Raise your hand if you open a romance novel and expect to learn a life lesson.
Raise your hand if you open a romance novel and expect to find validation for being a woman.
Raise your hand if you expect to never ever open a romance novel that will reflect something bad that has happened to you, your loved one, your child or your sisters best friends girlfriend.
Raise your hand if you take your romance novel over to your husband, lover, boyfriend or that guy in the corner flipping through a magazine and say ‘HEY you can’t do that because right here ::pointing to the page in said romance novel:: the hero says he doesn’t do that’.
Terrible things happen in life and many things go bump in the night and I have had many a shitty thing happen to me in my 31 years but never did I think to myself:
‘self, this [insert tragic thing here] better never ever show up in a romance novel for that would make me sad and that would be bad’
‘self, if it wasn’t for this very evol [insert stoopid author who has offended you here], there would be no [insert stoopid male trick here] in the world for they would have never gotten the idea on their own.’
‘self, we must go comfort jane and take all her romance novels away from her for she is female and human there for too stupid to know a romance novel is fiction and not a guide for how to live her life.’
I could go on but I won’t. It could be I am just a horrid person but whenever I see a rant start out with this happened to me so I know how it feels, I have seen the effect of, my mother went through, my husband cheated on me so I or even Eileen Dreyer’s would be angry rant:
I worked in trauma nursing for sixteen years. We were the catchment hospital for familial abuse, so I took care of endless numbers of women caught in a terrifying spiral of violence, abuse and degradation because they’d been taught that they were worthless, powerless and lucky to have the man who was crippling her and her children. So I have absolutely no objectivity about the subject. I know what an abuser looks like what he(statistically) sounds like and what the cost of his abuse is.
My reaction is close the book and read something else. Warning, warning, danger Will Robinson here be monsters. Any adult with a working brain should know how to put the book down, turn the tv off, change the radio station or flip the fucking page. But why do that when you can call for justice in the form of censorship.
I don’t like this so I don’t want to see it in a book. okay! thxs b!
So on that note, I being a female with a brain. A liberal, pro-choice, smart ass, sailor mouthed one at that, I should have done the smart thing and clicked the back button. But then I would have missed the gem of the rest of the post. About how women need good role models in romance so they know abusive relationships are bad and how never having one in a book would make men not hurt women. And coming on the heel of the all knowing Lydia Joyce’s cries for give her accurate history or give her death, Eileen’s bit about St. Louis police stopping and arresting men if they spoke as the CHARACTER in the ROMANCE NOVEL did. Had me giggle.
But then I felt stupid because how in the hell did I manage to read Claiming the Courtesan and miss it was contemporary based in St. Louis? Because I find it hard to believe a police officer would stop a Duke in London and tell him he better watch how he was talking to a whore or he would get thrown in the slammer.
Hell did London even have police in 1825? I know, I know… I am a stoopid reader and should not be allowed to live another minute to open another book. Good thing we have authors around to explain to us how we should spend our money. That erotica is evol and has no place in romance, no matter if it is erotic romance or not. They will explain the boundaries of romance to us. And isn’t it shocking how those boundaries almost always end up fitting what they write? Funny that. For this and more fun times allow me to direct you here. Enjoy.
oh and you can put your hands down now…
Boy, this is begging me to write my own blog post but for now…
I used my Super Librarian Powers to find out about the history of Bobbies in London. What would be considered a modern police force didn’t exist until Sir Robert Peel introduced the Metropolitan Police Act in 1829, and assuming the Internet isn’t lying to me – they started patroling on September 29, 1829.
So there you go. No cops in 1825 London.
Well as you have super librarian powers and are smart and all knowing I do believe you are welcome on RRA. (ROMANCE READERS ANONYMOUS for you stoopid readers out there) Because an author pointed out that said wonderful list was created by librarian and the super smart who dared to out themselves as romance readers.
::pauses for proper awe::
Seriously it may have been just a statement and the nasty tone of get thee gone fowl reader who doth not agree with us, was just one I imagined. I read it after the moderator came in sighing and threatening to send us to our room until we stopped having ideas and trying to dance to footloose.
I thought there was already a really, really popular guide book on how to live your life. Gimme a sec & I’ll remember the title.
Oh, yeah — The Bible.
Has that one fallen off the best seller list?
Sybil:
I once was a member of RRA-L and now I’m not. I’ll just leave it at that.
Lord have mercy, I can’t tell you the number of times I cringe when I read about how so and so doesn’t want romance books to contain X, Y, Z. Uh, fuck off. Course you can’t really say that because they throw in how they experienced it first hand and it’s not romantic and why, why, why would anyone think it was? *shrug*
I had started a book called Prozac Nation and when I realized that I was identifying way too much with the heroine (I have panic attacks and my anxiety ratcheted up while reading) I put the book down and walked away. Do I think the book shouldn’t have been written? Hell, no!! If it helps one person to understand what a friend or loved one experiences then it’s a great thing.
I come at romance books the same way. Are people saying that people who have been abused are unable to find happiness? I hope not.
Anyways, I tend to stay out of those conversations because I already know you aren’t going to change the persons mind, so why waste my breathe 😉
CindyS
Totally off-topic, but I so love your pussies.
That just proves once more you are the rightest wendy.
true cindy but it is fun to point and laugh
karen I love them too *g*
My response to this is unprintable.
The Bow Street Runners were working in London at that time, but I wouldn’t expect them to mouth off to a duke. Na uh.
Gah – I always forget about Bow Street. Once again, a romance author shows us the way 🙂
What I find interesting is that many people are upset with Avon for publishing this book. Where was the outcry in 2004 when Signet published Sasha Lord’s In A Wild Wood? Yes, I read it – yes we have “forced seduction.” And while that scene really bothered me, I thought the book was readable in an “old school” sort of way. Would I recommend it universally? No. But those readers who miss 1985 would probably love it.
Outlawing “forced seduction” (I hate calling it that – it’s rape) isn’t going to solve the problem of domestic violence. If only it were that simple. And to imply women find themselves in these types of relationships because of an “old school” romance novel they read is insulting. The problem is much larger than that. I’m sorry, romance novels (and fiction in general) just does not have that kind of power. If it did Nora would probably be running the UN. I like to think I’m a good person, but I didn’t become a “good person” by my choice of reading material. To say that is a bit of an insult to my parents, who raised me to think critically and to know right vs. wrong. Yes, fiction can be empowering – but I’d be a little worried about anybody who took their morals and values from a book. Whether it be “good” or “bad.”
Frankly, I’d also be worried about anybody looking for a “role model” in a fiction book. It’s fiction. It’s not reality. And to suggest that women need to blur the lines between reality and fantasy to find strong “role models” is a bit insulting. But what do I know?
~hops upon soapbox~
THINK!
~hops down from soapbox~
There are some people out there that don’t like to think. I know, crazy, but still true. And they like things handed to them in honest truth and happiness on a silver platter. To me these people really haven’t accepted that life is not fair, not a pretty place and they can’t really accept that. If you can’t use your brain to put something down if it bothers you, then you should be able to take what you are reading/seeing. But these things are said above, aren’t they? 🙂
How very odd…So now romance novels might encourage women to engage/remain in abusive relationships? But I thought it was only the “uninitiated” romance reader who would think there were rapes in that book? I’ve got to get on with reading this darn book, so I can make up my own mind. If I can, that is, since as a romance reader I might not have the capacity to. Such a poor opinion of our intelligence!
Oh for fuck’s sake! These people need more to worry about in their lives if they’re worried about this. As Wendy says, it’s FICTION.
Why do I read romance? Because it makes me smile, 9 times out of 10, and I feel good when I put the book down. If I feel a book steps over the line with a rape scene or something that I don’t like, I simply put the bloody thing down. Perhaps I’ll pick it up again, but perhaps not. Choice is an amazing thing.
Besides, they should be reading these for the hot sex, right? 🙂
The mere mention of ‘outlawing’ the whole thing (and I’ve heard people mentioning it on another board) makes me instantly want to go out and write a forced seduction scene. lol. That’s censorship and I’ll have none of it, thank you.
Besides, I’m much more interested in the fact that Anna Campbell is a beautiful writer. Why is no one talking about her talent when she can write such a hero and have him work?