RNFF Romance Reading Pet Peeves

During RNFF's first year, a regular feature on the blog was the "RNFF Pet Peeve" post. Each pet peeve post pointed to a particular common feature of traditional romance novels, and explored why the particular plot line, trope, character type, or stock phrase, struck me as problematic when viewed through a feminist lens.

I thought it might be interesting to go back, several years later, and revisit some of these pet peeves. Are they still commonly found in heterosexual romances? Have newer feminist issues emerged, issues that might lead to different pet peeves? How many of these older pet peeves would still rank on my top 10 pet peeves list today? If I took some off, what would I replace them with?

(NOTE: the pet peeves listed below come from reading heterosexual romances. Discussing pet peeves about queer romance is certainly worth its own post...)

RNFF PET PEEVES

1. The "I'll follow you wherever you go; wherever you are is my home" declaration, or, the heroine moves to be with her hero with no sense that the hero would do the same for her (discussed at greater length in this post).

I've not seen this one as much in my reading of late as I did when I first started writing the blog. Have I become better at screening my reading to avoid this trend, or is it really becoming far less common?


2. "But what choice did she have?", otherwise known as the story that backs the heroine into an anti-feminist corner for plot purposes (discussed in this post).

I still come across this one quite often, even in romances purporting to be about strong women. She has to accept his gift/money/help because she has no other choice... She had to give in to stupid, sexist demands because she has no other choice...  She has to act in a way that makes her TSTL, because she has no other choice...

Ah, no. You can always choose not to take that gift/money/help, not to give in to sexist demands, not to act stupidly. Authors are always advised to make things harder for their characters, but that doesn't mean they must back their characters into sexist corners to do so. Try thinking outside the patriarchal box, instead!


3. "Baby, you're all that I need," otherwise known as "your romantic partner must and will fulfill all your emotional, physical, and psychological needs"

I'd say that this one is still pretty common (shades of Jerry Maguire). Many romance readers like believing that a heroine who finds her one true love is guaranteed to live happily ever after, because finding her one and only makes her life complete, whole. How many readers actually believe this, and how many know it's an aspect of the fantasy that the romance genre holds out to its readers? Janice Radway, where are you when we need you for some timely reader response exploration?


4. The overabundance of dukes as heroes in historical romances (discussed here).

Since I write historical romance (under my pen name of Bliss Bennet), I personally get annoyed by the completely historically inaccurate bounty of dukes who roam the current grounds of English-set historical romances. A quick glance at Debretts Peerage shows that only 25 non-royal dukedoms existed in 1818. Out of a population of 14.4 million people living in England, only 0.0001735%, or one in every 576,000 English people, held the title. A popular historical romance author today will  likely create more than 25 dukes in just her books alone!

Given the way that amazon search engines reward authors who include certain tropes (or aristocratic titles) in their books, arguing against this plethora of dukes seems like a losing battle. So this perhaps wouldn't make a general top 10 list of anti-feminist peeves, but I reserve the right to keep it on my own personal one.


5. When "feisty" is mistaken for "feminist" (see this post)

Acting feisty (or bratty, or snarky) is not the same as acting with feminist principles in mind. Yelling at a stupid guy, snipping at a sexist alpha, ignoring the advice of a potential love interest because he's a man—none of that grants you a feminist card. Working on behalf of other women, on behalf of women's rights, calling attention to sexist behavior, laws, assumptions: those are feminist actions. Books that assume that a feisty, or strong female is also a feminist female still seem distressingly common.


6. Romances that diss feminism (see this post)

I recently read one of the four books that won the first RITA Award (then named the Golden Medallion Award) back in 1982. I'll be blogging about that experience in a future post, but suffice it to say, references to feminism (or "women's lib") in the book are hardly flattering. It's a bit disheartening, if not surprising, to discover such comments in a book published in 1981. But even today, when a romance novel includes the words "feminism" or "feminist," it rarely regards those words as positive. But so few romance novels even use the words that I'm not sure this one deserves a place on a top 10 list anymore.


7. Heroines in historical romances who spout gender critiques that sound more like Ms. Magazine than anything Mary Wollstonecraft or her radical contemporaries ever wrote (mentioned in passing here)

I could write a treatise on this one. But again, this may be my own particular pet peeve. The historical romance market right now does not seem to care much about historical accuracy, at least when it comes to social mores that would rankle contemporary readers' morals or standards.


8. "It's a Guy Thing" (or "Women all do this...) (see this post)

Part of the spice of many romances depends on playing up the differences between male and female characters. Far too often, though, for a feminist's taste, playing up differences between particular characters shades over into definitive statements about what all men do/are/say/act like, and what all women do (or don't do). I don't know about you, but the variation in behavior between individual women seems just as wide as the variation between any particular man and any particular woman. Whenever a writer (either through a character, or in the voice of the narrator) states that "guys are like that" or "women always/never say/do this," I can't help but cringe. This may be the most common pet peeve I have with a lot of contemporary romances.


I've not written previous blog posts about the following, but I'd definitely include them on a top 10 heterosexual romance Pet Peeve list today:

• Heroes who don't take "no" for an answer. Harassment is not sexy

• Heroines who say "no" but really mean "yes." Heroes are NOT mind readers, ladies

• No discussion of birth control before or during sexy times

• No portrayal of consent before or during sexy times

• Evil other women as foils for a virtuous heroine

• Slut shaming


When you put on your feminist reading glasses, what pet peeves annoy the heck out of you?

Move it or Lose it? Mary Ann Rivers' LIVE

I've not written an RNFF Pet Peeve post in some time. But reading Mary Ann Rivers' first contemporary romance, Live, made me remember one I mentioned in passing in a longer Pet Peeve post: heroines who declare to their newfound lovers, "I'll follow you wherever you go; wherever you are is my home," or other heartfelt words to that effect. Willingness to leave a career, relatives, and/or friends behind without a single look back has often been used as a measure of the depth of a romance heroine's love. In recent years, some authors have inverted the trope, making the hero, rather than the heroine, prove his love by his willingness to ditch his job on his beloved's behalf. While I appreciate the variety, I'm not convinced such inversions call into question the thinking underlying the trope itself: that one person can fulfill all your needs. While I can recognize the appeal of the fantasy of the inverted trope (wow, he loves me more than anyone, more than anything else!), I've never quite understood why women readers find the self-sacrifice of the original something to get dreamy over. And having spent some time in academia, where couples searching to put their newly minted PhDs to good use teaching are often faced with choosing to live in the same city with only one employed or choosing to teach at different universities and live apart, I've seen firsthand how excruciatingly difficult such decisions often are in real life.

Pet Peeving noise...

Rivers' novel brought this Pet Peeve to mind not because Live embodies it, or even inverts it, but rather because it takes it as its object of study. Typically, the "I'll move for you" declaration occurs at the end of a novel, during the HEA moment, when the couple declares their love for one another. In Live, however, one of our protagonists, Welshman Hefin* Thomas, has already so been there, done that. Having met and married an American after only a whirlwind week of courtship, he followed her to Ohio, the site of her successful law career. But his struggles with immigration, and his inability to find work in his chosen field and being unemployed for two years, turned their marriage sour:

     The night she came home and poured them wine and told him that he resented her, and she couldn't live with his resentment anymore, he started to say no, of course he didn't, his failure to find work in his new country was his own, his temper and his moods were his own, or were his shame that he hadn't provided for her, for them—and then he was choked by his own tears.
     He cried like a child, noisy and stormy and wet, and she held him against her.
     The grief was impossible. (Loc 945)

A hand-carved Welsh love spoon

At novel's start, Hefin's divorced and working as a woodcarver (a hobby turned into a job), restoring the carvings in the library of the Ohio town where he still lives. But he's decided that at job's end, he'll be returning to Wales, so he can reconnect to his family, and find a job where his love for engineering can flourish. Such plans make it unwise to respond to his attraction to the ginger-haired woman who comes into the library every day, diligently conducting her own job search on the library's computers. Even after their meet-cute (or meet-teary), Hefin makes certain that Destiny Burnside knows that he's going back to Wales in eight short weeks. And that he won't ever stay for someone else, live for someone else again. And he will never ask anyone to make such a sacrifice for him. Better not to get involved, he tells her.

But Destiny challenges Hefin's right to make such a choice on her behalf, to protect her without her say. Des has weathered her own share of grief of late: the death of her father, the loss of her job, and the pain of a beloved sister not recovering the way she should after being hit by a car. Des wants to take the joy she can today, without worrying about the potential losses of tomorrow: "I can't stand the grief of losing something and the fear of losing something else at the same time. I can't. And since I already am living with the grief, I guess I choose not to bother with the fear" (Loc 1739). And so the two decide to spend what time they can together, to enjoy the brief weeks they have rather than worrying about what might follow.

Neither Des nor Hefin is prone to casual relationships, though, and their physical attraction soon interweaves with emotional intimacy, intimacy that convinces them this is no passing affair. Being with Des makes Hefin want "to know what it was to live beside another and still know who you were" (Loc 2268). But Des knows that Hefin needs to go back to Wales, to the sound of the sea and the love of his family and the work that fulfills a real gap in his life. And more than ever, Des needs to stay in Ohio: her siblings are on the verge of falling apart, her sister is back in the hospital, and her new career as a fledgling web designer is just starting to get off the ground. Rivers writes with poignancy of the double tug each lover feels (this example from Hefin's pov):

Was it that Destiny wasn't enough? If she wasn't, no one else would ever be. Yet his heart felt so full of her, like they were sideways, together, like the first time he was inside her, their limbs entwined, and just like that, the both of them had slipped into his heart, a physical weight, knotted and warm. How could that be and her happiness not be enough? How could he still have such a feeling of hope and lightness at the idea of his plane winging its way home? (Loc 3306).

Will Hefin ask Des to move for him? Will she ask him to stay? Is it only a question of either/or, Ohio or Wales? With an elegance of language and honesty of emotion not often found in romance, Rivers depicts the painstaking steps Des and Hefin take, the questions they ask themselves and each other, as they struggle to figure out how to meet not only their need for a lover, but also for rewarding work and for strong family ties, in order to feel whole.


* Prounounced HEV-in, according to the website Behind the Name

Photo credits:
Love spoon: Adam King

Mary Ann Rivers, Live

Loveswept, 2014

RNFF Pet Peeve: "Baby, You're All That I Need"

In the early years of our relationship, my significant other traveled for business two or three times a year. I'd drop him off at the airport, and a few days or a week later, would drive back to Logan, leave the car in short-term parking, and wait by the arrival gate for his plane to land. Images from films and television commercials would flicker through my mind, visions of couples joyfully embracing, the man swinging his girl in his arms, the woman grabbing her man and kissing him, oblivious to the line of passengers their torrid embrace was holding up. But in those movies and advertisements, none of those passengers minded, not really; witnessing the pleasure of romantic love reunited more than made up for any delay it might cause.

Somehow, though, my own airport reunions never lived up to such visions. More often than not, a flood of annoyance, even dislike, overcame me as my man came striding toward me down the concourse. I'd often find myself turning away from his kiss, grabbing at his baggage and gruffly urging him to move out of the way of the other passengers rushing to push past us. That fug of airplane smell hung always hung over him, an odor not at all conducive to evoking tender emotions, and as soon as we'd get home, I'd urge him not into my bed, but into the shower.

For the longest time, I thought my unromantic airport reunions meant there was something wrong with me, or with my relationship. If I loved my guy, why didn't the mere sight of his familiar face emerging from the crush of a crowd of strangers send me into a cloud of delirious joy? It took me a good while to realize that part of me wanted to push him away when he returned from a trip not because I didn't care for him, but because I cared too much. How dare he have commitments more important than me. How dare he care about something else besides me. How dare he abandon me! My conscious brain knew, of course, that such a response was irrational, ridiculous, but even so, a small corner of my unconscious was angry, and wanted to punish him for enjoying, for needing, something else besides me.

Despite being a rational, educated, feminist woman, this patently false belief—the "Baby, you're all that I need" fallacy—had wormed its way into my brain. Indeed, it's difficult for any woman to rid herself of the annoying pest, at least a woman brought up under the influence of Western culture. From pop song lyrics* to iconic film lines, the message that all woman needs is her one true love reigns ubiquitous in the media. And romance novels often partake in its dissemination, even ones with seemingly empowered women as their heroines.

Case in point is a book that I started off loving: newcomer Kate Cross's steampunk fantasy Heart of Brass (2012). As the book's blurb asserts, Cross's heroine, Arden Grey, "enjoys a life most women in 1898 Victorian London can't even dream of": social status, wealth, and independence. She's an inventor, creating not only devices to help "hysterical" women relieve their tensions (what we would call vibrators and the like ;-) ) but also special glasses that allow her to see the final moments of a murder victim's life. Such inventions allow her both to help the police and to work as an agent for the Wardens of the Realm, protecting the nation against unclear but obviously dangerous menaces.

Best of all for romance junkies, Arden's beloved husband, Lucas, who has been missing for seven years, makes a sudden reappearance at the start of the novel (ironically for one who hates real-life airport reunions, lovers separated then reunited is a favorite romance trope of mine). Lucas, having had his memory altered by the mysterious "Company," has no recollection of Arden and instead has been programmed to assassinate her.

Plots twist and unravel, but the book isn't all about action. Both Arden and Luke reveal more nuanced layers of character as they gradually come not just to remember their past feelings, but to develop new ones in response to the quite different people the past seven years have wrought of them. In their early marriage, Lucas often left Arden for his work as a Warden; at the time, Arden played no role in the organization. The old Luke might not have appreciated this more intrepid, independent Arden, but this more disillusioned version appreciates her strengths.

Yet their present relationship is haunted by the ghosts of Arden's past fears, fears that Luke cared more for his work than for her. Before Luke's disappearance, their marriage was plagued by tension, tension stemming from Arden's frustrations at Luke's constant abandonment of her whenever the thrills (or "duties," as Luke justified them) of his spying work called.

Rather than showing Arden maturing, growing out of such fears as she comes to recognize the value of her own work and skills, the novel instead concludes by simply appeasing them. After Arden is almost killed when the murderers they've been pursuing are revealed and captured, Luke highhandedly submits not only his own resignation to the Wardens, but also hers. The narrative positions his decision as a positive one, a rejection of an agency that is only using him, and is negatively impacting his relationship with his wife: "He was done with being a spy, with putting his life in jeopardy for a country and an agency that would just turn around and demand that he do it again. He refused to be separated from her again. Refused to keep secrets from her, or endanger her because of his actions." But as becomes clear in the book's denouement, Luke's decision resonates because of what it tells Arden about his feelings for her.

Arden agrees to Luke's highhanded decision to resign on behalf of them both with surprisingly little protest. Readers can understand why when they see her old fears returning: "She didn't know how long it would last—how much time would pass before Luke began to crave excitement and chafe at the bonds of matrimony. It frightened her thinking he might leave her again." Only after weeks pass, and Arden brings herself to question Luke about his decision, is she finally assured by his declaration: "Arden, you are my life. I don't want anything else."

Critics of romance novels frequently complain that they too-often require their heroines give up everything in order to be with the man they love. The "baby, you're all that I need" trope is the flipside of that demand, a demand that a man give up everything he values in order to appease the insecurities of his woman. While such declarations and actions may be deeply satisfying to our infantile ids, which can only be satisfied by a lover/mother who will meet our every need, a feminist might wish to think twice before being pacified by the impossible-to-live-up-to siren song of "baby, you're all that I need."

 * Male singers or groups who have recorded a song titled "You're All That I Need" range from Michael Bolton to Marvin Gaye, Radiohead to Twisted Sister, Method Man to White Lion. No matter her musical taste, a woman can find a man ready to tell her he needs nothing but her.


Photo/Illustration credits:
Airport Kiss: Tumblr
Jerry Maguire: Mentoring Career Advice
Id/Ego/Superego: Fishegg Cartoons

Next time on RNFF

The Wonky Feminism of Ruthie Knox

RNFF Pet Peeve: Feisty Does Not Necessarily Mean Feminist

Run a Google search for "strong female protagonists," and you'll get more than 5 million hits. If you attempt to narrow the results by adding the words "in girls' reading," you might expect the number of hits to go down. But in fact, they increase, exponentially, to more than 40 million. In the early 1990s, books and reports such as Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (1994), Peggy Orenstein's SchoolGirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap (1994)  and the AAUW's How Schools Shortchange Girls (1993) argued that images of passive girls and women in popular culture were contributing to an American society of girls at risk. The AAUW (in Girls in the Middle: Working to Succeed in School [1996]) recommended that schools work to "expand the range of acceptable behaviors for girls, particularly 'nonconforming' behaviors such as argumentative and assertive actions," to combat the trend. Concerned librarians, teachers, and parents began compiling lists of books that might counter such negative images, thousands of which have proliferated on the web. And thus, the era of the "feisty" girl protagonist was born.

The feisty girl protagonist can often recognized by the way she talks. Not only does she like to argue; she speaks up for herself, and for other girls, even if her society would prefer she keep silent. She also likes to be in control, a decision-maker, actively determining her own fate. Often openly objecting to the social constructions of gender that would limit her agency and choice, the feisty girl refuses to conform, often earning opprobrium rather than praise from those around her, but forging ahead in spite of it. Above all, the feisty girl is not an object or a reward; she is not the gift given to the handsome prince who rescues her, nor does she live happily ever after, known only as his wife.

The feisty girl can be found not only in books for teens, but also in books for adults. As the kick-ass heroine of adult fantasies, the rebel of historicals, and the career woman of contemporary fiction, the feisty heroine has become a staple of the romance genre.

Yet when you look more closely at the feisty heroine of adult romance*, all too often you're likely to find that her feisty-ness is simply a reassuring cover papering over the same old disempowered heroine package. If you dare to look past her cheeky, argumentative banter, if you peek under her shiny pink superhero cape, you'll discover a girl without choice, without agency, a girl who gives it all up to gain the love of a good man.

The feisty but hardly feminist heroine is quite common in historical romances (ironically, as the word did not come into common usage until the very end of the 19th century, according to the OED). People around the heroine frequently talk about her non-conforming behavior, yet such behavior is rarely shown in the novel; she's a rebel in reputation, but not in practice. She's great at squabbling, especially with the hero of the piece; the two go at it early and often, arguing over every trifle imaginable, but rarely about anything of substance. If the heroine does protest the hero's gender-limiting assumptions, she does so only to implicitly accept them in the end by marrying him, for he certainly hasn't changed his mind. Readers get the surface features of feminism, but without any of its substance.

Feisty girl can also be met with in fantasy romance, particularly in the recent trend in books about shape-changers. Forced to transform into a vampire, werewolf, or other supernatural creature, typically against her will, feisty girl may protest her fate, but in the end has little say in the matter. Because she is "destined," not just to be transformed, but to be loved by the hero, she is given no choice, no agency over her own body, or over whom she'll share it with. Other men in the book often complain about feisty girl's mouthiness, allowing the hero to look good by comparison, because he enjoys it when she mouths off. But he rarely allows her to win a verbal or physical argument against him. One by one, her protests are cut down, or ignored. For example, at book's start, she may argue that wearing a thong is uncomfortable, stupid, done only to please a man, but by the end of the book, there she'll be, wearing said thong for her beastly lover's pleasure, the only explanation for her change of heart an implicit one: that her lust for said lover has overcome any principles she once espoused. Oh, the novel may allow her to make one or two life decisions, but in the end they are only token ones; far more decisions have been made for her, often in the face of her protest.

Interestingly, the words "aggressive, excitable, touchy" are the ones the OED chose to use in its definition of "feisty." No mention at all of "independent," "decisive," or above all "feminist." So be on the look-out for the mock-feminist feisty girl. Don't allow her to fool you; mouthing off is not the same as actively protesting gender restrictions, assuming equality between the sexes, or determining your own fate. Feisty is not always a synonym for feminist.

What books come to mind when you think of heroines whose feisty-ness is only skin-deep?


* And of purportedly strong girl romances for teens, as well, about which more in a future post...

Photo/Illustration credits:
• Feisty Girl: The Feisty Girl blog 
• Love it when you're feisty: JackFreak1994 at Deviant Art 
• Feminist Fairy Godmother: Tom Gauld, Flickr

Next time on RNFF:

The "proper" woman as feminist historical heroine: Mary Balogh's A Summer to Remember


And check out my post on Feminism and Romance at the Popular Romance Project's "Talking About Romance" blog

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