LTAFS Addendum 3: Workplace Romance
So, my lovely romance authors, we need to talk. As readers of my Let's Talk About Fictional Sex know, I am a big believer that fiction is not real life. And that yes of course you can happily write and read about things that you hope to never experience in real life from bungee jumping to mafia kidnappings, and it does not need to reflect on your real life.
But. But. Workplace romance has always been fraught because power dynamics, and because quite honestly if you've ever had to sit in a conference room with two people who everyone knows were caught having sex on the office camera, but we are all pretending that we do not know that, it's just a lot.
Sex is a healthy activity for consenting adults to engage in. People often become friends or more than friends with people that they first met in the office. However, I worry when I read some of these things. I once heard two dudes on a podcast say that the thing about rom-com movies was that characters do things that would be considered sexual harassment but it's okay because it's wanted. Please imagine me trying to yell back at a podcast.
Sexual harassment does not disappear because these people fall in love. Yes, I know people who fell in love with co-workers. And yes, I also know people who fell out of love with their coworkers. Or were cheating on their spouses with a coworker.
Coworkers have real full lives, and that is as it should be.
Romance novels often operate on a what's keeping these people from pursuing their relationship principle. Circumventing workplace relationship protocols is not a good obstacle, in my opinion, because workplaces trying to create a safe environment for their employees is a good goal. Having your characters at odds with this goal is awkward.
To be clear, if the taboo is the goal, then cool. I'm not here to yuck people's yum, and if you are writing something that is forbidden for that reason then that is cool.
Obviously assigning motivations to an author is murky. But there are some authors who appear to be positioning their books as exploring workplace harassment, by, um, writing a story about two characters flaunting the workplace romance rules by keeping their relationship secret from their coworkers.
And that isn't really exploring or subverting sexual harassment. It's basically saying it's okay because of true love. I love love. But it does not fix sexual harassment.