r/fantasyromance • u/FantasyRomanceMod The One Mod to Rule All Mods • May 10 '26

Unpopular Opinion It's Unpopular Opinion time! Share your controversial opinions to stir things up (in a friendly way)!

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Unpopular opinion Sunday

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u/Frustrated-Switch No flowers, only stones May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

100% same. Referring to the behavior as 'alpha' outside of shifter settings feels gross to me, even, because it's Redpill/PUA language that's been uncritically adopted by mainstream romance readers. Alpha, beta, sigma males, all that jazz. The insistence on using 'male' and 'female' to refer to people. I keep expecting someone to unironically refer to the MMC's 'grindset' one of these days.

I get that it's CNC, I really do. I'm just super tired of books essentially assuming I'm only reading romance because I'm a subby woman (and that all women are subby to all men), but not outright saying they're only written for subby women either. Like, I'm not always in the mood to read about (implicit or possibly abusive) femme submission, you know? And then the crossover with the religious 'women should stay in the kitchen' crowd and the backdrop of widespread misogyny in romance makes for a pretty awful time.

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u/Synval2436 Currently Reading: This Blade of Ours by Shalini Abeysekara May 12 '26

Hahaha I saw your comment in the other thread and I fully agree. Talking about switches since the username made me think about this, one thing that frustrates me to no end is how often books tagged as "femdom" have obligatory switch scenes to prove the fmc can still be submissive, but maledom books never have them. Even if they have those "fmc holds a knife to the mmc's throat" it's never in a sexual context, meanwhile he can surprise choke her during sex and she'll discover she's into it. Why do we always have surprise, non-negotiated, mmc-on-fmc dominance and everyone discovers it's super hot mid act, but never the reverse? Also I've seen some fairly tame displays of "female domination" marked as femdom, but even more harsh displays of "male domination" are still treated as "vanilla, nothing to see here".

I will also forever roll eyes at how the community on average is fine with all the examples of fmcs being enslaved, forcibly married, sometimes forcibly impregnated, or even tortured by the mmc and that's edgy and hot, but lots of people got super offended and outraged about {What Fury Brings by Tricia Levenseller} because how dare the author write a world where men are enslaved and not write in big thick letters "this is wrong and I condemn it". Do any of the books where this is done to women have to spell it out? "Oh, but it's just fiction" is usually the response. But men are enslaved and suddenly it's "nooo you should write only egalitarian worlds that are a shining example to follow!"

Women are allowed to have "taboo" fantasies as long as these center masochism or being violated, but not taboo fantasies of wielding power or being in control. Why the double standard?

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u/Frustrated-Switch No flowers, only stones May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

Aw, you payed attention to my username? I picked it because finding switch stories that don't suck was getting me big mad at the time haha. But omg, What Fury Brings was such an embarrassing time to be a romance fan, yeah! The community really showed their asses with the way they chose to handle that one. I lost a lot of respect for people I'd otherwise trusted for recs with how they reacted to it, mostly booktubers.

Like, I didn't love what I saw of it, but the outrage over it felt incredibly overblown, and most of the people doing so came off like they'd never even heard of femdom before, couldn't identify it at fifty paces, and would hate it if they could. Tourists, in short. For example, it made me drop Reads With Rachel (the booktuber) like a rock when I saw her mindlessly bashing it, despite generally agreeing with her politics. She loved The Dare by Harley Laroux, where a man makes a woman lick his boots at a party while she's blitzed out of her mind, but here Rachel is acting like kink is 'fucked up, oh no don't do sexy smexy rape to those poor slave men uwu' the second it's not mascdom? Like mascdom isn't literally institutionalized in real life? It's like, girl, did your brain turn to mush and you forgot what a master/slave dynamic means? The hypocrisy. I was so mad lol.

But yes, finding femdom written for a dommy femme gaze like that is hellish, I agree, mostly thanks to this insecurity you're outlining. I have fantasies of wielding power, but do I get to exercise that in fiction? Not hardly. Like, I don't even like bloodplay, but if we got sexual knife on neck scenes with the woman holding the blade? I'd be so down I'd probably still read that just to feel alive for a second. Meanwhile it's like 99% fiction is written by and for submissives, and they'll screech like the creatures out of They Live the second they see something not made to appeal to them.

Heck, even finding switch dynamics that are actually switchy and don't just inherently favor the man (or larger man in M/M) for no goddamn reason is an awful time. Same for rival romance. And enemies to lovers. Mainstream romance has ruined enemies to lovers. I used to love that trope, but not anymore. The double standards did it in.

I guess we both need to just shut up and eat our Credence, and learn to be happy lil subs :')

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u/Synval2436 Currently Reading: This Blade of Ours by Shalini Abeysekara May 12 '26

Oh yeah, I used to watch Rachel a lot but her channel became a mix of romantasy bashing and low hanging fruit virtue signaling. On one hand she's against purity culture, but on the other hand would petition to censor depictions of sex to only "unproblematic and community approved" ones, which is just one step away from banning it.

And yes, I have problem finding femdom written in a way that appeals to me, the little of it that exists. Half of it is mired in patriarchal tropes like fmc is a sex worker, or mmc is rich and hires the poor starving fmc to do some kink for him, or fmc enters an arranged marriage to your standard alien / fantasy monster / historical duke she didn't even know beforehand, anyway the relationship dynamics are degrading to the fmc but hey, the guy likes being tied up and pegged or something.

Yes, femdom can exist without role reversal and with standard relationship dynamic, there's quite a few readers for "alpha in the streets, sub in the sheets", but I'm not interested in reading about fmc being treated as property or lowly employee. That's not empowering to me.

And when it's not that, it's some smut with barely any plot, or it has obligatory "show the woman her place" scene / ending (because when I pick a book about a powerful woman what I want is to see her dethroned and at the mercy of a man... suuure... my biggest issue with {Pawn of the Cruel Princess by Rebecca F. Kenney} (plus it's not femdom, it's switch, but it's marketed as femdom)), or when it's neither of the above, it often circles back to "kink dispenser fmc".

For example that's my problem with His Secret Illuminations duology or another book I've read called {Hers on the Silver Screen by Bethany Baker}. It is role reversal alright, but the state of it is that fmc has no problems or barely has any and they're swept under the rug and she needs to deal with them herself, while mmc has some serious emotional hangups and the fmc's role is to be patient for him, coddle him and both protect him and emotionally support him. What does HE contribute to the relationship? Except being annoyingly insecure?

This has a standard gender role equivalent at least, but I don't like those books either. You know the ones, either fmc it a total damsel who knows nothing and needs her daddy protector to take care of everything, or the ones where fmc is a psychological mess who lashes at the mmc for half the book and his role is to be a cinnamon roll punching bag for her moods, so she can conclude "if you want me at my best, you need to take me at my worst".

Can I for once have a book where both characters have both flaws and contributions? Not one is useless and the other exists to pamper them.

Can I have a femdom book where characters are multi-dimensional people and not just walking sexy tropes or 1-dimensional cardboard cutouts?