Meet the hottest new women’s fiction subgenre: the Amish romance novel. Seeing as “the church has traditionally viewed fiction as distracting and deceitful,” the Wall Street Journal reports, Amish romances are largely written by non-Amish women, for non-Amish women. These so-called “bonnet books,” essentially, are romance novels for modern women who want to live vicariously through an Amish character’s modest romantic transgression against her religious community. So while the books routinely defy Amish sensibilities in plot—they generally involve “an Amish character who falls for an outsider”—they remain extremely sexually conservative.  In one popular book, Cindy Woodsmall’s “When the Heart Cries,” the forbidden couple “actually kiss a couple of times in 326 pages.”

Read More “Amish Romance Novels Provide Stolen Kisses, But Not “Women’s Rights”” »

Welcome back to Sexist Beatdown, the erotic weekly chat wherein Sady of Tiger Beatdown and I discuss our innermost desire to be raped, forcibly married, and impregnated by a handsome and affable doctor of our parent’s choosing.

Shit, no, no—that’s the subject of our $39.99 Pay-Per-View edition of Sexist Beatdown (check local listings). This Sexist Beatdown is actually about how a handsome and affable doctor who rapes, forcibly marries, and impregnates a young woman is a totally awful and fucked up hero to write into your romance novel!

Or is he?

Are rape fantasies—and the Romance Novelists who love them—any more disturbing than all the other strange sexual fantasies being parsed out there in pages upon pages of awkward prose? Before you answer that: You should know that some of these strange sexual fantasies involve sexy role-playing as “Friends” character Chandler Bing.

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Romance writer Moriah Jovan notes a disturbing new trend among the youngsters in “Romancelandia” (that would be the realm of romance novel fan-dom). Women “who love romance novels” are mocking older romance novels for their fantastically retro covers, dated cultural references—and rapist love interests. Not fair!

Read More “Why Young Readers Don’t Like Romance Novel Rapists” »