Do people (and by people I mean men) who shit on girls/women for liking “bad boy” narratives ever stop to actually read those stories? 99% of them are about a boy/man who behaves badly *except* with the heroine and/or changes *for* the heroine.

The most frequent bad boy narrative isn’t about women liking bad boys (not that there’s anything wrong with that if it’s fiction) -

--it’s about women finding comfort in a story where a male love interest who’s threatening/dangerous (you know, like they so often are to women *in real life*) turns out to be understanding and protective of the heroine.

Readers often seek comfort in fiction to compensate for and heal from something they go through in real life. It’s not a mystery if women like when a fictional jerk has/grows a soft spot for the heroine, and it shouldn’t be shameful either.

It just means many women have to deal with assholes who dismiss, belittle and threaten them on a daily basis and that it’s comforting for them to read a story where those assholes change/aren’t truly who they appear to be.

In a world where so many “nice guys” turns out to be incels, women like to read about a male love interest that has an opposite arc. What a shocker.
Women and girls facing abuse from men is so common that they’ve consistently been starving for bad boy narratives for fucking ever.

The day we see a decline in the popularity of that trope is a day we’ll be able to say that there’s been a dramatic decline IRL of controlling behaviors from straight men in relationships, as well as a decline in domestic violence and sexual assaults in general.

As long as those issues are a reality, women and girls will need fictions that provide an escape, one that is tailored to the very real need they have to feel and be safe in the street, at work, at home. Quit ridiculing them for it.