Forced seduction. Bodice Rippers. Blackmail. Coercion. Stalking. Dominance.
Romance novels are filled with rape that isn’t called rape. If she says no, and he keeps forcing her into sex, that’s not forced seduction. That’s rape. If he tells her that she has to have sex with him or he’ll reveal a secret she’s been keeping, that’s rape. If he follows her, tells her that she doesn’t know what she’s doing, that they’re meant to be together, then has sex with her despite protests, that’s rape.
It’s a loaded word, and it’s a scary fetish, and calling it something fluffier makes a whole lot of women a whole lot more comfortable enjoying it, but it’s dangerous to confuse that line of what’s rape and what’s romantic.
Maybe it’s a business decision. PayPal, Visa and MasterCard are still squabbling out the details of what ‘legal fiction’ means, especially in how it pertains to erotica. But most forced seductions occur in Romance – a subset of fiction that isn’t affected in the same way erotica is.
Calling it something other than what it is for purely squeamish reasons. Women wouldn’t buy a book where a man rapes the heroine, but they will buy a book where he coerces her using his charisma, charms and good looks to do something she doesn’t want to do.
Doesn’t this hurt and confuse women who were in these scenarios? The women who struggle to make the legal system believe them – that this was rape? We already have so many issues with trying to make rape – and rape victims – fit into our box, and this idea of forced seduction as being romantic can’t be helping.
Many women who enjoy the genre defend it by saying that the woman’s mind changes, at some point, and desire wins over and that’s the crucial difference, and that’s fair enough – but when does this change happen? It depends on the book. Sometimes it’s when they’re kissing. Sometimes it’s during foreplay. Sometimes it’s during sex. Sometimes it’s after the sex. Everything that came before? That was rape or sexual assault.
And if he doesn’t know her mind changed? That opens up another whole murky field of him not knowing he (now) has consent.
The genre of romance hails from an era when it was totally unacceptable for a woman to want sex. And since the attitude still persists, so do the story conventions that let the woman have sex without her initiating it in any way and in fact resisting it, because that’s what good girls do. All the benefits of sex without any of the responsibility of free will – apparently hot to some.
I can totally understand the hotness of the lack of responsibility! A very good point.