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The Gabbers  Amanda"I read anything that holds my attention past the first 100 pages, primarily genre fiction of all types, ’serious’ literature, classics and travelogues." read more...
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Sexual Politics, Patriarchy, and Romance
« What’s love got to do with it? | Home | Bah Humbug! »  If anyone reading this hasn’t been following along with the recent debate over Julie Bindel’s comments on Mills and Boon Romances, I apologize for what will likely sound out of context. If you have been following the discussion and are still, by some miracle, interested in it, then what follows is my own take on Bindel’s article and on some of the issues I think she offers us the chance to reflect on a bit. First I decided to draw from Bindel’s piece what I think is the core of her argument (quoted under fair use):
My purpose in taking this apart is 1) to pull the Romance commentary away from some of the more inflammatory and objectionable language, 2) to suggest that there is, indeed, a Romance paradigm that makes one kind of sense to readers and another to those who are outside of it, 3) to argue that Bindel’s argument is not dismissive or infantilizing of heterosexual women, Romance readers, and Romance authors, and 4) finally, to suggest that we cannot uphold the integrity of Romance by dismissing out of hand arguments like Bindel’s. In all of these scenarios we know perfectly well that the hero and heroine are “meant” to be together. We know they have a happy ending, and that if “all comes right in the end” that they will share a love and a mutual devotion that will make their love invincible and will make us root for their HEA. Readers recognize these scenarios not as real-life depictions, but as long-used set-ups for the exercise and resolution of emotional conflict and sexual tension. The heroine may resist the hero because she is modest or does not want to appear slutty (historicals, anyone?). She may not want to reward the hero’s bullying, even though she knows her surrender to his blatant sexuality is inevitable (Linda Howard’s Mr. Perfect and To Die For). She may see a vulnerability that eclipses his aggression (numerous Anne Stuart novels), or, as Bindel asserts, he may save her from one of so many threats she faces from the villain, from other scoundrels, from her own reckless actions (numerous Romantic Suspense books). Not all Romance novels feature this type of scenario, of course. Jo Goodman’s latest, If His Kiss is Wicked, for example, features a hero who is driven by honor and total respect for the heroine. Jane, of Dear Author, recently reviewed a Sara Craven novel she believes challenges dominant Romance power structures. And even those books that feature force scenarios are not universally loved. Some readers found the power relations in Claiming the Courtesan completely unromantic, while others found the chair scene in Untie My Heart nothing short of sexual blackmail and force. I was once likened to a KKK member for defending Patricia Gaffney’s To Have and To Hold by a reader who was appalled by the depiction of sexual force in the genre, and Eileen Dreyer has explicitly called for the ousting of rape from the Romance genre. So even within the Romance community there is controversy over this paradigm that Bindel identifies. So what’s offensive? Would any of us argue with the assertion that in real life scenarios like the one in Stuart’s Into The Fire would come across as both threatening and potentially violent? Would any of us counsel our friends or sisters or mothers or daughters to hang in there with men who did half the stuff some of the most popular Romance heroes get away with? So how would readers who have read fewer than 20 Romances and who actively believe that women are the ongoing victims of patriarchal oppression likely to view these scenes? Perhaps in the same way that, say, a victim of rape or an ER trauma nurse (i.e. Eileen Dreyer) who sees many victims of domestic violence might read them – especially if they are not familiar with and accepting of the paradigm? I suspect that what readers are recoiling from is the intimation that as women we are complicit in our own oppression by reading and writing books featuring these sexually aggressive scenarios, by loving heroes who are “capable of rape” even if they don’t carry it out. I think there are two layers here that we have to deal with. First the assertion that Romance is full of “patriarchal propaganda” and second that women are complicit in it. I disagree with the first assertion because I believe that if the genre characterizes anything, it’s relationships, including the shifting of power back and forth between the hero and heroine. He might have the physical strength, but she has the emotional steadiness and patience to understand his torment. Whether or not these strengths are coded as male and female might be the basis of an interesting debate, but I would still argue that many Romances, if not most, feature some sort of negotiation of different kinds of power. As to the second assertion, let’s say for a minute that Bindel is correct, that women are perpetuating patriarchal assumptions and power by reading and writing Romance and that the very nature of heterosexual sex – penetration and acceptance – makes the woman vulnerable and the male dominant. Like the description in Louise Allen’s Virgin Slave, Barbarian King where she felt her body accept him as a scabbard accepts the sword it was made for. What would it mean for us to be complicit in that? I think Bindel gives the answer in her description of the “gender dance” she describes, where the heroine is “fed up” and refuses “to comply” with the hero, who, at that point, must force her to some degree to accept him as a viable sexual and romantic partner. I don’t see any indication in Bindel’s argument that the heroine submits because she is stupid or weak. She is “fed up,” indicating an awareness of his jerky behavior. But he pushes her into recognizing both her sexual bond with him and his deeper vulnerabilities. At which point she falls in love with him, because the dictates of heterosexual love are that women “are required” to love and desire those who represent society’s power – the patriarchy. And in Romance the heroine really has no choice, does she – she is destined by the nature of the genre to end up with the hero regardless of what occurs between them. What Romance readers may see as part of the ‘fated to mate’ scenario in the genre Bindel sees as part of heterosexual love in a patriarchal society, and, I would argue, in the same way we do not see Romance heroines as weak because they must love the hero, nor does Bindel see women as weak for falling in love with men. She sees the paradigms as compatible, whereas many of us who read Romance see one or both differently. I realize that the term “patriarchy” is amorphous and confusing, but it is most often seen in the same sense as the word “infrastructure” – the unseen building blocks upon which something (in this case society) is built. It’s all the seemingly invisible ways that women end up doing more housework and childcare even though they often work as many or more hours outside the home as men. Or the way women who take time off for children have to start at the bottom of the corporate ladder in most, if not all, male dominated professions. Or the way women still earn a lower average wage than men. Or the way women are still suspect in rape trials, and until quite recently, had to show active physical resistance to even be able to claim rape. Now I disagree with Bindel’s assessment of society, heterosexual sex and love, and Romance. But I think she raises some interesting questions in her observation that the sexual dynamics in a good deal of Romance persist even as women’s social roles change. Take, for example, the idea that the forced seduction scenario is a fantasy experienced by the woman who is feeling overwhelmed with responsibility. Taking a step back, where are those responsibilities coming from? Couldn’t you argue that women are often overburdened with responsibility because for all the strides we’ve made professionally, we still have most of the charge of home and hearth, as well? And couldn’t you argue that this is a condition of patriarchal privilege? Or let’s take Bindel’s idea that Romance is “patriarchal propaganda.” How is that any different than arguing that Romance is inherently feminist or empowering – except in the direction of influence, of course. And if we say that Romance has no influence at all, that it’s only entertainment, then why are some of the same fantasies employed over and over and over again? Why are certain scenarios so popular that whole lines are created around them? And how can readers have such strong opinions about things they do and don’t like in the genre if they hold no real significance? Why can’t the heroine have had a thousand lovers, and why can’t the hero be 4’10” tall? Why do we take so personally our Romance likes and dislikes? Aren’t there miles of difference between saying that Romance sends messages like x-rays to reader minds and saying that Romance is a socially significant genre because it’s so focused on love and sexuality? I think it’s a terrible shame that arguments like Bindel’s are often so universalist. Even her qualification of “some women” when talking about those who have a terrible self-image leading to abusive relationships with men seems to get buried under the inflammatory rhetoric and ridiculous over-generalized assertions. But if we just look at what she’s identified in Romance, and the fact that it is a paradigm I think all Romance readers can recognize in the genre, isn’t it interesting that she could so clearly outline that scenario on such a small sampling of books and blurbs? That she could get those author quotes so easily to support her position (even if one disagrees with her overall assessment)? I read the values of both society and the genre differently than Bindel does, but I find the ease with which she identified the “gender dance” paradigm a check on the ease with which I now take that paradigm for granted in the genre. Not because I think it’s negatively influencing me or promoting patriarchal power, but because its ubiquity seems so indicative of all the energy we human beings put into our relationships, and especially how much women give to the contemplation and negotiation of every level and type of relationship. For that reason alone, I think we are trying to tell ourselves something in these novels. What that is, and why we feel so compelled to rehearse these scenarios over and over is not answerable from a single perspective, of course. But perhaps Bindel is reminding us that if we didn’t think this genre was important to begin with, we wouldn’t feel so passionate about defending it. This entry was posted by Robin on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 6:00 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. 12 Responses to “Sexual Politics, Patriarchy, and Romance”Leave a Comment |
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December 17th, 2007 at 10:30 am
Take, for example, the idea that the forced seduction scenario is a fantasy experienced by the woman who is feeling overwhelmed with responsibility. Taking a step back, where are those responsibilities coming from?
Can I take another step back? This idea has always sounded very convoluted to me, and I think one could almost read it as a way to yet again deny women’s sexuality.
According to this idea, although the female reader appears to be reading about sex, that’s just a way of sublimating her real desires, which are to have less housework to do, no childcare problems, and fewer deadlines and pressures at work. Thus the female reader doesn’t have rape fantasies, or forced seduction fantasies. What she has are housework fantasies, peace-and-tranquility fantasies and fantasies about the ideal job! Which, of course is so much more feminine than the idea that she might just like reading about sex.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m staying suspicious of that explanation for forced seductions until someone can explain it to me a little more fully.
December 17th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Let me add, with you (Laura), that there is a long pre-history to the “forced seduction” topos. The notion that desire and / or love take us by force, as an assault or conquest, goes back at least to Sappho:
Fragment 65
I
Percussion, salt and honey,
A quivering in the thighs;
He shakes me all over again,
Eros who cannot be thrown,
Who stalks on all fours
Like a beast.
Fragment 100
Eros weaver of myths
Eros sweet and bitter
Eros bringer of pain
–and it shows up in Dante and Petrarch as the way love seizes men, rather than women: by stealth, in ambush, and so on.
I don’t want to say that these fantasies have no connection to social structures. That would be to go to Bindel’s extreme of arguing that sexuality is ENTIRELY a social construct, as she did very unconvincingly in another piece for the Guardian. (The link is over in the comments to our Bindel brief on Teach Me Tonight.) Rather, I’d say any fantasy this enduring will have multiple sources, all of which are at an author’s disposal when he or she writes such a scene, successfully or not as the case may be.
In short, although I agree with you that “we are trying to tell ourselves something in these novels,” and even in these scenes, I don’t think that “something” is necessarily or uniformly something about patriarchy.
December 17th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Laura:
This idea has always sounded very convoluted to me, and I think one could almost read it as a way to yet again deny women’s sexuality.
Well, I think it became a popular explanation because the presence of rape fantasies in women’s literature seemed to track along with the increase in women’s work and family responsibilities. To be honest, I’ve never been convinced of its validity either, but on the other hand, I DO think these fantasies are socially constructed (more on that in my answer to Eric’s comment). And clearly this has become a commonly accepted explanation. So for the purpose of my piece, I wanted to point out that the explanation doesn’t, IMO, do away with the patriarchal power problem. But you’ve raised another issue, which is the question of whether the rape fantasy is really a sexual fantasy or whether it’s displacing something else. And I don’t know how much work has been done on that question. I’m obviously not one of those people who thinks we should just accept that it’s a fantasy and move on, but I’m also skeptical of the idea that there’s one coherent reason that the rape fantasy is so popular. Part of me truly believes that it’s SO socially codified that it’s virtually impossible to see it as anything but natural to some degree (i.e. that we’ve been fully interpellated by the ideological presumptions that give birth to it). But it would be difficult to convince me at this point that this fantasy would make sense outside of a socialized context. Or that in some way it isn’t about power and the exchange of power.
Eric:
I’d say any fantasy this enduring will have multiple sources, all of which are at an author’s disposal when he or she writes such a scene, successfully or not as the case may be.
Think, for example, of Leda and the Swan, and how the rape/seduction myth is connected to the genesis of society and the relationship between the human and the divine. At some point, I think, the question of whether certain things are completely socially constructed or not is unresolvable because we can only understand them within the context of society, so in a certain sense we create or recreate them at the moment of comprehension/interpretation.
But back to the Bindel debate, I wanted to respond to your question on TMT about whether someone like Bindel, who claims she has made a conscious political choice to shun heterosexuality can write objectively about something like Romance. Obviously the answer is no, but I’d argue that none of us can, really. Although I’m sure you anticipated that response and are really talking more about whether Bindel’s admitted bias makes her reading of Romance rigged from the start, so to speak, which I think it does. But that’s one more reason why I think her comments are not meant to be dismissive of women or of Romance readers and authors.
If she believes that heterosexual women are fundamentally required to submit to a type of love that is symbolized by oppression, then outside of the choice she makes, what other choice do women have in her world view? Bindel must even recognize that she’s hardly escaped the patriarchy in her own sexual rebellion (to what degree does the rebel help reinforce the norm?). Now I’d argue that there are all sorts of problems with Bindel’s position, not the least of which is that there’s a fine line between identifying oppression and becoming oppressive with one’s own declarations of disempowerment by a nearly omnipotent social construct. But to me the extremity of Bindel’s position provides a good anchor from which to backtrack a bit into a more moderate exploration of the power relations she’s so sensitive to.
Bottom line, I think Bindel’s right in that Romance novels contain certain paradigms that dramatize sexual politics and power exchanges between lovers (and it would be interesting to read gay Romance within the Bindel paradigm, IMO). How those paradigms play out in individual books is where the action is, IMO. And as a reader, I tend to gravitate toward books that *seem* more conscious of the nuances of the man-woman dynamic. That doesn’t mean I want a perfectly “equal” situation, because some of my favorite books are those that struggle with very difficult power imbalances and all sorts of attendant anxieties. In that vein, I’m so looking forward to seeing how others find the Louise Allen book we’re reading for next month and whether their baseline reader reactions match mine.
In short, although I agree with you that “we are trying to tell ourselves something in these novels,” and even in these scenes, I don’t think that “something” is necessarily or uniformly something about patriarchy.
Agreed. But I would like to think that the culture of Romance can withstand the scrutiny of critical reading without folding in on itself in self-defense.
December 17th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
the presence of rape fantasies in women’s literature seemed to track along with the increase in women’s work and family responsibilities
I’m not sure, I mean, most women have always had lots of responsibility and working class women have always had to work hard. There’s maybe some correlation with the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s, though?
we’ve been fully interpellated by the ideological presumptions that give birth to it
Maybe, but as you pointed out in your original post, not everyone enjoys reading about rapes in romance, and in fact the genre has tended to move away from the old-style rapist hero. And while there are many heroes who are “tamed” by the heroine and relationships in which the couple are negotiating a power imbalance, there are also many other romances in which this isn’t an issue. So I don’t see this as something that all romance readers fantasise about/want to read about. Once again I’m wary of generalising, because although I would agree that there are probably cultural factors which underpin the prevalence of this theme in the genre, I don’t think everyone responds to the themes in the same way, and we’ve all been shaped by our social context in different ways. Also, we don’t all come from the same social context, and I suspect that that will be reflected in differences in reading choices. Cookson-type sagas seem to have been much more popular in the UK relative to romance, for example, compared to the US.
December 17th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Laura:
I’m not sure, I mean, most women have always had lots of responsibility and working class women have always had to work hard. There’s maybe some correlation with the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s, though?
That’s what I meant to say, Laura, but didn’t finish the thought (posting in a hurry). But actually, the class issue is interesting because as much as the fantasy seems to be universalized in its interpretation, I wonder if that’s really true. It’s been explicitly tied to the sexual revolution as it impacted the public expansion of women’s roles, as well as to the so-called “liberation” of the women’s rights movement. But what about women who have traditionally occupied lower social classes who haven’t necessarily received the same benefits from the women’s movement as, say, white middle and upper class women.
Maybe, but as you pointed out in your original post, not everyone enjoys reading about rapes in romance, and in fact the genre has tended to move away from the old-style rapist hero.
I wasn’t trying to suggest that all women respond to or find the fantasy appealing, but merely that in those societies that recognize it and comprehend it as fantasy that we do so because it’s been fully codified in recognizable terms. Thus whether it’s “natural” (biological or pre-social or whatever) or socially constructed becomes kind of a moot issue because we can really only comprehend the rape fantasy from within our particular social structure. So some will argue that it’s pre-social while others will argue that it’s socially-constructed, but neither position is provable, IMO. But as a society we’ve come to see it as beyond culture to some degree, even though our expression of that idea is itself socially constructed. I realize it sounds circular, but to me it comes down to the idea that regardless of the genesis of the rape fantasy it’s significance has become contextualized by social relations, as have most gender roles and relationships, IMO. So we always, IMO, need to be paying attention to cultural context because it acts as our interpretive filter even as we’re claiming something lies outside of it. That individuals react differently within a certain cultural filter doesn’t, IMO, eliminate the social analysis; it only reminds of us the role of hybridization in social relationships and the importance of adaptation and variation.
December 18th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
In the end, Robin, I’m left feeling like there’s no there there, or at least not much. You’re much more convincing than Bindel was, but you’ve mostly convinced me that we know (at least I know) very little about the real history or substance or appeal of this fantasy, or of this range of fantasies (as I suspect that a close look would show). We have a certain amount of speculation in hand, but not a lot of substance yet. I’d love to see some serious thought go into this topic, but Bindel clearly isn’t the woman to do it. In fact, it’s going to take a lot of people doing a lot of work to sort out this particular meme, on its own or in particular cases.
What comes through most powerfully from Bindel–and not, I’d add, from you–is anger at, and frustration with, and disappointment in the millions of women who don’t feel the same way she does. And I must say, I found her piece about the social construction of sexual desire entirely unconvincing. You impress me as a thinker, but she doesn’t, or at least she hasn’t yet!
December 19th, 2007 at 1:37 am
Woohoo! Grading’s finally done, so I can read and comment, hopefully intelligently (although I might want to wait for tomorrow for that last requirement).
Robin said: “Bottom line, I think Bindel’s right in that Romance novels contain certain paradigms that dramatize sexual politics and power exchanges between lovers (and it would be interesting to read gay Romance within the Bindel paradigm, IMO). How those paradigms play out in individual books is where the action is, IMO. And as a reader, I tend to gravitate toward books that *seem* more conscious of the nuances of the man-woman dynamic. That doesn’t mean I want a perfectly “equal” situation, because some of my favorite books are those that struggle with very difficult power imbalances and all sorts of attendant anxieties.”
I was struck by this, because I think that this speaks to the popularity of the overbearing hero, in that the books’ struggles with power imbalances are precisely what attract the readers, whether they’re conscious of it or not. I absolutely think Romances represent our attempts to work through some of the more threatening aspects of power imbalances in patriarchal society. I just get frustrated when people like Bindel then assume that this means that we’re all submitting to “patriarchy” and are helplessly lost–even when it’s “not our fault” that we’re so taken in.
And I guess I have a harder time separating what is good–or at least thought-provoking–about her argument from “misogynistic hate speech.”
December 19th, 2007 at 6:02 am
[...] If you want to read the Bindel Brief, along with a paragraph by paragraph commentary, swing by Teach Me Tonight. The beat goes on this week at Access Romance, and will surface again in January’s Internet Event of Stupendous Proportions on Louise Allen’s Harlequin Historical, Virgin Slave, Barbarian King. [...]
December 19th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Eric, you have to be careful in citing examples from classical literature when discussing Romance. As I mentioned over on TMT, what we think of as “romantic” today comes from medieval literature; in classical times, passionate love was considered a form of madness, generally inflicted by the gods, usually for reasons of their own–and the Sappho quotes are in line with this. Venus caused Dido to fall madly in love with Aeneas because she wanted the queen’s help for her refugee son; and in the Hippolytus of Euripedes, Aphrodite, angered because Theseus’s son by the Amazon queen has scorned her in his devotion to Artemis, causes his stepmother Phaedra to fall passionately in love with him, which eventually leads to both his death and hers. And Dido, of course, committed suicide when Aeneas left her. On the whole, it was regarded as a negative thing, except in lyric poetry.
December 19th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
And in the Middle Ages medical doctors, following the ancient tradition, also thought of love as a form of madness.
I’m not sure this invalidates Eric’s point, though, which seems to be about how love can sweep people away against their will/reason.
December 19th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
But the point, as I understood it, was that from the Romance point of view, this being swept away was a positive thing, whereas in earlier examples (including non-courtly medieval discussions), it was generally considered a bad thing.
December 20th, 2007 at 3:04 am
Eric:
What comes through most powerfully from Bindel–and not, I’d add, from you–is anger at, and frustration with, and disappointment in the millions of women who don’t feel the same way she does.
Definitely, Eric, and I think this comes from the fact that she’s basically an activist, and therefore tends to work in over the top images and arguments. I kind of understand that type, because I knew a woman who was an incredible horse activist, and while she was infuriating on a personal level, it was exactly those extremist ideas that got important laws changed on behalf of the humane treatment of horses. I see Bindel as more on that activist side, which means that even though I think she’s wrong about Romance, I’m in great sympathy with her larger project of fighting for female victims of violence (in the US, for example, women often kill their batterers in a way that opts them out of a self-defense plea, meaning they spent ridiculous amounts of time in prison. Also, the number one cause of death for pregnant women is homicide, and statistics suggest that while it is now 1 out of 3 women who will experience some sort of domestic violence, that number is expected to clime to 1 out of 2). Now, if she came over here and started accusing women of being sexist or of other stuff, I’d probably go into smack down mode pretty quickly, lol. But based on what she did say and how I see her overall political agenda, I’m more sympathetic than hostile to her. In the terms of your vegan example on RtB, I might not ask a vegan to review a steak house, but I might get some valuable information from the vegan about why eating meat is detrimental to my health and the ethical mandates of humane animal treatment.
In fact, it’s going to take a lot of people doing a lot of work to sort out this particular meme, on its own or in particular cases.
OMG, yes. Whenever the rape in Romance topic is brought up, a few names are advanced — Nancy Friday, for example — as research references on the rape fantasy. Which is fabulous, because IMO women should not in any way feel guilty over a sexual fantasy that seems as old as society. But I still think we need to go further, because as you say, we don’t know everything we need to know. For example, we don’t always separate out different portrayals of sexual force in the genre. IMO not every portrayal of sexual force is a “rape fantasy” — and even those scenes some readers see as fantasy are not to others. To me, this is an enormous topic, and one of enormous importance for the genre, so I keep pushing at it, hoping we can eventually get more people to take a closer look at it from a critical perspective.
Sarah:
I was struck by this, because I think that this speaks to the popularity of the overbearing hero, in that the books’ struggles with power imbalances are precisely what attract the readers, whether they’re conscious of it or not. I absolutely think Romances represent our attempts to work through some of the more threatening aspects of power imbalances in patriarchal society. I just get frustrated when people like Bindel then assume that this means that we’re all submitting to “patriarchy” and are helplessly lost–even when it’s “not our fault” that we’re so taken in.
ITA with your insight that Romance readers are attracted to the power imbalances, and especially to their resolution.
I think, though, that Bindel’s version of first wave feminism isn’t so much an indictment of women as being “taken in” but rather overpowered by a social infrastructure that has defined most of our social terms and relationships. Maybe I’m splitting hairs, here, but I think I’m stuck on this because it seems to me that so much that is present in the genre has come to be there unconsciously, or through a mimetic process we all sort of take for granted. Which for me means that we’re not being “taken in” by certain patriarchal assumptions, but rather we aren’t looking closely enough at certain things, or being mindful of particular points, either because we think it’s only entertainment or because we assume everything is pro-woman or because we don’t want to find negative things in a genre we love, etc. So maybe we’re missing some stuff that’s there in the genre that we really don’t want there, but don’t recognize because we’re looking at other stuff.
Sort of like this assertion from the Globe and Mail article SB Sarah posted today: Valenti, meanwhile, posits that a commercial and tabloid culture that encourages women to obsess about their so-called imperfections is a dangerous distraction from bigger issues, such as the rollback of reproductive rights in the United States.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071215.wschneller1215/BNStory/Entertainment/
talpianna: I think you’re getting at the ambivalent relationship the Romance genre has to passion. On the one hand it’s the foundation of Romantic love, but on the other hand it can be dangerous and uncontrollable — a curse rather than the rapture. My own opinion is that the passion, generally embodied in the hero, must be “tamed” and “domesticated” — made socially productive and channeled into family and children to keep society from exploding under the force of the irrational forces of passion. Sort of like the balance Euripides tries to draw in The Bacchae (the Apollo-Dionysus dynamic).