There have been some pretty heated discussions going on lately at the Romantic Times Readers’ Roundtable Messageboard and at the AAR Potpourri Messageboard about Anne Stuart’s new book, Cold as Ice. Apparently, Stuart had the audacity to write about…oh, steel yourselves and be sure to have your hartshorn ready, ladies…a man who’s had them homosexual encounters.
The threads are huge, and I admit, time and my blood pressure aren’t allowing me to read through all of them. Some of the old standard canards have been brought up, from “OMG IT’LL RUIN ROMANCE BECAUSE IT’S VIOLATING THE ONE MAN/ONE WOMAN RULE!” to “OMG IT’LL RUIN ROMANCE BECAUSE HOMOSEXUALITY IS AN ABOMINATION!” Sigh.
The kerfuffling began with this report from LLB on the 2006 RWA conference included this snippet about Stuart’s upcoming book:
…the hero, a spy who slept with a man in Black Ice, has total control over his body, which allows him to have sex with men or women, whatever the job entails, without any emotional feelings whatsoever. At one point in the upcoming release, the hero informs the heroine that he kissed her to distract her in order to knock her out. When she asks what he would do if he needed to distract a man, he answers, “I would do the same thing.” Cold as Ice will be released in November. Given Harlequin’s sometimes old-fashioned reputation, I asked what the editors at MIRA thought about this. Stuart indicated hers loved it and that other editors who heard about it thought it was “cool.”
I noticed this bit of information when I first read the conference report last week, and it raised a brow, sure—but probably not for the usual reasons why anyone would raise their brow at the idea of a bisexual hero for a mainstream romance novel.
Why can’t a guy in a romance novel just enjoy cock because he enjoys cock, and not be a freak, emotionally cut-off to the point of pathology or a sociopathic villain who’s looking to shag anything that moves and a great deal that doesn’t? Not that Romancelandia is populated by the healthiest of heroes, but c’mon, now. A guy can like cock or cock AND pussy without being a sociopathic freak, you know. No, trust me, I know this, if you know what I mean, and I think you do..
I’m here to explode some myths about bisexuals. Hold on to your panties, people, because they are ground-shaking revelations of the first order.
1. Not all of them are polyamorous.
2. Not all of them are into group sex. Just because they’re omnivorous doesn’t mean they want all of it, all of the time.
3. Not all of them are indiscriminately slutty. Liking both sets of bits doesn’t mean they’re sex fiends, or that they don’t care who’s attached to those bits. That’s like saying omnivores don’t care about the quantity or quality of their food, simply because they enjoy both meat and vegetables.
4. Being bisexual doesn’t mean they’re wishy-washy or unable to make up their minds about what they want sexually. That’s like saying an omnivore is somebody who can’t make up their minds whether they like meat or vegetables, so they must be confused vegetarians or carnivores.
Furthermore, having a sexual encounter with the same sex doesn’t, in my opinion, immediately make somebody gay or bi. A lot depends on context of the encounters. Would a man who was raped by another man be considered gay, or bi? What about a man who had sex with other men strictly for the money? What about a man who was in a confined situation in which women were scarce for extended periods of time (as in jail or a ship)? What about a guy who was curious about what it would feel like to sleep with another man, but otherwise felt no real attraction to them?
And to flip this around: would a person who self-identifies as gay but married and slept with somebody of the opposite gender so the person could serve as a beard be considered bisexual?
People have this tendency to immediately go “AHHHH TEH GAY GERMS!” and label somebody bisexual or homosexual based on a few encounters, when to me, the true test boils down to: are you able to fall in love with a person of that gender? Does your interest immediately perk up when you see an attractive specimen? In short, are you attracted at a primal level to people of that gender? By that standard, I’m not sure that the hero of Cold as Ice is, as described, bisexual—he just happens to be willing to take on the cock for king and country.
But back to the debate. Of all the objections I’ve read, the one about “OMG IT VIOLATES THE MAN/WOMAN COVENANT OF ROMANCE” to be the most puzzling, because dude: it’s romance about a man and a woman. Just because it makes you go “EW, he touched peener in the past!” doesn’t make the hero any less monogamous or any less in love with the heroine by the end of the book.
And I won’t even begin to address all the “you can write it, but don’t call it romance—it’s actually EROTICA!” claims I keep stumbling over in the discussions. I’ve ranted plenty over that issue already.
Something else I keep stumbling over: people keep vigorously complaining about their right to be asshats without being called out on their asshattedness. “Stop judging the judgmental” etc. etc. etc. And true, people have their right to their opinions—but we also have a right to call you on your bigoted reactions. Look at it this way: if the hero to Stuart’s book, instead of shagging men in the past, had shagged black women in the past, and some people railed against the book in disgust, what would you think of those people? In that context, let’s look at some of the comments I’ve culled from various messages:
“…it [sic] warped , dysfuntional and abnormal …”
“I won’t be buying it because it’s too far outside my comfort zone.”
“Either way, it sounds gross”
“No thanks, I had trouble with this with Laurell K Hamilton and Anne Rice, but got past it because the men in question were not human.”
Mmmm-hmmmm.
I’m glad a mainstream romance author has a protagonist who’s had some homosexual encounters in his past, but I’m disappointed that Stuart, who’s pushed some interesting envelopes in the past, seems to be sticking with tradition in making those same-sex encounters traumatic.
Wow, I waded through six pages of that stuff over on RT, and now I feel queasy, kind of like I ate a whole sleeve of Oreos. Except I didn’t get any cookies with this queasy feeling.
Roseread, in the interest of brevity in my previous post I think I may have oversimplified my views. I don’t like the arguments that people are making about “comfort zones”. I agree with Candy, what I was mainly trying to express in my post is that Robin’s comment made me think about this from a different perspective. Sometimes I feel like I *personally* get so caught up gnashing my teeth, but her comment made me take a (half) step back. I felt for me that it was a valuable insight. That’s all I’m trying to say. I tend to take a pretty strong stance as well in these issues as well. 🙂
Any one aware of any romances where the heroine has had same sex relationships before she meets the hero? From Kinsey to more contemporary sexoligists, the research indicates sexual relationships between women who idenfify as heterosexual are not uncommon. Yet the current romantic trend is to write about m/m sex and romance. I would be great one day for the romance genre to fully embrace the idea that some people are attracted to the person not the gender.
I just wanted to give a thumbs up to Candy for her points on bisexuality. It’s annoying when people think that just because you’re bi, you can’t be monogamous or that you think cheating is ok because it’s with the same sex. I’ve been in a monogamous hetero relationship for over nine years and my bisexuality has never caused any issues.
I just love you. As usual.
That’s sexologists – why do I lose my capacity to spell on the internet?
celeste wrote: I’ve read a few books where the guy had same sex encounters in the past (usually not by his choice), and it takes the heroine’s almighty vagina to make him right again. Ugh.
Diana Gabaldon did this. Then again, she’s pretty adamant that she is not a romance author. Latidah.
WHAT “one-man one-woman rule”? Did Scarlett O’ Hara and Amber St. Clair miss the meeting?
Somebody’s trying to rewrite history, I think.
I can’t remember titles right now, but it seems to me I read some romances from the 80s where there was lots of globe-hopping, sort of sweeping adventure stories, and the heroine would sometimes sleep around a bit before she settled down with Mr. Hero. They were a bit campy, quite like the covers of Ms. Brandewyne below but they sure weren’t one man – one woman, only.
And what about all the historicals that open with a man fondling his mistress (or some hooker) on the boobies just so us readers don’t miss the fact that he’s a dangerous womanizing rogue?
“as Candy stated, this were a discussion about inter-racial romances, anyone who said it was outside their comfort zone would be denounced—rightly—as a racist and anyone rational would dismiss their arguments.”
Why does it have to come down to such a powerful label being given? Maybe such a person is racist and maybe they’re not. Maybe their background is one of tremendous racial homogenity and they are really unfamiliar with much racial diversity. What about non-wite readers who won’t read interracial Romance?
I’m still waiting to find the person who is completely free of some form of prejudice against any category, group, organization, individual, etc., because I’ve yet to locate one (myself included). I am very uncomfortable reading many Native American – Anglo Romances, because I think so many of the Romances themselves are pretty racially insensitive. But beyond that, I just don’t think most people fit so easily in and out of categories—something you seem to suggest yourself in explaining your own sexuality.
Now, if someone says that they don’t think interracial Romance should be part of Romance, I’ll argue very strongly against that position. But really and truly, the vast majority of people I know and observe harbor any number of fears and anxieties and suspicions about a range of “othernesses,” many born of unfamiliarity. It doesn’t, IMO, make them an “ist” of a certain variety, especially if they are not actively campaigning against other groups or victimizing said people or loudly proclaiming the inferiority, perversion, etc. of such people.
“Why does it have to come down to such a powerful label being given? Maybe such a person is racist and maybe they’re not.”
Totally, 100%, absolutely bunk. There’s nothing especially ‘powerful’ about the label if you come from magic-non-reality Ignoranceland—if the lable is taken as powerful than the person who said the stupid shit obviously should have known better. If you don’t want to be labled racist… don’t be racist. If you don’t want to be called a homophobe… then don’t be homophobic.
But, don’t run around pretending that theres some sort of “get to be hateful for free” card based on your upbringing. I wouldn’t let a person kick me in the knee, because they came Knee Kicking Country. I’d tell them knee-kicking makes you an asshole. They can either change thier knee-kicking accordingly, or choose to willfully be an asshole.
I agree with Veronica. Own your freakin’ labels, folks.
If somebody calls me a bitch, my first response is, “Thank the fuck outta you.”
I can be a bitch at times.
If you’re a bigot either change or own it, all y’all bigots!
Americans particularly stroke out being called racist, because so damn many of y’all are.
Yep, I said the ‘R’word. If the shoe fits . . .
Totally, 100%, absolutely bunk. There’s nothing especially ‘powerful’ about the label if you come from magic-non-reality Ignoranceland—if the lable is taken as powerful than the person who said the stupid shit obviously should have known better. If you don’t want to be labled racist… don’t be racist. If you don’t want to be called a homophobe… then don’t be homophobic.
One of the things I get most frustrated with in W. is his absolute certainty that there is a right and a wrong way to look at things—a black and white reality, so to speak. The Axis of Evil, Islamofashism, stem cell research, Plan B, choice, Christianity. That kind of absolutist certainty, regardless of the political ideology and party behind it, frightens me a little.
Burning a cross is a racist act; racially segregating schools is racist; proclaiming that Blacks are inherently lazy or that the Chinese are inherently industrious (a la African American political scientist Thomas Sowell) is racist. You want to throw in all Romance readers who don’t like interracial Romance? Really? Wow.
Americans particularly stroke out being called racist, because so damn many of y’all are.
Wow again. This statement feels sort of racist to me, and I’m actually way less comfortable referring to something/someone as racist than I am being called racist.
Robin,
I respect your feelings, but hear this.
Most black people would have no problem at all with my statement.
Americans particularly stroke out being called racist, because so damn many of y’all are.
While I don’t speak it out loud because it’s taboo, I define racist as being treated or solid evidence of being regarded differently from a like white person solely because I’m black.
Late and short but my two cents (that’s Mexican, by the way):
The problem I have with rigid moral compasses at any spot in the spectrum is that most of those holding them want to make everyone else follow the path of that one compass.
This.. proselytizing, if you will, would be a trivial matter if some of those same rigid moral compass holders weren’t actively trying to regulate everyone else’s morality and behaviour.
(Can’t resist! spam foiler: came69)
While I don’t speak it out loud because it’s taboo, I define racist as being treated or solid evidence of being regarded differently from a like white person solely because I’m black.
I see what you’re saying here, Monica. I guess that for me there’s a difference between racialism and racism. To me, anyway, what you’re talking about here is racialism, which is the phenomenon of identifying or believing in differences among races. And I do believe that America is an incredibly racialist country. While racialism can become racism, I don’t think it’s the same thing (and I don’t think it’s a “soft” form of racism, either). Racism to me is hatred, discrimination, or a belief of inferiority or superiority singularly based on race, and while I think everyone has prejudices and holds certain group stereotypes (many of which huddle around circumstantial differences like race, culture, religion, language, etc.), I think the proportion of true racists is smaller than what you’ve represented. For me it’s the difference between segregating AA Romance, and portraying African American Romance characters as subhuman (i.e. stupid or violent or even hyper-sexualized).
I want to add that I feel the same way about gender issues; I get nervous when people start calling various men misogynist, because, really, I don’t think most men hate women (they fear us! ;)). I think misogyny is a really strong word, and while I think that both genders have a tendency to essentialize each other, I think person to person discrimination is less of a problem than passive acceptance of patriarchal social values we don’t challenge persistently enough. And perhaps it’s the same with race.
Respectfully, Robin,
Why is romance segregated? What is the message? You say it’s racialism.
Bear with me.
What if a romance writer writes a romance and the majority of romance readers refuse to read her romance or don’t get the opportunity to read it solely because of her race?
What if her romance is treated differently than the other romances, to the point of being put on a separate shelf, even though the content of her romance stories are no different from the others?
What is this telling her about her worth as a writer—and as a person—compared with the other writers whose books get regarded the same as the other romances?
Isn’t the message that she’s inherently different, somehow subhuman and naturally inferior writer if her romance can’t be treated the same as the others?
How is this less harmful than a book portraying African American Romance characters as subhuman (i.e. stupid or violent or even hyper-sexualized).
She might say it’s more harmful because it affects her life, her hopes, dreams, and her potential.
There is no difference between racialism and racism. It’s just different semantics for the same thing.
I’m sidestepping the most recent branching of the conversation, but I wanted to respond to something Keziah said a bit up-thread:
Any one aware of any romances where the heroine has had same sex relationships before she meets the hero?
I don’t actually read romance (fantasy novelist and reader here, but I find it interesting to read about the trials and tribulations of other genres), so I can’t answer that question. But I know that in fanfiction, m/m is astronomically more common than f/f, and the majority of it is written by women. There’s plenty of speculation about why that is the case, but I suspect whatever the causes are, they’d apply to romance, as well, since the majority of the authors (as I understand it) are, again, women.
Or, to put it another way, as long as the majority of writers and readers of romance are straight women, they’re more likely to find m/m action hot than f/f. For whatever reasons that may be. I live ten minutes’ walk from the Kinsey Institute, but getting into their library requires permission from God, so it’s not a question I’ve ever tried to research. 🙂
Monica has a point. I’m in a mixed-race marriage myself, and the novel my agent is currently shopping around is an interracial romance. She loves the book, but when I first signed on with her, she gently suggested I might want to make my hero Italian or something else because it might make it a tougher sell. I did all the other revisions she asked for but I didn’t change my hero’s race.
We’ll see how NYC feels about it because it’s a great story otherwise.
Oh, and since somebody mentioned this up-thread, too—
—the linking of homosexuality with pedophilia, bestiality, and various other kinks/perversions (depending on your point of view) probably happens because of boundaries. That is to say, some people view homosexuality as lying on the other side of the boundary of Moral Behavior, and once you cross that line, everything goes. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, cats and dogs living together, etc. It isn’t rational; those behaviors don’t actually correlate. But they’re all (for such speakers) in the territory where there are no longer any boundaries.
(It’s also my amateur opinion on why men are more likely to be bothered by m/m sex than f/f. In the sense that men penetrate, and women are penetrated, m/m sex violates their bodily integrity and breaks the boundary of their self, which isn’t supposed to happen to them. If I had the spare time to read up on sexuality, I might know whether I’m totally wrong about that or not—but I only have time to wear so many hats. Alas.)
After reading the six pages on the RT forum, I think the thing that bothered me the most was the knee-jerk reaction. If they had actually examined the book in question, there are no graphic m/m scenes. The hero isn’t currently sleeping with guys for fun, although if he were, more power to him.
The character is not a sociopath or a budding serial killer; he’s more like a spy or an undercover narc officer. He does whatever he has to get to get the job done. I don’t think Stuart really delves his enjoyment of m/m sex, although hopefully she won’t go down the Schone road and make it traumatic. It’s part of the backstory; that’s all.
And yet to have so many people flipping out, saying it’s gross, unnatural, immoral, aberrant—that blows my mind. It’s not even a story element, for Christ’s sake!
So why all the freaking out over it?
What if a romance writer writes a romance and the majority of romance readers refuse to read her romance or don’t get the opportunity to read it solely because of her race?
What if her romance is treated differently than the other romances, to the point of being put on a separate shelf, even though the content of her romance stories are no different from the others?
What is this telling her about her worth as a writer—and as a person—compared with the other writers whose books get regarded the same as the other romances?
Isn’t the message that she’s inherently different, somehow subhuman and naturally inferior writer if her romance can’t be treated the same as the others?
Well, I think there are some assumptions and conclusions here that are arguable.
First off, in terms of the shelving issue, does that really occur because bookstores and readers consider African American Romance to be inferior, or does it happen because, as in my Borders, for example, African American history and Chicano history and Native American history and culture and general literature categories are shelved separately? And is that related to the fact that African American Studies has its own department on most college campuses, a separation actually insisted upon by many African American scholars who prefer the prominence of the separate title? That is, not because African American Studies is viewed as inferior, but because it’s seen as requiring a certain insulated protection? Gay/lesbian literature is shelved separately, too, and several of my gay friends have expressed the fact that they are more comfortable with that, because they can find it easily and don’t feel uncomfortable browsing the shelves with other customers. I am actually against segregating Romance on the shelves, but I’ve heard from African American readers that they prefer having a separate place to go where they know they can access AA Romance. I’ve heard booksellers say they shelve separately because of so many reader requests for AA Romance. Some of it, I think, is intended as a sort of literary affirmative action, not as the denigration of Romance.
As to AA writers being treated differently, can you elaborate on that? When this topic comes up on boards, I see so many requests from non-AA readers that they are open to read AA Romance but have just not actively sought it out. Is this so different from readers who don’t seek out books that take place outside of England? I don’t know the answer to this question—I’m asking for an opinion about it. Does the fact that white Romance readers aren’t actively seeking out AA Romance mean that AA Romance authors aren’t being read, SOLELY because of their race? How many AA authors actually write AA Romance? How do AA authors who write white Romance figure into this in terms of being judged solely on their race (as opposed to the race of their characters).
Also, what about AA readers? The long-time friend who started me reading Romance, who has read Romance since she was a teen, doesn’t read AA Romance, even though she’s an academic who heads the African American Studies program on her campus and works specifically on issues of race and culture. Where would she fit into this equation?
Can you give me some examples of how AA Romance authors are treated in such a way that they are being told that they aren’t worthwhile as writers, examples that are distinct, for example, from white Romance authors who can’t sell manuscripts that take place in France or Belgium, or WWI Germany, or 15th century Spain? I think it would be easier for me to accept your conclusions if I had a stronger grasp on your premises.
And yet to have so many people flipping out, saying it’s gross, unnatural, immoral, aberrant—that blows my mind. It’s not even a story element, for Christ’s sake! So why all the freaking out over it?
Might it be because the administration changes at the national level in RWA left these sad and frightened bigots feeling as disenfranchised as they believe gay and lesbian people should be? And there’s nothing angrier than a thwarted bully?
On the interracial thread: I must admit that when I first started looking around in online romance sites, the idea that there was a separate category for ‘interracial romance’ just trounced my ‘comfort zone.’ Or, to be frank, it pissed me off. For godsake, Kirk kissed Uhura over 30 years ago. Our race is Human. (Except for those pesky vampires and were-beasts.)
Speaking of which, I find it passing strange that gay-lesbian stories are often lumped under ‘exotic’ in many chat lists—with the aliens, vampires, and other non-human creatures.
Candy, kudos to you. “Outside my comfort zone” is a soft-core condemnation by someone who hasn’t even got the guts to honestly acknowledge a prejudice. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. What sane consenting adults do together is their own business and no one else’s.
But we’re getting into the free-speech zone again, I think—the “how dare you tell me I might be wrong?” Since when is literature about any subject supposed to be restricted to a “comfort zone?” Dickens made many wealthy Victorians uncomfortable by his realistic portrayal of what happened to the helpless in poorhouses and orphanages—should he have been censored because he threatened their “comfort zone?” Or how about Solzhenytsen? Martin Luther King? Any random feminist? Environmentalists? How about the person who yells “fire” in a theatre because the place really is on fire?
Insular ignorance is “comfortable” to people who are threatened by the idea that their way is not the only way. Recognizing that gay and lesbian love is a legitimate form of human expression may be uncomfortable in the short run, but growing up is frequently a terribly uncomfortable experience.
But the alternative is to remain a perpetual adolescent, with ignorant and immature opinions—and we have far too much evidence of what can happen to a country that’s run by people who are stuck in that state.
The whole homo(bi)sexualality thing linked to beastality/pedo behavior just has to come up every fuckin’ time!! Like a man that would stick his cock up another man would inherently stick it in any hole around. Dick is well-named.
And why is this an issue now?? Emma Holly has a bisexual hero in Beyond Seduction how many years ago? Seems to me the genre is still kickin’
The gay/bisexual prejudice is just a new twist to an old thing. Prejudice and hatred of an other unites people.
Gay people are doing something different from most, so are an easy target for hatred.
Gay folks will have arrived when Harlequin starts a line of gay romances.
However, while books featuring gay sex are segregated in some places, and places like my hometown in Kansas refuse to carry any gay books books (or books by black authors for that matter), books by gay people that aren’t about sex and coupling don’t seem to be separated. We haven’t come to that yet. Truman Capote was gay, but his book In Cold Blood was shelved with the true crime like any other author’s book.
Robin, we’ll have to agree to disagree. You think blacks have little beef when it comes to racism, even when we’re segregated from the mainstream. Many white Americans share your views that prevasive racism is a made-up construct. Something blacks say just to have fun and piss them off, I guess.
Candy, you are amazing.
Thank you for posting about the stereotypes attached to bisexuality, which few ever question.
In the bisexual world, the polyamorous types are the exception, really. And those that are doing the orgy circuit are most often young, which is true for heterosexuals as well. When bisexuals get older, we settle down into traditional (though sometimes gay) monogamous relationships like anyone else.
I’m not disputing that AA Romance may be separated in a lot of bookstores. But certainly not in all. In my husband’s store Romance is shelved alphabetically, period. I don’t think it would have occurred to him or any of the staff to do otherwise. But his store is small and independent, and isn’t a yardstick for the industry.
I don’t know if he carries gay Romance. I’ll have to ask.
Just because I can, I’ll add that at his upcoming event in Oct, I’ll be signing with Dennis Lehane, Michelle Monkou and George Pelecanos. So that’s a couple of Irish types, a black woman and . . . is that Greek? Not sure. But it’s a pretty diverse lineup.
It never fails to amaze me how people have no problem reading about sex with what is essentially a corpse (vampire romances) but they will totally wig out over a little implied homosexual or bisexual action.
Whooohooo, Michelle gets to sign with Nora, Lehane and Pelecanos?! I’d be tickled for the opportunity to chat with my heroes.
I’m trying to puzzle out the ‘bisexual partners are more likely to be unfaithful’ argument. Several people in the AAR discussion have suggested that they find Happily-Ever-After to be much less likely with a bisexual man as the hero. It doesn’t make sense to me. Why is a bisexual man more likely to be unfaithful than one of those Toxic Alpha Man-Hos that Romance seems to be littered with?
I don’t think that anyone making the argument that the HEA is less likely with a bisexual hero could back it up with logic. To me that seems an argument based on their prejudice or plain ignorance. I know that someone (probably Candy) already provided a study showing that just because someone is bisexual has nothing to do with them being able to have a monogamous relationship.
Perhaps (staying on the “personal preference” rather than the “morality/exclusionary” side of the issue) we just gravitate toward romance novels that elaborate on our own fantasies and reflect/validate our own realities. I know I’m much more likely to pick up a book that has an older pairing, rather than a twenty-something couple. I’m more likely to stick with a book in which the hero is more of the academic type than a cop or a cowboy (in fact, I am definitely NOT into cowboys or SEALS, etc).
Bisexuality is irrelevant to me, as long as the novel I’m reading presents a plausible romance that I can releate to. Race is irrelevant, as long as it meets the same criterion.
What I *really* want, and what I almost never find, are books that reflect my own reality, with a middle-aged heroine finding her middle-aged hero. Don’t give me that 35=midlife crap, give me a woman over 50 who’s still looking for passion and commitment. We’re invisible, but we exist. Limiting romance novel characters to the young, slender, and beautiful says to me that I’m not a candidate for a HEA myself, and reinforces the myth that sex/love/passion are the province of the young.
Talk about a slap in the face to an entire generation!
I was wondering when you were gonna post on this.
Very well done.
Wow, a lot to comment on today.
Megan said:
You said it. No matter what mythos people come up with, I never get past the “But he’s dead” in my own mind, followed quickly by “Ewwwwww.” In my world, vampires don’t get to have sex; they drink blood. Maybe they experience intense pleasure through feeding, but actual physical sex doesn’t fly for me.
SandyW said:
First, the idea that a bisexual hero is more likely to be unfaithful is ridiculous. It doesn’t mean someone is indiscriminate. To me, it’s an indicator that someone is extremely enlightened and is able to be attacted to a person, not just their naughty bits. And that’s a convention that I thought was yummy when I was like 18 and fresh to romance. Now that I’m older, I find that particular formula revolting. I mean, we have a man-ho who fucks his way through the world because he’s emotionally damaged, unable to love a woman, and then, here comes our heroine, who will cure him magically the first time he sticks his penis in her magical vagina. Well, shit, if the woman’s hoo-hoo is really that special, she should be on display at the Holy See with petitioners lined up to touch it for its healing properties!
Finally, Nancy said:
I agree and would recommend Black Rose from Nora Robert’s In the Garden trilogy. In fact, this book blew both Blue Dahlia and Red Lily out of the water, not that they were bad, but Black Rose was ground-breaking. I like challenging the stereotype that a woman has to slowly become matronly and non-sexual as she ages. Great book.
And could a bitch please fix my Italic faux pas below, please?
Robin, we’ll have to agree to disagree. You think blacks have little beef when it comes to racism, even when we’re segregated from the mainstream. Many white Americans share your views that prevasive racism is a made-up construct. Something blacks say just to have fun and piss them off, I guess.
I’m not sure exactly how much we disagree on, Monica. You threw out an extremely strong statement:
What if a romance writer writes a romance and the majority of romance readers refuse to read her romance or don’t get the opportunity to read it solely because of her race?
Isn’t the message that she’s inherently different, somehow subhuman and naturally inferior writer if her romance can’t be treated the same as the others?
I asked for clarification and specification. Telling me a situation is racist and expecting me to simply agree is different from giving me your definition of racist behavior and then providing examples that have led you to that conclusion so I can see for myself how you’ve reached it. I feel that because I’m not ready to simply agree to something just because you’ve told me it’s so (i.e. that AA writers are being treated as inferior, not that inferior treatment doesn’t indicate racism), now I’m one of “those” white people who just doesn’t get it. Which feels sort of essentialist to me in its own way.
You don’t really know what I think about the situation of AA authors in Romance, because I haven’t yet drawn a final conclusion, although I will endure the implications of your comment because it would be disingenuous of me to simply say, yeah, you’re right, AA authors and AA Romance is the object of racism in the industry and in the Romance reading community. I’m stil working my way through the analysis. And it would take too long for me to explain all of the things I believe about racism and race in America more generally. I have a lot of thoughts on that, some of which involve the “R” word, and some of which don’t.
Someone below, Lia, I think, brought up the word prejudice, and I just have to say that I wish that word would make a comeback in our vocabulary. I think she had the right of it when she said that not wanting to read outside one’s comfort zone was a form of prejudice, because after all, the damn word means what it says—to pre-judge—and certainly, this is what readers are doing in these circumstances, IMO (the question beyond is whether people should be condemned for, or forced to face or overcome their prejudices, which is, IMO, a slightly different discussion). What I don’t think is that prejudice is necessarily the same thing as racism, and while you imply that Americans (particularly us white folks) need to wake up and get comfortable with the “R” word, I think the “R” word has become so overexposed that its use actually discourages people from attending to the differentiations and the prejudices and the stereotypes and the inequities you want us to see.
I live in one of the most liberal counties in the country and in the most liberal state in the US, and am considered to be very liberal in my political and social views. I work in an extremely liberal academic setting and go to one of the most leftie law schools in America. Even here I see the burnout and the backlash, and it’s frustrating because the area in which I work—on equity issues in higher education—has become a battleground. Why? Because the more conservative politicians and pundits have been able to capitalize on people’s frustration with what they believe to be unfair advantages given to “minorities” (and what I think has been both political sides’ unfair and inaccurate generalizations about race in America) such that these people are ready to listen eagerly to diatribes on “political correctness” and the like. A number of years ago, when we had a proposition on the ballot to deprive illegal immigrants of public services, one of the major voting blocs of support came from Chicano/Latino voters. Same with the state proposition to ban affirmative action in public institutions; although the percentage was smaller, a significant number of non-whites voted for that proposition. So now we’re not only fighting for real equity issues, but we’re also battling these broad generalizations from both sides of the political aisle, which, in some ways, are more difficult to contend with and overcome.
My vision is admittedly circumscribed by my own experiences both professionally and personally, as well as the work I’ve done on race and the development of the American national identity (my dissertation work was on Indian captivity narratives and the social constructions of race and culture), and that research (much of it primary) continually surprised me with its nuances and complexities, especially the confusion around what constitutes race and what constitutes culture and how unstable both categories really are (I highly recommend Theodore Allen’s two-volume work, The Invention of the White Race, for anyone who is interested in this stuff). So between all that and what I see as an overuse and overapplication of the term “racism” to dynamics that may or may not be out and out racism, I am hesitant in using it liberally, so to speak. If that makes me one of those white people who doesn’t get it in your eyes, then I’ll have to live with that, because no matter how smart I think you are Monica—and I do think you’re extremely smart—I’m not ready to agree with you just to avoid being called the “R” word.
I’m not calling you a racist. It’s too charged a word to bandy. But that’s all it is, a word.
I don’t see why I have to defend that segregation is dehumanizing and degrading. The fact that historically segregation is a bad thing seems to be a given.
Why do societies segregate? By the act of setting apart, the set apart are demeaned and made inferior.
Apartheid, the Untouchable caste in India, Jews under Nazism, blacks in the U.S. pre-Civil Rights Act.
The only writers of romance and other popular fiction segregated by race are black authors.
You can defend the hows and whys we are set apart, but it doesn’t change the reality of the many ways, small and big, that we are segregated.
I’m going to speculate that shelf-segregation is actually a marketing ploy. I think publishers intend to appeal to racial solidarity: black women will buy this book so we’ll put all romance novels written by black authors together in hopes that they will hit the same target audience.
However, that thinking is paltry because it seems to carry the assumption that a white soccer mom from New Hampshire won’t read the same book as a black PR specialist from Miami. They’re limiting their audience when a good book is a good book. Romance should be slotted with romance.
Publishers were so astounded when they realized that black people actually read books in the early nineties, they flooded the market with black-authored books. Black romances were allowed in numbers in 1994—before that if you wanted to write romance you had to pass for white.
What’s telling is instead of adding black authors to their existing lines and imprints, they made separate categories just for books by black authors.
The black book niche is thriving around 15 years later. Black folks read a lot. Many blacks are grateful to be published at all and to have characters in books that look like them, so they’re not complaining. We remember well when we couldn’t be published at all or read a genre book with black characters.
But a bitch like me reminds folks that segregation is segregation and segregation is bad, no matter the economics.