And this is why I love Lois McMaster Bujold

[trixtah]

Apropos to a discussion on her mailing list regarding why yer typical male reader doesn't seem to enjoy "romance", Lois expounded on her Theory-in-Progress as to why that might be:

First, gender formation. Gender formation consists of a certain amount of biology overlain by a lot of culture.  In our culture, gender differentiation goes into high gear at puberty, and consists to a large extent of a process of deletion.  The individual ejects or suppresses aspects of him/her/self perceived as belonging to the other gender, and the resultant cripples are called "young men" or "young women".  Maturity, to an interesting extent, consists of people reclaiming a lot of these lost aspects to become more complete persons again.

(My itals) Isn't that bloody awesome? I'm in love (if I wasn't already).

Then there's this about status:

Status and status emergency.  Status seems to me under-examined as a biological (as contrasted with a social) motive.  It's necessarily a group thing; no one has status as a lone individual, as it is created relative to the group in which the individual is embedded.  ... Lack of status can really kill one, in any crunch situation.  (Lifeboats, starving villages, the hunt, etc. See _Lord of the Flies_)   So humans have a *biological* need for enough status to obtain whatever their personal threshold may be to feel safe.  ... When a person drops below their comfort zone of status, they are thrown into a state of status emergency or panic behavior (often bad or wildly disproportionate) sometimes having little relation to any actual physical threat (see any internet flame war.  And a lot of real wars.)

Which results in this kind of thing:

Combining these two, there are three arenas of status/gender struggle: man vs. man, woman vs. woman, man vs. woman.  All overlap and all are combined with equally urgent needs for various kinds of cooperation amongst the participants, so at this point it all sort of goes fractal.  But anyway.

In the post-puberty, not-yet-mature mode, the social model goes: girls attract guys by out-competing other women in attractiveness/status, the latter being defined as (million ways again) anything from beauty to owning more cows.

Guys attract girls by *competing with other guys* to obtain victory/wealth/status: girls then happen automatically, without the guy having to actually, like, talk to them or anything.  (See: trophy wives.)

Note that both genders are focusing on guys.

Problems happen when the girl has way more status than the guy, throwing him into possibly-unconscious status-emergency mode.  Problems also happen when the girl has *so* much less status, association with her saps the boy's status, ditto status-emergency for him.  In the puberty phase, when social enforcement of gender roles is in high gear, boys also lose status in the eyes of their very dangerous peers by association with anything "girly"; tomboys have similar troubles, if less directly lethal.  (But not always: see rl murder of Brandon Teena/Teena Brandon, and about a gazillion other people who stepped outside of prescribed gender boundaries in an unsafe place.)  So guys have more directly visible status-motivation not to appear "girly" than girls do not to appear "tomboy", but the indirect pressure on the girls can be just as nasty.  (Many females do not read SF because they perceive it as a guy-genre, unwelcoming to them; many guys read it for the exact same reason.  Or rather, because the suspect sissy thing, reading a book, is redeemed by being strongly guy-associated.)

There follows more about "why guys don't read girlie romance" - and it's easy to see where Lois is heading here - but doesn't this Theory-in-Progress go way beyond that?

This kind of thing is why I regret not finishing a university degree. I wish I could think in that kind of way, and have the underpinning concepts to be able to construct a theory like that.

Comments

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

It leaves traces, too. I was noodling through some writing last year, with the characters wandering through all kinds of situations. I could write dialogue, I could write comedy, I could write drama and sci-fi and whatnot.

Then they ran into romance, and I found myself completely out of my depth. I had *no frickin' idea* how to write even a low-key romantic arc.

First stop was the gf's extensive library, but Victorian potboilers and Jenny Everleigh (sp?) weren't exactly what I was after. Neither was the riotgrrl stuff, the Laurell K Hamilton, etc etc. (Although there was some sense of coalescence here and there, which may have helped.)

Genuine 21st-century gentle romance seems to be a bit more difficult than I assumed it would be when I let my characters wander blithely in that direction. And now I'm too stubborn to *not* figure out how to write it.

Grr. I need some "How to write romance" books. And there's a statement that would have had my teenage self backing away in horror.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Yes, those teenage traces have a habit of popping up in interesting ways. :-)

As for writing challenges, eep. Regarding background reading, I think it's important to read yer Austens and Jane Eyres, because a lot of the tropes are still with us (and they're good books). The same is true of the good Heyers. Laurell K Hamilton is really porn, so I don't consider them in the romance line.

I suggest you get thyself over to Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com), and check out their reviews, especially the ones rated in the As. I don't agree with all of them (and I haven't read a lot, since I'm not exactly the demographic for het romance), but they're certainly good for a starting off point. Jennifer Crusie and Nora Roberts are the two authors everyone swears by at present. Oh, and I read Jo Beverley's Mallorean books recently, and I enjoyed them too (but they're Regencies as well).

Also, since we were on the topic, I don't know if you've read much Bujold, but A Civil Campaign has all the Austen and Heyer elements, but it's an excellent (character-centred) SF story. It's a good example of showing how the old tropes can translate to almost anything. Also, the POV is mainly from a male character, and I loved how Lois made him so convincing with his romantic fumbles (and catches).

[tygerr.livejournal.com]

*Early* LKH is chalk-full of sexual tension, but really isn't porn. Anita starts out, if you recall, as a Godd Little Catholic Grrl Who Doesn't Believe In Sex Outside Of Marriage. (Okay, yes, technically she's Episcopalian, but only because the Catholic Church excommunicated her supernatural ass--she still pretty much thinks of herself as Catholic.) So the first 3-4 books in the series are decent examples of a harder-edged romantic subplot with a resistant protagonist.