I'm so sick of the current landscape of the fantasy/romance genre and the obsession with the sexual degradation of women. Bodice rippers have always been a thing, but now it just feels like the shelves of every bookstore and bestsellers lists are crowded out by these stories (Alchemised, Rose in Chains, Mate, ACOTAR, whatever the latest Booktok craze it). Why does "dark" always and exclusively mean the subjugation of women?
Intellectually, I understand the fantasy, but it's not my fantasy to be abused and degraded by a dark shadow daddy who bought me at an auction or whatever, and the fact that it's getting increasingly harder to find books without this dynamic is worrisome to me.
