Ilayda Tank

Contemporary Romance Literature and its Derogatory Depictions of Sex: Paulo Freire on Colleen Hoover.

 “Designed to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind” is what George Orwell made of the English language. Any attempt to translate lived experience to written form is, to some sense, a dishonest act; the written word will never fully encapsulate the vibrancy of the living world. “Bad english”, Orwell believed, served as a vehicle for oppressive ideology. Letters are not an objective medium, they are a politicized construct. It is an attempt to harness what is, by nature, inherently free: like Orwell’s wind – or, in the case of contemporary romance literature, women. 

Mark Fisher once argued that capitalism is so embedded within our collective consciousness it defines our very notion of existence. Its eradication would constitute a collective existential crisis. Similarly, one could argue that the patriarchy defines our very notion of womanhood. Its dismantlement would correspond to a similar existential crisis. This is due to the fact that, as Fisher argued of capitalism, the patriarchy is embedded into our consciousness, fostering an oppressor conscious, as Paulo Friere understands the term in his 1970 work Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Forming our sexual drive, the conception of life itself is marred by the patriarchy. While I do not regard the patriarchy as a direct product of capitalism, I do regard sex as a means of patriarchal oppression embedded within capitalism. Sex becomes more than a means of profit, it yields power; and capitalism awards power. Sex sells, sex is on sale in bookstores, and sadistic sex turns the most profit.  A means of oppression sold to the oppressed, a means of enslavement wrapped up under the Christmas tree; Satan’s little helper. 

Investing in our own enslavement, do women suffer from a “fear of freedom” as defined by Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed? Adopting Freire’s perspective on true liberation, when young women discover a yearning to be free, a longing for sexual liberation, they will only perceive that this longing can only be transformed into reality when “the same yearning is aroused in their comrades” (Friere, 1968). Adopting an attitude of adhesion toward the patriarchy, mothers become their daughters’ sub-oppressors when providing them with derogatory, abusive, and degrading literature. Colleen Hoover is only one such author of the plethora that exists. Romanticizing abusive behavior and toxic dynamics while promoting toxic masculinity, Hoover has a chokehold on teenage girls, and our daughters are gasping for breath under the weight of her oppressive literature.

Power struggles and pillow talk; Sex is as much an expression of politics as it is love. As literature encapsulates the current political climate of its time, the insurgence of oppressive literature should serve as a warning to society. The rise of the right, the longing to return to traditional values, following the reinforcement of gender roles, make contemporary literature a true product of our time.

The oppressor consciousness, much like the capitalistic consciousness, develops a strictly materialistic concept of existence. Profit is the primary goal, and sadistic sex sells. A perverted love that, as Paulo Freire states, “is a love of death, not of life” (Friere, 1968). A deranged love of oppression, not liberation. The sexual themes present in contemporary romance embrace a sadism and masochism that was previously confined to the adult world. This Christmas, there is a three for two. The human sexual psychology of modern romance subscribes to the allure of a lacking consent, or transactional sexual favors. Referring back to Freire, “self-deprecation is another characteristic of the oppressed, which derives from the internalization of the opinion the oppressors hold of them.” The authors of these modern contemporary romance novels are women themselves, writing for a female audience, as exemplified by Colleen Hoover. Thus, the internalized misogyny women harbor indulges in further oppression as “although they (the oppressed) desire authentic existence, they fear it.” We must liberate ourselves from the oppressor whose consciousness we have internalized, and reject the current influx of derogatory literature that solidifies our oppression. Our fear of freedom will fuel the extinction of our sexual liberty as an “authentic existence” (in terms of sex) encompasses the eradication of the oppressor consciousness. 

Women must achieve a liberation of the mind, forbid the oppressors from entering our bodies, and planting their seeds of oppression in our womb. The oppressor conscious is truly a sexual disease, and the modern woman is held back by fear, not of the sickness itself, but rather its absence. A fear rooted in the intrinsic belief that, as a woman, your human value corresponds to your sexual value. Challenging the oppressor conscious will provoke an existential crisis amongst the oppressed. We will lose our sense of selves when we lose a sex that sells. But the time has come for women to reclaim their identities. Thus, it is time women are liberated from the oppressive literature they are taught to be “romance”. It is time women free their daughters, and spare them from a generational pain painted as pleasure, consolidated in oppressive contemporary literature. It is laborious, as “liberation is a childbirth, and a painful one.” It is time to face a collective existential crisis, because, as Paulo Freire explains it, and Hoover herself puts it: It Ends with Us.