Because apparently I need to say this again

[annathepiper]

While I was working the NIWA table at Worldcon, one of the people who came by was a very outspoken, charming fellow who took the time to chat and make jokes with several of us. I wanted to like him. Except for one thing: he was very blunt in his opinion of romance, sweepingly dismissing the entire genre as “swill”.

And as soon as he said that, I

Comments

[agrumer]

There’s a pretty good history of romance influence in science fiction. Anne McCaffrey wrote some non-SF romance books, and her Pern stories had a clear romance influence. Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness has the general structure of a romance novel; Joanna Russ was convinced it had started out as Star Trek slash fiction.

That said, is sexual consent really a defining attribute of romance fiction? It’s not a genre I read, but I hear/see discussions, and my impression is that there’s a lot of rape in the romance genre. Especially in older works, but even Kate Breslin’s For Such a Time, shortlisted for this year’s RWAs, portrayed as positive a romance between a woman and a man with complete power over her.

[annathepiper]

I'm aware of the overall romance-y flavor of McCaffrey, yes; I have a LONG history of reading her work, and I'm well familiar with how the love stories she writes are front and center in her storylines. Often with primary focus, e.g., the Rowan series. Less so in the Pern and Crystal Singer books, but the romance influence was definitely there.

Re: rape in romance--yes, there's a history there, but modern romance is way less rape-y than it used to be, and this is an issue that gets acknowledged and talked about considerably on the blogs I follow, Dear Author, and Smart Bitches Trashy Books. There's a lot of public discussion about how to properly warn rape survivors about books with rape as an on-camera event, or as character backstory

[marzipan_pig]

Well also, what exactly is wrong w 'porn for women'? Like HOW is that an insult? I'm not a big romance reader but it's not romance that turned me off when I was an adolescent bc of the ridiculous and limitinf view of gender I saw and it's not romance that's making national news with crazy schemes at awards shows.

Also: it gets people reading. I think that's good for more than just kids.

[annathepiper]

Seriously. But yeah, we still live in a culture where proper wimmens aren't supposed to have positive feelings in their wimmenparts, so clearly any writing that promotes such positive feelings is "porn".

And yeah--I've said it before, but the usual heteronormativity and gender roles are most often what keeps me from reading contemporary romance. I can't put up with it there. (Oddly, I can deal with it more in historical settings, go fig...)

And OH MY YES re: screwing up the Hugos. The romance genre is not without its drama in that respect--witness the brouhaha around this year's RITAs and how a novel featuring a relationship between a Nazi concentration camp commander and a Jewish prisoner got itself nominated. But SF/F is taking the drama crown this year.