why is romance "cringe"?

If there’s one thing both “conservatives” and “progressives” seem to agree on it’s that romance is probably bad for women.

Conservatives complain it gives women “unrealistic expectations” — that every man should be a hot CEO or a duke (and yes, we do love dukes), attentive and caring, basically someone who treats you like a human being.

Don’t get your hopes up, girls!!!

You’re not gonna meet a duke in real life!!!

Meanwhile, “progressives” argue Meanwhile, “progressives” argue that romance reinforces the myth of ideal patriarchal love, that it’s all conservative religious propaganda in disguise.[a]

Both sides stand firm in their belief that women can’t read critically.

[b]That society must protect them from their own supposed stupidity so they don’t fall prey to bad men.

Because, of course, it’s a cruel world out there, girls, and there’s simply nothing anyone can do about bad men.

When something you genuinely love is generally considered silly or trash by society, it makes you feel…weird.

by society, it makes you feel…weird.

Like there’s something wrong with you.

You can awkwardly defend the thing you love (“it’s not actually silly!

It’s meaningful!”),

or you can cave and giggle and say, “Well yeah, it is kind of silly, haha, I just read it for funsies, hahahaha, we all have our guilty pleasures right???”

pleasures right???”

There’s always some defending going on, even if you’re not entirely sure what you’re defending against this time.

You just know that romance is something you’re not supposed to really, like, not supposed to actually like.

Romance is one of the most prolific and profitable genres[1], and yet also and profitable genres[1], and yet also the most ridiculed and detested.

It’s also mostly written and read by women.

And to be honest, I can’t And to be honest, I can’t say that I entirely don’t understand why some people are…uncomfortable why some people are…uncomfortable with romance.

When I was a teenager, I told myself I didn’t really like romance.

I wasn’t much of a “romantic”, I wasn’t much of a “romantic”, and I had no examples of even somewhat healthy romantic of even somewhat healthy romantic relationships around me — most marriages I saw or heard about growing up were, well, complete disasters.

So my teenage self would’ve proudly told you proudly told you she didn’t believe in love or sentimental drivel.

Because compared to the real world and to the real sufferings of the women in my family, the general romantic narrative of everyone having a soulmate, seemed like one big fat lie. seemed like one big fat lie.

The women of my family certainly didn’t have them.

Interestingly though a lot of the books I was devouring during those years had romantic subplots.

But paradoxically, I never once considered myself a romance reader.

Because I thought “romance” was something different.

What I was reading (I thought) were stories (I thought) were stories where a girl meets, you know, friends friends that she can also kiss — doesn’t that sound nice?

That’s not romance, right?

There are no white knights!

I had this image in my head of what romance is — and, more importantly, what romance readers are like.

The idea of “romance” I had in my head — and that, I’d argue, a lot of people still have — is that romance is mass-produced, low-effort sentimental drivel-slash-porn.

Every romance story is exactly like every other one.

They’re basically interchangeable.[d]

The genre has an opiate-like hold on the minds of its mostly female readers, brainwashing them into loving the patriarchy instead of smashing it.

And of course, I thought romance was all about soulmates and true love — something that always annoyed me something that always annoyed me in Hollywood movies — about meeting Prince Charming on a white horse who spirits the heroine away to the land of happily-ever-after while making saccharine promises that get repeated story after story.[e]

The stories I liked weren’t like that, I thought.

They were different.

I was different.

Because I read my books critically — which meant, obviously, I wasn’t a romance reader!

[f]I thought romance readers were all…middle aged and unhappy and believed in silly impossible things.

I would never become one of them, I said.

Well, long story short, I did become one of those romance readers I feared of becoming.

I even read those historicals that I thought were so cursed, the ones with identical covers of shirtless men and ladies in historically inaccurate dresses.

And I read romance stories And I read romance stories from all around the world, like shoujo manga, danmei, boy’s love stories, and much much more, so I feel like now I understand a lot better how the romantic plot works, and also why we love it — and why we hate it.

I’ve heard plenty of people praising the romantic subplot in The Apothecary Diaries — in The Apothecary Diaries — and sure, it’s good. But it didn’t invent and sure, it’s good. But it didn’t invent and sure, it’s good. But it didn’t invent anything new.

people relate to Maomao is because she’s completely uninterested in romance.

She cringes at it, just like we all do.

People do, you know, occasionally get into relationships.

They do mushy things, they live together, they even have s*x.

Close partnerships have a massive impact on a person’s life — it’s the one kind of family we actually get to choose.

Of course it matters.

So… why is romance “cringe”?

Why can stories about such a mundane, universal part of life send people into fits of secondhand embarrassment?

Is it because it’s unrealistic?

Plenty of stories are unrealistic, but no one cringes at dragons.

So something else is happening.

Maybe romance is just fundamentally Maybe romance is just fundamentally at odds with how we’re told to see ourselves — and the world.

Chapter 1. Myth

The word romance has a surprisingly complicated history.

At first, it had nothing to do with love at all—it simply in a Romance language rather than Latin.

in a Romance language rather than Latin.

These works mostly told stories of heroic adventures, which is why they were considered popular entertainment.

In that sense, your favorite action or adventure story is technically a romance-: an underdog-turned-hero going on quests and facing antagonists.

Back then, these stories were already brushed off as “trashy,”[h] mostly by the self-appointed guardians of taste who have always been suspicious of joy.

So romance was dismissed as dumb long as dumb long before the Victorian era gave it the meaning we use today—a love story.

there are people who cling to the belief that reading is not supposed to be fun.

They wring their hands over our “hopeless generation” and its shrinking attention span.

How do we get people to read books?

they wonder.

Can literature ever compete with the pleasures of TikTok?

I don’t know, boys.

Have you considered reading something that is, you know… fun?

Stories that bring people joy or offer escape have always been treated as incompatible with “serious thought.”

That’s why genre fiction—crime, fantasy, That’s why genre fiction—crime, fantasy, sci-fi—and graphic sci-fi—and graphic narratives like comics, manga, narratives like comics, manga, and webtoons are so easily dismissed by self-proclaimed intellectuals as trivial or shallow.[i]

Their favorite argument is that genre fiction follows familiar patterns.

John G.

Cawelti called these “formula stories,”[5] and the very structure that makes them easy to enjoy is the same structure “serious intellectuals” tend to look down on.

While some insist that true literature should overwhelm you with existential dread—because it’s supposed to reflect hard truths about the world “as it really is”—I think most of us can agree that the real world is already depressing enough.[k]

“Deep literature” can absolutely help us bond in our shared hopelessness, but many of us, whose lives are often stressful or exhausting to begin with, also need a reason to get through another day.

Many of us, women, especially, need fiction that lets us breathe.

And that’s what formula stories do.

They give us a problem we care about—a crime, a villain, some injustice—and then solve it in a relatively optimistic way.[6]

In real life, crimes go unsolved and villains go unsolved and villains rarely face consequences.

In stories, they do.

This is why these narratives feel safe at the end of a long day: we trust they won’t make us feel worse.

That’s the “predictable” part—not sameness, but emotional safety.

All popular stories rely on structure, and that predictability is part of the pleasure.

But that doesn’t mean the stories themselves are identical.

They innovate within their forms, and those innovations are what bring us joy.

The structure is just the bones; the meat is in how the author bends or breaks those bones to create something new.

those bones to create something new.

But even among all the genres considered “beneath” real literature, romance stands out.

No other genre receives as much contempt.

No other genre is treated as quite so cringe or embarrassing to read.

As soon as women began writing and reading these stories, they were branded as “trashy” and “identical,” a stereotype only reinforced by the marketing strategies of major romance publishers like Harlequin in the 20th century.[7]

Harlequin deliberately “packaged” romance novels with seemingly identical covers and titles, as if they were products rolling off a factory line.

Those covers and titles became the primary symbols by which the genre was judged—usually by people who never read a single book and were, quite literally, judging by the covers.[l]

And I used to think that way too, because the idea of “romance” I had in my head was actually a construct.

A myth.

An apparition conjured out of rows of seemingly identical romance covers with embarrassing titles, and the public’s general belief that romance is low-effort “trash.”

This imagined version of romance became almost like a genre of its own — a genre Jayashree Kamblé media romance, “a fantastic combination of sexual comedy and literary tragedy.”

[m]Media romance is the image of the romance genre as portrayed in newspapers, magazines, TV, and the internet.

And it’s this version that seems to have cemented itself in the minds of people who’ve never even read a romance novel.

Critics dismissed the books as unworthy of analysis.

Or they read a handful and confidently concluded that every romance novel must be the same—while must be the same—while presenting absolutely no evidence for that claim.

Because, you know, women writers are all identical.

Not only do they apparently write the same story as each other, each individual woman apparently writes the same story dozens of times.

To say that romance stories are “all the same” is to make assumptions not only about the creativity of their authors but also about the taste and intelligence of their readers[n]—because apparently they’re too undemanding to notice they’re reading the same story on repeat.

There are romance readers out there who’ve read hundreds, even thousands, of these books.

Just how dumb do you think they are—to keep rereading the same story over and over again, voluntarily, in their free time?

Just like crime or adventure, romance is a “formula story.”

ts core is two (or sometimes more) characters with a developing romantic attachment, plus a predictable component that guarantees emotional safety—a happy ending[o].

emotional safety—a happy ending[o].

An optimistic ending is nice because it spares readers additional trauma, which is exactly why most popular stories use it, but it’s not actually a requirement.

And many argue that romance doesn’t even have a strict formula: everything besides the story of a relationship—or relationships—is optional.

-- And really, even though we call them “formula stories,” that doesn’t mean any writer can follow a checklist and magically produce a beloved crime, adventure, or romance novel.

Genre formulas have been studied for decades, yet breaking into genre fiction is still incredibly difficult.

The formula gives emotional safety—it doesn’t safety—it doesn’t write the story for you.

The author still has to create compelling characters, believable conflict, and real emotional stakes.

They still have to know their craft.

Romance is no exception.

Behind those supposedly identical covers—shirtless men, historically inaccurate dresses, or cute romcom illustrations—you’ll often find complex, carefully crafted works exploring different themes and pairing different and pairing different personalities in fresh, meaningful ways.

For example, The Heiress Effect directly explores how the tension of “person vs. whe world” escalates when it’s two people against society, but also kind of against each other.

The heroine, Jane refuses to conform to society even if that makes her a object of derision, the hero, Oliver, on the other hand, chooses to mask, to blend in, to say exactly the right thing to get the people to do what he wants.

So they naturally come into conflict because of the way they choose to deal with society.

The themes explored in the novel A Gentlemen Undone[q][12], on the other hand, are very different.

Both of the main characters are severely traumatized, the heroine Lydia, in particular, uses s*x as a means of self-destruction, unable to deal with her trauma she went on to work in a brothel to punish herself, to destroy to punish herself, to destroy not only her body, but also her soul.

The hero Will, on the other hand, has just returned from war and is suffering from PTSD and guilt and whole bunch of other things.

Both of the characters have been broken by the world, and both believe that they are beyond saving.

Their story is an exploration of whether two traumatized people can actually help each other heal.

Here are two of the stories that were supposed to be identical.[r]

They were even published at around the same time.

One of them even has a scandalous shirtless man on the cover.

The themes they deal with are vastly different, even though both stories focus on relationships between two characters.

And that’s just two novels.

The “media romance” image is false and sexist [7], the fact the so many people truly believe — the fact that I believed — that women would read identical low-quality stories again and again just boggles my mind[s].

Although it would also be dishonest to say, that unlike the rest of the humanity romance authors are somehow the most inventive and creative people on Earth.

Of course not.

There’s bound to be some bad writing, authors trying to repeat some bestseller’s success, authors with bad ideas or those who just don’t know their craft so well.

Finding gems that are fun and have substance is difficult — and it’s like that with every genre.

Different stories resonate with different readers, a lot depends on your reading experience.

I love romance, but the worst books I have ever read have also been romance.

But it’s like the general public doesn’t believe that romance can have gems or stories that are meaningful, that are meaningful, and all the unique ways humans connect with each other.

The moment those connections become part of a love story, they’re suddenly considered trite and cringeworthy.

Perhaps it’s because romantic love itself is seen as so banal and stupid that it can never become respectable.

Because romantic love is sentimental — and in this day and age, there’s no bigger crime than sentimentality[t]. [5]

Chapter 2.

Sentimentality Romance focuses on things, Sentimentality Romance focuses on things, events, and feelings that are supposedly inconsequential.

Even though we’re becoming more psychologically aware and finally recognizing and finally recognizing how much emotions matter, some feelings—especially those tied to romantic love—are still treated love—are still treated as not respectable enough for serious fiction.

Or, at best, they’re only “serious” if written by a man.

Women writers are somehow assumed to have nothing substantial to say about love.

When women write about it, people insist it’s always the same story.

But as bell hooks notes, when men write about it, “their work is far more rewarded than is the writing of women” (p.

14).

Romance written by women is dismissed as shallow and sentimental—imagined, and sentimental—imagined, often by people who haven’t even read it, as over-the-top and emotionally excessive.

That’s what sentimentality basically is — it’s the emotion that seems just a little too much.

[v][14] And because of it, it sometimes feels fake—like a performance built from pre-scripted gestures: the diamond ring, the sunset proposal, the clichés that are supposed to signify “true love.”

“true love.” Sentiment feels illegitimate because it’s feigned unspontaneous banal.

A cliché.

The problem is, of course, how do we decide which emotions are legitimate or not.

How do we decide that something is “too much”?

Partly, it depends on the individual perception of each reader.

But it also depends on our shared cultural standards about emotions—what is considered appropriate to feel in a given situation and what is not.

And the question is not only how we decide that a display of feeling is excessive, but who gets to decide that.

To begin with, our common sense—our basic sense of how the world works—comes from philosophy, which was historically written by men.

And many of these men, especially in the Western tradition, had very specific ideas about emotion: namely, that emotion and rationality are opposites.

“To be subject to emotions and passions is probably always an illness of mind because both emotion and passion exclude the sovereignty of reason.”

In simpler terms, feeling anything makes you irrational.

And if no emotion is really allowed, then every emotion becomes “too much”—especially when expressed by women.

he same philosophers who insisted that rationality is incompatible with emotion also insisted that women are inferior because they are “too emotional,” and therefore “lag behind in matters of justice (yes justice!)

(yes justice!) honesty, and conscientiousness" Much of the structural injustice against women was justified this way.

That was, for instance, how “men of reason” justified not giving girls access to education.

Did you know that that was one of the main things the first feminists fought for?

The right of girls to be educated.

To which these supposedly rational, justice-loving men replied that that was a very unreasonable idea.

In any case, the idea that women are too emotional and incapable of reason is obviously sexist, and it can be—and has been—disproven many times.

But what I’m concerned with here is something different than sexism.

It’s what Russell Keat called “genderism.”

called “genderism.” Unlike sexism, which is a belief about women’s supposed “lack” of something, genderism is the skewed way we think about the world and how we should live in it—a skew that exists because those ideas were developed by men and therefore describe male experiences and male perspectives, with little regard for others.

As Keat explains, sexism is when there is a belief—say, “moral rationalism”—that takes a particular characteristic rationality to “be the basis of people’s intrinsic worth or value, and thus of the respect and thus of the respect that is due to them as moral beings, and simultaneously assumes that women are incapable of having that characteristic”.[20][ab]

that characteristic”.[20][ab] The belief that women are incapable of rationality is sexist.

But the belief that rationality is a superior value in the first place is genderist—in our case, masculinist.

That is obviously not to say that men and women are fundamentally different by nature, or that every idea in the world has to be divided into something “masculine” and “feminine.”

But Western philosophy and its approach to rationality and emotions is definitely not gender-neutral.

It is very obviously tainted by masculine gender norms. The reason men became so fixated on the dichotomy between reason and emotion is that suppressing emotion is a masculine gender norm that still prevails today.

These philosophers saw the need to suppress emotions in order to be “rational” as common sense.

The standard justification was that rationality is “human nature,” a quality of the civilized man, something that distinguishes him from animals and from supposedly “animal-like” humans such as women or non-white people.

But in reality, that belief comes from a masculine gender norm designed to naturalize and justify not only male domination over women, but also white supremacy.

Even today, men are expected to show as little emotion as possible so they don’t appear weak—so they don’t appear like women, and can therefore maintain their supposed superiority.

Any display of vulnerability is treated as something to be embarrassed or even ashamed of.

If you’re not stoic, you become “like a girl.”

And those who are “like girls” are expected to be ashamed of themselves.

I, for example, used to pride myself on not being “overly emotional” like a typical girl.

I made it a point never to cry in front of anyone—especially guys—so they wouldn’t think I was someone who couldn’t control her feelings.

If I slipped, I’d feel humiliated.

But when it happened to someone else, or to a book character, I’d cringe.

I’d literally make a face.

Excessive emotion—especially from female characters—still makes me squirm.[ad]

Just shoot me instead.

Cringe is secondhand embarrassment.

We feel it when someone crosses a line of what we consider inappropriate, but not just that, “not necessarily when someone violates a social norm but when a person’s feelings toward such a violation fail to align with our own.”[ae][23]

In other words, they are doing something we’re embarrassed of, but they don’t think it’s something to be ashamed of.

They might be displaying a weakness, a degree of vulnerability we’d never dare show ourselves.

The characters are serious and not at all embarrassed about being vulnerable.

And love stories are full of these vulnerable, cringey moments, the moments we never want to live through in real life.

They’re “sentimental” because they allow for excessive displays of feeling, the very thing that supposedly makes someone a lesser human being.

After all, people who “feel too much” have always been at the bottom of the food chain.

Romance takes all these embarrassing feelings seriously.

It thrives on vulnerability, It thrives on vulnerability, on people being emotional and irrational.

So yes—by definition, romance is going to be cringey.

And sentimentality is not just about excessive emotion, it’s also about the excessive attachment to mushy tender things like love.

It’s about holding on to “unnecessary” things and feelings.

We would call mementos that remind us of our loved ones, like old photos, to be “sentimental items”.

As in, they’re not actually “useful”, they’re just for our “feelings.”

[ah]The desire to be loved is sentimental in itself.

Even me saying that, that we all desire to be loved, is kind of embarrassing.

Like I have to turn it into an ironic joke, not say it outright, downplay it somehow.

Romance also contains other taboos, things other taboos, things we are supposed to turn into jokes things jokes, things we’re embarrassed or even ashamed to talk about.

Like very steamy scenes.

That’s a massive topic of its own, so I won’t get into it now—I’ll make a separate video.

But since BookTok exploded, people were suddenly reminded that women do, in fact, read—and many were shocked to learn just how many s*x scenes are in the books girls love.

[ai]They expected our books to be stories about pure and innocent love.

Plenty of people now argue that romance is cringe because it’s explicit.

Especially new adult romance, which sometimes has more s*x scenes than plot, making the whole book two characters going at it.

It’s often compared to p*rn—so if that is bad, then romance with steamy scenes must be bad too.

Again, not going into that today.

But it is a question: what actually makes romance more “cringe”?

Is it the steam… or the sentimentality?

As Michel Houellebecq once said, today sentimentality is even more p*rn*graphic than p*rn*graphy-- It's the self-indulgence of the mind, not the body.

Giving into the sentimental desire is almost morally wrong.

We have come to acknowledge that nothing is wrong with our desire for s*x, yet something is fundamentally wrong with our desire for love.

Love has become unavowable, something that's difficult to openly discuss for the fear of being laughed at or criticized, therefore it has to be concealed and believed in secretely.

Wanting love is embarrassing—it’s evidence that you’re weak, not autonomous, not truly independent.

It suggests you want to exist merely as someone’s “other half.”

“other half.” Isn’t that, like, super unhealthy?

Not only to be dumb enough to believe in the myth of true love, but to willingly give up your independence for someone else?

Love, we’re told, isn’t just a myth—it’s a dangerous one. Especially for women.

Haven’t we spent generations living out the same marriage plot?

Women fought for independence, and yet we’re still reading soulmate stories? What’s wrong with us?

soulmate stories? What’s wrong with us?

As my friend said once: “I don’t want to read yet another story about a woman choosing love.

I want to read about her being independent, advancing her career, living for herself.” Isn’t

romance problematic because it seems to say women need love—and men?

Chapter 3.

Resonance It’s true that most women are socialized to view themselves always in relation to someone else — as someone’s mother, daughter, or wife.[13]

Girls are raised to become future caretakers.

Because for the longest time, that was the one possible storyline for the life of a woman: the marriage plot.

[25] You exist to eventually become someone’s wife, have kids, and take care of your family for the rest of your life.

So it seems like that’s what all those heterosexual romance stories are about — the same old marriage plot, now sold to us under the sauce of “choice” and “empowerment.”

Shouldn’t we have different stories now?

Stories about women finally getting to be selfish and independent?

Because men have other stories — the ones where they get to actually do things.

Where they get to be the main character of their own life, not just a caretaker who exists only in relation to someone else.

And that reflects the way many men see themselves: as independent, autonomous subjects, each selfishly pursuing their own interests.

That’s also how Western philosophy envisioned human beings — as fully autonomous and independent units of society.

The philosophies of those thinkers reflected their way of life and the gender norms of their time.

Of course they imagined humans as autonomous subjects — they were rich men, fully autonomous and, in many ways, free to do whatever they wanted.[ao]

So they argued that we need justice, to make sure we or THEY, autonomous subjects, could coexist without clashing too much — because if everyone did whatever they wanted, wars would break out, since everyone has conflicting interests.

What they failed or refused to see was that some “units of society,” namely women, were never allowed to be independent or autonomous.

Perhaps that’s also why they weren’t considered fully human, huh?

The enslaved or subjugated people also weren’t reflected in these men’s philosophy.

In fact, they explicitly argued that women were incapable of that rational moral justice they idealized.

Women were saying silly emotional things like “let’s help the poor” and “let’s abolish slavery.” How dumb.

abolish slavery.” How dumb.

That’s obviously not justice.

That’s just how the world works, and emotional women simply couldn’t accept the harsh reality.

Obvious societal injustices aside, feminists in the ’70s argued that people in general aren’t born autonomous beings.

-They’re born weak and helpless.

And they often die weak and helpless.

We might be autonomous during certain phases of life, but there are other phases in which we have to rely on the care of others to survive.

That’s why we need to imagine a new ethic, they said, an ethic of care.

Because this world is built on care.

None of us would have survived without caretaking.

Many people — many women — dedicate their whole lives to caretaking.

And caretaking is not a selfish act done in your own self-interest.

in your own self-interest.

in your own self-interest.

the well-being of others.

And, in fact, they’re expected to — otherwise their care wouldn’t feel like true care.

A mother who only takes care of her children so she can later get something out of them wouldn’t be considered a good mother.

Parenting is a selfless act.

Caretaking is an act of love and kindness.

But the world treats caretakers poorly.

Caretakers are taken for granted.

They’re treated as satellites that revolve around actual planets.

And we, women, who were raised to be someone’s satellite rather than a planet of our own, are like: [ar]WTF. Isn’t it unfair?

I am lucky and privileged, because now I am allowed to act like an autonomous being.

I selfishly follow my pursuit of knowledge, my passion.

I couldn’t have done this before.

I wouldn’t have been allowed to, or I would’ve been ridiculed for it, because as a woman I would be expected to act out the marriage script.

It’s a privilege that my refusal to become a caretaker is now considered my right.

Because frankly, I don’t think I’m fit for the job.

But that doesn’t mean the value I bring to the world is more than that of a mother.

I don’t think I want to be one, but I know this world is built on the labor and genuine care of mothers.[as]

The world is built on care.

Every human being alive exists thanks to the care they received from parents — and in many places, that care is primarily done by women.

Like the majority of children in Russia, I was raised — as we joked — by a same-sex couple consisting of my mother and grandmother.

Because the men in our lives were either busy drinking or being “autonomous,” expecting the satellites of women and children to revolve around them.

This gendered division — where some people get to be autonomous planets and others are forced to be satellites — is extremely unfair.

And it makes a lot of people miserable.

Women, who are forced into caretaking roles simply because men refuse to do them.

And also men, many of whom are miserable climbing their invisible ladders, climbing their invisible ladders, worrying they’re not good or impressive enough, pressuring themselves to be better, more efficient autonomous beings — when in reality, they might have been excellent caretakers and much happier.

But because we live in a patriarchy, many men can’t allow themselves or each other to “be like women” or do “women’s jobs.”

Because that would imply women aren’t inferior.

Women taking men’s roles are a threat to patriarchy, but so are men taking women’s roles.

In reality, none of us are fully autonomous planets or mere satellites.

We are all connected, and those connections can’t be measured.

Very few people are truly independent or have no one who depends on them.

If you are, you’re either lucky, privileged, or either lucky, privileged, or extremely zen.

Most of us exist in connection with others.

Rather than independent, we are interdependent.

We’re the main characters of our own lives and profoundly influenced by others — just as we influence them.

We are interdependent because we resonate with other people.

So, returning to the question: isn’t So, returning to the question: isn’t it better for women to have female character role models who are depicted as independent?

In a way, yes — because we need to normalize women being selfish, we need to remind ourselves that we are planets, not satellites whose lives revolve around others.

However, the broader philosophy that ignores human interdependence and imagines humans as autonomous units selfishly pursuing their own goals is the philosophy of the extremely privileged — people who genuinely cannot fathom how much care is required to keep this world running, or how deeply our lives resonate with each other.

One of my favorite stories is a little-known shoujo manga called Piece that follows Suga Mizuho, a "cold, heartless person", who doesn't get too close to people and doesn't let anyone in.

But the her former classmate — someone she barely talked to — suddenly dies, she feels almost compelled to follow the trail of small pieces of memory that her classmate left behind and to collide with other people and get close to them to the point of being uncomfortable.

"Piece" is ultimately a story about resonance.

The shock of resonance that is created when we choose to really get to know another human being instead of looking away and keeping our distance.

And although I won’t necessarily call Piece a love story, although it does have a romantic subplot, I think the story captures the most important part of any romance story: the resonance.

People are empathic beings, that's why when we satisfy our craving to get closer to another person it always hits us back.

All the romantic tension and embarrassing situations in romance stories are really just convenient setups to put two characters against each other, to force them resonate and affect each other in unpredictable ways.

That’s the whole point of romance.

As my aro and ace viewers would say, why does it have to be romantic?

People can resonate with each other in all kinds of relationships, not just romantic or sexual ones — and they’re right.

In fact, as the author of Platonic argues, now that we believe soulmates are found through romantic relationships, we expect those relationships to be our everything.

Before, people had much deeper friendships.

Now same-sex friendships are always suspected of being “gay,” as if loving a friend “too much” must be romantic or sexual..

Love in general is obviously much broader than romance.

Anyone can have a deep, profound impact on our lives.

It doesn’t have to be romantic.

But making it “romantic” is first of all, a convenient way to sell a story about a relationship.

Also, the embarrassment and excessive feelings involved don’t just raise the stakes for the characters — they make it more fun for us to read.

That’s what keeps us giggling.

Or cringing. Or both.

The “romance” or “sex” parts are just pretty wrappings around the real candy inside: stories about human connection.

The most important part of romance isn’t the “romance” itself.

It’s not about soulmates, diamond rings, or weddings.

It’s about the simple fact that humans profoundly affect one another.

Stories about human connection are important, because as humans we are all connected.

However, unfortunately, in reality human connection is often predepermined by our social roles...and

by our gender roles.

Even though romance stories at their core are about human connection, they often rely on our existing notions about what love is and how it can be expressed to drive their point.

And when our existing ideas about love...well,

about love...well,

no longer work in reality because we now recognize just how much they rely on the patriarchy…well…problems It just stops being fun.

So you turn to stories that have no potential to reflect your life in the first place.

For example, you might turn to boy's love stories.

They have all the fun parts of a romantic narrative, but don't have the most annoying one -- women falling for the marriage plot.

Boys love stories have women as side characters, living our their best lives independently, but love and human connection is still at the center of the story.

They still might replicate the same conflicts, and even gender-like roles, but because the characters there are men, some female readers feel less discomfort when reading, because they can assume the role of a passive spectator that just watches the romantic scene unfoding instead of being its participant.

To me, personally, the gender of the characters is mostly irrelevant — if you give me compelling characters, I don’t care what their gender is.

And if the story is badly written or stereotypical, I won’t enjoy it even if it features the love of two hottest men on Earth.

And with all of my defence of the romance genre, I’m also willing to be its harshest critic.

I’m not settling for mediocre stories because I know how good romance can be.

I don’t think that romance is trash or cringey or embarrassing to read, and that’s why I have high standards for it.

A romance story has to be unique and have substance or I’m not reading it.

If it has nothing to say, I’m not going to stay for all the cutest fluff in the world.

If it’s very typically heteronormative, I’m not reading it even if it’s a boy’s love story.

If it’s a Regency historical with a obviously colonial gaze with England being the civilized world whereas the East is the world of savages, I’m not reading it.

I treat my romance seriously, so I’m not cutting authors any slack if they have racist ideas.

Toxic relationships, on the other, are different.

Many people in real life are toxic.

Relationships actually do have problems, and people in general don’t know how to love.

So I don’t expect romance stories to be these perfect pockets of sunshine where all the characters are nice and loving.

I prefer my stories to have believable conflict, sure, it can be a conflict of cosmic proportions, but the most believable conflict in a relationship is someone is a bit of an asshole.

Anyways, I did talk about this before, many many times.

My biggest problem with romance is that we’re not treating it seriously.

Thank you for listening.