A Voyeur’s Guide to Romance Novels and Romance News
I’d like to confirm whether what I am seeing in Rorschach reality is real, or whether I am suffering from a romance-o-graphic delusion of female porn. We all know the evils of pornography, objectifying the fem-sale body, copulating an attitude towards “wholly mother whatever”, yada, yada. We all know it leads to imposing fetish equestrian sex and the evils of chocolate and peanut butter for women allergic to peanuts and addicted to chocolate. Fair enough, I gave up equestrian sex when I realized she couldn’t jump the footboard and there’s no way I could tolerate the loss of points when she bungles the headboard. So I hung up my spurs, soaped my saddle and put it into storage. After all, with advances in technology and genetics, why can’t I get a car with tits? Why do they keep teasing me with the promise? I mean really, what do I need her for? I have a conscience, and it likes me.
Why do I need nagging guilt in stereo?
Remember when tabloid news was only available at the grocery store checkout, two headed chickens, alien sex and the love forlorn movie stars screwing and suing? For those that never caught on, it was a handy way of promoting a career that really wasn’t news worthy. Gee, I wonder if it was all just staged for self-promotion? It also gave a little something to titillate the bored housewives that were more interested in the equality of arousal. Jerry Springer came along and taught us all the value of, well nothing really, just more titillation. I always figured it was the female version of WWF. Categorized by emotional weight class, confused and insensitive welterweights, passive aggressive lightweights, obnoxious; self-serving middle weights, abusive and narcissistic heavyweights. You know, then you go on to the men’s division, folding chairs and cages.
Apparently some people took this crap seriously and next thing you know bookstands are flooded with shake and bake reality and fashion sensitive victim-ology. I just wish they could make up my mind. Do I read self-help books or take self-help drugs? No psycho-pharma-therapist worth an ounce of confusion would ever recommend both; it’s to bloody dangerous. Besides, you can’t get in touch with the real you while you’re out of touch on prescription drugs. That’s like getting aroused for not being aroused, which, by the way, does happen later in life through simple biology – and it’s free.
Now we have all the news that’s fit to arouse and we square off into special interest groups that are better described by the twisted fetishes they are. Post-menopausal bureaucrats empowering pre-menstrual post modernists against patriarchal Episcopalians to establish a bold new defrock-racy.
Go ahead, read it again. It’s not as funny as you think.
This stuff doesn’t come cheap. Remember your tax arrears? While following the arousal story surrounding Julian Assange, I couldn’t help but laugh while listening to Naomi Wolfe and Jaclyn Friedman describe the lurid details, like they were reading from the romance novel “The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty”. I think we need to change zero tolerance to zero arousal, and I’m referring to mine.
Friedman went on to explain that sex without enthusiasm from both (or all) must be rape and no one can be enthusiastic about aggressive sex. Of course Naomi Wolfe suggested such a model may criminalise a large part of the population. She’s right, I don’t want to be arrested for being aggressively unenthusiastic, but I think I need documentation just to be safe. Anyone got a coitus contract?
To objectify or not to objectify, that is the accusation. Again, male porn may well objectify the female form, but so does male biology; a curve of the hip, a tone of skin, foundation lines sensually following the curve of the jaw, the scent of bottled yesterdays.
Makes you want to rip off that cosmetic mask, hose her down with pine sol and procreate, doesn’t it?
It’s a chicken and egg thing. Which came first the cosmetics or the porn? I’ll have to ask Cleopatra about that one. There is, however, another form of objectification media that to my knowledge really isn’t appreciated for it’s true value or recognized as the very special porn that it represents.
Romance Novels.
When you stop and think about it this is the kind of stuff that goes beyond objectifying an individual. This stuff objectifies reality entirely. Male porn for the most part is pretty boring; scrump ’em and hump ’em with close ups and a money shot or six. Let’s face it foreplay in male porn is really four playing. But romance novels? Now that’s arousal! Long, tingly, sweaty heat, building with every flip of the page. C’mon, this stuff is the original “Dungeons and Dildo’s,” I mean Dragons, of sexual game play.
Somewhat of a startling addendum to this coitus cooing is a team researching Harlequin Romance novels. They determined that sales may be driven by a repetitious theme of sexual assault. They went on to ask if these themes may be influencing women’s perception of sexual assault. One term I found entertaining was “Romance Novels, a manual to live by.” Here’s a little quote from a woman that was introduced to romance porn as a preteen reading from her grandmother’s side table.
“Everyone in a Harlequin novel is successful and beautiful. The men have chiselled bodies and strong faces. The women have lush hair and lips sitting atop their toned, yet curvy physiques. It is an amazing world of perfection to delve into for a reality break. This is appealing, certainly. Harlequin has made a name for itself and has established a worldwide following for generations. The decadence, the lust, the love, the fantasy it’s all right there between the …covers.”
Now do you think this just might explain the difference between Mr. Right and Mr. Right Now? Aren’t we all just holding out for the perfect airbrushed partner to take us away to orgasm land, where those who come never leave? Knudge, knudge, wink, wink, say no more. After all anything less would be settling wouldn’t it? Curious to me when settling or not, how do you fulfill that dream in your mind without objectifying your own self-worth and yourself?
Everything in life that follows is a monetized process to acquire the objects on your list. Your heart holds the inventory, your mind sets the price and the checkout is between your legs. This to me explains why so very few woman lust for a man, but rather lust for the architecture of romance and their own pleasures. It is the titillation of self-perception and self-worth. Transactional love becomes the contract of intimacy and the jinx of fulfillment. These are women who truly have nothing to offer a man. They perceive men as an expense against the acquisition of material icons that represent the very architecture of their objectified romance. They are walking pathologies thirsting for blood to sacrifice at the altar of their self-worth. It is pornographic in nature and more so in execution.
In my mind the point behind not objectifying someone or anyone is to engage them in a process that is mutually shared and experienced. We are ever striving toward a cognition of equality to support a wilful co-operation in circumnavigating events that would otherwise oppose the outcome of a similar or shared determination.
It is the case in an artificial construct that is represented by our societies and cultures that we become the elements of our own supportive ecosphere. By achieving equal participation, a synchronicity of experience is achieved that we refer to as intimacy. The cognitive definition and exchange of experiential information and insight self-actualises an ever changing definition of self-worth, or not.
There is a thousand ways to express this and 999 of them may be more insightful than the way I have chosen. Objectifying a woman’s body is a common attack mounted against men and their expression of sexuality. Unfortunately objectification is not gender specific. My personal opinion is that it is closely linked to how we experience self-worth. Self-worth is a guarded tabernacle in our psyche and much of our time is dedicated to ritual offerings on that altar.
Much conjecture has surrounded the question as to why men have been silent during the processes that have reshaped our culture and our consciousness over the last fifty years. I would suggest that in fact men have been silent for many hundreds of years, languishing in a crucible of subjective and romanticized servitude, objectified by a collective dream, and a hollow promise. Many have awakened in a dry desert of hope and they thirst. Look to the horizon brothers, it is there where we must go.
We have effectively reduced ourselves to the mundane expression of grandiose ideologies that disembody the reference to our own experience of existence. Exchanging a political premise to police the unqualified and redirect their attentions to an undefined destination. We are deemed to be no longer worthy to share in the determination of direction, the distinction of the destination or the duration of the distance and yet we plod on…………….With our porn, fully aroused and reaching for more.
I’ve tried to avoid citations here I thought they might contribute to an anti-climax, if you know what I mean. Truth is this topic is still festering in feminist foreplay, (say no more) and they are loath to address it until it is appropriately propagandized. But if it’s raw entertainment you’re after, or the blush of bawdy babes, just Google Harlequin Romance Novels and their effect on Sexual Assault and Rape. Don’t forget to use some Kleenex …you know, for the tears. (say no more!)
Too Tired For Rape!
