I mean, they are having sex on the cover, I kinda figured that out...but I love reading about Bat Boy and Alien Elivs with my time in the checkout line. Next go around, I will grab one of these novels and screaming something like, "horrible smut, smut of evil - devil begone from the baked good isle!"

compared to which a real woman could never live up to (and shouldn't try, as the ideal porn woman would exist strictly to fulfill a males fantasies). I don't know if romance novels/movies go quite as far as Porn, as much porn is pretty dehumanizing, but they do create expectations of a romantic male that most males fall short of.

But then all fantasies contrast favorably with reality.

Bryant

Both the man and women don't have an ounce of body fat and look like they just stepped off the set of One Life To Live. After having sex.

I would argue that the point of fantasy is to escape from the humdrum boring world we live in. Be that sexy romp novel or slaying a dragon. Of course everything and everyone is going to be blown way out of proportion, you really want Stan from accounting to be your wingman while fighting the Dreaded King Nox? No, me either I want Conan the Barbarian.

Or can it? I don't know that that's an easy answer - because its individualist; every reacts to things differently.

Bryant

If one gets so lost in fantasy, that they become disillusioned with reality and want to withdraw into the fantasy world more and more. That is the danger imo.

Completely withdrawn into a fantasy, counting on... I don't know, some magical being... to come save us from ourselves.

"Of course we all know that that is a solution to the problem, but we can't possibly do that."
"We can do anything we want to address this, except that."
"Why not that? Well, sure it would work, but it would inconvenience important people, so we can't do it."

How insane is this? Yet we are all supposed to accept this as just the way it is. But don't worry, the adults are in charge.

and less about reality too. I know I've seen it firsthand and in my own family.

That concern goes well beyond love and sex.

to be less inhibited, a bit more free to try new things and more willing to please each other"?

I have never really "gotten into" porn. My new BF used to watch it...he doesn't anymore (that's what he told me)....but if he wanted to watch it a bit, I guess it wouldn't bother me.

Maybe porn allows unrealistic expectations to become realistic for some.

But, yeah...I'll admit that I've watched porn maybe 10 times in my 47 years and I've "used" some moves. 😄

There's nothing wrong with some fun.

And my guy is caring and a little bit romantic and attentive in all aspects of his life.

"Give them a Bible to read! Like this passage about the sex-orgy king Salomo held."

"WHAT THE FUCK THESE PEOPLE ARE FUCKING ON THE COVER OF THIS BOOK!"

and the women are all lacking most of their apparel! I wonder how many Germans fantasize about being a cowboy in the Wild West?

Can we have some scientific data to back this up?

"Can become" "May" All the wiggle words. And who are these "experts"? (And who are "some authors"?)

Romance fiction has been the leading fiction seller for at least 40 years. Sales topped $1.0bn a year at least 10 years ago. This is nothing new.

Your concern is noted. . . .and totally dismissed.

Quick! Tell that all those authors of teenage-vampire-novels and all those producers of video-games!

You ever read Fifty Shades of Bacon?


It's even got a chapter called "Multiple Orgasms"!

that some asshole has decided will kill us all off before the things that actually will kill us all off have a chance.

Boy meets girl (sexual chemistry and loin-stirring) , for some lame reason they break up but realize they belong together and live happily ever after, with a passionate kiss at the end.

I read my fair share of those when I was young.

I read them way back in the day. Poorly written and really lame.

There are tons of those bodice ripping books. It tends to be middle aged women buying them. If you've read one, you've read them all.

....women camped out in tents waiting for it to open...

at least, that's what I read in some research study.

Also, one man told me how lusty his wife was after reading 50 Shades of Grey. (It was an appropriate topic of conversation because I'm in publishing.) So you can't say that reading romance novels is necessarily a bad thing for women.

Joey nosed around in Rachel's stuff. He was kind of mean to her. Hilarity, perhaps, ensued.

My late grandmother was a voracious reader of romance novels. She went through them by the bagful. Looking back, it's clear that she was unhappy on several levels. Her son had died of AIDS at 39, so young. She and my grandfather had moved to a remote location, in their retirement. She was too isolated, and so sad, so much of the time. She needed something to help her cope, and the escapism of romance novels may have been that thing.

It's kind of sick, probably, to babble about one's grandmother in reference to the ongoing DU porn debates. I don't mean to offend anyone or trivialize any points to be made on the subject. It seems to be a complicated matter. I can't help wondering, though, if pornography might be a coping method for some people. Sometimes a person needs something to help them cope with hardship. It might be weird or risible or offensive, when regarded by another, but it helps them keep living life.

Apologies if this post is somehow unhelpful. I just thinks the thinkey-thoughts, and sometimes they flow out of the fingers and onto the intertubes.

Therefore "Romance" novels are good, porn is bad.

partner. Geez. I can't believe how much like the conservatives some democrats sound like on this issue.

Some here seem to think anyone to the Left of Limbaugh is a Liberal, so therefore they are real Democrats.

That will probably be next.

I found the OP to be amusing because some here assume that only men are consumers of porn in any form.

Vibrator = Modern enlightend woman. Sexually fulfilled. Likely sexually fulfilling.

Fleshlight (or other male sex toy) = Creepy gross pervert that no one would ever want to touch with a ten foot pole.

The sex scenes usually don't turn up until halfway through most romance novels. Leading up to that is conflict, character, dialogue, the usual things that go into a relationship. That is completely different from "objectifying" men as mere bodies.

Are they about MORE than just sex?

Is that somehow less of an obstacle to "achieving an emotional connection with a partner" than masturbating while viewing porn?

over and over again.

Murder mystery: Dead body. Sleuth investigates. Killer revealed.

Romance: Boy meets girl. Despite attraction, boy and girl have conflicts. They resolve conflicts and fall in love.

"Love" is the operative word in a romance novel. Not "sex."

And, p.s.: there are romance novels that never have sex. Just a fade-out.

They are just as lame as the romance novels. Harlequin books are 100 pages if that, hardly time for any realistic 'romance'. There's plenty of sex in them.

in a typical romance book, the men are all of a certain type - they are older, brash, confident, powerful, and rich.

At least as impossible an ideal for the average man as an airbrushed playboy bunny is for the average woman. As Marian's mother said

"If you don't mind my saying so - there's not a man a live who can hope to measure up to that blend of Paul Bunyan, St. Pat and Noah Webster you've concocted for yourself out of your Irish imagination and Iowa stubbornness and your library full of books!"

of those cheesy romance novels, those books suck big time.

Are you familiar with the First Amendment?

We little ladies don't need your concern or your assistance.

Don't like the shoe being on the other foot?

you'd be sadly mistaken.

Hard to keep the cast of characters straight after awhile.



I apologize.

No problem.

" but it's a concern..."

I'm quite certain the sincere and the honest will think on it, act on those thoughts, and chart an effective course of action; while those who are merely throwing mud against the wall to see which false equivalency sticks will continue on that same course too.

That our soap operas are roughly equivalent to porn for the ladies. It's the plot. Remember when Behind the green door came out in the 70's and that Linda Lovelace film? Deepthroat? They were first of a kind because there was a loose story line, rather than a pile of body parts on a bed. It's the thoughts about the pizza boy making a delivery to the bachelorette party ......kidding. I don't read romantic novels but I do like the Stephanie Plum series. There are occasional entanglements that are a little sexy and fun. It's part of life. Not all if it.

- who they are and what they have done (baseball dips into the personal stories and personas quite deeply) and the audience is enraptured guessing what these players will do next. Trust me, I don;t follow either, but have been close on the sidelines to see it is the same shit.
Anyway, no one really wants to know the backstory of porn players to give it more meaning, you barely follow the story at all. Completely different animal.

Some of those novels have forced sex in them. The man becomes so obsessed with a woman that he can no longer control himself and forces himself on the woman, who then eventually gives in to his desires. A lot of women find that sexy.

The popular term for these kind of novels are "bodice rippers."

and nobody is harmed by the production of this kind of material to help them indulge their fantasies, I guess it's not really a problem.

The links I could find were religious in nature, opinions by various people and even one from psychics.

CODSWALLOP!

the love scenes since as I told my daughter "if you have read one you have read them all" boring!

Those novels have enough sex in them described in detail that they aren't so romantic anymore.

You can have sex and romance in the novel.

All the other genres including non-fiction were mixed together willy-nilly on the shelves but the romance novels were separated out and shelved together. There were at least five thousand romance titles and possibly a lot more than that, over half the quite large book section.

I've gotten really good at finding stuff I'm interested in (not romance ) just by observing the fonts used on the spines of the books, don't even have to read the actual titles to discern the various genres in many cases.

Is this saying women don't watch porn?

Some like to read it, some like to watch it, some may do both.

A recent survey of romance readers here:

http://www.rwa.org/p/cm/ld/fid=582

The Romance Book Buyer

(Statistics from Bowker® Market Research, Q2 2012, New Books Purchased and RWA's 2012 Romance Book Consumer survey)

Women make up 91 percent of romance book buyers, and men make up 9 percent.
The U.S. romance book buyer is most likely to be aged between 30 and 54 years.
Romance book buyers are highly represented in the South.
The greatest percentage of romance book buyers (39 percent) have an income between $50,000 and $99,900.
According to RWA's 2011 Romance Book Consumer survey, slightly more than half of survey respondents live with a spouse or significant other.
Forty-four percent of romance book buyers consider themselves "frequent readers" (read quite a few romances); 31 percent are "avid readers" (almost always reading a romance novel); and 25 percent are "occasional readers" (on and off, like when on vacation).
Readers have been reading romance for a long time: 41 percent of romance book buyers have been reading romance for 20 years or more.

And the #1 choice when it comes to type of romance fiction? Romantic suspense.

(print buyers):
Romantic suspense: 58%
Contemporary romance: 50%
Historical: 44%
Erotic: 15%
Christian: 19%

Clearly, women are not reading for the sex scenes, but for the story.

that reading Harlequin romance books made her horny.

I quickly offered to send her a box and then visit next weekend, but she didn't take me up on it.

I owned a bookstore, I could have done it too. I sold the old ones ten for a dollar.

The closest I've come to a romance novel is Lady Chatterly's Lover and Anna Karenina.
I hate romance comedies too. I'll pick suspense or drama every time.