Men like to watch random people having sex.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They'll pull up pictures of the act, watch one internet video after another showing a different set of people doing similar things.\u00a0 A whole genre of movies exists to cater to the male desire to watch\u00a0generously endowed females wiggle, squirm, slither and squeal in high-pitched tones as the man gives it to her good.\u00a0 A few scenes later, the same man - we'll call him\u00a0Dick -\u00a0gives it to three\u00a0different women (at the same time) and they\u00a0enjoy it every bit as much as the first piece he left behind.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Women like to read about\u00a0how\u00a0Dick discovers\u00a0Jane - the\u00a0woman\u00a0who makes everything in the bedroom so different that he'll\u00a0change the way he lives after the orgasm's over.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Women want to see Dick meet Jane, figure out that Jane's going to be different, and watch Dick try to walk away from Jane.\u00a0 Women want to see Jane teach Dick that she's not so easy to leave.\u00a0 Women want Dick and Jane to struggle with any of a million different dilemmas before both of them realize that\u00a0it's love and that's worth any cost.\u00a0 Women want to see Dick learn that the groans won't always sound better coming from a new mouth.\u00a0 By the Great Green Toad Frog, women want to see Dick\u00a0find the one woman he won't - can't - leave.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
Romance novels aren't\u00a0about When Dick Leapt Jane; <\/em>they're\u00a0about When Dick Kept Jane. <\/em>That's a fundamental difference in the way men and women see sex.\u00a0 And it's the lesson that Alan Elsner is too MALE to learn.\u00a0 It's why Mr. Elsner got it wrong in the piece he wrote for The Huffington Post<\/a>.\u00a0 He's written a new book and because it has the word romance in the title, he said he was often asked if he'd written a romance novel.\u00a0 The piece is about what he discovered from checking out from the library - and ALLEGEDLY reading - a stack of recent romances.<\/p>\n The real thrust of Mr. Elsner's piece is a secret he reveals in the opening paragraph.\u00a0 He says that when people asked him if he'd written a romance novel, HIS INSTINCTIVE REACTION WAS NO.\u00a0 Then he says he hadn't read romance fiction \"for many years\" so he checked out a stack from his library to read and investigate.\u00a0\u00a0Guess what?\u00a0 I know, you're on the edge of your seat to discover whether he liked the novels or not.<\/p>\n No, you're not on the edge of your seat at all, are you?\u00a0 Because you're all smart enough to guess that\u00a0he's a man so his investigation proved that he was right all along.\u00a0 He hadn't written a romance novel.\u00a0 He'd never write a romance novel.\u00a0 Because romance novels - unlike his book - have a predictable script and include too many graphic descriptions of sex.\u00a0 He concludes, in\u00a0damnably\u00a0patronizing<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0fashion, that\u00a0romances are \"escapist fiction\"\u00a0and that women have\u00a0\"as much right to enjoy pornography packaged to their liking as men.\"\u00a0<\/p>\n Well, thank you very much Mr. Elsner.\u00a0 Women\u00a0appreciate your being gracious enough to recognize\u00a0that we have\u00a0rights -just like men do - imagine that!\u00a0 But you can keep the \"right\" to enjoy pornography packaged in any form or fashion.\u00a0 I'll just pat Alan on the head and say, \"Poor thing, he's just a victim of his gender.\" \u00a0\u00a0Mr. Elsner read romance novels and DIDN'T GET what made them romantic.\u00a0<\/p>\n Today's romances don't generally stop at the bedroom door.\u00a0 Once upon a time, on I Love Lucy, <\/em>Lucy and Desi slept in separate beds.\u00a0 Today, Meredith and Derek on Grey's Anatomy <\/em>don't just sleep in the same bed, viewers get to watch while they celebrate\u00a0their relationship in that bed.\u00a0 Mr. Elsner points out that Jane Austen's Elizabeth and Darcy shared a physical attraction but the reader doesn't see them having sex.\u00a0 Elsner says that in Pride and Prejudice \"<\/em>the real romance takes place in their heads.\"\u00a0 He says that modern romance makes a mistake in opening the bedroom door.\u00a0 Personally, I'm guessing that if Ms. Austen wrote today, she'd\u00a0open that door too.<\/p>\n \u00a0Elsner says that the sex scenes in romances are \"pretty much all alike\" and rely on \"an unfortunate mix of strained metaphors and graphic anatomical detail.\"\u00a0 After all, Elsner claims, one stiff nipple is pretty much like another\" and this engorged penis is pretty much like that one.\u00a0 I'm not at all surprised that a man, like poor Mr. Elsner, would see it that way.\u00a0 That's why internet and movie porn exist, after all - for men who see sex as serving a physical purpose like\u00a0pissing.\u00a0\u00a0And one toilet is pretty much like another - right?<\/p>\n In romance novels many authors will show the hero frolicking with other women - before he meets the heroine.\u00a0 That shows the hero as a typical man, finding one bout of grabbing and growling pretty much like another.\u00a0 What Mr. Elsner, the poor thing, misses, is that sex between the hero and the heroine shows the difference between random sex and sex that expresses love.\u00a0 Alan can't see past the stiff nipple or the engorged penis, but if he could, he'd see that sex in romance novels is about how the hero and heroine got there and it's about what this stiff nipple means to her and how much more this engorged penis matters to him.\u00a0 This act matters more because they matter more to each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n And Elsner claims that in romance novels \"love is expressed through sex and only sex.\"\u00a0 How sad that Alan\u00a0read a stack of romances and couldn't far enough get past the male preconceptions about\u00a0peaked\u00a0nipples and hard ons to see that the most romantic acts in the book didn't occur in the bedroom.\u00a0 A former rogue turning down a trip to the bordello with his old running buddies is romantic.\u00a0 A committed bachelor who looks at a room full of ladies and sees only one is romantic.\u00a0 A man's gut-churning desire to beat his former cohort in debauch\u00a0bloody for dancing with one certain\u00a0lady is romantic.\u00a0 A rake known to appreciate the swell of a bosom yelling at the heroine for wearing a low\u00a0cut gown is romantic.\u00a0\u00a0Poor Mr. Elsner sees none of that.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps it's just as well that Mr. Elsner doesn't write about sex.\u00a0 Men don't do it well because they dwell where their mind sticks - on descriptions of the physical.\u00a0 I guess that explains why the author who won the seventeenth annual Literary Review's \"Bad Sex In Fiction\" award<\/a> is a MAN.\u00a0The winner, Jonathan Littell for The Kindly Ones, <\/em>compares a woman's vulva to a Gorgon's head and a \"Cyclops whose single eye never blinks.\" If you read the description, you'll see that it describes the act, but never the emotions or the feelings.\u00a0 The passage almost denies the woman any personhood.\u00a0It treats her like an object, and portrays her the same way that\u00a0porno pictures, video or movies portray, or rather don't portray<\/em>,\u00a0 women.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0Elsner\u00a0says he doesn't write romance and he doesn't write sex because he's more interested in love\u00a0 \"and love takes place in the mind where it has to fight for its existence against all of the other challenges presented by life.\"\u00a0 Well, thank the Lord that Mr. Elsner doesn't write romance.\u00a0 He can't even identify the right organ.\u00a0 He thinks love springs from the mind.\u00a0 If that were the case, then no one would love.<\/p>\n Love is not a choice reached through logic.\u00a0 It is abandoning logic to follow the heart.\u00a0 It obeys the soul rather than\u00a0the limiting bonds of reason. \u00a0Who would ever decide to fall in love?\u00a0 Who would voluntarily surrender their sense of self, their very happiness and give it over to the keeping of another?\u00a0 If love were about the mind and logic and reason,\u00a0it would cease to exist.\u00a0<\/p>\n Romance novels are about the triumph of the heart over the mind.\u00a0 Perhaps that's why they're best written by women who\u00a0generally take more emotional risks than their male counterparts.\u00a0\u00a0Elsner says that romance novels do a disservice to other writers who want to tell a \"real love story\" about \"real people grappling with real dilemmas.\"\u00a0 Poor Mr. Elsner misses the point of romance novels.\u00a0 The real dilemma at the heart of every romance is the surrender of the mind to the heart that changes\u00a0\"me\" to\u00a0\"we.\"\u00a0 And I bet that if Jane Austen were writing today she wouldn't just know that, she would show it, inside and outside the bedroom.<\/p>\n If you want to watch how Dick Leaps Jane, then play a porno movie or read a \"love story\" by a male author who is courageous enough (or foolish enough) to write\u00a0descriptions of sex.\u00a0 If you want to know why Dick Keeps Jane, then read a romance novel written by a woman who understands that everyone deserves happy endings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Men like to watch random people having sex.\u00a0 They'll pull up pictures of the act, watch one internet video after another showing a different set of people doing similar things.\u00a0 A whole genre of movies exists to cater to the male desire to watch\u00a0generously endowed females wiggle, squirm, slither and squeal in high-pitched tones as ...continue reading \"Dick Leapt Jane vs. Dick Kept Jane\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":772,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions\/772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}