Annoying speech about "problematic" romance

[sqbr]

I usually like Smart Bitches Trashy Books but this annoyed me.

Breaking Up with Damaging Conventions in Romance: A Conversation with Kate Cuthbert

It annoyed me to start with by being more gendered than it needed to be. Not all romances are about or by women, and even the ones that are aren't just read by women. You can talk about it being a genre mainly about/for/by women (which it is, and that's important) without overgeneralising.

But then she did that thing a lot of anti-problematic-fiction people do, where they start out saying "write about whatever you want, but think about the context of what you're writing and do it mindfully" but by the end are unambiguously saying "don't write this". She talks a good game about being ok with women's sexuality and fantasy but she clearly doesn't get it.

*** Content note: discussion of rape fantasy ***

Did you ever read the book Asking for It by [Lilah Pace]?... I think that there’s absolutely room for fantasy. I think that the difference that comes in when you’re reading romance novels versus reading something that is meant to be pure fantasy is that romance novels, particularly contemporary romance novels, are supposed to be depicting, you know, contemporary reality as it is now, and granted it’s an incredibly optimistic reality, but the coercive behavior that I talk about isn’t coming through in the heroine’s fantasy. You know, it’s coming through in, in her reality, and I think that it’s, it’s so tied up in everything that we’ve been taught and everything that we’ve heard for years and years and years from, you know, the school yard – oh, he only picks on you because he likes you – through to, you know, well, he just couldn’t help himself, and I think that that’s pushing back a lot of responsibility on the women to take care of themselves and the men to not be able to control their behavior, and while there is something that is sexy about being desired so dramatically that, you know, you make somebody lose control, the reality of that situation isn’t sexy? It’s scary.

tl;dr Rape fantasy in romance novels is fine...if the heroine imagines herself being raped, or maybe consensually roleplays it with her partner.

But if you published the fantasy she's having as a stand-alone story, that would be bad, because it wouldn't be clear it was fantasy! And presumably, her reading and enjoying that story in-universe would also be bad, because it would imply that publishing such stories can be a positive part of women's lives. It can only live safely in the dark recesses of her own mind, where it can't hurt anyone else.

Comments

[deborah_judge]

This seems oddly lacking in imagination. Or maybe typical-mind fallacy - she reads stories a certain way and so assumes other people do as well. I mean, people write and read stories to explore things other than what relationships should be like. And that includes stories about relationships. I feel like personally the gap between what a story describes and what it means to me can be *huge*, so much so that often I can't imagine how someone could figure out one from the other and if they tried to guess it would almost certainly be wrong.

Like, no I do not actually have any real-life desires to be married to someone who has harmed me badly, and yet I keep writing and reading stories about relationships like this. For reasons that make sense to me but wouldn't be obvious to someone else.

[sqbr]

she reads stories a certain way and so assumes other people do as well

Right! Also I think part of the issue is that it can take a long time to figure out that certain types of stories are bad for you psychologically, especially if they're considered Normal. Once someone has figured out for themselves that, say, romances with rape in are bad for them, they want to save other people from having to go through the same long and painful process of self discovery. But you can't shortcut other people's processes of self discovery by just assuming they work like you! Because they probably don't!