There is a well documented sociological phenomenon known as occupational devaluation and the concept behind it is simple: When an occupation is primarily performed by women, it is viewed as less prestigious. The average wage is lower. Societal respect for that position is lower.
And if there is a demographic shift and that same job becomes male-dominated, then the average wage increases. Societal respect increases.
The converse is also true. If a job shifts from primarily male-dominated to primarily female-dominated, the average wage will drop. Societal respect decreases. A big example of this phenomenon is secretarial work. In the 1800s, being a secretary was actually considered a man’s job, and it was a very elite one at that. If you were a secretary, you were being groomed for leadership. It was a position of status.
That position shifted to a female-dominated field after the invent of the typewriter. Women were hired for the role as typists, and the position was quickly stripped of its respect, mobility, and high wages. As it was feminized, it was devalued. The work was perceived as less because it was performed by a woman. It is yet another microcosm of misogyny.
The inherent devaluation of what is perceived as feminine is blatant in many aspects of life, but I think it has been achingly apparent in how the heated rivalry fandom has treated romance as a genre.
Romance is a genre that is often perceived as being written for women, by women. It is a feminine genre. And so it is devalued.
This devaluation is another well documented phenomenon. Romance as a genre has long been treated as low-brow. It is the empty calories of literature. There is a pervasive mindset that you read it as a guilty indulgence, not because it’s really good.
This idea that the romance genre is lesser or low brow is a fundamentally false one. I had another post here about what genre is and what the romance genre in particular is, so I won’t get into that here. Romance is just a type of story. It in no way dictates how that story is executed. And any story can be executed well.
We are still studying Pride & Prejudice centuries later because from a mechanical perspective, it is a masterclass. It is a serious and complex work of literature. And it is a romance novel. And Pride & Prejudice is not unique in its excellence. There have been many excellent works of literature over the centuries that can be classified as romantic in nature. Some of Shakespeare’s finest works were his romances. The mere fact that a work is romantic does not demand that it is executed with any less skill. But we still act as if you should expect less from a story because it is “just a romance.”
This mindset is rooted in misogyny. There is no genre out there where every artist on the planet got together and decided that it would be the place where they shuffled off the literary duds. That’s fucking bonkers. And there is no other genre where we act like we did that, because there is no other genre as feminized as romance. It is treated as lesser because it is perceived as being for and by women.
Any story can be written well. And the fact that a story focuses centrally on romance does not exclude it from tackling societal issues in a nuanced and complete manner. A romance novel does not need to be a sociopolitical thesis because no book needs to be anything. But it can be.
I think it is telling that one of the most common defenses of these books is not “no, they handled that topic well” but is instead “you can’t expect them to be well executed because it’s just a romance novel, aka the place where dumb fucks go to die.” There is nothing about the fact that these books are romantic that makes them inherently less. And we need to seriously inspect this communal instinct to act like it does. Because the devaluation inherent in that is based in misogyny.
Authors have the freedom to decide what topics they try to tackle in their books, and the audience expects them to do it well. If they do not do it well, then they open themselves up to criticism about that fact. That has been an understood and expected facet of literature since we invented fucking books. Literary criticism has always been a part of society’s experience of literature. We have spent centuries tearing apart each other’s writings and pointing out what we think was done well or poorly. And we have never rushed to the defense of other works with “no no no no no don’t criticize it like that—it’s supposed to be bad, you’re just taking it too seriously.” Authors pick their own conflict. It is not too much to demand that they handle that conflict well.
Rachel Reid voluntarily chose to engage with complex topics in her novels. And that means she does not get to excuse herself from criticism around how she engaged with those topics by saying that they were never supposed to be seriously analyzed. She was the one who chose to try to address serious subject matter to begin with. If she didn’t want to actually address it, then she should have chosen to write about something else.
