What Rough Beast....

I'm slowly dragging myself towards creative writing again... one small slouch at a time. It's gonna take a while, I think, so bear with me. 

I've been thinking about feminist sexytime romance... so much of what we see is humorless, as though feminists are truly not interested in romance. This is letting others define it for us. Which is not good, nope. A lot of the time if you look up "romance" it either shows stereotypical images of woman's likes and dislikes as though we still only dig housework (the idea that feminist love stories are men washing dishes, because sure, that's the only frame of reference we have). I was thinking also about how many women flooded the theaters when Magic Mike (both 1 & 2) came out-- and the types of imagery those very sexy guys used to appeal to women. In the 70s, there was the great debate about sexuality and feminism where a lot of folks argued that heteronormative sexuality and romance was inherently oppressive to women. 

And I disagree. It is if only men write it for us. It is if we write it using the old tropes that were defined hundreds of years ago, only. It doesn't have to be, though. 

I think there's a place for romantic stories that have feminist protagonists-- both male and female. There have been some strides made in popular culture, but it's still the same old romcom tropes of the "ugly girl" who takes off her glasses and suddenly is hot, suddenly loves the difficult guy that she kind of hates, too. (I see you, all Sandra Bullock and Katherine Heigel movies). 

What does feminist romance of a sexy sort look like to you? It's definitely not poorly researched 50 Shades style work, but might include elements that appealed to the people who ate that series up with a spoon. 

I dunno. But I'm thinking a lot about this issue right now, and want to get back to my undead cyborg story. It's just hard shifting from academic teacher-y stuff back to the fun, "for me" stuff.