![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Romance Novel Confusion
Aug. 15th, 2015 08:49 pmBefore I moved to education, I proofread books for a library for the blind. As such, I proofread many novels. A fair number of these were romance novels.
Since then, I have also talked to other people, and followed what's popular and what's not, and I've come upon a trend that I, as a non-romance-reading guy, don't understand. Mind you, I'm not passing judgment, I'm not criticizing, I'm just trying to understand here.
The most popular romances seem to involve a dominant male who forces himself on the woman he wants, absolutely refusing to take no for an answer. After trying to resist him for most of the book, the woman, secretly awash in sexual desire, finally yields, giving in to his desires, and realizes that he's just exactly what she's always wanted, and they are happy forever after.
In other words, the most popular romances among female readers, many of them feminists, involve precisely the kind of men feminists despise.
So why is it that so many women's ideal read is so different from these same women's ideal experience? Women don't want to be dominated by a man, I get that. They don't want men to treat them as sex objects. I get that. I agree wholeheartedly with both of these points. So why do these same women gobble up books where the behavior of the dominant male is, at best, sexual harassment, and at worst, outright rape?
My own theories? I honestly don't have one. Some guys would probably suggest that a woman's secret desire is to be treated like the women in the books. But I don't buy that. So this is going to have to be a blog entry that expresses my perplexedness, but offers no resolution. Perhaps it's just one of the foibles of the human condition that hound us all. That's as deep as it's going to get.
Since then, I have also talked to other people, and followed what's popular and what's not, and I've come upon a trend that I, as a non-romance-reading guy, don't understand. Mind you, I'm not passing judgment, I'm not criticizing, I'm just trying to understand here.
The most popular romances seem to involve a dominant male who forces himself on the woman he wants, absolutely refusing to take no for an answer. After trying to resist him for most of the book, the woman, secretly awash in sexual desire, finally yields, giving in to his desires, and realizes that he's just exactly what she's always wanted, and they are happy forever after.
In other words, the most popular romances among female readers, many of them feminists, involve precisely the kind of men feminists despise.
So why is it that so many women's ideal read is so different from these same women's ideal experience? Women don't want to be dominated by a man, I get that. They don't want men to treat them as sex objects. I get that. I agree wholeheartedly with both of these points. So why do these same women gobble up books where the behavior of the dominant male is, at best, sexual harassment, and at worst, outright rape?
My own theories? I honestly don't have one. Some guys would probably suggest that a woman's secret desire is to be treated like the women in the books. But I don't buy that. So this is going to have to be a blog entry that expresses my perplexedness, but offers no resolution. Perhaps it's just one of the foibles of the human condition that hound us all. That's as deep as it's going to get.
