It’s always an experience to read Vintage AAR. This article by Paula Detmer Riggs on writing taboo subjects is especially thought-provoking. She wrote about the hero of her book, Her Secret, His Child, a book she published in 1995 and we gave a DIK to in 1998.
Years ago, her hero–and he is her hero–date-raped the heroine. Riggs writes:
The hero I love is imperfect in some terrible way. He’s an all too-human soul who’s driven by inner demons far more deadly and cruel than any serial killer or evil empire or double-agent. A man, who, because of a mistake in judgment or action, had done a terrible wrong to an innocent victim, and if that victim is our heroine, so much the better.
She knows her choice is controversial. To her critics, she replies:
Why was it written? Why choose to frame a love story in such a way? What kind of message does a rapist hero and an irresponsible heroine send to the reader? In my opinion and intention, one of hope. If the people in my fictional world can face their own mistakes, learn to forgive themselves, and rise above the harm they’ve caused themselves and others, so can each and every one of us. Our mistakes are most likely far more benign, and yet, perhaps, just as painful to admit. Most of us have a strong sense of personal integrity, no matter what our religious preference. To violate our rules of decent behavior shames us. It’s often easier to accept our failings when we compare them to the far more serious failings of fictional folks. Living through their pain, seeing them make restitution, and thus find redemption and happiness is often enough to encourage us to do the same.
What do you think? I wonder if we are less tolerant of heroes and heroines who, in the past, have done reprehensible acts than we used to be? And, is that a good or bad thing?
Let us know your thoughts.
Personally, learning about rape culture has made me far less ready to believe that a rapist is a decent person who just made one mistake. When I read that a young man date-raped a girl, I wonder how many other times he refused to take no for an answer. How many other girls he made uncomfortable or fearful. Why he believed he was entitled to sex, and what, if anything, has changed about his mentality and his behavior since then. I’m cautious around such characters.
That said, I’ve read books where the protagonist commits rape (The Fountainhead, Lord Foul’s Bane) and enjoyed them on the whole. But I’m just not comfortable with a romance hero who sexually assaults a woman.
When I started reading romance years ago, this was the norm, and it was usually presented as the heroine being so beautiful that the hero just couldn’t stop himself. Unfortunately these days, especially after reading memoirs like Chanel Miller’s Know My Name, I can’t separate the reality of rape from a dubious-consent or no-consent sex scene in romance.
Moving on to acts in general, I think in some ways we’re less tolerant, and in some ways we’re more so. I just browsed through reviews for Robin Schone’s The Lady’s Tutor, and they mentioned how the heroine’s husband is first revealed to be gay, and then exposed as a child molester who preys on his own sons. Likewise, when I started reading romance, any time the hero was with a sexually experienced woman, I knew she’d be tossed aside at best and murdered at worst. But many readers now are fine with a heroine who’s had sex before she meets the hero. At the same time, there was a level of cultural appropriation in older books that wouldn’t pass muster today.
Great topic, Dabney, and I look forward to reading the responses to it.
I stopped reading Christina Dodd long ago after a non-con sex scene that, to me, read as flat-out rape. She said No, he didn’t stop, I was done.
I think it’s worth noting that Riggs didn’t portray the encounter as the hero knowingly raping the heroine, because even she likely knew she couldn’t pull that off. She did it in a way to make him look as blameless as possible, while still technically being rape. The heroine was infatuated with the athlete hero, lied about her age and experience and drank as much as he did in the run-up to the encounter, so they were both intoxicated. She gave him no indication she was anything but into it, and was into it until just before the moment of penetration, when she suddenly got scared. But he was kissing her and she couldn’t say no with his mouth on hers, so it happened. The morning after when he saw the blood on his sheets, he realized she was a virgin, was remorseful and wanted to apologize for how it went, but she had already taken off. So, no, she didn’t want it, but he also had no way of knowing that. Rape without making him look truly bad or aggressive. Yes, he should have made sure he had consent right down to the end, but he was as drunk as she was. The whole thing was messy.
The whole book was a mess. Naturally she got pregnant and had their secret child, who was a teenager by the time the hero (now using a wheelchair after having been injured playing football) learns about her (and that the heroine considered their encounter rape). Then the teenage daughter is raped by a football star in the same manner. The book has a lot of fans, but geez, I thought it was lousy.
Yikes, this book does sound like an unpleasant mess.
If your description of the “rape” is accurate, MyNameHere, that makes a difference to me. I’m all for “no means no”, but your description makes it seem that the hero had a reasonable belief that the sex was consensual, right up through the end. If the heroine was unable to effectively express her last-minute change of heart, that’s unfortunate, but it’s no one’s fault either. Describing such a man as a “rapist” sounds like a stretch to me.
To clarify my opinion: When both parties (inebriated or otherwise) are eager and willing to have sex, and they both appear to be of legal age, and at the very last minute (point of penetration) one has a change of heart, but the other one doesn’t realize this, or doesn’t realize in time to step on the breaks, that’s not the same thing as someone forcing sex on a clearly unwilling person or on an incapacitated person/minor child who cannot give consent.
Thank you so much for posting this. I had read the review and not the book and I could not get any details from the review that were helpful about the specifics. This is indeed a very specific circumstance and one that seems particularly timely as it’s discussed very often now.
I believe it is Malcolm Gladwell who brought up these questions of consent and miscommunication (or no communication) in encounters such as these in his latest book.
One of the somewhat controversial things he examines is when both parties are equally inebriated why the male is considered at fault- especially if the female does not raise any objection at the time.
It is all too sadly common for there to be incidents where both parties are intoxicated, both agree to go back to-say the male’s apartment or dorm, they both agree to some kind of encounter. Because they are both willingly engaged in some behavior, the male (who is also intoxicated) believes consent has been given generally. At some point the girl/woman decides she does not want to go further but does not verbalize it from fear, inability or some other reason and things go farther. The next day she considers the act non-consensual and the boy/man is stunned to hear it.
It sounds like these are the circumstances (roughly) in this book and I understand why people who read it can still be sympathetic to the hero.
This is a sideways comment on the topic, but I highly recommend the HBO series I May Destroy You if you want to see an examination of all the ways in which consent can come into play and how it’s such a nuanced and difficult concept when it comes to sexual/relational interactions.
The series starts out with the protag coming to the realization that she was drugged in a bar and something happened to her. Clearly non-consensual and not wanted. But as the series progresses you see her and her friends, all of whom are 20-somethings in London, having interactions with sexual partners that range from black and white to very gray in terms of who is consenting. What are some of the lies we tell ourselves and each other in the give and take of getting to a sexual encounter? Are they violative of consent? If you think an encounter was one thing, but you find it was something else?
I just loved all the ways in which the nuances were written and played so brilliantly by Michaela Cole and the rest of the cast.
And to bring it back to the topic of forgiveness – the show showed some of that too. And also showed that most people are not saintly or evil, but fall somewhere in between. That really appealed to me. And appeals to me in my reading too.
The PDR doesn’t sound like my cuppa for a variety of reasons but in general the books I’ve loved most have been ones with complicated, messy characters. Do I want them to ultimately do right? Yes. But I’m okay if they do some wrong along the way.
“But he was kissing her and she couldn’t say no with his mouth on hers…”
I just read the article by Ms. Riggs, which says :
“When she said “no” (when things had gone much too far), he didn’t hear her, and he didn’t stop.”
Trying this again…I could be remembering the moment wrong (it’s been a while and I no longer have the book); I always remembered it as her not saying no, but maybe it played out as Riggs describes (although how an author intends things to come across isn’t always the way they do). I read through some of the reviews on Goodreads, and the impressions seem to vary (and if readers, who presumably weren’t drunk while reading it, have different impressions on what happened, it’s probably no surprise the characters do). Several readers had the same impression I did, that she never said no. One thing Riggs and the rest of us seem to agree on is that he didn’t know she’d changed her mind at the last second, after being very responsive up to that point. Whether it was because she didn’t clearly say no or he didn’t hear her, he didn’t know the encounter was anything but consensual and certainly didn’t intend to rape her. Either way, my original point stands, that Riggs wrote it in a way to have a “rape” without having the hero knowingly commit one, which is far easier to “redeem” than an intentional one. (And also why it’s necessary to get consent right down to the moment of penetration.)
i’m a big fan of tackling difficult topics in fiction. i think life itself is full of infinite ambiguity-very rarely are we afforded the luxury of morality. therefore, i like the books i read and the movies i watch to reflect that. i think humans are attracted to taboos: call it our id or repressed desires, but i think the fascination with true crime and the prevalence of anti heroes/bad boys comes from the same place in our psyche. fiction is where we can live out our messy fantasies without severe repercussions.
i also think that people can change. to paint criminals/people who’ve wronged another as subhuman and throw them into prison without hope of rehabilitation seems pointless to me. i live in a country where rapists are rarely, if ever punished. even when they are caught, they don’t seem to understand what they’ve done wrong-is executing or imprisoning them truly a punishment when they don’t understand the magnitude of their crime? to me, a novel where the character successfully realises what they’ve done wrong and makes amends makes for a more engrossing read compared to one where the character played by the rules. good people don’t make for addicting stories usually. ultimately, humans are full of contradictions. why shouldn’t the people who populate the worlds we create reflect that?
Do we forgive Rhett Butler? Reading the “carrying up the stairs” scene today, it’s clear he rapes Scarlett (even if her response is presented as reveling in it—needing someone to “bully and break her”). And what about the heroes of those multitude of bodice rippers my generation consumed in the 1970s & 1980s? I’d say in the majority of those books, the hero raped the heroine—although at the time the act and context surrounding it weren’t presented as rape. Personal and cultural attitudes change. If they didn’t, we’d all still be reading things like LOVE’S WILD DESIRES today. That said, I do read quite a bit of dark romance where dub-con/non-con/“forced seduction”/abduction/captivity/ Stockholm Syndrome rule the day. But I know what I’m getting when I pick up a mafia romance or something by, say, Skye Warren or Natasha Knight. I would not have the same tolerance (in fact, I’d be shocked and appalled) if “rapey heroes” started showing up in more mainstream romances by writers like Serena Bell, Juliana Stone, Molly O’Keefe, Julie Kriss, etc.
On the other hand, I do think how the author frames the story goes a long way toward our tolerance for the hero’s behavior. A few weeks ago, I read an HP from 2016: Maisey Yates’s CARIDES’S FORGOTTEN WIFE, which features a borderline-alcoholic, serial-adulterer husband. An unfaithful husband “hero” would generally be a hard pass for me, but Yates did such an excellent job with the character (never giving him a pass for his behavior, but letting us understand the roots of it) that the book went immediately onto my list of favorites read in 2020 (“published in a prior year” division).
This is a book that has long been on my keeper shelf. I know it’s hugely controversial and that people hold very, very strong views about it. So, here is some text extracted from a review I posted elsewhere 18 years ago and a final word written today in 2020:
THEN: “I know this book has attracted controversy in the past because it deals with date rape – a subject which is often in the news these days because of the concern over the legal fraternity in getting it treated fairly in our politically correct world. It’s a subject to be handled carefully and, to be fair, I feel the author does so in the main. However, I did not really warm to her heroine because frankly, Carly Anderson is not someone I would like for a friend. There is just a touch of hollering “no” at the point of no return and that is, of course, the heart of the problem with the whole topic of date rape. Also, for a very intelligent woman, she allows this one episode to cause her to make some questionable choices in her life; she is not a happy woman when we meet her and you really have to wonder why she has not been able to be just a bit more pragmatic about herself.
“The hero, Mitch, is made to suffer disproportionately, in my view, for something which he did at a very young age. PDR makes this man a paraplegic at the height of a fantastically successful career as a professional athlete. He does, in the main, rebuild his life but he still suffers – there is no truly meaningful relationship in his life and his physical disabilities are horrendous although he does cope very well with them. He is a very charming and desirable.
“It’s the “hidden baby” in this book where I thought there was actually a more significant issue. Although Mitch meets and loves his daughter when he is allowed to know her, Carly and he (really Carly in my opinion) decide to keep her paternity a secret. Denying a child knowledge of its paternity is, I think, probably a worse “crime” than the date rape especially when the father is loving, caring and willing to take full responsibility. The issue of IVF for paraplegics is explored which is interesting because it allows Carly and Mitch to start again. However, any resulting child will know its parents but not its sister.
“I liked Mitch and felt able to forgive him. He was realistic in handling his disability. He suffers and is tortured about his actions and their outcomes but handles them better and more maturely than Carly who is, I think, a little bit two dimensional by comparison.
“This is PDR at her angst-ridden, tortured hero best. I loved Mitch but would not like to have lunch with Carly. Highly recommended for the issues raised here: date rape, retribution, suffering, disability and paternity.”
NOW: So, now in 2020 how has my POV changed? Not a lot, frankly. I have always thought I would hate to be on a jury trying a date rape case because despite changes in the law, it is still a very fuzzy and highly emotive area. I accept that women should be protected under the law from rape but it’s the actual definitions applying to the spectrum of rape cases that is, for me, worrying. On a purely personal basis, I fail to understand the logicality of waiting months or even years to report an incident nor am I a fan of naming only the accused in the run up to and during a trial – at least in the UK. Until and unless there is a conviction, I believe (no doubt very wrongly to some) that in the main both parties should be anonymous particularly in date rape cases where there can be so much ambiguity. It has been shown too often that a man cleared of rape (especially a very young one) carries a stigma that can badly affect the rest of his life and I do not see this as fair. Whilst I realise that naming an alleged perpetrator can flush out further alleged victims, it just seems to me that it’s a very murky and grey area.
PS – I have always wondered what happened to Paula Detmer Riggs; I loved her books but one day she just seemed to vanish.
I appreciate you and others who have read the book posting because, as I said above, the review does not cover any specifics and the circumstances of the incident as well as the intent of the hero are crucial to deciding if this hero can be forgiven.
I would say based on the information you and others provided, then yes, I could absolutely accept this hero. There appears to be zero malice on his part and he’s presented as a very great guy.
He is the complete opposite of an old Victoria Holt novel where the “hero” drugs and rapes the heroine. It’s not even a case of old school “she’s so beautiful I couldn’t help myself” but because she is engaged to a relative that thwarted him and he wants revenge. It’s pure evil and aggression, not even cloaked in the misguided ideas of the time as romance. Yet somehow the poor heroine ends up with him in the end. That “hero” I do NOT accept.
You have wonderfully expressed my own thoughts about the two protagonists. My sympythies lay mostly with Mitch, less with Carly. I found her self-righteous. She was unable to admit that she wasn’t totally unblamably for what happend.
The problem, sadly, is that often the modern POV on this is that the man is at fault without question and that what the woman says is taken by law enforcement to be the unquestioned truth. I would hate to be the mother of an 18 year old son right now. It seems that currently a man must get permission in writing, in triplicate, witnessed and pinned to his backside before making love to someone sometimes, even, including his wife.
It’s not that bad–I have sons 24, 27, and 29. It’s the most pronounced on college campuses but once out, the real impact of this dynamic is the there is less sex, dating, and intimacy. In the US, 1 in 4 people haven’t had sex in the past year and of those, 28% are men in their 20s, a huge jump. I also see both young men and women needing copious amounts of booze to get laid.
It is true, however, that when accusations of sexual assault come up on college campuses, it’s always presumed to be the male at fault even if both parties were altered.
Sad, very sad
I don’t think it is as scary as you suggest. Firstly, if you look at actual data in the UK, only 15% of those who experience sexual assault report it to the police, and of reported rape cases, only 5.7% end with conviction (much lower than for other crimes). Purely anecdotally, I know of a frightening number of friends and family members who have experienced sexual assault and rape, and have not reported it to the police because it is too triggering to go through the whole process, and because it involves people very close to them. It’s strange – if you ask most men, they will say that they’ve never known a rapist, but if you ask the majority of women, most of them would have experienced some form of sexual harassment or violence at some point in their life. We also should ask ourselves, is it really such a bad thing to get consent from our sexual partners before engaging in sex?
Also I would like to add, that parents of 18 year old sons who somehow feel scared that their sons might be unfairly accused, may want to consider the parents of 18 year old daughters, who are constantly worried that they are going to be raped and assaulted. Perhaps such parents would do better teaching their boys about the importance of consent. I for one, am sick of the unsolicited advice that I had when growing up to avoid getting raped i.e. don’t wear short skirts, don’t walk home alone, don’t drink too much, don’t sleep with too many boys or you’ll get the reputation of being ‘easy’ etc etc etc…
I also think that penalties for rape need to be more severe, and should include life imprisonment if certain criteria are met. There needs to be no statute of limitations, just like murder, because it may be decades before the person is ready to report the rape. And don’t get me started on child rape; my notions on that are pretty medieval.
“…it may be decades before the person is ready to report the rape.”
For anyone who wonders why some victims don’t speak up until months or years later…
When I was fourteen, one of my father’s friends got drunk and groped me. It wasn’t outright rape. He never got under my clothes. But he was like an uncle to me, because his daughter and I used to hang out together. And I was incredibly sheltered at the time. I’d never even spoken to a boy my age, and I’d certainly never been taught what to do if someone touches you against your will. We didn’t have that kind of education in my family or my school.
So I froze up. I couldn’t move or talk (in case anyone is wondering why I didn’t fight him off or say no). He stopped eventually, and then I pulled myself together and went to tell my parents.
They had no idea what to do or say. They looked at each other. Then they looked back at me. And finally my father said that since it was past ten p.m., I should go to bed.
We never referred to this incident again, though the man and his family were never invited to our house again either. But since it was clear that my parents wanted to close the book on the whole matter, that’s what I did.
However, if I heard today that other women had accused that man of sexually assaulting them when they were teenagers, I’d speak up. Not because I was trying to get him into trouble, not because I think that he’ll be held legally responsible years after the fact. Certainly not because I want to run the gauntlet of “Why did she wait so long?” questions.
I’d do it so those women would know they were not alone.
I’m so sorry that you had to go through such an awful experience. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. You are absolutely right; by sharing your stories with others, other women feel supported and know that they are not the only ones who have been abused. My mum went through a similar experience with two of her uncles, and like your family, it was never talked about again and the perpetrators faced no consequences. When I asked my mum, she said that she just froze up and was too ashamed to tell her parents in case they didn’t believe her. She also said that she just wanted to forget about it.
“Certainly not because I want to run the gauntlet of “Why did she wait so long?” questions” : So true. I think people forget that a lot of people don’t want to report sexual violence because they don’t want to have go through the humiliating process of inquiry that follows it.
Thanks again Marian, for sharing your story.
Thanks, AlwaysReading. It means a lot to me when people offer their support. And I’m sorry to hear your mother endured this as well. I knew my parents believed me (otherwise the man would still have continued to visit us). They just didn’t know how else to react.
I think people forget that a lot of people don’t want to report sexual violence because they don’t want to have go through the humiliating process of inquiry that follows it.
That too. Quoting Chanel Miller again : “Each time a survivor resurfaced, people were quick to say what does she want, why did it take her so long, why now, why not then, why not faster. But damage does not stick to deadlines. If she emerges, why don’t we ask her how it was possible she lived with that hurt for so long, ask who taught her to never uncover it.”
And remember what happened when Alice Sebold was brutally raped by a stranger inside a tunnel? The police told her that previously a girl was murdered in that tunnel, so she was “lucky”. I didn’t need anyone consulting their sliding scale of trauma and telling me I shouldn’t be so upset since it wasn’t actually rape.
I am glad that your parents believed you, and I understand how it can be difficult to know how to react when your loved one suffers from sexual assault. I can only hope that by fostering dialogue we can all learn the best ways to support future victims of sexual assault. With my mum, she used her painful experience to educate us, and to let us know, that she would always be there for us if anyone behaved inappropriately with us. Culture is also a huge factor, we’re an Asian family, and sexual assault is a taboo subject. It is easier in such cases to turn a blind eye then to confront the behaviour head on.
‘But damage does not stick to deadlines. If she emerges, why don’t we ask her how it was possible she lived with that hurt for so long, ask who taught her to never uncover it.”:
This is so poignant and true. It is so sad that very few people ever think of asking these questions of survivors.
‘I didn’t need anyone consulting their sliding scale of trauma and telling me I shouldn’t be so upset since it wasn’t actually rape’: This sadly happens all the time. Only you get to decide how you should feel and process your own trauma. It is disgusting that there are people out there who would try to invalidate it.
“Culture is also a huge factor, we’re an Asian family, and sexual assault is a taboo subject.”
Oh, same here. Asian family. Just to give you an idea how repressed we were, when I was a sophomore in university, I came home for a visit. My brother was twelve at the time, and I asked my parents whether they had told him about the facts of life.
They said, “No, we were waiting for you to do it.”
So true. My mum was better than most, she had a long talk with me about the birds and the bees. However, I was then expected to relay the information to my younger sisters and cousins.
Hugs to both of you. Life can so often suck. <3
Its perfectly normal to want the whole thing to go away, and especially girls under 18 or so are still prone to magical thinking. The “If I tell no one it didn’t really happen” mindset. And you do have to relive the trauma every time you tell your story or see your victimizer. There is also the fact that women often shut down their brains while the assault is occurring, which they then think makes them bad witnesses. Ten years ago it DID make them bad witnesses, but now there is much more understanding of victim psychology, denial, and PTSD.
That is not to say that it is easy to report these crimes, and it’s certainly not easy to face your rapist in court. There is still a definite “blame the victim” notion amongst jurors. No wonder it takes some victims, some of whom are men let us remember, years before they come forward.
Here is what I say to those who say date rape is just a misunderstanding: how do you want your sister to be treated? Or your daughter?
Absolutely! There are so many reasons why survivors may only come forward later on. I think you are right to frame it as a question of empathy: how would you want your loved ones to be treated? A little bit of compassion goes a long way in helping survivors process the trauma of sexual assault. The point you make about how trauma may cause survivors to be bad witnesses (particularly when the brain shuts down during the violent act) may also explain the low conviction rates for rape.
“We also should ask ourselves, is it really such a bad thing to get consent from our sexual partners before engaging in sex?”
Here’s a quote from Chanel Miller’s memoir on that topic :
“When a woman is assaulted, one of the first questions people ask is, Did you say no? This question assumes that the answer was always yes, and that it is her job to revoke the agreement. To defuse the bomb she was given. But why are they allowed to touch us until we physically fight them off? Why is the door open until we have to slam it shut?”
That’s such a beautifully-worded paragraph and so powerful. It’s so true how men really feel like they are entitled to our bodies without us saying a word. Take for instance, how some men always feel the need to touch women on their waists when they are moving through crowded bars. It is so unnecessary and invasive. I’ve been meaning to Chanel Miller’s memoir, I’ve heard such wonderful things about it. I think it shows that we need to start shifting our thinking on consent and dating.
I recommend Miller’s memoir not only because it’s so well-written, but because it shows the aftermath of the crime for her. What she and her family went through during the legal process, for instance. The judge was concerned about Brock Turner’s potential as an athlete and a college student being lost because of “20 minutes of action”, but what about her life and her future?
Thank you, I have just ordered it. The judge in the Brock Turner case angers me so much.
THIS! Consent isn’t yes UNTIL it’s no, It’s NO until it’s yes! Men have no rights to our bodies and should ask for consent from the get-go. I love reading some romances these days where the guy says, “I’m going to kiss you now. Is that ok with you?”
Teach your sons: “Don’t assume yes until you hear a no. Assume no until you here a yes!”
This is why I don’t enjoy romances where the heroine says she doesn’t want to have sex, and the hero says, in effect, “Fine, I won’t force you to. But since you didn’t say no to everything else, I’ll get into your personal space, make suggestive comments, touch your hair, maneuver you into being alone with me, and push your boundaries every chance I get. Sex may be off the table, but everything else about you is on it.”
It’s not outright rape, but it’s part of what normalizes and excuses rape when that occurs.
About date rape:
As a young girl and woman, I did not know about consent, and lived in a culture that was a total double standard: men could not help themselves and women brought it onto themselves when they were in places where anything could happen to them (which was pretty much everywhere, really, safe places were few). There were some hard limits, but rape was to me then a truly violent act, and persuasion, or shaming a girl into sex, or any other mental behavior war not seen as rape, unless it was blackmail or serious threats.
I think that this was the culture many here were brought up in.
I mean, this was the reality of Europe and US in the 80-ies, to my best knowledge.
Right next to feminism and women becoming normal in the workplace etc.etc. this existed as a norm, as far as I can make out.
No wonder most good men had no idea either.
I remember boys and young men being teased by their peers (and by quite a few girls too) for not being decisive enough, not showing clearly enough that they really wanted a girl and so on. Basically, they were told to just aggressively “seduce” because the girl would not be sure they were into her if they were just gentle and sweet and asked her consent all the time. She might think they were not truly passionate about her.
Horrible stuff, looking back.
But at the time, this was normal, and there was no sense of wrongness to the men’s behavior.
And most of these young men grew into responsible adults, and caring partners, and still, they did unacceptable things, and girls / women had them done to, and often consented, no matter how faulty that consent was.
I did.
Nothing dramatic, just feeling pressure, giving dubious consent and icky feelings about it all later.
So, yes, just like I believe my classmates and university friends are redeemable, I believe in such redeemability in romance.
We all – or most – did not know better.
And I believe that still, many persons do not.
They know what is wrong, but how to be with the other sex without the learned (toxic) templates is difficult.
I love how authors today are exploring what all was wrong, and writing a different template. Because to me, this is what authors of romance today often do. They actually create a model for how relationships can be that are shed of the above ideas. How masculinity in love and in passion can work that is not coming out of the places above. How passion can still be present without women feeling unsafe. How femininity can be honest and say “no” and draw powerful boundaries in intimacy – this is fascinating.
I believe a lot of today’s romance & passion is aspirational, not reflecting the reality even of today, and a lot of it is women’s fantasy of how we want men to be, just like a lot of older books was about the fantasy women had then, of how passion and relationships were (and that was a toxic fantasy).
I would hope that those young men of then would do things differently if they started a new relationship now. That is to me the quintessence of redemption – learning from our past and doing better.
I have not read the specific book (or I do not remember it), this is a general comment.
I think that life is messy, and that it depends on the details and specifics of a specific love story whether I can believe in this person becoming a responsible caring loving HEA partner, either man or woman.
So yes, to me nearly all can be written about and it depends on the author whether I will believe the romance & HEA or not.
I really enjoyed reading your thoughtful comments. I have often thought about how acceptance of various things have changed over just my lifetime, not just in terms of consent which is the issue here, but also what is considered age appropriate.
I think it’s hard for people who are significantly younger to understand that people don’t always have or had what we would think of as “current ideas” of what is acceptable. For instance I know a lot of women who are now in their 50’s that dated (and often later married) men who were a good ten years older than them while they were in their teens.
There was an investigation of a politician here in the U.S. a few years ago over allegations he was engaged in sexual behavior with very young teenage girls when he was 20-30 years old I believe. I think we can all agree any adult engaging in that way with a 13 or 14 year old is just wrong.
In investigating his life however, much was made of how at 28 years of age, he would often date or approach young women of 18-19 years and how this showed he was “creepy” and had a propensity for young girls. This happened in the 1970’s I believe (possibly earlier).
Even though I was still quite young in the 70’s I can tell you this was considered acceptable behavior by everyone I knew in the 70’s, 80’s 90’s and I am sure long after. I know of many couples, including long married people, with a good ten year age gap who got together while the female was in her teens. If a guy was respectable and responsible a lot of people thought that was good for the girl as he wouldn’t be as “wild” as a teen her age would be. He would be more serious and looking to settle down (which was assumed all girls wanted) and not just out for “a good time”. Now they weren’t pairing up at 13 or 14 but by 16-18 no one thought a guy 10 years older was a child molester or a creep for dating them. Nowadays I think it’s looked at very differently.
My first boyfriend was 22 to my 16. My kids are always appalled at that but, in 1977, it seemed totally fine. #differenttimes
Do you remember the made for TV movie “Sooner or Later” with Rex Smith? The heroine is 13 but wears makeup and pretends to be 16 to date a 17 year old. By the end he accepts her age and they say they are in love but agree to “take things slow”. I cannot imagine that being made today.
I don’t remember that but I do remember the utter insanity that was 1975’s Sweet Hostage where a 31 year old Martin Sheen, a mental patient who we were clearly supposed to see through the lens of R. D. Lang, kidnaps a teenage Linda Blair and they, in the most messed up love story ever, go on a Thelma and Louise like run from the law.
It would never be made today and that’s a good thing although it did inspire me to read Coleridge’s Kubla Khan.
Check the trailer out. It is NUTS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kljq5SuIwLE
The 70’s were nuts! Melanie Griffith at 14 was openly with Don Johnson who was 22! Linda Blair lost her virginity at 15 to 25 year old Rick Springfield in the 70’s. Don’t even get me going on what Led Zeppelin and David Bowie were up to.
I recently rewatched “Sooner or Later” online. I saw it on TV as a kid back in 1979 (it was a huge hit) and was curious what I would think of it as an adult. It was a *completely* different experience. The biggest problem was they cast a 25 year old guy as the 17 year old but had an actual 13 year old girl playing the 13 year old. I was literally squirming watching parts of it as my ick factor conquered my nostalgic memories.
I also re-watched “Young Love First Love” with Valerie Bertinelli and Tim Hutton (also from 1979) where they are teenagers playing 17 year olds and it was a completely different and still enjoyable experience.
OMG I just watched it. Whoever thought the line “The insane can’t teach us all a lesson in life” must have had a few issues themselves.
The fact that this exists is proof to me of how much men were controlling all aspects of the entertainment industry.
I thought I was the only one who remembered that one! It was very popular with girls at my high school. One girl couldn’t understand why he was so upset with her, and another had to explain it to her.
That same year, I got to see Rex Smith play in Grease in Baltimore,. After the show, I got an autograph. And an unexpected kiss!
Even pre-COVID, do you think an actor would do that with a fan in today’s environment? It seems like a 1970s thing.
But what do I know? The last autograph I got was from the late Sid Haig a couple of years ago. Completely different experience! :)
I’ll be honest there were parts of it I didn’t get at all watching it as a pre-teen that I understood watching it as an adult women. When I was younger I just loved the makeup and romance and fact he was a musician.
I saw an old interview with the actress who played Jesse in the movie and she talked about how she had a crush on Rex Smith (like every other young girl) and how awkward it was to film the extended kissing scene at 13 with a 25 year old guy whose wife was standing there! I can’t imagine that happening today.
Young Chrisreader would have been very jealous of you attending that concert and meeting him. I had to make do with my cassette tape of his album.
Maybe not but here is a bit of info cribbed from Wikipedia:
Only two US states – Delaware and New Jersey – have set the marriage age floor at 18 with no exceptions. Twelve states do not have any set age limit, and six allow girls under the minimum age to get married if they are pregnant.
Pretty shocking, really.
I know of at least three couples, all of them long-married with children and grandchildren, who met in the 1970s in high school when the husband was the wife’s teacher! All of them have a small age gap (less than ten years) between spouses and all of them were “secretly dating” when the wife was a high school senior—and the secrecy was more a matter of not wanting other students to believe the girl in question was getting preferential treatment regarding grades than anything considered inappropriate about the relationship. I can’t stress enough how “normal, if not frequent” this behavior was in the 1970s. But times do change and what was once considered acceptable would not pass muster now: a teacher today could never date a student (“secretly” or otherwise) and still remain a teacher for very long.
Have you ever seen the movie Margie with Jeannie Crain? It starts off with an older Margie telling her daughter about her teen years. It goes back to the time when she is high school student and by the end of the movie it’s one of her teachers who brings her home (as in a date) from the high school dance and the big reveal is he is the “dad’ and Margie’s husband. It was “good old fashioned entertainment” you can still catch on the old movie channels.
Not all that many years ago large age differences or relationships where a person had power over the other’s grades or job etc, wasn’t even blinked at. Older teen girls were considered fully “adults” in terms of consent. It’s like there was a line at 16-18 where once girls hit it -people thought no differently than if they were 30 years old.
There isn’t too much a decent writer can’t make me forgive a guy for. Serial killer, bros who do their sisters, men who torture, those creeps I’m not reading a romance about.
But men who’ve slept around on their women, had sex with a drunk willing girl, lost their temper (once or twice) and acted badly, I can get into a story about them if they’re over it and the author is good enough to get me to forgive them.
I don’t like secret baby stories so the book here isn’t for me.
Same for women, or is there a difference in forgiveness? Just curious because I started thinking about it when I read your comment. And I do not know if I would be able to forgive the same things in a woman.
Unfair.
Will think on it.
When I was younger I definitely admit I was more narrow in my choices of heroines. I didn’t want heroines that weren’t largely a reflection of me and my life and values.
As I have grown older I have come to enjoy heroines across the board with very different experiences and lives. So I can say yes, I can forgive and do very much enjoy a “flawed” or imperfect heroine as well. That includes ones who also need forgiveness.
I agree that an author can get me to forgive a number of sins if the hero or heroine is truly sorry for past transgressions and has genuinely learned from their mistakes and bad behavior. Just having a bad upbringing isn’t enough for me to forgive, the characters have to have grown and become better people.
As to your list of the unforgivable I was nodding and agreeing and then it struck me- I enjoy Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark series. I think some of the heroes, like Lothaire Definitely crossed some of those lines in the sand yet I still enjoyed them.
Anne Stuart’s heroes definitely cross lines as do men in some of Eloisa James’ earlier books.
I think because of the supernatural nature of Kresley Cole’s books I give them more leeway. Lothaire, like Angel and Spike gets more leeway from me as he’s a vampire. I don’t give human heroes the same latitude.