Jennifer Prokop - a romance editor, reviewer, podcaster, and one the foremost experts and advocates for romance novels - wrote an article about romance as a genre for Kirkus Reviews I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. The premise was that in the centuries since Pride and Prejudice - what she considered the big bang of romance as a genre - romance has not only exploded as a genre in terms of popularity but has expanded. And this expansion is deeply important because as our understanding of the infinite number of ways people can love grows, the genre should grow to reflect that expansion. Just like our universe, romance is a genre that is infinite and expands infinitely. She then highlighted thirteen authors that were helping to expand the genre. It was a deeply insightful piece I really enjoyed. But, in the end, I was left with a very familiar hollow feeling in my gut. Prokop had included four brilliant authors who write queer stories (yay!), and two who have written sapphic romances (yay!), but not a single author who writes strictly sapphic romance. It was disheartening that even in a piece about the expansion of the genre I love, highlighting why it mattered, the way I love and the writers who exclusively write about it were not considered as part of romance’s expansion.
Prokop is one of the great romance minds. She reads extensively and diversely and is always looking for what is next in romance. On her podcast, Fated Mates, she has recommended books by the likes of Melissa Brayden, Ashley Herring Blake, and Meryl Wilsner - truly heavy hitters in the sapphic romance space. If Prokop is not going to include exclusively sapphic romance authors in this expansion no one will.
Why?
It is the question that has been echoing in my mind since I read the article. Why is sapphic romance so often overlooked and undervalued even by true advocates? Why can’t sapphic romance break through in the same way gay (m/m) romance has? Why are strictly sapphic romance authors always scrapping for the last seat at the table rather than being welcomed in one of the most expansive and diverse genres in the world?
And, like so many other things, I believe in large part it comes down to the patriarchy.
I know, I know, it’s always either Ronald Reagan or the patriarchy with me. But, in my defense, like 95% of truly messed up things tie back to either or both of these two reasons. I can’t help how the world works.
In so many ways romance as a genre is doing incredibly feminist work. However, we live in a deeply patriarchal society. It is the air we breathe. And it is important to remember that, unlike sexism and misogyny, patriarchy is a system. It is about creating a societal power structure where white cis men hold and retain most of the power and that power is garnered by the oppression of women. Sexism (gender based prejudice and discrimination) and misogyny (hatred and contempt for women) are the tools most often used to enforce this oppression and keep women at a lower social status than men. They are the foot soldiers of the patriarchy, but they are not the system - and that is deeply important to remember as even when writing deeply feminist work, authors, reviewers, publishers, readers, can and do unintentionally support the system. In fact, patriarchy is dependent on women doing just this. Arah Ifeanyichukwu put it this way in her excellent piece for Medium Patriarchy Doesn’t Work Without Women:
“Patriarchy needs women to work, to convince other women that there’s light at the end of oppression, that it gets better if you behave. (It doesn’t). Whether in support or protest of patriarchy, the system remains the same. But that’s the point. Patriarchy will never be the best fit for us, no matter how hard we work at it. Being the highest paid out of the underpaid, having the best body to objectify, even being the only woman at the engineering firm, none of this is progress, personal or otherwise. There is no individual elevation under oppression; we all live at the bottom rung, no matter how nice the view.”
I don’t think it is an accident that most queer literature, especially queer romance, that breaks through to the mainstream is m/m. It challenges heteronormativity without upending or posing a threat to the patriarchy. In fact, by centering men, m/m stories allow for queer representation that reinforces rather than subverts patriarchy. The exclusion of women is always welcome here. Sapphic romance doesn’t just center women in the narrative as most romance does, it actively excludes men. And this is (consciously or subconsciously) threatening to people and structures that are dependent on patriarchy for their power source - including the current romance ecosystem.
Sapphic romance literally upends the patriarchy and that can feel unsettling and dangerous to the even most enlightened members of a patriarchal society. A broken system you understand often feels safer than a new system you don’t. The modus operandi becomes pushing the limits without actually breaking through the barriers. I believe it is this innate threat to the patriarchy that keeps sapphic romance and strictly sapphic romance authors from breaking through to the mainstream and ending up on lists like this.
It is also exactly why it is so essential that sapphic romance writers - hell, sapphic artists of all stripes - don’t get discouraged and don’t stop making and sharing their art.
Because in sapphic art you will find the seeds of revolution.
When I first started writing this piece I thought it was going to be about the need for us to be included when talking about the expansion of the romance genre. I was so sure the point would be about our validity as a component of the romance landscape and fighting for sapphic authors to have a place at the table. I realize now, our inclusion was never what I was yearning for as I read Prokop's piece. I wanted something much more radical and expansive.
The brilliant romance author and academic Carrie Byrd is always reminding me that “change never happens within existing structures.” The simple truth is we will never fit properly at the table as it exists anyway. It’s not for us. We need a new table.
Actually, everyone needs a new table.
A table where everyone truly is welcomed. A table where everyone sees themselves and can find stories that show them they are not alone. A table that thrives on equity and welcomes change. A table that is ever expanding. A table where no one (who isn’t a raging and unrepentant bigot) ever questions if they have a seat.
Sapphic romance is by its nature subversive, our definition is innately expansive, and our artists are as talented as any other writers writing. We could start building a hell of a table - one that doesn’t just expand the genre but transforms it. However, if we are going to be the kind of place that builds a new table we have to come to terms with our own racism and bigotry. We have to look our whiteness problem in the eye and address the structural, institutional, and internalized racism so prevalent within the sapphic romance community. We have to address decades of biphobia and transphobia that have kept these stories and artists on our margins. We have to deconstruct the ways we have leaned into femme/femme stories because they are the easiest for heteronormative readers to ingest. More, as my brilliant friend Patsy Kelly pointed out to me, we have to come to terms with the misogyny embedded within how gendered butch/femme characterizations often are within sapphic romance - and with the internalized misogyny embedded in all of us.
We have to reckon with ourselves in order for the seeds of revolution within us to blossom.
So, that is a huge part of what the rest of this year is going to hold for Macon Books. We are going to be working to understand and then deconstruct the places where we fail as a community in terms of equity and inclusion so that we can get about the work of building a new, better, equitable, and frankly gorgeous table.
I am so excited to begin.
NOTE: Special thanks to Liz Grey, Patsy Kelly, and JJ Arias for their thoughtful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this piece. I learned so much and this piece was made better by each of you.
While I agree with everything you wrote, there is, I think, another issue with m/m romance, which is overwhelmingly dominated by (often straight) women writing for (mostly straight) women. It’s often deeply fetishizing and, IMO, homophobic in that it shows "acceptable" homosexuality.
"we have to come to terms with the misogyny embedded within how gendered butch/femme characterizations often are within sapphic romance" yes, this is very much an issue. In sapphic romance I have sometimes seen the butch written as a 'man with a vag', with all the attitude of a man - that's so demeaning.