Unashamed, Unabashed, Unrepentant: Why Erotic Romance Is Good for Women

The PensFatales welcome Theresa Stevens today! Theresa Stevens is an author, editor, and the co-owner of STAR Guides Publishing and EditTorrent.

It’s no secret that I have some fairly strong opinions on gender equality, but those that know me best have always had trouble reconciling that with my love of romance publishing in general and erotic romance in particular. How can one be both strongly feminist and an unabashed lover of “those” books?

There are two answers to this question, the simple but dry one, and the more complex but more truthful one.

The simple answer is that in order for a patrilinear system to work, the sexuality of the woman must be controlled. Before modern medicine, the only way to guarantee paternity of a child was to prevent the mother from having sex with anyone other than the intended father. (It’s a lot easier to guarantee the maternity of a child: just witness the birth.)

This type of sexual partner limitation is fine as long as the mother is on board with this plan. After all, we might like to have a say in who fathers our children. But it’s also not fine insofar as it leads to double standards, economic inequality, and other abuses. Erotic romance and other open expressions of female sexuality take us one step further away from the days when feminine desire was demonized as a way of strengthening the patriarchy and limiting women’s power and social standing.

But that’s sort of intellectually detached from the real state of my thoughts on erotic romance. In truth, when I read a “dirty girl book” (as I like to call them, and it’s meant fondly), I walk away from the reading experience with an incredible feeling of sisterly solidarity. Part of being a woman, a fully alive and engaged woman, is being a fleshly creature with sexual urges and, lucky us, the capacity for almost limitless sexual pleasure. Yes, we want to explore that in the context of a romance, because that’s also a part of being a woman. Our hearts and bodies are entwined. But for too long, for centuries, we’ve been openly encouraged to embrace the heart and feel shame at the body. Not any more, and hurrah for that.

So when I read a book with a heroine who thrills at the sight of her lover, who craves his most decadent touch, who surrenders every corner of her sexual psyche to his loving exploration, then I see an alive and engaged female character. And I relate to her, as do other readers of this genre, because her body is my body. Her lover is my lover. Perhaps most surprising, her fantasies are my fantasies.

If there’s one thing I learned in four years as an editor at one of the world’s leading erotic romance publishers, it’s that these feminine fantasies are common and universal. Over and over again, we read the same sexual scenarios in submissions -- a powerful male body, a heroine swept away by passion, issues of trust and yearning and fulfillment playing out in countless variations on a single theme. So if these fantasies are so common, if we’re hardwired for this kind of desire, then why not celebrate it?

Erotic romance does exactly that. With a broad smile and a playful wink, these books show readers that they’re not alone. Others out there secretly thought the same naughty thoughts and even went to the trouble of writing them down and sharing them. These books allow women to explore their own sexual and romantic urges in a safe way, in a way that promotes understanding of self and sister, and perhaps most important, in a way that’s uniquely feminine.

To all of you writing erotic romance or aspiring to do so, I urge you to push forward and never hold back. Never think that your ideas are too outrageous or scary or personal. Be bold. Reach for the new position, the new setting, the new way of making your heroine’s thighs tremble. Give us a hero we can love, and then show us how to love him in mind-blowing ways.

Somewhere out there is a reader who fantasizes about the same thing, and who, upon reading your book, will smile to know she’s not the only one. She’ll take courage from your boldness. And she’ll find confidence in this silent connection to other women. (And maybe even find a new trick to use on her lover later. But that’s an entirely different blog post.)