Andie J. Christopher is the author of bestselling romance novels.
With an eye to stemming the tide of sexual misconduct of which we've seen so much distressing evidence lately, Ms. Christopher has a suggestion: Men should act more like the romantic heroes in her literary genre.
She writes in the New York Post:
As a feminist and a romance novelist, if I wrote about a male protagonist who made unwanted sexual advances towards his female employee or ignored pleas to slow down or stop trying to have sex with a date, I would be pilloried by my readers — and rightly so.
Because that’s not the behavior of a romance hero, that’s the behavior of a villain.
Forcing women to walk a tightrope of appropriate behavior won’t end sexual harassment and violence against women. It won’t make us equal. Because women’s behavior is not the problem — badly behaved men are the problem.
Perhaps it’s time that men start acting more like romance heroes.
Romance heroes don’t whip their penises out without making darn sure their partner wants to see them — toddlers and villains do that.
So romance novels are not all about bodice ripping. They are about men and women listening to each other and connecting, argues Ms. Christopher, and that is an antidote to sexual predation.
Read the whole column to see how Ms. Christopher would have plotted the romance novel about a comedian who meets a noncelebrity. It would hot have wound up as a sad tale on Babe.net. Why Can't Sexual Harassers Act More Like Romance Heroes?
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