As a feminist and a romance novelist, if I wrote about a male protagonist who made unwanted sexual advances towards his female employee or ignored pleas to slow down or stop trying to have sex with a date, I would be pilloried by my readers — and rightly so.
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Because that’s not the behavior of a romance hero, that’s the behavior of a villain.
Forcing women to walk a tightrope of appropriate behavior won’t end sexual harassment and violence against women. It won’t make us equal. Because women’s behavior is not the problem — badly behaved men are the problem.
Perhaps it’s time that men start acting more like romance heroes.
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