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爱情小说的女德本质

There are many novels written by women which eroticize the power that one person has over the other. One individual falls in love with, or is sexually obsessed by another, and is therefore under his/her power. But this power does not correspond with, and is not reinforced by socially structured domination. On the other hand, the paperback romances that so many women consume are full of depictions of domination as sexy. It is not the accidental sexual power of one individual over another that is the focus of the story, but rather the eroticized domination of those who rule over those who are ruled. This is not just a matter off eroticizing the traditional imbalance between the sexes; class inequality is eroticized as well. This silver-haired boss is often the prime object of the secretary's desire, and his Rolls and luxurious house are always described in loving detail and presented as constituents of the man's sexual appeal. The man usually abuses his power and exercises domination by sexually harasssing the heroine, by being physically aggressive, and/or by threatening to fire her. But all these acts of domination are presented as inherently sexy. These incidents always fuel the flames of the younger woman's desire, even though they simultaneously trigger danger signals in her mind.

The woman of these romances are no wimps; they want their independence — up to a point. They work outside the home, they never have parents or other authority figures, and they do not necessarily fall for the first man who flatters them. But the men they do fall for are always more socially powerful than they. The male heroes are white and middle-class; they are also older than the heroines, often a lot older.

The only difference between the hero and the villain (there's invariably a villain) is that the villain actually tries to carry out his threats to rape the heroine or bring her to ruin, while the hero always stops at the last minute. The hero falls in love at some point late in the book, and this acts as a check on his otherwise "natural" impulses to abuse women sexually, emotionally and even financially. In a Silhouette romance, the hero meets the heroine when they talk in his office about a possible contract. He bluntly suggests a dinner date, implying the contract depends on her accepting the date. The heroine is angered at his presumption and his overt use of the economic power he has over her, but she is also sexually flattered. The hero's exercise of gender and class domination is both threatening and intriguing to the young heroine. She is trying hard to become an independent businesswoman, but she secretly yearns to give up control to a stronger being. The discouragements inherent in woman's economic struggles are mystified by being "translated" into sexual language. The heroine is presented not as the victim of an unjust economic system, but as a trembling female body yearning to be engulfed by the power of the male.

The real-life problems inherent in women's economic inferiority are simultaneously ignored and glamourized. Male economic power and women's lack of economic power are both given a sexual gloss. Sexual attraction is portrayed as being embedded in unequal socio-economic relations between the sexes, and financial inequality is sexualized. The marriage at the end of every book is presented as the resolution of all contradictions. Yet what the marriage actually does is institutionalize the inequality. Through marraige the woman will have access to her husband's wealth and power, but she will continue to be the inferior partner.

Thus it is not coincidental that the only sexuality the heroine appear to have consists of passive eroticism. Because of the strong links between social-economic inequality and eroticismto allow women an active sexualtiy would involve revolutionizing a lot more than the bedroom. It would be impossible to equalize the sexual roles in formula romances without challenging social roles.

To further explore this point, let us quote some typical passages:

Women always looked at Alex Brent like that ... His lean, hard body held a menacing sexuality, an implicit threat of sexual violence which attracted women like iron filings to a magnet.

and

He had a hated her with a burning intensity only because he had loved her so deeply. His hatred was as strong as his love. And that was what made her mind up for her. When a man loves you as much as that, she reasoned happily, how can you turn him down?

Now, when one reverses the pronouns in these passages, substituing "he" for "she" and "men" for "women", one does not create an image of a powerful, sexually assertive woman to whom men are attracted like iron filings to a magnet. Rather, the effect is to create a ridiculous piece of prose portraying women as evil witches. [...] Because active sexuality is equated with domination or the abuse of institutionalized power it is impossible to depict women's active sexual desire without turning the women into monstrous super-bitches. There is no room either for a passive eroticism that is not powerless, or for an active eroticism that is not "menacing" or based on the "implicit threat of sexual violence". Both roles of the dynamic of erotic power have been hopelessly mired in gender stereotypes, and in turn these have been affixed to the social structure of patriarchal capitalism. [...]

Patriarchal ideology is woven into the very language used to describe sexual arousal and satisfaction. Women do not lust afer a man, they "tremble," "quiver," "shudder," and display other Jello-like behaviour. Men, by contrast, do not want pleasure as much as they want to dominate. Even an ordinary kiss can become a sadistic tool to convey not passion but "punishment," "He crushed her roughly closer, and as she lifted her chin to protest, drove his mouth down on hers in a kiss that explained everything without words. It was a punishment in itself ..."

Popular erotic literature written for women fails them at a sexual level precisely because it fails to challenge the social status quo. It takes social relations for granted and portrays sexual power as belonging exclusively to powerful men. It portrays women's desire as purely passive, as the desire to be domiated and subdued and "rescued" from the hassles of trying to become an independent and financially secure woman. No wonder marraige is invariably the resolution of all contradictions and tensions of the plot. [...]

Of course this is not necessarily true in reality. For a lot of women marriage is neither sexually pleasurable nor physically safe. But we are speaking about the institution and the ideology of marriage, and paperback romances are concerned with the ideology, not the reality. The ideology is that men are dangerous, and so women can only "let go" with their husbands, because only their husbands have a duty to take care of them after they have fucked them. Only in marraige is the male urge to possess somewhat countered by a duty to protect. One could thus convincingly argue that the view of men presented in formula romances is much more pessimistic and bleak, and hence more anti-male, than the images of men presented in feminist fiction.

In several ways, then, women's popular fiction not only resembles pornography but actually is pornographic. There is an eroticization not only of male sexual power but of social and economic power in general. There is a corresponding glamourization of women's social and sexual subordination to men. The tensions in the plot are invariably resolved by, or at least buried in, marriage, and not any marriage, but a rigidly structured one in which the woman gives up her social autonomy with gay abandon in the hope of obtaining the love, i.e. protection, of an essentially dangerous male. Sexual surrender is tied to economic and social surrender. The woman, romantic soul that she is, makes no demands other than marriage itself in the naive belif that her big, strong hero will love as well as fuck her. If pornography is the depiction of women as the willing slaves of men, and in general the eroticization of institutionalized forms of domination, then one can hardly think of anything more pornographic than a lifetime of formula romance.

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