Elyse: I recently DNF’d a slew of books due to totally repulsive behavior on the hero’s part, so of course I ranted at Sarah about it.
Sarah: And I’m always here for ranting about books. Squeeing, too, but also ranting.
Elyse: I’m so tired of the sex-entitled hero who sees every person to whom he might be attracted as a potential location for his peen.
You know the guy I’m talking about, right?
Sarah: Yup.
Elyse: He sees the heroine and the first thing he can think about is how his penis would feel inside her.
His dick is hard so he must find an outlet for it right now.
Sarah: I’ve read that guy. I really hate that guy. His interest in her is not about her as a person, but as a potential sexual object.
Elyse: Congrats on your circulatory system working, dude, but nobody cares about your stupid boner.
Sarah: And it’s surprising to me when I think about how common it was, and is.
Elyse: The plot might be led by the hero’s erection. He has one. He needs to do something with it. We have conflict.
Enter the heroine. She’s the best boner solution ever and now he haz a feeling. A feeling and a boner at the same time.
Sarah: Wait, he might also be mad about the feeling, because she caused it, and it is all her fault!
The only punishment is MORE BONER.
Elyse: The end.
I’m so fucking sick of heroes behaving badly and then not taking accountability for it.
Sarah: Agreed. I am very tired of Boner Led Heroes.
Elyse: YES.
Sarah: It’s either, “I have a boner, I’m not in control of it, and I’m mad at you about it” or “I have a boner so you must service it.”
I’m way tired of that kind of heroic arc. It’s not much of an arc, really. More of a slant.
Elyse: Your inability to manage your own erection is upsetting and gross.
Sarah: But it’s not cause for a plot for an entire fucking book.
Elyse: It’s reductive and misogynist and just plain gross.
Sarah: To quote Amanda’s shirt: NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR STUPID BONER. Having one doesn’t give you special rights or opportunities.
Elyse: I read a tweet that said, basically, “There are men who put their penises in trees. In sheep. Having a guy want to stick his dick in you is NOT a compliment”
Sarah: You have hands, lotion, maybe a Fleshlight? Your boner is your problem. (Also, I’d read The Duke’s Fleshlight.)
Does the plot revolve around boner rage or boner expectations, or does it focus on emotional connection?
If it’s a Boner Led Hero plot, then no, thanks. In terms of book plots, “I have met a person and I want to stick my dick in that person” as a foundation is not interesting to me.
But “I really like this person, and I really want to figure out how to make this person feel happy, safe, and also orgasmic” is VERY interesting to me.
Elyse: YES
I’ve been on a celebrity/royal romance kick lately (I WONDER WHY?) and there seems to be a plague of boner-led heroes in this sub-sub genre.
Take the hero I read who wakes up from a drunken night with one of his fans, and is trying to extricate himself from her presence. She is confused why he doesn’t want her to blow him as she’d been planning to.
As for the hero, his DICK feels puzzled, too! His dick argues with him!
He then describes his dick as being dumb, and as having a mind of its own.
No, your dick does not have a mind of its own. It isn’t sentient. It is a part of your body for which you are entirely accountable.
Suggesting otherwise is a common way to justify things like sexual harassment and assault.
Sarah: Yeah, that is…not a character I would enjoy.
I know some books that have handled sexual attraction and emotion as two separate challenges to be wrestled with by both characters and handled that conflict well. Pants-feelings*-to-real-feelings is a totally workable sequence of events.
*™ Captain Awkward
And I get the idea of the personification of desire. I’ve read many a female character’s sexual interest as being identified by a “tingle” or a “zing” in their “lady parts,” and I’ve read about “lady boners.” None of that bothers me, I think in part because it’s still subversive for women to own their own desire.
But I don’t remember reading a vagina as having a mind of its own, nor reading one that calls the shots or speaks or argues with the character, so to speak. So the dick-as-sentient-being thing doesn’t work for me.
I understand why it exists. And I will absolutely admit upon self examination and a look at my tattered keeper copies that I’m slightly more tolerant of Boner Led Heroes in books published 20+ years ago or more than I am of heroes published right now, especially in contemporaries.
I have read a lot of “My Boner Has Led Me to Understand There May Also Perhaps Be Feelings in Other Parts of Me Well Crap Now What Do I Do” romances, but I’m really done with them now. But I’ve said for awhile, I like emotionally fluent characters.
Elyse: It was a popular theme for a long time, but I think it’s more than past time for me to avoid all the Boner Led Heroes.
Sarah: Agreed.
What about you? Met any boner-led heroes? Or have you found a few that worked for you? We’d like to know what you think!
I should clarify my earlier comment – sexual attraction is not the only element that makes or breaks a romance for me. What I was trying to say is that I don’t have a problem with insta lust or the hero or heroine thinking sexual thoughts about the other MC and wanting to have sex with that person. I cut my teeth in romance on regency romances from zebra and signet with little to no sex and those can be powerful stories. But instant sexual attraction that then turns into more can also be powerful. It all depends on the emotional depth of the characters and/or the plot and/or the skilll of the writer and/or your own personal catnip.
I’m just catching up on this post and the comments and I want to say thank you to the whole SBTB community for having this discussion. It’s smart and insightful, and even the conflicting viewpoints are presented with the utmost respect for others. As much as I though I was enlightened around the #MeToo movement, you’ve given me even more to think about and dissect.
I read in Annik Houel, commenting on Julia Bettinotti et al’s classifying (?) work on romance, that the “polemical confrontation”, one of the five canonical narrative components, took up the bulk of any given book, 70%, or 80, don’t quite recall.
The sexy parts were among the essential elements squeezed into the remainder: the encounter, the sexual encounter, the declaration of love, and the marriage.
If that paradigm holds, a huge part of romances’ appeal has to be in the capacity of ‘problem’ novels, ie ones that raise issues (pop sociology polemics, object lessons). That type of content makes up the bulk of the book.
Accordingly, I highly doubt that we demis, aces and greys are the only ones reading reviews with spoilers to see if characters ‘fight fair’ and come to an equitable agreement in the end.
We MAY contribute disproportionately to the group of people who read sexy first encounters last, out of sequence, when it works as foreshadowing a relationship that has since lasted and proven functional. Or skim over that section and never return.
As an example of ‘problem’ v ‘problematic’, earlyish Lynne Graham is often problematic sexually. Coercion rather than consent, with the thin pretext of it being physically painless as possible not papering over the cracks well – which may be intentional, to give Graham her due.
Graham’s treatment of ‘problems’ can be better. It’s her phrases for financial abuse that first articulated some things I felt in real life. Like the guy “getting off cheap” in a divorce.
That was a departure for the time. Mostly heroines were at such pains to be the antithesis of so-called gold-diggers they deprived themselves and any kids.
I am perversely impressed by Graham’s versatility. In recent years, she managed the tour de force of having an estranged wife demand an explanation from her husband: How could she get pregnant from ex sex seeing as he’d had a vasectomy? Without telling her.
Yep. He’d had a reversal, also without telling her. And forgotten all about it in the heat of passion and the force of habit.
Oh, it’s farcically fun for the WIFE to demand the explanation, but it requires glossing over reproductive rape. Even with negligence or recklessness, not malice for intent.
(And really, would a man forget a recent op on his family jewels? Especially one that represents a dramatic shift away from assuring child-free status. …I suspect real blokes might laugh maniacally at the idea.)
Is it said that I can immediately imagine the plot for a diptych, the first book of which would be The Duke’s Fleshlight. (No, I don’t believe the title of the second book would be The Duchess’s Dildo, but it probably should.)
Omg I never noticed this, but I have read a ton of books with ‘boner as sentient being’ tropes. I don’t think it usually bothers me, because it’s usually for the heroine, and I see it as Sarah mentions as a “my boner has let me to realize I have other feelings too” thing. But this is the first time I’ve really interrogated that and will definitely be thinking about it going forward!
OMG! I just read a book that started exactly like this from Chapter 2. It was a book on sale I saw on this website and was highly recommended on Amazon and so I bought it. I hated it! I thought the H a creep because this is all he thought of from the moment he saw the h and he couldn’t care less that she was a widow without any family – he just wanted to satisfy his needs.
I dont know if its a good thing that in these days of E-readers we can no longer throw books against the wall. I really wanted to throw this so called “Hero” against the wall for sure!
Good to know I am not alone in my disgust!
‘Insta-lust’ is a problem for me, not because I don’t believe it happens, but because I don’t believe it lasts. And, when I read a romance, I want to believe that this couple, who I have just spent a major portion of my very precious relaxing time watching get together, will last beyond the time it takes to eat an ice cream.
I want, in this world of temporary everything and throwaway everything, to believe that there IS LOVE THAT LASTS. That all relationships aren’t doomed to the seven year itch. And any relationship that starts with – and in some cases seems purely based on – boner-feelings, does not convince me it has the lifespan of more than a mayfly.
A boner that gets bored is worse than no boner at all, in my view.
To clarify my position (which I thought was the point of the post but doesn’t appear to be how others are interpreting it, so my bias may be in effect), I’m not opposed to sexual attraction and sex in romance, or to initial lust that develops over time into love as the characters get to know each other better. In fact, I expect all of those things to varying degrees. I avoid “sweet” romance because I want to see some passion in a fictional romantic relationship.
My objection is specifically to the in-text reference to the hero’s uncontrollable erections every five seconds. First time he lays eyes on a woman: BONER! Stands next to a woman: BONER! Woman’s elbow touches his arm: BONER! Woman serves coffee during a business meeting: BONER! Any situation in which there is no flirting, no touching, no exposed skin, no kissing, no possibility of impending sex, and absolutely nothing that could be construed by a rational human as sexually suggestive: BONER BONER BONER!!!!!! A hairtrigger boner is the entirety of this guy’s personality. His character arc is “single boner” to “boner in a committed relationship.” Twenty percent of the words in the book are devoted to his priapism.
The effect the authors are going for may be “this not-like-other-girls woman affects his penis like no other and that’s how you know she’s special” like a dick is some kind of emotional divining rod (riiiiiiiiight), but it sounds to me like a medical condition (at best) or a form of psychopathy that makes him a danger to women everywhere, and I don’t find a single thing about that appealing.
There are these things called “thoughts.” There are physical sensations in body parts that are not reproductive organs. All of these things can be used to indicate interest, attraction, and arousal, rather than limiting the range to BONER BONER BONER!!!!!!
Purely from the perspective of escalating tension, when you start with BONER, there’s nothing to build to except ejaculation. The development of the entire sexual relationship has been reduced to two steps, the first of which occurred at Bonerman’s initial appearance, and the second of which inevitably follows in short order because you can’t expect a stud of this magnitude to hold it in. Now for the next 280 pages, all you can do is repeat the boner-squirt cycle ad nauseam. Apart from whatever distaste one may have for being confronted by the sentient boner on every page, it’s boring.
@Ren Benton – I agree with you about the original intent of the post – to rant about something that doesn’t work for you or you hate as a reader. I read the original post that way too and actually wasn’t going to comment. My philosophy has always been read what works for you, what entertains you and what gives you the feels. If you love erotica – great! If you have sweet or closed door romances – great! If you love inspies – great! If you hate a trope – don’t feel like you have to read it! If you love a trope, glom onto it! If you hate insta-lust, great! If you love insta-lus, great! I, personally, have read books with no heat to books with lots and lots of heat – and have found versions on all ends of the heat spectrum that I absolutely adore and others that I absolutely hate.
And I think it is great that people feel safe and welcome here to squee about what works for them and they love and rant about what they hate. It helps other readers to find or avoid books and that is wonderful.
The reason that I felt compelled to join the comments was the implication that women who chose to read heros obsessed with their own boners either aren’t sophisticated enough to understand why that might be problematic in real life or aren’t emotionally intelligent enough to read such a book and understand their own feelings about it. It deeply bothered me because it seems in the same line of criticism of why so many people look down on romance readers – that we don’t have realistic expectations in real life, that we can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality, and that we “need” to read romance to replace some gaping hole in our own lives (no, no, and no). Romance readers (and authors) are intelligent and deeply emotional people and I hate to see them labeled otherwise because of what works for them or what does not.
Someone earlier was asking about an example of a boner led hero – I can ONLY think of two that I read and enjoyed – Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren (I rated as Very Good) and Cheater by Rachel van Dyken (I rated as Good). Beautiful Bastard was very much about a primarily sexual relationship that later developed into more. It was problematic in a couple of ways – especially as this was a boss/intern story and there was a significant power differential. And, again, if that is a total NO for you and totally icky and doesn’t work and you don’t want to read it or would like to throw it in the trash, no problem! But I don’t agree that if you did read it and did enjoy it that means you don’t understand or recognize the problematic elements, or that you are emotionally lacking in some way because the story worked for you even though parts were problematic or that you (or the author that wrote it) have some sort of deep seated internal misogyny that just needs to be educated away. Yep, boss/intern sexual relationships are super duper problematic and can go wrong in about a billion different ways, but to me it is a testament to Christina Lauren that they took the story in a way that made it work.
I understand that not everyone agrees with me and probably thinks that women that do enjoy these books really do need to be “educated” (which, again, I can’t disagree with more) BUT I am really glad we have a safe welcoming space at SBTB where we can really dig deep and discuss these things with other passionate romance readers. It continues to blow the myth of romance readers as uncritical readers of text out of the water.
Thanks to all for this conversation! I’ve just had an epiphany recently that I’m demisexual (and I have to thank my teenager daughter for introducing me to the concept) and am starting to understand that there actually is a huge gulf between how I experience (or, more to the point, don’t experience) sexual attraction and how others do. I’m currently prepping two romance manuscripts for publication and realized that I had some problematic (IMO) trope shoehorned into the stories purely because I actually have almost no experience with being sexually attracted to people and was relying on conventions of the genre to get me through. Maybe I’ll just label my protagonists demisexual and write what I know… 🙂
Also, I wrote a sentient boner scene where the boner is as emotionally fluent and aware of ambiguity as the guy it’s attached to, and they both agree that the situation is complex and requires further reflection. I thought it was hilarious, but my beta readers just thought it was weird that he was mentally talking to his boner. Oh well.
@Katie C.: Agreed on all counts. Contrary to FH’s court filing, romance readers aren’t “unsophisticated consumers,” and everyone has reasons for liking what they like, which may have nothing to do with the reason someone else hates that book. For example, there have been a couple of wildly popular books recently with characters who are less than truthful about things that would likely influence the other character’s decision to have sex with them if the truth were known. That’s a hard no from me because I view it as a consent issue, but literally no one who loves those books is saying, “I LOVE how he violated her trust and boundaries!” They have other reasons, different priorities, perceptions, and tolerances. We’re not a hivemind, and nothing will be universally beloved or reviled. The genre has to be as immense as it is to accommodate something for everyone, and it could do with still more expansion to make room for greater diversity.
There’s plenty of room to discuss personal preferences without making sweeping generalizations deriding those who don’t share them. I do understand where some of that comes from because I too get frustrated with the ideological leanings of large groups of people, but I don’t agree “I enjoyed a book with a problematic element” indicates ignorance or a moral flaw on the reader’s part. Liking a book with a Mafia hero doesn’t make someone a real-life fan of organized crime. Liking a book that includes dubious consent doesn’t make someone a real-life rape apologist. Liking groin-centric books doesn’t make someone a real-life bad feminist. Discussing the books themselves is always more productive than attacking the readers.
I’ve been following the conversation and am still working out my thoughts. I just read Talia Hibbert’s A Girl Like Her (loved it, A++ book) and the hero gets a lot of boners while interacting with the heroine. And I enjoyed that in the book, because none of the boners were the heroine’s fault, or something he felt like she needed to deal with, they just happened while he was flirting with her and he tucked them away and hoped she didn’t notice and was still comfortable around him.
I think the language used has A LOT to do with how I feel about boners in books. “He got a boner” vs “She gave him a boner”, the former works for me because it’s describing something happening to someone and the latter doesn’t because it’s like saying the someone forced a physical reaction out of the boner-getter and puts the responsibility of the boner-having on the boner-causer.
This topic is making me think a lot, because I am generally pro-boners in books and pro-situation-appropriate-boners in real life, but I think as soon as the language used starts aligning with rape culture mores I’m out.
Thinking about the problem of equating genital response and desire has reminded me of something which I have been noticing recently. Romances that have had potentially interesting but underdeveloped things to say about this and the subsequent shame and horror have all been cases where it is the male protagonist who was sexually assaulted as a boy or young man.
Specifically I am thinking about Jackie Ashenden’s Mine To Take (which I didn’t like at all because of squicky consent issues and virgins are anti-catnip to me) and How to Master Your Marquis by Juliana Gray and I know there are others I can’t remember atm.
[Possible triggers ahead]
@Iris: re the difference between bodily response and desire: Jackie Ashenden’s TAKING HIM also revolves around this very thing. As a teen, the hero was groomed and eventually sexually molested by an older relative, but because he got erections during the activity, he was ashamed and confused, and as an adult he can’t separate the shame from his sexual/emotional feelings for the heroine. I think it’s a great book—one of Ashenden’s best.
Also—although my overall reaction was “Meh”, Alice Ward’s YHE CABIN features a heroine who was raped by two men. She is in a shame spiral because she got wet during the assault and the rapists laughed and told her she must be enjoying it. Bodily reactions don’t always equal emotional desire and consent. It’s an important element of part of what’s being discussed here—and I like that some romance authors are addressing it. (In a way, it’s sort of the reverse of the boner-led hero trope.)
THE CABIN, sorry!
A book that normalises, minimises or otherwise misrepresents red flag behaviours – inc “Entitled To Have You” (Because I/You Lust) + “Never My Fault” – will not mislead discerning readers. But bear in mind that not all readers are at that point. Underage readers, say, ARE forming their ideas on relationships still. Add in the consideration that grown women can be taken in by confidence tricks and be brainwashed into speaking with abuser’s voice, self-victim-blaming for everything, and seriously, romances that ARE educational on “Responsible, Respectful Relationships” and name dysfunction and toxicity are needful… though they need not dominate the landscape to assistprevention and repair.
I want to say how much I appreciate this kindness and nuanced discussion. Y’all are lovely and wonderful. And Christine, if you’re writing demisexual protagonists, I know so very many romance readers would welcome the opportunity to see themselves and their way of understanding sexuality in a book character, so I say go for it.
But I don’t remember reading a vagina as having a mind of its own, nor reading one that calls the shots or speaks or argues with the character, so to speak. So the dick-as-sentient-being thing doesn’t work for me.
You have obviously never read any Jordan Silver. Not that I am suggesting you do. Pretty sure you wouldn’t like it.
A review I once read quoted a line where the hero took a look at the heroine and…
“His dick saluted.”
I pictured a cartoon penis growing little arms so it could do a salute. Or better yet, a Rimmer salute.
I’m trying to figure out where these women are judging women that like the boner trope because i’m not seeing that.
@Bri – I was specifically responding to comment number 21 and also supporting @CatG’s response where she quotes from that comment.
@Bri: insulting the intentions or intelligence of romance readers is the go-to tactic of outsiders, and the main lateral violence pitfall to avoid; that casts a shadow and everyone feels potentially implicated. (Anyway, that’s my guess.)
I’ve mostly had people trying to make me conform to popular taste, though, so I find the implied cloud of suspicion very jarring. I know it’s not the same people or attitudes, but my gut reaction is “NO, YOU do that to ME”.
Zyva’s point about underage readers is so on point. I can remember being that age, and reading things that had elements that bothered me (and which I’d now call problematic), but thinking since I was reading it in a book written by adults that it all Must Be Okay. Now, looking back, I can recognise that it took me years to grapple with this, to unravel the idea that yeah, a lot of that was Not Okay even though it was being published. I have an unfortunately long history of putting aside things that bother me as just me being Hypersensitive.
I don’t have issues with people liking problematic stuff — I’m a sadist, so let me tell you, if you want problematic fantasies, I can deliver in spades — but I do have issues with the way some people become defensive about liking problematic things.
No one in this thread has been even remotely guilty of that, but I’ve seen it elsewhere, and I think it’s at least as much of a problem as judging people who like problematic things. They’re not dissimilar issues. On the one hand, you have “this bothers me, it doesn’t bother you, so either you must be ignorant or morally something or other,” and on the other you have “this doesn’t bother me, it does bother you, so you’re a crybaby/prude/too PC/whatever.”
I have a love/hate relationship with Emma Chase’s books and recently read her Royal series…the hero’s in the first 2 were awful in the dick control. I finished the series, but this is one of those situations when you find the characters so awful that you hope the ending can redeem them. Nope…
I believe this trope is called Forced Seduction. One theory for this trope was that the authors wanted to give the heroine the sex she desired, without feeling guilty about it. In a way, the author is censoring their desires in a society that would deem them sluttish if the heroine showed any desires. That being said, there’s no excuse for it now, as it is like all of you say, freakin horrifying.
For me it’s a mixed bag; do I like the hero and heroine being super attracted to each other in a romance? Hell yes. Do I dislike it when the hero and heroine are attracted to one another but that’s all there is – nothing in common, no feelings or emotions beyond lust if it’s not erotica? Nope. And I LOATHE it when the hero and heroine abandon reason/duty to a ridiculous point.
I have to admit that the boner trope is one that can go either way for me. If the boner-haver deals with his boner with Must. Bone. Woman., then the author has to work really hard to keep my interest. Stephanie Laurens springs to mind, especially her early Cynster novels. I can’t tell you how often I think “oh. Look. Jiggy-jig again. Where do they start recovering themselves, I’ll read on from there. ”
But if a boner-haver takes his boner in hand (as it were), then that charms me so much. And if he’s dealing with it in order to keep his instalust to himself, he gets bonus points from me.
But it hardly ever happens.
@BellaInAus — But if a boner-haver takes his boner in hand (as it were), then that charms me so much. And if he’s dealing with it in order to keep his instalust to himself, he gets bonus points from me.
But it hardly ever happens.
OKAY OKAY THIS THIS THIS. This is a thing that baffles me — I have read SO MANY DAMN BOOKS where the hero is like “omg no I will NOT MASTURBATE” or “OMG that woman has DRIVEN ME TO MASTURBATE” or “OMG I cannot believe I just MASTURBATED” and it’s just like… guys… masturbate… a lot? Like that’s… normal? for guys? to do? Frequently just as a matter of course? I’ve known exactly one guy who had weird hang-ups about masturbating and he was super-duper religious. Most guys seem to consider this a normal part of life. Maybe I have a freakish sample or something, including only the Spiders Georgs of the Masturbation World, totally possible, but this just doesn’t seem realistic or authentic.
@Anonymous @BellaInAus
In JD Mader’s advice book for other guys You Hate Me Because I’m Pregnant , he warns dudes that their partner’s pregnancy will probably be a sex drought. It’s kind of taken as read that the guy will masturbate. But apparently there are dudes who pretended to not need technicolour assistance for that who will have to confess at that point. But even the unmasked ‘limited purity’ claimants are still going one better than stooping so low as to hassle a pregnant woman for sex. He emphasizes that.
There is an Amy Andrews romance – I think it’s one of the new line she rejoices in where she can drop f-bombs? – called “Playing House” which I think is instalusty but without all the description being below the belt.
(I don’t remember that distinctly because I was blinded by the hero seeing the heroine as hot so fast because she’s bookish and into history.
Why yes, I completely agree that’s hot. That is a truth that should be universally acknowledged.)
There is a ‘hands-on’ scene, but he’s really not keeping it to himself, except physically. I mean, they’ve got together before and that time he’s Skyping to her.
@BellainAus – I would recommend Chase Me by Tessa Bailey and Make Me by Tessa Bailey
I believe someone’s dick becoming sentient was a plot on South Park once.
I’m 60 and a romance reader since Kathleen Woodiwiss’s half rape/half cuddle (to quote Madelyn Kahn in Yellowbeard) days. While I applaud and enjoy the more forward thinking depiction of relationships, I still think a large percentage of otherwise nice guys still think with their id. “My Boner Has Led Me to Understand There May Also Perhaps Be Feelings in Other Parts of Me Well Crap Now What Do I Do” Is still real too.
Ok, with all due respect to the earlier nuanced discussion, I’m going back to being shallow for a sec. Whenever I find out I’m reading a boner-led romance, the first thing I think (besides “ugh”) is “Is that what guys really think in the first 5 minutes?” Like, do they really sit there and think about a woman’s mouth around their cock, or about bottoming out? Maybe that’s a naive question, but I do wonder whether authors ASK guys what their first thoughts are when they encounter an attractive person. Yes, many men are total dogs/sleazebags. I’m just looking for some honesty. I have to believe there are men who watch a woman talk and think her mouth looks great wrapped around words, not just his dick.