Foot in Mouth: Psychology Today on Rape Fantasies
I don’t dispute the findings of this article citing scientific studies surrounding women’s sexuality and rape fantasies. But one line that totally made me sit up and bark was this one:
Rape or near-rape fantasies are central to romance novels, one of the perennial best-selling categories in fiction.
Look, Sex Educator Dude–you obviously haven’t read a romance novel recently. Or maybe ever. If anything, the current romance genre ignores and defies your statistics. Nobody’s bodice gets ripped anymore. Things have gotten so civilized that prominent reviewers complain about perfectly frank and mature dialog between lovers.
In point of fact, the mainstream romance genre goes so far out of its way to avoid any kind of complicated or seemingly aberrant sexuality, that it opened the way for erotica to find success online, where women say they can buy what they want without being seen or judged.
But anyway, the point is, stop propagating false stereotypes about the romance genre.
Tags: bodice rippers, rape fantasies
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January 16th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Oh good lord. Somebody was a fertilizer salesman in a previous life and he is continuing to spread his bullshit.
January 16th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Did you comment and tell him to go update his ‘romance’ reading by about 25 years? Idiot.
January 16th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
Kate, good idea. I just did so.
January 16th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
Heh. I had the same thoughts when I read that article; obviously if the writer read any romances at all, they were filched from his aged mother’s back closet, leftovers from the seventies.
Which isn’t to say they were all bad back then. That’s when I started reading historical romances, when I was twelve, in ‘75. I even remember fondly one Catherine Coulter book (I think it was her [squint/ponder]) where the Villain’s henchmen (all five of them) raped the Heroine while waiting for the Villain to show up. Afterward, our Hero tracked down every one of them and killed them with his own hands. Woot! \o/ Of course, I grew up in an era where it was very difficult to get a rape conviction, even if the victim had the guts to take it to court in the first place, knowing that she’d be painted as a lying slut by the defense, so seeing a bloody and violent short cut taken to that kind of situation was quite satisfying.
[cough]
Anyway, yeah. Article-dude’s data is way out of date.
Angie