“Wouldn’t romances be more progressive if the heroine ended up without a man” is, in addition to anti-romance garbage, yet another way to conceptualize around cishet white women first and foremost.

“Alone and independent” is only empowering for a certain kind of cishet woman

Queer people don’t get to have being in a relationship be our celebrated default. It’s not more liberating for us to end up alone. Alone is our default

Also, when Black women—even cishet Black women—have reason to fear for their partners survival in a violently anti-Black environment, being “alone and independent” isn’t some kind of road to freedom

The idea appears to be that if it’s a misogynist trope to always have a woman end up with a man, you fight that and achieve feminism by celebrating women being single

But this is classic privileged individualistic feminism, which posits the lack of male strength and supremacy for women as the foundation of female oppression.