Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Feldhahn argues that romance readers can become “unbalanced” by the distortion inherent in romance, and gets right down to the age-old comparison of romance to pornography, albeit porn for chicks. Pointing her right-leaning finger at erotica, she argues that the pornography is bad enough, but then there’s all these women seeking an unattainable ideal based on reading too much romance with rugged, sensitive heroes. Seems us romance types are not spending enough time “find[ing] the hero in our husbands and not in the pages of a fiction book.”

Thank God she stopped short of mentioning the words “family values,” though the hint was there in broad stroke.

Setting aside the deep faults of the first commentary, the rebuttal has plenty of butt in it, too, starting with the condescending and utterly trite argument that romance, erotica, or not, “at least women are reading.”

Stop patting me on the head. You’ll mess up my hair.

While Feldhahn asserts that erotica novels - which, duh, aren’t the same thing as romance novels, not that these two would care to examine the difference - promote addiction, and create unattainable romantic ideals, Glass responds that erotica has been shown in a recent study titled Pornography: Research Advances and Policy Considerations to have “no adverse social implications.” Thank heaven. I’d hate to think reading about human sexual and emotional relationships might make me antisocial any more than I already am.

Neither writer can tell the difference between erotica and romance any more than they can tell the difference between a sound and completely idiotic argument. Moreover, both come across as women who doth not know whereof they speak, who likely have never read a romance novel nor an erotica novel.

My overwhelming reaction to this condescending bulltripe? Exhaustion. Not only can I not tell if they’re arguing about erotica or the sexuality of romance novels, but again the idea of reading romance and now erotica is called into question as some rubric against which to value the intelligence and relative mental stability of the reader, to say nothing of the old lumping together of romance AS porn for women.

On one hand, so what, if it is? It’s not but even if it were chick porn, so what? God forbid we have orgasms or even sexual knowledge. But more to the point, romance isn’t pornography any more than merely reading it will turn a reader into an imbalanced harpy who finds limitless anger in the fact that her husband isn’t “strong, rugged and breathtakingly handsome, yet sensitive, patient listeners and utterly unselfish.”

If anything, I want to know why “journalism” like this hasn’t caused a decrease in the number of people reading newspapers. Oh, wait....

Candy: First of all, this sentence by Feldhahn was had me rolling:

The male heroes are all strong, rugged and breathtakingly handsome, yet sensitive, patient listeners and utterly unselfish.

Has this woman read a romance novel? Romance novel heroes can be accused of any number of things, but being sensitive, patient and utterly unselfish listeners ain’t one of them. Unless she’s confusing the gay best friend in chick lit with a romance novel hero?

But really, I’m so goddamn sick of the whole “Romance creates unrealistic expectations in women!” argument. Most right-leaning douchebags eventually gave up on the whole “RPGs will make your children Satan-worshipping elf-wannabes who will STAB YOU IN YOUR SLEEP” scenario; why won’t they do the same with romances? Why the insistence on assuming we’re weak-minded fools who are unable to tell fiction from reality? Fiction can have transformative powers, it’s true, but when somebody decides to break up with a wonderful husband because of a romance novel, I think that person has more serious issues than a romance novel addiction to deal with. The DSM-IV would be a good place to start.

The funny thing is, the sorts of people who love to blame romance novels for the breakdown of the family are usually the ones who go on ad nauseam about the importance of personal responsibility, especially when it comes to social issues. Pregnant with an unwanted child? Gay? Brown and po’? SUCK IT UP, BECAUSE IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT TO BEGIN WITH, AND IF YOU TRIED HARD ENOUGH, YOU WOULDN’T BE ANY OF THESE THINGS. But once something like, say, violence in video games or the manly (but sensitive! Don’t forget they’re so sensitive!) heroes in romance novels rear their heads, they’re all for warning people off lest the poor, unsuspecting victims shatter their fragile psyches against the ramparts of oiled man-titty. As soon as blame can be attached to something that directly affects them, you won’t see a group of people so eager to pass on the buck. God forbid that the kids do awful things because they had shitty parents or because they’re being, y’know, kids, or that the woman left her husband because he’s a terrible spouse.

The rebuttal didn’t get my dander up quite as much as it did Sarah, but the derailment into Pornolandia made me raise my brow. I tend to question studies that claim violent porn increases propensities towards sexual violence--my gut feeling is that people who voluntarily seek out violent porn (not kinky BDSM stuff--I’m talking snuff porn and rape porn) on a regular basis probably are inclined in that direction to begin with. Linking causality for this sort of thing is incredibly tricky.

And all this clucking and flapping over female porn always makes me wonder: are female orgasms so terrifying? Seriously, why are people so damn worked up over women getting turned on and rubbin’ one out? Every time a woman masturbates, are TWO kittens killed instead of just one? I want to know, because I’d like to know how many kittens I’ve killed last week.