what makes readers see behavior as negative?

[deborah]

Y'all have seen The Popular Romance Project, right?

Popular romance sells. And it reveals deep truths about people and cultures, fantasies and fears. The statistics are staggering: According to the Romance Writers of America, romance fiction generated $1.37 billion in sales in 2008, and romance was the top-performing category on the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly best-seller lists.


The Popular Romance Project will explore the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance as told in novels, films, comics, advice books, songs, and internet fan fiction, taking a global perspective—while looking back across time as far as the ancient Greeks.

I'm thrilled that I got the opportunity to participate. My post "Hero or Stalker?" addresses some of the questions I've been having watching students respond to the behavior of male love interest in young adult romance. I've been realizing as I teach how much the reading transaction is influenced by the reader's genre expectations, and how much of those themselves are influenced by genre in a given place and time. My post explores this by looking at Margaret Mahy's The Changeover and Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. If you are interested, come and contribute to the conversation!

Comments

Re: This reflects a serious double-bind in real life too.

[deborah]

Alterid, I make no claims about whether or not every woman or every man finds any particular behavior unpleasant. I am making claims about whether or not something is socially acceptable. You keep trying to put "possessive behaviors" under a big umbrella without talking about specifics, but when you are talking about what is socially acceptable, you have to address specifics. Starting a conversation with a stranger, as long as you pay attention to body language and other cues asking you to go away, is socially acceptable. Pushing a stranger up against the wall and saying "yo baby, I'm your man" is not. Any woman who tells you "be more aggressive" or "I go for real men" might be telling you what her particular preference is, but that doesn't change the fact that certain behaviors are still not socially unacceptable, and for damn good reason. As I said earlier, any individuals who want to stray outside socially acceptable behaviors can negotiate that between two adult partners in a safe, sane, and consensual manner.

And just as you countered my general with specifics, I can assure you that humans are varied enough that there are certainly both women and men who would find the real-life equivalent of Hannibal Lecter romantically and sexually appealing. You do know the statistics about people attempting to hook up with individuals on death row, right? They are fascinating, to say the least. So no, you cannot take any individual's preference as a guideline for what is socially acceptable.

There ought to be a reliable way for an adult (male or female) to approach another adult (male or female) with romantic or sexual intent in a way that both (a) is respectful enough not to provoke harsh moral judgments and (b) does not exclude the possibility of attracting a large proportion of people

There is a wide variety of socially acceptable ways for one adult to approach another adult with romantic or sexual intent. But "reliable"? As Fox1013 says, women are not puzzle to be solved. All of us are different, and all of us have different ways we want to be approached. Leaving aside the fact that people have different preferences in what you are calling levels of aggressiveness or possessiveness, you are assuming that for every strange woman you are attracted to, there is some magical formula which would make her (1) interested in romantic or social overtures at all at this time, (2) from men, (3) from you. Since this is patently quite obviously false -- even the most egotistical potential suitor would have to admit that some women are monogamously partnered, gay, asexual, or otherwise not potentially interested in him -- the idea that there could be a reliable method should immediately become obviously false.

And of course the variety of socially acceptable manners changes based on the micro-society you enter. If you go to a BDSM play party, there are a different set of acceptable opening gambits (although if you go to a BDSM play party thinking there are no rules, you will quickly find yourself ejected; subcultures often have far stricter rules than society as a whole).

Also, as I have tried to make clear in every response to you, yes, I am looking at the creation of what is sexually appealing in fiction. That's what this post is about, that's what every response I have tried to make is about. It absolutely does not obligate me to be interested in your question, anymore than the fact that you find a woman attractive obligates her to be interested in you. And while I might potentially be interested in the question of how complicated people express complicated attraction in a complicated world, I would (1) not be interested in it in a post about fiction, and (2) not be interested in it with somebody who begin their argument by saying "don't you see how this is unfair to men?"