{"id":1343,"date":"2017-08-17T20:18:14","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T00:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/?p=1343"},"modified":"2017-08-17T20:18:14","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T00:18:14","slug":"three-reasons-why-sexism-is-still-a-problem-in-romancelandia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/three-reasons-why-sexism-is-still-a-problem-in-romancelandia\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Reasons Why Sexism is Still a Problem in Romancelandia"},"content":{"rendered":"

(This post was first published on the Romance Junkie <\/a>blog as part of my RECKONING blog tour)<\/p>\n

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Wow, look at those heartthrobs demanding that crying woman decide which man she belongs to! How romantic…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For a genre by and large written by women for women, romance uses a lot of sexist tropes in its storytelling. You can\u2019t swing a pink dildo around the romance section of your favorite bookstore without hitting a paperback that denigrates women in some way, and I\u2019m not just talking about the Old Skool stuff.<\/p>\n

I get where the impulse comes from. The genre\u2019s purpose is to sell a romantic fantasy, and often that fantasy entails willowy women being swept away by alpha males as a metaphor for losing oneself in sexual and\/or romantic pleasure in a way many of us can\u2019t do in real life.<\/p>\n

If the basic definition of feminism is treating men and women as equals, then the woman-swept-off-her-feet-by-a-manly-man naturally caters to the opposite<\/em> impulse by playing into our desires to abdicate our mundane responsibilities and let somebody else take charge\u2014without the negative consequences that often follow in real life, of course.<\/p>\n

Not to say it\u2019s an unreasonable desire to build a fantasy around. Who doesn\u2019t want a Greek billionaire to worship them? But as the late Roger Ebert said about movies\u2014\u201cIt\u2019s not what a movie is about, it\u2019s how it is about it\u201d\u2014it\u2019s not what a romance novel is about, but how it goes about it. By dipping a toe into the pool of anti-feminism in service of a romance storyline, some books trip headfirst into it and send up a maelstrom of cringe-worthy sexist stereotypes, and sometimes outright misogyny.<\/p>\n

(Note: \u201csexism\u201d is a prejudice or stereotype based on gender; \u201cmisogyny\u201d is a dislike or hatred of females. Not surprisingly, the two often go hand-in-hand)<\/p>\n

Here are the three biggest offenders that need to follow shirtless-mullet-heroes and he-raped-me-until-I-loved-him-heroines into the Romance Pit of No Return:<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Slut-shaming<\/strong><\/p>\n

God forbid a woman should be sexually experienced\u2026or, even worse, if she enjoyed that experience\u2026or\u2014the worst<\/em>\u2014if she dares to have sex with a man other than her intended during the story, no matter the circumstances! Virginal heroines are a trope all their own, along with the idea that the state of a woman\u2019s hymen is somehow directly proportional to her worth. Of course men aren\u2019t held to this standard. Dudes can ho around all they want, it don\u2019t mean a thang! But a lady, especially the heroine, must save herself for The One<\/em>. And if she doesn\u2019t\u2026for shame<\/em>.<\/p>\n

*A woman\u2019s value = what her vagina\u2019s been up to.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All other women in the story are evil and\/or sluts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Basic decency is a zero-sum game, and other women are the enemy. What better way to make the heroine look good than by bringing down all the other ladies around her? Her true love will only want her if she\u2019s not like other women<\/em>, i.e. a not a slut (see above).<\/p>\n

*A woman\u2019s value = how she compares to other women.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Stalking\/abusive behavior portrayed as romantic<\/strong><\/p>\n

He shows up at her work unannounced and demands she go places with him. He makes proclamations about how \u201cshe will be his,\u201d orders her around (especially in the bedroom), won\u2019t take no for an answer, won\u2019t let her deal with her own problems, and won\u2019t let her make her own life decisions\u2026because he loves her so much! She may tell him no, but her heart says yes. It\u2019s okay, though, because he knows what she wants. If he keeps telling her she\u2019s beautiful and assures her that he\u2019s never felt this way about anyone else before, she\u2019ll just keep swooning no matter what he does.<\/p>\n

* A woman\u2019s value = what a man tells her it is<\/p>\n

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Obviously not all romance novels contain sexist elements; in fact, many are happily, proudly feminist! And you could argue to each their own\u2014these books are fiction after all. A lot of women like the anti-feminism fantasy, so what\u2019s the harm? The problem is that fiction is a reflection of reality as the author sees it, if only in subtext. If a certain genre of fiction contained, for instance, regular allusions to anti-Semitism, what assumptions would you make about the people who read it? If we tolerate a consistent thread of sexism and misogyny in our beloved genre, what does that say about us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This post was first published on the Romance Junkie blog as part of my RECKONING blog tour) For a genre by and large written by women for women, romance uses a lot of sexist tropes in its storytelling. You can\u2019t swing a pink dildo around the romance section of your favorite bookstore without hitting a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Three Reasons Why Sexism is Still a Problem in Romancelandia”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[293,296,294,290,291,292,295],"class_list":["post-1343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-evil-sluts","tag-misogyny","tag-not-like-other-girls","tag-reckoning-blog-tour","tag-romance-junkies","tag-slut-shaming","tag-stalking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Vyi8-lF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1343"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1350,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343\/revisions\/1350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shanafigueroa.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}