Consent in Romance -- The Needs of Culture vs The Needs of Drama
(If you are unfamiliar with the concept of the Needs of Culture vs the Needs of Drama, I explain it here or here. )
Recently, I happened to see a post where some romance writers were bragging about how, in their books, the man never acts romantically until the woman has given consent.
The current idea in Culture is that men should always ask before kissing a woman. So as far as meeting the Needs of Culture, these authors are hitting it out of the park.
But they have raised the Needs of Culture by severely depleting the Needs of Drama.
The problem is: When the hero asks for consent, he comes over as weak.
And this is not just in fiction. I remember being a young woman. This was true in real life, too. The kind of guys who asked if they could kiss you were never worth kissing.
I wish it were different. Asking first sounds like a nice idea…but sadly, life is not as tidy as we would like it to be.
This becomes doubly true in fiction.
Romance heroes are required to be more masculine than real life. That is what readers are looking for when they turn to a romance novel—the emotion produced by the contrast between the feminine and the starkly masculine.
If the author is forced to artificially make the hero act in a less masculine fashion, it takes away from the enjoyment of the story. It’s like telling mystery writers that they had to stop and warn the reader before there could be a murder.
It undercuts the primary force of the story.
And to what end?
What exactly is the Needs of Culture achieving?
It doesn’t help to tell girls that men will always ask for consent first, because it isn’t true. And nothing the girl does will make it true.
It doesn’t change female nature to make us want the guy to ask first—even if a lot of modern females don’t know this. That is beyond the power of mankind, to change our own nature.
A man who doesn’t ask will always seem more powerful, more in control, more determined—and those are the qualities that make men attractive.
And men don’t read these books, not for the most part. So no man is learning how he is supposed to behave by reading modern, culturally correct versions of romance.
So … who is benefitting?
So far as I can tell, it is pure, 100% virtue-seeking on the part of the authors.
Are there readers who prefer if the man asks first before every first kiss? I suspect there are…those who are of the same mindset as the ones who think they are doing some good by writing this way.
But it is not because asking first makes for better romance. It is because their Cultural prejudices give them a thrill when they see them carried out in print. But it is a different kind of thrill from the kind delivered by a romance novel—the kind of holier-than-thou glee one feels upon seeing some pet peeve or bias confirmed in a work of fiction.
The people I feel sorry for are the rest of the readers, the ones who would like to read a romance that does well what romances do—a story about a man who is more of man than those around him winning the heart of a winsome or spirited lass.
This is very funny because in one of my books the heroine, as she's about to do something dangerous, stupid, and necessary, lays one on the hero without asking, then rides off to what she's pretty sure is certain doom. It's very human (she is an elf, this is not the point) really, nerves and opportunity and fear and all those other emotions we feel about people and situations.
That's what romance is about, in real life and in stories. Yeah, people have to play a guessing game and both sides are essentially sending signals in semaphore, which can be hard and can go badly wrong, but it's always been that way and, no matter what rules you put in place, it's always going to be that way. In this realm, at least there is neither RETVRN (I've read Catullus!) or "progress"- there's just people. More than with any other aspect, I think a lack of verisimilitude in the romance can break a story. Either don't include it or stop trying to push an agenda with it and write how people actually are.
A curious thing is that in modern stories, in order to avoid breaking the Narrativist taboos about Male Oppression and Stronk Women, they have the heroine grab the hero and kiss him first. From that point on, he can initiate a kiss or a hug (or more) but not until.
Not so consensual.
Which I mention, because the Consent requirement might be the frilly cover-up that tries to put a friendly, or at least plausibly virtuous, face on the ugly demand to erase the sexes in stories most concerned with the reality of their nature.