Well, yes. Romances marketed to romance readers are going to have romance tropes. But in this case, I think that may be even more problematic than many of those tropes are in m/f romance.
1) Stereotypes are not inherently bad. Archetypes are not inherently good. The romance genre (like any other) contains both archetypes and stereotypes, as well as its fair share of cliches.
2) Many of the romance genre archetypes/stereotypes are pretty darn toxic from where I'm sitting.
For example, that it's okay for a hero to be "overcome by passion" and rape the heroine, except she turns out to be a virgin, so he feels bad (he wouldn't have if she weren't), but she gets over it and they have True Love. It's still not an uncommon trope in historicals. And there are other, more insidious ones about gender roles, some of which I suspect are the ones gay male readers are objecting to having projected onto m/m couples. For example.
A recipe may call for sweetener, but there's a big difference between honey and high fructose corn syrup.
I don't think the entire romance genre is bad, but I do think it perpetuates some really awful mindsets (I feel the same way about some other genres, although those mindsets don't tend to be as focused in the area of romantic relationships).
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1) Stereotypes are not inherently bad. Archetypes are not inherently good. The romance genre (like any other) contains both archetypes and stereotypes, as well as its fair share of cliches.
2) Many of the romance genre archetypes/stereotypes are pretty darn toxic from where I'm sitting.
For example, that it's okay for a hero to be "overcome by passion" and rape the heroine, except she turns out to be a virgin, so he feels bad (he wouldn't have if she weren't), but she gets over it and they have True Love. It's still not an uncommon trope in historicals. And there are other, more insidious ones about gender roles, some of which I suspect are the ones gay male readers are objecting to having projected onto m/m couples. For example.
A recipe may call for sweetener, but there's a big difference between honey and high fructose corn syrup.
I don't think the entire romance genre is bad, but I do think it perpetuates some really awful mindsets (I feel the same way about some other genres, although those mindsets don't tend to be as focused in the area of romantic relationships).