By Aaliyah Medawar
Part One
The Line Between Love and Lust:
Sex sells. Every artist, musician, advertiser, and consumer knows this. In this day and age, it is sex appeal that draws a crowd. Nothing exemplifies this better than the state of modern writing. In a world where BookTok, a section of TikTok dedicated to reading, and the romance genre cohabitate the public conscience, sexualization will inevitably find a place among their ranks. While the liberation from harmful, if not impossible and unrealistic, standards of purity and sex is wonderful for both people’s freedoms and society’s morals, the dangerous status quo of gender norms still can rear its ugly head, and morph itself to fit the changing ideals of relationships.
But it is not only relationships that fall victim to the influence of this culture of writing. The popularity of these stories and the negative stereotypes they perpetuate has led to the creation of the term Fast Fiction. Coined by Sarah Welch, a webcomic maker who has been publishing installments of a modernized Sherlock Holmes adaptation- known as Signs of Three- since 2018, this term refers to the “cheapening of literature.” Though similar in meaning to a penny dreadful, an older term referring to popular and cheap serialization of stories, it is far different, for penny dreadfuls were able to spawn iconic characters like Sweeney Todd, while Fast Fiction lacks substantial merit. Like its true forefather, Fast Fashion- the mass-production of clothing at the expense of quality-, Fast Fiction is in reference to the phenomenon of writers relying more on the merit of their tropes rather than their plot and characters, which often leads to lackluster storytelling both on a technical and emotional level.
Throughout history, the effort to groom men into abusers and women into victims has manifested strongly in media, be it as old as Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” or the 1944 film “Gaslight.” Now, it is manifesting through BookTok romances, wherein consent is often optional and women only have as much initiative as is required of them for a story. One of the most glaring examples is in the popular dark
romance— a genre dedicated to the exploration of romance in environments of violence or crime—story Haunting Adeline. At the center of this tale sits Zade, a hacker who kills pedophiles, rapists, and other criminals whilst subsequently being a stalker himself, and Adeline, a writer- though we never hear anything about her books- who recently inherited her grandmother’s house and who is being stalked by the ‘morally-gray’ Zade.
In the story, Zade outright says, “All I want to do is break [Adeline]. Shatter her into pieces. And then arrange those pieces to fit against my own. I don’t care if they don’t fit—I’ll fucking make them.” These are not the words of someone who loves their partner. These are the words of a predatory monster who wants to control another human being, even if it means destroying them. I will relent that in relationships involving kink there is a concept of consensual non-consent—wherein parties give each other permission to engage in intimacy though it simulates a non-consensual situation. However, this book does not follow this principle. Zade violates Adeline’s consent multiple times in the story.
He stalks her; he kills people outside of her door; he downright tortures her, and Adeline admits this. After a particularly harrowing incident wherein Zade sexually assaults her with a gun, she says, “What happened two nights ago was sexual assault and I’m not going to spin it any other way.” The ‘morally gray’ killer of rapists is himself a rapist. His victim acknowledges this, yet they end up together at the end of the series. This is not love. This is the glorification of abuse. Love should not make you question whether or not what happened to you was rape. Yet people hail this book as some great portrayal of a dark and sexy relationship rather than the story of a woman conditioned into loving the man who is abusing her. Even worse, the same thing happened to her grandmother, and she ended up marrying the man. The book implies they are reincarnations of each other, eternally bound to forever be in these bonds of stalking and abuse.
I am a firm opponent of censorship in the media. I believe art is supposed to make people question the world and provide a certain degree of discomfort to its viewers. Challenging the status quo is important. Books that uphold it or disregard it let readers gain a wide breadth of perceptions, which allows them to make educated decisions and form their own opinions. That being said, dark romance is not an inherently “bad” genre. It can allow people to see the world through a different lens and even let people explore their own sexuality in a safe and healthy environment so that they can apply it to their own lives and understand the value of consent, relationships, and trust. However, most times, books in this category are not truly manifestations of relationships with darker themes.
A dark romance story, more often than not, does not feature mutual insanity or moral grayness in their focus relationships, and consent is usually a footnote. In fact, this ‘challenge’ to societal norms actually seems to align with them. A domineering man and a doormat woman are often at the forefront of these stories, which is exactly what society encourages. This has been the status quo for centuries. Think of the
housewives of the 1950s. Think of the scold’s bridle—a device used to silence women in an act of public humiliation—of the colonial era.
At what point does ‘darkness’ just become abuse? The story “Fifty
Shades of Grey” comes to mind. Long criticized for its inaccurate portrayal of BDSM, Fifty Shades of Grey spawned from the Twilight series, which too has been under scrutiny for its normalization of stalking, violence, and imbalanced power dynamics.
Edward watches Bella sleep, an early form of the normalization of stalking that plagues BookTok romances. Jacob, also from Twilight, falls in love with an infant, another imbalanced and unhealthy power dynamic, and has his culture portrayed in such a harmful manner that the actual indigenous tribe he belongs to finds his portrayal distasteful.
Christian Grey uses zip ties during intercourse—which is both unsafe and unhealthy. He even outright admits that he is using Anastasia Steele to ‘fix’ his mommy issues, as she resembles the ‘crack whore’ who gave birth to him. He is not a “dominant.” He is an abuser using sexual violence to cope with his issues rather than grow up and see a therapist. Relationships like these are not full of “spice,” as BookTok so often claims them to be; they are full of ideals where women suffer through sexual violence because “at least they love them.” Abuse is not love, and women should not feel like they need to tolerate it simply because “loneliness is worse” or “love is messy.”
That being said, BDSM is not the problem. When handled with safety, trust, and mutual respect BDSM can simply be a way to express intimacy between partners. So long as nobody’s consent is being violated, it is not an issue. Sex should not be an issue. The National Library of Medicine wrote an article on this subject in 2019. Researchers in sexual health say “Cross and Matheson indicate that it is power that is at the core of BDSM interactions, rather than pain, bondage, and humiliation, which are merely tools or methods to achieve the mutual creation of a hierarchical status. As such, the exchange of power in an erotic context is the driving mechanism underlying sexual pleasure.”
It is not a way to abuse. It is a mutual exchange of power for pleasure. If one party does not consent or uses a safe word to stop the interaction, then the situation stops. Power is a privilege not a right. But in these
types of stories, those lines get blurred or downright ignored. Not only that, but in Fifty Shades the methods of achieving these dynamics are unsafe. BDSM practitioners are very focused on safety, such as with aftercare, which lets partners provide comfort to each other after an intense session. The same goes for the tools being used in these situations. The intention is never to permanently maim or abuse, and there is always a safety protocol involved. You do not go skydiving without a parachute, after all.
But in books like Fifty Shades, or even Haunting Adeline, the intent is harm not hierarchy. Grey and Zade want to hurt Adeline and Anastasia. Power is second to pain, not the other way around. That is not mutual consent, that is abuse. According to an article written by the National Center of Sexual Exploitation, “Fifty Shades is not a risqué, passionate romance. It is a story of sexual and domestic abuse.” It also describes how “Our pornified culture is already affected by violent acts in mainstream porn and now, with the help of Fifty Shades of Grey, this violence is being further legitimized and broadly accepted by women. No longer do men have to entice women to engage in the violent acts that they regularly consume through pornography because Fifty Shades of Grey is doing it for them.
The popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey among women sends a message to men that violent and degrading sex is what women really want. For a more realistic look at how a sexual encounter between a sexually abusive, egomaniacal multi-millionaire and a young, vulnerable woman would end for the young woman, look no further than George Soros’ hedge fund manager, Howie Rubin. Rubin allegedly beat and raped three different women in his creepy penthouse BDSM dungeon, according to the lawsuit one woman filed against him.”
Life imitates art, just as much as art imitates life. While it is inevitable that books with problematic themes will be published, it is not inevitable for people to glorify them.
We live in an age of dying media literacy and the normalization of abuse. Until we fix our education system, these stories can and will leave an impact on their readers. We should not demonize the people who fall victim to these lies, but rather seek to promote education in media consumption as well as in sexuality, gender, mental health, relationships, and intimacy. Even though people who perpetuate or enable rape culture can be victims of it too, that is not an excuse, merely an explanation. The key lies in their identity, gender, or otherwise. We see this even now with people romanticizing the
murderer Wade Wilson, who murdered two women in cold blood and has a history of sexual battery. Many women want him released simply because he is attractive or reminds them of a character from these types of books. This hybristophilia, the sexual attraction to those who have committed crimes, has been happening for generations.
They did the same with Jeffrey Dahmer, who raped and murdered seventeen young men of color because they were easy targets in a society that did not care. The same happened with Ted Bundy, who killed thirty women in the 1970s and did unspeakable acts of sexual violence to their bodies be they dead or alive. One of his youngest
victims was Lynette Culver. She was twelve years old. He threw her into a river after he was done. The other was Kimberly Leach. She was twelve and found in a pigpen. She was his last kill.
Dahmer’s youngest were two fourteen-year-old boys. One, Konerak Sinthasomphone, was returned to him despite being clearly abused because the police did not think anything was wrong. They did not care. Wilson did not care. Neither did Richard Ramirez, Charles Manson, or any of the others that people think they can fix. Society has conditioned women into thinking they can ‘save’ the abusers, the rapists, the murderers. It has made women think that ‘he hits you because he likes you.’
It has encouraged women to stay in abusive relationships because it's easier. Society does not care. It will continue to not care until we can recognize patterns of abuse and fight against them, until we can demand for better education, until we can stand up and say “We are done.” But with books like these, which actively promote these relationships without any sense of nuance or condemnation, this will be a long fight. These authors’ audiences are often young women or older women. One is developing their identity, the other is looking for excitement. Both are hurt by these stories. They are not hurt by the safe exploration and education of sex. They are hurt by the ignorance and normalization of abuse.
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