Romance is ridiculed because of misogyny, friends. That’s it. The only reason. It’s not any more unrealistic or variable in quality than any other genre. The only “dangerous” thing abt (cishet) romance novels is that they center women’s voices & sexual agency within a patriarchy.

Every criticism is rooted in sexist assumptions: that (the overwhelmingly) women readers can’t distinguish real life from fantasy, are undiscerning about quality, ought to spend their time in more “worthy” ways, should be ashamed to read books with sexual content, and so on.

That doesn’t mean everyone has to like romance novels. That would be silly. But the only reason the entire genre is publicly derided as “trash” is pervasive (and often internalized) misogyny. It always comes back to that. Always.

(And I would suppose the “dangerous” thing about non-cishet romance novels is that they center non-cishet voices and sexual agency—but I am not the best person to speak to that, as what I write and have to constantly defend is romance with cishet relationships.)

(And authors of color have the extra layer of racism to deal with, which I don’t mean to ignore either.)