Bittercon: Are We Not Men - Human Women and Beast-Men in Paranormal Romance

[attackfish]

Paranormal romance is a world in which human women and girls are entranced and overcome by the charms of supernatural, inhuman men. Vampires, werewolves, faeries, demons, and others populate the romantic field for the women of these novels, and seldom does it flow the other way with a human man and a supernatural woman.

The story of a supernatural woman romancing mortal men, as told by male writers portraying women as the other is a venerable and often retold one. But the idea that a woman is othered by men, that she is some sort of strange and unknowable creature tells women that men must be so very different from them, and therefore as hard for them to understand. Therefore, since the beginning of women's writings, women have portrayed men as the strange unknowable.

But is this the only reason the female protagonist of a paranormal romance rarely begins as a supernatural creature? Romance writers presumably expect women and girl readers to identify with the female protagonist, so it must be her male love interest (m/m and f/f romance having different dynamics all together) who is inhuman and serves to introduce her into the magical world he inhabits, a world the reader gets to visit until the story is over, so it's very useful to have an othered male.

One of the largest subsets of paranormal romance is Young Adult or Teen paranormal romance, where entering a supernatural world serves as an obvious metaphor for the first steps into the dating world. Dating is so confusing, so overwhelming, that most of us on some level wish we had a guide. Along with introducing her to the supernatural world, the supernatural boyfriend in a paranormal romance serves as that guide, taking away insecurity, potential pain, and the fear of making a mistake. The fact that if he is a vampire, faerie, demon, angel, etc. he is likely to be much much much older than the heroine (though still appealingly young and sexy) makes for a fairly dubious cultural narrative of an older man who guides and protects a young girl.

It has been discussed elsewhere that fathers and father figures in paranormal romances and urban fantasies tend to be very very good fathers, and mothers are in some way either neglectful or monstrous. The only woman a heroine can rely on is herself. How does this play into the idea of the othered male? Is the genre also othering women from it's female readers, proclaiming them each exceptional women, far above other women, and therefore worthy of their own magical boyfriend?

Written for bittercon the online convention for those of us who can't make it to any other kind, on a topic stolen from a panel at the 2011 Readercon.

Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I feel a bit lame linking to my own essay, but it's quicker than regurgitating all the points in it: "Why Is Faerie Ruled by Queens?"

If it wouldn't have been terribly off-topic for the conference, I might have tried to go into the flip side, which is human women and supernatural men. It seems to me that pattern happens the most often when the supernatural is seen as predatory/bestial (as opposed to mystical/irrational, the faerie pattern, which is so often feminine). Those qualities can be hyper-masculinized, whereas "manly" and "fey" don't play as well together. And, of course, some of it has to do with the sources of these narratives: Dracula, the archetypal vampire, is male, and on the werewolf side you have the whole "alpha wolf" concept. (Which apparently isn't nearly as true as we think. But I digress.)

I really like all of your points, too, about reader identification and othering and the dating metaphor and even the practical, craft-related concern of exposition. I can think of some ways to flip those on their head and write from a supernatural female perspective -- some authors have done that already -- but it doesn't erase the pattern.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I remember that essay! I think the feminine associations of faerie are why faeries are more common in Urban Fantasy than Paranormal Romance. And why the Paranormal Romances I like tend to be about faeries. I mentioned in the essay how I thought women othering men was the natural consequence of men othering women, and faerie folk tradition is so much older than any of the others in Paranormal Romance, so the one where men's voices predominate.

Paranormal Romance likes to eroticize male predatory behavior, doesn't it?

I never got that Alpha male thing. Anybody with dogs should know differently. *shakes head* People see what they want to see.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Good point; I tend to see the UF side of things more than the PR, and conflate the two together overmuch in my head.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

It's hard to tell where the line between them goes.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

Paranormal Romance likes to eroticize male predatory behavior, doesn't it?

Yep.

A couple of years ago I put it like this: "Because we live in a patriarchal society, it is with individuals from the class of their oppressors that women are encouraged to find romance. The mystification of oppression consequently blurs the distinction between the ideal lover and the lover as he represents a source of oppression for a woman."

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

This. In old folk tales with othered women, men were given the lesson that they should either try to destroy the other or change it. Danger in a woman was a sign that she must either lose her power, or die (and power, of course meant danger) or in some stories, that she would leave and break her human's heart. Women are encouraged to embrace the other and make themselves more like it instead. Since the other in Paranormal Romance is dangerous (just like men can be in real life, there's a reason Edward is frequently called an abusive stalker) this danger is what we women are told to embrace. Meanwhile, if something happens to us, it's our fault.