Bookish Kink Shaming
Romance has a spectrum of intimacy, from sensual hand-holding to smoking hot sex scenes. I prefer to write smoking hot which verges on kinky to reflect my characters. My Patron Saint of the Saint of the Shadows series submits to his Marisol to reflect his never-ending service to the city he chooses to protect while Marisol’s desire to domme mirrors her need to find control among the city’s chaos. Since I feel my stories are more plot focused—after all, they’re saving the world—I consider the kink I write to be a light bit of frosting on my romance cake. It’s never the whole cake. Having said that, I hope to never engage in kink shaming rhetoric. Ever.
As the Romance genre continues to be a punching bag for book banners and pearl clutchers, I think it’s easy to engage in discourse about how my romance isn’t one of those bad ones. A paraphrased line from a thread was something like “Sure, I like monster tentacles, but THAT crosses a boundary!” However, when we in bookish spaces make the lines we draw for ourselves into how the whole community should judge Romance, we’re engaging in book-banning rhetoric.
Here’s the thing: we’re all in this together. We’re all dealing with heightened attitudes about banning and sexual shaming. We are stronger if we stick together. Sure, we shouldn’t yuck someone else’s yum, but I think the bookish community can go beyond that minimum. We should stand against the systemic yucking of the yum, and stand up for each other when someone draws lines in the community.
There are many ways we can combat a divided community. We can start with being mindful of how we discuss Romance, the genre we love. This includes being mindful how we discuss heat levels. For example, a sensual Romance isn’t boring or lacking; a super-spicy Romance is still sweet and emotional. Open-mindedness includes how we discuss queerness. For example, a bisexual FMC in a M/F happily ever after is still bisexual, and there’s no single right way to depict the intimate life of a trans character. An open-mind is also essential when the discourse involves kink. For me as a reader and author, if I’m rooting for the lovers and am drawn into the emotion of the story, I absolutely do not care how they go about expressing their intimacy. Vanilla? Furry? As long as the intimacy is from the heart, I’m a happy reader and writer.
Therefore, it is important to foster a community built around what we like and not about what we don’t. And believe me, I’ve done it. I’m tempted to engage in the “tropes I don’t like” discourse. I’ve shared a few—sorry lovers of fated mates! I also think creating social media around hating a books doesn’t help a reader seeking a recommendation, it only insulates the bookish community further. It’s taken this almost forty-year-old some growing up, but saying I don’t like something doesn’t really help people understand what I do like. I promise to do better in dismantling the systemic yucking of the yum.
