there's an old anne rice interview circulating on twitter rn that i remember reading ages ago where she makes a pretty salient point about how submissive men who have bdsm fantasies etc will go to a sex worker and basically order the ala carte version of their fantasy to be performed in real life but women don't really have that same option and certainly not at the same point of availability so they read her horny books instead. and honestly that argument has been in the back of my mind every time people get on their high horses about the popularity of booktok romantasy novels or heated rivalry or whatever the "women are horny and we're upset about that" cultural property du jour is ever since. women, especially straight women, have so few outlets for their sexual desires, especially if they have a partner who doesn't share them, and i will never understand why "someone ELSE'S private sexual fantasy makes me uncomfortable and therefore they should not be allowed to engage with it, even if i am in no way being affected by it or even aware of it at all" is such a popular party line among allegedly progressive young people.
The only issue I genuinely ever take with the romantasy tropes is that often they seem to be utterly nonconsensual on the part of the woman, as she is simply accepting (often with a lot of internal monologue about how she’s scared/concerned/upset about) the man treating her in whatever way his fantasy runs, which usually seems to be very dominance-based.
In this world where women are already subjected to the sexual whims of their male partners and their own desires are often ignored or belittled, I very decidedly don’t wish to read about that exact same thing happening to the FMC. Now, if the FMC is living her best life whilst being subjected to these tropes and shadow-daddy MMCs, then good for her!
I just really wish that the FMC’s pleasure and desires would be centered, rather than just assumed to be submissive and then executed as such without first asking.
So yeah, am I asking to see the kink negotiation scene? Hell yeah, I am.
Nope. Because in a book like that, the BOOK ITSELF IS HAPPENING WITHIN THE KINK SCENE. The kink is non-diagetic! It's like saying "I don't like when movies have music that comes from nowhere, I wish they would show us where the musicians are, how do you have an orchestra pit when the heroine is running around the moors in the fog and the rain??" The kink negotiation scene isn't happening between the characters, it's happening implicitly between the reader and the author, and your power to withdraw consent is perpetual and ongoing -- all you have to do is close the book and walk away. You're allowed to do that, and I encourage you to do it.
But for things happening between the characters, if the FMC is scared-AND-horny or whatever, that's what the fantasy is supposed to be and you as the reader are expected to do some basic suspension of disbelief in order to engage with the idea that (just like in a kink scene!) this is not real, this is just for pretend, everyone is safe and no one is actually getting hurt. On account if it is fiction.
Now, if you're not into that, that's perfectly fine, I am not saying you have to be into reading things that you don't like. If you want to see some kink negotiation, that's cool. Sometimes, there are books that are about diagetic kink, and they do include those negotiation scenes. But for non-diagetic kink (aka the thing you're "taking issue" with), I don't think that it's fair to say that it's wrong for those books to be written that way. A woman's desires ARE being centered -- either the author's own desires or what the author is envisioning the reader will desire. If you're not into it--again, that's perfectly fine, it's just not the right book for you or the right genre for you. Read something else.
You missed the point of the first post, @atinymekanie, so let's read it together again:
women, especially straight women, have so few outlets for their sexual desires, especially if they have a partner who doesn't share them, and i will never understand why "someone ELSE'S private sexual fantasy makes me uncomfortable and therefore they should not be allowed to engage with it, even if i am in no way being affected by it or even aware of it at all" is such a popular party line among allegedly progressive young people.
"yes but the only issue i take with romantasy tropes [...]" literally is just "someone else's private sexual fantasy makes me uncomfortable" in different clothing. Do you see what I'm saying? You're doing the same thing. "Yes but when it comes to the thing *I* don't like, people shouldn't do it that way." Not everyone is doing it that way! Read different books!
