Why Romance is NOT porn

To all you ignorant, self-righteous dullards^1:

In my last book, AS YOU WISH, the story is told in 306 pages. Of those, let’s say ten are pages of sex³. That’s approximately three percent of the novel. The sex is between two consenting adults who are attracted to each other and end in a committed relationship with each other. Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s usually how a committed relationship expresses itself—with sex. I’ve been in a committed relationship for 27 years and, yes, I still have sex with my husband. It’s the natural progression of showing affection for someone.

Porn is intended to do no more than cause sexual excitement. While passages in Romance may do that, the stories celebrate love, relationships, how those relationships form, and the characters the reader comes to love (we hope), root for, and who earn a happy ending. Most often this relationship is not with the pizza delivery boy or copier mechanic.⁴

For those of you simpletons who still insist Romance is just porn with a prettier name, let me apply your definition to other media:

            Bridesmaids: clearly porn. The opening scenes and then the ones at the closing credits. It’s obvious really.

            Shawshank Redemption: clearly gay rape porn. Forget the message. It’s all about the sex. And those pin-up girls...tsk, tsk.

            Schindler’s List: Again, message unimportant; the only scenes that matter are the ones with sex.

            Notting Hill: there is a sex scene, therefore porn.

            The Firm: in the book Mitch cheats on his wife on the beach, therefore, porn.

            “Afternoon Delight”: Really? Need I say more?

Don’t want to read Romance? Fine, but don’t parade your ignorance. You’re embarrassing yourself.⁵

¹In general I have nothing against nor am I offended by cussing or stronger words, but I don’t use them much myself. I like the extra sarcasm offered by non-profane vocabulary. Shakespeare had insults down to an art without the crude language. As for those words, they have appeared in my books, but not too often; only when I found them appropriate and convincing, as when my two Guards in WISHFUL THINKING are yelling at someone and drop the f-bomb. These two men are essentially military. I doubt they would say, “Gosh darn you.” But feel free to replace “dullards” in your head with any appropriate synonym you might think of.²

²And yes, it is okay to end a sentence with a preposition. That’s one of those fake grammar rules that teachers plague their students with because it’s easy to remember. Others are never start a sentence with a conjunction (I can think of many sentences that are just fine grammatically even though they start with a conjunction) and never split an infinitive (that one goes back to Latin and German construction.)

³I counted the pages and it works out to less than nine if we count actual lines, but I’m being generous here and counted the paragraphs leading into and out of the scenes.

⁴ I didn’t mean to single out you pizza delivery boys or copier mechanics, but those are the clichés that pop to mind. And now you know how it feels to be judged on clichés and not substance.

⁵By the way, your parents had sex. At least once. Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.

--Gabi

Books I’m reading now:

It’s RITA time. I’m reading, but I’m not telling you what. I’ll continue with Discovery of Witches after I’m done judging.