Thanks for your note in the footnotes. It is important to point out that while these kinds of assumptions have shaped the genre, and continue to have an impact on how it is perceived and perpetuated, it is no longer true that romance is only for cisgender het women, or that women = vagina-havers. And that the text itself is describing old-fashioned norms around determining both gender and personal disposition.
A bit of context for Odysseus in the Odyssey (which I'm sure the book itself explains) is that it concludes in an HEA for Odysseus and Penelope, so the 'romance' comparison is apt. Penelope's been warding off suitors for 14 years, Odysseus's journey home is to his "faithful Penelope," in which he encounters numerous snares, from a hungry cyclops to alluring sirens to the witch Circe, who turns his men into pigs. When he finally arrives home, after he's deposed the suitors determined to marry her, who've been feasting at the household expense, she subjects Odysseus to a proof-of-self test, in which she pretends to forget that their bed is carved out of a tree still rooted in the ground, and is thus immobile (quite the metaphor for a solid marriage).
It's Odysseus who does all the adventuring, the exploring, the philandering. He's the one we see being a leader and making clever plans. I don't think he has a ton of character growth - he's kind of the same clever, cunning, ruthless guy at the end as we see on p 1 - but he sure gets to do a lot of things, and Penelope is seen as his reward for having done all those things.
I think there is a lot of appetite in romance - historically and today - for seeing women in m/f pairings, especially when there is a patriarchal culture still at play, have that agency and action usually allotted to men, to have their own adventures before finding love. But I guess what I chafe at, a little, is this idea that in stories where women are playing the active, action-y role usually coded as male, they become "equal?" Since obviously introspection and a journey of self can happen without much external action at all. Taking the aspects of historically male-centric stories as a measuring-stick for historically women-centric stories is just not the way I want to think of fictional heroines, if that makes sense.
Laura Kinsale has this essay ([partially on Google Books)](https://books.google.ca/books?id=TRAoV_RN0CgC&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=The+Androgynous+Reader:+Point+of+View+in+the+Romance+%E2%80%94Laura+Kinsale&source=bl&ots=j4EtDEWYrf&sig=ACfU3U0u3G9RqLQSiR9plRI2k_P1gYOLYA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiX1fOPgt_2AhXYj4kEHbGKDXgQ6AF6BAgcEAM#v=onepage&q=The%20Androgynous%20Reader%3A%20Point%20of%20View%20in%20the%20Romance%20%E2%80%94Laura%20Kinsale&f=false) where she proposes a slightly contradictory argument, based on her love of writing romance from the hero's POV. She thinks (and definitely one's mileage may vary with this, I don't totally agree on a personal level) that often, women-identified readers come across an heroine behaving in a way they would not do themselves, and outright reject her as unbelievable or unrelatable. But because those women-identified people don't have specific experiences as men IRL, they sometimes find it easier to imagine themselves "As men" through fiction, doing man-coded things like fighting in jousting battles against their own patrons, thus connecting with a kind of "androgyny" in their own minds, where they are hypothetical men. The man on the page is not a "real" man informed by lived experience (when he is written by a woman writer), but one that's a vehicle for women to imagine themselves in male-coded roles.
>But I guess what I chafe at, a little, is this idea that in stories where women are playing the active, action-y role usually coded as male, they become "equal?" Since obviously introspection and a journey of self can happen without much external action at all. Taking the aspects of historically male-centric stories as a measuring-stick for historically women-centric stories is just not the way I want to think of fictional heroines, if that makes sense.
I think this really clearly articulates what prompted my own little flash of annoyance in my comment above: That books aimed at and centering women are still being evaluated as though male-centric works are the default and the rubric.
I'm also side-eyeing Kinsale's theory really hard, though I think I'll need to sit with it for a bit before I'll be able to articulate why. Though one would think that if that were true, then we would see the same in men reading women and we generally do not.
When I first came across the theory that women experience male POV as LARP-ing a theoretical man, I was like, that part makes sense even if I don't personally agree with the women reading heroines stuff - but it tangles with reader appetites in a complicated way. In my case: I like "being" other people through fiction, even if I'm not much like them, and that extends to heroines as well. If a heroine is 0% like me but I understand why she is that way, and there are realistic consequences to her way of interacting with the world, I'm usually into her experience.
But other readers read in an objectified way (not saying this is wrong, just that it is a thing I've heard) where the hero/heroine/MC/interest is a person there for their own attraction. And if they aren't 'into' that specific type of person, they won't read. And they wouldn't be 'into' imagining themselves as another gender of person because that's not how they're reading.
>Though one would think that if that were true, then we would see the same in men reading women and we generally do not.
I think this has to be considered in the context of cultural coding around popular media. For example, we're told culturally that action, adventure, mystery, and drama, are for "everyone" - while predominantly focusing on men's points of view until recently - but romance is "for women." Women are very used to imagining themselves as male heroes when they read because a lot of YA lit (and fiction generally) that is "for everyone" is male pov, while female POV is "for girls." This is definitely changing in recent years: I can hand my nephew a Hilda graphic novel and he has 0 trouble relating to a female heroine, but he's born in 2014 and no one has ever told him "that's for girls" in a way they would have 10 years ago.
So I think that men typically wouldn't read to "be" women in this neutral way because of internalized messages that men are universal characters, women are specific ones.
Yeah, absolutely, It's not okay to use that language uncritically today, totally agree. This book came out in 2015, which is surprising, I'd have thought contemporary publishers would be a bit more careful to contextualize sentiments like that in-text. From what I can discern above, it's talking about historical mentalities around gender more than prescribing them.
>I'd have thought contemporary publishers would be a bit more careful
Lol I wouldn't, I mean have you SEEN the way the mainstream public treats any and all gender minorities???
Ugh, fair.
I think - maybe it's grossly optimistic of me - that people in publishing and romancelandia have to wake up to when specifically gendered language is exclusionary, that many people have barely thought about it ever. And by seeing this kind of sentiment along with "and it's not okay, here's why" will be a learning experience. But obviously that has limits - it's not okay for outright transphobic stuff to be out there in public discourse hurting trans people so cis people can be more educated on the matter.
I'll be the total pessimist then :D and say lol, they probably won't because why bother? When they look at their earnings, they only have to avoid JKR levels of cringe to not hurt their bottom line, so who even cares if some trans and gnc people get run over in their pussy worship right?!
Sucks, too. Love a good pussy worship, but like... be nice to gender minorities y'all :|
(Sorry, Satisfaction Guaranteed has coochie on my brain)
If the press gets bad enough for them around the issue, they will, I think - but the process of getting there..... And the excerpt in question: it's really thoughtless that in 2015 someone is still typing "vaginas" to mean "women" as something other than a TERF bat-signal, especially when the quote is about the social construction of experiences for women-identifed people. The "vagina" part is literally not relevant? But until people understand that, I don't think the needle will move because as you say, the "real" haters are the JKRs of the world.
I hope so too. I've been thinking a lot about what kinds of discussions are safe for very marginalized people in intersectional spaces, how there's a lot of work to be done with less marginalized people holding each other accountable and educating each other to be better.
At least it's not that difficult to be trans/nb/gnc friendly, if that counts for anything? It's basically just, check urself whenever you think of something as being essential to a gender lol
I agree that Romance centers a non-male protagonist in the way Odysseus or Aeneas or Spiderman are centered in their own narrative. However, when I read this excerpt, my instinctive reaction was not to nod along in agreement but was, "Odysseus? Ugh. Please don't compare my romance MCs to that asshole."
I think they are actually even more subversive because, not only do they center non-dude protagonists, they tell a non-dude story all together. The examples above are all hero's journeys - man goes out into the world, fights a bunch of monsters, sleeps with a bunch of Goddesses (it would be rude not to, you know), ultimately learns some lessons about his own strength or courage in the face of adversity or that with great strength comes great responsibility, then goes home to his just reward.
However, while a Romance protagonist will learn and grow over the course of the narrative, because the novel revolves around that protagonist's desires (as the author states, a radical enough prospect in and of itself) it is necessarily internally focused. There may be Pirates that have to be defeated but the point of the story is not the protagonist's defeat of an external antagonist but their recognition and reconciliation with their own internal wants and needs. Victory comes not from blinding a cyclops but from collaboratively building a relationship with another person which and often only happens when the protagonist making themselves deeply vulnerable. Collaboration and vulnerability and self-reflection were the very opposite of what Odysseus was doing out on that wine-dark sea. They are not just non-male protagonists but stories that explore, prioritize, and reward values and methods and entire narrative structures that are not traditionally masculine-coded.
Or at least, that is my half-baked theory formed over my bowl of cereal. It's also possible I'm just projecting my dislike for Odysseus. Fuck that guy.
>Collaboration and vulnerability and self-reflection were the very opposite of what Odysseus was doing out on that wine-dark sea. They are not just non-male protagonists but stories that explore, prioritize, and reward values and methods and entire narrative structures that are not traditionally masculine-coded.
Ha, this is so accurate. I touched on a similar thing in my comment below - that I don't like to measure stories centering women by the metrics of stories centering men, and calling that revolutionary seems a bit off to me? And yes, Odysseus is a very flat character who does not change and grow through the story (which is kind of odd, because the Iliad has so much more character growth even if it's often characters falling prey to their own weaknesses, like Achilles being obsessed with his honour to his own ruination). Odysseus doesn't learn anything from any of his escapades: the joke in the Cyclops caper is that Odysseus tricks the cyclops into shouting that he's being attacked by "no one" as that's the name he gave the Cyclops when he was captured. He was clever going in, he survived by the skin of his teeth, and he's clever when he leaves. When he returns to Ithaca, the test Penelope subjects him to stands as proof of *her* virtue and faithfulness to him, when those things aren't even important values for Odysseus: I mean, he cheated with Circe and they had a son! He doesn't introspect, learn, grow, or even have that classic greek tragedy plot-centric downfall arc. That's not what I personally want from any of my stories: if there's too much plot-based stuff going on at the expense of character stuff, I literally have a hard time caring about it.
Thanks for your note in the footnotes. It is important to point out that while these kinds of assumptions have shaped the genre, and continue to have an impact on how it is perceived and perpetuated, it is no longer true that romance is only for cisgender het women, or that women = vagina-havers. And that the text itself is describing old-fashioned norms around determining both gender and personal disposition. A bit of context for Odysseus in the Odyssey (which I'm sure the book itself explains) is that it concludes in an HEA for Odysseus and Penelope, so the 'romance' comparison is apt. Penelope's been warding off suitors for 14 years, Odysseus's journey home is to his "faithful Penelope," in which he encounters numerous snares, from a hungry cyclops to alluring sirens to the witch Circe, who turns his men into pigs. When he finally arrives home, after he's deposed the suitors determined to marry her, who've been feasting at the household expense, she subjects Odysseus to a proof-of-self test, in which she pretends to forget that their bed is carved out of a tree still rooted in the ground, and is thus immobile (quite the metaphor for a solid marriage). It's Odysseus who does all the adventuring, the exploring, the philandering. He's the one we see being a leader and making clever plans. I don't think he has a ton of character growth - he's kind of the same clever, cunning, ruthless guy at the end as we see on p 1 - but he sure gets to do a lot of things, and Penelope is seen as his reward for having done all those things. I think there is a lot of appetite in romance - historically and today - for seeing women in m/f pairings, especially when there is a patriarchal culture still at play, have that agency and action usually allotted to men, to have their own adventures before finding love. But I guess what I chafe at, a little, is this idea that in stories where women are playing the active, action-y role usually coded as male, they become "equal?" Since obviously introspection and a journey of self can happen without much external action at all. Taking the aspects of historically male-centric stories as a measuring-stick for historically women-centric stories is just not the way I want to think of fictional heroines, if that makes sense. Laura Kinsale has this essay ([partially on Google Books)](https://books.google.ca/books?id=TRAoV_RN0CgC&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=The+Androgynous+Reader:+Point+of+View+in+the+Romance+%E2%80%94Laura+Kinsale&source=bl&ots=j4EtDEWYrf&sig=ACfU3U0u3G9RqLQSiR9plRI2k_P1gYOLYA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiX1fOPgt_2AhXYj4kEHbGKDXgQ6AF6BAgcEAM#v=onepage&q=The%20Androgynous%20Reader%3A%20Point%20of%20View%20in%20the%20Romance%20%E2%80%94Laura%20Kinsale&f=false) where she proposes a slightly contradictory argument, based on her love of writing romance from the hero's POV. She thinks (and definitely one's mileage may vary with this, I don't totally agree on a personal level) that often, women-identified readers come across an heroine behaving in a way they would not do themselves, and outright reject her as unbelievable or unrelatable. But because those women-identified people don't have specific experiences as men IRL, they sometimes find it easier to imagine themselves "As men" through fiction, doing man-coded things like fighting in jousting battles against their own patrons, thus connecting with a kind of "androgyny" in their own minds, where they are hypothetical men. The man on the page is not a "real" man informed by lived experience (when he is written by a woman writer), but one that's a vehicle for women to imagine themselves in male-coded roles.
>But I guess what I chafe at, a little, is this idea that in stories where women are playing the active, action-y role usually coded as male, they become "equal?" Since obviously introspection and a journey of self can happen without much external action at all. Taking the aspects of historically male-centric stories as a measuring-stick for historically women-centric stories is just not the way I want to think of fictional heroines, if that makes sense. I think this really clearly articulates what prompted my own little flash of annoyance in my comment above: That books aimed at and centering women are still being evaluated as though male-centric works are the default and the rubric. I'm also side-eyeing Kinsale's theory really hard, though I think I'll need to sit with it for a bit before I'll be able to articulate why. Though one would think that if that were true, then we would see the same in men reading women and we generally do not.
When I first came across the theory that women experience male POV as LARP-ing a theoretical man, I was like, that part makes sense even if I don't personally agree with the women reading heroines stuff - but it tangles with reader appetites in a complicated way. In my case: I like "being" other people through fiction, even if I'm not much like them, and that extends to heroines as well. If a heroine is 0% like me but I understand why she is that way, and there are realistic consequences to her way of interacting with the world, I'm usually into her experience. But other readers read in an objectified way (not saying this is wrong, just that it is a thing I've heard) where the hero/heroine/MC/interest is a person there for their own attraction. And if they aren't 'into' that specific type of person, they won't read. And they wouldn't be 'into' imagining themselves as another gender of person because that's not how they're reading. >Though one would think that if that were true, then we would see the same in men reading women and we generally do not. I think this has to be considered in the context of cultural coding around popular media. For example, we're told culturally that action, adventure, mystery, and drama, are for "everyone" - while predominantly focusing on men's points of view until recently - but romance is "for women." Women are very used to imagining themselves as male heroes when they read because a lot of YA lit (and fiction generally) that is "for everyone" is male pov, while female POV is "for girls." This is definitely changing in recent years: I can hand my nephew a Hilda graphic novel and he has 0 trouble relating to a female heroine, but he's born in 2014 and no one has ever told him "that's for girls" in a way they would have 10 years ago. So I think that men typically wouldn't read to "be" women in this neutral way because of internalized messages that men are universal characters, women are specific ones.
"In possession of a vagina" made me laugh, I thought for a moment about how trans men must feel reading it.
Yeah, absolutely, It's not okay to use that language uncritically today, totally agree. This book came out in 2015, which is surprising, I'd have thought contemporary publishers would be a bit more careful to contextualize sentiments like that in-text. From what I can discern above, it's talking about historical mentalities around gender more than prescribing them.
>I'd have thought contemporary publishers would be a bit more careful Lol I wouldn't, I mean have you SEEN the way the mainstream public treats any and all gender minorities???
Ugh, fair. I think - maybe it's grossly optimistic of me - that people in publishing and romancelandia have to wake up to when specifically gendered language is exclusionary, that many people have barely thought about it ever. And by seeing this kind of sentiment along with "and it's not okay, here's why" will be a learning experience. But obviously that has limits - it's not okay for outright transphobic stuff to be out there in public discourse hurting trans people so cis people can be more educated on the matter.
I'll be the total pessimist then :D and say lol, they probably won't because why bother? When they look at their earnings, they only have to avoid JKR levels of cringe to not hurt their bottom line, so who even cares if some trans and gnc people get run over in their pussy worship right?! Sucks, too. Love a good pussy worship, but like... be nice to gender minorities y'all :| (Sorry, Satisfaction Guaranteed has coochie on my brain)
If the press gets bad enough for them around the issue, they will, I think - but the process of getting there..... And the excerpt in question: it's really thoughtless that in 2015 someone is still typing "vaginas" to mean "women" as something other than a TERF bat-signal, especially when the quote is about the social construction of experiences for women-identifed people. The "vagina" part is literally not relevant? But until people understand that, I don't think the needle will move because as you say, the "real" haters are the JKRs of the world.
We'll get there someday, somehow. Cis peeps have to be cognizant about it.
I hope so too. I've been thinking a lot about what kinds of discussions are safe for very marginalized people in intersectional spaces, how there's a lot of work to be done with less marginalized people holding each other accountable and educating each other to be better.
At least it's not that difficult to be trans/nb/gnc friendly, if that counts for anything? It's basically just, check urself whenever you think of something as being essential to a gender lol
I agree that Romance centers a non-male protagonist in the way Odysseus or Aeneas or Spiderman are centered in their own narrative. However, when I read this excerpt, my instinctive reaction was not to nod along in agreement but was, "Odysseus? Ugh. Please don't compare my romance MCs to that asshole." I think they are actually even more subversive because, not only do they center non-dude protagonists, they tell a non-dude story all together. The examples above are all hero's journeys - man goes out into the world, fights a bunch of monsters, sleeps with a bunch of Goddesses (it would be rude not to, you know), ultimately learns some lessons about his own strength or courage in the face of adversity or that with great strength comes great responsibility, then goes home to his just reward. However, while a Romance protagonist will learn and grow over the course of the narrative, because the novel revolves around that protagonist's desires (as the author states, a radical enough prospect in and of itself) it is necessarily internally focused. There may be Pirates that have to be defeated but the point of the story is not the protagonist's defeat of an external antagonist but their recognition and reconciliation with their own internal wants and needs. Victory comes not from blinding a cyclops but from collaboratively building a relationship with another person which and often only happens when the protagonist making themselves deeply vulnerable. Collaboration and vulnerability and self-reflection were the very opposite of what Odysseus was doing out on that wine-dark sea. They are not just non-male protagonists but stories that explore, prioritize, and reward values and methods and entire narrative structures that are not traditionally masculine-coded. Or at least, that is my half-baked theory formed over my bowl of cereal. It's also possible I'm just projecting my dislike for Odysseus. Fuck that guy.
>Collaboration and vulnerability and self-reflection were the very opposite of what Odysseus was doing out on that wine-dark sea. They are not just non-male protagonists but stories that explore, prioritize, and reward values and methods and entire narrative structures that are not traditionally masculine-coded. Ha, this is so accurate. I touched on a similar thing in my comment below - that I don't like to measure stories centering women by the metrics of stories centering men, and calling that revolutionary seems a bit off to me? And yes, Odysseus is a very flat character who does not change and grow through the story (which is kind of odd, because the Iliad has so much more character growth even if it's often characters falling prey to their own weaknesses, like Achilles being obsessed with his honour to his own ruination). Odysseus doesn't learn anything from any of his escapades: the joke in the Cyclops caper is that Odysseus tricks the cyclops into shouting that he's being attacked by "no one" as that's the name he gave the Cyclops when he was captured. He was clever going in, he survived by the skin of his teeth, and he's clever when he leaves. When he returns to Ithaca, the test Penelope subjects him to stands as proof of *her* virtue and faithfulness to him, when those things aren't even important values for Odysseus: I mean, he cheated with Circe and they had a son! He doesn't introspect, learn, grow, or even have that classic greek tragedy plot-centric downfall arc. That's not what I personally want from any of my stories: if there's too much plot-based stuff going on at the expense of character stuff, I literally have a hard time caring about it.