"Chick Porn"

Do you have to have sex in romance? What is the role of explicit descriptions of sex and, more generally, sexual tension in romance stories? I've been thinking about this for a long time, at least ever since the Princeton romance conference (Love as the Practice of Freedom), which I was fortunate enough to attend because Princeton is pretty close to NYC (gotta love that New Jersey Transit, a godsend for us car-less freaks.)

The old anti-romance literature chestnut "romance = chick porn" has made us romance readers defensive on more than one occasion, yet there does seem to be some truth to it. A friend of mine once told me that he could always tell if a book was a romance by whether or not there was sex in it. Of course, there are plenty of romances that don't have explicit sex, but they tend to be "inspirational (ie. Christian) romance," and of course there are plenty of classics included in the romance canon that don't (Austen and Heyer's books come to mind). The definition of romance is any story in which the romance is the central plot device, and that covers a large section of literature, both modern and classic.

Romantic elements are in the vast majority of fictional works, including "dude porn" (which I'll get into in another post). Examples are The Matrix as well as several Bruce Willis flicks (ie. as a subplot in his fame-making Die Hard and as main elements in both The Fifth Element and 12 Monkeys.) In fact, probably more movies (and books) have a romantic element than don't, and it's not only romance novels that that get steamy with teh sexxoring - plenty of mainstream films contain fairly explicit sex scenes (Top Gun and The Big Easy immediately come to mind.)

However, my friend and his 15-second-romance-test do speak to a certain truth; that is, that modern day romances almost always come with teh sex, of one degree of explicitness to another from your run of the mill 3 - 4 sex scene romance to your non-stop romantica orgy. Which got me to thinking... Can you have a romance without sex? How integral is the sex to the romance?

Is it just for the sake of titillation? Not that there's anything wrong with titillation - as a feminist, I personally think it's great that there are depictions of women enjoying sex in non-oppressive, even nurturing, relationships. In fact, that's probably where a lot of anti-romance sentiment comes from - these are stories in which the men are not only awesome, they're great lovers as well! This would be very threatening to men who are uncertain of how they compare to these super-lovers, especially if their ideal sexual partner is a Fredericks of Hollywood-ed woman who's basically a living blow-up doll, someone who demands nothing and exists only (in their mind) to cheerfully provide them with non-stop sexual gratification, like a Stepford Wife crossed with a sexbot. An entire genre in which women achieve their own sexual gratification, and in which their partners are also interested in their personal and sexual welfare, would freak these guys the fuck out.

So, is romance possible without sex? I don't think it really is. In the real world you're not attracted to every guy who's funny and nice and has a great personality. Sure you like them, and you'll probably end up friends, but it's the ones you feel a certain something for that you'd say you were "attracted to." And if they feel that certain something for you too then it might develop into something more. So no, I don't think it's possible to have a real romance story without at least a little sex. Otherwise, it's just a story about friends. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not romance.