Sudden Bondage Doesn't Mean I Love You

Lately I'm seeing a lot of Sudden Bondage. Nothing makes me lose my investment in a story faster than the use of childhood abuse as a substitute for real conflict resolution. If you're not familiar with the concept, Sudden Bondage is the scene where the heroine (or hero, but more often the heroine) ties the partner up with little or no warning (and certainly not fully informed consent) as a demonstration that they are trustworthy. The tied partner usually has a history of abuse, often with PTSD symptoms attached. The dominant partner wants to tie being bound with pleasure instead of having it be bound with pain.

Leaving aside the issues of personal sexual preference and the importance of consent between non-damaged partners, let me explain why Sudden Bondage is so problematic to me in mainstream romance. I get that bondage is trendy right now, but I don't read romance for the sexy-times-rawr, I read romance for the character conflicts. If you take someone who has trust issues, who has an abuse history with control needs and you bind them without consent you don't get the gentling-the-wild-horse fetish that ends up on the author page. You are far more likely to get violence, panic, racing heartbeats, more distrust and an end to your relationship. This person is not going to be thinking "Wow, so hot after all" they are going to be thinking "Oh my god, please stop, don't touch me, I have to get away." You are also unlikely to get the kind of casual we-will-see-what-happens agreement that some characters in romance offer. Your character is wondering why their lover isn't respecting their boundaries. You character is wondering why their lover thinks they have to be cured rather than appreciated. Sudden Bondage tells me you don't understand abuse issues. You don't understand anything about this character point you've decided to use and I will hate your story proactively from that moment forward.

Like any group of people, abused children are not all the same. Some like double dark chocolate, some like vanilla, some like spumoni, some eschew ice cream entirely. Being one myself and having known a considerable number as well, I will say the adult abuse survivor of romanceland generally resembles an actual adult abuse survivor about as closely as a manatee does a mermaid. (Yes, I meant to make the fictional version the manatee. Manatees float dumbly along in the ocean occasionally eating their own waste while mermaids have complex and varied lives. There was a documentary and everything.) In my experience, adult survivors of abuse have many challenges. We don't think like the other kids. We don't have the same needs as the other kids. Our emotional triggers are not theirs. We are also endlessly resourceful. We seek and appreciate fun. We value the human ties and freedoms that we've attained. Respect and consent are not abstract concepts to us. We do not believe in doing things for someone's own good. Put me in a room of people and I go to the ones laughing the most, smiling the most and making the best jokes. Someone beat the crap out of them and then it stopped. It's time to live. It's time to appreciate life.

In fiction the adult survivor is shuttered down into themselves. They cannot form attachments. They do not trust their own instincts. They are trapped in the mental prison their parents built for them, broken until the fictional lover gently leads them into the light. I dunno, man. Maybe this is true of some I haven't meant. Maybe it's true of adults who were in abusive relationships. After years of exposure to some of the most fucked up family situations to walk the planet, I can tell you it doesn't line up with what I've been or seen from kids who grew up and got the hell out. My old man dies and leaves me a vast estate? I'm not gonna cry in my pillow about upholding his mantle. I'm gonna throw a party that makes Puff Daddy look like a cheapskate. My lover thinks they know what I need more than I do? I'm getting a new lover yesterday.

It's obvious to me when a writer approaches abuse from a place of pity instead of a place of experience. Some writers do a great job with abuse from their research and intuition. Nora Roberts is pretty much perfect in her handling of male and female abuse survivors. Courtney Milan does a nice job as well. (No WAY Mark lives in that house, I am still saying.) It's totally possible. But like Brenda Joyce's historical black friends your abuse adult is a stereotype with little rooting in plausible reality. You might want to get that looked at.

What's Wrong With This Series?

There is a liberating moment in the Southern Vampire Mysteries where Sookie Stackhouse realizes she doesn't have to live this way. She's been abducted and (yet again) maimed. She stumbles out of a cornfield into a blinding array of headlights. Humans have come to rescue her. The humans she disdained in Dead Until Dark, the humans whose thoughts have driven her to seek out paranormal beings, these humans are also the ones who run after an abducted girl. Over the course of Dead Ever After Sookie examines what she needs from life and who meets those needs. To the anguish of fan girls everywhere, the answer is not an abusive undead lover. Sookie chooses the imperfections of human life and a (mostly) human mate in her search for reliability and security. For me, unlike most, this redeemed what had been a deeply problematic ride.

Eve Duncan is another heroine with lovers vying for a place by her side as she endured multiple assaults and horrors. Even a stone cold series finisher like myself couldn't make it to Bonnie, the allegedly final chapter in the actually ongoing Eve Duncan Chronicles. Humanity wasn't enough for Johansen. She raises her I See My Dead Daughter ante with other paranormal aspects late in the game. What started life as a compelling series rooted in reality became mired in international government conspiracies, super humans and paranormal abilities. The Eve Duncan Chronicles was a total bait and switch. A dominant theme of this, like so many popular romantic suspense series, was mutilated women and children.

In the Charley Davidson series I'm experiencing a blend of both these worlds. Like Sookie, Charley is put through a horrific ordeal with each book. Tortured, beaten, sexually assaulted, Charley never makes it to the final pages intact. People she trusted betrays her. Her lover abuses her and withholds information. Unlike Harris, Jones appears committed to her core couple. No matter what information Reyes has withheld from Charley or what peril he places her in, the omgsohot sex will let Charley forgive him. There is a scene in every book where Reyes saves her from something, giving the swooning reader a chance to excuse whatever Reyes has done or will do to Charley outside of that action. The reader is told how protective and good Reyes is, an abusive past is trotted out to excuse dysfunctional treatment.

Robards, formerly one of my favorite authors, launched her Charlotte Stone series last year. The heroine is haunted by a dead serial killer who she finds sexually compelling despite the living and non criminal man in front of her. I panned the book but readers strongly defended it. There were hints laid that the serial killer might have been innocent. He. Might. Have. Been. Innocent. Maybe. Meanwhile, he was absolutely convicted. He absolutely played creepy mind games with Dr. Stone during their pre-death encounters. After surviving the required near death terror porn experience, Charlotte rejects the living supportive man in front of her for the less than honest dead guy who probably killed girls for kicks in her head. This is past Bad Boy Romance and deep into Toxic Self Destruction.

Remember Batgirl? Daughter of a cop, crime fighter, lover of Robin? In The Killing Joke DC made the controversial choice to break her spine. The Joker raped her and left her for dead. Afterward, she was faced with the long road to recovery. Her mental and physical changes were played out over years of story as she rebuilt herself into Oracle, a chair bound superhero who relied on her mind to perform the tasks her body used to. Barbara underwent a traumatic experience with real effects. She emerged a different but still highly capable woman. She did not start dating the Joker. In 2011 DC made the even more controversial choice to magically heal her and restore Barbara to the cowl as Batgirl. The Oracle, a more powerful character to many, was erased. I had complicated feelings about that (and other choices). DC and I broke up after many, many (many!) years together.

Where are our series with men who suffer unimaginable abuse and are still instantly hot for it? Where are our heroines who lie, abuse, mistreat and rage at our hero but are forgiven via their sad childhood? Why do we want to read about women being broken and men who make their burden heavier? I've lost count of the ways women or children are imperiled in romantic suspense. Girls in cages, books told from the killer's POV, girls buried alive, paranormal heroines having their skin peeled off, rapes and torture abound. Are these empowering because the heroine triumphs over an exaggerated version of real world horrors? Does the failure of the heroine to succumb to life ending injuries reinforce the lie that horror can never happen to us? Does her refusal to demand honesty and support from her problematic partner reinforce the message that wanting this in our own lives is unreasonable? We can be beaten. We can be tortured. We can undergo anything, see anything, and we can soothe Man Pain while we do it. Backwards. In heels. It's an incomplete thought, but it's on my mind lately. Extreme Romance (as DA's Robin terms it) may be on the rise but it's roots have been in romance for years.

On the healthier side of the coin we have both Eve Dallas and the Bishop's Special Crimes series. While women are still injured or tortured on the regular, the heroines are promised healthy and unconditional support from their partners. Women injured in the line of work stay injured. There is very little paranormal instant healing. The men generally support their choices and respect their agency. Most importantly, the relationships are mutually supportive. Past abuse is used as motivation or explanation, but never as an excuse or a free pass. These series are romantic suspense without the self hatred, and they are what I look for when I pick up a series. I wish they weren't so damn hard to find. I wish I knew why we (collectively) want the abuse dynamic reinforced in our fiction. If we didn't, it wouldn't sell.

Dude Looks Like A Stalker

"Don't ask me what I think of you / I might not give the answer that you want me to." - Peter Green 

Just a few chapters into a highly anticipated new book I find myself wanting to abandon it. A major issue I have with The Numeric Book and The Series That Inspired It is the toxic power dynamic of the lead couples. Many years ago (when I was reviewing erotica) I realized that reality has no place in getting your freak on. If something is possible, if something is plausible, if something is healthy is irrelevant. Humans are aroused by things that would be toxic to their daily life. I get that. Much like science fiction and fantasy, erotica has it's own physics. Popular literary fiction thrives on dysfunction. The sicker the better. (Raped by your dad? Add a dead cousin and a teen pregnancy! It's all so meaningful!) I've been around a few blocks. Each has it's customs. Which is why this book is making me so sad.

It's all 1978 up in here. Our heroine has a dead fiance. She wants to go cry at his grave because she didn't give it up before he left. She asks around for a fairly safe ship to travel on, seeing as her plan involves boarding it with only her maid for protection. (She's not even planning on a passenger ship. Her faith in her fellow man is really touching.) The ship she's chosen refuses her. The captain tells her he'd like to have sex with her. So she runs off to try every other ship in port. All of them refuse her because the captain has offered double her cash to anyone who does. Since there could be hundreds of ships in port, he could (in theory) have pledged 40,000 pounds to keep her on shore. That's like, 100 million dollars. Ok, so already we're in unreasonable territory. Even if there were only a handful of ships in port, it is insane that our hero would offer up a ton of cash to thwart the travel plans of a women he spoke to for less than five minutes. In that five minute conversation she told him she wanted to go see her fiance and he decided he had to bang her. At this point our hero is an unbalanced rapist creep. Our heroine never gives him her name. He has her followed. He approaches people for information about her. He sneaks into her bedroom to confront her. Her reaction to a man who has stalked her and invaded her home is not fear. She's angry. How dare he thwart her plans! So she's either equally insane or just too stupid to live. If the guy at Hertz refused to rent you a car unless you rocked his world then let himself into your house without so much as knowing your name, I don't think you'd cozy up for a chat. I don't care how great the TripAdvisor reviews for Hertz were, that shit is scary.

Our hero tells the heroine that he wants to bang her omgsobad. However! He will settle for a kiss at his time of choosing on said voyage. But she will be sleeping in his room, of course. Our heroine says "That's a deal, sir." and off to sea she goes. (She thinks only ugly guys rape women.)  Can we back it up a second? A guy she has barely spoken to tracked down her identity, invaded her privacy, restricted her options, showed no respect for her choices and demonstrated serious control issues but he offers her his word and she's good to go? What? In the real world she gets raped and tossed to the fishes without anyone ever being the wiser. In fact, in the real world she disappears from her bedroom then and there. Creepy Stalker Dude is Creepy Stalker Dude in any time period. Instead she slaps him and he sorrowfully takes it. Which proves he's ok. (Oh hi, abuse dynamics. I knew you weren't far behind. What took you so long? The hero and heroine have exchanged at least twelve sentences by now.) Everyone knows a real creepy abusive stalker rapist dude would never tolerate a slap to the face or express conditional remorse. We're all good now!

So at this point in the book we know these things. The heroine finds the hero trustworthy, based on nothing. She's already thinking about how she didn't give it up to her dead fiance so she sure as hell isn't giving it up to this guy, unless she maybe does, but she won't because dead fiance is dead! The hero is thinking he has to bang her like he's never banged anything so he better keep her penned in and get it fast - after she hooks up with fiance guy she's going to cool down and be sexually unavailable. Who wouldn't want to read more? (THIS GIRL!) Ok, I'm not being fair. We also know that the hero has brothers with whom he has a completely inexplicable relationship. The interactions between the hero and his brothers make as little sense as the relationship between the hero and heroine. There is a lot going on in the author's head, but it isn't making it's way to the page. So I'm sad. I'm sad because this favorite author is turning in a wallbanger of a book. I'm sad that the rapetastic stalker hero of the 1970's is back. I'm sad that this romance isn't between two flawed people but between the pheromones of a Magic Vagina and a Conquering Dick. I'm sad because there are days I feel like the only reader who wants my romance to be romantic instead of training wheels for erotica. I'm sad because I'm going to have to slam this book when I rate it and the ensuing outrage is going to annoy me.

Here's the thing about reviewers. We want to like your book. We try to like your book. If you promise me Super Emo Guy but deliver Crazy Eyed Date Rapist, we can't be friends. I have to love myself before I can love your book. Ok then. I'm glad we talked.  I'm going to go finish it before the TruFans realize which title I'm talking about.

Flawed And Fallen Women

I just finished a book I really enjoyed. It was a top read in all respects except one. Almost as unwelcome as the Hermetically Sealed Heroine is the Crazy Bitch Ex. Why can't relationships just not work out? Why does the genre insist that our heroine is special and unique to the hero (or vice versa) while all past relationships were a narrow escape from the cauldron of hell? Shelve your divorce issues, people. Sometimes you don't get married. It's why we have friends we used to fuck instead of shallow graves in the backyard. Sex is not a sacred event that can only be correctly bestowed upon one person. In the case of this book I was really into the hero. His evolution from sulky arrested adolescent to leading man was skillfully done and fully realized. Then his ex shows up. Suddenly, I hate both of them. If you've ever spent time on a legal aid board, poverty skills forum or any other place second, third or fourth wives hang out you know exactly what I am talking about. The current relationship is pure and magical. The past relationship is a succubus draining the life from their innocent and trusting spouse.

In this case, our hero rides off to apologize for a one night stand several years past, thankfully leaving the heroine out of it. The CBE is in an insanely dysfunctional marriage she entered a scant two months after rejecting the hero on grounds of potential poverty. Her parents may have forced her into the relationship and since then she's rarely seen in public. On a trip to London our hero was drunk as a Duke and spent a weepy evening reliving past glories. Along comes the harsh light of dawn and he realizes he just wanted to bang her once. He's out of there and she's on her own. CBE heads back to her husband, never to cross Drunky McDuke's mind again. 

On the other side of the marriage, CBE's husband is wicked crazy. He engages in a three book arc of revenge culminating in a promise to kill the hero if he so much as glances at the husband's prized tea kettle. He's angry, unreasonable, and obsessively focused on his wife (the aforementioned CBE) and Drunky. Our hero has been a pretty stand up guy to this point. He's all about women's rights. He's discovered his own father had a potential CBE that turns out just to be a nice dead lady. (See? Relationships CAN just not work out!) So to this point we're ok. Then it all goes Jerry Springer. Drunky may (or may not) have fathered a child with CBE and CBE has informed her husband of this either to torment him or because she's honest. CBE is sobbingly grateful that Drunky has finally come to rescue her from an (allegedly) abusive husband she fears will kill her. At this point Drunky has had his own life threatened (and certainly turned upside down) by CBE's husband. He's afraid of the guy himself. So he sneers down at her for making her husband the mess he is. How dare she complain when she has a wealthy, titled husband who adores her. She's a celebrated (if rarely seen) beauty with four children. Tend to them and bother him no more. Later Drunky takes a moment to wonder if CBE's husband might really kill her. He thinks it sucks the kid might suffer, especially if it's his, but what can he do? He's famous Drunky McDuke and that other guy is Reclusive Lord Crazy. How can Drunky McDuke do anything for his potential child or baby mama? And why should he? She's obviously a head case who has driven Reclusive Lord Crazy mad with her bitchy ways. Thank god he didn't marry her! 

Our hero rides off to apologize to his family for Reclusive Lord Crazy stalking them after his failure to keep it zipped. Later in the book Drunky stares down at his first (second?) born son with awe and hopes all sons are so beloved. As a reader we are supposed to share Drunky's revulsion for his CBE and Reclusive Lord Crazy. As well, we are supposed to share the hope that Lord Crazy's son is his own. As a person familiar with domestic violence and the ease with which people turn away from it's pleading victims I had a hard time looking at Drunky after that. I'm pretty sure CBE quickly took a header down the stairs leaving Bastardish Son to grow up with a hot and cold father he can never satisfy. Eventually BS will meet a Hermetically Sealed Heroine and the two will go off to their own HEA. That's how things go in Romancelandia. 

I would have thought a hell of a lot more of Drunky if he'd taken the words of a women he once loved (enough to marry) seriously. If he had investigated her safety as carefully as he did his own paternity before coming to a ruling of CBE I'd have forgiven him. The Crazy's may be in a hell of their own making, one they enjoy in the manner of those drawn to these relationships, but she could also be in serious danger. I find it hard to take a man seriously when the life of his former lover and possible child are something to shrug over and walk away from. Maybe that's just me. 

Return Of The Hermetically Sealed Heroine

Who started the hymen fetish? Is it the same person who decided all women in a romance who are not the heroine must be subordinate or murdered or evil? Why do we who love books about women hate women so much? (I know, I know, we're all full to the gills with preprogrammed cultural messages. I get it. Still.) I'm having a hard time reconciling a book I recently loved and a book I'm struggling to read  with my love of the genre. I don't know why I am drawn to the authors or stories I am. Why do I read about endless Dukes when I cannot stand the multi generational rich? Why am I forever sympathetic to a parade of doe eyed damsels in my fiction when I don't tolerate them in my own life?

I'm a total hypocrite. I get that. So's my genre.

In the case of the book I am loathing the early set up is a Hermetically Sealed Heroine. The book takes place in Romancelandia with a number of improbable events in a row. I am uncertain if I will read Chapter Two given the events of the Prologue and Chapter One. Our heroine is a former spy chosen from the gallows and trained to perform any action necessary, including whoring for her country. Now discharged, our heroine has been seen with a number of rich men in a number of scandalous costumes. She is considered to be a woman for hire. She wanders into White's, climbs upon a table, partially disrobes, declares herself a virgin, and offers her hymen to the highest bidder. Then she calmly leaves. There are so many things wrong with this. This is so far into Fantasy Land that Romancelandia hardly seems an adequate description of the world this heroine lives in. There is, based on the opening pages, no sexual violence in her world. Women are not raped to know their place, raped to respect their betters, or raped just because they can be. Our heroine is not only Hermetically Sealed (allowing her to cash in her hymen like a lottery ticket) she's also loaded with Magic Rape Repellent.

Think about it. She's been in prison on death row. She's been in war. She's been intimate (but not vaginally) with rich men who are either paying for or believe they can pay for her body. She's infiltrated a zone forbidden to women and offered sex in a group setting of powerful men, yet she has no fear at all of sexual violence. No hesitation. Who is this woman? Where would she come from? How can she even exist? Setting all of that aside she's decided to offer her hymen up for auction in a bid for financial freedom. Who is going to buy that? Unless you're trying to cure yourself of a sexually transmitted disease are you really part of the hymen cult? Who, beyond pedophiles, really belongs to this organization? What kind of man checks a woman out and thinks "Man, she'd be so much hotter with an intact hymen" and in what world is he also unlikely to enforce the social order through sexual violence? Why is the Virgin Whore still a thing? One of the men surrounding her asks why she'd auction it off instead of marry. Who in that room is going to marry her? How does that work in this bizarro world?

She walks out of White's unmolested and I have to decide if I'm going to read on. Genre books have had women in and out of White's like crazy lately. Sometimes they're standing in the rain getting their Lloyd Dobler on, sometimes they're eating in the kitchen as a special I Value Your Feminist Ways treat from the hero. Occasionally they push in the front doors as though they have every right to bring an errant brother / husband / lover/ random man home. They are never met with violence. Because they are the heroine and bad things cannot happen to women endowed with Magic Rape Repellent. Now ex-lovers of the hero? Oh, that is a different story indeed. Since this is long enough, it's a tale for tomorrow. Bring your blankie.