i'd like to point out first, my del.icio.us tags include amtdi and non-con

You know, I thought I talked myself down off this one, because frankly, Twilight is not great literature and mounting a defense takes up valuable time reading non-con amtdi porn.

But you know, I just feel that inspired, plus I ran out of Dean/Castiel reading and my son still has Twilight in his locker. Go figure.

I have to know something; did I miss the memo that I'm supposed to be ashamed of being twelve? My apologies; see, when I was twelve? I never really considered to form my actions to meet an arbitrary standard that would come into existence twenty years later on my reading habits, because that? Would have totally pulled the Gor novels right out of my hot little hands.

As in, please to be putting down your AMTDI non-con for a second while ranting on how Twilight is ruining young girls. I will totally be there when fandom as a whole stops finding aliens made them do it rape as a fun and lighthearted fanfic pasttime. I mean, I will be there, but I'll still be writing it. Hell, throw in eroticized slave-fic with idealized sexual slavery and falling in love with your enslaver controlling boyfriend who stalks you...wait.

Writer responsibility comes up a lot with this, which I suppose is fair when one is writing cross-alien-species sexual hijinks and one is struggling to portray those sensitivity, or the reality of slave trafficking in the modern world, or hell, magical healing cock after rape and lets toss in mpreg for kicks, because there's a genre that's incredibly sensitive and socially conscious. I have zero interest in writer responsibility, to be honest, except for one key points--did they tell a story? That's it; that's where it starts and stops, with some codicils of audience. Twilight was readable to a huge group of people.

Maybe the mystery is the plotline? Because I agree; I cannot imagine why anyone would enjoy a fantasy novel about two people obsessively in love with each other and would do anything to be together.

You may pile your under the bed romance novels over to the left, please; lets do this right. Let's blackball the entire romance novel industry already. I want petitions against VC Andrews, Johanna Lindsay, Judith McNaught, Catherine Coulter, Virginia Henley (Okay, I could stand to lose her), and anything set in Viking England with a wee Saxon lass.

Seriously. I get hating them for being bad, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder; shaming young girls for something they've found to love is edging right into the reason I'm trying to stop myself from ever using the term "Like a twelve year old girl" again in any slash fic I write. Which will probably be something I'll have to pick up on beta because comparisons to teenage girls as insults to men is surprisingly common.

Please lay off the girls. And remind me again how Seeds of Yesterday ended. For the life of me, I couldn't find it with my other VC Andrews work.

Comments

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

No, guidance also means discussion about what choices children make- boys AND girls- and why they are making them. It means sitting down with your kid and talking to them about the media they consume, the messages it contains, what it made them think about, how it made them feel. What you're describing is dictating. What I'm talking about is parenting (although it certainly can be done by any caring adult, and not only the kid's parent.)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I think it's patronizing to assume that an enjoyable reading experience requires that the adult make a judgment call based a kid's taste on escapism, be it Die Hard or a teen romance.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Yeah, parenting can occasionally be patronizing. I'm cool with that. I really can't get behind the idea that just because a kid has female genitalia, everything they choose to ingest should be automatically okay lest we destroy her autonomy or something. I mean, 12 yr old girls make dumb choices on occasion, not because they are girls but because they are 12. And just because society hands us shit to feed them doesn't mean we need to accept it as a gourmet meal.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, steak is nice. And sometimes, macaroni and cheese. If behavior or values were at stake, I'd be at right of interference. When escapism reading is, when someone actually believes that a single book can change the entire value system of any child to the point that something fun, reading for pleasure, becomes a morality homework assignment, then there is a failure on the part of the education up to that point, not in the reading material.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree up to a point. But I think there IS a failure on the part of education of young women (and men!) in our culture. I think it's a fundamental flaw in our society, that failure. And I think it's why books like this are so popular in the first place. And it bothers me- as a parent AND as a woman.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I think they're popular because they tap into a fairly common trope in romantic literature that can be and is attractive to many girls and women. That some parents see it as modeling good behavior is not the fault of author or book; that is a problem with the parents who promote in real life values that belong in fantasy.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Yes, it IS common because it's attractive, but it's also attractive because it's common. It's like fashion. Whatever is out there and marketed heavily and popular with friends is what a kid wants. And therein lies my issue with it. I'd like some alternatives to abuse/rape fantasy romance novels, especially those targeted at kids. And there aren't many.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

There are some. Many are boring. Being able to tap what makes teens tick, what interests them, and not what we think they should like is the prime reason people hate Moby Dick with a passion when they're forced to read it before it has any context with their lives or interests. If saying that girls finding boys attractive and indulging in Cindarella fantasies is something that needs to be stamped out, it needs to start with stamping it out in every single adult novels and adult woman and adult man, and I'm not willing to give up autonomy of imagination for society quite yet.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Ok, you keep going in the BAN! direction, and I remain unsure where you are getting that from anything I am saying.

I understand that you strongly believe in autonomy wrt (especially) girls and women and media. And I am right there with you. But you are championing *choice*- and what I'm telling you is that I don't think there actually IS one. Kids aren't reading this shit because it's not shit, they're reading it because it's WHAT'S AVAILABLE.

Which leads to my bigger concern: this kind of media is not created in a vacuum, it's part of a larger cultural trope where girls are taught to be passive- they are fed this from the age of fairytale all the way through adulthood with movies like "Closer", as mentioned by another commenter. It's a circle, and you're coming in in the middle of it, saying "let them pick, it's good for imagination!" I'm saying, this has nothing to do with imagination, and everything to do with agenda.

Especially this book, which was written with a very very specific religious agenda in mind.

[sholio]

I hope you don't mind me jumping in here; I'm just reading through the comments and found this interesting.

I can't speak for seperis, but I think one of the points here is that a lot of young women would choose that sort of entertainment no matter what else was available, because it speaks to a kink they have. Using "kink" for young teens makes me a little squirmy, but, hell, *I* had kinks when I was that age, and I sought out books that contained them, even when I had to hunt them down and shove aside a whole sea of other books to do so. I felt weird about it and I sure couldn't explain to the adults what I was doing, but now that I am an adult, I'm still doing it (and a lot of the same kinks too).

And I feel very proprietary about my kinks. They're *mine*. It's true that maybe if I'd had a better, less screwed-up childhood, I wouldn't like reading stories about people having certain kinds of awful things done to them. And maybe I enjoy some of the things I like to read are because my society has indoctrinated me in various ways. But ... it's still mine, it makes me happy, and at this age or age twelve, I wouldn't want to be told that all I need to do is read the right sort of entertainment and then I won't want my kinky things. But I do want them; I don't want to stop wanting them. This doesn't mean there shouldn't be discussion, and responsible parents *should* be talking to their kids about this stuff. But just because they want it doesn't mean there's something wrong with them for wanting it. If it speaks to something deep inside them, even if it's a kink that would be massively screwed up in real life, they're still going to look for it even if there are thousands of books out there with much healthier views of relationships.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure where the notion is coming from that I believe something is wrong with 12 year old girls who choose to read these books. Something is wrong with our entire culture for promoting them, but I am certainly not placing the blame on a child.

I am, however, advocating for responsible parenting, as you say in your last paragraph. I don't see how it is ego-squashing to have a girl (or boy) look at their own choices and see what they might mean. I'm not talking about a ten page morality report on Why Twilight Turns Me On, I'm talking about sitting down with a kid who gets all kinds of messages thrown at them by mainstream media, and teaching them to be responsible consumers. That's pretty much what parenting IS.

[sholio]

I certainly agree with that last paragraph, and I may be misunderstanding your point, because what I was getting out of your comments is that if girls were educated about the misogyny in the basic "Twilight"-type fantasy, and if they had other sorts of books available to them, they'd choose not to read the "Twilight" type -- that it's basically ignorance and lack of choice that makes "Twilight" so appealing to them. And, just looking around at what adult women and teens get up to in fandom, I'm fairly convinced that they'd be reading those books anyway; it's quite a leap to assume, just because they're reading and fanning on the books, that their parents aren't having these conversations and that they don't already know the books don't represent an idealized view of male/female relationships.

I guess my basic point is that they're as entitled to their socially-inappropriate fantasies as the rest of us, and just the fact that they have those fantasies doesn't mean they're prepared to act them out in the real world. I definitely think that parents should keep an eye on what their kids are reading and be prepared to discuss it with them, but just because they like to read about characters being dominated by men doesn't mean that they actually want that in real life. As fans, we have more of a window into the dark things lurking in our id than most people do, so we ought to be the last people passing judgment on others for their own. (Not that I'm saying you're necessarily doing that.)

I am not, however, a parent, so I'm not the best qualified person to make those judgments and might feel differently if I had kids of my own.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

I can't claim to know what makes the ideas in TL so damn attractive, because it's not like we can take girls away from all the misogyny inherent in our society, raise them on a desert island, and then see if they still enjoy the same tropes.

All I'm saying is that the argument Jenn puts forth- which seems to me to be "it's anti-feminist to ever tell girls that their choices might be flawed"- is illogical and ill conceived. It's just as important, if not more important, to talk to girls about where their desires might come from. Not only because they might translate into reality, but because we are so damn soaked in these kinds of misogynistic messages, we don't even think about them AS flawed anymore.

There is nothing anti-feminist about looking deeply at this kind of stuff; in fact, I see it as the total opposite. Telling girls to accept and embrace the media that our fucked up culture throws at them, to me, is a way worse sin.

And I definitely believe that as adults, my kinks and your kinks are okay so long as they don't hurt anyone else. But a 12 yr old, boy or girl, is too young to make good choices around a LOT of things, kinks included. I can't tell them what to get off on, some things are probably indeed hard wired. But I can damn sure, as their parent, provide insight and guidance. That's my JOB, man.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

All I'm saying is that the argument Jenn puts forth- which seems to me to be "it's anti-feminist to ever tell girls that their choices might be flawed"- is illogical and ill conceived.

That's because it wouldn't be the argument, which would explain why you find it illogical and ill-conceived.

It's just as important, if not more important, to talk to girls about where their desires might come from. Not only because they might translate into reality, but because we are so damn soaked in these kinds of misogynistic messages, we don't even think about them AS flawed anymore.

I like this. We do this a lot. Back in the day, there were special hospitals where young girls' 'desires' were examined carefully for social correct before genital mutilation and an all-dairy and oatmeal diet. I am totally supportive of stripping away all fantasies and acts of imagination that do not conform to the current social standard on what is healthy. We're still muttering about girls' kinks being not okay, though thankfully we're leaving their clit intact. How far we've come.

I think that modeling the correct behavior and instilling values that recognize the difference between fantasy and reality are where the work needs to be done, not chasing after a pop psychology myth that young girls are weak, their desires are weak, and their bodies are subject to that weakness and they must depend on others to tell them what's right. Making them ashamed of what they feel, what turns them on, explaining they *should* find x and not y hot is why we can see a guy masturbate in American Pie but not a girl get off with her dildo. I have a huge problem with substituting a restricted reading list to curb the mind instead of making sure that before they read, they already know what is and what is not healthy in real life. Co-opting their sexuality for an agenda is wrong.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

"I like this. We do this a lot. Back in the day, there were special hospitals where young girls' 'desires' were examined carefully for social correct before genital mutilation and an all-dairy and oatmeal diet. I am totally supportive of stripping away all fantasies and acts of imagination that do not conform to the current social standard on what is healthy. We're still muttering about girls' kinks being not okay, though thankfully we're leaving their clit intact. How far we've come."

And again, you are reading nothing that I am saying, and answering from a place entirely in your own head. At this point, I am not sure why I'm bothering to answer you, because clearly anyone who disagrees is somehow a fascist who wants to mutilate little girls' genitals. I mean, seriously, S, where the hell did you find ANY of this shit in anything I have said?

I don't approve of my 12 yr old boy watching American Pie either. And I am not the one co-opting anyone's sexuality, our culture has already done a mighty fine job of it. So good, in fact, that you can't even begin to hear arguments about why it might be the job of a grown up to help kids make better choices for themselves than what is automatically deemed normal by what is the vast majority of men who control the media.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

At this point, I am not sure why I'm bothering to answer you, because clearly anyone who disagrees is somehow a fascist who wants to mutilate little girls' genitals.

No, I would have gone the Hitler route if I wanted to compare to fascism. I don't think it's fascism. I think it's overthinking at a dramatic scale, where everything becomes a dramatic issue that will destroy society.

Granted, I'll concede genital mutilation is up there with a Godwin, so consider that withdrawn. In my defense, my most recent reading in feminism was on that and the evolution of the right to vote for women, so sexual restrictions on women is on the top of my head in a very big way.

I don't think parental discussion is bad, and I'm even fence sitting on parental restriction of reading material; there's very little I'd deny my son, but I'd mull a bit on Anarchist Cookbook. My worry hovers far more in the idea of female weakness this always seems to express when there's discussion of teen girl literature. And most frustrating to me, this comes up when too many girls like it. It's a correlation between popularity == garbage, that leads to examining the text for, and dammit I have no non-inflammatory rhetoric for this one, so take it with a grain of salt, looking for the devil because they wouldn't like it if it was truly good for them. Things that are good for you are not pleasurable, while things that aren't are obviously hidden with evil. That's the attitude that irritates me, and otherwise sane people get absolutely terrified when it comes to how girls think.

Do I think there's a huge problem with how society views women? Yes. Do I think that needs to change? Christ, yes. I don't think the platform to do it on is their pleasure reading. I think that making what they fantasize about a platform for social change doesn't make feminism, or hell, equality advocates, any different from thousands of years of men telling women their sexuality was evil. We're doing it from different motives, but the end result is the same, and both sides can claim it's for the sake of the girls.

Teenage years are so short, and so intense, and so utterly miserable at the best of times. They already deal with the real world fucking with their heads on clothes, make-up, educational goals, breast size, and how short their skirts are. They already deal with a strong patriarchal tendency to try to protect an imaginary standard of purity in how they live their lives. They worry about date rape because a lot of society still cannot imagine it exists. They deal with damned cheerleader uniforms. It's too much to ask them to give up how they want to fantasize. I can't accept that there's no part of a girl that can't belong to herself and herself alone; if it's a weird fascination with the entire Friday the Thirteenth series or an idolization of the perfect boyfriend who thinks not being a white, blonde, blue-eyed cheerleader slash gymnast with a nice car and a dozen popular friends is fantastic. Edward is a creepy stalker, but he's also something else; he's a hot guy who thinks the clumsy girl who will never be a perfect ten is amazing and doesn't care about her skirt length, her make-up choices, or her social rank and doesn't want to make her a notch on the bedpost.

The attitudes expressed in the book are problematic when they are used as a literal application to real life, just like literal interpretation of say, the Bible becomes hugely problematic. But despite popular belief, not many girls will grow up and consider this a good idea. Just like not a lot grow up to go on a killing spree for video games. There has to be a place a girl isn't hyperexamined for her orthodoxy, and frankly, I do not see a single other place outside her imagination this can occur. Taking that away as well--I can't under any circumstances conceive of it as other than utterly wrong.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Ok, yay, we can haz conversation.

I'm not terrified of how girls or women think. I am very comfortable with my own kinks, many of which continue to horrify other people. But it took me a while to get there, mainly because our society IS afraid of female sexual power- so yes, I am so with you there.

Where you lose me though, is the notion that because a girl is attracted to something, it must automatically be okay, and to question that is to somehow assault her rights as an individual. I mean, all I was advocating for was a discussion with my kid about the things she enjoys, which again, I consider my job as a parent, but somehow in your argument that got construed as dictating. Is it impossible to believe that kids might make dubious choices for themselves? And that adults can help them look at things from various viewpoints, without squashing their esteem, their imaginations, or their sexuality? That's certainly my goal as a parent.

I also get confused because all the things you list as so damned hard to deal with (which I agree with btw), like cheerleader uniforms, purity, etc. seem to be pretty much parallel with the messages in TL. Bella must stay a virgin until she gets married. A man (her father, Edward, Jacob) is always in charge of protecting her innocence. This guy who "loves her even though she's clumsy" is also constantly telling her and showing her how bad and wrong she is- for wanting sex, for wanting him, for wanting to be friends with another guy. I just. Dude, that is pretty much everything you are arguing against, isn't it? The fact that he say, doesn't care how he dresses really pales in comparison to me.

Finally, I don't believe that all our fantasies, at any age, translate into real life beliefs or actions. That's silly. But in our formative years, they certainly have more of an opportunity to be something we imprint on, consciously or not. No, this stuff isn't world shattering. But it is *important*. And again, as a parent, I think it's irresponsible NOT to expose your kid to counterpoints.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

That's why it's a fantasy, not a reality. The girls who are vulnerable to the book being a literal interpretation of real life are already screwed because they've already been indoctrinated by real life to think the book is accurate. Those that haven't been indoctrinated aren't in any more danger of suddenly changing their value system than I am of embracing a life free of slash fic due to bizarre moral objections.

Yes, the book does those things. And it's a book. And RL trumps books like whoa. That makes it automatically in the video game debates of fantasy. Edward is a rape fantasy, to use that term very very loosely. Like pretty much all movies and books. It will affect a girl in direct proportion to exactly how much real life echoes it. If her real life doesn't echo it, it's an outlet for a dramatic fantasy of someone, somewhere, finding them acceptable the way that society doesn't find them, how they don't find themselves. Asking them to deconstruct and remove that as well; I don't agree. Girls shouldn't be asked to give up everything to careful social analysis. There is no way I can find that acceptable until such a time as they actually start modeling IRL what they are reading, which again, would actually be a plus. If reading Twilight sends legions of girls looking for stalkery boyfriends, that's like affixing an arrow and stating "There is something wrong here" and underlining twice that something is wrong in their real life that needs to be addressed.

The vast, vast majority of young women who read them will get a vicarious thrill of romantic intrigue, vampires, and go on to lead fairly normal lives, perhaps with hentai if we are all lucky since we need more good writers in fandom. Condemning the majority for the sake of a tiny minority that already *had* a problem this book is highlighting is overreacting and strips away the power of saying that making a girl wear a cheerleader skirt that shows her damned bloomers isn't a great idea, things that they have to live and breathe twenty-four/seven.

[kitsune-kitana.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't mean to jump into this conversation but you are saying everything that I want to say--thank you for articulating it so well.

"There is no way I can find that acceptable until such a time as they actually start modeling IRL what they are reading, which again, would actually be a plus. [...] That's like affixing an arrow and stating "There is something wrong here" and underlining twice that something is wrong in their real life that needs to be addressed."

It just sounds to me that you're saying that the issue is one of upbringing and "real life" issues and not something that can be affected by a book--and that since changing those real life issues is such a gargantuan, impossible task, that there's no point in looking at the representations of gender in the books at all. However, alongside some of the huge leaps of logic made here, I'm going to go ahead and propose the issue of the Rockdale county syphilis outbreak (1996?) that my friends from Conyers still laughingly recall. That was a case of a bunch of bored teens watching porn and emulating it until over a hundred of them contracted syphilis (note that this was not such a "tiny minority"). These people were my age and--knowing some of them--absolutely did not have the analytical facilities to separate fantasy and reality. I think that you have a very generous opinion of how the average teenager is able to sort through these socially-impressed ideas of gender and sexuality.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Teenagers doing stupid things. That's new and unique. The girls were emulating porn and not responding to stimulus combined with biological urges. Without porn, they never would have engaged in sexual activity, as without society, there would not be stupid sexual activity. And boys had nothing to do with it, I take it?

I am totally feeling it. Anecdata ftw.

So speaking as a former welfare caseworker with a high percentage of clients that were either pregnant teens or women who had been pregnant teens, I'm going to make a very tentative and crazy suggestion that maybe, just maybe, the porn wasn't the problem, but inadequate supervision and lousy role modeling by their parents for safe and healthy behavior. I'd probably also wonder why no one taught anyone anything about condoms.

[kitsune-kitana.livejournal.com]

Again, I think you need to take notice of the *many* posts you've received saying "This is not what I said at all." You seem to be arguing something in your own head--I never said that boys had nothing to do with the problem and I think I directly implied that it had to do entirely with inadequate supervision and people in these teens' environment acting and encouraging behaviors that told them that emulating porn is okay. Like I said in my reply, I was only making the kind of huge leaps in logic that you're making and proposing a counter-example to your statement that teens do not necessarily do IRL what they see/read in the media. Your condescension is really unnecessary.

And the reason why no one taught about condoms is that Rockdale is an uber-conservative Christian area with very limited communication about when/what kind of sex is okay (to them, when you're married and trying to have babies). Surprised much?

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Now I'm curious. What state?

And no. Following the media has very little to do with the media nad far, far more with what they have seen and been exposed to in actual human interactions. I feel like the argument keeps being pulled over to video games are to blame for violence. So yes, I was condescending because with any kind of luck, eventually society as a whole will stop blaming everything and everyone but themselves for the problems they reap. This month its Twilight; last month Judy Bloom. Before that it was feminism making women uppity. It used to be Susan B. Anthony and a while back it was Joan of Arc. Teenagers being stupid is consistently pushed into a corner of other people's responsibility instead of the parents from teh beginning grounding them in what they want their kids to be.

What I want, and what the post was about, was asking, for five minutes, for people to step back and ask themselves in all seriousness what makes this book more dangerous than any other, what makes this book worth shaming girls when they read it, and why we're adopting the same paternalism that at one time didn't allow a woman to have agency in her life or her body. Everything doesn't have to be about making sure all messages are crafted to current ideology--sometimes, we, these girls, everyone, can take enjoyment and let it stay enjoyment instead of the constant barrage that nothing they do, read, say, is good enough or mature enough or smart enough or worthy enough.

[kitsune-kitana.livejournal.com]

This all went down in Rockdale county in Georgia. There's a pretty pitiful Frontline expose on it floating around.

I don't think that anyone who has responded to this post believes that parents and society aren't an enormous part of the problem we're discussing--the thing is that these adults are condoning this kind of gender expression because they aren't providing the necessary framework for their kids to question these images. I don't know that I would use the word "dangerous," but this book is even worse because it's being promoted by a patriarchical religious leadership and an enormous network of adults who, I think, don't feel the need to contextualize the ideas in Twilight with--for lack of a better word--other gender discourses.

"Teenagers being stupid is consistently pushed into a corner of other people's responsibility instead of the parents from teh beginning grounding them in what they want their kids to be."

Yet just a couple replies before, you were saying that teenagers doing stupid things wasn't new or unique. Then you say, "The girls were emulating porn and not responding to stimulus combined with biological urges." So was this the parents' responsibilities or just impulses that teenagers would've carried out regardless? Yeah, teenagers can be idiots, but when teenagers are engaging in unprotected sex orgies, that has nothing to do with "biological urges," and everything to do with girls and guys wanting to embody the uber-masculinity and femininity they see on a TV screen.

"Everything doesn't have to be about making sure all messages are crafted to current ideology--sometimes, we, these girls, everyone, can take enjoyment and let it stay enjoyment instead of the constant barrage that nothing they do, read, say, is good enough or mature enough or smart enough or worthy enough."

Now, I think this may be an inflammatory move, but I feel like this idea has the same associations to it as white privilege does in society. As a minority female--and reflective of the research I do in my department right now--I don't get the privilege of not thinking, "How does what I do reflect on my minority group as a whole?" Unfortunately, being considered the lesser sex/gender/race/ethnicity/etc. comes along with a great deal of self-consciousness as to how that facet of my identity is represented to society as a whole.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

That was sarcasm. It started with Teenagers doing stupid things. That's new and unique. The girls were emulating porn and not responding to stimulus combined with biological urges. Without porn, they never would have engaged in sexual activity, as without society, there would not be stupid sexual activity.

The question is, if the porn didn't exist, would people have sex for stupid reasons anyway? Yes. Porn can be an excuse along with anything else, but again, it's blaming the video game and thinking that removing that will stop the violence. It doesn't. Removing Twilight doesn't stop bad or abusive relationships from existence. It won't.

Now, I think this may be an inflammatory move, but I feel like this idea has the same associations to it as white privilege does in society. As a minority female--and reflective of the research I do in my department right now--I don't get the privilege of not thinking, "How does what I do reflect on my minority group as a whole?" Unfortunately, being considered the lesser sex/gender/race/ethnicity/etc. comes along with a great deal of self-consciousness as to how that facet of my identity is represented to society as a whole.

Not inflammatory; your approach is as valid as mine. If you feel the cigar is always a metaphor, rock on. I don't agree, and I think it's damaging to constantly and consistently call out every cigar as a metaphor, fully as much as not calling out anything at all. It simplifies the issue from "There is behavior here we need to examine" to "if only Stephanie Meyers or etc author would stop writing books I find questionable, all things would be awesome and non-problematic." Girls literally modeling Twilight in their real lives when they come of age would be terrifying adn wrong. Teenage girls indulging in wish fulfillment with unicorns and vampires is normal behavior when exploring their sexuality.

[fyrdrakken]

Removing Twilight doesn't stop bad or abusive relationships from existence. It won't.

Here's a thought I just had, referring back to your upthread point about Twilight not causing any problems for anyone who didn't already have issues with fantasy vs. reality, stalking vs. healthy relationships, etc. (sidestepping the whole thing about how the media we're immersed in as a culture -- fictional and non-fictional -- both reflect the world as the producers see it and reinforce those attitudes in the less-aware consumers, since that's a long-assed topic for another time): Being ga-ga about Twilight -- and not making disclaimers about knowing what's wrong with it but liking it anyway as literary junk food -- can be seen as an indicator of a person who actually doesn't have functional detectors for "healthy relationships," because so many of the comments from some of the fans are coming from such a jaw-dropping place. It's not so much that Twilight is itself a horrific piece of literature, it's that it's attracting so many horrifyingly clueless individuals and aggregating them and letting them reinforce each other on their wrongness, and the cumulative effect is what's creeping a lot of people out who would otherwise just shrug and toss the books aside and move on. We didn't realize there were so many people out there who really didn't understand "What's wrong with this picture?" until they all got together and started squeeing.