In defense of dark romance

I want to talk about something I've been noticing in the book community and it's how people who don't read dark romance tend to talk about and criticize dark romance.

Dark romance, if you didn't know, is a subgenre of romance that tends to explore "darker" themes: so it might have dub-con, or non-con, or morally ambiguous leads, or taboo relationships that maybe don't fit into the "lighter" archetypes of romances on the other end of the tonal spectrum.

There are a lot of valid criticism that can be-- and should be-- had with dark romance novels. Obviously, when people decide to tackle weightier subjects, there's some responsibility on behalf of the creator to handle those subjects well. Failing to do so doesn't necessarily make them a bad person (more on that), but it can lead to what is-- subjectively-- a bad book.

But what I've been seeing more and more is this sort of moral grandstanding: that people who read dark romance novels are being conditioned to fail at having healthy relationships because they are romanticizing "toxic" relationships that will lead to a failure to recognize potential red flags in romantic partners.

And I'm sorry, but WHAT?

The sad thing is, while I'm sure some of these critics mean well, what this sort of bad faith criticism actually demonstrates is internalized misogyny. It's shifting the blame, first of all, from abusive partners to the people who read these books and "set themselves up for failure." Which is a huge NO. Abusers cause abuse. Not the victims and certainly not the romance novels they read.

Second of all, romance as a genre is seen as the domain of women, queer, and femme-presenting people, so it's kind of sus that the burden of this "you are what you read" mentality would fall upon their shoulders. Nobody is checking up on the horror or thriller readers to see if reading all those books about vampires and dead bodies is conditioning them to be ghouls and murderers, so I fail to see why reading a dark romance novel would suddenly turn someone off the path of moral goodness.

Third of all, since when is it feminist to police what and how women and femme people read? If you're asking people how they can be feminist and read romance novels with dark themes, maybe you should take a look in the mirror and ask yourself: how can I call myself a feminist while denying people their agency?

Fourth of all, the act of reading demonstrates consent in the fullest. You pick up the books you choose to read and if it gets to be too much you can put it down. Also, unlike real life, characters in romance novels are guaranteed a happy ending, so unlike real life, there's comfort in knowing that the characters you're reading about can go through hell and back and still have a happily ever after.

It's very frustrating as someone who identifies as a feminist, who writes and reads these types of novels, to see the genre belittled by people who think they're doing some good but instead are contributing to the very societal infrastructures they're fighting against. I think this stems from a failure to understand that authors and readers can write and read about things that they don't endorse, and also from a sort of in-group bias that leads to people thinking that people who aren't exactly like them can't possibly share their values.

Romance, like feminism, comes in all kinds of flavors, and I think it's important to keep in mind that just because you personally don't like something, that doesn't necessarily make it immoral.*

*Otherwise, all motorcycle club romances would officially be illegal because I really can't stand that genre. :P