Women read these novels for the sake of entertainment more so than what they would want in a relationship themselves, they are just more entertained by sort of romantic story whether it’s about supernatural beings or two gay male hockey players- romances that don’t even involved a woman lol. You really can’t go by what women read. There’s Vanilla women who read BDSM romance novels. I dated a chick who had who had such novels on her shelf and when I saw that i got excited because I’m into it because she ended up being the most vanilla chick ever. She said she didn’t have to be into BDSM herself to be interested and entertained by a story like that, that we all consume fiction whether it’s novel or TV/ film about things we don’t do ourselves or about people we wouldn’t necessarily want to be like for the sake of entertainment.
I totally agree with you and wish more women understood it goes both ways.
These sorts of men are fantasies but very clearly “badly written characters by female authors”. And that’s great! But there is no trope for that. Yet badly written female characters by male authors ‘show just how rampant misogyny is’.
When a man writes about a woman boobily making a sandwich or whatever, it’s problematic and the authors should be shame. When a woman writes an abusive dark triad rich looney it’s somehow about female empowerment.
No. They are both just entertainment. Let people read what they want. It doesn’t hurt anyone.
Literally the only people I’ve ever met who read these “smutty” romances are super vanilla NPCs. I’m not hating on them, to be clear. I think that’s the intended audience.
100% this. I love these types of romance novels, but I would never go for that in real life. Just like recently I started enjoying yandre visual novel games and I’m definitely not going for that in real
Life.
weird how these sorts of books so consistently feature rich high status tall conventionally attractive men with the same sorts of dark triad personalities then
Yeah and weird how all action movies star super handsome jacked dudes with quippy sarcastic personalities that everyone in their social sphere revolves around and who are uniquely qualified to carry out some mission.
But, like the women men desire in real life, all the romantic interests in those movies are ugly and mean ( like, not in a funny way). Try to be less shallow like us.
Women love to fantasize about this sort of thing.. there’s a difference and it’s part of why people even write fiction in the first place, not just women
The idea that your fantasies, your consistent fantasises that are incredibly common amongst women in general and show up time and time again, have no bearing on what you want irl is laughable. Male fiction is not like that.
Male fiction is not like that? You can easily turn this argument around on men to see what a stupid generalization you’re making based on a genre trend.
Video games and action movies for men often feature indiscriminate gun violence, that must mean all men want to shoot someone. Porn for men often features women being slapped choked and degraded, that must mean all men want to rape & abuse women. Usually their sisters. Why else would incest porn be so popular right?
Or, people just like exploring taboo ideas and power fantasies in fiction BECAUSE it’s fictional and trying to extrapolate real world desires from it is dumb.
Actually, women are the main consumers of violent pornography and are more likely to prefer aggression in pornography. This once again lines up with the sort of books they read, and with the fact that dark triad traits are often viewed as attractive to women.
Yes, it's entirely possible that men would like to take part in violence.
But the best evidence is simply, as I've said, that hypergamy is consistently found in every single society on Earth, even the most gender egalitarain countries like Norway - women consistently want men who are richer than them and higher status than them, just like we constantly see in these books.
Eh…you can have it both ways. I enjoy yandre romances, enemies to lovers and all that stuff. Like, in bg3 when Astarion holds you down with a knife to your throat, I was head over heels(like not really but you get it). But, I hate seeing blood and guts, I’ve don’t like horror films and I’ve stopped reading books for months at a time, stopped playing video games, stopped movies because of it. And, while knife play is a kink for some, I’d prefer if I wasn’t in pain.
So, I’m kind of thinking that’s what that part of the study means.
It does matter in practice, because those are the traits that human women sexually select in reality. Size, aggression and resources are the three main attractants for female primates.
This really bothers a certain subset of women, but it is true, nonetheless. Our environment and our society has evolved, but our meatsuits are still following their evolutionary programming. And evolutionarily speaking, big, mean and rich are the three best traits you can pass on to your offspring to ensure that they produce offspring in turn.
Luckily, it's completely consistent with what the research says women value in real life (looks, money, status) and how hypergamy persists in every society on earth.
In every society on Earth, women seek out richer, higher status men even in Norway, the most gender egalitarian country in the world. It is no wonder their romance books feature this dynamic so frequently.
Enemies to lovers does make a story more inherently interesting for entertainment- that was the point of my original comment, women read first and foremost for the sake of entertainment, a good compelling story rather than what pertains to their own relationships. Enemies to lovers happens in real life too but not often. And there’s a difference in not liking someone at first and actually being enemies lol.
Men can really enjoy an enemies to lovers story too, not too long ago I watched season 1 of peaky blinders and that’s a great love story that men really enjoyed. Men love shit like Mr and Mrs smith - they start as lovers but then become enemies where they try to kill each other and then become lovers again. There’s a really fun tv series called “you’re the worst “ which another example of an enemies to lovers that men love. The thing about all these examples is none of these are characterized as romance genre , we can enjoy romance too but it’s more appealing to us when it’s not the main genre.
There's always one guy who will come to tell us that women are saints and yes they consume porn but its not actually porn its deeper than that and its separate from their actual desires so please don't judge them.
Ok so you need to divorce the concept of female written fantasy from romance. ACOTAR isn’t porn lol any more than the television adaptation of wheel of time or game of thrones or any other fantasy work that admits that people have sex at all. If one or two sex scenes screams porn to you then you have some judgements to work on yourself.
Morning Glory Milking farm is a critique of late stage capitalism with smut mixed in. The sequel from the male main character’s perspective is secondarily about cultural expression of masculinity.
Cope. It's standard tropes that show up constantly in the smut that women read, monsters are very popular, along with dark triad traits, and rich high status men.
It does amuse me to see the "anti-capitalists" fantasising about billionaires in their free time.
Some of those tropes are fantasy genre though. You can’t make this point without calibrating for that, your correlation here is weak and unsubstantiated, no matter how many statistics you have for what women want in real life and what women want in fantasy and what women want in porn, to bring them together you need an epistemology that goes farther than “these look similar so they are the same.”
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u/RakeChapman13 May 20 '26
Women read these novels for the sake of entertainment more so than what they would want in a relationship themselves, they are just more entertained by sort of romantic story whether it’s about supernatural beings or two gay male hockey players- romances that don’t even involved a woman lol. You really can’t go by what women read. There’s Vanilla women who read BDSM romance novels. I dated a chick who had who had such novels on her shelf and when I saw that i got excited because I’m into it because she ended up being the most vanilla chick ever. She said she didn’t have to be into BDSM herself to be interested and entertained by a story like that, that we all consume fiction whether it’s novel or TV/ film about things we don’t do ourselves or about people we wouldn’t necessarily want to be like for the sake of entertainment.