Lately, everybody seems to be obsessed with romance. I would argue that everybody has started to admit that they are obsessed with romance publicly. Wherever you turn, people are all abuzz about their favorite romance novel adaptation—among these being the likes of “Bridgerton,” “Heated Rivalry,” and “People We Meet on Vacation”—or their favorite romance fantasy novel—see the likes written by Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros. On social media, the cultural dominance of romance in public conversation has become ever-present in ways that finally reflect the true economic power of romance within popular media. Romance, in particular romance novels, had been relegated to the niche of moms and spinsters in public consciousness, even as they were always the best-selling genre. It is not as if people have suddenly realized they like romance; people have loved to read about love since time immemorial. This is why I find it absurd that everyone is treating the new presence of romance as the greatest sign of societal decline since the No Child Left Behind Act.

Anytime I log into social media, I end up having the unpleasant surprise of reading a non-romance reader’s hot take on romance. Suddenly, I have to read their opinions on whether or not romance signifies the sexual liberation or repression of the modern woman, whether the increasing presence of third-person perspectives represents the increasing narcissism of the younger generations or whether or not fan fiction should be laughed at for the nth week in a row. It is not as if these subjects do not have the depth that would make them compelling or that there are not entire papers endlessly debating those aspects of romance. The problem is that romance has now been opened to the scrutiny of a spectator that does not really care about it and rather just wants to use it as both proof and part and parcel of such societal ills as misogyny and homophobia.

“Heated Rivalry,” in particular, and its source material “Game Changers,” has been undergoing such absurd levels of scrutiny that it only makes it apparent that many of those who attempt to show themselves as romance critics often are working simply as bad faith critics. Without any sort of knowledge pertaining to the tradition or practices of romance (never mind the many branches of male-male romance across the world that have gained popularity with a primarily female audience in mind), they use it as proof of whatever egregious crimes they want to argue about female writers and readers and their interactions with the queer community, at any given time. And it is not as if there are no bad actors among the women who write male-male romance media. As a lesbian romance reader who frequently brushes shoulders with some of the circles that primarily read male-male romance, I have had multiple encounters with women who read and write queer romance while also being rather homophobic themselves. But rather than focusing on and criticizing these phenomena, these cultural writers broadstroke their arguments to qualify any woman who consumes male-male queer romance under the same label, with no regard for whether or not their assumptions are applicable.

There is a sort of appeal to many of these authors about the possibility of revealing a certain kind of homophobia that opens most women to blunt-knife criticisms and proving that these women are nothing more than perverse exploiters of the male body. There are, of course, these women—much like there are men who consume lesbian porn for the pleasure of visually exploiting these uninterested bodies. But there are male-male female romance readers (such as myself, on occasion) who have no interest in the male body whatsoever. There are some that have no interest in anyone, for that matter. In my experience, women modulate their consumption of male-male romance as a method of enjoying a love story where they are not involved and are thus detached from their own bodies. One could argue that this is still open to criticism, as it implies a sort of internalized misogyny, but this is not what gets commented upon. Many of the people who have the chance to write these dissections of male-male romance do not even have the capability necessary to explore the thin line of escapism and repression. The facts of the matter are these: For many romance readers across time, the appeal of romance does not come from being part of the love story. Instead, the goal of romance often lies in its ability to satisfy the romantic needs of its audience without the input of a second person. Non-romance reading or watching critics forget this.

I believe that the romance genre is one of the most important gauges for the media. There is something incredibly telling about what people like in others, and romance is all about people liking each other and proving to each other that they will like each other, hopefully, for a long time. Love is, at its barest form, a miracle of two (or more) people overcoming their societal, economic and personal circumstances because they want to stay with each other. Thus, people can’t help but to keep writing about it. I just wish that, when people wrote about the people who wrote about it, they would encounter love and romance on their own terms and not the terms by which they want to represent it.