#'normalization'

We're going back to anti-theater levels of catastrophizing about fiction. :/

*Pinches bridge of nose*

Oh look, it's the same old anti-romance genre talking points, but the Zoomers are at it again with carrying on what the anti-novel crowd started.

According to this person's logic, women who wrote/enjoyed bodice rippers "endorsed" kidnapping, rape, women staying with their rapists, abuse, confinement, cheating, women having less rights than men and belonging to their husbands (bodice rippers romanticize [def: to treat in an idealized or unrealistic way] the time periods they're set in; doesn't mean women want to go back to those times!), never divorcing, and men not respecting women's boundaries.

No, they didn't.

I'm just gonna leave this here, and peace out:

Dangerous Men & Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance (1992)

[Source: The Backlash Against America’s Most Popular Novelist Is Way Less Satisfying Than I’d Hoped!]

• The Pamela/Mr. B pairing. Fun fact: there was merchandise inspired by the book, such as Pamela motifs on teacups and fans. Playing cards, too.

• Shipping female characters with villains who severly wronged them. Here's an example from way back in the 18th century: some of the people who read Samuel Richardson's "Clarissa" wanted the titular character to end up with Robert Lovelace. They even wrote their own endings in response to the actual one.

• The Jane/Rochester pairing

• The Catherine/Heathcliff pairing

• The Erik/Christine pairing. Fans made them canon outside of the original novel. :)

• The Sheik by H.M. Hull (1919)

• The Sheik movie with Rudolph Valentino

• Sheik romances (known for the MMC abducting FMC) 

• Harlequin romances published in the 1970s–1980s which had cruel, alpha male heroes (authors of note: Violet Winspear, Charlotte Lamb, Robyn Donald, and Penny Jordan)

• The whole bodice ripper era of romance that lasted from the 70s to the 90s (authors of note: Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, Rosemary Rogers, Johanna Lindsey, and Beatrice Small).

• Linda Howard books  

• Telenovelas

• Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause (1990)

• The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton (1994 – Han kidnaps Leia after shooting her with a mind-control gun. For realsies.)

• Writing/reading dark shippy fanfiction (e.g., abuse between the MCs); fandom-goers were writing said stories when people still shared fics through zines.

• The Buffy/Spike pairing

• The Bridgerton novel series

Aaaand so on. These pre-2005 examples are just the tip of the iceberg.

Like "romanticize," certain individuals seem to think glorifying something from fictional media – say, a toxic ship – equals "normalizing" its problematic elements irl, despite the fact fiction cannot validate behavior that's already frowned upon by society.

Otherwise, we wouldn't take much issue with gun violence if the violence-glorifying video games we played since our childhood were actually capable of turning us violent.

It just occurred to me that if fiction affected reality the way the fanpol claim, then aren't news stories about horrible crimes even worse? Is the media making us all into terrorists by covering ISIS? Isn't raising awareness of domestic abuse only normalizing it? Shouldn't we ban things that might trigger or badly influence people from TV, which literal babies will definitely see?

In all seriousness, the more I think about it, the more it occurs to me how much REAL stories about evil things tend to work against those evils. Like the Vietnam War famously got so much opposition because it was all televised. For the first time people saw the pain of war's victims on both sides. And that wasn't the intent! The news was supposed to be pro America and anti Commie. Nevermind needing to be explicitly told hurting people is bad, apparently we dislike it even when we're told its for everyone's good!

Like even if you can't distinguish fiction from reality, almost any human being who sees someone suffer empathizes. In fact, the Jaws effect is the perfect example. We empathized with humans who got hurt. And what stopped it? Stories about sharks being hurt by people.