands together and decide to be oppressive- you can be an unwitting participant.

BEGIN As much as I don’t agree with Bindel’s argument, I read her comments very differently.  What I think she’s saying is that M&B Romances end up “feeding into” what she sees as a pervasive system of patriarchal propaganda.  Again, I DISAGREE with her argument. 

I think she’s also saying that women are not to blame for this, because we are in an ambivalent relationship to the patriarchy, in that we fall in love with and marry those who represent patriarchal power, which differentially and substantially disadvantages women.  That, IMO, is a more interesting argument, but let’s just say for argument’s sake that I also disagree with that.

Removing the argument from the gender context, I think Bindel is saying the equivalent of this:  Romances featuring “savage” Native Americans or “wild” desert sheiks or “young buck” African Americans feed into a widespread system of racism and racist propaganda…. To me, anyway, what Bindel is arguing is that she sees M&B novels as part of a larger ideological system in which women are oppressed.  Which, again, is an argument with which I DISAGREE.  But I don’t think her argument is itself paternalistic or that she undervalues the intelligence of women, and I absolutely don’t think she was advocating censorship or anything like it.  END

Robin, I perfectly agree with your assessment or recasting of Bindel’s arguments. And thats why I can agree with the argument that most cultural products of modern Western society(for the most part) will reflect the racist, sexist, homophobic and patriarchal culture from which it is produced.

I think an important point that you brought up is that for many people oppression is a polarizing word. Racism and homophobia too. It shuts down conversation because people cant deal with the psychological discomfort that comes from admitting they are participating in a system that simultaneously privileges some people and disadvantages others. I actually dont have a problem with that cause I realize I constanly have to check myself and unpack my privilege (whether its gender, class, racial or heterosexual privilege). Thats why analyzing romance novels critically is an area ripe for discussion and study.

Dont get me wrong, I am not saying that Romance is bad. Romance just is. Romance might be feeding into the patriarchal system for reflecting and perpetuating some patriarchal stereotypes. At the same time Romance CAN be subversive by taking some gender stereotypes and tweaking them. As people have rightly noted some patriarchal ideals of feminine sexual epxression are being challenged in paranormal novels where the heroine has spiritually and sexually fulfilling relationships with multiple partner or doesnt want children or to give up her career. Where once she would have been the amoral villian she is now the heroine. But thats the whole point- Romance as a product of our culture is working outthrough the fictional telling the ambivalence we feel regarding gender, power and sexuality .

~More that choices don’t occur in a vacuum, and that the general societal expectations for women are that she be primarily responsible for housework and childrearing on top of anything else she may be doing…not to mention willing sex kitten whenever her man’s in the mood~

Boy, I don’t see this. Not in my world, or the world of my close women friends. Not in my dil’s world or that of my almost dil. (wedding in June).

This is not how I raised my boys to think, not how they live. Not how I think or live. I can’t be that far removed from the majority.

I’m not saying this doesn’t exist, but I don’t believe it’s the way of most relationships, marriages, lifestyles.

And if magazine articles are touting it as the way to go, those magazines are absurd. And insulting not only to women, but to men. Men are not so selfish, so self-absorbed, so completely oblivious to the needs and wants of the women they love, and who love them to—as a whole—subscribe to this.

I raised two boys into men, and have a lot more respect for the species than this.

I think an important point that you brought up is that for many people oppression is a polarizing word. Racism and homophobia too. It shuts down conversation because people cant deal with the psychological discomfort that comes from admitting they are participating in a system that simultaneously privileges some people and disadvantages others.

Which is why I like to talk about it in terms of privilege and advantage rather than the various “isms.”  One of my main differences from Bindel is that I see society as much more complex ideologically than she seems to.  I don’t see blanket sexism, blanket racism, or blanket homophobia; I see it as a bunch of competing and cooperative ideologies, all simultaneously affirming and subverting.  In other words, when one rebels, they indirectly affirm the power of that thing against which they rebel.  But the opposition itself can be incredibly subversive, and I think we see over and over again that extreme views begin to turn back on themselves and sort of somersault ideologically.

If I thought Bindel was actually trying to convince anyone reading Romance that she had a point, I’d say she’d be an abject failure because her rhetoric is so overblown and oppositional (that line about “misogynistic hate speech” really went over the line, IMO). 

But I also think she’s mainly targeting the Romance motif of *rape,* which curbs my negative response to her, as well, because I do think there are many instances of rape in the genre that go beyond the sexual fantasy (e.g. the rapist villain, the pimping for rape villanness, the threat of rape to the heroine, the (mis)use of history to excuse the sexual powerlessness of the heroine, etc.) and while I think that there are ways in which rape in Romance is very subversive, I also think there are ways in which it isn’t, and what’s the harm of talking about the issue, especially when we continue to struggle in RL with the issue (and can we bring race into the discussion, as well, another under-analyzed aspect of the genre, IMO).  Because IMO not all fictional portrayals of rape, even those expressed as pure sexual fantasy, are so far removed from the issue of rape in RL as to be insignificant.  Which is why it’s such a hot button issue for so many people, IMO. 

Men can be perpetators and victims as well as women can.

Thanks so much for bringing up this point, because IMO it’s critical.  Ultimately I think society is harmed by patriarchy just as by racism, even those certain people or classes of people may be privileged in certain ways.

Not in my world, or the world of my close women friends. Not in my dil’s world or that of my almost dil. (wedding in June).

Shrug. Anecdotes don’t equal data. I know at least one marriage counseling session where ‘more sex’ was the husband’s stipulation for staying in the marriage. Not that he cared if she wanted it, just that more sex would be had.

Plus, from what I can tell in these articles (and these are mainstream magazines), it’s just something you do.

Romance novels don’t help with this, I don’t remember many where the heroine successfully had a headache, at least one that wasn’t ‘overcome with passion’.

There are some interesting comments on the article here
http://smalltownscribble.blogspot.com/2007/12/mills-boon-know-sex.html
and here
http://www.teachmetonight.blogspot.com/
and here
http://natashaoakley.blogspot.com/2007/12/here-we-go-again.html

Bindel wins. Like my old art history professor always told me “Your first book should be about something extreme and ridiculous. Then, when you have the eyes of the world on you, publish the book you really want to present.”
You have to be careful not to make the first book something so stupid people don’t take you seriously, but it’s an old technique used for years on the academic circuit.
Trouble is, this isn’t Bindel’s first go at getting the limelight. She’s awfully good at it, isn’t she?

E-

You love SF/F, and you love historicals where romance is a subplot? I just read a wonderful book by a Canuck named Marie Jakober called the Black Chalice. An Arthurian style legend set in Germany during the time of the Crusades. Freaking awesome!

What has she won, exactly?

This is an opportunity for us to discuss really interesting ideas. I’m loving some of the comments in this thread - and in the teachmetonight blog.

Okay, I studied politics and this brings it all back, but isn’t it fun?

I guess I am always going to resist the idea that romance should “help” the feminist movement, or bolster self-esteem, or be obligated to promote any kind of particular “competing ideology” to help make the world a better place. People of whichever gender have and will always desire and imagine certain social situations that do not fall within acceptable public bounds. Be aware, sure, that has its place, but as I said before, unless someone shows me a body of study that proves that reading lots of Harlequin Presents has any woman-hating effects, feeding “directly into some women’s sense of themselves as lesser beings, as creatures desperate to be dominated” (because that’s Harlequin’s fault!) I’m going to shake my head and buy a Sheikh romance.

I’m also one of those readers who is fine with romance being “just” entertainment. I value the importance of the fluffy as well as the weighty as they affect my quality of life, so I don’t see it is as a consolation prize either.

Myself, I’m waiting for the grand day when certain feminist ideologies will be able to accept the fact that some women like to read stuff that doesn’t square with their [ie the readers’] principles and that any “harm” from this activity, part of the pervasive patriarchal system, is actually negligible. I’m not holding my breath.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t read romance to have my life choices reflected or confirmed. I’m not particularly interested in reading about heroines who use the “headache” excuse successfully. I like variety and romance, as it is now, amply provides that. I’m sorry that England only has Greek billionaire romances.

As for romance heroes who are dying for babies that describes just about every Lori Foster hero. If he’s not convinced at the outset he is by the end. (She’s also popular enough to count, I think.)

Robin, thanks for the reccs. I already had Spymaster’s Lady on pre-order because of earlier talk here about it. Oh, that dreadful cover.

Kis, have ordered Black Chalice. I especially like the review on Amazon from PW, calling it an “irritating, brilliant novel…” Sounds good to me!

Nora, I know a lot of fellows like your sons (most of my male friends are of that sort, because I don’t like having jerks for friends, but I do like having male friends). But they still seem to be the exception rather than the rule, even in my world of educated, upper-middle-class liberals. (And, dammit, they all got snatched up early!)

This whole discussion has made my job very strange. Just today I was working on a book where the wife has sex with her husband just to get it over with. In context it’s not rape, but certainly the feeling of “Argh, at least if I have sex with him, he’ll be done in ten minutes and I can get some sleep” isn’t a good one.

This book isn’t a romance novel, but rather “women’s fiction.” It’s actually pretty good, and the scene serves as a thematic development on the couple’s root problem: poor communication, and the wife’s desire to be accomodating to her husband’s family.

A few examples from mainstream sites, and the final one is definitely not work safe. Comments are from the links.

http://www.babycenter.ca/baby/dilemmas/wifedoesntwantsex/

“We only make love about once a month and even then I get the impression that it’s a chore for her.”

“...and so what if she feels obligated, she is your wife after all.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12079143/

“Being tired is an excuse. Many people work hard and get tired. Sure, there are many competing priorities in life, but you do not want tiredness to push sex to the bottom of the list. Otherwise, your spouse becomes your roommate.”

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070512103811AAbMQf5&show=7

“have been married for seven years and the only time we have sex is if she thinks I’m really fedup then will to keep me quiet”

http://ms.about.com/od/forfriendsandfamily/f/ms_wife_sex.htm

“My wife has MS and doesn’t want to have sex anymore. Why not and what can I do?”

That’s my favorite. My wife has a disease AND OMG I AIN’T GETTING ANY!!

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/bel_mooney/article571379.ece

“It seems that I must always accept her wishes in the matter of physical affection, while she is never prepared to recognise mine.”

I really hate that she won’t lie there and take it

http://www.marriageromance.com/stories/11102115123.htm

“Please understand i get sex from her, but when we are having sex she doesn’t really participate in the act, she just lays there.”

Not about marriage, particularly but speaking of respecting men:

http://men.style.com/details/blogs/details/alternative_orifices/index.html

This discusses anal sex, and when it’s ok to ‘demand’ it. Not work safe.

“them a good story to tell over beers—and more the psychology. “For most of my friends, it’s sort of a domination thing,” says John (not his real name), 30, a writer in New York. “[It’s] basically getting someone in a position where they’re most vulnerable. My friends enjoy that and they tell their friends they did it. But it’s not like girls are ready for it—it’s something they do when they’re really drunk.”

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t read romance to have my life choices reflected or confirmed.

I don’t either, actually, or I’d not read so widely in the genre and beyond.  God knows I have no interest in becoming a spy/daughter of an earl/vampire hunter who marries a CIA agent/noble-blooded rake/shapeshifter, lol.

I guess I am always going to resist the idea that romance should “help” the feminist movement, or bolster self-esteem, or be obligated to promote any kind of particular “competing ideology” to help make the world a better place.

I am in complete agreement with you here.  I think what several of us are saying is that Romance is *already* value-laden (not value neutral) as all products of culture are.  And that some of us are interested in looking at how the genre expresses and reflects those values.  Not that anyone has to or should be reading for those (most of us don’t when we’re kicking back), just that they’re there already if one happens to be interested in looking (although we might disagree about what we see and what it means).

Someone earlier mentioned fairy tales, and I didn’t follow up because I didn’t want to implicate any equivalence between literature for children and literature for grown-ups.  And I still don’t want to do that, but I will point out that fairy tales are among the most widely used literary forms for acculturating children into society.  I found this little piece on fairy tales from the Yale-New Haven Teacher’s Institute, a long-time University/K-12 partnership.  Because it’s aimed at teachers there’s a curriculum unit and stuff, but some of the historical and literary context stuff mirrors, IMO, some of what we’ve been discussing here, not necessarily in content, but in terms of seeing fiction as culturally coded:
http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1984/4/84.04.07.x.html

If anyone happens to be interested, of course.

It’s so tempting to talk about the position of women. And about how to improve men. But I’m going to resist and focus back on romances.

Romances change as society changes. During the period when baby boomer women were avoiding having babies, romances didn’t have babies in them. Period. Then, when we as a generation finally realized it was now or never, suddenly romances were flooded with babies. They still are, because baby boomers, the largest bump in romance readers (and writers, too), are still raising some of those babies or feeling a bit nostalgic about the process. But I can tell you that a lot of us are in fact tired of babies, and our ennui probably accounts for the lackluster situation for category romance these days. Been there. Done that. Next.

And what about careers? Up until the very late 1970s, romance heroines routinely gave up their careers for marriage. Then it became a conflict that they won. Now, it’s not even on the table for discussion. Times change. Romances change.

I did an entire blog on rape sagas of the 1970s and I won’t rehash that here. Not a whole lot of romantic raping going on in romances lately, as we all know. I’m happy about that.

But yes, a romance is still an apotheosis of an intimate relationship. The details of the HEA change as writers and editors have the wit and vision to go in new directions, pushed by their own new needs as women. But women who want to read about other happenings in women’s lives have a wealth of other books to read. A novel about a woman does not have to be a romance. Read an Oprah pick. She’s about as anti-romantic as they come. 

And women who want to read genre that isn’t all about an HEA can read paranormal, science fiction, fantasy, chick lit, and erotica, to name a few. Its writers certainly don’t feel obliged to wrap up everything with an HEA that includes a wedding and babies. Doesn’t the mere existence of erotica prove that women as readers and writers have progressed to a point of raised feminist consciousness that is the exact opposite of the standard patriarchal linkage of sex with procreation in marriage? Yes, you bet it does.

So why publish a book entitled Pleasured in the Billionaire’s Bed (Harlequin Presents #2588)? Because money and power and sex sell. They sell books. They sell movies. They sell poor Britney Spears and all the people Dancing with the Stars, too. Commerce and the deep themes of fiction do have a nexus. And it’s the same old same old: Money. Power. Sex.

By the way, that Harlequin was a balanced story about a woman who has her own business and is not influenced or oppressed in any way by the hero’s money or fame. It was all about her conviction that she was frigid, and his coaxing campaign to prove otherwise. The title and the back cover blurb promised a power dynamic that never existed in the story itself. And that’s a dishonesty in marketing, not an author writing a book that attempts to reduce women to chattel status. But titles and blurbs like those wouldn’t exist for long if they weren’t selling the books. To us.

“I am in complete agreement with you here.  I think what several of us are saying is that Romance is *already* value-laden (not value neutral) as all products of culture are.”

Then why do romances always take the hit, when we have the patriarchal brainwashing discussion?  Aren’t we more in danger from the continual, subtle bombardment of things we don’t notice?

“Someone earlier mentioned fairy tales, and I didn’t follow up because I didn’t want to implicate any equivalence between literature for children and literature for grown-ups.”

But if you study story-telling, as a lot of writers do, you find that fairy tales were never intended to be children’s stories.  They used to be everyone’s stories, and were much too violent and sexually graphic for modern children.  They only became children’s stories when the Grimms cleaned them up.

Fairy tales are the archetypes that we draw on, consciously or unconsciously, when we write.  And although it may look, from the outside, that the only conflict we are writing about is ‘will they or won’t they have sex/get married/have babies?’ that is not the truth.  Everyone already knows the answer to this. 

The central conflict, from the writer’s perspective is usually something else entirely:  ‘can she keep a business, can she survive illness, can she protect what’s important to her?’

And since these are books written for by and about women, the heroine in these stories is going to win twice.  She gets the guy, and anything else she wanted.  These stories are about having it all.

I’m writing historicals, so my hands are kind of tied, when arguing for or against marriage and babies.  Marriage and babies was the main career track for women.  But from a feminist perspective (which I am holding as I write, because I would go insane if I had to write about doormats for a living) my stories are about sexual power.  My female characters are aware that their bodies and reproductive capabilities are a commodity, and they know that the system is stacked against them.  They want a happy and secure future.  The definition of happiness changes with the heroine, but she’ll have it by the end of the story.

And I’m with Nora on the liberated men front.  I have a husband and two teenage boys.  Husband is responsible for all laundry, and changed diapers, gave bottles and has done everything else needed to parent the kids, baby to adult..  And he stressed plenty about balancing family and career.

Older son does dishes, younger son vacuums and watches food network with me and tries recipes that interest him.  And we just bought a snowblower, light enough for me to run, since work is not gender specific here.  Of course, we all still argue continually about housework, as will any four people who are too busy to keep up with the housework and don’t want to ‘do it all’. 

And, because of a peer helping group he’s in, older son is continually wearing t-shirts in neon colors that warn girls about the dangers of dating violence and encourage them to get help, if there is a problem.  (I find this a little sexist, since out of a hundred shirts, statistically, there should be a few in the group to warn boys who get hit by their girlfriends or boyfriends).

As romance writers, we are telling you what we expect from the men in our lives.  Do you really think that we sit down at the computer to be tools of the patriarchy from 9 to 5, and then knock off work to be liberated?

Then why do romances always take the hit, when we have the patriarchal brainwashing discussion?  Aren’t we more in danger from the continual, subtle bombardment of things we don’t notice?

I think Romances become the center of attention in these discussions 1) because this is a Romance-related blog, 2) more generally because Romances are the most popular and widespread literature that are *explicitly* about relationships between men and women, and are therefore already involved in a larger discussion about gender roles, sexuality, and social power, and 3) because to those outside the Romance reader paradigm, the covers, blurbs, and titles invite a skeptical perspective, which sometimes results in provocative or even hostile commentary that sparks discussions like this one.

But from my perspective, these discussions have been ongoing for many years about all sorts of literary and popular genres (I can give you scads of academic references for articles and books that focus on race, gender, and class in popular fiction and culture), and Romance is now generating more critical attention *from its own readers and authors*—which I guess can seem disloyal to those readers and authors who aren’t interested in that kind of analysis. 

Not, IMO, that such interest hasn’t been there for much longer, but I think the online revolution has facilitated this kind of discussion among a diverse collection of readers and authors, and all of a sudden there seems to be a different aspect of the genre culture emerging, the “critical Romance reader.”  Who, btw isn’t any “better” than the reader who doesn’t have any interest in that kind of reading. 

I’m not going to defend Bindel’s argument, because I disagree with it, but at the same time, I don’t think that discussing cultural values and gender roles in Romance is inherently denigrating of the genre, either. In fact, sometimes it can engender a healthy dose of respect for the genre, IMO.

But if you study story-telling, as a lot of writers do, you find that fairy tales were never intended to be children’s stories.  They used to be everyone’s stories, and were much too violent and sexually graphic for modern children.  They only became children’s stories when the Grimms cleaned them up.

Oh, yeah, the Brothers Grimm definitely made folk/fairy tales children’s literature.  But as you point out, they were always “everyone’s, stories” including children, who were included (and important) in the audience, because these stories contain valuable information about social roles and expectations, morality, community values and norms (in the same way that myths are so often about the formation of societies and communities).  And they have always played a critical role in promoting community coherence by transferring “proper” behavior to community members including and especially children (which is one of the reasons children have long been featured in so many folk/fairy tales). 

Now I don’t think Romance has near the acculturative function that folk/fairy tales have historically had (and I’m not talking about Disney stories, which IMO are a whole different breed). But Romances do explicitly imagine again and again an idealized image of society, which, IMO, makes them ripe for these kinds of discussions, just like 19th century domestic fiction does, just like sci/fi does (I TAed a Science Fiction course in grad school that focused on race, gender, political structure, etc.), just like movies do (through film criticism), just like television and videos and video games and music genres all do via cultural studies. 

LizE made a comment on the AAR thread on this issue that I really like (and she’s much more articulate than I am on this issue):
http://aarboards.com/viewtopic.php?p=24741#24741 

Do you really think that we sit down at the computer to be tools of the patriarchy from 9 to 5, and then knock off work to be liberated?

When I first started reading the genre, I was extremely disturbed by the prevalence in the genre of rape and other violent acts perpetrated on women.  It just seemed to be *everywhere* in the genre, whether it was in the heroine’s past, threatened by the villain, converted to a sexual fantasy with the hero, used to punish so-called “bad” women, etc.  And it really freaked me out.

Over time, and through many books, I started to make distinctions and comparisons, to ferret out different aspects and types of violence, such that I started to see some things as subversive.  With the history of violence directed at women, I could see some instances of it in the genre as attempts to alter the terms so that the woman came out as the powerful one, or so she brought the man around and neutralized the threat.  Some aspects I began to view as attempts to understand or make coherent something that can often seem big and scary and ubiquitous. 

Had I not been trained to read texts critically, had I not approached the genre trying to understand this big thing that really disturbed me, I don’t know if I could have gotten past some of the violence, let alone seen it as cathartic or subversive or healing in its own way.  Of course there are instances where I am still disturbed, and I want to be able to talk about those, too, and to see what other people have to say about them, as well.  Not that anyone *should* have those interests.  But I know for myself reading this way has made what I love in the genre so much more meaningful, and some of what I don’t love more comprehensible for me, which in both cases has been a good thing.

Don’t know if the secret baby plot reflects new attitudes towards fatherhood. It’s mostly about unwed and struggling motherhood, after all. And it has a lot of anger in it for the easy life the man has had while the woman has been totally derailed by this baby she’s had the entire burden of raising.

Hmm…come to think of it, that could be a seldom-acknowledged subtext in secret baby stories, how hard motherhood is when men don’t do their share of owning up to parental (and sexual) responsibility.

I’ve always thought of the secret baby story as a fantasy reunion theme, a reconciliation theme if you will. In real life, the lover from seven years ago doesn’t return and want a woman back. But in romance fantasy, he does, or she does, and every issue that forced them apart is aired. And the suffering that one or the other or both endured also is aired and finally laid to rest.

In detailing the suffering, these romances give voice to the struggle of the single mother in our culture as no other stories do. And then they give her an HEA. Hooray for romance!

I wonder if the secret baby sub-genre is an extension of the idea that women can only find true fulfillment in motherhood (e.g. the movie Baby Boom). Now, men can only get to find true fulfillment as involved fathers as well.

There’s also the idea that a baby can save a relationship that’s in trouble, whereas in real life, I’ve noticed that working about as well as using gasoline to put out a fire.

” wonder if the secret baby sub-genre is an extension of the idea that women can only find true fulfillment in motherhood”

If the baby is secret, the woman, is unexpectedly pregnant, not seeking fulfillment through a baby.  She decides to keep the kid (for whatever reason) but not the man, since he is not a worthy partner/parent.

Later, after she has been a successful single parent, the man reappears.  He proves that he is capable of being a good father.  And he still finds the mom hot as hell, even though she’s not nineteen and childless. 

They live happily ever after.

So this type of story is about not losing your sexuality after having kids, and the belief that fathers should contribute more than biology to a successful relationship.

If a reader doesn’t want kids, this will never talk her into them.  But if she has them or wants them, it’s an assurance that romantic love doesn’t have to end with procreation.

I know that secret baby books tend to get dissed and dismissed, but I find them really fascinating for two reasons:  1) secret, and 2) baby. 

How do people feel about those books where the heroine keeps the baby secret from the hero, not because he disappears or she knows he’d be a bad dad, but because she 1) doesn’t want him to be involved in HER life, 2) thinks he doesn’t love HER, or 3) wants the baby to be all HERS?  And is that fair to the BABY, let alone the dad? And is the child actually a child or a plot device?  And what does it mean for a child to have to adjust to first a single parent and then the news that its father didn’t even know he/she existed? Why is the fantasy so often played out between the H&H as if the child didn’t really exist? 

I’m thinking, for example, of Rachel Gibson’s Daisy’s Back In Town, where the heroine decides not to tell the hero she’s pregnant with his kid, marries his best friend instead and moves away, and then comes back to her hometown when the boy is a teenager and the best friend has died.  I loved that Gibson made it clear that Daisy’s choice was selfish, and I took the fact that I wanted to slap her silly a couple of times as a good thing, because so rarely, IMO, are Romance heroines allowed to be selfish and unlikeable in their kid choices.  So I credit Gibson with making Daisy flawed in this way.  And she portrayed a fair amount of anger in the hero (realistically, IMO), who, of course, doesn’t find out about his son directly from the heroine.

But IMO the quick fix was still pretty much in, which diminished the HEA for me.  The son was one of those hyper-astute, sensitive but well-adjusted types, so we know he was raised well and can handle the disruption, but still, even that seems kind of a cop out.  IIRC, the kid knew his “father” wasn’t the DNA-contributor, but still, is it enough that we all THINK the hero wouldn’t have been the father or the husband the heroine and child needed for all those years?  Is it all about representing the way the heroine is possessed of more responsibility than she should be, or about a revelation that she should have been more trusting, or affirmation of her choice for independence in the gift of True Love from the real father? 

To me, the secret baby books are kind of a litmus test as to how important children really are—or aren’t—in the genre.

The only time the secret baby thing works for me is if: 1) the heroine thinks the hero is dead (can’t remember which book I read this in) or 2.) she cannot find him (this was a military book where she didn’t know his last name and he was gone from her area soon after teh sex happened).

If it’s for any other reason then it’s selfish.  If the book deals with the selfishness of the choice and admits the heroine was wrong then maybe that would be different. I’ve never read “Daisy’s Back in Town” so I cannot comment on that.

I just cannot abide a woman that doesn’t tell a man no matter what her reasons (unless he’s a terrorist or some such but then I don’t think he’ll be the hero of the book!).

Just my opinion of course! LOL

Not sure if I explained myself well here or not.

“How do people feel about those books where the heroine keeps the baby secret from the hero, not because he disappears or she knows he’d be a bad dad, but because she 1) doesn’t want him to be involved in HER life, 2) thinks he doesn’t love HER, or 3) wants the baby to be all HERS?”

Hate those kind. In fact, I’m not overkeen on babies in romances at all. Many writers don’t seem to know how a child of, say, two, three, or four should behave. I just read a book where a two and a half year old was chatting in sentences and there was no mention of nappies, and she slept in a bed, rather than a cot. I tried to ignore it, because the rest of the book was rather good.
Secret baby plots - I can take them when there is a good reason for it, for instance, the mother thinks the father is dead, or has evidence that he doesn’t care, or some other good reason not to tell him. Then they can be fun. But to take a unilateral decision like that just isn’t fair on the father and I find it hard to forgive a mother for that.

If it’s for any other reason then it’s selfish.  If the book deals with the selfishness of the choice and admits the heroine was wrong then maybe that would be different. I’ve never read “Daisy’s Back in Town” so I cannot comment on that.

I just cannot abide a woman that doesn’t tell a man no matter what her reasons (unless he’s a terrorist or some such but then I don’t think he’ll be the hero of the book!).

This is one of the things I struggle with, too, Tracy.  I haven’t read a ton of these books, but none of the ones I have read have left me feeling settled.  Either I’m thinking about how the kid was sacrificed for the HEA of the couple, or how the hero’s rights were violated unilaterally by the heroine, or how the heroine has cut off two very important rights from her kid (biological father and child support), or how I feel uncomfortable judging the heroine for her choices, etc.  In other words, these stories don’t seem to provide me with a restful fantasy, lol.  In some ways they seem kind of a strange fit in the genre IMO, but their popularity makes them a veritable staple.

In fact, I’m not overkeen on babies in romances at all. Many writers don’t seem to know how a child of, say, two, three, or four should behave.

This bugs me, too.  And it kind of confuses me, too, especially since kids seem so much a part of the genre.  It reminds me a little of RfP’s most recent Reader’s Gab column on bad sex writing (http://accessromance.com/gab/2007/12/06/bad-sex-in-the-library/), something we also see quite often in the genre.  I know it’s not because authors don’t have sex or kids, but what is it that makes these two central elements of the genre so annoying sometimes?

“To me, the secret baby books are kind of a litmus test as to how important children really are—or aren’t—in the genre.”

I agree there.  Secret babies are definitely not my thing.  Too many plot holes to make the story believable for me.  How can she be so selfish?  Why doesn’t she ask for child support?  How bad does the guy have to be to want him to permanently disappear, and if he’s that bad, why would you ever take him back?  Isn’t this kid going to end up in therapy for-ev-er?

I think the baby exists as a prop, in these stories, to serve the reader’s fantasy.  Maybe it’s really about regaining a first love, or getting some kind of do-over.  The baby-daddy isn’t a drunken loser who won’t pay child support, or a total player, or the worst one night stand of your life.

He’s really a stand up guy, who loves you, no matter what.  And he loves the kid too, and will drop easily into the role of father: changing diapers, coaching little league, and whatever else needs doing.  I bet he helps with the housework, after the book is done.  And, of course, the sex is great.

If the reader is a single mother with small kids, she might be looking for a much more practical version of prince charming to fantasize about, than the readers who are picking up the Greek billionaire, womanizing boss stories.

After a few tries, I gave up on secret baby stories. They made me so angry I couldn’t see straight! It seemed like the humanity of the child was never considered.

In most cases the entire construct hinges on the mother being utterly alone and pregnant—who in his/her right mind can think that denying that child another parent in case of death, illness, accident, can be in the best interest of the child? Unless, as said above, the biological father is a psychopath/terrorist/abusive drunkard junkie/what-have-you, and in that case, he ain’t no romance novel hero, right?

Too many plot holes to make the story believable for me.  How can she be so selfish?  Why doesn’t she ask for child support?  How bad does the guy have to be to want him to permanently disappear, and if he’s that bad, why would you ever take him back?  Isn’t this kid going to end up in therapy for-ev-er?

Not to mention as a guy reading these from my perspective the actions are such a betrayal that when the guy just up and forgives her like no problem I am like… WTF?

Half the time I come away thinking the kid would be better off raised by wolves.

While on the Secret Baby topic, it’s worth noting how very anti-choice most category romances are.  The idea of abortion is just about inevitably seen as completely repugnant by both hero and heroine and anyone who does have an abortion is severely criticized. Even the morning after pill is depicted as being as unsavory as an abortion, which is a fallacy I would really like to see exposed.  There may be exceptions to this, but I haven’t read any and most of my reading is considerably more contemporary than the original examples.

Virginity is still very big too, although I would say becoming less so. And the heroine not having sex with anyone but the hero, even after a decade long separation, is still the norm.

While on the Secret Baby topic, it’s worth noting how very anti-choice most category romances are.  The idea of abortion is just about inevitably seen as completely repugnant by both hero and heroine and anyone who does have an abortion is severely criticized.

Thinking about the books I’ve read I’d say there’s more an absence than a condemnation of *active* choice. Which may be the same thing or it may not, depending on the book. 

I think what makes me most uncomfortable about some secret baby stories is the way I am invited to judge the heroine for something that in RL does seem so terribly selfish and as unfair to a child as a father who abdicates his financial and/or emotional responsibilities. 

And I keep wondering, ‘why the hell is this happening, why is she doing this?’  And then I think of all the stuff that heroes can get away with in the genre and I feel REALLY uncomfortable, because while I can’t help but feel that the heroine is doing this really unfair thing, I also sort of feel sometimes like I’m being set up to judge her—and for what?  For setting in motion the perfect plot to have the functional and happy family I’m not supposed to believe she would have had if she had told the hero when she got pregnant?  So I’m supposed to judge her for following Romance formula? 

Either way I look at it I can’t get settled, because if the book glosses over the selfishness of her choice I feel cheated, and if the book dwells too much on it, I feel complicit in a genre double standard.

This discussion has been very interesting and intellectually stimulating. 

Normally the secret baby plot is one that I really dislike, but in real life I do have a good friend who actually lived this scenario.  We were close in college but after a few years she dropped out and began to work full-time.  Then suddenly, she moved back to live with her parents in another state.  As it turned out, she was pregnant - the result of a date rape by a guy she had known and trusted.  The thing was, she blamed herself for what happened and didn’t identify what happened to her as rape until quite a ways into the pregnancy.  By that time she had cleared out of town without ever telling the guy about her pregnancy.  When she consulted a lawyer, she was told that if she brought the guy to trial, it would be his word against hers and would be complicated by the fact that she hadn’t gone to anyone immediately after the incident.  In fact, there was some concern that the guy could claim parental rights and try to get some sort of custody.  Needless to say, she didn’t want any kind of contact with the father of her child.  So in essence, I guess she had what might be termed a “secret baby.” 

The other thing that I totally didn’t get was that she wasn’t eligible for welfare because she refused to identify the father.  I’m hazy on the details (and even in retrospect it doesn’t make sense to me), but I distinctly remember that she wasn’t able to get much financial assistance because of some documentation complications.  Which made the whole thing seem even more cruelly unjust.  She’s a strong woman though and if anyone deserves a real-life HEA, it would be her.

If it’s for any other reason then it’s selfish.

Only secret baby story I liked was one where the heroine tried to contact the hero but the only way she had to contact him was through his mother.  And of course grannie was teh ebil, didn’t tell the hero and even lied to the heroine about what he supposedly said.  I wish I remembered more about it, other than I think it might have been a western, but that was the only thing that stuck out ‘cause it was awesome in how different it was.

I just read a book where a two and a half year old was chatting in sentences and there was no mention of nappies, and she slept in a bed, rather than a cot.

I’m sure it has to be hard to write a middle of the road child who everyone can identify with.  If I were to write my son into a story (at 2.5 years old) he’d match two out of three of those points.  Except at that point he could pretty much only say “mama” and “dada” still.  Which would leave readers wondering why this child couldn’t freaking talk yet.  So unless a kid’s waxing philosophical, I tend to give more leeway.

Needless to say, she didn’t want any kind of contact with the father of her child.  So in essence, I guess she had what might be termed a “secret baby.”

I think that’s kind of the previous poster’s points.  If there’s legitimate reasons to not contact the father, then there’s myriad reasons why that guy would not be romance hero material.

When she consulted a lawyer, she was told that if she brought the guy to trial, it would be his word against hers and would be complicated by the fact that she hadn’t gone to anyone immediately after the incident.  In fact, there was some concern that the guy could claim parental rights and try to get some sort of custody.  Needless to say, she didn’t want any kind of contact with the father of her child.  So in essence, I guess she had what might be termed a “secret baby.”

What she had was a horrendous experience and obviously the strength to do what she needed to do for herself and her child.

Instead of the tear I’d like to go on about the state of our rape laws (and even perceptions about women who bring the charge) and what they say about gender equality, instead I’ll just say that I hope your friend gets a happy ending with a guy who hasn’t committed date rape and doesn’t need Romance novel rehabilitation techniques to be a loving and supportive partner and father.

And in terms of Romance novel secret babies, I am also now thinking that perhaps those plots fetishize biological parenthood in addition to the reunion fantasy.

The thing that annoys me about secret baby plotting is not so much the improbability as the forgiveness we so readily give (or are encouraged to give) both bad parents.

Also very few writers do younger characters well.  The rare occasions are such a joy—secondary characters done well will win me every time.  But most of the time, as noted, the chidlren are written as if the writer has absolutely no concept of childhood development.  What’s MORE surprising is how often said writer’s profile indicates she/he is a parent.

Anyway, back to the forgiveness thing… I would not want any man who needed to be “won over” anywhere near my child.  I would not want any child to be raised by a woman who would deliberately isolate him or her from his or her father.

Certainly there are notable exceptions, but it’s interesting how often we see blatant manipulation and bargaining with a child in romance.  I grew up during the 70’s (born in 65) and it was the first time divorce really felt epidemic.  Maybe it’s an era thing… so many of my friends of divorced parents viewed/treated manipulation and being used by parents as inevitable and “normal.”

I can recall SO MANY conversations with friends in high school about mother’s digging for info on dad’s girlfriend… visitation being denied to punish a spouse… kids being used as tools to hurt or blackmail the other spouse.

Thought you might like to know that one of the authors of the books mentioned in Bindel’s article replied today:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,2225914,00.html#article_continue

Go Louise!

oppressed my ass. Guys my age and younger are growing up pansies. It’s because they’re all afraid of being called hate mongers or whatever for chatting up a woman. It’s ridiculous!

Apparently this idiot hasn’t been in touch with the cave woman inside her head since… ever. I look for men that are likely to at least have the strength of will to keep me from dominating them all the way, because my mom was that way and I don’t want to be a bully myself. That and the guy isn’t afraid of a woman who has been called a number of names like “Amazon”, “Viking” and “Valkyrie”. >.>;;