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

Judging Our Romance Characters

Earlier this week, the All About Romance blog ran its first "Winsome or Loathsome" column. This new feature will "look at well-known heroines and asked the pointed question—Winsome or Loathsome?" Each column will open with an AAR reviewer giving a brief description of the heroine in question, and the book in which she appears, then the reasons why she has not been "universally loved" by romance readers. Several AAR reviewers will then weigh in with their own judgments; AAR readers will be invited to discuss and debate in response to each post.

Why do romance readers so often judge the likability of romance characters? It's a tendency that's always interested me, because it's not one that literary critics are not trained, or encouraged, to pursue. Maria Konnikova's 2013 Atlantic article, "Do Readers Judge Female Characters More Harshly Than Male Characters," shows how the entire question of wanting your literary characters to behave well is rather ridiculous to the literary cognocenti:

Should we be looking to fiction for friendship material to begin with? Imagine for a moment that someone wrote an impassioned critique of Crime and Punishment on the basis of Raskolnikov's unworthiness, or denounced Macbeth because Lady Macbeth would likely turn out to be one of those frenemies who invites you for a sleepover and takes the opportunity to poison you and ruin your reputation on the chance you survive, or railed at The Inferno because, out of all its major players, hardly a one would pass muster as friendship material. You'd dismiss any of these arguments from the get-go. Judge literature on the merits of its characters-as-my-best-friend material and you lop off the vast majority of the literary canon—and much of modern fiction along with it.... Such a reading misses the point entirely.

But for readers of romance, unlike readers of literary fiction, judging its characters has always seemed part and parcel of the reading process. Why?

AAR already has a successful column, "Dreamboat or Douchebag," devoted to a similar evaluation of male romance novel protagonists, so clearly this is not simply a gendered thing, this judging. Although I'm guessing there have been, in the original column, and will be in the new one, interesting gendered aspects to reviewers' and readers' conclusions. What actions do readers find reprehensible in a heroine? In a hero? Are they similar, or quite different?

I'll be interested to read  future AAR columns, to analyze the gender politics behind the judgments readers make. But today, though, I'm more interested in the larger issue of judging itself. Why do romance readers feel (I'm not sure of the right word to use here)—compelled to? entitled to? deep pleasure in?—making moral, ethical judgments of the characters in our romances? 

Is it because romance readers believe/wish/desire on some level that the characters in the books they read be their friends? And being friends with a protagonist who does something bad makes the reader feel bad/guilty by association?

Is it because their main way of responding to romance protagonists is by identifying with them, and if a character behaves in an unacceptable way, it's like throwing a monkey wrench into the identification process?

Is it because romance, unlike most other genres, focuses so much on emotions, especially on the impact one character's actions can have on another character's feelings? Bad behavior leads to hurt feelings—by condemning a hero or heroine's actions, are readers trying to protect one another from feeling hurt?

Is it because romance heroes and heroines are supposed to be larger, and thus less fallible, than people in real life? So if they aren't, we feel the need to point out their unsuitableness for the role of hero or heroine?

Is it because romance readers are so-often judged (negatively, in large part) for their reading, so they extend this judgmental stance to what they themselves are reading?

I'm also wondering about the line between judging and being judgmental. Is there a meaningful difference? Between making an ethical judgment and conservatively policing the behavior of others?

When you read romances, do you find yourself judging their characters? Why or why not? And to what end?