Criticizing Rachel Reed does not equal sexism.
She needs to and deserves to be critiqued. Like every single person. Every single person has unconscious and conscious biases they need to work through and the moment they stop thinking that is the moment they are the most dangerous.
The way people critic Rachel Reed can absolutely be sexist! Your critic can be right and sexist at the same time, and you need to be able to hold space for that when asking for accountability. And you have to hold your community responsible too.
It’s really interesting seeing how people will accurately point out racism in Rachel Reed’s writing of Shane only to turn around and giggle about their head cannons of giving Shane a pussy just for sex. Rachel Reed is weird for sharing a list of penis sizes ranked and putting her two characters of color at the bottom. The fandom is weird for feminizing Shane and how that plays out in demasculization and fetishization. Fandom will pretty much always take a character they categorize as a bottom and submissive and start writing “pussy boy!” And “trans man!” Versions of the character for sex reasons. Are there trans people who want to see their dynamics of sex play out in the bedroom in fandom? Yes absolutely. And I love that. But if that was the primary motivating factor you would see far more people writing about tops who are trans/have boy pussys. But you don’t see that in the same measure or popularity, and pretending that it doesn’t deserve critic is disingenuous.
Deciding that Rachel Reed is dumb, a terrible writer, and evil is sexism! This is holding her to a parasocial standard they would not with a male writer. (Maybe some would, but let’s not pretend like that’s a majority). Especially people who hate ‘everything about the books’ but ‘love Jacob Teriney’. I’m so sorry, but declaring that a man fixed or is the only thing that made a woman’s story good is misogynistic! That’s a continued narrative that art made by women is bad until a man does it. And contributing to that narrative isn’t good. Especially when Teriney sees the project as a collaboration and loves RR’s work.
You don’t have to like RR’s work. But deciding to publicly declare and defend that RR’s work is terrible but Jacob Teriney is amazing and fixed it, is a misogynistic choice! And maybe being right is a hill you will die on. Fine. But are you benefiting the cultural narrative by loudly screaming about it on social media or are you cultivating a place where misogyny is allowed to fester?
Why do you think that Rachel Reed isn’t able to accept criticism of her writing and grow from it? I can tell you in a genre of MLM hockey romance Rachel Reed is one of the only ones who makes a large thematic point about critiquing the way hockey culture sucks. She falls flat and doesn’t go far enough a lot of them time. But it’s actually more reasonable to think that Rachel Reed would be receptive to hearing how she failed and how she could do better than deciding to write her off. Please be upset about racism, sexism, and misogyny in the game changers universe. I don’t see people criticizing the joke that’s made about Shane thinking Cardi B was a man as anti-black and extremely harmful to black women, and I wish that was talked about more. But at the same time I believe if I sat down with Rachel Reid and explain that to her, she would understand and work to correct that going forward. She shouldn’t have made the joke in the first place, but every single person has jokes they should have never made.
Complaining about the “prose” of Rachel Reid’s writing and how it’s “not serious literature” and then brining up books by racist white men who wouldn’t care about structural inequality if you brought it up to them, isn’t the kind of argument you should be making. Encourage people to read classics and modern lit written by black women instead of bring up Tolkien again. “Their Eyes Were Watching God” has beautiful prose and delves into a lot of important themes, and is classic literature. Why are you not bringing books like that when you want to point out “better prose”?
When you come into the romance genre with no respect for the genre, how it’s written, and the rules within it, and don’t take that into your criticism of the books that’s probably criticism that is born of or will birth sexism!
Romance and even explicitly erotic works can have larger themes and delve into serious topics. But if you aren’t equipped for the ways romance as a genre will engage in those conversations you are going to miss it. And you run the risk of your criticisms echoing misogyny.
Rachel Reed is responsible for the written word she put out into the world, the space that takes and creates, and how she responds to it.
And you are responsible for the same exact thing. It doesn’t matter if you get three retweets or 2 likes on tumblr. If you are holding her to a higher standard you hold yourself, why? Larger platforms have larger responsibilities yes. There are different things to consider. But you should be able to do the same things you ask of her at your own scale. You have personal responsibility! You deserve to be criticized! I should be criticized!
I hope Rachel Reed listened to the criticism of her writing after heated rivalry came out. That the anti-blackness, fetishization of men of color, and sexism in Rachel Reed’s writing is addressed and fixed. I hope she gets a few sensitivity readers who will help her out. I hope she centers the voices of fans of color. I hope that’s what you want to, and not just a chance to hate on a woman who has gotten recently successful.
