Chelsea Fagan

They're princes.

They're dukes.

There's sort of an inherent underlying assumption that what the man is bringing to the relationship is as much about his power and his social status and his wealth as it is about anything he might be bringing sexually, romantically, et cetera.

There's also, again, often a serious age differential.

And when you combine that with

This, you know, this sort of really strong orientation toward not just a quote unquote happily ever after, but in most cases, most cases, a heterosexual marriage, in many cases, a jump forward to having children.

And so I think.

I'm not going to say that you can't enjoy Fifty Shades of Grey, for example.

Enjoy it.

Enjoy that.

Enjoy.

True.

True.

But I do think it's really important to take a step back and look at books like that and say, what are the messages that this is giving me?

Not just about her and her, the main female characters role in this.

but about him and why he's perceived as attractive, even though in the writing he sort of comes off as, at best, a blank slate, at worst, a sociopath.

It's interesting.

I came to the realization recently that I would say the genre that I probably read the most often is contemporary slash literary fiction with often a strong romantic theme.

And I realized in looking back at the books that I've read over the past year that consistently my favorites have all been queer stories.

Some historical, some modern.