Let's get some things straight...

Romance as a genre is way more expansive than I think a lot of people like to give it credit for.

I don't know if it was because February is typically the "Month of Love" or what, but I saw soooo many posts across the various socials talking specifically about how romance books are "verbal/written porn."

I want to debunk this--as much as I can, at least--with my space. I know that some people might go ahead and scroll past, and that's fine. I had a creator straight up DELETE my post with statistical evidence because it went against their opinion.

Anyways. Back to topic.

So yeah. Recently there has been a lot of chatter about what romance books are or aren't. To call them "verbal/written porn" is so far from accurate. Honestly. I'm not just saying that because I happen to write romance books.

Romance as a written genre spans from what we call "sweet" or "clean" romance all the way to erotica. Y'all, that's the equivalent of "holding hands to BDSM"! Aside from the overly Puritanical religious zealots, most people would not classify those things as being even remotely close in "experience level" or heightened sexuality.

So, why do we do that with romance novels? I'll tell you why. Because for literal centuries, women were the people reading romance novels. They were considered lowbrow from the onset simply because it was a medium consumed primarily by women. Hell, comic books had more clout than romance novels! And that was solely because comic books were deemed "male" reading and romance were "female driven."

Patriarchy aside, can you give me a single reason why this particular genre is shunned more than any other even as it brings in the MOST profits of the literary world? You can't.

"What does the spectrum consist of?"

Great question!

The spectrum, like I mentioned, basically starts with Clean/Sweet Romance. These are books that have "butterflies in the belly" vibes. There can be hand-holding, maybe kissing. They're called Sweet because you find yourself saying "Awww" a lot. That's not to say the topics or situations are all hunky-dory. Nope. I've read some incredible Sweet/Clean Romance that really had me thinking and feeling big emotions.

Close to this but I personally feel should be seen as separate, is the "Closed-Door" sub-genre. This means that any fun-time activities occur off the page. These are also called "Fade to Black" because there can be lead up without any further description.

On the other end of the spectrum is Erotica. This is more along the lines of what most consider porn and the sub-genre I would most agree can be classified as that. No shame or judgement to readers who grab from that bookshelf. No. Seriously. You go! If men watching porn is fine, I can't see why they should have an issue with anyone reading something equivalent.

Guess what? I've only given you two sub-genres of the overarching romance genre. Those two make up MAYBE 20% of the books out there. That leaves 80% that fall somewhere in between.

I personally feel like Closed Door is more in this 80% but I can totally see why others would lump it in with Clean/Sweet. They're not wrong, but I feel like the build up tends to be more graphic than a typically sweet romance. That's totally a personal preference thing though.

Within this 80% are different degrees of explicatively.

• Some books will have 3-5 descriptive/graphic scenes while maintaining a rom-com feel to them. This is what I personally love to read and write so I've spent a lot of time in that pool of books.

• There's dark romance where the situations around the characters are ... well, darker! More drama than comedy, if you're into the movie comparison. Again, the number of scenes depicted in these books can range from few to a majority of the writing is explicit. This subgenre is one I've found a LOT of "romance is porn" advocates point to. And still, they're wrong. No ifs, ands, or buts about it; they're just wrong.

• There's paranormal which includes aliens, monsters, mythical creatures... this one runs the gambit. I've only really read Ruby Dixon's Ice Planet Barbarians in this genre, and that was only to an extent. I don't consider these bad or wrong or porn; but I'm also just less likely to watch a paranormal movie than a solid sports flick. Personal preference doesn't make something more or less superior.

I did the math once, trying to see if maybe there was a slim chance of seeing the Evangelists' POV ... but there's not.

See, on average, romance books contain 3-5 scenes of explicit activities. These books average 299-450 pages in length; the average reading time for these books falls between 4-11 hours (confirmed using Audible's listening at 1x speed). Doing the math, the percentage of "fun times" on the page is about 12-20% of the book is spicy.

Now, rom-coms--the most blasé form of visual media that contains spicy times. No one looks at these movies and screams "PORN" in the theatres! But, mathing here: those movies average 90 minutes in length. Even if they have the same number of scenes (3-5), the percentage of spicy time jumps to 20-30% of the film.

Look at the numbers. If you can't tell me, logically, that a typical romance novel is the equivalent to the porn it's being compared to. Mathematically: you're wrong. Just in form of presentation: you're wrong; porn is visual depiction of highly sexualized activities.

As a mom to a pre-teen, I am coming to the understanding that I will need to address our own personal family limits on what our children can read, and that includes romance.

My daughter is very much like her dad. The kid wants to read Non-fiction (NF) or historical fiction, mainly war-based books that have children as the heroes. She has read the entire HP series on her own; she also read all 4 Hunger Games books and the original Percy Jackson series (PJ & the Olympians), so she has some interest in YA fantasy.

In other words: she's not interested in most fiction or romance at this time. And while I don't believe in censoring what she reads, I do try to give her a heads up on what I feel is age appropriate. When she asked what books from our home collection she could read, I realized I could make it way easier on her. I reorganized everything so that the ones I'd be totally fine with her grabbing without asking. And in that area is ACOTAR.

This one I had to give her the caveat that the first book is 100% fine for her, but I feel like from Book 2 onward they're probably not as age appropriate. She shrugged, grabbed PJO & Sea of Monsters, and went about her day.

See what happened there? For those who may have missed it: I gave my 10 year old information to make INFORMED decisions and she did. Had I simply declared them off limits, I'm sure she would have tried to sneak them. Simple Parenting Math there!