Since we are way off topic, I just want to say that I do believe you, except that one thing they have in common is that they keep going back. It’s an illness/addiction. There is no “profile” for people with an illness.”

Then Jennifer T said, “Sorry, but I think that is wrong. People look at the abused and ask why? Why do you stay? Why don’t you just leave? He’s raping you! Beating you! What the F is your problem? The person not living the situation doesn’t have a clue. You think you do, but you really don’t. To me it’s like telling an alcoholic or drug addict that their addiction is about control. Nope. Not even close. There are a million reasons to stay with an abuser, none of which make any sense, but they are there. It’s not easy to walk away and let me tell you, love ain’t got nothing to do with it. Maybe in the beginning, but not in the end.”

Actually I don’t think this is off topic. This whole debate is about opinions and what is best for society/readers. Some things we can agree on and others boil down to opinion shaded by our background. Can I just say I would whether have a label telling me this is a great book that will be a classic.

BTW, I work at a drug rehab center and trust me it is about control or the lack of it.

First, Laura V’s essay just went up because it had a lot of links in it and my spam filter holds any e-mail with a lot of links because it assumes it’s about cheap Viagra. So her long post is WAY upthread because I worked til 6AM and then slept until two, but it’s a really good one and you should read it.

Yes, I know I need to figure out a way to time stamp or number these posts. I’m working on it.

Also, I just up another post to this, but asking a new question. Think of it as another comment, though, and keep talking about whatever you want to talk about on this. It’s really a way of getting a new comment thread. I’ll close this one to keep the everybody on the same page, literally.

And boy do I love these comments. I keep changing my mind every time I read. And I am Strong-minded and Stubborn, too.

On another note, why is it that every element of a romance novel has to be romantic? Again, I think saying that imposes limits on this genre that we haven’t placed on others. No one looks at a Sci-Fi novel with a romantic subplot and kicks it out of the genre. Futuristic mysteries are still allowed to be in amongst the legal thrillers and detective novels. Why should romance be any different from these?

One of the first things we learned in DV Law (and my prof is an atty, a recognized expert in the field, an activist, a trainer of law enforcement on this issue, and a composer of judicial guidebooks on DV) is that the majority of victims ultimately leave their batterer. I totally understand your inclination to see the relationship between a victim and a batterer as addictive, but would caution you in this regard: the situations of women vary widely and some women have children with their abuser they are legitimately afraid they will lose, some women have economic considerations, because their batterer will harass them at work or in their housing units (getting them fired or evicted — even though in many cases the terminations are illegal) or otherwise keep them economically disabled; many, if not most women don’t know the ways in which the law can protect them (through VAWA and other programs); many judges are still suspicious of DV cases and under-sentence the batterer; many women do not have citizen or resident status and do not know THEIR legal rights; many women feel shame about their condition or have been convinced the system will not help them.

Sorry, but I think that is wrong. People look at the abused and ask why? Why do you stay? Why don’t you just leave? He’s raping you! Beating you! What the F is your problem? The person not living the situation doesn’t have a clue. You think you do, but you really don’t. To me it’s like telling an alcoholic or drug addict that their addiction is about control. Nope. Not even close. There are a million reasons to stay with an abuser, none of which make any sense, but they are there. It’s not easy to walk away and let me tell you, love ain’t got nothing to do with it. Maybe in the beginning, but not in the end.

But this is not the issue. Rape should not be banned from books. Any book. I’m writing about a guy who murders children and then takes their body parts – should that be banned? Am I telling people this is okay? That if you have had this life then it’s okay? No. I am not. It’s bad. Very very bad. But it sure as heck makes for good reading.

Distinction
Rape: Not romantic, Bad.

Rape Fantasy: Two people that decide they are going to act out a fantasy with each other. Romantic. Good.

(this coming from someone who has seen both sides of the coin).

FOREVER by Judy Bloom. Read it. Loved it. It’s in my house for my children to read. But I’ve also had the chat with my children about what the frist time is really like, even if it’s with someone you care about. Well, at least two of the three.

Let me decide what to read. Alphabetize the whole blooming lot. The back cover might tell a little, but not the whole. Just a few facts, ma’m.

Our young people read for info, as Jen-t did. If it makes sense to them, fine. No harm done. If it doesn’t, they’re too young. No harm done. I had to be over 20 to read Lady Chatterley’s Lover. A really good book. Learned a lot. Off my hobbyhorse for a while.

Since we are way off topic, I just want to say that I do believe you, except that one thing they have in common is that they keep going back. It’s an illness/addiction. There is no “profile” for people with an illness.

I read Forever by Judy Blume in high school. There were lots of people who were up in arms about the explicit sex scenes in that book, but I thought it was MUCH more likely to delay young women having sex than encourage them to do so, because (unlike everything you see in the movies or read in most romances)the sex was NOT great, and was NOT romantic. We’ve gone from a culture of “no sex outside of marriage” in which many “good” women (and probably men) were convinced that they shouldn’t enjoy it, and, in many cases, probably never did, to one in which sex is the most amazing wonderful experience – but kids should definitely wait to have it.

Huh?

I agree with Jen-T that the antidote to this mixed message is not “protecting” people from reading about sex, but a lot more information. And understanding of how poor communication and bad assumptions can become date rape. Which is a crime. The remedy for which is not arguments over “he said, she said”, but teaching (especially) young people to be more aware of their own behavior. There are, undoubtedly, predatory rotten date rapists out there, but there are also, certainly, young men who are horrified to discover that they are rapists (at which point the denial may well come into play, and it would be SO much better if our legal system weren’t set up in the adversarial way it is!).

And I wish films would quit “pushing the envelope” on how much they can get away with and try to be, you know, edifying. But that’s just me.

One thing that seems to happen in some of these discussions is that the word “rape” has only one connotation, when in the fictional world of Romance, there’s the rape fantasy, the violent rape of the heroine by someone other than the hero, the so-called “forced seduction” of the heroine by the hero — all of which have different dynamics and meanings within the genre and within individual books.

Beyond my basic opposition to the idea of labeling content generally, I think we run into real trouble when we depend on someone outside the book to parse through how a particular event or motif is used in a particular book. ESPECIALLY when we get into the gray area of forced seduction scenes (i.e. rape fantasy scenes) and in acts of violence perpetrated outside the romantic relationship. What if, for example, the heroine is a rape survivor but there’s no current rape in the book (a la Eve Dallas)? Would the book be excluded from Romance or labeled with a scarlet “R” on the spine? Or how about the mild bondage in a book like Laura Kinsale’s Shadowheart? How much force is too much?

Frankly, I don’t trust anyone but *me* to make the choice about what I deem fit for reading, and I certainly don’t think my opinions on that are going to jibe with some marketing person or editor — or even the author.

Been a reader of “Romance” for more years than I want to remember. Started with Grace Livingston Hill at about twelve, way, way back in the thirties.

This has been a good discussion on a sensitive subject. Censorship is a no-no as far as I’m concerned. Leads to all sorts of problems.
No “Big Brother” for me.

BCB said : “I don’t want judgmental labels on my books or restrictions on my choices within any genre, romance or otherwise. I’m an intelligent adult. I am perfectly capable of putting a book down if it offends me.”

I vote with BCB. Not that labels will limit my choice–I will read the book of my choice no matter what label is on it. There is a wealth of information about books . If content concerns you go do some research before you buy the book.

Re-reading To Have and To Hold and loving it just as much as I did before .

For the most part, the abuser, like a child molestor, is a lost cause. It is very rare that he can be redeemed.

The abused woman is a troubling case.

What my DV Law prof told us is that 25 years of research into DV has turned up a surprising consensus: there is NO profile for a victim of battering, even though the VAST majority of research has been conducted on women victims (isn’t it ironic that we continue to study the victim as the problem?). Now that research is shifting to the batterer, though, we’re finding that there are particular characteristics they seem to have in common: manipulative, jealous, controlling, secretive, etc. So the question of whether the batterer can be reformed or redeemed or whatever hasn’t really been answered yet, because so many of the limited resources have been going into victim services and there’s still a resistance in some jurisdictions to taking DV seriously and really *treating* the batterer instead of sending him to court-ordered anger management.

Isn’t the idea behind that to protect children, the innocent victims of their parent’s dysfunctional relationship? The woman is an adult and can make her own decisions – which is a generalization, people, so don’t jump down my throat /;+) – but the children can’t.

What I learned in both Criminal Law and DV Law is that these policies — along with mandatory arrest policies — evolved out of several big lawsuits filed against jurisdictions that failed to respond to repeated calls for help from battered women, resulting in death or severe injury. Although certainly in some jurisdictions the rationale given might be to protect the children. However, one of the big problems in DV law right now is the issue of children, because women who fear that their children will be taken away from them often won’t call for help (and in those jx’s where CPS shows up with the cops, they have reason to be worried!). And with the problems of batterers who routinely violate protective orders and many jurisdictions not taking DV convictions all that seriously on the sentencing end, there are some big debates going on over how the state can most effectively intervene in DV cases without setting up the victim for later abuse and on how children should figure into the mix.

That is too funny and scary in a way.

Sally J. said: “Last night after I posted, I had to go and take a long, hot, vigorous shower. Right now I’m going to clean out my bookshelf; if rape is romance, then I want no part of romance.”

Sally, it’s your choice, but I don’t think anybody here has stated the equation as Rape=Romance. Keep in mind what the original discussion is about. The book in question didn’t even portray the rape in a positive light. It was a rape that happened to occur in a romance novel. Murders occur in romance novels and nobody is saying Murder=Romance. What we’re talking about here is whether rape as an incident should be banned from the romance genre. If you do that, then you can never have a story about a woman who overcomes the devastation of rape to find her HEA. You’d have to ban Gabaldon and many other writers. You’d have to throw out a good chunk of the early historicals. The question is whether we want to place those sorts of limitations, or is it better to let the author write her story, and the reader make their choices.

Warning labels on everything is not the answer. I know the contents are hot! I order a friggin’ hot coffee!

Caution: book contains the words throbbing, dewy, and lawyer; scenes of murder, rape, and mayhem; a heroine who is Too Stupid To Live; a precocious four-year old; a character named Bubba; cliches about Republicans; and unrealistic expectations about the true nature of love. Read at your own risk.