This is a rant about people questioning the value of romance novels. And I had to get some things off my chest. But just to be clear, romance novels are intellectual and feminist. (1/7)

Romance novels show women they can have respect and consent and trust in their romantic and sexual relationships. Romance novels show women it is possible to have agency and power in a world constantly... (2/7)

...trying to knock us down and keep us as second class citizens. Romance novels show women they should enjoy books, they should see themselves in the pages of those books, & they should STRIVE FOR BETTER than the mediocrity the Patriarchy thinks we should be grateful for. (3/7)

Romance novels show women they can and do deserve pleasure and if they aren’t getting it they can leave and find it elsewhere. Romance novels show them putting themselves first is not a failure. (4/7)

Other genres of fiction exist because they, like the predominantly white cis het men that write them, profit from the women who do the work... aka writers of the romance genre. You cannot deny the labor the romance genre has done for the publishing world. (5/7)

Romance novels scare some men, again predominantly white cis het men, because it challenges their mediocrity. It challenges the status quo that “romance novels are a fantasy” when in fact they are the standard of basic decency to which all women deserve in relationships. (6/7)

Note: the word “women” in this thread is referring to trans, cis and genderqueer individuals who are women in any way. (7/7)