WTF is up with romance novels?
Seriously, wtf is up with romance novels?
I read this post on ONTD: 5 horrifying plots of romance novels.
One of the egregious examples (i.e. quoting from the post), 'Not Quite A Husband', by Sherry Thomas:
"This book won the Romance Writers of America Award for Best Historical Romance in 2010. Leo is going to marry a lady doctor, Bryony, whom he claims he loves. But his fragile masculinity is threatened by her being smart, so he has a brilliant idea: to fuck someone else the day before the wedding. Bryony sees him, but doesn't say anything. She's disappointed that he's a fuckboy but still marries him. She sleeps with him, but can't enjoy sex with her husband and is kinda cold in bed because, obviously, she thinks he's a douchebag. And he's like wahhhhh I'm such a nice guy, why is my wife so frigid!! Solution: sleep rape. Oh you read that right. He starts coming into her room in the middle of the night and raping her while she's asleep. She only realizes it when she's woken up by the rape one night, and she's like CAN YOU NOT RAPE ME WHILE I'M ASLEEP PLEASE. And our romantic hero does NOT get it at all - UM, why are you making such an unreasonable request? I'm a NICE GUY let me rape you in your sleep! So the next night he goes and rapes her again as a punishment for crazy talk. And Bryony is like SERIOUSLY, STOP. And he does it again. "And on it went. Until she couldn’t go to sleep for fear of what he would do to her that night. What he would make her do. Until she almost killed a patient because she was so under-rested and distraught. That evening she went home, bolted all the doors to her chamber, and never let him into her bed again for as long as they lived under the same roof".
She gets an annullment and gets the fuck away from him. He gets very angry because he's such a nice guy and he bought her a microscope once!!! Ungrateful bitch!!! So a couple of years later he tracks her down and he's still angry. She finally confesses that she saw him cheating on her, he gives her a half-assed apology. So now they're cool and they get together again because ~true love~" ( The rest of the post is here.)
Yikes x 100 000 000 000.
Here is another example (reviewed by yours truly -the book is called 'Wicked Delights of a Bridal Bed', by Tracy Anne Warren):
The following is an excerpt from my review.
"Where the book suddenly became rage-inducing for me was when the main characters wound up married sooner than the main male character (Adam) had initially planned as a result of their being caught in a compromising situation (a plot device which has been done absolutely to death in these books). They are married and, despite the fact that he *knows* she is not yet fully over the death of her fiancé [who was purportedly killed a year earlier], he essentially loses his sh*t when SHE DOESN'T FEEL COMFORTABLE HAVING SEX WITH HIM RIGHT AFTER THEY ARE MARRIED. BECAUSE HOW DARE SHE REFUSE HIM. SHE HAS NOW BECOME HIS PROPERTY AFTER ALL.
Of course once they have sex -which she finally agrees to as a result of his blatant emotional manipulation- she of course winds up loving it because all women need a penis, apparently.
No, just no.
This is RAPE, people. R-A-P-E. Why is this something people don't get?
Here is a handy reference to help those who still don't understand: Tea consent.
And that was where I burned this book.
(Add to this the fact that the long-lost fiancé also disregards her when she clearly states that she wants him to leave her alone and to stop stalking her, basically, and I am amazed I managed to finish the damn thing.)"
It's not just historical romance, either. Here is another review (again by yours truly, of the novel 'Alpha Instinct', by Katie Reus):
An excerpt from my review.
"I have rarely read a book that is more *sexist* than this one -and I do not use this word lightly. Every woman in this book seemed to: (i) cower in a corner waiting for the men in her life to protect her, (ii) perfer doing 'female' things off in her corner with the other females, (iii) accept a general separation of the sexes where men were the warriors and women... did not do much of anything.
For example, the main character had become the leader of her pack when all the males of her old pack were killed. The nasty leader of a neighboring pack tried to take over their pack and land and she therefore accepted a 'takeover' of the pack by a bunch of unknown males led by an old (male) flame of hers. In exchange for this protection of the 'little females' by the new males, she agreed to become the fellow's official mate. While the main character stated that she was not part of the lupine shifter race's 'warrior class' and therefore was not suited by temperament or ability to be the leader of a pack, it was revealing to me to see that all the new 'warrior class' wolves who had shown up to protect her pack were MALE.
Most of the story felt like a truly bad romance novel, featuring the familiar trope of the 'big hulking male' being tamed by the 'little woman', with a small degree of variation in that it was not only the main character but also his brother and the other men trying to learn how to deal with the new 'little women' who had them wrapped around their little fingers. And for a novel written by a woman, another aspect which struck me was the extreme separation of the sexes where the women had their own houses and did their own things under the watchful eyes of their male protectors. Apparently female shifters like things this way -when the main character found out that one of the newly arrived wolves was female she proposed that said female stay with the rest of the females in their house. While this new female had undergone some trauma and while I could understand a certain level of instinctive fear and discomfort on the part of a woman has been raped and abused with regards to men in general, this whole notion of 'female space' is carried to a ridiculous extreme in this novel. Another example of this is that there were two cubs/children who were brought over with the male wolves, one of which was female and the other male. Both were quite young and cute, but guess which one was essentially (and later literally) adopted by the main character? You guessed it: the FEMALE. The possibility that a young male child might benefit from having a female maternal type presence in his life was not even considered because, of course, he was MALE and was therefore better off with the men.
There was one female who was eventually revealed to be a member of the warrior class and who seems to be a pretty good fighter -but she came across to me as so anomalous as to almost be a token 'tough female' presence in the novel.
Ugh."
Wow.
I point you also to my earlier posts regarding the novels and TV series 'Outlander', where the main male character rapes his new wife (in the books) and 'humorously' beats her (in the books and the TV series): post #1, post #2.
wtf. And these are marketed to women???
I read this post on ONTD: 5 horrifying plots of romance novels.
One of the egregious examples (i.e. quoting from the post), 'Not Quite A Husband', by Sherry Thomas:
"This book won the Romance Writers of America Award for Best Historical Romance in 2010. Leo is going to marry a lady doctor, Bryony, whom he claims he loves. But his fragile masculinity is threatened by her being smart, so he has a brilliant idea: to fuck someone else the day before the wedding. Bryony sees him, but doesn't say anything. She's disappointed that he's a fuckboy but still marries him. She sleeps with him, but can't enjoy sex with her husband and is kinda cold in bed because, obviously, she thinks he's a douchebag. And he's like wahhhhh I'm such a nice guy, why is my wife so frigid!! Solution: sleep rape. Oh you read that right. He starts coming into her room in the middle of the night and raping her while she's asleep. She only realizes it when she's woken up by the rape one night, and she's like CAN YOU NOT RAPE ME WHILE I'M ASLEEP PLEASE. And our romantic hero does NOT get it at all - UM, why are you making such an unreasonable request? I'm a NICE GUY let me rape you in your sleep! So the next night he goes and rapes her again as a punishment for crazy talk. And Bryony is like SERIOUSLY, STOP. And he does it again. "And on it went. Until she couldn’t go to sleep for fear of what he would do to her that night. What he would make her do. Until she almost killed a patient because she was so under-rested and distraught. That evening she went home, bolted all the doors to her chamber, and never let him into her bed again for as long as they lived under the same roof".
She gets an annullment and gets the fuck away from him. He gets very angry because he's such a nice guy and he bought her a microscope once!!! Ungrateful bitch!!! So a couple of years later he tracks her down and he's still angry. She finally confesses that she saw him cheating on her, he gives her a half-assed apology. So now they're cool and they get together again because ~true love~" ( The rest of the post is here.)
Yikes x 100 000 000 000.
Here is another example (reviewed by yours truly -the book is called 'Wicked Delights of a Bridal Bed', by Tracy Anne Warren):
The following is an excerpt from my review.
"Where the book suddenly became rage-inducing for me was when the main characters wound up married sooner than the main male character (Adam) had initially planned as a result of their being caught in a compromising situation (a plot device which has been done absolutely to death in these books). They are married and, despite the fact that he *knows* she is not yet fully over the death of her fiancé [who was purportedly killed a year earlier], he essentially loses his sh*t when SHE DOESN'T FEEL COMFORTABLE HAVING SEX WITH HIM RIGHT AFTER THEY ARE MARRIED. BECAUSE HOW DARE SHE REFUSE HIM. SHE HAS NOW BECOME HIS PROPERTY AFTER ALL.
Of course once they have sex -which she finally agrees to as a result of his blatant emotional manipulation- she of course winds up loving it because all women need a penis, apparently.
No, just no.
This is RAPE, people. R-A-P-E. Why is this something people don't get?
Here is a handy reference to help those who still don't understand: Tea consent.
And that was where I burned this book.
(Add to this the fact that the long-lost fiancé also disregards her when she clearly states that she wants him to leave her alone and to stop stalking her, basically, and I am amazed I managed to finish the damn thing.)"
It's not just historical romance, either. Here is another review (again by yours truly, of the novel 'Alpha Instinct', by Katie Reus):
An excerpt from my review.
"I have rarely read a book that is more *sexist* than this one -and I do not use this word lightly. Every woman in this book seemed to: (i) cower in a corner waiting for the men in her life to protect her, (ii) perfer doing 'female' things off in her corner with the other females, (iii) accept a general separation of the sexes where men were the warriors and women... did not do much of anything.
For example, the main character had become the leader of her pack when all the males of her old pack were killed. The nasty leader of a neighboring pack tried to take over their pack and land and she therefore accepted a 'takeover' of the pack by a bunch of unknown males led by an old (male) flame of hers. In exchange for this protection of the 'little females' by the new males, she agreed to become the fellow's official mate. While the main character stated that she was not part of the lupine shifter race's 'warrior class' and therefore was not suited by temperament or ability to be the leader of a pack, it was revealing to me to see that all the new 'warrior class' wolves who had shown up to protect her pack were MALE.
Most of the story felt like a truly bad romance novel, featuring the familiar trope of the 'big hulking male' being tamed by the 'little woman', with a small degree of variation in that it was not only the main character but also his brother and the other men trying to learn how to deal with the new 'little women' who had them wrapped around their little fingers. And for a novel written by a woman, another aspect which struck me was the extreme separation of the sexes where the women had their own houses and did their own things under the watchful eyes of their male protectors. Apparently female shifters like things this way -when the main character found out that one of the newly arrived wolves was female she proposed that said female stay with the rest of the females in their house. While this new female had undergone some trauma and while I could understand a certain level of instinctive fear and discomfort on the part of a woman has been raped and abused with regards to men in general, this whole notion of 'female space' is carried to a ridiculous extreme in this novel. Another example of this is that there were two cubs/children who were brought over with the male wolves, one of which was female and the other male. Both were quite young and cute, but guess which one was essentially (and later literally) adopted by the main character? You guessed it: the FEMALE. The possibility that a young male child might benefit from having a female maternal type presence in his life was not even considered because, of course, he was MALE and was therefore better off with the men.
There was one female who was eventually revealed to be a member of the warrior class and who seems to be a pretty good fighter -but she came across to me as so anomalous as to almost be a token 'tough female' presence in the novel.
Ugh."
Wow.
I point you also to my earlier posts regarding the novels and TV series 'Outlander', where the main male character rapes his new wife (in the books) and 'humorously' beats her (in the books and the TV series): post #1, post #2.
wtf. And these are marketed to women???