Monday, February 05, 2007

All About Virgins...

There’s been the most terrifically funny thread over at the AAR group list.

We’ve been talking about virgins in books, and why a lot of romance readers seem to hate them. My thing is, I don’t mind virgins, as long as the hymen isn’t a replacement for their brains, and they’ve at least dated.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve never had sex, unless you’re living in outer Mongolia, you will know that the vagina isn’t just for bleeding out of. Or at least you should.

I’ve read lots of Linda Howard books that featured older virgins in them, but they never bothered me at all, but then again, she’s a good writer.

This question from one of the AAR posters, caught my eye:




This was part of Lynne Connolly’s answer to the above question:




That woman seriously cracks me up.

I’ll tell you how I’d feel, I wouldn’t effing read it, no matter who it was written by. I hate too much virginity-based drama in a book, and if a contemporary woman had gotten to the age of 32 without so much as a sniff of a man (without the benefit of being a nun) then you could safely assume that she would have some deep issues to resolve first. apparently there are 30 year old virgins who have never dates, who are fully adjusted, but I simply don’t want to read about them in a romance I’m not interested in reading a romance book with that amount of emotional baggage. Does that make me shallow? Possibly.

I found this comment quite amusing:



Come on guys, some of you must have examples that you can cite. Our Mills and Boon, Tender and Modern romances are just full of those kind of heroines. Which is why I stopped reading them years ago. Although every now and then, I do get sucked in by Emma Darcy, who’s books I generally hate, but for some reason still read. I’m sure there’s a name for this affliction.

This comment incensed a couple of people:



This poster wasn’t overjoyed by that comment, she responded:



I’m sorry, but was it bad that I laughed at this point? Tee hee.

Anyway, the conversation then moved onto Pseudo Virgins, you all know the type right?

This was my contribution:



God, I can’t tell you how much ‘virgin’ widows/divorcees annoy me.

Anyway, the conversation went slowly downhill from there. One of the AAR regulars commented that she was offended by the fact that people would dare call contemp virgin stories stupid, just because she liked them. She insisted on taking every comment personally, like a few AAR readers are wont to do, every now and then.

This is what she had to say after I posted that I personally hate virgin stories with heroines who had never even so much as dated:



Talk about oversensitive. I’ve been hating vampire stories for a while now, and don’t mind saying so, I certainly couldn’t give a flying fuck if anybody decided they totally disagreed with me.

I love best-friend-to-lovers romance books, but it wouldn’t occur to me to take offence if somebody else thought they sucked hairy balls. Does that make me a freak?

It still amazes me that people get so het up about these things, when there are so many other things to take umbrage with. Like racism in publishing for instance… *g*

Anyway, for anybody who’s unsure about my stance on this, let me clarify: I hate contemporary storylines with thirty year old virgins who have never dated, and don’t know what their vagina is for.

Dontcha just love the romance community?

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