this was a forum topic where i um get news of new audiobooks. now. i had noticed a bunch of rando fantasy books so thats what i thought it was about. imagine my surprise when it was really:

New audiobook posts are more and more a flood of harlequin/gay/women’s fantasy shit. I have no problem with romance or escapist fiction, but this stuff is obviously bottom of the barrel, pathetic crap that makes stupid people stupider.

oh.

given that i am actually one of the culprits behind flooding the site with ‘gay fantasy shit’ i have to take issue with the ‘scrapping the bottom of the barrel’ comment. like. same is true for the het romance stuff.

does this person not realize the amazing feat of a imagination it takes to suspend your disbelief to think of a heterosexual man who is traditionally masculine (muscular, athletic, etc.) but still respects women? a str8 man who is an ‘alpha male’ but listens to his romantic interests and gives her actual orgasms? a het d00d who is well-groomed but not narcissistic and still willing to settle down and have kids and help around the house?

elves are more believable that straight men like this, ok?

its actually hard enough that even most women writing in the genre fail to achieve this ideal. managing only to capture facets but not the total man (usually intentionally – or at least i hope so).

this person calls romance escapist and it is. its an escape to worlds more fantastic than most in fantasy or sci-fi. it isn’t to some feminist utopia where men and women are equal, true, but its at least to a world where men give a fuck about the women in their lives.

in no other genre of writing (bc most are dominated by men) do men so consistently give a shit about women. and, as those of us who are not men know, in real life most men don’t give a fuck about women. as whole and, sadly, rarely even about the particular ones in their lives.

anyway. i’m a stupid person whose been rendered stupider by a steady diet of gay/women fantasy drivel