Prima Donna romance: Lynn Turner's PAS DE DEUX and Katherine Locke's DISTRICT BALLET COMPANY series

prima donna:

• (1745) the leading female singer in an opera company; a female opera singer of great skill and renown
• (1834) a person who has the highest standing or who takes a leading role in a particular community or field; ALSO
• a self-important or temperamental person



When I looked up the phrase prima donna in the Oxford English dictionary, I wasn't surprised by the first definition I found. The words are, after all, a pretty literal translation from the Italian: prima = first; donna = lady. And I've spent quite a few hours accompanying my spouse on many trips to the opera, listening to prima donnas from Teresa Stradas to Elina Garanca on both stage and screen.

What did surprise me was the way the gendered nature of the term disappeared as it shifted from the world of opera to take on a more figurative connotation, pointing to a person with excellence in any field. And especially as the figurative connotation narrows to encompass not a person's standing, but the negative judgments with which successful people, especially successful women in the arts, are often labeled. There's more than a hint of sexism in label prima donna, I think. It functions to contain and control female success by labeling it as problematic, as too much: too self-important, too emotional, too erratic, too neurotic, too difficult. Diva, princess drama queen, prima donna: these and similar labels seem aimed at undercutting female power, or the power of a man who behaves in a stereotypically female manner. It reassure the world that while a particular woman (or feminized man) may be great, her/his greatness is not untainted, as a cisgendered man's would be.

Given the general romance reader's preference for nice heroines, the prima donna figure is not all that common in the genre. Which was why I took such pleasure in reading not one, but two hetero romances that featured strong-willed, deeply emotional artists, both of them world-renowned ballet dancers. And rather than insist that the prima donna stereotype was wrong—that these women were not self-important, not temperamental—both books instead celebrate, rather than denigrate their female heroines, precisely for the characteristics for which the prima donna label tells us we should condemn them. Both Mina Allende of Lynn Turner's Pas de Deux (2018) and Katherine Locke's three District Ballet series books (Turning Pointe, Second Position, and Finding Center, all 2015) have talent, ambition, drive, and the emotions (and emotional baggage) that often goes hand in hand with an artistic temperament. And both authors make readers love them, precisely for these qualities.

For the past ten years, since the age of seventeen, French-Tunisian-American Mina Allende has been dancing with the Paris Opera Ballet company. But the recent death of her best friend and fellow ballet dancer Étienne has left her wanting something different, something more. Mina is tired of the all-white world of the ballet, especially being continually turned down for her dream role:  Odette in Swan Lake. "Désolé," she's always told, "You're just not the right fit" (Kindle Loc 3593). Not because she's not good enough to dance the part, but because even today, the ballet world cannot imagine a black woman dancing the part of Swan Queen.

Ashley Murphy, photographed by Nathan Sayers

So when brash American choreographer Zach Cohen invites her to co-star with him in his new Broadway musical Lady in Red, a decidedly modern take on the classic story La Dame aux Camélias, Mina jumps at the chance. So many ballet choreographers are "obsessed with this antiquated notion of uniformity," a uniformity which her skin color breaks. But on her first rehearsal of Zach's New York show, Mina is surrounded by "an array of skin tones and body types in the room, something she hardly ever saw in her world." The embrace of variety, rather than insistence on uniformity, gives her back a bit of the feeling of being alive she lost after losing Étienne (493).

Mina just might be able to make something new, something special, in New York—if only she and Zach Cohen can stop butting heads. For Zach, like Mina, needs to be in control. Even though he was adopted by a working-class, loving Latinx family as a teen, and has left much of his anger and fears of abandonment behind, he can't quite ever erase the impact of his years living as a "nomad" in the foster care system. And he deals with his emotions by exercising authority over not only himself, but also his show. The show of which Mina is the star.

There's a bit of a suspense plot toward novel's end here, but the main pleasure of Pas de Deux is the "let's put on a show" storyline: the ups and downs that Mina and Zach experience, first as dance partners, then as lovers as they gradually allow themselves to slip free of their self-imposed restraints and give into the attraction they've felt for one another almost since the moment they met. Channelling their emotions into sex, and gradually, into love, doesn't dilute their chemistry onstage. Nor does sharing the vulnerabilities of their pasts, or the complex steps each has danced between privilege and disadvantage, between opportunity and prejudice, as they've forged their way to fame in their respective careers. Emotions run high for both Mina and Zach, but it is those very emotions that allow them to create art that moves audiences to leap to their feet in joy.

I picked Katherine Locke's Second Position, the first full-length novel in her District Ballet Company three-story series, back in January, after reading a tweet from the author saying that the book fit the bill for those looking for a demisexual romance with a non-alpha male protagonist. But the book isn't really focused on demisexuality; it's more about the long, arduous process of accepting loss and recovering from trauma. The second-chance love story between Alyona Miller and Zedekiah Harrow actually takes place over the course of two full-length novels—Second Position and Finding Center—with the story of their initial friendship and falling in love in the prequel novella, Turning Pointe. I didn't know this at the time, though, so I began with Second Position, which begins four years after the events of Turning Pointe. Since this is a second-chance romance, and references many of the events covered in Aly and Zed's earlier time together, I don't think it's vital that you begin with the novella.

Too much emotion has always been a problem for prima ballerina Aly. In particular, anxiety has been her nemesis. As her best friend Zed describes it, "Without tea and without ballet shoes on, [Aly] is restless and anxious and something just short of a disaster waiting to happen" (Kindle Loc 336). During her teen years, her friendship with Zed helped keep her balanced, helped keep her anxiety at bay. But after a devastating car accident costs Zed a leg and them both the baby their new-fledged sexual relationship has inadvertently created, Aly flees. And Zed does not have the wherewithal to chase after her.

Now, four years later, Aly might just be the poster girl for temperamental prima donna-hood. The youngest principle dancer in the Philadelphia Ballet, she's been forced to take a leave of absence after having a major melt-down during rehearsal, brought on by stress, anxiety, and the weight of unresolved trauma. And that one public incident is only the tip of the iceberg: Panic attacks. Fainting. Rages.

Aly hardly expects to run into Zed in a coffee shop in D.C., where she's been living with her mom and spending intense hours working with a therapist to help get a handle on both her anxiety and her disordered eating. While Aly's on a downward spiral, Zed is finally clawing his way up. The years since he last saw Aly were just as difficult as hers: debilitating depression, alcoholism, and suicidal thoughts. He's got a job now, teaching high school drama, attends AA meetings, and calls his AA sponsor when times are tough. But he, too, is still mourning.

In romance novels, love is supposed to conquer all. But neither Aly nor Zed had the ability to cope with the multiple traumas life dealt them during their teen years, something they try to come to terms with when they meet four years later:

     "You squeezed my hand. I thought we'd be okay.".....
     I whisper, "So why weren't we?"
     "I—" she begins and swallows. Her eyes fill with tears. She looks like she can't breathe either. "I know. I couldn't—I just—I wanted everything to go away. I couldn't do it. I'm a coward. I'm so sorry."
     I want to reach over the table and cradle her face in my hands. Those goddamn eyes. I need to look away.... I shift in the booth, my feet  moving and bumping against Aly's. I can only feel one of them, a reminder that some things lost that day were tangible.
     She lost, too. I wanted to share that grief with her, for something that we never wanted but had been ready to handle. But the car rolled, and hit a fence,, crushing my leg and shaking her so badly she started to bleed.... I mourned my leg, my career, our kid, and her. She mourned a life—and me, maybe—alone. I can't undo that and I don't want to try. I need to say something.
     "I'm sorry, Aly. I should have—everything just felt so—it got bad." (352)

Many a writer would take such a scenario and make melodramatic hay of it. But Locke crafts a story that relies on character development rather than sensational plot for its draw, delving deeply into the psyches of two damaged people who only gradually come to terms with all they've lost. Neither heals the other; each needs other people, people with far more experience in coming out the other side of trauma than either of them has. Locke spends time depicting these often painful emotional interactions—between Aly and her therapist, Aly and her mother, Zed and his friends, Zed and his AA compatriots—showing how their own work in coming to understand both their self-destructive patterns and the things that bring them joy help them bring far stronger selves to the task of rebuilding a relationship they had thought long lost.



Photo credits:
Ashley Murphy: Pointe magazine
Prima donna t-shirt: Zazzle

Lynn Turner

Pas de Deux

indie published

2018

Katharine Locke

Second Position

District Ballet Company #1

Carina 2015

Love and Sexism in Scandinavia: Simona Ahrnstedt's HIGH RISK

Whenever I get too depressed about the state of political discourse in America, I start fantasizing. Not about sexy alpha men, but about moving to a different country, one more socially and politically progressive than the one in which I live now. Especially one where sexism is far less prevalent than it is in the good old U. S. of A.

To, say, Canada. Or perhaps one of the Nordic countries, which, according to the 2017 Global Gender Gap report (published by the World Economic Forum) score in the top 10 of countries that have come the closest to closing the gender gap (as measured by Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment):

#1: Iceland, 87% of the gender gap closed
#2: Norway, 83%
#3: Finland, 82%
#5: Sweden, 81%
#16: Canada, 76.9%

The United States? All the way down at number 49, with 71.8% of the gender gap closed.

So I was thrilled when an RNFF reader sent me an email recommending a romance novel by Simona Ahrnstedt, a best-selling author in her native Sweden whose books have recently begun to be translated into English and published in the States. What would a romance that took place in a country with far more gender equality look like?

Turns out, there's still a lot of room for sexism in that 19% gap in the opportunities and achievements between women and men in Sweden. Especially in the age of gender-based cyber harassment.

Reporter Ambra Vinter's career has been on the downslide for the past few years, ever since Aftonbladet, the popular news tabloid where she works, has hired a new editor-in-chief with whom Ambra doesn't click at all (maybe because she told him the paper had taken a step back when it came to feminism, perhaps?). The constant flood of hate mail her woman-focused articles often inspire is another downside of the job:

Twenty emails in ten minutes. Nineteen of the messages were hate mail on an article she'd written about sexual harassment at a gym, published the day before. She scrolled through them and knew that she should forward the worst to the security department, but she didn't have the energy. She had been working for too long now to care about anonymous misogyny. (7)

But Ambra's always wanted to work for Aftonblat, and doesn't want to risk losing her job. So she agrees to agrees to travel north to Kiruna, even though the small town is where she lives for a year as a foster child with an abusive family. Interviewing a tipster about a possible long-ago sex scandal might be worth the trip, especially if she can get the story and get back to Stockholm without running into any unpleasant memories.

But it's not just elderly Elsa and her stories of the secret sex retreat she and her lover ran during the 1960s that end up fascinating Ambra; it's a grumpy fellow in the hotel coffee shop, Tom Lexington, who has his own hidden reasons for coming to Kiruna: to try and convince his long-time girlfriend, who moved on after he was declared dead after a security job in Africa went terribly wrong, that she really should come back to him.

But Tom isn't the same easy, competent guy who left an already dissatisfied Ellinor to immerse himself in his high-risk overseas security work. Four months being held by terrorists have left him a shell of his former self. He can't eat; he can't function at his job as CEO of Lodestar, a private security firm; and he certainly can't avoid the panic attacks that overtake him without warning, turning him into a weak failure rather than the in-charge professional he's used to being. And he can't bear to medicate or talk his trauma away, far preferring to dull his fears in the numbing warmth of liquor. When Ambra gets stranded in Kiruna on the eve of Christmas, the two spend a surprisingly companionable holiday evening drinking together in the hotel bar. But when Ambra offers Tom a one-night stand, he ends up turning her down. Largely because he's convinced himself that "If he could just get Ellinor back, everything would be fine. He was sure of it" (30).

Readers are far less sure, and so aren't surprised when fate keeps throwing Ambra and Tom together. Even while Tom is up front with Ambra about his desire to reunite with his reluctant ex, he and Ambra find themselves drawn to one another, recognizing on some intuitive level that they're struggling in their different ways to deal with the very different traumas they've experienced. Tom gradually begins to emerge from his trauma-induced depression, with the help of an old friend, a new dog, and a woman whose directness is the exact opposite of his former girlfriend's tiptoeing around difficult subjects. A woman who makes him feel like "a normal man," not "a weakened freak or a violence machine, just a person" (277). But Ambra's only in Kiruna for a short time, and Tom's still too invested in the idea of being saved by Ellinor to leave.

Or is he?


There's not one, but two scenes in the book in which Tom ends up physically rescuing intrepid Ambra (although her endangerment in one of them was inadvertently caused by Tom). There's also a (male? female?) wish-fulfillment subplot in which Tom and his ex-military friend Mattias search out all the misogynists who have been cyberstalking Ambra and her foster sister Jill, a famous pop singer, and use their secret agent skills to scare the bullies into stopping and even apologizing. None of this comes across as all that empowering for Ambra (although thumbs up for the idea of making men be responsible for dealing with anti-feminist members of their own gender). But even despite these drawbacks, Ambra is not portrayed as a damsel in distress, but as a powerful, outspoken woman who takes it for granted that she and everyone else who shares her gender have just as much right to a seat at the power table as does any man. One of my favorite moments is this bit between Ambra and her (male) nemesis at the paper, entitled, arrogant Oliver, who once used a "I'm protecting you, vulnerable woman" manipulation to steal a story from Ambra:

     "Half my team's sick, but we have Oliver doing a series on murders of women out jogging. The unprovoked woman killer."
     "What does that mean? That some killings of women are provoked?" Ambra couldn't stop herself from asking. "And why say woman killer? You would never say man killer."
     Oliver groaned. "It's a good headline. Don't start with that crap again."
     "We'll take another look at the headline," Grace [their boss] said firmly.
     "Of course," Oliver said smoothly, but he exchanged a sardonic glance with his direct manager. (323).

Ambra's great at sticking up for women in the workplace. But the trauma she experienced, losing her parents as a child, being moved from foster home to foster home, and suffering an abusive placement, have her deeply confused about how to make personal connections, especially ones across the lines of gender. Another favorite scene is one in which Ambra tries to puzzle out with Elsa, the nonagenarian former sex retreat counselor, just what it is that men are looking for from a woman:

     "Men fall for a certain kind of woman, I think," Ambra continued. Elsa was almost one hundred. She had to know things.       But Elsa slowly shook her head. "Men aren't a uniform species. They fall for different types, just like we do."
     "What do you think men want, then? Really?"
     Elsa gave her a slight smile. "I lived most of my life with a woman, so I may not be an expert on the subject. But I don't think you can generalize like that. Men are different. Just like women . . . . There are plenty of crazy men out there, so there must also be plenty of crazy women for them."
     Ambra smiled. "That doesn't sound much like solidarity."
     "You shouldn't feel solidarity with someone just because they're the same gender. And stupidity has nothing to do with gender, it's everywhere."
     "So why do you think some women find it so easy to meet someone?" she asked, which was what she really wanted to know, after all.
     "I think, honestly, that a lot of them simply settle." (135-37).


It's no surprise, then, that Ambra refuses to settle, especially when Tom appears to choose a suddenly nostalgic Ellinor over her at an important social event. A man with a hero complex, a man who needs to rescue the damsel in distress in order to make himself feel whole—that's not the man for Ambra.

But can Tom redefine for himself what it means to be a hero? A man who doesn't just act, but who also feels?

After reading High Risk, I can understand why Ahrnstedt's been dubbed "The Scandinavian Queen of Romance." I'm really looking forward to reading more of her work.




Photo credits:
Why people don't report harassment: Dunya News
50/50: Mind Manager blog

Simona Ahrnstedt

High Risk

(High Stakes #3)

published in 2016 as en ende risk

Kensington, 2018

When An Artist's Abusive Behavior Call Your Love of Their Art into Question

Composer Richard Wagner's magnificent operas, set against his deeply anti-semitic tract Jewishness in Music. The racism of the early cartoons of Dr. Seuss, or in the first-edition depictions of the Oompa-Loompas in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The myriad works of literature by lauded male writers, and the misogyny that runs like a bloody thread through their personal lives.

How can we love an artist's work, when we discover that the creator of that art held political or social views that we find to be morally repugnant? Or acted in a morally reprehensible way? Many shrug and say "It was different back then." But this already questionable position is even more difficult to take when the morally reprehensible actions have been done by an artist of our own times, our contemporary, rather than someone from the distant past.

Such are the questions confronting the male/male romance corners of Romancelandia after last week's tumultuous cascade of accusations and revelations about widely-praised queer romance author Santino Hassell. Over the past year, the pseudonymous Hassell has accused others of harassing him by trying to discover and reveal his IRL (in real life) identity, an identity that he claimed he kept hidden to protect himself from homophobia in his native Texas. But as accusations of Hassell's self-misrepresentation on a GoodReads thread, screen-shotted Twitter evidence to support such claims, and heartbreaking #metoo stories about Hassell's abuse of members of the queer community proliferated, reaching a groundswell late last week, two of his publishers, Riptide and Dreamspinner Press, abruptly announced that they had dropped him from their lists. Because the "author known as Santino Hassell" misrepresented himself to the publisher, which is cause for cancellation in the majority of author contracts. [If you want a more detailed timeline of the events leading to this, see these three posts from The Salt Mines].


What do we do when we hear that an author whose books we love has treated others with far less humanity than the characters in those books do? Has lied about who he is? Has catfished queer fans to mine their personal lives for story ideas, then used said stories not just without attribution, but without permission, in his novels? Who manipulated others to attack those who tried to call him out for his despicable behavior?

Many are taking down their reviews of all of Hassell's books on Amazon, GoodReads, and other social media sharing sites. Many are returning his books for refunds, or spending the $5 credit offered by Riptide to any reader who has ever purchased one of his books from their house on a book by a queer author other than SH. And many who supported Hassell's Patreon account after hearing him movingly write about of his cancer, his struggles as a single father, his bullied children—all claims which have turned out to be false—have yanked their financial support.

As a blogger, I am struggling with how to respond to this horrible cascade of accusation and abuse. I have a family member who was a long-time victim of a narcissist, one who sounds painfully similar to the person described by many who describe SH and his abuse. Being manipulated by such a  person is painful, embarrassing, and deeply shaming. All those harmed by SH's more direct abuse, you never deserved to be treated that way.

I have no desire to help advance the career of, or indirectly provide financial support to, an aggressively narcissistic abuser.


RNFF has reviewed several of Hassell's previous books. Should those reviews be taken down? Or should each be prefaced by and/or replaced with by a link to this post and a brief explanation, so readers can explore the issues and decide for themselves whether they feel comfortable reading a book by an author they would in all likelihood in real life shun?

Many other blogs, including Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words,  From Top to Bottom Reviews, Vir Reviews, and Just Love have done the first. My gut instinct, though, is leading me toward the second. Because erasing evidence of abusive behavior makes us forget, not remember. Because history matters. Because readers, including myself, need to be reminded that a detestable  person can write an aesthetically and politically good book.


I'd like to hear from RNFF's readers before I make the final call.

The Gender Gap in Tech: CD Reiss's KING OF CODE

3/40

3/28

2/27

0/16

7/39

2/19

Whenever my significant other, a tech geek who does advanced computer development and research work, attends an academic or commercial conference, he likes to text me the number of people in the audience at each workshop or presentation he attends. That number is always preceded by a much smaller figure: the number of women in each room. Three out of forty. Two out of twenty-seven. Zero out of sixteen. Two out of 19 on stage during three general session meetings. The only room during the conference that had more women, he tells me, was the one in which the "Women in Tech" breakout session was held.

Such numbers are more than a little disheartening, especially for those who like to believe that gender discrimination is far less of a problem in the workplace than it was 50 years ago, or even 20. In some professional fields, such as law, medicine, and the physical sciences, the gender gap has decreased. But not in computer science. In fact, computer science's gender gap has actually increased since 1984:

Why has women's participation in computer science declined over the past thirty five years? Many different reasons have been proposed: the advent of home computers; computer games that focus on competition rather than collaboration; social discourses that code computers as masculine, just to name a few.

In her latest contemporary romance, King of Code, CD Reiss highlights yet another reason—sexism among male computer coders. Our introduction to the book's narrator, Taylor Harden, comes as he's engaged in sex with the sole female employee in his small computer start-up company, in the company supply closet. After he's finished, Taylor muses about the experience:

Raven looked great walking into the hall after she'd just demanded I rip her apart with my cock. I had no feelings about her whatsoever, and that lack was mutual. Working sixteen-hour days in the same office meant we fucked each other or didn't fuck at all. This was why I didn't hire women, besides the fact that they turned nerd IQ points into premature ejaculations. I usually wound up fucking them. But my lawyer had said to hire one, pay her well, and not fuck her. I'd taken two-thirds of the advice. Raven had needs, same as I did. She was so anti-drama, she practically had a dick. (Kindle Loc 173)

I'd like to believe that Reiss was exaggerating Taylor's sexism for dramatic effect. But my spouse was not at all surprised when I described this scene and others that highlighted Taylor's gender stereotyping throughout the opening pages of the novel. Such overt identification with male goals, male feelings, and the male gaze, and the consequent objectification and denigration of anything labeled female and feminine, are all too prevalent in large swaths of the high tech field, his anecdotal evidence suggests. Especially in smaller start-ups, where work environments can feel more like carry overs from a frat house than professional adult spaces, the idea that women are distracting, dangerous and even a potential legal liability is far too often the norm rather than the depressing exception. To be a King of Code, one must banish all potential queens and princesses from the room.

Taylor's start-up is on the verge of making a big public splash with a new, non-binary, and above all non-hackable computer system: " 'Quantum Intelligence Four is pure virgin code.' It bleeds when breached. We said that a lot around the conference table room, but not in front of Mona Rickard," Taylor notes while giving a tour of the up-until-now highly-secret company to Mona and several other reporters from Wired magazine (281). Computer guys may make sexist jokes, and reinforce gender stereotypes, among themselves, but most know better than to say what they really mean in public, especially where a woman such as Mona might hear:

"You're pretty sure of yourself."
     "I'm sure about these guys on the other side of the door."
     "I hear it's all men."
     "I hire the best regardless of gender."
     "And all the best had dicks?"
     Someone on her team snorted with laughter. The elevator doors opened, and I led the group to the cage doors.
     "Google hires all the girls," I said.
     "I'm sure." She folded her pad and pencil against her chest and smiled. We saw right through each other, but she couldn't print what I wouldn't say. (249)

Male techie contempt for "girls" is an open secret in the high tech community, one that many men have learned to talk around, in order to maintain plausible deniability—and to maintain their all-male privilege.

After such an introduction to the sexist Taylor, (female) readers are primed for him to be on the receiving end of some pretty major payback. And payback comes, early and hard, as Taylor's purportedly un-hackable system is hacked—right in front of the eyes of Wired's reporting team.

Luckily for an enraged, humiliated Taylor, his hacker seems just as cocky as he is, leaving a clue in the text of The Complete Sherlock Holmes posted in the comments section of the hacked code: Geohash coordinates. Taylor knows that wherever those coordinates are pointing, he has go to face his tormenter-hacker and force him to give back the keys to the code he's locked Taylor out of.

Taylor's hardly expecting the geohash coordinates to lead him in Nowheresville in the Great State of Nowhere, USA, i.e., Barrington, a down-on-its-heels town economically reeling after the recent closing of its one remaining major employer, a bottling plant. Barrington must be just a stop on the way to some bigger town, Taylor insists; no way could a person with an IQ high enough to hack Taylor's code live in such a dead-end town.

Neither is Taylor expecting to find a woman like Harper in Barrington, a beautiful, sexy girl ready to help him discover the identity of his hacker. Or is she? Things get a little confusing when Taylor gradually gets beyond his own sexist assumptions to see the truth: Harper is not just physically hot, but smart as hell. In fact, it's she, not some faceless geek guy, who is actually his hacker. And Harper has some prior history with Taylor, history that Taylor, in his blinkered, sexist bubble, has found it far more easy to overlook than Harper has.

Just who is Harper? How does she know Taylor? And what does she want from him and from QI4? Quite a few very important things, it turns out, including economic opportunity, lots of hot sex, and a recognition of the needs of small towns like Barrington, towns often overlooked in our shift from an industrial to a communications/service economy. Not to mention a little bit of self-reflection on Taylor's part about how his bro-dude attitudes towards girls and women are less about a common-sense approach to ridiculously restricting political correctness and more about maintaining a space where men are not forced to confront the discrimination against women both past and present upon which their gender privilege rests:

    "Honestly? Can I say something honestly without you destroying my life?" [says Taylor to Harper]
     "Sure. Why not."
     "If I'd noticed you, I would have fucked the shit out of you."
     "Thanks. I think."
     "And if you were in SanJo when I staffed. . . I might have hired you. But the 'wanting to fuck you' thing would have been a problem."
     Her jaw tightened, and her face hardened as if she didn't believe me.
     "That's not comforting," she said.
     "I didn't say it to comfort you."
     "You need to fix that, Taylor. You need to grow up and stop letting your dick run the show. It's pathetic."
     I'd been told that before, but her disgust sent the message right into me. I was ashamed. Deeply ashamed. I carried my cock as if it was the president of the company, and I didn't make any excuses for it, but now I wanted to curl into a ball and think about all the decisions I'd made because of where I wanted to stick it.
     I'd thought I was making sure the workplace was appropriate, but what I'd done was make it safe for the impulses of the least appropriate person: Me.
     And. . . Raven. Of course I'd made sure there was one consenting partner in the office just for me.
     Nice leadership. Real nice. I didn't blame Harper for being disgusted.
     "Yeah. Well. I guess, when you put it that way, you're right." (2559)

Why does it matter whether women go into computer science or not? Because, as Forbes magazine notes in response to the study put out by Girls who Code that first called attention to the gap in high tech, "that gender gap not only impacts women's career prospects and financial lives, but the U.S. economy as a whole. Keeping women on the sidelines means more computer jobs will go unfilled, reducing innovation and global competitiveness. It is already happening: in 2015, there were 500,000 new computing jobs to be filled but fewer than 40,000 new computer science graduates."

Perhaps after reading King of Code, a few more women might be inclined to pursue such jobs.

And perhaps a few more men might stop standing in their way.


Illustration credits:
Women Computer Scientists: Girls Who Code

Without Women, Computer Coding: Women Who Rock Science Tumblr

Why is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?: The Atlantic

The Case for Computer Science in the Classroom: Robomatter.com

C. D. Reiss

King of Code

Flip City Media, 2017

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.

Sexism and Gendered Workplace Competition: Christina Lauren's DATING YOU / HATING YOU

I've written about several different battle of the sexes romance novels here in RNFF, particularly BotSs that take place in male-privileged work spaces (Julie James, anyone?), and even proposed possible guidelines for crafting feminist BofSs storylines. So I thought I knew what would be in store when I picked up Christina Lauren's latest contemporary comic romance, Dating You / Hating You. Two Hollywood agents "meet awkward" at a party, then go on a first date. But when their competing agencies merge, the two wind up pitted against each other for the same spot in the "Features" department that will remain after the post-merger reorganization. The book's sell copy makes the BofS's theme perfectly clear: "What could have been a beautiful, blossoming romance turns into an all out war of sabotage. Carter and Evie are both thirtysometing professionals—so why can't they act like it?"

What I wasn't expecting was to discover that Carter (who is actually twenty-eight to Evie's thirty-three) wasn't the embodiment of unthinking sexism that the male half of most BofS's romances typically feature. No, Carter espouses none of the privileged male beliefs that undergird most sexist workplaces: no assumption that men are more, women are less; no belief that his way is the best way and her way is the wrong way; no taking-it-for-granted that equal opportunity for women really means that men are getting the short end of the workplace stick. Carter's approach to agenting is far different from Evie's, yes, but he views their strengths as complimentary, rather than at odds, and has a deep respect for her talents and accomplishments.

But even without overt sexism, the authors suggest, competition, even between friends and prospective lovers, can lead colleagues to anger and frustration. For a people-pleaser like Carter, such feelings are difficult to openly acknowledge. Especially when both Evie and Carter are still smoldering from the sparks of frustrated sexual desire. And so, despite their continual assurances that they can and will work together to undermine the winner-take-all situation in which their boss has placed them, both Carter and Evie find themselves pulling back, and even slipping into more defensive, aggressive postures, at the least sign of unfair or privileged behavior in the other. Because underneath their agreeableness, each one believes the other has the advantage: Carter, because his company was the one that got bought out, and he's now working for Evie's boss; Evie, because she sees how her sexist boss keeps favoring his fellow male colleague and undercutting her work.

Both Evie and Carter are über competent, über in-love with their jobs, and über competitive, qualities which lead not to a "war of sabotage," but rather to a series of amusing pranks—Evie substituting decaf cups in Carter's Keurig; Carter replacing Evie's go-to hand cream with bronzer; Evie taping over the speaker in Carter's phone; Carter loading the air system in Evie's car with glitter. But as the work tension escalates, will the pranks edge over into more damaging work-related sabotage?

Carter may not be openly sexist, but the novel shows that he's definitely the beneficiary of male privilege, privilege that he is not that aware of, and is not all that willing to acknowledge. He'd rather believe that he and Evie are on even footing. But Carter isn't blind, and he gradually begins to realize that even if he isn't behaving in a sexist manner, his competitive instincts have led him to overlook, or even contribute to, the sexist environment at the office: "I guess we could go with when our boss knocked Evie's breakfast [a doughnut] into the trash because he's a sexist dick, and I just sat there and watched. Or when I let her sit through a meeting with two of her shirt buttons undone. Two very important buttons," as he admits to his best friend (199). It takes his own growing self-awareness, as well as a good talking-to by another agent, the wife of said best friend, to accept that the "normal" he's taken for granted isn't the same normal Evie lives with:

"Playing into Brad's sexism? That makes me angry at you, Carter. Its hard enough for a woman to be taken seriously in this business and seen as a person with a brain and not an object. Men get passes for acting like it's 1960 and every woman in the office is their secretary. Evie will have to be smarter, faster, and better at her job than you are, for possibly less money and a whole lot less recognition, all while appearing totally grateful for it" (200)

Which (along with some prank-ful starch in his suit), leads Carter to a moment of clear self-awareness, a moment he shares with Evie:

     "So here's the thing, Evie: if we put our heads down, and do our jobs, and stay out of each other's way, then we can just be colleagues."
     She gives me an aggressive shrug. "Okay? Sounds good to me."
     "Colleagues. That's it," I say, and her shoulders fall a little as she gets where I'm going with this. My heart is pounding so hard, I have to pull off my suit jacket so I don't feel like I'm going to hyperventilate. Evie watches me take it off and drop it next to us, eyes rapt as she looks back to my face.
     "Passing in the hallway, small talk, work emails. Whatever this is," I say, waving between us, "would go away. You may not like the glitter explosion in your car, but at least you know I was thinking about you when I did it." I pause, swallowing. "At least now you know I can't stop thinking about you." (220)

It takes some more back and forthing, some managing of competitive flare-ups and honest discussions of privilege and feelings, before Evie and Carter can begin to come close to figuring out how to work as true colleagues, rather than as cutthroat competitors. And some seriously hot trysts before they can come together not just as friends but as lovers, rather than sublimating their desires for one another into secret, silly sabotage.



Stop here if you don't want the ending of the book to be spoiled for you...


My one disappointment with the book was in the way it ended up dealing with its sexist villain, Evie and Carter's boss, Brad. He's never done anything that would break any of the equal opportunity rules at their company, but his behavior towards Evie is overtly sexist throughout the story. But it turns out that said sexism is not the reason for his ultimate downfall; instead, it turns out that he was trying to get Evie fired because he worried that she was on to his embezzlement scheme. Brad doesn't get fired for being sexist, but gets arrested for being a criminal. In one way, you can read this as a wish-fulfillment fantasy: that the condescending sexist pig you work with would be sent to jail for his piggish behavior. But on the other, it suggests the difficulties in taking a sexist pig to task for his sexist behavior, even in today's purportedly equal opportunity workplace. Brad can only be punished because he's an embezzler, not because he's unfair to his female employees.


Illustration credits:
When you Disagree: Hello Giggles

Christina Lauren

Dating You / Hating You

Gallery Books, 2017

Bread for all, and Roses, too: Courtney Milan's HER EVERY WISH

Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes,
Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread but give us roses.

As we come marching, marching, un-numbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread,
Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew
Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses, too.

Bread and Roses strikers

As I was reading Courtney Milan's latest novella, I could not help but think of the Lawrence, Massachusetts "Bread and Roses" strike of 1912. In response to a new Massachusetts law limiting the number of hours women and children could work (from 54 to a mere 52!), textile mill owners in Lawrence cut the wages of their workforce. Expecting such a move, leaders in the Industrial Workers of the World union organized a strike of primarily female immigrant millworkers, workers whom several other unions claimed could not be organized.  The strikers demanded not that their wage be returned to its former level, but that it be raised by 15%. Because working women deserved not only the lowest wage that would allow their survival, but a wage that would allow them "small art and love and beauty," too.

Milan's novella is set hundreds of miles away from Lawrence, in London, England. And it takes place 46 years earlier than Lawrence's Bread and Roses strike, in 1866. Yet its heroine, Daisy Whitlaw, has the same thirst for the small beauties of life as did Lawrence's textile workers. Daisy (whom readers of book 1 in the "Worth Saga," Once Upon a Marquess, will remember as the working class best friend of that book's heroine), a woman who cannot stop reaching for her dreams, no matter how many times her hands are slapped away, opens the story by entering a contest offering fifty pounds to the person who presents the best plan for a new business. Ten semifinalists have been selected based on their written proposals (wise Daisy entered under the name "D. Whitlaw"), and now each must give a public presentation to the members of the parish. Unlike the other finalists (all men), whose proposals include the same old ideas for new stores and businesses, Daisy's proposal is a novel one: Daisy's Emporium, "a small shop of carefully selected goods. Durable, beautiful, and inexpensive. Designed for—" For women, Daisy had planned to say. But the hostility of the crowd, angered that a woman has dared enter the contest, makes it almost impossible for her to deliver her intended speech (Kindle Loc 121).

In spite of the difficulties of her presentation, Daisy is chosen as one of the five finalists invited to prepare a more detailed proposal. The man in charge of the program suggests that her invitation has little to do with her proposal's merit, however:



"We'll see you all next Saturday. And it looks like we have our entertainment in order. After all, we've just lined up the jester." He gave Daisy an exaggerated waggle of his eyebrows and let out a great, braying laugh, one that explained precisely why she'd been chosen. (163).

Daisy, though, can't help but hope that her proposal might have a slim chance of winning, even in the face of such sexist condescension. And so when Crash, her former lover, an impudent, self-confident flirt of a man whose ancestry is so mixed that people who barely know him feel entitled to come up and ask him, "What are you?" offers to serve as audience while she rehearses her speech—"You need to practice in front of someone you hate. Someone who makes your stomach curdle. Someone who will ask questions while you want to smash his face in," (i.e., himself)—Daisy finds herself accepting.

A 1868 velocipede race in France

And finds herself not practicing her speech, but being thrust upon a velocipede, learning self-confidence by learning to ride this newfangled wheeled contraption. And learning a lot more about Crash in the process, a man with whom she had once thought herself in love. A man so arrogant and self-assured that she'd thought nothing could wound him—especially not herself.

Though Crash and Daisy appear to be polar opposites, Milan shows that their common experiences of facing discrimination—sexist discrimination for Daisy, racist discrimination for Crash, and classist discrimination for them both—the two have far more in common than they, or we, ever thought. And that both deserve more, far more, than society tells them they should want.

Not just bread, but roses, too.


Photo credits:
Bread and Roses strikers: New England Historical Society
Emporium: Haute Design
Velocipede race: The Online Bicycle Museum

Courtney Milan

Her Every Wish

The Worth Saga, #1.5

self-published

Are Beefcake Covers Sexist?

Over on the IndieRomanceInk Listserv this past week, one poster wrote of a male friend who accused the romance genre of sexism for objectifying men. In particular, this friend had a problem with the recent trend in romance novel covers, covers that feature headless male torsos, typically wearing little to no clothing. Such images, this friend felt, reduce the male body to a sexual object, and thus are sexist.

The original poster felt ambivalent over her friend's claim, and asked her fellow writers for their thoughts in response. A fascinating discussion has resulted, with some authors arguing in support of the male friend's position, others taking issue with it. And still others complicating the question in various intriguing, often feminist, ways.

So I thought I'd ask you, readers, what you think of the beefcake cover? Is is a celebration of the male body? Or an objectification of it? And if it is an objectification, is that a problem? Why or why not?

In Need of Help, Not Saving: Victoria Dahl's FLIRTING WITH DISASTER

A man with a compulsion to help others meets a woman who has been betrayed in the past: it's one of the most common romantic pairings in the contemporary romance genre. In the hands of a conventional writer, the plot in which two such lovers are placed usually goes something like this: Put that woman in a little danger. Have her insist to all and sundry, including the man, that she can take care of herself. Have that man prove himself worthy of her trust by protecting her from said danger anyways.

Give that same couple to a writer whose been steeped in feminism, though, and the story is likely to come out rather differently...

Painter Isabelle West, the protagonist of Victoria Dahl's contemporary Flirting with Disaster, loves the seclusion she's found living outside of Jackson, Wyoming. No nosy neighbors, no annoying door-to-door salespeople, and, best of all, no friendly neighborhood cops. Brought up by a cop turned cop-killer, dumped by fiancé son-of-a-cop fearful of her father's bad rep, and threatened by a series of officers she once thought of as friends when it turns out her father's crime might be just the tip of the iceberg in a much larger corruption scandal, Isabelle will be only too glad if she never comes face to face with an officer of the law again. Especially since she's still a "person of interest" in her father's case, and she's changed her name to hide from the FBI, the Chicago cops, and her prison-fleeing felon of a father.

So when U. S. Marshall Tom Duncan comes knocking on her door, trying to dish out a story about running a protection detail for the judge who owns the property behind hers, it's no surprise that Isabelle is more than a little suspicious. Even though "her attraction to men in that field [law enforcement] had been hard-wired into her from an early age," Isabelle is wary of allowing let her libido take charge. But at heart, Isabelle is a risk-taker, and when Tom's story checks out, and her small circle of female friends encourages her to take advantage of their obvious mutual attraction, Isabelle decides to go for it. (FYI, the book's cover suggests the two are white, although no mention of their race is made in the novel).

Tom initially finds his attention caught by Isabelle's suspicious behavior, and does some background checking on her just to be sure she's not a threat. But by the time he's discovered that Isabelle West did not exist before 2002, he's also been caught by the "prickly and proud and smart and self-contained" artist, a bold, outspoken, self-confident woman who isn't shy about expressing her interest in sex. And in Tom. And in sex and Tom in the same sentence, in the same bed. Even if she's a free spirit and he's a by-the-book lawman.

Tom's fellow Marshall, Mary, who suspects that Tom is getting overly involved with Isabelle, jokingly asks "How's your savior complex coming?... You do have a tendency to date women who are a... bit of a mess." Tom doesn't take it as a joke; instead, he argues "Isabelle isn't a mess. She needs help." Though Mary claims "Semantics," Tom, and the narrative, insist that it's not just semantics; there's an important difference. Tom doesn't need to be the strong, self-assured Isabelle's savior. But everyone, including independent Isabelle, can use a helping hand upon occasion. Understanding this is the difference between being an arrogant knight-in-shining-armor and being a man who can treat a woman as an equal.

I'll leave it to you to pick up a copy of Flirting with Disaster and find out how Isabelle and Tom's relationship plays out. But I did want to share a few choice quotes from the book, to show just how pleasant it is to read a romance whose heroine, and whose writer, takes feminist ideas for granted:


Isabelle thinking about aging:

But Isabelle had discovered that freedom was the best thing about getting older. She'd felt a touch of it when she's turned thirty. She'd suddenly felt less like a bit kid blindly feeling her way through the world and more like an adult. Then at thirty-five she'd realized she was at that age when so many women really started to worry. That they were too old now. That they hadn't married or had children. That this was their last chance to really live. Isabelle didn't feel as though this was her last chance. She felt as though she was finally free. Capable. Happy with herself. Comfortable with her own body. And allowed to say anything she wanted to out loud, even if it made a grown man blushed. Maybe specially if it did. She loved it. She couldn't wait to be forty. She was going to own that shit. And then at fifty, when strangers would stop hinting that it was time to settle down and have some babies, and just start looking at her with pity? That would be glorious. So she grinned at Tom Duncan and took an extra-large piece of pie and didn't bother stifling her moan of pleasure at the taste. (Loc 359)


When Tom asks whether her friend Jill, and then she herself, like living alone, Isabelle calls him on his unthinking sexism:

    "You're not wearing a wedding ring. Do you live alone?"
     "Yes."
     "No wife or kids Are you depressed about it? Are you pining away?"
     His lips twitched at the idea of sitting in the window of his apartment, staring yearningly into the night, like a sappy scene from a bad movie. "No. But I travel quite a bit."
     .....
     "Well, I don't travel, but I'm not lonely. I have my work, my friends and my home. And internet porn. Life is good.
     Tom tripped over a snowdrift and nearly fell flat on his face. Isabelle laughed as he dusted snow off his knee. So much for her reserve. "If you said that to shock me, it worked," he said.
     "I said it because it's true." She grinned over her shoulder as he kept moving. "Try to keep up."(399)

After Tom plays guard-duty for the judge's daughter during a girls-night-in at Isabelle's:

     "I have to admit, it was a lot more fun than any night out with the guys. I'm not sure my brain will recover from all the new things I learned, though. You girls are filthy. Like, really filthy."
     "I know. It's because we have to save it up. We can't be honest about stuff in front of men because so many of them are creeps. When it's just us and we don't have to be on guard against men bothering us... God. It's so much fun."
     "Should I be insulted that I don't count as a man?"
     "No." She dropped onto the couch and patted the seat beside her. "You should be flattered that all of us felt comfortable around you." (1307)


After Tom and Isabelle have had sex, and Tom is feeling guilty for sleeping with a woman whom he's investigating:

     "Please tell me you're not one of those guys who needs the girl to be in love or it's dirty. Because then I'll have to remind you that you throughly enjoyed it all."
     "That's definitely not it. And I hope you haven't met any  guys like that."
     "We've all met guys like that." (1452)


Isabelle telling Tom about her first boyfriend:

     "He was an incredible ass. He liked that I was a virgin. Liked that I waited for him. He talked shit about other girls who put out, and it made me feel special. So I suppose I was an ass, too." (1456)

   

And this, sharing confidences after sex:

     "You just seem really... comfortable. With sex. With yourself. It's attractive."
     .....
     "It's really hard for a woman to like sex."
     "Because guys are terrible at it?"
     "No," she laughed. "Even aside from that. We're taught from day one that we're supposed to resist it. That we'll eventually be talked into it. That we don't want it as much, and we definitely don't need it. Not like boys do. I believed that. So much so that I wasn't the least concerned that I'd never had an orgasm. Because lots of women don't.... Can you imagine that? I mean really. Think about that. What if you had sex your whole life and never came? .... But then when I figured out how much I liked sex and exactly how I liked it... Jesus, that's even more confusing. To be a woman and like sex. To want things just as much as the man does and still be treated as if you've given something away. It's no wonder women hit their sexual peak later in life. It takes decades to find the confidence to have good sex."
     Tom was frowning harder now. "How so?"
     She shook her head. "Some men can make it hard to feel good about it afterward, no matter how much you liked it. Men say things like 'I got some,' or 'She put out,' or whatever that dialogue is. Girls are stupid cows giving the milk away for free. And suddenly you feel like you were conquered."
     "Oh." Tom had never heard anything like that before.
     "It takes a lot of self-possession to know that a man's attitude doesn't change what you wanted. It doesn't change what you got out of it." (1818)


Re the above quote: is that how you were brought up to think about sex? Is it still as true today as it was for women of my generation (growing up in the 1970s and 80s)?


The first review I wrote for RNFF was of Victoria Dahl's Start Me Up. It's a true pleasure to watch as Dahl's writing continues to push the genre in new, decidedly feminist directions.


Photo/Illustration credits:
Wyoming cabin: Joanne Rossman
Semantics graphic: Never Not Thinking blog
Girls Night In: Dar Dar's Gifts
Have Sex, Hate Sexism card: Redbubble.com

Victoria Dahl

Flirting with Disaster

HQN, 2015