Now that I am a matronly lady, married for over a decade, I think I can finally admit on the internet that I’ve been known to read a romance novel every now and again. And not, like, Christian romance novels, or “Amish” romance, where everyone is basically chaste and even the smoldering glances don’t get broken out until after marital vows have been made.
As I detail in my forthcoming book, Good Christian Sex, I first encountered “trashy romance novels” at some point in my early adolescence. They were cast-offs at my grandparents’ summer home: left on the shelves with the other beach reads, the paperbacks with the warped covers next to the classier (and less interesting) Danielle Steeles. I learned a lot from those books.
Peggy Orenstein has a new book out called Girls and Sex. It’s still in my to-read queue, but she’s getting some good press. Tablet asked about female sexuality and desire in Judaism, NPR did a lengthy interview. One of the things Orenstein found, that I’ve noticed too and that strikes me as so desperately unfortunate, is that girls — and women — have a hard time naming and identifying their sexual desires. They’re accustomed to being objects or performers… but not really sexual agents pursuing their own desires for pleasure. That’s not how our culture is teaching girls and young women to think about their sexuality.
There are myriad reasons for that — many of which we can lay at the feet of various religious traditions, and many more we can blame on the more secular patriarchies… but what intrigues me is how — for all my own sexual goofiness and youthful ridiculousness — that lack of knowledge about my own desires was not one of my issues. And I think a lot of that had to do with access to and tacit approval from various matriarchs of erotic fiction.
Those stories have their limitations: the common tropes of the virginal woman and the reckless, wounded man who comes to love her; there’s usually some wrong-side of the tracks stuff going on. They’re all heteronormative. And that is not to say anything about their literary merits. But. But. Those heroines have sexual desires, and they, along with their partners, go about satisfying them. Usually by about page 165.
I grew up on those books, and they taught me that women could feel things and want things and even, dare I say it, initiate and enjoy things. I started on those books in early adolescence, and so by the time I was ready to actually touch another person, I had at least some idea of how to check in with myself about what I wanted. I knew that my opinion and desires mattered.
Fast forward twenty years or more and, as a reader with religious and feminist commitments, I’d be grateful to see some better trashy romance novels.*
And lo and behold, a month or so ago I got my hands on one. This time, written by another young clergy woman, a feminist, whose female characters are complex and not even remotely defined by their sexual histories or the lack thereof. Amber Belldene is a priest who writes romance novels. Her newest one, Not a Mistake, features clergy in all the main roles — which could be weird, maybe, for non-clergy to read — but if you went to seminary or divinity school you’d know that the future clergy fall in love and mess around and make questionable decisions just like other young adults.
I got a review copy from Amber, and left mini-reviews on amazon and goodreads in exchange. But more than anything I just think her work is really brave. She believes that desire is divine, and her writing in this very particular genre evidences that commitment. And, you know, it’s a ministry. All the questionable decisions of my misspent youth (that is mostly facetious) were rendered less harmful because I had a sense of my sexual agency. And I got that, in large part, from trashy paperbacks.
The next generation of girls and young women, it seems, could stand to get their hands on some higher quality, faithful, smut.
*which, it should be clear, is a term of affection and tradition
