I once had a conversation with a man, of course it was a man, who said that all romance novels were shallow and poorly written and only existed for the sex scenes, and when I asked him if he had actually explored the genre, he said he hadn't. That level of confident ignorance is staggering, though not surprising. His reference points were Twilight and Fifty Shades and little beyond that. This is similar to a different man equally confidently telling me that women don't write good horror and basing that opinion solely on Anne Rice and Laurell K. Hamilton. Men sit down and stop speaking with your whole chests on things you don't understand and clearly don't respect challenge.

It's possible that I feel so strongly about this because I, too, used to think romance novels were throwaway garbage. As though an entire genre can just be dismissed as irrelevant. As though there aren't social and cultural reasons to belittle art that's primarily consumed by girls and women. As though the most popular examples of anything are automatically the best ones. As though everything has to be deep and profound and existing only for the sex scenes is a bad thing.