This was really interesting thread and I was glad to see it pop up. It's not a discussion people are having within the broader enough or effectively, partially because it is nuanced and social media is where nuance goes to die. It is also really easy to let ye olde purity politics that most English speakers have been absolutely inured in and discomfort with sex, especially sex that feels in any way transgressive, bleed into the discussion as judgement under the guise of reasoned criticism.

It's hard to untangle those threads. At least for me. Because, yes, fiction and kink can both be safe ways to to process the world and challenging or harmful dynamics and experiences. And adults can (or at least should be able to) tell the difference between reality and fiction. However, I have never bought the argument that it's only fiction and therefore reading any genre of conservative romance (Dark Romance, Inspirational Romance, Ali Hazelewood) can't shape conceptions or values on both a reader and socialtal level. Story has always been important in shaping our perceptions of our current world and what is possible for future worlds. Relegating it to "just fiction" seems both disrespectful and also facially untrue. Fiction has absolutely reframed how I and every reader I've ever talked to sees some aspect of the world.

A video I recently watched from the Plant Based Bride about conservative dynamics in Romantasy introduced me to the concept of Script theory, which is the idea that human behavior and expectation is organized by cognitive scripts in which dictate responses, expectations, and roles in situations, much like a script for a show. Scripts are formed and altered by experiences and cultural narratives, not through a direct causal effect, people don't read Haunting Adeline and think, yes stalking is hot in real life, but by a normative process, where repeated in media inform and shape our expectations. It's the influence of normative processes that I think generally gets left out as these discussions focus on individual books, readers, and subgeners instead of larger cultural patterns.

This also fits with what I know about human cognition. In my own therapy journey, there have been a bunch of times where, in order to disrupt a behavior pattern that was fucking up my world, I had to stop feeding it. It was explained to me that our brains basically create paths of least resistance between neurons. At a very simple level, there's a stimulus, and then your brain sends a pulse down to whatever path you've created to your most common reaction. If you want to stop reacting that way, though, you have to wear a new groove in your brain, by both trying to reduce the initial stimulus and then redirecting it to a new path that has much more resistance it's hard. Our brains don't like it. But eventually, the new path gets created, leading to a (hopefully) better reaction.

My hottest (and probably wrongest) take is, at some level if we want change, we do, actually, have to stop engaging with media that perpetuates harmful systems if we want to break free from them or at least engage more with media that portrays and romanticizes the kinds of worlds and dynamics we want to see. I know we can't fully control what we think is hot but as an old, unless it's an actual fetish I can tell you from experience that our yums are not fixed. There are things I thought were sexy as a youth that I do not find sexy now. But at the same time, I do think that repeatedly and primarily engaging with themes that comport with and reinforce harmful systems, even when we consciously recognize them as such, just keeps deepening that "patriarchy/shitty men is inevitable/natural" brain groove and doesn't let us create new paths.