Romance novels much like horror novels are button pushing. They either hit your kinks hard, or offend you big time.
By which I do not want to judge anyone who likes them because I have a gazillion guilty pleasure ready and totally get the appeal of not only reading high quality works. My sister always wanted me to read thomas bernhard in the middle of my hardcore a book a day dragonlance phase. I have times where I will read anything that has an elf or a spaceship in it, no matter how bad.
and i wont even start with how much I swallow from comic books.
Exactly. It's why I try not to judge the people (including family members) who love Twilight novels. I've gotten so much crap in my lifetime for loving things like comic books, daytime soap operas, romance novels, westerns, pulpy sci-fi/fantasy, and Ann McCaffrey. Seriously, sometimes politically correct is a bit boring. And it's nice to sink into another view.
I always say...one person's kink is another's button.
It's weird that it's the sexism that puts me off romance novels but that I can read Fables or even some Manara porn thingy without being much bothered by it. I guess it is because it's easier to discount it as completely off the rooker male fantasy than seeing the internalized sexism in chick lit, where the woman is at the center but is still all about men.
I'm the exact opposite. I like the female fantasy...the internalized struggle...it's fascinating to me. My own odd desire for it...yet hatred of it. The complexity. See when women write it - it's complex, not simple. Surprising, not cliche, when a gal writes about wanting to be seduced, to be tricked into marriage - she's struggling to compromise her desire for marriage, for great hot sex in marriage - yet also to be independent and powerful in her own right. In chickfic and female written romances - she's in control, she has power over the men in her life. They want her so badly they can't control themselves. They need to control her.
While in Fables and the male books - she has no power. He does. She's in one role and one only - an object of his desire. And if she has power - it is emasculating. He rapes her, doesn't seduce her. He breaks her, doesn't coerce. The male books are about power with violence, the female with sexual seduction/flirtation and manipulation.
For me, I prefer the female - because she doesn't have to be raped to be powerful. There's no vicitmized little girl turned kick-ass heroine. She doesn't have to become violent to be strong.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2011-11-27 12:27 am (UTC)By which I do not want to judge anyone who likes them because I have a gazillion guilty pleasure ready and totally get the appeal of not only reading high quality works. My sister always wanted me to read thomas bernhard in the middle of my hardcore a book a day dragonlance phase. I have times where I will read anything that has an elf or a spaceship in it, no matter how bad.
and i wont even start with how much I swallow from comic books.
Exactly. It's why I try not to judge the people (including family members) who love Twilight novels. I've gotten so much crap in my lifetime for loving things like comic books, daytime soap operas, romance novels, westerns, pulpy sci-fi/fantasy, and Ann McCaffrey.
Seriously, sometimes politically correct is a bit boring. And it's nice to sink into another view.
I always say...one person's kink is another's button.
It's weird that it's the sexism that puts me off romance novels but that I can read Fables or even some Manara porn thingy without being much bothered by it. I guess it is because it's easier to discount it as completely off the rooker male fantasy than seeing the internalized sexism in chick lit, where the woman is at the center but is still all about men.
I'm the exact opposite. I like the female fantasy...the internalized struggle...it's fascinating to me. My own odd desire for it...yet hatred of it. The complexity. See when women write it - it's complex, not simple. Surprising, not cliche, when a gal writes about wanting to be seduced, to be tricked into marriage - she's struggling to compromise her desire for marriage, for great hot sex in marriage - yet also to be independent and powerful in her own right. In chickfic and female written romances - she's in control, she has power over the men in her life. They want her so badly they can't control themselves. They need to control her.
While in Fables and the male books - she has no power. He does. She's in one role and one only - an object of his desire. And if she has power - it is emasculating. He rapes her, doesn't seduce her. He breaks her, doesn't coerce. The male books are about power with violence, the female with sexual seduction/flirtation and manipulation.
For me, I prefer the female - because she doesn't have to be raped to be powerful. There's no vicitmized little girl turned kick-ass heroine. She doesn't have to become violent to be strong.