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The boy was just watching "The James Bond Story" on Tivo, which had one of the Bond girls saying something about how sexism is most harmful when it is insidious, the point being that the sexism in the Bond movies was so overt that it was harmless. Err, right...

So that got me off on my now standard rant as to why there are not more cool female secret agents/spies/ninjas/actions heroes out there, and my god, I so wish that Alias had let Sydney be all dark and slightly amoral and sleep around and such like a female James Bond (but then we start getting into my multitude of issues with Alias). Then I started wishing that someone had written some sort of fanfic in which James Bond wakes up female and all sorts of cool things would happen and while it would have a good and nice point, it wouldn't be too polemic or anything to get in the way of the story. At that point I decided maybe I should go to bed, because some very strange thoughts were coming out of my head.

Read the last bit of Connie Brockway's My Pleasure. Alas, some of the book was ok, but I was just not in the right mood, or something, because I was getting very snarly with the book. At the end I sort of threw my mental hands up and out and out started ranting in my head on why in the world the guy always gets to be the super-cool fencer who was tortured in some French dungeon and slept around because *gasp* he had been hurt by love. And of course the heroine is more concerned with his sleeping around than his, oh say, sort of stalking her without her knowing it for the past few years or so. And of course if a heroine in a romance novel is ever hurt by love, she would never take it out on the opposite sex by having sex willy-nilly with everyone, because heroines hurt by love in romance novels always remain completely celibate and virginal so that the more experienced hero can warm her up to sex. And, ohhh, the heroine was feeling so bad for the poor widdle hero whose heart had been broken in the past and so slept around and felt debauched afterward.

I realized that if the situation had been so that the heroine were the promiscuous one and the hero had been the one feeling bad for her, I would have been wholeheartedly cheering for the hero and the heroine. I don't know if that is reverse-sexism or whatever you call it, but a lot of it is being completely fed up with how often the first situation happens in romance novels and how infrequently, if ever, the second ever occurs.

And I do realize that given the history of the world and such, it really isn't so historically accurate to have my nifty keen female assassins and spies and fencing masters and whatnot, but why why why can't I at least have heroes and heroines on a more equal level -- I mean, if the heroine can't be all stealthy and cool and such, maybe the hero could just be very nice and sweet and intellectual. But no, it's always the big, brawny alpha male. And the James Bond thing was saying how James Bond was the fantasy of every girl, at which point I sort of yelled at the TV. Maybe he was for me at a very tender age because I am not immune to the cuteness of Pierce Brosnan (I haven't watched many of the older ones at all), but I feel I really don't need a fantasy hero who goes and ruthlessly sleeps around with everyone and is in general pretty misogynistic, because despite what lots of fiction seems to think, I do not secretly wish to be dominated in the bedroom or anywhere else.

I feel a little better now that I have gotten this out of my system.

Anyway, now I want to read books with really kick-ass heroines. Bonuses for books that don't conform to standard gender stereotypes regarding sex and virginity and blah blah the girl must never sleep around if she's the heroine (evil girls, naturally, get to have evil villain sex) while the guy can go do whatever because he's a guy. Actually, what I really want is a romance novel in which the heroine is all tough and alpha-like and rescues the sweet but somewhat naive guy, but somehow, I'm thinking there aren't very many of those around. Also, the next book in which I encounter the good, virginal girl vs. the evil, skanky girl (remind me again why I stopped watching Alias?) I will throw against a wall.

Brockway, Connie - My Pleasure

Helena Nash wanders about at night dressed as a guy (very unconvincingly, of course, because we simply can't have homoeroticism in a romance) to help out star-crossed (aka, really dumb) lovers out of the goodness of her heart. She runs into Ramsey Munro, one of the men pledged to protect her and her sisters to repay her father. Sparks ensue, along with mistaken identities, fencing, and... actually, not that much else.

I'm trying not to be too snarky, because I should have gotten most of the rantiness out of the way now.

To be honest, I wasn't that mad at the book, per se. It was just the unfortunate conjunction of events. Connie Brockway is usually better than most romance authors at avoiding my hot button issues, but she doesn't manage to do it with the same grace in this book, or, for that matter, in the earlier book in the series, My Seduction (is it entirely pretentious of me to link to my own book posts? Or is it helpful? I can't tell, so I've felt very weird about doing it). My Pleasure isn't an awful romance by any means, but it falls short of Brockway's best, so I still feel disappointed. Plus, it has one of my nearly bullet-proof kinks (icy and controlled heroine) and still manages to not appeal.

Part of it was the gender disparity. I could see Brockway trying very hard to make her book not sexist -- every time the book started approaching a throw-against-the-wall moment, Helena or Ramsey would luckily say something and just slightly diffuse the situation so it was not quite as throw-against-the-wall worthy (I need to start with spork ratings ala yhlee!). But even though it was somewhat tempered, I still got annoyed because obviously Brockway could see the same gender issues that I was seeing and was trying to not fall prey to them and not succeeding. I wanted to sort of shake the author or the industry or the publisher or someone to say that there is market for feminist romances! Maybe a market of just me, but still! I suppose I should have seen it coming, given that the premise of the trilogy is that there are three burly Scotsmen sworn to protect three sisters. And Shadowheart may have forever spoiled me for the whole "forced seduction is a way for women to have control over sex" -- now I expect women who want control to show it not by being "forced" by the hero into having sex, but by actually, you know, being in control. Though I am being mean now, because Helena does eventually take charge. I was, however, snorting at Ramsey's chivalry in not ravishing the heroine on the streets. Either go with the hot, out-of-control sex or go with the tender, nice sex, but don't start with hot and then move to tender! You've already taken off her top, for god's sake, too late for chivalry!

You also can tell an author is really stretching the match when the heroine's change of heart comes not from talking to the hero or seeing him do something, but from an outsider literally sitting her down and telling her, here, this is why Ramsey is a nice guy and really, he loves you very much.

I would also like to note that I totally called the villain back in book one. Not that it was very hard, but still.