Netta Baker

I think the specific phrasing was conservative propaganda for tradwives with a patriarchy kink.

A lot of those readers will talk about it as a space for exploring feelings of feminine rage about a culture that they feel is increasingly turning misogynistic.

So a lot of times it gets described in public understanding, like sort of awareness, as just we mashed up romance and fantasy together.

The problem with that is it's not that, and it's actually just a rebranding of fantasy romance, which is a subgenre of romance.

And so in 2015, Bloomsbury that published Sarah J Maas took credit kind of for coining romanticism as a term.

And it might have been an attempt to remove some of the stigma that romance as a genre inevitably ends up with.

But it had been a term that was floating around.

Yeah.

I mean, I was very aware of the hot take on it being conservative propaganda.

I think the specific phrasing was conservative propaganda against

for Tradwives with a Patriarchy King.

You're not looking at the text as, say, a critic experiences it in isolation and thinking about what does it say we should be.

And instead, you look at it from the perspective of the communities of readers that build knowledge about what it means to them.

So what do they say it does for them?

And a lot of those readers will talk about it as a space for

exploring feelings of feminine rage about a culture that they feel is increasingly turning misogynistic, more so than ever before.

they'll talk about it as giving them representations of male partners that they don't perceive as realistic in real life.

And it has nothing to do with the muscles and the things they talk about instead are, he's supportive, he listens to me, he believes me, he is unthreatened by a powerful woman, he accepts me and affirms me, he's emotionally intelligent.

And that's what they tend to be receiving from it.

And they're very interested in a lot of books that skate under the radar, but are actually highly discussed in more niche spaces.