So at the end, I think it is all a matter of how your brain is wired. As a friend of mine said on another list, “if you don’t viscerally understand the difference between rape and forced seduction, you don’t. If you do, then you do.”

I think it goes back to the basic personality traits. Some people dream of control taken away, along with responsibility. For others, losing control is a nightmare, rather than a fantasy. For some, forced sex is a method to free a woman from her inhibitions and responsibilities. For some, it is perceived as humiliation for a woman.
I think it’s like water and oil, forever unable to mix

And I agree with the poster who said it makes for edgier books. Though I’d for once love to read an edgy books which wouldn’t gain egdiness by making a woman weak.

So at the end, I think it is all a matter of how your brain is wired. As a friend of mine said on another list, “if you don’t viscerally understand the difference between rape and forced seduction, you don’t. If you do, then you do.”

I think it goes back to the basic personality traits. Some people dream of control taken away, along with responsibility. For others, losing control is a nightmare, rather than a fantasy. For some, forced sex is a method to free a woman from her inhibitions and responsibilities. For some, it is perceived as humiliation for a woman.
I think it’s like water and oil, forever unable to mix

And I agree with the poster who said it makes for edgier books. Though I’d for once love to read an edgy books which wouldn’t gain egdiness by making a woman too weak to fight.

I look forward to reading your column. I’d actually written an entirely different column, on a completely different topic, several days before deciding it would not be nearly as interesting as writing about this subject. I’m glad I changed my mind, because this has been a very interesting discussion.

TTFN, LLB

TTFN, LLB

It’s not one thing that makes me like these, but a combination. First, it’s the relief of (for a time, in a book where there’s no real danger, and vicariously through the heroine) NOT having to be ‘responsible’. Sometimes, I think a woman’s life just gets tired. You are responsible at work — usually for a TON of things that the men let go. You are responsible for the food at home. You are responsible for the kids, and the clothes, and the way you look, and paying the bills….and it’s exhausting.

For me, the kids are now grown and the house pretty much runs itself and I don’t have an outside job anymore, but the stresses of a responsible life get you down. I don’t enjoy fuzzy, funny, ha-ha books — never have. But, I do enjoy tense, exciting books with the occasional moments of ‘you aren’t responsible, you CAN’T be responsible, I won’t let you’.

Of course it only works if the guy in question is the to-die-for hero that the heroine secretly wants more than anything in her life, even if she doesn’t know it.

That, I think is the fantasy — the guy you really WANT just taking over everything. And it IS a fantasy, not ‘real life’. Not something I want in ‘real life’ (well, except maybe as play LOL)

Second, the forced seduction (along with ANY big dramatic scene) makes the fiction more interesting. It creates conflict in a scene where it’s hard to put conflict. A scene that’s just ‘oh honey, I love you so much. Kiss kiss. Sex’ gets REALLY boring if it goes no longer than a paragraph. Happy happy sex is interesting to DO, but it’s usually boring to READ. ANY scene that doesn’t have conflict in it is boring to read. So, sex scenes where the tension can be kept high are just more enjoyable and memorable book moments. Forced seduction certainly isn’t the only way to make a sex scene more interesting — but it is ONE way.

Thirdly, forced seductions contribute to the tone I like in a book. As I said above, I don’t like nice sweet, happy books. I like books that bite, that are edgy and controversial and difficult in places. So, the books that have these sorts of scenes are often books where I’m just more interested in the hero and heroine and story than in some other books.

Do I like books without these scenes? Sure. LOTS. But, this is the sort of book that draws me, so I’ll read it. I’m greatly enjoying Anne Stuart’s Black Ice right now, for example.

So, for me, it’s a package deal. I like the sorts of books where these scenes CAN occur, I like my fiction a bit larger and gritter than many readers, and I can get into the fantasy of being stripped of responsibility. But it’s just fiction. To each their own.

As for the ‘but that will confuse people’ — puleeze! Are we morons? God help us if the fact someone likes to read books about serial killers is suggesting they want one to visit them! Or that liking to read about aliens invading means they expect ET any moment, with an alien uzi. What we read as fiction is enjoyed precisely because it IS fiction, safe. And if it were any genre but Romance there wouldn’t even be a discussion.

There are people who can’t separate reality from fantasy and they need help. But the average adult — male OR female — knows the difference.

–June

Was it Rosehaven? Not only does the hero rape the heroine, but the other women in the household chastize her for being too proud to submit willingly, thereby deserving what she got. Double-dipped yuck on a stick.

As for To Have and To Hold, although those early scenes between Sebastien and Rachel were incredibly difficult for me to read, I can’t imagine the book without them, and feel that Sebastien’s overt repentence (even as he’s trying to make lame excuses, all the while knowing they’re lame) pumped up his masculinity for me in a big way. His self-awareness is a central part of his appeal to me, even in the early parts of the book. And his acknowledging the jerkiness of his actions made me feel much more that he was effecting his own “redemption,” which in turn just made him more powerful to me as a hero.

so, for that race of beings, such a behaviour is a cultural norm. You will find many similar developments in romantic erotica. Vampires who have it in their blood to hold down the female and have sex with her, etc. Aliens who kidnap the females and use them as sex pets, because it is the cultural standard in their world. Notice how those more extreme behaviours are practically often veiled by the fantasy/speculative shroud of a “different culture.”

Now, take the level of intensity down a few levels, make everyone human…and voila, a classic forced seduction scene.
What does that tell us? Maybe that the authors are afraid of being accused in providing endorsement for a certain kind of controversial sexual fantasies?

And if the female readers can separate fantasy from reality–can the male readers do it?
On one hand, it is pretty offensive to assume they can’t.
On the other hand, weren’t the men told for ages that romance as a genre encapsulates all female desires?