Whether's its the rampant, hypocritical, slut shaming in erotica or the old school "good girl" MC pitted against "mean girls, internalized misogyny still seems to be the go-to trope. It's not just in these genres, I see it alive and well in every female dominated genre of fiction, especially in YA and New Adult.

Apparently, the only way to make a female lead stand out from the crowd is to reduce every other female character in the story to a sexist stereotype. UGH!

Please tell me I'm not the only one sick and tired of this, and direct me to some erotica and romance novels featuring healthy, strong and supportive female relationships. Or even just warn me away from any sexist books you've suffered through.

Thanks.

This doesn't really bother me unless it rises to the Beautiful Disaster level. (If you haven't read or seen, literally EVERY female in that book who wasn't Abby and her BFF were bitches and sluts. Every. single. one. And the rampant double standard with no one considering anything wrong with Travis. He's not slutty or a whore, he's just a poor boy caught in a Whore Vortex.)

Oh, this bothers me, too! I can't stand Kristen Ashley books for this reason (and also the general rambling/lack of editing). But I surprised myself by really enjoying Kit Rocha's Beyond series recently. It was very conflicting, because it has a lot of uncomfortable, even sexist, shit at first glance--the women are always the subs in D/s relationships, the men control when the ladies come, women dance for men's entertainment/arousal. At the same time, though, sexual consent is always essential and explicit -- even to the point that the consent went beyond "do you want this?" to the next step, where the men took care that consent was not tainted by intoxication, drugs, or even emotional vulnerability. Also, the relationships between the women were very supportive and positive, not judgey or jealous. I hadn't ever read anything quite like it, and I found all three books (but especially the first, Beyond Shame) very refreshing and liberating even as parts of it set my feminist-rage hackles rising.

Reply to post #2 (show post):
Alicia,
It stands out to me more now that I'm actively looking for more feminist, and female centric stories.

Clio,
I've resisted reading the Beyond series because of those issues of everyone revolving around male pleasure, because while there might be strong female relationships doesn't make it a female centric story. Then again, that doesn't mean that you can't have very strong female characters and relationships in a traditionally sexist story, look at How to Marry a Millionaire. The premise is super sexist, but the story is about three women who don't hate or compete with each other.

I don't think there's a perfect story out there but lately it feels like many of the popular titles are sending us backward.

"I don't think there's a perfect story out there but lately it feels like many of the popular titles are sending us backward."

Agreed! And the sad part is that mostly women are writing them. :(

Reply to post #5 (show post):
"...the sad part is that mostly women are writing them."

YES! Written by women for women. So why so much woman-hate in this female dominated community? Maybe because there is a certain type of fantasy, where a woman is a special snowflake to all men, and that consequentially makes them some how better than other women? You see it a lot in these genres and fan fiction too, but I wish more women would understand that it's the most insidious form of misogyny.

And too often it's packaged and sold like a feminist ideal. Please see most of the YA dystopia genre. >.

haha reminds me of a scene from the Incrementalists. The heroine is sitting in a bar talking to the female bartender, who comments that she thinks the waitress is banging the bartender's boyfriend. The heroine says "What a slut," to which the bartender agrees. Then the heroine clarifies, "No, I mean your boyfriend. He's a slut." That shuts the bartender up!

Reply to post #7 (show post):
Well that sold me on reading the Incrementalists.

Reply to post #8 (show post):
It's a good book but I had a few problems with it, definitely not Brust's best (I don't know anything about his co-author). The male-to-female character ratio was out of whack for one thing. I could go into more details but that would require spoilering things. There were a lot of cool elements though.

Reply to post #1 (show post):
Believe me, I get your frustration. Before, it probably would've gone over my head. However, similar to you, I've been lately trying to find more of a feminist outlook/writing toward a lot of the stuff I read. Which, surprisingly, has been a lot harder than I thought it would. I'll admit that I've had a bit more success with Chick Lit than with actual Romance (but that could be due to pure dumb luck than anything else). What bothers me more than the "Good Girl" vs. "Bad Girl" thing though is the actual HERO/MALE MC of the story. I've seen so many Romances where he TELLS(read as ORDERS) her(HEROINE/FEMALE MC) pretty much what she will or won't do. This even goes down to sex (i.e. telling her if he's "going to let her come" or not or she will when he WANTS her to). I've even seen a few books/series where the heroine is actually AFRAID of how the hero is going to react to certain that she almost doesn't want to tell him or how to tell him. And it's in that "Oh, things-are-going-to-change" or "We've-hit-a-hard-point", like she's actually afraid or whatever. And it's behavior like that, and MUCH MORE, that I just truly dislike. And what makes it worse that this type of stuff gets brushed away or romanticized("He's being an Alpha male/hero", "He's so Alpha"), when it really shouldn't be. And then on top of that if you don't like that kind of hero ( "Alphas"), you're considered strange or weird. It's just....ugh.