New York Times disses romance authors

Hey, all, many of you have probably heard about the so-called "book review" of the fall's upcoming romance books, penned by famed literary editor Robert Gottleib, that appeared in Wednesday's issue of the New York Times. If you haven't read the piece, you should check it out, here.

Why the paper thought a man known for editing literary fiction was the best choice for such a piece is more than a bit puzzling. What isn't puzzling is the frustration, disappointment, and outrage felt by romance authors and readers alike by the patriarchal, condescending tone of Gottlieb's piece. Several of those people have written strong blog pieces in reaction: check out Ron Hogan's piece at Medium, "All the Dumb Things You Can Say About Romance Novels, All in One Convenient Place," and Olivia Waite's "Robert Gottlieb is Obviously Smitten" from the Seattle Book Review. And the many, many smart, informed comments people have posted online in the comments section of the article, as well as on the Book Review's Facebook page, are heartening. I hope RWA will send the Times a letter protesting this latest example of shaming the industry, its writers, and its readers.

If you're frustrated, disappointed, and/or outraged by the Times' piece, please let the Times' book review editor know, either by posting a comment in response to the Gottlieb piece online, adding a comment to the Times' Facebook page, or sending an old fashioned snail mail letter to the editor:

Via email: books@nytimes
Via snail mail: The Editor, The New York Times Book Review, 620 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10018.

This is the comment I posted on the Book Review's Facebook page:

Wow, sexism, classism, racism, urban bias, ignorance, and misinformation, and even more sexism, all in one book review/roundup. Way to insult so many people at once, NYT.

Romance is not a feminist genre?

Naming this blog "Romance Novels for Feminists," rather than "Feminist Romance Novels," was a very deliberate choice on my part. English majors, trained in close reading as we are, believe that every word, as well as the placement of every word, matters. I did not want readers to think I was setting myself up as supreme arbiter of any one romance novel's feminist credentials; instead, I wanted them to understand that the blog was intended to explore the ways that individual novels, as well as the genre as a whole (and its various subgenres) embrace, explore, reject, and/or convey conflicting messages about things that would likely be of interest to readers who claim a feminist identity.

Why, then, did the title of Robin Reader's recent Dear Author letter of opinion, "Romance is not a feminist genre‚ and that's okay," annoy me so much? It took me some time to figure out, hence this post here rather than in the comments section of the DA blog.

Perhaps I was annoyed, at least in part, because unlike Robin Reader once did, I've never bought into the argument that the genre of popular romance is, because it is primarily written by and read by women, inherently feminist. In fact, I'd argue that for much of its history, romance has leaned more toward enforcing than challenging patriarchal assumptions about women, about gender, and about the balance (or lack thereof) between the sexes. Defending the genre as a whole by pointing to its feminist underpinnings seems like setting yourself up for an all-too-painful, all-too-easily-justified intellectual smackdown.

Feminists analyzing their own differences

It also seemed odd to me to argue, as RR does, that because there are so many different kinds of feminism, from the social activist to the literary theoretical, and since many of these branches of feminism are at odds one with the other, it doesn't make sense to use the word "feminist. Yes, some feminists are anti-porn, some are pro-porn; some feminists eschew male involvement, while others encourage it. Yet these differences aren't, I would argue, so at odds that we can't see the more common, underlying similarities. For example, both women who are are against porn and those who celebrate it are vitally concerned with women's sexuality, and the ways patriarchy has worked to contain and repress it. And separatist feminism doesn't mean separatist feminists are uninterested in romance (even if they prefer it occur with another woman than with a member of the opposite sex).

Most confusing to me was the turn RR's essay took when she asks readers to "entertain for a moment the idea that Romance is not a feminist genre. What is it, then, beyond a genre that celebrates love and is largely written by, for, and/or about women?" She gives two main answers, both of which, at least to me, seem decidedly feminist:

First, she argues that Romance "does something very similar to its literary forebear, sentimental fiction, namely, providing a shared space for women to contemplate and discuss the important issues that affect our lives, both on a general, societal level, in terms of day-to-day reality." And why is this not feminist? The phrase "the personal is political," after all, was originally coined by the editors of Notes from the Second Year: Women's Liberation (1970) for a reprinted speech given in 1969 by feminist Carol Hanisch, which argued that feminist consciousness-raising groups weren't apolitical, but were a way for women to recognize how "personal problems are political problems."

Second, she suggests that Romance "elevates the domestic, both in terms of 'taming' the rake/rogue hero and in terms of valuing marriage and family," a more plausible argument, at least upon first glance. As RR points out, "Because domesticity has also been a source of social and personal oppression for women... readers who are interested in a more progressive agenda can look at this element with suspicion." But feminists, in particular historians and literary critics, have long been interested in domesticity (as the long passage RR herself quotes from scholar Cathy Davidson illustrates). Domesticity, like feminism, like romance, is not monolithic; depending on how domesticity is depicted, its "elevation" can have patriarchal or feminist aspects (or, most commonly, intriguing combinations of the two).

Robin Reader reaches a far more nuanced conclusion than the declarative statement of her letter's title suggests (did she title it? Or did a DA editor? I wonder...) She writes: "So does that mean the genre is either wholly feminist or wholly oppressed in the vice of patriarchy? I would argue it's neither." I completely agree that romance as a genre is either wholly feminist or wholly tied to patriarchal oppression, and it's well beyond time for proponents of the genre, as well as scholars who study it, to move beyond that limiting either/or paradigm.

I'm not sure I quite understand what RR is suggesting in the final line of her letter, though: "it's still okay, because in the end it's the quality of our experience and engagement with the genre that matters, even more than the books themselves."  How does the "quality of our experience and engagement with the genre" relate to whether the genre as a whole, or individual titles within the genre, are feminist or not? Why should that engagement matter more than the books themselves?

Instead of "Romance is not a feminist genre," how about we agree that "Romance has the potential to be a feminist genre," and get on with the reading, writing, and analysis that proves it?


Photo/illustration credits:
Domestic ≠ Submissive: Phoebe Wahl, via Pinterest

Feminism, YA style: E. Lockhart's RUBY OLIVER series

Romance novels are often regarded as fantasies, stories that tell about love not as it is, but as we wish it would be. In the world of young adult fiction, though, with its strong tradition of literary realism, love stories often feature a far more rocky road to the HEA (Happily Ever After) than do many other sub-genres of romance, if they arrive there at all. If an author can provide a wealth of laughter to help cushion a reader's ride on said rocky road, he or she is likely to find an eager audience. And if on top of that, a writer in our so-called "post-feminist" age adds a healthy dollop of feminist consciousness-raising to her tale, then she just might find herself a featured author on Romance Novels for Feminists. As does E. Lockhart, author of four feminist books about wisecracking neurotic adolescent Ruby Oliver and her travails through the pitfalls and pleasures of teen romance.

Lockhart's quartet, beginning with 2005's The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver and concluding with Real Live Boyfriends: Yes, Boyfriends, Plural. If My Life Weren't Complicated, I Wouldn't be Ruby Oliver (2010), is chock-a-block full of "of course this is the way it is" feminism, as well as recognition of the ways in which feminism's goals are still, frustratingly, out of reach.

Each reader will have her/his favorite feminist moments. In the spirit of Ruby, who loves to make lists, I've jotted a few of mine below.

1. Ruby's lists of romance patterns from movies and books that hardly ever occur in real life: 

From Ruby's list of break-up then love films

Another thing that happens in the movies: They all have these dramatic crises where everything looks bleak and you think the couple will never, ever get back together. But then they realize they can't live without each other, and in the end they live happily ever after. (BL 65)

I thought maybe heartbreak would make me lose my appetite, like it always does to heroines of books, and then I could waste away tragically to nothing and Jackson would see me and I'd be pale and haunted-looking, and he'd realize that he never should have hurt me like that. But no. It turned out my stomach has no idea of what's going on in my heart and I could eat just like normal, if only there was normal food in my house). (BL 151)

Movies where the heroine meets a guy who is funny and cute and kisses her—but then she never lays eyes on him again: none. (BB 146)

2. Ruby's hilariously trenchant comments on the limiting construction of masculinity her culture (the well-to-do kids who attend Seattle's Tate Academy) offers:

If you're trying to talk to a boy in front of his friends, don't mention anything too girly. Like mermaids. Or kittens. If you do, he is apt to act like a complete wanker and cause severe injury to your self-esteem. Beware.

And after she and her friend Meghan get a boy to recruit others to bake for their bake sale:
     

A bit more secure in their masculinity than Tate boys...

     "This is going to change the whole social order at Tate," I said to Meghan as we left the B&O in the rain.
     "It'll get us out of this state of Noboyfriend, if that's what you mean," she answered, unlocking the doors and climbing into the Jeep.
     "No, I mean it'll change the antiquated sex roles that go on during bake sales," I said.
     "Speak English."
     "You know. Every year, girls bake. Boys eat. It's like the nineteenth century."
    "I guess."
     "That's why I never liked CHuBS [the bake sale club] that much in the first place. It was all girls in the kitchen. In fact, I bet you no boy has contributed to CHuBS, ever. And like Wallace said in American H and P last year, if you change one part of the pattern in a social system, the rest will have to shift in accordance." (TMofB 83)
  

3. In this book, it's the jerks who sling anti-feminist comments, not the heroes:

     "Ooh," I said, all innocent. "Can I see? Let me look!"
     "I don't know," said Darcy.
     "Please," I coaxed, scotting in next to him and leaning over flirtatiously. "Just for a sec. I love pictures."
     He pulled them into a stack and handed them over. As soon as I got them, I yanked the Nora pictures [ones featuring her friend topless] from the bottom of the pile, dropped the others on the floor and ripped the ones of Nora into tiny pieces.
     "Oliver!" barked Darcy. "What'd you go and do that for?"
     "You have to ask?"
     "Don't go all feminist on me," he muttered. "Geez."
     "I wouldn't need to be feminist if you weren't such a pig." (BB 82)


4. And especially, the way Ruby points to how difficult it is to reconcile what we know (from what feminism has taught us), what we even believe, with how we feel: 

Ruby thinking about Spring Fling:

The second mentally deranged thing about the situation was that I was waiting for someone to ask me. Obviously, this is the twenty-first century, and as I'd told Nora, girls can ask guys out. We should ask them out. There is no reason to sit around being passive and hoping to that someone will ask you to a dance when you can easily invite the person you want to go with. How are women going to become president and win Oscars for directing if we sit on our butts waiting for things to happen?

     I know this. I believe it. But I still wanted someone to ask me to the dance. Yes, like it was 1952. Yes, like Gloria Steinem never existed. Yes, idiotically, yes. (TMofB 188)


What I'd like to spend the bulk of this post on, though, is a feminist message that may not be so obvious on a first reading of Lockhart's series: the message that girls play as much a role in the suppression of other girls as does "the patriarchy."

In the opening book of the series, Ruby has recently been dumped by her boyfriend of six months, Jackson Clarke. Three days after dumping her, Jackson begins dating Ruby's best friend since kindergarten, Kim. Because she is so invested in being the nice girl demanded by contemporary femininity, Kim begs Ruby, "Don't be mad" before she drops the news of her new romance on Ruby. Though unbeknownst to Ruby, Jackson has been talking to Kim for a long time about his troubles with her, Kim has kept to the letter of the "Rules for Dating in a Small School" their quartet of friends has worked out and written down in their self-authored The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them:

Rule 4: Never, ever kiss someone else's official boyfriend.
Rule 5: If your friend already said she likes a boy, don't you go liking him too. She's got dibs.
Rule 6: That is—unless you're certain it is 'truly meant to be.' Because if it's meant to be, it's meant to be, and who are we to stand in the way of true love, just because Tate is so stupidly small? (BB 16)

Kim invokes rule 6: "I'd never do this to you, except the thing with you was never working out anyway—and I think Jackson and me are meant to be" (BL 131), and continues to beg "Please don't be mad." Kim can thus position herself as acting "nice," as following the rules, while suppressing the knowledge that her behavior is hurting Ruby.

But when Kim can't attend the big upcoming Spring Fling dance, Jackson asks Ruby to go with him—"as friends." Ruby decides to say yes, realizing only later that she didn't consider how it would affect Kim, or Angelo, the son of her mother's friend whom her mother had fixed her up with to go to the dance: she was "only thinking about how Jackson still had some feelings for me, would love me again in my silver dress, and how we would stand in the moonlight, looking over the railing at the light playing across the dark water" (BL 156). Yes, even though she can see the false romance patterns movies put forth, she still finds herself sucked in by them, as well as by her lingering feelings for Jackson.

Crusing alone in the moonlight is safer...

But standing is not all Ruby gets up to with Jackson in the moonlight. And though Jackson is more than a willing participant in their Spring Fling smooch, somehow he comes out without a scratch. The resulting spin is that Ruby is the slut, the boyfriend stealer, the friend-betrayer. Jackson is the "faithful saint who was only doing a favor taking a poor, rejected four-eyed ex to the dance when she had no other date" (BL 168).

Ruby becomes a metaphorical leper in the Tate universe; she loses not only Kim, but also her other two best friends, both of whom take Kim's side. Ruby even agrees, at first, with Kim's interpretation, and begins experiencing panic attacks. Only after several months of therapy can she acknowledge her own anger at Kim, and admit that "I just didn't think she had been nice at all, really" (BL 153).

Very few books for teenagers demonstrate so clearly the damage that socializing girls to be "nice" can cause, not just to themselves, but to other young women. Getting along with one another at all costs, even at the cost of deluding themselves when they act in a way that isn't nice at all, becomes a defensive skill for girls raised under patriarchy's dictates. Learning to recognize when a girl, (your friend, or even more difficult, you, yourself) is hiding behind the "oh, I didn't intend to hurt you, please don't be mad at me" line to protect herself from knowing how much pain she has brought to others is a truly difficult skill. But a vital one in a society in which girls are supposed to hide their anger and jealousy behind a facade of niceness.

For Ruby, it takes three more books' worth of therapy, losing and gaining new friends, and figuring out just what she wants from a boyfriend before she truly gets it. Only then can she see which boy in the Tate universe might be generous enough to recognize, as she has, that "people are complicated and make mistakes" (TMofB 231). And that when they make mistakes, and hurt you, you shouldn't hide behind niceness; you need to tell them that you're mad. And then, if you love them, you also need to forgive. 

With Ruby's help, it just might not take readers quite so long...


P.S.  For readers in the U.S.: Don't forget to vote today!

E. Lockhart, The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs, and Me, Ruby Oliver (Delacorte, 2005)

The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them (Delacorte, 2006)

The Treasure Map of Boys: Noel, Jackson, Finn, Hutch, Gideon—and me, Ruby Oliver (Delacorte, 2009)

Real Live Boyfriends: Yes. Boyfriends Plural. If My Life Weren't Complicated, I Wouldn't Be Ruby Oliver (Delacorte, 2010)









Photo/Illustration credits:
Say Anything: IMDb
Men at Bake Sale: Flickr CarrieApple
Gloria Steinem: WDYDWYD
Moonlight cruise: Pasatter's nature favorite pictures
Be Nice: Seth Drury

Next time on RNFF: Free to be a Feminist

RNFF Pet Peeve: "It's a Guy Thing..."

 

 

You've all read them, those lines in romance novels meant to explain away some difference or conflict between the hero and heroine. A girlfriend tells the heroine, "Don't worry, everyone knows men hate talking about their feelings" when her new love interest won't discuss last night's disagreement. Or a buddy jokes to his newly engaged best friend, when dragged along to the mall by his fiancée: "Get used to cooling your heels, Jack. All women love to shop." Or the hero dismisses the heroine's attempt to figure out why he's breaking his promise to go see her beloved ballet company perform, saying "You wouldn't understand. It's a guy thing..."

Realistic lines, perhaps, echoes of ones we hear almost every day. They're used, of course, to explain what to the speaker are natural, obvious differences between the sexes. Or are they?

When you stop to think about it, such statements are rarely true of all men or all women. Yes, many men don't care to discuss their feelings, but I know quite a few who are quite ready to bend my ear telling me their latest emotional triumphs and woes. Yes, many women do love to hit the shopping center hard, but I also know quite a few who despise shopping more than a visit to the dentist for root canal. For any statement you can find that attempts to categorize behavior by assigning it exclusively to one gender or the other, I'll bet I can find at least one person (and in most cases, many people) who doesn't conform. I'll bet even the people who utter such statements would, if pressed, admit that they know someone who undermines the truth of their own generalization.

So why do authors keep writing such statements and putting them in the mouths of their characters? Sexism? Laziness? Because they really live in such a culturally homogeneous place that every man really does act like every other?

I've been pondering the possibilities, and I'd like to throw out a few here for your consideration:

PLEASURE IN SUPERIORITY

In a romance novel, when the gender statement is said with a touch of tolerant amusement, and refers to the male sex ("Oh, men!"), the pleasure offered to the (presumably female reader) is that of feeling superior. Men, silly creatures, they can't talk about their feelings. Aren't we women special because we can?

While such superiority may make us feel better in the face of messages that denigrate characteristics typically associated with being a member of the female sex, it's a temporary fix, I'd argue, and one that does little to advance equality between the sexes.


PLEASURE IN DIFFERENCE

If a romance includes not only "guy" statements, but also "girl" statements, then the pleasure in feeling superior is no longer at issue (or if it is, it is a pleasure that moves back and forth between feeling superior and feeling inferior). Perhaps the pleasure in this case lies in the assertion of difference. Men are x and women are y, so very different one from the other; in overcoming such vast differences by novel's end, the heroism of our protagonists strikes us as far more vast than it would have if gender differences did not exist.

I wonder, though, if this isn't just a shortcut on the part of writers, relying on gendered stereotypes to build conflict between their protagonists rather than on detailed character development? Bridging the gap between two different human beings, no matter their sex or gender, seems a far more monumental a task than bridging the gap between a stereotypical man and a stereotypical woman.

Psychologist Janet Shibley Hyde's 2005 meta-analysis of previous scientific studies of gender differences argues that males and females are similar on most, but not all psychological variables. In her 2010 follow-up study focusing on gender differences in sexuality, she discovered an even more intriguing fact: "nations and ethnic groups with greater gender equity had smaller gender differences for some reported sexual behaviors than nations and ethnic groups with less gender equity" (21).* Yet even today, seven years after the publication Hyde's "The Gender Similarities Hypothesis," the difference model, which argues that males and females are vastly different psychologically, continues to dominate both the popular media and conventional wisdom, and much romance writing.


FRUSTRATION AT DIFFERENCE

Sometimes, though, difference leads not to pleasure, but to pain. When the romance hero does not act, or think, in the way the heroine expects (and vice versa), it can be easy to explain away the resulting frustration by pointing the finger at gender.  Excuses that attribute problems of communication to gender, rather than to individuals, let romance characters, and through them, romance readers, off the hook. "Can't help it honey, it's just the way women/men are!" The protagonists in such romances often come together only because of sexual attraction, rather than because of any sense that they truly understand one another, making it difficult to believe that their "happily ever after" will continue after the first blush of romance wears away.


HOMOGENEITY = HIGHER SALES

And of course we have the crass commercial reason: if all women think the same way, then publishers only have to create one type of romance, and repeat it ad nauseum. If some women like alpha heroes, while others like beta heroes, while still others like stories of two women together, that makes it far more difficult for a publisher to produce the bestsellers that will appeal to "all" romance readers. Buying into the myth that all men or all women think, act, or believe in the same way means simultaneously buying into the reader that publishers have constructed to aid their sales.


GENDER POLICING

The concept of gender policing comes from queer theory, suggesting that gay and transgendered individuals are often on the receiving end of pressure to conform to more conventional gender norms. But everyone is subject to such policing, not just those who obviously don't act "masculine" or "feminine," as recent studies by sociologists and ethnographers have come to show.** We receive messages about how to act "feminine" or "masculine" from the time we are infants, from our parents, our teachers, our peers. Don't yell and scream, it's not ladylike. Don't cry; boys are tough. Girls like pink and princesses. Boys like trucks and guns. Men who have casual sex are studs. Girls who have casual sex are sluts.

By the time we become adults, most of us have internalized such messages, and have come to believe that what we were taught is actually simply the way it is. Even when we are confronted by people who do not follow the gendered patterns we've come to take for granted, we don't change our statements; instead, we simply consider these odd people exceptions that prove, rather than disprove, the rules. Other people are easier to understand, after all, if we can put them neatly into labelled boxes, and if they act according to the rules of the box in which they've been placed.

But not all people fit comfortably within those boxes. And many refuse to step in them, or allow others to push them in. Their refusals remind us of our own acceptance, our own choice to step into the boxes. And sometimes that reminder can be shame-inducing, pointing to the moments when we lacked the courage to do what we wanted, to be what we are.

And this is one of the less than amusing purposes of "men are all..." and "women are all..." statements: not to state an obvious truth, but to ostracize those who make us uncomfortable, or ashamed of our own lack of courage.


Feminism doesn't mean that all girls should be tomboys, nor does it mean that princesses and pink should be banned from every girl's room. But it also doesn't mean that all girls should have to be princesses, or all boy should have to like trucks (or to dislike talking about feelings, or whatever other manly characteristic or pursuit an author deems the key to all masculinity). So next time you come across one of those "it's a guy thing" statements in your romance novel, take a moment to stop and think about what purpose it is truly serving.


* Janet Shibley Hyde, "The Gender Similarities Hypothesis." American Psychologist 2005 (60.6): 581-592; Jennifer L. Petersen and Janet Shibley Hyde, "A Meta-Analysis of Research on Gender Differences in Sexuality, 1993-2007." Psychological Bulletin 2010 (136.1): 21-38.

** See for example, Martin, K. 1998. Becoming a Gendered Body: Practices of Preschools. American Sociological Review, 63(4), 494-511.


Photo/Illustration credits:
• "I have feelings..."
• Women Rule
• Feminsts disguised as humans
• For Mothers

Next time: RNFF Book Review of Where She Went