If the haters want to talk about things that are deeply sexist and ultimately harmful to women, I’d say the idea that we poor females can’t hold our own ideas in the face of a bunch of words on a page is pretty damn demeaning, oppressive and harmful.

The lolcat is darling but let’s be honest. Does any cat in the world have a negative self-image? >^-^<

Heh. Heh. Heh. It’s funny cuz it’s true. ;)

I doubt readers will think “Oh dear, I must have a social obligation when I go to the bookstore, I’m buying a forced seduction book and what will people think of me, oh me oh my!”

Again… it’s funny cuz it’s true.

As far as I’m concerned, I meet my social obligations just fine without having to bring my reading habits into question.

I mean, I pay my taxes, I’m not a law breaker, I raise my kids to be polite and honest and respectful, I don’t drive drunk, I don’t rarely speed, I have a job that helps take care of my kids. I give to charity, I try to recycle, and I vote.

If somebody wants to criticize my lack of meeting my social obligations (or their messed up perceptions of), they are welcome to. Just like I am welcome to ignore them. :)

If I had to consider “social obligations” when picking out my reading material, I’d rather not read.

The specifics may vary–the sheikh, the Greek Tycoon, the alpha cop…a bargain, a revenge plot, enforced closeness for a number of reasons…whatever. The situation places the heroine at the mercy of something she is unable to control, yet the end result of the story is that through her own charater, that force that is uncontrollable–that alpha male or the rich and powerful male…ends up being tamed by her.

At one level, I’ve always looked at the paradigm not as an instruction manual for how things are, but rather a re-envisioning of how they could be, and in so doing, they are actually encouraging women to remain conscious of the possibility of things being different and better.

However, I’d still like to know how reading what Bliedel tells me I should be reading is any less oppressive than reading what some mysterious “they” tell me I should be reading.

I don’t get it. There is more violence against women in crime books and I don’t hear a call for arms against the women who enjoy reading that genre.

Because, sadly, we North Americans are a society that more readily accepts violence than sex. Church groups will protest sex, a beautiful and natural act, in the media more often and more vehemently than they do violence.

Let’s take the movie industry: Too much sex and it’ll be rated 18A/NC-17 and/or it’ll be stuck in the back room of the video store; Hack, shoot, or slaughter people, and it’ll get rated 14A /PG-13 so the general public can still watch it.

Coincidence or craft? I ask y’all.

…

Rankin said:

“the people writing the most graphic novels are women”, before going on to specify that “they are mostly lesbians as well, which I find interesting.”

To which McDermind replied:

“There is still a funny notion that women should not write violent fiction…and yet women more often than not are the victims of sexual violence. So what are we saying – that the ones most likely to experience it should not write about it?”

And she rounds off by saying:

McDermid is the first to admit that there is snobbery in the literary world when it comes to the crime genre. “It is manifestly clear, however, from the kind of critical acclaim we get, that there are now very good crime writers.” It will be a “good day”, she continues, when a crime novel wins the Booker prize.

I feel the same way about Romance! (This is from an article in The – where else – Guardian.

I’d love to be intelligent and draw parallels to gender and genre and so on, but I’m sleepy. I just thought it was interesting.

I think I would accept the comparison of crime fiction to romance fantasy if the would be victim ended up marrying the serial killer.

Which I think goes back to Gennita’s question about why it’s Romance and not crime novels that are scrutinized the way they are (re. violence toward women). Because the focus on the romantic union ups the ante, so to speak. Not that I think we couldn’t do some of the same kind of ideological analysis of crime novels, but in a genre where violence (in general) and love are so closely entwined, it doesn’t surprise me that Romance comes under the cultural microscope more easily.

I remember reading a piece of research some time ago where the “rape fantasy” was studied and mostly debunked. It turns out that rape fantasy is not so much rape fantasy as a romantic fantasy, and the men that the women fantasized would throw them on a bed and do it no matter what were almost without exception men that the women already really, really fancied.

Do you have a reference or even a partial reference for this, Sherry?

Robin had a brilliant analysis somewhere in all these discussions

The check’s in the mail, Sarah. ;)

Last year, a survey in Woman & Home magazine bolstered the notion that women nowadays prefer blood and guts to hearts and flowers. Half of the respondents said that the crime thriller was their favourite fiction genre, with science fiction and romance the least popular.

Would a survey in the US have the same result? Were the answers to the survey influenced by the low brow reputation of romance? I’ll admit I read far more mysteries than romances.

I think I would accept the comparison of crime fiction to romance fantasy if the would be victim ended up marrying the serial killer.

On another note a friend and I were kicking around a bookstore after lunch picking up some winter reading material– Charles Todd and Val McDermid for me although I think the television series Wire in the Blood is better than the books– and she confessed that some of her genre reading embarrassed her– I thought she was going to confess to a secret passion for romance novels but turns out she was talking about Kim Harrison’s Dead Witch Walking novels,

We excuse many a hero’s barbaric behavior to the time in which he lived, but I think there is a way to stay true to a time period and yet not depict a brute.

In some ways with everything I have read about history and sexual politics. I think it might have been worse actually.

I just wish that if you are going to make the hero barbaric in his behavior that you actually show the whole setup so that it is in context. The societies views should match the barbaric hero’s and the heroine should not expect any different behavior either.

I think what makes some of these books worse is that there is a presence of modern thinking in the characters that would not actually exist. So something seen as really jaw dropping wrong in our day and age would be commonplace and accepted then.

I just went over all this reading about the pioneer era and homosexuality before there was even a term for it and how men treated same sex incidents between friends. Very interesting, very eye opening about how much went on in those shared sleeping arrangements after looking at letters and such.

You seem to be getting totally the gist of what I was saying. Well, maybe not totally, because if it’s a historical, men could be true barbarians. Redeemed sometimes. But the writer better darn well convince me.

Thanks Anon 76!

Surely there were men throughout history who were not barbaric brutes? If they were all like that, I imagine we’d have been stuck in the Dark Ages forever. And there are no brutes around these days?

We excuse many a hero’s barbaric behavior to the time in which he lived, but I think there is a way to stay true to a time period and yet not depict a brute.

You seem to be getting totally the gist of what I was saying. Well, maybe not totally, because if it’s a historical, men could be true barbarians. Redeemed sometimes. But the writer better darn well convince me.

Thanks

For instance, if the heroine has the “unwilling at the moment” hero tied to the bed, and then works her wiles on him…is that seduction? Or rape? If he is saying no, and meaning NO, then it is rape.

See, for me, I can’t root for a hero who isn’t turned off by a woman who is “unwilling in the moment.” That’s not heroic to me, and there has to be some bit of nobleness in a character for me to want to read about her or him.

I looked up POMD on Google Book Search to refresh my memory. Only excerpts are available, but it’s clear that the hero was angry afterward, felt like something had been taken from him. His actions are motivated thereafter by anger.

It’s a very fine line, yes, and I think there are gray areas all around it. That gray area is different for every reader.

(OH, but he’s a guy, right? So why wouldn’t he love it?)

In the POMD hero’s case, there was another woman that he did care about, not in the deep manner we expect at the end of a Romance novel, but a commitment nonetheless. Just because his biology performed doesn’t mean it’s something he wanted. Some of that reaction is involuntary for both men and women, so the whole “body betraying her” notion doesn’t ring true to me.

Incidentally, Bindel’s written an article about why some crime novels are feminist.

Wow. So, Blindel can understand how violence in crime fiction can be cathartic and “affirms absolutely. . . a feminist to challenge sexual violence,” to quote Denise Marshall from the article — but she can’t understand how at least for some women that as Jan said “rape fantasy is empowering, allowing women the control in a situation where in real life it’s stripped from them.”

The latter might not appeal to me, but I can at least see that it appeals to others. Blindel is applying a double-standard.

This all is super interesting. Yes, there are books with flat out rape, but I personally think that the writing of the character’s motivation and time period determines if the hero can still be a hero afterwards.

And, I think there is a fine line between what could be considered a seduction scene versus a rape scene, again based on all of the other factors that go into the book.

For instance, if the heroine has the “unwilling at the moment” hero tied to the bed, and then works her wiles on him…is that seduction? Or rape? If he is saying no, and meaning NO, then it is rape. (OH, but he’s a guy, right? So why wouldn’t he love it?)

Just something for the group to chew on.

But this may very well not be Bindel’s definition of feminism. My own definition of feminism, (an abbreviated version of bell hooks’s definition) is that “feminism is a movement to end sexism.”

Incidentally, Bindel’s written an article about why some crime novels are feminist.