So I finally got my hands on a copy of the latest Romance Writer’s Report (The monthly industry publication put out by RWA), so I could see what all the huhbub was about Jennifer Crusie’s agent recommendations. ::shrug:: To each her own. I have a friend who was insistent upon getting a New York agent too, and now she regrets that she wasn’t more insistent upon getting an agent she actually likes. To each her own. I don’t agree with everything Jenny Crusie says by a long shot (she has a strange prejudice against prologues, epilogues and flashbacks), but she always presents her arguments in a well-researched, academic manner, and I can’t fault her for the fact that academically, we don’t always see eye-to-eye. So that’s fine. Don’t agree with it (my agent has offices in Georgia and L.A. and is doing quite well, thank you very much), but it’s fine.
Frankly, if I was going to be offended by something, it would probably be the interview with Superromance author K.N. Casper. That was, without a doubt, one of the silliest, most sexist, most pointless articles I’ve ever seen the RWR publish. I honestly believe it set the cause of gender equality back a good ten years. It jumped off from the patently false and ridiculous assumption that “it’s weird” for men to write romances and even went so far as to actually say that women are the keepers of emotions and emotional depth and that it must be so difficult for Mr. Casper to access that for his books.
WHAT THE F—?
A few weeks ago, at Romancing the Blog, a lone male writer (William LAmbert) poked his head out from under the covers to comment on this very topic:
Besides which, romances are widely and heartily promoted as books by women for women, along with the supplemental (and I’ve always thought denigrading) illusion that any woman, between diapers and cooking, if she just puts her mind to it, can write a romance. Any book by a man for women goes against those expensively hard-won and long-running promotional campaigns.
Man’s got a point there (and it’s the reason that, even though I’m against this whole “definition of romance” nonsense that RWA is after — um, hello? Romance is between a man and a woman? I know of plenty of romances that aren’t! — I’m also against hte idea of calling it “Women’s Fiction Writers of America” — we write in a genre, not for a gender-specific audience). In this business, he’s had to defend not only his right but also his ability to tell a love story. A love storyt hat, if you are to believe RWA, he always has a fifty percent role in making!
And this is not the first time I’ve seen this opinion expressed as if it was gospel truth. A scant few days ago, there was a conversation on the HQN thread of eHarlequin (always a popular gathering place for the prejudiced and clueless of the romance industry), where an aspiring male writer introduced himself with “Dear Editor, I know it’s weird to think a man could write romance…”
No! No it’s not! Stop saying shit like that! The more you say it, the more idiots like the interviewer of the RWR will believe it and think she can present it as the natural assumption which weary male romance authors will then have to defend themselves against. I can very easily compare this to the bodice-ripper paradigm. People said it so often and for so long that now people and the media think it’s ACCEPTABLE to say it. It’s acceptable to make fun of romance without the slightest reasoning. It’s acceptable to call books with no sign of a bodice, let alone a ripped one, “bodice rippers.” I wrote an artcile about a romance writer back in the day, and my editor put bodice-ripper in the text, because he argued that there was no other way for the standard reader to access what I was talking about. (Oddly enough, the premise of the article is that the just-launched Blaze series was sexier than any Harlequin series that had come before it, so saying that the books weren’t bodice rippers was a little weird.) My friend Kristen Billerbeck writes Christian chick lit set in Silicon Valley and an article about her used the phrase Bodice-ripper as a comparison. That’s about as valid a comparison as if they’d used supernatural horror novels.
So now the poor male romance writers have to first defend their ability to write said novels, then defend the value of the novel itself! DO you see what a horrible situation we’re setting up?
Why in the world would we think that men have any less of a natural ability to read and enjoy a love story? An excessively short (but it gets the job done) list of men who write and have written romance (whether they call it that or not):
The Tony part of Tori Carrington
James Patterson
Nicholas Sparks
William Frickin’ Shakespeare
Now, I will sit back and let you tell me how hard it was for Bill to access the depth of human emotion, since that’s women’s work. No, go ahead, I’ll wait.
Let’s get one thing straight here, one thing that’s way, way, WAY more important than debating whether or not an agent should live in Brooklyn and take the subway to Manhattan every day.
Men and women have equal capacity for artistic and intellectual achievement. Women and men can be rocket scientists and romance writers. Period.
Shame on you, RWR, for publishing sexist nonsense in your magazine as if it was our organization’s official position on the matter. Write on, K.N. Casper.
June 1st, 2005 at 11:24 am
I found the article rather odd considering that Harold Lowry, a man who just happens to write romance was once President of RWA. The days when Tom Huff had to write romances as Jennifer Wilde are long gone. Harlequin just hired two guys as editorial assistants. There should be nothing bizarre about guys writing romance or the idea that women do it better (although Nicholas Sparks said the opposite, that men write romance better than women). One of the most famous books of the last century was a book called Love Story by a guy!
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June 1st, 2005 at 11:53 am
I think it’s also interesting that probably one of the very top selling romance writers of today is Nicholas Sparks. He also made an odd comment I thought, on how he chose to write love stories. In his view, suspense was well tapped, and all the other genres, but there was ‘an opening’ for someone to write strong love stories, so he purposely went there. It worked, quite well. But, I just found it odd, because it seems to me that he is in one of the most crowded genres, there’s plenty of love stories, romance out there. Yet, he still stands out.
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June 1st, 2005 at 12:37 pm
I completely agree about the interview in the RWR. I didn’t at all like the way it was presented. But let’s look at some facts.
–More women than men read books sold as romance.
–More women than men write books sold as romance.
Those aren’t value judgments or opinions, just truth. Now, I’ve always jumped on discussions that excluded men from the genre–I even had a letter published in the RWR about it! Half my father-in-law’s reading is romance, and not just my books. Ted Johnson is forever my hero because he’s an NFL linebacker who quite confidently discussed on ESPN his love of romance novels. And REAL romance novels, not stuff that is about romance but is sold without the label. (See previous post on this blog {g}).
I love romances written by men that are sold as romances. I’ve read KN Casper for years. I love Karl Fieldhouse. The Jim portions of the May McGoldrick novels are often the most emotional. Karl Fieldhouse is one of my favorite writers. I’ve known male romance authors as long as I’ve been a romance writer, and in the communities I’ve been in (my chapters, conferences, eHarlequin) I’ve never seen any man met with anything less than enthusiasm and welcome.
I agree with you, Diana, that we have to change our approach to such things, that the attitude that it’s “strange” for a man to write romance is bad. But it’s MILD compared to how women are usually met in industries dominated by men–at least in my experience. And it’s even mild compared to the attitude toward romance in general that the industry is constantly fighting.
Men writing romance are a novelty, and are going to be treated as such, whether it’s with dismissal or bestsellerdom. I’m not saying it’s right. Just that it’s expected.
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June 1st, 2005 at 1:00 pm
I think if that’s how the interview went, I wouldn’t have had a problem with it at all. If she’d asked, “Do people often ask you what it’s like to be a man in such a female-dominated profession?” or “How do you tackle prejudice against male romance writers?” That would have been interesting and valuable to me, because yes, it’s an issue and it’s one that a lot of people are curious about. I’m not saying ignore the fact that it’s a novelty. I would very much like to hear about how his career has been affected by his gender and the assumptions of the industry. But instead the interviewer came from the direction of the prejudice and showcased her bias while assuming her readers experienced the same. It’s the difference between an interviewer asking, “Do you come across much sexism in your male-dominated line of work and how do you respond to it?” and saying, “Seeing how you’re a stupid woman, what makes you think you can be a physicist?”
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June 1st, 2005 at 2:47 pm
YES, you’re absolutely right. I agreed with you and do even more. I just leapt from that starting point in a different direction than you did.
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June 1st, 2005 at 3:51 pm
You said: eHarlequin (always a popular gathering place for the prejudiced and clueless of the romance industry)
I say: I find it hilarious that you continually chastise a place that you frequent. You had a lot of nerve posting the link to your sale news right above a post that made fun of us for wanting to have everything right for Reno.
To quote you again: “What the F–?”
If you feel this way, why in the hell do you “gather there” on a daily basis?
I know more than a handful of people who wouldn’t be sad if you stopped gathering there. We sure wouldn’t miss your condesending tone, your hypocracy and utter bitchiness.
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June 1st, 2005 at 4:32 pm
Dear “Anonymous,”
(Does anyone else notice how great it is to be an anonymous poster? They get all the fun on blogs!)
I have a lot of respect for eHarlequin. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t go there at all. I met some of my best writing friends on eHarlequin, and it remains a wonderful place to share industry info. However, like most public internet forums, it tends to generate a lot of misinformation and panic. I have frequently blogged about what I see as its main drawbacks: cultivation of published-author and editor-worship (with the corresponding bizarre world of editor abuse!), misinformation, unprofessionalism, and the danger of being a forum for scam-artists of all types to come prey on unsuspecting writers.
It’s a great resource to be sure, and the people who run it work very hard to make it a greater and more useful one, but sometimes the things I see there scare me away for months (the whole business with encouraging rejected writers concoct revenge fantasies in which editors were shoved inside elevators with poisonous creatures was a particularly disturbing episode).
Now, I limit my visits there to the threads that I find contain the most straight industry info, intelligent discussion, good sense and regular “clear the air” kind of posts from people who know what they are talking about, namely, the HQN thread, the Blaze thread, the Q&A threads, and the contest thread. I do not see my willingness to participate in a community that has its faults as being hypocrisy. Nothing’s perfect.
Nor do I view my posts on those boards as being either condescending and/or “utterly bitchy”. What is bitchy about this? My two most recent conversations on those boards were about my favorite Blaze authors, and about never ever giving up, no matter how many rejections you get.
On my blog, I can say anything I want — I can talk about the drawbacks of any number of different webpages I frequent, books I read, organizations I belong to or movies I see. I don’t know if you’re a regular reader, but even in this post, you can see that I do not limit my discussion to the negative aspects of eHq. I talk about the enormous drawbacks of RWA lists as well, but I belong to several.
And I had a lot of nerve posting my sales news on my blog? Why is that, exactly?
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June 1st, 2005 at 5:15 pm
Very interesting points, Diana.
One comment I hear frequently from some is that if they read a romance novel without the name being on the cover, they’d be able to tell if the writer was a male or a female.
I wonder how true that is.
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June 1st, 2005 at 5:51 pm
I can only speak for myself, Jill, but I can’t tell at all. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out that this once romance author I always read was a guy. I’d sooner claim to recognize M&M color by taste (which this guy I know says he can do) than recognize gender by romance writing style.
It’s interesting though — I wonder how long people have been making this claim? For much of the 18th and 19th century, lots of novels had men’s names on them, even the ones written by women. I wonder if, back then, they said, “Oh, I could tell this one was a chick.” And Harlequin too, they used to publish all the novels with men’s names in the early part of the century.
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June 1st, 2005 at 5:54 pm
I wasn’t gonna post until I saw anonymous — no, actually your response to the post. Diana, you’re a class act.
Anyone who ventures into a field thoroughly dominated by the opposite gender has my respect.
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June 1st, 2005 at 6:45 pm
I really wish I could comment, but I’ll probably get the June RWR in mid-July…
Sometimes it sucks to be Canadian.
Cindy
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June 1st, 2005 at 8:48 pm
it’s really chicken shit of someone to take a shot at you anonymously for opinions you state on your own blog. obviously that person has animosity towards you and were just waiting to strike out. f#ck em. jealousy makes people crazy. keep doing what you’re doing.
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June 1st, 2005 at 9:07 pm
I don’t get Nicholas Sparks as a romance writer. I’m an HEA junkie, and his books just depress the hell out of me.
And for those who believe gender is important to writing a good romance, Suzanne Brockmann’s books are very hero-ccentric, but has anybody questioned her right or ability to write the POV of a 6ft African American Navy SEAL?
Shan (who is obviously sensitive to eHQ criticisms, but isn’t Anonymous, just in case anybody’s wondering. *g*)
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June 1st, 2005 at 11:36 pm
I’m not wondering, Shannon. You posted your disagreement on your blog long before Anon came here, and of course you’re sensitive! It actually got me thinking about the whole thing, and inspired one of the blog posts i have planned for next week, long before this comments section got off topic.
Cindy, I feel your pain. I’m getting mine forwarded up from Florida, and I seem to be a few weeks behind as well — though that’s not as bad as July, I admit.
Must to bed, or I’ll fall asleep in my soup tomorrow…
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August 30th, 2005 at 5:41 pm
Diana, I’m so glad you brought this issue into the open. Having done enough interviews, I know when an interviewer is intentionally trying to create controversy by the wording and tone of the questions. It’s bad enough to find it in the rest of the journalistic world, but right in our own industry magazine is really disappointing.
Sorry we didn’t get to meet up in D.C.! I promise next year when I’m there permanently we’ll do it!
Leslie
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