Imagine: A brilliant, kind, and compassionate heroine—we’ll call her Avery—has just gotten home from an awful date. This time, the guy–we’ll call him Chandler–had the nerve to talk mostly about his fantasy football team, and she caught him sneaking glances at her cleavage. What a loser! Clearly, this guy—and every man she’d ever gone out with (often the lone exception is the one who got away)—wasn’t worth it. In fact, men aren’t worth it. The answer to seeking true love, great sex, and, down the road, a kid or two, is to quit the other sex entirely.
Right?
Wrong. What the hell, Avery?
It’s not all heroines, just some. But their numbers are growing, and that alarms me. Romance novels, once built on the idea of love triumphing over differences, are increasingly populated by women who are done with men before the story even starts. They aren’t wary of bad men; they’re rejecting all men. They’re swearing them off, declaring them unworthy, treating attraction as an unfortunate glitch rather than a natural pull.
And sure, some of this is catharsis, a reaction to the ways men have wielded power unfairly. But there’s a difference between critiquing specific behaviors and painting half the population as beyond redemption. And don’t even get me started on the growing number of heroines who throw punches, slaps, or well-placed knees, framed not as assault but as empowerment. If it’s not OK for a man to do it, why is it OK for a woman? When did smacking a guy become a charming character trait?
Now, I get that many women want to smash the patriarchy, and, honestly, I’m mostly with them. But challenging a power structure doesn’t mean that everyone who lives in it—even benefits from it—is bad news. In fact, that approach is likely to fail, as most us vs. them strategies usually do. If the goal is change, drawing hard battle lines between men and women isn’t just counterproductive—it’s exhausting.
It’s not that every romance novel is built on this premise. But the number is rising, and the idea that men, as a sex, are unworthy of love is creeping further into the genre. That shift is worth questioning.
And beyond the genre, what message are we sending? Why would men vote for women if women keep telling them they’re awful? Why would they support policies that benefit women if women make it clear they see them as the enemy? Sure, men resisting gender progress isn’t new. But if we want to win hearts and minds—if we want to build a future where men and women work toward real equality—declaring one side the enemy is a losing strategy.
Likewise, why would women invest in making relationships work if they’ve been told their partner is rotten by default? Romance—real romance, the kind that thrives in long-term relationships—is about accommodation, about two people figuring out how to make a life together. If men are beyond redemption, what exactly is the point?
And if the answer is that there’s just one guy, our hero, let’s call him River—a man who knows exactly how to please in the sack, loads the dishwasher like a dream, and, of course, would never waste Avery’s time explaining, without any encouragement on her part, the intricacies of crypto trading—well, that’s a problem. Because that setup assumes that every other man is an asshat bro, unworthy of effort or consideration. If the only way a man can qualify as worthy is to be fundamentally unlike other men, what does that say about the genre? About the expectations being set for real relationships? And why, exactly, should men have to prove their humanity one by one?
This doesn’t mean women should settle for bad relationships. Being critical of power imbalances, of unfair labor loads, of the way attraction and respect function in relationships—that’s all fair game. But there’s a difference between demanding better from the people we love and deciding they aren’t worth loving at all.
And what’s the goal here? To have people be safe but alone? To avoid the risks of love by refusing to engage with it at all? To strip relationships of the one thing that makes them rich and meaningful—compromise? Because take it from me: there is no such thing as true intimacy that isn’t built on compromise. That’s not weakness. That’s the work of building something lasting.
And what’s the alternative? Women spending their time scrolling, dreaming of men who never offend, never mess up, never improve—because they were never given the chance? Are we really telling women that the best path forward is longing for a fantasy rather than working with a real person, flaws and all? And what about the women who want kids? Are we actually suggesting that the best framework for raising children is one where fathers, by virtue of their sex, are assumed to be the problem?
Sweeping dismissal isn’t just morally shaky; it’s also strategically foolish. If the goal is a better world—one where people understand each other, change for the better, or, at the very least, listen—broad-stroke contempt won’t get us there. And it certainly won’t resonate with the readers who love their fathers, sons, husbands, and friends.
Romance is about connection, about people figuring it out together. And that’s what we should be rooting for—not a fantasy, not an idealized unicorn of a partner, but the messy, frustrating, deeply satisfying experience of falling in love with an actual person.
* This post applies to m/f romance with cis/het leads.
These trends – in romantic heroines – are probably part of the reason I so rarely read m/f any more.
Are there men who dismiss all men out of hand in m/m?
Not that I’ve cone across, no. There is still too much use of the awful (female) ex trope, but it seems to be dying out.
I don’t see it. It’s one of the reasons I don’t read much m/f anymore. The gender politics is so much less in queer romance. When the protagonists are the same sex, you’re almost garaunteed not to encounter many sweeping gender statements like you mentioned in your blog. The closest I’ve come is someone burned by, say, a hockey player who thinks all hockey players are macho dicks. Of course the book will usually be about him meeting a hockey player who shows him how wrong he is about “all” hockey players. 🙂
Nothing makes me quit a book faster than when the hero or heroine are absolutely perfect and can do no wrong. I feel like I have a higher chance of experiencing this (in terms of heroes) in recent books that come from authors who originally published indie and blew up to trad but this might just be my experience picking the wrong books for myself.
A heroine that can do no wrong is common in older romances but I feel like I’m more likely to come across a perfect hero in books published today. It almost feels like authors don’t trust their readers with flawed heroes…or maybe shy away from the inevitable conflict/fallout?
I really enjoy when the hero is flawed and there is growth throughout the book. I feel more surprised and it’s more rewarding. I also like to see the heroine push against the typical male-dominated power structure. Is it fair? No but it gives the heroine more umph, if that makes sense.
One last thing, I like when heroines swear off men because of a particularly painful past or something that is going to require A LOT of work from the hero to help the heroine overcome. But just checking her out or existing as a man does not cut it for me.
I guess I’d say the reasons I’m seeing for swearing off men are mostly about how men suck, not that the heroine was abused by someone or had a traumatic experience. I’d agree that romances where the female lead has to overcome a horrific past and in which the hero helps her do so–although we used to complain about magic wang therapy back i the day at AAR!–are often lovely.
But I’ve read three contemps in a row where the females are done with men because they’re horn dogs too soon, they’ve said something stupid like “my mom stayed at home with me and I thought that was great,” they didn’t tip the overworked wait enough, and, most commonly, at first blush, they seem insensitive and self-absorbed. I am particularly over women that have never been out with a nice guy in their lives (other than, duh, the one that got away). Is none of that on the woman?
I am reminded of a story a male friend told me recently about how his wife rejected their marriage counselor. (It was his idea to go.) After a month of so, she told the counselor, “Unless you can agree with me that it’s all his fault, I’m out of here.” The counselor said, um, no, and she bolted. That to me says she’s not really interested in staying in her marriage which is her right. But it doesn’t mean, she’s right about why her marriage isn’t working. It’s virtually never ALL the other person’s fault.
Wow! Are they still married?? Because I wouldn’t want to be married to someone who saw me as the cause of all their problems.
On their way to divorce….
I think this is an evolving human trait overall – that mistakes have been made but they were all made by the other person.
There’s an article in The Atlantic this month that has the same complaint about how many talk about kids. In it, the author writes:
It’s nuts to me that in an era where so many complain about others saying an unacceptable thing, we are, at the same time, increasingly dismissing whole groups simply out of hand.
Romances reflect changes within society more than other genres. In the 70’s, romances reflected the uneasiness of changing sexual mores for women. Now, romances are reflecting so many women’s dissatisfaction with men.
Statistically, many more women than men are going to college and graduate school. Men particularly face the stigma of living in their parents’ basement, during and after covid. Polling indicates that a huge proportion of men would rather play computer games than have sex. This week’s New Yorker has a long article, analyzing why no branch of our military can find enough male recruits. The cited cause? Obesity and poor scores, educationally.
In the meantime, sex outside of marriage has become the norm, accompanied by a loss of stigma of women as single parents. If a woman wants to have sex, she can. If she wants to have a baby without its father, she can. Most importantly, she doesn’t need a man to feed or to protect her, as was true for tens of thousands of years.
Is it a wonder that romances show women dissatisfied at her options, romantically?
Well, the reasons men are falling behind are not all just on men, for sure.
And, it seems limiting to define success as “I can make it on my own,” rather than “I can make it–and have a family–more easily with a partner.”
I have three sons and one daughter. I don’t see my sons or their friends as acting like dickheads on a regular basis–perhaps that’s why they’re all partnered. There are millions of great men and women out there–I’m just never going to buy that the path to happiness is best found alone. We are social by nature. No one has to have a husband or a lover if they don’t wish, but it irks me to hear put forth, as though it’s reasonable to say, that all men are useless.
Going off on a brief tangent, I read a fascinating article yesterday talking about why more men and boys aren’t going to college now as in the past –
https://celestemdavis.substack.com/p/why-boys-dont-go-to-college
and suggests it’s because more women are going. Once a class or subject has more than 60% female students, men stop signing up because those subjects are now seen as “feminised”. There are other reasons as well, of course, although those reasons (money, career progression etc.) affect both sexes. But the author makes some interesting points about how the view of higher education has changed over the years:
When mostly men went to college? Prestigious. Aspirational. Important.
Now that mostly women go to college? Unnecessary. De-valued. A bad choice.
As a teacher of teenagers, I see some of those attitudes in the classroom every day.
Anwyay, a tangent, but an interesting read.
I was a college professor and an academic administrator. During the period I worked at universities, female students were slowly outnumbering male students and the admissions offices had to work very hard to keep the numbers at 50-50. In most colleges, there were significantly more female students than male students. Persistence and graduation rates were again far greater for women than men. In class room, my female students were stronger academically than male students so much so that I had to grade on a curve to prevent too many male students from failing. If I offered a class in the morning, it would be filled with all females while any class offered after lunch would be populated by mostly men. The difference in the grade distribution was also stark—morning classes with all females mostly at As and Bs and the afternoon classes with mostly men at Bs, Cs and Ds. With women entering college and workforce in significant numbers, the academically weaker male students are falling off the cliff. They just are not able to compete with their stronger classmates of either sex.
I’m starting to think there’s a case for bringing back single sex education. In almost every class I teach, it is usually the girls sitting ready to get on with the work, looking bored while I have to deal with the disruptive students who are delaying the lesson – who are almost always boys. Note I’m saying “usually” and “almost always” – because of course, there are girls who disrupt as well. It’s just usually boys. I went to mixed schools because at the time, my parents thought it was the right thing, and I agree with them. Now, with the achievement gap widening, I’m not sure it’s fair on the girls – there’s still a feeling that if you sit a problematic boy next to a well-behaved girl, it will temper the boy’s behaviour and perhaps help him academically. My daughters both had to suffer sitting next to complete arseholes in some classes as a result.
And if the boys are educated apart from girls, it takes away a lot of the need to show off (especially once they hit puberty!) and might perhaps allow for some proper role modelling among peers.
I think same sex classes might help, sure. But even better would be paying teachers more so that more men would go into the field, bringing back recess, shop, pottery and classes that allow for kids to get their energy out safely, less lecturing and more hands on work for kids, smaller classes, and more opportunities for outdoor education.
Tell me about it… when I started teaching nearly 20 years ago, the largest class I had was 25 and most of the others had 21-22 kids in. Now I regularly have 28-31. We do still have a regular break time in the morning here (usually around 11am for 20-25 minutes depending on the school) and PE is part of the curriculum so there are usually 2 hours per week for that. But that isn’t enough and things are too rigid overall, I think. Having English Lit as compulsory – when I did it back in the late 70s, only the top sets in English did Eng Lit – the rest carried on with English language – is ridiculous when there are kids in the class that can barely read, let alone understand the nuances in Dickens or Shakespeare!
There needs to be a real shake-up in the way kids are educated, but it’s a massive task and nobody has the balls to do it, despite there being good examples in, say, Scandinavia and other places that could provide inspiration.
100%.
Again, not all of that is on boys/men.
We, at least in the US, have reconfigured school to work better for girls, especially in in k-12. Beginning in pre-school, we have set up structures that work better for little girls than little boys. We know that girls tend to develop certain skills before boys–they are hardwired to better sit still for long periods of time and be more attentive at earlier ages. We know that those who reach puberty earlier do better in middle school and high school do better and follow the rules better and girls typically go through puberty before boys. Additionally, most teacher are female and they tend to reward girls more than boys. Studies show that ALL OVER THE WORLD, when the teachers give the grades, girls do better in all subjects. When students are given standardized tests, the boys do better in math, the girls in reading and writing. BUT when the anonymous piece is missing, when teachers have leeway, they grade girls higher on all subjects.
I’ve watched this–having twins AND serving on school governance committees gave me an up close view of how much well intentioned systems would simply be happier if all the students behaved like girls. By the time young men hit high school, far more of them hate school than do young women.
Schools have begun to realize this and it is my hope we will, beginning in pre-school, continue to create structures that empower both boys and girls.
For a long time, for centuries in fact, it was boys/men who were empowered, who appropriated all the resources and, for whom (strong, average and weak) the systems were set up to succeed. Much of this was achieved by denying access to half of the population. In the last fifty years, the disempowered has been becoming empowered, strong and competitive. If the system is more accommodating of them, I would say, it’s time. If the boys seem to be at a disadvantage, it is not the academically strong but the academically weak. Before, the academically weak were tracked into crafts, vocational techs and union jobs. That avenue has now completely disappeared. Now every student is told that a college degree is essential to get a decent well-paying job. As a result, the weak, under-prepared students enroll in colleges, either drop out after first-year or somehow manage to finish with a mountain of debt with little subject specific proficiency. Most of them enroll in management majors (not humanities or social sciences or hard sciences) because they assume, mistakenly, that jobs will be easier to get with these majors. When I was teaching, I would look into their faces and silently ask the question, ‘why are you in college, wasting your time and your parents money’. Of course, they had no other choice.
By the time they get to college, it’s too late to get them on a different track. Studies show that, by third grade, the track kids are on in school is the one they’ll be in when they hit high school.
I really don’t buy this. All the mores we have in school were there since the 1920s at least — the industrialization of educations dates back to then and it’s largely been unchanged since then. Schools were always awful for many boys but the difference was that only a minority of boys were expected to make it much past elementary school. The goal was to get semi-literate factory workers and the top 10% could get a good quality education. Once we stopped artificially holding women back, they leaped ahead. It’s not that more men are being left behind than were historically; it’s just that you can no longer support a family of five on a factory worker’s wage.
That’s not true. In fact, if you sit in a classroom today, you will barely recognize it as the same thing of classrooms from yesteryear. A quick google search will give you a plethora of books on this subject but significant changes have been made to our educational system in the last 50 years and each successive change has reaped more failure than success. Recent studies have shown that girls success in school has more to do with being well-behaved than actually being successful academically. https://www.forbes.com/sites/geekgirlrising/2020/08/04/why-girls-lead-in-the-classroom-but-not-in-the-boardroom/
Having sent boy/girl twins through the system, I’d say, in my family’s experience, being well behaved by female standards was both preferred and rewarded by the vastly female teaching workforce.
I understand it to an extent, especially as the kids age. When my son was in middle school, at least half the boys literally towered over their female teachers and moms. While we went to a charter school, and the kids were mostly middle-class and white, they could still be (politely and nonviolently) aggressive. Some of the boys would stand up and talk back, which I would imagine was intimidating given the size difference. In those circumstances, I would also give better grades to the well-behaved and quiet girl.
As a teacher of teens, I can attest that the majority of the students I have to give sanctions to are boys, and the majority of those who get on with the tasks set and produce good work are girls. There are exceptions of course – but I’ve been teaching for 20 years and that has been true for the whole of that time.
WIth all respect, that says more about how poorly the system now serves boys rather than anything about boys.
My only child, a daughter, was an American public school product but beyond that I had no deep exposure to the inner workings of the system.
I was a college teacher for many years, taught a huge number of courses and graded hundreds of papers. I taught at all levels—freshman to seniors. Since freshman year is just a transition year out of high school to college, the gap I had observed in the academic ability and performance between boys and girls is evidence based. I was always a strict grader and never gave anybody a pass because they came to class on time or were polite in class. I had experience of some very bad female students and some excellent male students. But the overall pattern repeated itself semester after semester, course after course—that is, girls performed better academically than boys.
I could see this difference most starkly in two sections of the same course, one offered early morning with almost all female students and one taught in the afternoon with mostly male students. When I had so many female students in class, I actually graded their papers stringently because I knew most of these would be very good and I could not give everyone an A grade and the difference in A and B+ was only a few points on a 90-100 scale. Grading male students always took me the longest sometimes several days. I graded these papers on a curve trying very hard not to give anybody Fs or Ds. I gave failing students make up papers, extra coaching. Yet, there were always a few Ds and the highest grade rarely went above B+. It was a great joy to come across an excellent male student—I would do everything to recognize their academic caliber, lavishly praising their work. And I was not alone in this—most faculty experienced some version of male underperformance and worked to help these underperformers succeed. Student Affairs also did a lot of advising, tracking and coaching to help struggling freshmen, especially males, to stay in college. In colleges at least there were lots of institutional help and support available to help male students succeed.
Again, we start failing boys long before college. It doesn’t surprise me that by the time they hit college, they are behind.
Research disagrees with you. But more importantly, papers are subjective, not objective, grades. I can still remember my sophomore year in college I had a professor tell us he did not want a paper full of quotes and references. Most of the kids in class used only two or three, and we all got Cs except the person who used ten on a two-and-a-half-page paper. I was furious, but there was little I could do about it. The next paper – technically a short essay – was loaded with reference material, and I got a much better grade. I often found that talking to students that had the class before me and looking over their papers to see what was actually required ensured that all my papers came out well graded. That isn’t intelligence, it’s obedience and compliance. There were papers of other students that had a lot more insight and were frankly better written, but they didn’t comply with the standard the professor wanted, and they received low grades. The only class this didn’t work in was math. And I got average grades there because I was an average performer like 90% of the other girls. When my son went to college several years ago, I saw the same thing. However, some of the professors at his school allowed you to turn in preliminary work and then rework it for the actual grade. It was fabulous because you got a chance to learn exactly what the professor wanted and deliver that. Since grades are really about meeting an individual teachers expectations, it was great to have this system where you could actually learn what those expectations are.
I do not know when you graduated from college, a lot has changed in undergraduate classroom teaching in the last 15-20 years and your son’s experience is a more accurate reflection of how teaching and grading is done. First and foremost, there is now a requirement called assessment of student learning (it is a common practice in schools, but now it is being implemented in colleges too). Generally, every course description has a set of student learning outcomes and ways of measuring them. This is accountability for effective teaching—whether students are learning what teachers are teaching and what teachers think students should know. And the expectation is that at the end of the semester, teachers would use assessment data to improve student leaning. This is about student learning.
Then there is grading—the practice of allowing students to submit a draft paper and then submit a final version based on the feedback from the teacher is the default now. Many of us create rubrics and share with students how grading would be done. I did this in all the courses I taught, giving detailed feedback on the first draft and also giving the student some idea what grade they would likely get if they revised the paper based on my corrections. Many did but some could not be bothered. If there was an in-class final test, I would do a prep class where I would go through all the materials that would be covered in the final test.
You might wonder at all these efforts to make sure that students got good grades. Today’s students, for all sorts of reasons, are obsessed with getting good grades. As a teacher, I always felt that it is my responsibility to help them get there. But, there is a caveat here—a teacher may help a student in all kinds of ways to get a decent grade, but whether the student actually learns the subject matter in the way a teacher wants them to is a different matter altogether. There is usually a great deal of asymmetry between the two. A good grade is no longer a good metric of student learning. That’s why employers and grad schools are skeptical of high GPAs even of Harvard graduates.
But, there is a caveat here—a teacher may help a student in all kinds of ways to get a decent grade, but whether the student actually learns the subject matter in the way a teacher wants them to is a different matter altogether. Yes, thank you for so succinctly describing what I’ve been trying to say. A lot of the work/grading system in schools now is about compliance/meeting a specific grading standard and behavior. Most grading systems do not focus on learning or capability in that subject. And girls, overall, tend to be more obedient. And more willing to re-do their work to meet a standard.
You, as a mother of boys, obviously feel that American school system fails boys. But, I would say, it fails many group of students: students of color; first-generation students; poor students; neurodivergent students. You take your pick.
I have a daughter too–so my lens isn’t just about boys.
And yes, sure, the American education system is failing many groups. But boys are 50% of the system and if we wish to continue to have men be parents and partners, it’s not in our best interests to have a system that doesn’t work for most men. Especially men not from wealthy families.
I am assuming we are talking about public school system. Wealthy families typically send their children to private schools. Affluent families in affluent neighborhoods (tend to be mostly white) expend resources on sports camps, travel abroad, test preps, pre-collegiate residencies etc to make sure that their children (both boys and girls) are well prepared to succeed at school. The schools in these communities are also exceptionally well resourced. Yet, the parents do not totally depend on the schools to make sure their children are positioned advantageously.
Public school systems in middle class communities, in my opinion, are not set up to educate any special category of students more than adequately. Their property tax receipts are not big and the parents do not earn enough to create well-endowed PTAs. Ultimately, it is the parents who have to take on the responsibility of making filling in the gaps left by schools.
I disagree. If half of a cohort can learn to behave acceptably, so can the other half. Boys are given the same opportunity to make the right choices as girls, but more often make the wrong ones.
I see it very differently.
For the past 30 years, schools have abandoned much of what worked for boys. School is now much more about sitting still–no shop, less gym, less time between classes–and the ways we teach are better for girls. Until we have more recess, more male teachers, more hands on activities–boys learn better that way–and more tolerance for basic boy behavior, boys are disenfranchised and are then, of course, less interested in school and sitting quietly in the classroom.
There’s a definite UK/US divide in some of that. Most secondary schools here have a minimum of 2 hours a week PE/sports per week and I think ‘shop’ is what we call DT (design technology) which includes woodwork, electronics, product design, food technology (cooking) and textiles. Morning break is usually 20-25 minutes around 11am. Lunchtimes are very short, but students don’t go home for lunch – schools I’ve worked at have 30-50 minute lunch breaks. And we don’t have time between classes – it’s never been a thing here even when I was at school in the 1970s and early 80s. There are more male teachers at secondary (11-16) than primary (4-11), although there are still more women than men overall. But I think a lot of that stems from the way education itself has become so devalued – as per that article I posted somewhere here, it’s among the professions deemed ‘feminine’ and therefore seen as ‘lesser’ by many men.
Despite the presence of the things you indicate are absent from the US curriculum, the behaviour of boys in UK schools – in general – is still worse than that of girls, in general.
But, see, this starts in kindergarten. So, are we just going to say that a priori boys are badly behaved? I feel as if it is incumbent on adults to create systems that work for boys and girls. And, in the US, the school systems are wired for girls and not boys.
For decades, the educational system was biased in favor of boys, with ‘boys will be boys’ approach to discipline. The girls were shepherded into Home economics track and discouraged from even thinking about college. At that time, it was okay to disenfranchise girls. In the last three decades, women have been empowered and do well in schools and colleges. And ‘boys will be boys” approach is no longer the default mode of discipline. Suddenly, “ the school system no longer works for boys and they are disenfranchised”. But this is not the first time I have heard this argument—thirty years ago, one of my colleagues who had four boys and one girl was bemoaning that her sons had hard time finding jobs because now all jobs go to women!
And when the opportunity to do things other than the ‘softer’ options became available to girls, they took them. Now the boys/men are being outclassed, instead of stepping up to make the most of the opportunities that are equally available to them, they sulk and complain that they’re being left out.
It is not that women are given preferential treatment in employment hiring. Applicant pool is usually skewed to strong female candidates and women also accept lower salary (it is well known that women are not good salary negotiators). The employer benefits in two ways-highly qualified employee and savings in salaries. Whereas, male candidates, regardless of their qualifications, demand higher salary. Is it any wonder women get hired?
Back when, it used to be argued that to admit women to college or hire them for employment would mean lowering standards. It is actually the other way around in college admissions—admission standards are lowered for male applicants to keep gender balance. But that battle is lost—now in most institutions, the gender imbalance between men and women is anywhere from 45-55 to 35-65.
Which is bad news for the schools–endowments drop–and for making sure men and women can marry and support their families.
Not really—whatever loss colleges might have suffered because of lower male graduates have been made up by increase in female graduates.
It’s not graduates–it’s donations, the ability to attract faculty and top students. When schools drop below 40% male, these things suffer.
That is remarkably harsh.
It’s based on what I see every day.
I tend to think blanket dismissals of any group are harsh.
It starts before school, with parental attitudes. I’m sure you were an attentive parent who took care to treat your girls and your boys the same and to give them the same standards of behaviour and tried not to reinforce gender stereotypes. Sadly not all parents are like that, and there is still a gender gap where boys are allowed to get away with more unacceptable behaviour. I’ve seen it and heard about it from other teachers, who say there is more poor behaviour from boys aged 4 than there is from girls. Behaviour is learned – which is why I said before that if one part of a student body can LEARN to behave appropriately, then the other half should be able to do the same. (They’ll have to do it at some point if they want to hold down a job!)
I hear your point and I am still pretty convinced how we shape our culture now has a lot to do with what we define as appropriate and how we enable that.
I think we may just need to agree to disagree.
The West, where this is happening, is losing a lot of economic/science/tech wars that matter. And we are slowly losing our economic power. It could be a coincidence that that happened just as we changed our schools standards = or it could be causal. It’ll take a while for us to figure it all out and do research that really gives a full picture. It’s frightening to sit in what was once the strongest economy in the world and watch erosion swinging toward Asia.
Asia – where education is valued far more than it is in the West.
Exactly. A man in education in Korea, China, or other Asian nations isn’t seen as a glorified babysitter, which is what I have heard teachers called here.
This is strictly anecdotal, but I work with low functioning autistic individuals and we have found that these folks who barely understand gender, much less gender politics, misbehave pretty much equally. However, it affects our heavily female workforce differently. When one of the guys who towers over everyone and is a lot stronger than most of us, acts out, we jump into action where we might let it slide with the girl. I’ll add the guys tend to try physical intimidation with us, where if the rare larger male caregiver enters the scene, they don’t. I think its some kind of instinctive flight/fight instincts kicking in but I haven’t really read much on this. Most studies in this population focus on other issues but for those of us working in the field, this is a real issue.
I think the much bigger problem is the whole concept that kids are all on one grade level in every subject at the same age. We’ll never get the outocomes we want if we try to plug kids into holes that don’t fit them, all for our convenience. I strongly believe the main reasons so many students, male and female, struggle with math is that they need to learn it at different paces. “Fifth grade math” is probably appropriate for less than half the students in fifth grade, whether too easy or too difficult.
With homeschooling, I had the luxury of teaching to my kids actual skill levels instead of grade levels.
(Yes, I know homeschooling isn’t practical or appealing for everyone and there are drawbacks to it like there are with every schooling option.)
When my daughter was going to school, I was not even aware of the concept of homeschooling. Between my husband and I (with Ph.Ds in sciences and humanities) we could have done homeschooling but we relied on the formal learning structure of the school system. What the school system was lacking we made it up at home. But schools also gave her what we could not-afterschool activities like choirs, yearbooks etc. in fact, it was two male teachers who helped her do brilliantly in music and in writing. The school system was not perfect—especially female teachers some of whom engaged in racist behavior.
I considered homeschooling but felt that would be too isolating for my kids. I am, at heart, a communal person, and I felt that, for my kids, being in schools was the best option.
However, my cousins were homeschooled and their parents did a phenomenal job of making sure their kids were part of many peer groups so I know homeschooling doesn’t exclude having social kids.
Well, my experience was different. The reason my kds could spend time on music, drama, sports, yearbooks and other extracurricular activities is that homeschooling has less wasted time, including almost no “homework” (except assigned reading) since we covered it all during our daily school times.
Our homeschooling group produced a yearbook every year and had group classes once a week in a variety of subjects. I taught high school biology to homeschoolers, complete with hands-on labs, for over ten years. My kids could participate in an incredible choir made up of mostly homeschoolers, They took piano and gutar lessons. One child participated in a Shaspeare club that put on plays every eyar that were extremely well done and well attended. Adn they did all this during typical school hours, ie before 5 pm, so we had our evenings as a family. so you can see that my kids didn’t lack for social interactions or extracurricular activities.
Yes, as I said, my cousins did it that way and it was great!
Honestly, my kids tend to be introverts, but I’m not and I would have gone crazy without a social circle to be a part of!! 🙂
I was working and even if I had been aware of homeschooling I would not have been able to do it. Recently I asked my daughter if she would have liked home schooling and her response was “I would have hated it”.
To be honest I’m kind of over romance as a genre and moved on to historical fiction, thrillers and horror. Most romance that’s currently being published is not good in general you really have to wade though a lot of crap to find really good authors. And most writers seem to write what’s trendy I don’t blame them we have to put food on the table so I understand them following trends and writing for a younger audience. But yes gen z and younger millennials don’t seem to want characters with flaws especially male characters.
I still love a really good love story!
I do if they are good, well written but I’m just not getting that.
Agreed. I do read some contemporary romance, but I skew towards romantic suspense and fantasy/urban fantasy romance – books that have extraneous plots running alongside the love stories. There are a small number of authors whose contemporaries I continue to pick up, but I have a low tolerance for low-angst fluff, which seems to be 95% of what is being put out right now.
I’m still finding them but, honestly, most of the good romances I’ve read in the past few months haven’t quite made it to DIK territory.
My DIKs in 2024 were a fairly even mix of straightforward contemporary romance and “romance and”, although I think I probably read more of the latter because I now almost always stick to a trusted half-dozen authors when it comes to CR.
I am on a contemp run–I’m determined to find the gems!
I haven’t found any DIKs yet so far this year, but I’ve read a couple that were close, and there were 5 contemps on my Best of 2024 list.
I’m the same way!! I’ve really latched onto historical fictions recently and i think it’s because they deliver the drama that current romances just don’t.
I think lot of historical romance newer ones, lack authenticity. And if I do read a romance it’s usually older like about ten years older or more.
That’s the main reason I’ve almost stopped reading HR. It’s not just about authenticity though – I think we all know that if those stories were completely accurate, we’d be reading about old, overweight dukes and earls with poor personal hygene and bad teeth! It’s about something having a good sense of time and place, characters who behave as if they are part of that time and place, and a good story with characters you can root for, and there are aren’t many of those around.
Most of the major publishing houses are dropping their HR authors like hot potatoes, and I’m hard pressed to name more than half a dozen who still have publishing contracts. Harlequin Historical seems to be the only line committed to historicals, although how long that will last is anyone’s guess. Some are turning to self-publishing, but it’s tough.
Dabney’s comment about heroines hitting heroes happened in a couple of HRs I read, and my pet peeve is the heroines who run rings around the heroes or who treat them like crap and ride roughshod over their feelings because authors seem to feel that that’s how to write a strong heroine. Obviously, it isn’t.
I think many historical romance writers are trying to tap into women’s anger about so many governments trying to bring back the past. And I so get that. But there are ways to do it well–Erin Langston and Julia Bennett do this–without implying that women are innately superior and that most men suck.
Yes. As you’ve said in the post, that whole “smash the patriarchy” thing is understandable. But it doesn’t translate well into HR when it’s as “in yer face” as so many authors are making it.
I think, in many ways, smash the patriarchy misses the real problem. To me, the real problem is the huge gulf between the few have a lots and the many have too little. It almost feels like a Wizard of Oz thing–ignore the billionaire in the corner and instead focus on taking down the other sex.
Yep. Ignore the billionare in the corner because the marginalised are taking your houses/healthcare/benefits etc. is very much the issue right now.
This is from an article running in the Atlantic today:
“When Musk says he wants to run the government like a business, he means that he wants to slash the benefits it provides. When he says the government needs to “live within its means,” he means it needs to cut taxes on billionaires and cut services for everyone else. And when he says “temporary hardship,” what he has in mind is that he and his friends will continue to live lives of inconceivable luxury while millions struggle to make ends meet.
When Americans begin to suffer—as Musk has said they will—the aim will be to use the tech industry’s control over what the public sees and hears to trick people into believing that things are not occurring as they are or that someone else is to blame.”
except in real life, you’re not going to meet Jeff Bezos, but you will probably meet Fred the Amazon Delivery Guy, who will send you an unsolicited dick pic and/or sleep with you and then ghost you, or make “your body, my choice” jokes and/or make your job as a Delivery Lady more difficult by sexually harassing you at the warehouse. The reality is that in day-to-day interactions, people ruminate on and suffer the most from close personal interactions, not large systematic ones.
I’m just never going to buy that the vast majority of men suck.
If you remember, for a long time in romance novels, it was the men who were innately superior and most women, even if they did not exactly suck, not particularly great.
I disagree. Heroines have always been written as the best–it’s just that our belief about what best is for women has, over the past fifty years, changed. Heroines were always emotionally smarter than men, better able to understand the needs of the other better, more caring and compassionate to others than their male counterparts.
I think maybe they have never had a good experience with the opposite sex.
Well, they are unlikely to get one if they think all men are the worst.
True but in a way I don’t blame them my first experience with the opposite sex was terrible so I think it can kind of put you off, as they say you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find ‘the one’.
Sure. I get that. For me, the horrible boyfriend I had, briefly, in college made me far clearer on what kind of guy I wanted. I’m sorry I lived through his sh*t but it taught me what to avoid going forward.
I think it’s more than that. There really are A LOT of women who have had overwhelmingly negative sexual and romantic experiences with the opposite sex. With a large sample size. I don’t know whether it’s down to random chance or circumstance or poor judgment or if I just got really lucky to have overwhelmingly positive ones, but there are many, many women like this.
As are there many many men who feel that women’s expectations–make a lot of money, be tall, handsome, sensitive, and great at housework–are unreasonably high. I’d argue that both sexes are failing to connect.
But there’s a difference between being rejected or ghosted or strung along because you don’t fit some unrealistic ideal and being choked without consent or raped or stalked or given an STD because your partner is cheating. The women I know who have had poor experiences have had really, really poor, extremely scary experiences. Or have encountered men who are just…very odd. A friend went on a date with a guy who…didn’t wear shoes. In New York City.
I think the difference here is that in my generation, most people met in the “real world” before online dating became the norm. You had the ability to silently, and subconsciously, eliminate all the weirdos before you even got to first date territory. Online that vetting is a lot harder. Friends of mine who have dated online have had a huge ratio of negative to positive interactions. If they based it on that sample alone, it would not be an illogical conclusion to write off all men.
So I suspect it’s really about how people are meeting each other.
That is a stellar point. Honestly, my resolution for 2025 is to do stuff in person with strangers/friends. My husband and I have joined a pickleball team, signed up for a pottery class and I’ve joined a second book club. I am going to have–I have promised myself–three parties this year. We had one for New Year’s Day–a causal afternoon drop in and it was great!
You really have put your finger on it.
This is just a flip of the trope of not like the other girls, the hero is now not like other guys. I know I have read lots of heroines who don’t like other women because they like dumb girl stuff, and lots of male heroes who hate women because of one hoor/golddigger/betrayer. It’s the same trope, the question is does it bother you more when it’s women doing it to men, and if so, why?
I’ve never liked the not like other girls trope. I tend to dislike pretty much anything that leans heavily into the innate superiority of a few.
I think it’s a reflection of how mentally and emotionally exhausted we are as a society.
Yeah, but, IMHO it’s a solution that will lead to more depression over the long haul.
Your article demonstrates why I have always stuck to historical romance. I have read some contemporaries, but with a few exceptions, I don’t enjoy them. This may sound strange, but I love it when a strong-willed woman must fight class structures as well as the many other cultural attitudes against women that existed back in Regency/Victorian times. I don’t go for Medievals as much, with the exception of “For My Lady’s Heart” by Kinsale (although I love everything she wrote).
I don’t have my ear on the ground as you do, so was unaware of this trend. I love historicals and HEAs so much because they are so escapist. I WANT the guy to get the girl, but I also want him to realize what his life would be without her (cue “A Devil in Winter” and “Arabella”–two of my faves).
Life has gotten very grim over the last few months so I want to read happy books. And yes, I am a feminist and voted for Kamala (a lot of good that did). But I love me some bad boys once in a while, as long as they are redeemed by the love of a good woman.
A related thing that I see a lot in newer romance novels is that the men are too perfect — endlessly understanding, supportive, perfectly feminist, and always alert to their beloved’s needs. I get that romance is in some sense a fantasy, but some of the things the heroes say and do are just…not things that actual men IRL would say or do. So instead of getting swept up in the lovely romance, I feel skeptical of it.
Years ago, in the salad days of my marriage to Dr. Feelgood, I called my parents up after he and I had an argument and said, “I wish I were married to someone who never argued with me.” My parents, so rude, laughed. They said, “You’d be bored to tears.”
They were right–the idea that a perfect partner is one who validates everything you are and you believe seems to this cranky old lady, a nightmare. I have become so much better at so many aspects of life because I’ve had to work with my husband. I’m much more honest about my flaws, that’s for sure!
If this is so ubiquitous I don’t see how Colleen Hoover could be so wildly popular. She certainly doesn’t write “perfect” male protagonists. From what I understand she writes pretty abusive ones and her books sell like wildfire. Cue up the movie deal…
So maybe people are just writing what sells, whether it’s the perfect Stepford Husband or the abusive jerk.
Well, I think the men that her heroines end up with the end are good guys. But I’ve only read 1.3 of her books!
I think we are actually going to extremes…either perfect heroes that are the fantasy of every modern woman or horrible heroes that are the dark erotic fantasy of some women. Both types of men do not exist because the nicest man ever is going to make mistakes and a super sexy evil criminal is not going to be evil to everyone except one specific woman.
So it’s common to hear things like “only men written by women are worth it” but…then we have no right to get angry if men then say that only women written by men are worth it. Also where does this tendency come from: “If a man looks at my butt or my cleavage he’s an idiot but if I look at Bob’s muscles, hard stomach or crotch I’m a sexually healthy and liberated woman” or “I want a man who will listen to me ramble on about romance novels, makeup, cats, MY INTERESTS for hours but who doesn’t dare bore me for hours by talking to me about his own unless I ask him.”That is not equality, it is just deciding that women are superior and therefore men must always strive to please us to the detriment of their interests and what they want to deserve affection. I have never liked injustice and that is unfair, and to say “men used to do the same thing and some still do it” well that is exercising revenge and we are not going to get anywhere with that.
Yeah–if you can’t say it about one group, you can’t say it about another is my rule.
I think this is a depressing reflection of real trends in dating — mainly online. An increasing number of women are writing off dating altogether.
When I was in college, the norm was that if you found a partner in college, you would be fine to wind up with them. And soon after college, the expectation was that you were in the market for a serious partner. Now it’s almost like people are told they shouldn’t look for a permanent partner until they’re 28 or 29, even if the person is otherwise perfect.
But by then you’re out of college, which is a giant dating pool, and into the much narrower, difficult-to-navigate dating pool of adult life. So, you turn to online dating. Where you’ll find the absolute worst men possible, on average. If online dating is your primary experience of men, your observations would probably lead you to write off the vast majority of the gender.