Does "By Women, For Women, About Women" = Feminist?

Last week, I attended a Romance Fiction panel at the Boston Public Library, the first time the library had played host to talks by romance authors (although the librarian who introduced the panel said she hoped it would be not be the last). Eloisa James and Lauren Willig were the speakers (Sarah MacLean was scheduled, too, but had to cancel due to a family emergency), with Caroline Linden acting as moderator. In the audience were romance readers, writers, and reviewers, as well as a few folks who were there, as the woman sitting next to me explained, "to see what this romance thing is all about."

During the lively, entertaining panel that followed, one of the speakers (Willig, if memory serves), referred to the catchphrase that in the past three or four years has come to serve as a quick, easy justification to whip out whenever a romance lover meets one of those annoying people who assume that romance is stupid, laughable, or just plain embarrassing: "romance is the only fiction genre written by women, for women, and about women."

Implicit in this oft-repeated statement are two underlying assumptions. First, that in the past, value judgments made about of literature, including genre fiction, have been plagued by sexism, and thus romance, because it is by/for/about women, has been unfairly devalued because of its gender/genre connection. This is an assumption that I can get completely behind. But the second assumption—that because romance is written by/for/about women, that it must, by its nature, not be sexist—is one about which I have my doubts.

An anti-suffragist postcard c 1910

Even if all women shared the same biology (which, if we include trans women, they don't), they would not necessarily share the same beliefs. And since the dawn of feminism in the eighteenth century, feminism has seen its share of women who actively reject and crusade against its principles: Josephine Dodge and her fellow female members of the National Association Opposed to Women's Suffrage in the early 20th century; Phyllis Schafly campaigning against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s; and the current crop of #womenagainstfeminism tweeters, just to name a few.

Thus it seems mistaken, if not actively misleading, to imply that all romances, just because they are by/for/about women, must be feminist. I'd buy the argument that because they are by/for/about women, romances are more likely to be feminist than other types of genre fiction, perhaps even more than literary fiction. But each individual romance has the potential to be feminist, anti-feminist, or not interested in feminism at all. I've certainly read my share of actively anti-feminist romances, and not just those from the bodice-ripper era. Though they may be less common than in the 1970s and 80s, romances that reject the principles of feminism are still being written, and still being read. Especially books that take it for granted that men and women are, by nature, inherently different, and which portray that difference along a traditionally stereotypical masculine/feminine divide.

Of course, any romance can be read through a feminist lens. I can use the insights of feminism to explore/explain the gender power dynamics of any romance, including those that strike me as particularly anti-feminist. I can point to the ways that one book takes it for granted that men and women are inherently different, or another calls such assumptions into question. I can look at the ways that one romance is built around the idea that that social norms and institutions favor men, or the way another suggests that men and women have equal rights and opportunities. Or even how both ideas can exist, in tension with one another, in the same book. I can even suggest the ways that seemingly anti-feminist images or storylines might be read symbolically, as a protest against gender inequality, or a longing for gender parity (billionaire romances, anyone?).

But using feminism to analyze a romance is not the same as asserting that a particular romance, never mind the entire genre of romance, is feminist. And the assertion that romance, because it is by/for/about women, must always be feminist, is an argument that is only too easy to shoot down.

I know that the speakers at the Boston Public Library panel were talking to a general audience, not to scholars of the genre, and so did not get into the nitty gritty of romance and its critics. And the current level of conventional wisdom about the genre (i.e., romance = bad, silly, or stupid) might find an easy, unsubtle argument to counter stereotypes about the genre imminently useful.

Even so, I worry that romance authors who use the by/for/about women argument to justify romance may end up having those justifications backfire on them. For what will happen when an romance-doubting critic, rather than a romance-friendly one like myself, decides to challenge the assumptions that lie behind the argument?


What catchphrase would/do you use to justify romance, when you encounter a romance denigrator? Or have we moved beyond the need to justify romance's existence altogether?


Photo credits:
Anti-suffragist postcard: Atlas Obscura
Anti-feminist comic: Comically Vintage