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

For a bossy little bitch, I tend to favor somewhat anarchistic systems of organization, and my thoughts and feelings on copyright law are informed by this bent. On one hand, copyright protects important rights for artists and creators, and I certainly don’t think abolishing all forms of copyright law is a viable answer; on the other hand, certain aspects of copyright law as it stands now and the way in which it’s being (ab)used by some copyright holders seems, well, ethically suspect, even if it’s legally kosher. Keeping to the letter of the law but violating its spirit, if you will.

We’ve had some interesting discussions on copyright before right here at Smart Bitches, like in the comments to this entry about e-books. I’d like to hear more opinions about this issue, especially after you’ve read the comic. 

I have one friend who would dearly love to meet a great man, but she has a few non-negotiable standards, and one of them is that he agree to wait until marriage. She’s a virgin until married. Period. End of sentence. And no guy will go for that. The minute they find out she’s not available in that way, they’re gone.

Do you know of any dudes who value virginity? Or who even care that much? Hubby didn’t give a crap in the slightest. So of course I wonder, why is a hymen such a frequent character in contemporary romance, including erotica? (cat barb penis CAT BARB PENIS oh GOD make it STOP.) How many times have we read some guy going at it and then, “He broke through her maiden barrier, and felt shock and wonderment pass over him. She was a virgin! He didn’t know! He is the first! And now SHE BELONGS TO HIM FOREVER MWAAAHAHAHAHHA.”

It’s some kind of powerful fantasy construct, either in the sense of being completely and uniquely possessed by the hero, or in the sense of being a remnant from the virginity requirement enforced on so many heroines in past novels. What do you think?

Candy wrote:

Hmmm, interesting article, and interesting tidbit about your friend and her virginity.

I think I can safely say my guy friends don’t give a shit about virginity. However, I can imagine many men feeling sketched out by a woman who wanted to wait until marriage for a couple of reasons:

1. Some people, like me, believe that sexual compatibility is very, very important. Like it or not, that means trying before buying. And sexual behavior CAN be taught and learned, but there’s a certain chemistry that...well, it works, or it doesn’t, and you don’t generally find out until you’ve slept with each other.

2. Some guys are jerks who just want to get their rocks off, and finding a girl who’s not willing to help with that is a turn-off. No nookie, no go.

It’s a lot pressure, being somebody’s first, and the older the virgin, the higher the pressure. I think people are sometimes scared of this pressure, because there’s an implication of long-term commitment, and, well, most people don’t want to think of the long-term when they’re still working on figuring out whether the short term will work.

Now, leaving the Good Ship Reality and embarking on the wacky vessel that is Virginity in romance fiction:

I think this primal satisfaction in having deflowered the heroine (at least in contemporaries) is kind of a fictional construct. Romance heroes are usually all gung ho and In Lurve and Ready For Marriage (whether they’re ready to acknowledge these two states or not), and these feelings of possessiveness and GRAR MY WOMAN have become shorthand for “He’s in LURVE, he just doesn’t know it yet.”

Sarah said:

Other people’s virginity is ALWAYS more interesting than just about anything else! I’ve been emailing back and forth with my friend and she also thinks that part of the problem is the attitudes toward sexuality in the secular community versus in the religious community. On one hand, you have people witnessing folks Doing It for whatever reason in sexually explicit depictions at all hours of the day in print, film, and television, and on the other you have those same people showing up in church being told it’s a sin, and there’s no reconciliation between one and the other.

Oddly enough, she talks to her male married friends from church and they are all like, “Yeah it’s great that you save yourself” but when she asks if they waited for their wives they were like, “Oh, hell no.”

Heh.

But I am totally with you on the sexual compatibility question. It is my opinion that you do have to try before you buy. There’s no way to tell sometimes - sometimes the quietest guy is a dynamo in the sack. And vice versa.

And you are SO right about the subtext of the hero’s feelings of possession as far as the heroine’s virginity. It’s certainly enough of a squicky moment that the hero does usually pause and think, “WHY ME? Oh, the honor of her luuuurve™ is too much” while he’s gettin’ his bidness done, and it also contains that convenient subtext of traditional historic women-as-chattel ownership.

Candy said:

Hey, this conversation makes me think of some of the stuff we talked about a month back, about sexual empowerment in romance novels. I managed to dig up what I wrote:

See, while I think romance novels are subversive and reinforce the whole notion that women CAN have premarital sex and NOT die horribly by the end of the book, in a lot of ways, the message isn’t subversive at all. In fact, the message is oftentimes quite distressingly sexist.

Look at the obsession with virgins, for example. In no other genre are there so many women over the age of 20 and widows running around with their hymens firmly intact. (However, this may also be due to the fact that almost all of them suffer from some kind of genetic defect that places their hymen 2-3 inches within the vaginal canal.) It’s one thing if historical romances are the only ones guilty of overaged virgins, but SO MANY contemporary romances are obsessed with virginity, too. I mean, dear God, there exists a contemporary romance out there in which the mother of a secret baby IS STILL TECHNICALLY A VIRGIN. (I wish I can remember the title! It was a Harlequin, I remember that much.)

The heroines who aren’t virgins generally aren’t allowed to have orgasms or fulfilling sex lives before the hero comes along with his Monster Cock of Awesome Orgasmatronic power. Many of the non-virgins in Romancelandia are populated with rape victims, abuse victims, unfulfilled widows, women with clueless, sexually selfish exes and neurotic, sexually frigid women. Even in contemporary romances, way too many of these non-virgins somehow skipped sex ed, were never curious about their own bodies and never picked up a vibrator or a woman’s magazine in their lives. They don’t seem to know where the clitoris is, much less know what to do with it--even AFTER having sex. I almost feel like if you asked them what a clitoris was, they’d say, “Wasn’t he that Greek guy who wrote a bunch of tragedies?”

Women are also rarely allowed to be promiscuous the way men are in romance. Most of the heroes are rakish rakes (and somehow miraculously herpes- and gonorrhea-free), but even in contemporaries, the woman is much more constrained in her sexual roles. This becomes especially evident when you read contemporaries in which there’s a Long Separation between the hero and heroine. Usually the hero tries to deal with the trauma by fucking anything that moves. The woman? Why, she stays pure, of course. God forbid that she, too, embark on a slutty phase. I’ve read quite a few books in which the heroine either doesn’t have sex with anyone for years and years and years and YEARS, or she steadfastly remains a virgin.

Erotica and erotic romance have done a better job of blasting through a lot of these walls, in my opinion, and portraying more sexually empowered women. The women masturbate, have hot sex with people they don’t love, enjoy teh buttsecks, have a wider variety of sexual partners and experiences, and hell, they’re allowed to experiment with other girls and multiple partners. This is not something you see in the average romance novel.

Jeeebus. I managed to go on and on and on about that subject, didn’t I? And given the discussion in the comments for my review of Hot Spell about virginity and 20-something-year-old women keeping it, I definitely think this is a pretty hot topic. I’m afraid I came across as an asshole who thinks every woman should lose her cherry by the time she’s 22, or something, and I want to clarify my thoughts on this. (Just to be clear: I’m an asshole, just not an asshole who thinks every woman past 20 should no longer be a virgin.)

Losing one’s innocence is powerful juju in fiction. Having the heroine surrender her innocence (snort!) has been romanticized to a large degree in romance novels, but in the real world.... We attach significance to it, but after a certain age, I think the significance takes on somewhat creepy overtones--or at least, that’s the vibe I get from it.

Sarah said:

Your examination (ha!) makes me think of two things:

1. I think that the revolutionary statement that was “women can have sex before marriage and not die a horrible death like Pamela” was as big a statement to traditional sexual value statements back then as the evolution of the nonvirginal heroine in erotica is now. In other words, to be told it’s ok to have premarital sex AND a happily ever after is as much a challenge to existing standards of female sexuality when romance novels first appeared, as the nonvirginal sexually adventurous butt-plug-wearing erotica heroine is today. It’s just an assault on the castle of virgin/whore dichotomy from a different angle.

To put it visually, I picture the development of the feminist subtext in romance novels as a baton relay race, with the baton of female sexual advancement (maybe instead of a baton it’s a bowl or a big inverted pyramid jutting into the Louvre?) being passed from romance to erotica. With the established structures of romance pretty set, there’s a little wiggle room here and there for clever twists on the theme, but the ideas surrounding virginity and sexual exploration are relatively firm. Then, when you pass the sexual advancement on to the erotica writers, you get a whole new set of rules to explore the sexuality of women and men, and in multiple combinations! That said, the advancement made by the romance writers is not to be denied, though the more identifiable progress now seems to be among the erotica writers.

Note: this is not a slam on romance writers; I go back and forth between romance and erotica, because too much of one makes Sarah a dull girl.

2. What do I personally think of virginity in romance novels? Is it important to me? (And by the way, if we were members of a Native American tribe, my name would have to be Bitch Who Questions Everything Rhetorically, and you’d have to be Declarative Bitch).

Personally, I’m not sure I give a crap if the heroine’s a virgin, except for in a historical, because if she’s not, I’d like to know why, since it was of more importance back then that the bride be unsullied. Not being a virgin in a historical is more than just a characteristic, like hair color. But in a contemporary? Do I expect the heroine to be virginal? Not really, unless there’s, again, a reason for it. Writers, be alert! Sarah needs an explanation if she’s not a virgin in the past, and she needs one if she is the Virgin Connie Swail in the present! And if it’s a time travel, she needs the Hymen-Reattachment/Detachment 2000 module added to that time machine.

However, it is curious that those romances that are populated with nonvirgins are rarely sexually explicit as to why she isn’t a virgin. Certainly the construction of the male hero as The Sexual Powerhouse of Orgasmatronic Power is one way of delineating that he is The One, The One Who Shall Bring Orgasms, and is thus a tired cop out in terms of easy definition of the hero - just like abusing animals is an easy way toward creating a villain.

Virginity is such a tricky issue, especially for characters. Shall we turn this over to the Bitchery and see if we can achieve hymeny – sorry, harmony?

Candy wrote:

Oooh, excellent analogy with the baton-passing. I agree with you: romances revolutionized the way sex was written and viewed in fiction, but it became way too hung up on the Heroines Shall Feel Pleasure Only at the Hands (and Cocks) of the One True Hero trope, and now other related genres are exploring other avenues of female sexuality in fiction.

I think that when it comes down to it, the heroine’s virginity should make sense. I feel that far too many authors are contorting the stories and characters to fit the State of the Hymen, instead of having the State of the Hymen fit the characters. 

Smart Bitch Writing Award Categories

Best Contemporary

Did it take place in the present? Was it a romance? Did you like it? Nominate it!

Best Historical

Did it take place in the past? Was it a romance? Didja dig it? Hook us up with the title and author!

Best Series (Contemporary)

Present time, hot romance, series publisher? Bring it!

Best Series (Historical)

In the way-back? Hot romance? Series publisher? You know what to do!

Best Romantica/Erotic Romance

Did you read an erotic romance with a primary pair of protagonists and a happily ever after? Did it make you all happy n’at? Tell us about it!

Best Erotica

Did you read a hot sexy book that featured seriously excellent sex, but not necessarily an attracted primary pair of protagonists with a happily ever after? Which one did you like best?

Best Paranormal

Was there a werecod and an non-angsty vampire? Dude. You have to tell us about it.

First, there’s the cover. Hey! My very own mantitty! But I do not have long auburn hair, dammit. Who is that ho on MY cover?!

Then there’s the beginning of my story, which starts at, like, Chapter 16 or some such crap. I get no backstory from Oral-B? But hey… roiling mist! If you are shirtless, wouldn’t that hurt? No, that’s boiling mist. Sorry.

Oh, dear God. I just turned up the speakers. Fabio is READING this to me. Badly, I might add.

We’re on the next page of my Western Woods adventure, Fabio uses the word “brush” several times, and promises to shower me with diamonds (ouch, they are sharp!) and cover my pillow with rose petals. Pardon me for being a romance killer, but all I can think is, “Will the Oxi powder get those stains off my pillowcase?” He better use white rose petals, is all I’m sayin’.

And then the cheap bastard promises me an Oral-B Sensitive Advantage toothbrush. How’d I get from diamonds to rose petal stains to a TOOTHBRUSH? I fall down a ravine, there’s boiling mist, and the best I get is a toothbrush? Fabio, dude, we need to talk about how better to spend that $750.

And the absolute hilarity of this whole romance is that I have dental work this afternoon - Fabio had SO better be at the dentist’s office. 

“The Countess’s Pleasure” by Emma Holly
Set in the same steampunk universe as The Demon’s Daughter, Georgianna DuBarry, formerly possessed of a Thoroughly Useless Cock (now more useless than ever ‘cause it’s, well, dead), goes to a stripshow in in Bhamjran, develops a case of the hots for the demon stripper, then hires him to pop her cherry. Along the way, we learn all sorts of nifty things, like how demon spray-on prophylactics work, and are treated to some truly superficial observations of the consequences of inter-species love in a highly-stratified society.

The shaggery in this story, it is hot, but GOOD GOD, people, did we really need yet another fucking (well, non-fucking, actually) virgin widow? To see a rule-breaker like Holly use a hoary cliché like that is exasperating. The love story itself is somewhat unconvincing, which may be an unavoidable consequence of an erotic romance novella. Most romance short stories have a hard time building a convincing relationship between the two protagonists, and in an erotic romance, where quite a bit of the real estate is taken up by fizznucking, the space for building a convincing emotional connection is even more limited. However, the story is fun despite its flaws, the sex is well-written and hot, and the characters, while giving the impression of being perfunctory sketches, are at least likable. I can honestly say, “At no point did I feel the urge to stab any of the protagonists in the face.” Sometimes, that’s about all you can ask for. This is high praise indeed when you read what I have to say about the next novella. Grade: B-

“The Breed Next Door” by Lora Leigh
Where do I start with this mess? The heroine, perhaps, who isn’t just painfully feisty, but pointlessly so. Or the hero, whose obsession with the heroine borders on creepy, and whose motivations in general seem just...ARGH. And the writing style. Egad. It’s not so much awkward as magnificently lurchy. And the sex? Hilarious, but much in the unintentional, over-the-top way MST3K movies tend to be.

What? You want a story synopsis, you say? OK, fine: genetically-engineered freak, Tarek (part lion, part man, possessor of a barbed cock) moves next door to Lyra, pain-in-the-ass extraordinaire. Excruciating attempts at romantic comedy ensue, before it segues into excruciating attempts at romantic suspense. To add insult to injury, the heroine is that marvel of modern romance novel engineering: a spunky, horny modern woman in her 20s who’s in possession of both her own house and her virginity, with no convincing reasons, moral, religious, or otherwise, given as to why she’s still hanging on to her cherry.

If this short story were a little old lady, I’d push it into oncoming traffic. Misses the Cassie Edwards Barrier (by which all F books are asessed) by an asshair. Grade: D-

“Falling for Anthony” by Meljean Brook
Caveat: I’ve met Meljean in real life, and I proof-read this short story during the latter stages of its publication process. Make of my comments and this grade what you will.

Set in Regency England, doctor and all-round nice boy Anthony Ramsdell deflowers his best friend’s younger sister, Emily Ames-Beaumont, shortly before departing for service in the army and amidst some angst. We shall not dwell on the reasons for this deflowering, for yea, they are indeed silly and spoiler-iffic. Suffice it to say: Could have been more convincing.

After a battle in Spain, Anthony is attacked by a thoroughly nasty piece of work known as a nosferatu, but before he dies dies, is given a choice to become a Guardian and help the forces of good beat back the night. Meanwhile, as Anthony learns to be a bad-ass warrior with wings, Emily is facing some interesting problems of her own back in Merry England: her brother seems to be falling ill and developing a rather interesting psychosis--one involving an unquenchable thirst for blood.

The world-building in this story is some of the best I’ve seen in Romancelandia. Unfortunately, this means that the love story took a backseat. In terms of characterization, Anthony is thoroughly likeable, but Emily needed to be smacked around with a choice bit of haddock a time or two. Plot-wise, this story blows all the others out of the water, and the horror elements are excellent; I shivered a little during some of the ooky bits, and I have a pretty strong stomach when it comes to this sort of thing. I just wish Brook had more space to develop the characters and romantic tension; this, plus some debut author clunkiness in the expository parts, make this story a C+.

“The Blood Kiss” by Shiloh Walker
This story isn’t bad, just kind of boring. It’s one of those “King of Werewolves marries Queen of Vampires” sorts of tales, and those who can’t get enough werewolves and vampires--well, here’s your chance to enjoy both in spades.

Roman Montgomery, wolf king of Wolfclan Montgomery, has to rescue one of his dumbass younger brothers from the House of Capiet, a powerful vampire clan that’s on the wane. During the rescue attempt, he meets and promptly falls in lust with Julianna, the daughter of the leader of the House of Capiet. Oh noes, can love doomed by all that “a plague o’ both your houses” baggage ever succeed? Bitch, please, this is romance novel, so you know that the answer isn’t just a “yes,” but a resounding “yes.” A somewhat bland story that offers few surprises. Grade: C-