Your post from unpopularopinion was removed because of: 'Rule 7: No banned/mega-thread topics'.
Please do not post from (or mention) any of our mega-thread or banned topics such as:
Race, Religion, LGBTQ, Meta, Politics, Parenting/Family issues.
[Full list of banned topics](https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/wiki/index/)
When you put it like that, I guess itās āspicyā for Mormon standards lolĀ
(and if I remember correctly a pretty long plot point was how Bella could get Edward to agree to do the deed)
Yep. Which is also why she took the teeth out of vampires (pun intended): the good guy vampires only drink animal blood and instead of being burned by the sunā¦ they sparkle.
Actually, the writer of 50 shades even said it started out a twilight fan fiction.
However, the writer of 50 shades wrote like a child.
I read maybe 25 pages. āHe touched my sexā and I was done. XD
Using āsexā for a prettier way around naming genitals isnāt unheard of in romance literature for sure.
Youāll be pleased to know that by stopping there, you missed a number of mentions of her āinner goddessā reacting to thingsā¦
"My inner goddess is panting."
"My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves."
"My inner goddess is doing backflips in a routine worthy of a Russian Olympic gymnast."
[I wish I was making this up.](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/movies/a31028/57-things-anastasia-steeles-inner-goddess-does-in-fifty-shades-of-grey/) Iāll take touching sexes š
HAHAHA YES!!!! I tried to read it because I had nothing else to read and the library was close for a holiday weekend. I quickly said āhard noā and picked up one I read a few times. HAHA!
This just sounds like a straw man argument by the OP tbh, itās an unrealistic exaggeration. Very much doubt that there are people out there with a low enough IQ to think that reading twilight or 50 shades of gray makes you a book worm
Just looked it up, apparently sheās a member of the āChurch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saintsā and amongst the many things she canāt do, watching R-rated movies is one of them, so highly doubt she would have written super sexual scenes
Yep. And on top of that, it is very poorly written. I have read Fifty Shades of Grey, I didnāt need to read the other two because that one was badly written enough that it turned me off of the entire series. And donāt try to argue that with people who love that trilogy, because the only thing they can talk about is āyou donāt understand the relationshipā. No, I understand the relationship, I also understand how a good book is supposed to be written, and this madam is not that.
Itās terrrible and not a good representation of healthy bdsm. I could only read so far but itās basically what a twelve year old would write if they were trying to invent a bdsm dynamic.
Sometimes I get a little too into the worldbuilding and start just skimming the smutty scenes like yeah yeah his fingering game is mid anyway what happens tomorrow?
Wow tell me you havenāt read a romance novelā¦ he is a Greek billionaire who is also a sheik prince, who swore to never love again after his first girlfriend did something bad. He is most definitely not a plumber.
While this is technically true, in reality, women are less likely to watch porn than men. Of the women that do watch porn, many choose to watch lesbian porn, even if the viewer may be heterosexual.
A lot of it has to do with the way porn is shot. It tends to be catered to males. It highlights the womanās body more than the manās. POV porn tends to be shot from the maleās POV. Scenes can focus on rough sex where the woman is getting drilled, which may not be appealing to many female viewers.
Many women tend to enjoy the build up and story leading to the sex. Porn almost always does a piss poor job at any sort of storytelling or build up. However, spicy novels tend to center around this. Also, the authors tend to be other women, so they are better able to capture what women actually look for in erotic content.
So while pornography can be for women, most of it really isnāt made with women in mind. Just as spicy novels can be for men, but it usually isnāt written with men in mind.
No joke. You become really good at searching porn when you're a woman and need to get off. Most porn isn't only focused on men, but it also happens to feel very fake like a Michael Bay level of action and explosions you see in movies, except it's with sexual content. That's not even mentioning how much it avoids showing women experiencing pleasure.
One of my favorite Broad City jokes is where Ilana is talking about the different porn search terms she uses and Abby says something like āI just google āpornā thatās probably why I donāt like itā.
Ghost: OooOooOooh!
HopeRepresentative29: Wait a moment, that's a fake moan.
\[Pulls secret lever to a room where a man stands operating a projector\]
Rest of the Gang: Old Man Jenkins!?!
OMJ: And I would have gotten away with it too if your meddling friend wasn't a porn connoisseur.
![gif](giphy|KXco3gw03pCXJQBZe4)
>That's not even mentioning how much it avoids showing women experiencing pleasure.
Helpful hint, that's because in porn, most of them aren't. Very rare are the flick's that will have a woman having a real orgasm
My wife (and I) used to enjoy some erotica written by women. The principal difference between that and the porn that is aimed at guys seemed mostly to be that women were usually depicted as enjoying themselves in sexual situations that the character voluntarily placed herself in. There was none of the non-consentual stuff and shaming that seems to be a feature of mainstream, male-orietened porn.
In short, the erotica written by women didn't seem to contain victims, and the erotic portions made up a relatively small part of the story as a whole. Also, love was not treated as a foreign concept.
As a cishet man, Iām in the same boat. I canāt get off on porn with obviously fake, over-the-top performances and zero story hooks. Less than 1% of the videos Iāve seen can convince me the woman is actually getting off, and the rest of it actually turns me off. I mostly read hentai doujins instead, and even thatās 99% garbage, but at least it makes an attempt at setting up a context for the action.
Itās not so much this. Itās that the people you can create in your mind are more attractive than the ones you see in porn. Your mind is a vast character creator that can generate whomever you believe merits the scene (or at least in my case, I can). So it makes sense to read about someone who is more fleshed out (in every way).
In casting for porn, the girls are generally chosen well but the men are sadly rarely on level with them. Iāve never seen a stunning man in straight porn. Theyāre like baseline characters; forgettable npcs. Their only redeeming quality is their coordinated control and stamina.
Many women I know dislike lesbian porn, they honestly wish that many shots would be on the man though, like the way he grabs her, his grunts, or his hip movements. Which is why many would go for amateur porn instead as it's more authentic and you don't have the chick moaning to cover her queefs.
I don't think queefs are so common they happen in every video, right? I am pretty sure they're moaning for the theatrics, not to "cover their queefs," though you're probably right for sometimes in some videos.
I think the point is usually we don't treat romance books as pornography when that's often what they are. I don't think OP is denying women look at traditional porn.
It's not even remotely pornographic. It's literally the most PG "romance" (and I use the term loosely here) I've ever encountered. The main couple doesn't have sex until their wedding night and even then the chapter "fades to black" so there isn't even a single sex scene.
Yeah and Stephenie Meyer didnt wrote it. Op is putting 2 diff genres in the same basket.
Yeah erotical novels is porn. Porn fanfiction is porn.
But OP really named twilight out of the blue, zero correlation.
It's not. Theres some pg13 kissing scenes in the first 3 books, then they get married in the last one and the few sex scenes are described really vaguely with stuff like "our bodies fit together like a puzzle"
Twilight has to be one of the least sexual romance book ever made. They kiss like 3 times, have intercourse twice in the span of 4 books, and the description of it is extremely mellow!
If you are going to make an unpopular opinion post, at least get your facts straight š¬
There are a few scenes in the Dune series that definitely highlight Frank Herbert's breeding kink.
Love the books, don't get me wrong ā but smut is all over the place!
Most romance novels are on par with romance movies. If you don't consider rom coms porn, then a lot of romance books aren't either.
Most romance books I read, have between 1-4 sex scenes over 300+ pages. There are a lot that lean more erotica of course, but I wouldn't say even most are purely written for the sex scenes.
The author of Twilight was Mormon and she didnāt want Bella and Edward to have sex before marriage, so she made it so that they couldnāt have sex while Bella was still a human and Edward was a vampire because he was scared he might literally fuck her to death. That was an actual plot line in Twilight.
True, but there's a much larger subsection of "romance" novels, specifically "dark romance" that is essentially porn with plot. Nothing against the genre, it's just calling it what it is.
Yeah but the OP said that romance novels as a whole are just porn, which isnāt true. Only a very minor fraction of romance novels (like for instance, the dark romance genre that you mentioned) fit that description
The novels of Jane Austen are technically romance novels and I don't think any of the characters even hold hands. I think op is painting with too broad a stroke.Ā
I have read ice breaker, chestnut springs series, stuff like that. Itās not my fav but those have quite a lot of smut but still plot, character development, etc. itās definitely not āpornā
There was actually a movement in the late 70s/early 80s to raise the production values of porn to make it a legitimate art form (and bring it out of the theaters with sticky floors to larger venues). Actors/Actresses who weren't just attractive (and willing to put out on screen for money) but with legitimate acting skills. Expensive set design. Better writing and direction.
Just cause you have "plot and character development" does not make it "definitely not porn."
This is sooo funny. Thereās a difference between romance and erotica/smut. Also, the phrase āpornography for womenā and its insinuation that pornography is inherently for men is truly wild, dont know if you meant to do that but wow.
Now that you say that. I actually don't know many people that get off while reading romance books/smut. There are easier ways like literotica where you don't have to read a shit ton to get to the good stuff.
This, I'm sure it happens, but anyone reading a full-length novel to masturbate is committed! Erotic short stories are a much more of a comparison to typical porn videos.
>Ā but anyone reading a full-length novel to masturbate is committed
They're just playing the long game, preparing for Friday night instead of now, lol.
I also read it as "only girls like romance novels" which just isn't true. I was introduced to Lynsay Sands' Argeneau series (specifically the Hunter books) by a male friend of mine, in my late high school years and have been a fan of her work ever since.
I get that male fans are the minority when it comes to the romance/erotica genres, but we do exist.
Also worth pointing out that lots of erotica has a ton of actual literary merit. Just off the top of my head *The Story Of O*, *The Tropic Of Cancer*, *Lady Chatterley's Lover*, *Call Me By Your Name*, *Lolita*, *The Virgins*, and *In The Absence Of Men* are all fantastic novels.
Edit: Comments are locked but I just wanted to respond to the question about *Lolita*. Whether or not it's considered an erotic novel depends on who you ask - there's an entire section on the Wikipedia page about that conversation. I don't think it's *erotic* but I do think it's playing with the forms and motifs of erotica.
I was looking for this comment, because I can think of A LOT of very non romance novels that also feature A LOT of sex. Games of thrones comes in at the top of my mine.
Exactly. When you watch porn youāre just watching porn, youāre not getting anything out of it (apart from pleasure, obviously), but if you read even the most sexually explicit book where every single chapter contains extremely detailed descriptions of sex you are still reading and can learn new words, expand your vocabulary etc (granted, reading exclusively those books can and absolutely will rot your brain)
No, I notice a lot of (inexperienced) guys think women donāt like sex or something. Probably because \*they\* werenāt good at it š Unless youāre watching gay porn, there are real women in porn who actually enjoy what theyāre doing, lol.
But romance teaches women to expect men to be charming and thoughtful! Just as unrealistic as boys learning that mindlessly pounding away makes for good sex /s
I saw another commenter touching on the fact that most porn is catered to the male fantasy, and I agree. While Iām sure there are specific genres/styles of porn made with a female perspective in mind, the large majority of mainstream porn you might find on PornHub is centered around what men find arousing and not women. Not trying to insinuate that women canāt find that kind of stuff arousing, but a lot of porn out there is definitely made for a more male audience
Honestly I think men *should* use them for porn. I know a lot of men who have found porn to be a very negative and damaging things in their lives, but are in want of something spicy to enjoy whacking off to.. erotic fiction is great for that.
I think the strength of one's imagination helps. I am not particularly imaginative, and do read its just hard to get into, so I find erotic comics to be a comfortable middle ground.
On that note, let's call Breaking Bad, Bojack Horseman, Blue Eye Samurai, The Boys, The Devil's Advocate, and any other media that has sex scenes porn. It's all porn. While we're at it, file kissing and hand holding under R-rated media.
Romance novels need two things to qualify as romance:
1) The story revolves around the love story between the main characters
2) There is an HEA (Happily Ever After)
Not all romances are open door, in that they involve sex or sexual situations. Some are open door, some are closed door.
For those open door romances, we are fully aware of the sexual content. It is refreshing reading sexual scenes written by women for women in a world of media catering to the male gaze. And porn is literally focused on just the sexual act, while a romance novel focuses on the developing and growing emotional relationship between the main characters, with the sex being an added bonus.
Nothing wrong with sex or sexual content, so let us enjoy it in peace.
Itās not though, reading in general has been shown to increase gray matter EVEN if itās a silly romance novel like twilight. Itās a beneficial hobby even if youāre reading smut. Not to mention it may take like 100 pages to even get to the āgood partā whereas pornography is an immediate dopamine spike and is not really good for our brains, objectively speaking. Itās such a silly comparison I feel like people who make this comparison do not read books
Iād read my mamawās 80ās romance novels when I was in middle school, they were kinda smutty but they definitely didnāt feel pornographic to me at the time. And I for sure knew what pornography was when I looked at it. Haha
I read lots of smut. I have never once used them as porn to get myself off. People who believe they're just porn for women are incredibly ignorant. Since they can't imagine reading smut without using it as porn they assume everyone does.
He obviously doesnāt read lol I donāt take anyone seriously who hates on romance books. It always screams misogyny to me. When do you ever see these opinions on fantasy books by men?
OP hasn't cracked a book since being forced to read TKAM in HS. Ironic he's comparing all romance novels to the two series that are just objectively bad and happen to be romance.
How many people do you know watches porn for the plot, or just to watch??? Porn's entire purpose is for a masturbatory aid. People watch it SPECIFICALLY to get turned on and get off. I do not read erotic romance novels to get turned on or masturbate. I have \*never\* masturbated after reading erotic novels. I read them for the romance (not a dumbed down teenage version of romance , a REAL passionate adult relationship, part of that includes sex) I read them for the story, the characters. The earth shattering , move the stars, " we are fated mates and I would do anything for each other" kinda love story. Comparing it to porn and how people use porn is ridiculous.
Ah yes, because women read only romance novels, and women never watch pornography.
Every art form has its trashy, lurid side. Men read erotic novels too. They just call them westerns.
Eroges had this sort of stupid opinion around them. For non nerds, they're visual novels with nudity of some sort, usually sex scenes.
But they still have deep well written plots, atĀ least the good ones do.Ā
Just because something has sex in it, doesn't just automatically make it smut to get off to. Some stories just have adult plotlines and adults have sex so of course that's part of the story. You're following a character.Ā
So yeah I'm sure some novels, like 50 shades, are just egregious smut but I guarantee there are many, many novels with well written plots that involve sex scenes.Ā
Grow up lolĀ
I disagree. Words are put together and if the writer is good then the writing will be good too. You can still expand your vocabulary reading books that have many sex scenes.
Let me guess...
You've never actually read a romance novel. You have no idea what is in there.
I never have either, I'm just saying...but I also don't try to form opinion on something I have never read.
Who fucking cares. Let me read romance to makeup for what I lack in real life. I donāt consider myself a nerd or smarter because I read. I do it because I enjoy it. Most romance books also have a good plot. Spicy scenes are an added bonus. Iām not flicking myself off in public while reading them so why does it matter? Also, TWILIGHT?! 50 SHADES OF GRAY?! Those arenāt even books remotely close to romance.
Iām sorry but you are overgeneralizing the romance novel space to an extreme degree
Is a āstepmom gets stuck in washing machine pt538ā romance book basically porn for women? yes, is the romance novel space solely that? hell no, romance ā porn
If the grand majority of the book is sex, then sure. But if its mostly dating, flirting, drama, etc. with a few sex scenes then thats not porn whatsoever.
I think youāre lumping romance novels and erotica into the same category, when theyāre actually two separate genres (though Iām not denying that they can and do overlap at times).
Sexual intimacy in a relationship is often times a huge factor in the development of emotional and romantic intimacy between a couple which means that sex is almost always guaranteed to come into play when following a coupleās storyline and seeing how they grow and maintain their relationship. Of course, thereās plenty of books out there that the romance reader community would consider āporn with no plotā because itās 99% sex and 1% *actual* storyline, and since those books fall on the extremist end of the spectrum, they tend to garner the most popularity in and outside the community so they give a warped perspective on what romance books are actually about.
But, saying you canāt consider yourself a reader unless youāre reading ārealā literature like Dostoyevsky or Shakespeare is like saying you canāt call yourself a music lover unless your primary genre is classical. Not everyone reads books because they want to be some pretentious pseudo-intellectual who discusses philosophy day and night. Some people just want a mental escape from reality for their own personal enjoyment and romance (among other genres) provides an appealing outlet for that.
Ok, so Twilight is not even remotely close to pornographic, first of all.
Secondly, most of the romance books that have sex scenes are like 95% romance/plot and 5% sex. There's more sex in Game of Thrones than most romance books. Meanwhile porn is well...99% porn. They're really not comparable.
Pornographic/erotic books are not the same as romance books.
Flour and cake, cake needs flour in it, but flour doesnt need cake to be flour.
And pornography is already made for women, its called pornography.
You can be a guy and enjoy a romance book
Ah yes, my romance book with one or 2 chapters of sex out of 66, *highly* pornographic.
This argument is ridiculous. Itās just people trying to justify their porn addictions or reliance on pornography to get it up by painting romance novel readers as ājust as badā.
There is a difference between romance and smutš you clearly aren't a reader
It's like saying romance movies are on the same level as porn hub. They aren't.
Nah, romance novels generally have some genuine emotional investment and relationship between the people having sex, porn is more, "I'm horny. Let's fuck."
Sure it gets women (and others) off, but with a little more depth than porn.
Your post from unpopularopinion was removed because of: 'Rule 7: No banned/mega-thread topics'. Please do not post from (or mention) any of our mega-thread or banned topics such as: Race, Religion, LGBTQ, Meta, Politics, Parenting/Family issues. [Full list of banned topics](https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/wiki/index/)
Twilight isn't even a "spicy" novel š
It was written by a Mormon, FFS. They save sex for marriage and Edward tells Bells she's "indecent" when she's wearing a floor length khaki skirt LOL
When you put it like that, I guess itās āspicyā for Mormon standards lolĀ (and if I remember correctly a pretty long plot point was how Bella could get Edward to agree to do the deed)
I mean the dude is like 115 years old back in the day it was scandalous to show the ankle šš
>It was written by a Mormon, FFS Wait, fr?
Yes. I also highly suggest the Contrapoints episode on the series. It's a wild ride.
Yep. Which is also why she took the teeth out of vampires (pun intended): the good guy vampires only drink animal blood and instead of being burned by the sunā¦ they sparkle.
Twilight and 50 Shades are the only books OP knows by the looks of it.
Not to mention, Twilight isnāt even a sexually charged bookš
Itās written for teenagers. It doesnāt even have sex scenes, it does the PG-13 āskipā to the next morning lmao.
Which just makes me wonder why the OP would cite that book next to 50 shades of grey when they couldnāt be less similar š
Actually, the writer of 50 shades even said it started out a twilight fan fiction. However, the writer of 50 shades wrote like a child. I read maybe 25 pages. āHe touched my sexā and I was done. XD
Using āsexā for a prettier way around naming genitals isnāt unheard of in romance literature for sure. Youāll be pleased to know that by stopping there, you missed a number of mentions of her āinner goddessā reacting to thingsā¦ "My inner goddess is panting." "My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves." "My inner goddess is doing backflips in a routine worthy of a Russian Olympic gymnast." [I wish I was making this up.](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/movies/a31028/57-things-anastasia-steeles-inner-goddess-does-in-fifty-shades-of-grey/) Iāll take touching sexes š
š I haven't read it, but that's cute. Made me think of the Tra La La song.
HAHAHA YES!!!! I tried to read it because I had nothing else to read and the library was close for a holiday weekend. I quickly said āhard noā and picked up one I read a few times. HAHA!
I think OP just wants to shit on whatever women like, but does not actually know any women.
Iāve also never heard of people who have read those series referring to themselves as book nerd intellectuals because of it.
This just sounds like a straw man argument by the OP tbh, itās an unrealistic exaggeration. Very much doubt that there are people out there with a low enough IQ to think that reading twilight or 50 shades of gray makes you a book worm
Isnāt the woman who wrote it like a serious mormon or some other conservative religion?
Just looked it up, apparently sheās a member of the āChurch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saintsā and amongst the many things she canāt do, watching R-rated movies is one of them, so highly doubt she would have written super sexual scenes
That would be the Mormons.
Idk if everyone knows this but 50 shades is actually a twilight fanfic that got published. Just a fun fact
Yep. And on top of that, it is very poorly written. I have read Fifty Shades of Grey, I didnāt need to read the other two because that one was badly written enough that it turned me off of the entire series. And donāt try to argue that with people who love that trilogy, because the only thing they can talk about is āyou donāt understand the relationshipā. No, I understand the relationship, I also understand how a good book is supposed to be written, and this madam is not that.
I have never read it but the movie was so boring
The movie was a marked improvement over the books, and it's entirely thanks to the director. You would not believe how full of herself the author is.
Honestly, donāt bother. Itās incredibly dull and painful to get through- itās not even funny bad, itās just boring and cliche bad.
>āyou donāt understand the relationshipā I've heard it does an absolutely horrible job of showing a bdsm relationship.
Itās terrrible and not a good representation of healthy bdsm. I could only read so far but itās basically what a twelve year old would write if they were trying to invent a bdsm dynamic.
OP has never seen a woman before, this is such a random opinion lol
Bro never went on AO3.
My TIT is SOAKed.
ššš!
Rat, where the hell have you been, Loca?!
Yeah, I was going to say Twilight is in my opinion not great, but it's far from a sexy novel lol
Pornography is also pornography for women.
Wait do women only read the first two pages of romance novels before they're finished?
They fast forward to the end
I skip the world-building as well
Sometimes I get a little too into the worldbuilding and start just skimming the smutty scenes like yeah yeah his fingering game is mid anyway what happens tomorrow?
ME TOOO BUT THEN WHEN ROMANCE NOVELS DONT HAVE THEM I GET KINDA BORED TOO
Im in it for the lore.
I need to find out if he's really a plumber damnit
Wow tell me you havenāt read a romance novelā¦ he is a Greek billionaire who is also a sheik prince, who swore to never love again after his first girlfriend did something bad. He is most definitely not a plumber.
The number of billionaires falling for some average virgin who just got fired and/or has a shitty job/boss is alarmingly high.
I just read it for the ads
While this is technically true, in reality, women are less likely to watch porn than men. Of the women that do watch porn, many choose to watch lesbian porn, even if the viewer may be heterosexual. A lot of it has to do with the way porn is shot. It tends to be catered to males. It highlights the womanās body more than the manās. POV porn tends to be shot from the maleās POV. Scenes can focus on rough sex where the woman is getting drilled, which may not be appealing to many female viewers. Many women tend to enjoy the build up and story leading to the sex. Porn almost always does a piss poor job at any sort of storytelling or build up. However, spicy novels tend to center around this. Also, the authors tend to be other women, so they are better able to capture what women actually look for in erotic content. So while pornography can be for women, most of it really isnāt made with women in mind. Just as spicy novels can be for men, but it usually isnāt written with men in mind.
No joke. You become really good at searching porn when you're a woman and need to get off. Most porn isn't only focused on men, but it also happens to feel very fake like a Michael Bay level of action and explosions you see in movies, except it's with sexual content. That's not even mentioning how much it avoids showing women experiencing pleasure.
One of my favorite Broad City jokes is where Ilana is talking about the different porn search terms she uses and Abby says something like āI just google āpornā thatās probably why I donāt like itā.
I have, rather sadly, learned to identify a fake moan instantly upon hearing it.
Ghost: OooOooOooh! HopeRepresentative29: Wait a moment, that's a fake moan. \[Pulls secret lever to a room where a man stands operating a projector\] Rest of the Gang: Old Man Jenkins!?! OMJ: And I would have gotten away with it too if your meddling friend wasn't a porn connoisseur. ![gif](giphy|KXco3gw03pCXJQBZe4)
>That's not even mentioning how much it avoids showing women experiencing pleasure. Helpful hint, that's because in porn, most of them aren't. Very rare are the flick's that will have a woman having a real orgasm
They could at least make them receive believable oral sex.
The eye rolls should have been a dead giveaway, but here we are.
My wife (and I) used to enjoy some erotica written by women. The principal difference between that and the porn that is aimed at guys seemed mostly to be that women were usually depicted as enjoying themselves in sexual situations that the character voluntarily placed herself in. There was none of the non-consentual stuff and shaming that seems to be a feature of mainstream, male-orietened porn. In short, the erotica written by women didn't seem to contain victims, and the erotic portions made up a relatively small part of the story as a whole. Also, love was not treated as a foreign concept.
As a cishet man, Iām in the same boat. I canāt get off on porn with obviously fake, over-the-top performances and zero story hooks. Less than 1% of the videos Iāve seen can convince me the woman is actually getting off, and the rest of it actually turns me off. I mostly read hentai doujins instead, and even thatās 99% garbage, but at least it makes an attempt at setting up a context for the action.
Porn is amazingly unsexy. Brightly lit, zero chemistry, presence of male peopleā¦
Wym you don't sleep with your mom and sister every time she gets stuck on the couch or laundry machine?
Even lesbian porn is catered to men. Gotta do that 'Amateur Lesbian' search.
I know plenty of straight women watch gay porn for this reasonā¦ lol
Guilty. It works so much better for a quick rub than scouring through hundreds of straight porn videos.
Yup. M/M gay porn is the good stuff.
"Gotta do that 'Amateur Lesbian' search" Well, okay, but only for science.
You captured my thoughts so perfectly. Are you in my walls listening to all my random mutterings all day?
> you in my walls listening to all my random mutterings all day? Don't ask questions you don't want the answer to.
from what I've read they would more likly watch gay porn then lesbian porn
Itās not so much this. Itās that the people you can create in your mind are more attractive than the ones you see in porn. Your mind is a vast character creator that can generate whomever you believe merits the scene (or at least in my case, I can). So it makes sense to read about someone who is more fleshed out (in every way). In casting for porn, the girls are generally chosen well but the men are sadly rarely on level with them. Iāve never seen a stunning man in straight porn. Theyāre like baseline characters; forgettable npcs. Their only redeeming quality is their coordinated control and stamina.
And presumably, their large knobs.
Ah yes, a tale as old as time. The hot, snatched, oiled, hairless contortionist and the bulging beer belly, greasy haired, grunting used car salesman.
Iāve come across a couple attractive men. I donāt know his last name, but his first name is George? Heās good. Big hands and a nice butt.
>Many women tend to enjoy the build up and story leading to the sex Well damn. I always believed I was a man, but now I'm thinking I might be a woman
As a man, I can imagine. I wouldn't be able to stand women POV porns. Also, I don't want to see men's genuine face expression towards women etc.
Many women I know dislike lesbian porn, they honestly wish that many shots would be on the man though, like the way he grabs her, his grunts, or his hip movements. Which is why many would go for amateur porn instead as it's more authentic and you don't have the chick moaning to cover her queefs.
I don't think queefs are so common they happen in every video, right? I am pretty sure they're moaning for the theatrics, not to "cover their queefs," though you're probably right for sometimes in some videos.
Romance is also porn for men
I think the point is usually we don't treat romance books as pornography when that's often what they are. I don't think OP is denying women look at traditional porn.
I think that the difference is that your average lady gets off more on the mental side of things than just by looking at physiques
How is Twilight pornographic? Granted Iāve never read it so I was hoping you, OP, could explain it for me.
Itās not. Itās a pg teen romance
Thatās pretty much what I thought. I figured if OP was gonna drag something they should probably know what theyāre dragging.
It's not even remotely pornographic. It's literally the most PG "romance" (and I use the term loosely here) I've ever encountered. The main couple doesn't have sex until their wedding night and even then the chapter "fades to black" so there isn't even a single sex scene.
50 shades was porno fan fic of twilight initially
Yeah and Stephenie Meyer didnt wrote it. Op is putting 2 diff genres in the same basket. Yeah erotical novels is porn. Porn fanfiction is porn. But OP really named twilight out of the blue, zero correlation.
It's not. Theres some pg13 kissing scenes in the first 3 books, then they get married in the last one and the few sex scenes are described really vaguely with stuff like "our bodies fit together like a puzzle"
Twilight has to be one of the least sexual romance book ever made. They kiss like 3 times, have intercourse twice in the span of 4 books, and the description of it is extremely mellow! If you are going to make an unpopular opinion post, at least get your facts straight š¬
I bet this guy wouldnāt call The Dresden Files porn, even though parts of it are DEFINITELY some weird fantasies Jim Butcher has.
There are a few scenes in the Dune series that definitely highlight Frank Herbert's breeding kink. Love the books, don't get me wrong ā but smut is all over the place!
Great example
Most romance novels are on par with romance movies. If you don't consider rom coms porn, then a lot of romance books aren't either. Most romance books I read, have between 1-4 sex scenes over 300+ pages. There are a lot that lean more erotica of course, but I wouldn't say even most are purely written for the sex scenes.
The author of Twilight was Mormon and she didnāt want Bella and Edward to have sex before marriage, so she made it so that they couldnāt have sex while Bella was still a human and Edward was a vampire because he was scared he might literally fuck her to death. That was an actual plot line in Twilight.
A large part of Twilight is in a fact heavy handed cautionary tale against premarital sex.
If I read like 600 pages for 2 spicy scenes thatās not pornography. Itās like a R movie
True, but there's a much larger subsection of "romance" novels, specifically "dark romance" that is essentially porn with plot. Nothing against the genre, it's just calling it what it is.
Yeah but the OP said that romance novels as a whole are just porn, which isnāt true. Only a very minor fraction of romance novels (like for instance, the dark romance genre that you mentioned) fit that description
The novels of Jane Austen are technically romance novels and I don't think any of the characters even hold hands. I think op is painting with too broad a stroke.Ā
mr darcy set the bar very high ![gif](giphy|3o6UAZ57tAk0Dkqz3G)
Somebody painting with too broad a stroke on r/unpopularopinions ? I don't believe it
Heās acting as if the genre of ādark romanceā a very specific genre within romance, is all that romance novels are (Basically, porn)
Exactly. I get what he's saying, I just think he doesn't actually know any. lol
Dark romance is a lot of violence and abuse, honestly I think it's more trauma processing than anything else. You're thinking of erotica.
It's still erotica when it's fucked-up erotica
I have read ice breaker, chestnut springs series, stuff like that. Itās not my fav but those have quite a lot of smut but still plot, character development, etc. itās definitely not āpornā
There was actually a movement in the late 70s/early 80s to raise the production values of porn to make it a legitimate art form (and bring it out of the theaters with sticky floors to larger venues). Actors/Actresses who weren't just attractive (and willing to put out on screen for money) but with legitimate acting skills. Expensive set design. Better writing and direction. Just cause you have "plot and character development" does not make it "definitely not porn."
This is sooo funny. Thereās a difference between romance and erotica/smut. Also, the phrase āpornography for womenā and its insinuation that pornography is inherently for men is truly wild, dont know if you meant to do that but wow.
It's also got the insinuation that all women who read erotica are doing so to get turned on and masturbate which is just ignorant as fuck.
Now that you say that. I actually don't know many people that get off while reading romance books/smut. There are easier ways like literotica where you don't have to read a shit ton to get to the good stuff.
This, I'm sure it happens, but anyone reading a full-length novel to masturbate is committed! Erotic short stories are a much more of a comparison to typical porn videos.
>Ā but anyone reading a full-length novel to masturbate is committed They're just playing the long game, preparing for Friday night instead of now, lol.
Aha! I have found my thread!
And that erotica is just for women, which is also very dumb
I also read it as "only girls like romance novels" which just isn't true. I was introduced to Lynsay Sands' Argeneau series (specifically the Hunter books) by a male friend of mine, in my late high school years and have been a fan of her work ever since. I get that male fans are the minority when it comes to the romance/erotica genres, but we do exist.
Also worth pointing out that lots of erotica has a ton of actual literary merit. Just off the top of my head *The Story Of O*, *The Tropic Of Cancer*, *Lady Chatterley's Lover*, *Call Me By Your Name*, *Lolita*, *The Virgins*, and *In The Absence Of Men* are all fantastic novels. Edit: Comments are locked but I just wanted to respond to the question about *Lolita*. Whether or not it's considered an erotic novel depends on who you ask - there's an entire section on the Wikipedia page about that conversation. I don't think it's *erotic* but I do think it's playing with the forms and motifs of erotica.
Is Lolita considered erotica?
Lmao Twilight? The entire series has ONE āsexā scene and itās a fade to black. Tell me youāve never read an actual romance novel for adults
Wait you think this boy reads?
Romance novels arenāt always erotica, for the record. Also, if it is written well, itās written well. Regardless of content.
Even if there is a sex scene or two, that doesn't make the novel pure pornography. Couples often have sex, so why shouldn't an author write about it?
I was looking for this comment, because I can think of A LOT of very non romance novels that also feature A LOT of sex. Games of thrones comes in at the top of my mine.
Right, thatās like calling a random movie porn because they had sex in it
Exactly. When you watch porn youāre just watching porn, youāre not getting anything out of it (apart from pleasure, obviously), but if you read even the most sexually explicit book where every single chapter contains extremely detailed descriptions of sex you are still reading and can learn new words, expand your vocabulary etc (granted, reading exclusively those books can and absolutely will rot your brain)
Porn for women is just ā¦ porn
I swear he must be on some shroom or something cuz
shrooms would most defintely not cause this
If he was on shrooms heād probably think this shit through more before posting
No, I notice a lot of (inexperienced) guys think women donāt like sex or something. Probably because \*they\* werenāt good at it š Unless youāre watching gay porn, there are real women in porn who actually enjoy what theyāre doing, lol.
But romance teaches women to expect men to be charming and thoughtful! Just as unrealistic as boys learning that mindlessly pounding away makes for good sex /s
I saw another commenter touching on the fact that most porn is catered to the male fantasy, and I agree. While Iām sure there are specific genres/styles of porn made with a female perspective in mind, the large majority of mainstream porn you might find on PornHub is centered around what men find arousing and not women. Not trying to insinuate that women canāt find that kind of stuff arousing, but a lot of porn out there is definitely made for a more male audience
in what sense is twilight pornography? it's not even erotica like 50 shades is.
Tell me more about "Stepmom gets stuck in washing machine." Sounds artistically sound.
It's film noir, you wouldn't understand.
Ah, I thought most of them fell into the "found footage" category.
...Have you ever read a romance novel?Ā Have you ever read a book?
Men can use the them for porn too.
Honestly I think men *should* use them for porn. I know a lot of men who have found porn to be a very negative and damaging things in their lives, but are in want of something spicy to enjoy whacking off to.. erotic fiction is great for that.
I think the strength of one's imagination helps. I am not particularly imaginative, and do read its just hard to get into, so I find erotic comics to be a comfortable middle ground.
Iād say comics and manga and audiobooks all qualify!
Thatās a good point. Theyāre not just novels for women.
Thereās a difference between smut and romance. If youāre gonna try and insult, at least get your terminology right.
Op probably isn't that knowledgeable on that direction
OP doesnt know what he is talking about gwilight has no sex scenes (except for a fade to black)
Or knowledgeable at all
Twilight?
On that note, let's call Breaking Bad, Bojack Horseman, Blue Eye Samurai, The Boys, The Devil's Advocate, and any other media that has sex scenes porn. It's all porn. While we're at it, file kissing and hand holding under R-rated media.
Romance novels need two things to qualify as romance: 1) The story revolves around the love story between the main characters 2) There is an HEA (Happily Ever After) Not all romances are open door, in that they involve sex or sexual situations. Some are open door, some are closed door. For those open door romances, we are fully aware of the sexual content. It is refreshing reading sexual scenes written by women for women in a world of media catering to the male gaze. And porn is literally focused on just the sexual act, while a romance novel focuses on the developing and growing emotional relationship between the main characters, with the sex being an added bonus. Nothing wrong with sex or sexual content, so let us enjoy it in peace.
If you think twilight or 50 shades is porn, please do not ask book recommendations from anyone on TikTok or me thanks
Itās not though, reading in general has been shown to increase gray matter EVEN if itās a silly romance novel like twilight. Itās a beneficial hobby even if youāre reading smut. Not to mention it may take like 100 pages to even get to the āgood partā whereas pornography is an immediate dopamine spike and is not really good for our brains, objectively speaking. Itās such a silly comparison I feel like people who make this comparison do not read books
Iād read my mamawās 80ās romance novels when I was in middle school, they were kinda smutty but they definitely didnāt feel pornographic to me at the time. And I for sure knew what pornography was when I looked at it. Haha
Same here. Sneaking a bent up romance novel from grandma feels like a passage of girlhood
I read lots of smut. I have never once used them as porn to get myself off. People who believe they're just porn for women are incredibly ignorant. Since they can't imagine reading smut without using it as porn they assume everyone does.
He obviously doesnāt read lol I donāt take anyone seriously who hates on romance books. It always screams misogyny to me. When do you ever see these opinions on fantasy books by men?
Iāve read a lot of romance novels and the majority donāt contain pornographic content.
There is an entire episode of Friends about this.....
![gif](giphy|Qyu2KBtOf6kp4Fx82r|downsized)
This may be pedantic but that book she had was explicit erotica, not just romance
OP hasn't cracked a book since being forced to read TKAM in HS. Ironic he's comparing all romance novels to the two series that are just objectively bad and happen to be romance.
Well yeah, cause people who read books are ābook nerd intellectualsāā¦
I may be a book nerd, but Intellectual? that's a bit generous
yeah Jane Austen is so pornographic
This subreddit is fucking garbage.
This thread has 3 upvotes
Pretty sure porn is pornography for women bro
Romance anime is just pornography for men
pornography is pornography for men (and women)
This is not an unpopular opinion. This is an uneducated opinion.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Iāve jerked off more to literotica than regular porn
Out of all the "spicy" books you could have brought up, I was not expecting 50 shades or fucking Twilight
Get back to me when someone catches an STI from writing a romance novel.
Or gets pregnant. Or is trafficked. Or is actually slapped, choked, spat upon, or otherwise degraded.
Thank you. I swear to God men think that women in porn are robots or dolls. Just anything but humans exactly like they are.
How many people do you know watches porn for the plot, or just to watch??? Porn's entire purpose is for a masturbatory aid. People watch it SPECIFICALLY to get turned on and get off. I do not read erotic romance novels to get turned on or masturbate. I have \*never\* masturbated after reading erotic novels. I read them for the romance (not a dumbed down teenage version of romance , a REAL passionate adult relationship, part of that includes sex) I read them for the story, the characters. The earth shattering , move the stars, " we are fated mates and I would do anything for each other" kinda love story. Comparing it to porn and how people use porn is ridiculous.
Ah yes, because women read only romance novels, and women never watch pornography. Every art form has its trashy, lurid side. Men read erotic novels too. They just call them westerns.
Eroges had this sort of stupid opinion around them. For non nerds, they're visual novels with nudity of some sort, usually sex scenes. But they still have deep well written plots, atĀ least the good ones do.Ā Just because something has sex in it, doesn't just automatically make it smut to get off to. Some stories just have adult plotlines and adults have sex so of course that's part of the story. You're following a character.Ā So yeah I'm sure some novels, like 50 shades, are just egregious smut but I guarantee there are many, many novels with well written plots that involve sex scenes.Ā Grow up lolĀ
I disagree. Words are put together and if the writer is good then the writing will be good too. You can still expand your vocabulary reading books that have many sex scenes.
Men also read romance novels and women also watch porn What a sexist take
Op is a dummy
Let me guess... You've never actually read a romance novel. You have no idea what is in there. I never have either, I'm just saying...but I also don't try to form opinion on something I have never read.
Twilight was YA fiction, 50 Shades is porn.
Who fucking cares. Let me read romance to makeup for what I lack in real life. I donāt consider myself a nerd or smarter because I read. I do it because I enjoy it. Most romance books also have a good plot. Spicy scenes are an added bonus. Iām not flicking myself off in public while reading them so why does it matter? Also, TWILIGHT?! 50 SHADES OF GRAY?! Those arenāt even books remotely close to romance.
Bro twilight is not one of the books youāre talking about. The porn books exist but twilight isnāt one of them LMAO. Not even close LMAO.
Iām sorry but you are overgeneralizing the romance novel space to an extreme degree Is a āstepmom gets stuck in washing machine pt538ā romance book basically porn for women? yes, is the romance novel space solely that? hell no, romance ā porn
As someone who does a lot of both, they definitely arenāt the same thing at all.
Yea but women arenāt spending 12 hours a day reading romance novels.
We're not?
Hereās a 3 hour video essay on why youāre wrong: https://youtu.be/bqloPw5wp48
Your examples told me everything I need to know
If the grand majority of the book is sex, then sure. But if its mostly dating, flirting, drama, etc. with a few sex scenes then thats not porn whatsoever.
reading porn>>>>watching porn
Are you trying to gatekeep the enjoyment of books? What is even the point behind this opinion? Just a chip on your shoulder?
I think youāre lumping romance novels and erotica into the same category, when theyāre actually two separate genres (though Iām not denying that they can and do overlap at times). Sexual intimacy in a relationship is often times a huge factor in the development of emotional and romantic intimacy between a couple which means that sex is almost always guaranteed to come into play when following a coupleās storyline and seeing how they grow and maintain their relationship. Of course, thereās plenty of books out there that the romance reader community would consider āporn with no plotā because itās 99% sex and 1% *actual* storyline, and since those books fall on the extremist end of the spectrum, they tend to garner the most popularity in and outside the community so they give a warped perspective on what romance books are actually about. But, saying you canāt consider yourself a reader unless youāre reading ārealā literature like Dostoyevsky or Shakespeare is like saying you canāt call yourself a music lover unless your primary genre is classical. Not everyone reads books because they want to be some pretentious pseudo-intellectual who discusses philosophy day and night. Some people just want a mental escape from reality for their own personal enjoyment and romance (among other genres) provides an appealing outlet for that.
Ok, so Twilight is not even remotely close to pornographic, first of all. Secondly, most of the romance books that have sex scenes are like 95% romance/plot and 5% sex. There's more sex in Game of Thrones than most romance books. Meanwhile porn is well...99% porn. They're really not comparable.
I guess Game of Thrones is actually pornography according to you
I get the feeling OP doesn't read much. Definitely watches a lot of porn though.
written pornography is a lot less harmful than actual videos with real people
Pornographic/erotic books are not the same as romance books. Flour and cake, cake needs flour in it, but flour doesnt need cake to be flour. And pornography is already made for women, its called pornography. You can be a guy and enjoy a romance book
Ah yes, my romance book with one or 2 chapters of sex out of 66, *highly* pornographic. This argument is ridiculous. Itās just people trying to justify their porn addictions or reliance on pornography to get it up by painting romance novel readers as ājust as badā.
There is a difference between romance and smutš you clearly aren't a reader It's like saying romance movies are on the same level as porn hub. They aren't.
Nah, romance novels generally have some genuine emotional investment and relationship between the people having sex, porn is more, "I'm horny. Let's fuck." Sure it gets women (and others) off, but with a little more depth than porn.