The Pern series is for example nothing I would categorize as romance, so maybe we are also regarding wildly different fields here.
Why not? They are more romances than Lois Bujold. Lessa is saved by Fl'ar who seduces her after she gets picked by her dragon, the dragon mating, causes them to have rough erotic sex...the whole story is about F'Lar finding Lessa and the dragons are sort of in there.
Definitely romance - or in that category. Romance as a genre includes mystery, thriller, sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. Romance novelists write both.
And there's a huge gamut.
I guess that is why I find them so triggery because while downright fantasy/scifi etc. is known to be unreal by almost all it's readers,I see many people who buy into the romance type fantasies in the sense that many women focus themselves entirely around the male gaze and self objectify massively in order to achieve something with those imagined "weapons of a woman".
I guess if I could see it as just fantasies that no one buys I would be more bored and less bothered. But for that I see too many women with really skewered views of themselves.
Has it occurred to you that the person writing the romance is depicting their own views of themselves? It's often not men writing this, it's women reacting to the media imagery presented to them. Male dominated tv shows, books, etc - where women are told they are "supporting characters", wives, mothers, no career, and if they have a career...or women who have given up their career to raise children and be a wife...their novels are often expressions of their own pain, own frustrations, a coping mechanism as it were.
We read for various reasons...fantasy, comfort, whatever.
I think you have to be careful not to make broad generalizations.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2011-11-27 10:34 pm (UTC)Why not? They are more romances than Lois Bujold. Lessa is saved by Fl'ar who seduces her after she gets picked by her dragon, the dragon mating, causes them to have rough erotic sex...the whole story is about F'Lar finding Lessa and the dragons are sort of in there.
Definitely romance - or in that category. Romance as a genre includes mystery, thriller, sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. Romance novelists write both.
And there's a huge gamut.
I guess that is why I find them so triggery because while downright fantasy/scifi etc. is known to be unreal by almost all it's readers,I see many people who buy into the romance type fantasies in the sense that many women focus themselves entirely around the male gaze and self objectify massively in order to achieve something with those imagined "weapons of a woman".
I guess if I could see it as just fantasies that no one buys I would be more bored and less bothered. But for that I see too many women with really skewered views of themselves.
Has it occurred to you that the person writing the romance is depicting their own views of themselves? It's often not men writing this, it's women reacting to the media imagery presented to them. Male dominated tv shows, books, etc - where women are told they are "supporting characters", wives, mothers, no career, and if they have a career...or women who have given up their career to raise children and be a wife...their novels are often expressions of their own pain, own frustrations, a coping mechanism as it were.
We read for various reasons...fantasy, comfort, whatever.
I think you have to be careful not to make broad generalizations.
And well, respectfully agree to disagree?