Our very own Ainslie Paton has written a great piece over at Bookthingo, describing her frustration with the way some romance writers (and publishers) blur the lines between ‘alpha male’ and ‘entitled doucheturnip’. Here’s an extract:

Romance is a lot of things. It’s a place to explore fantasies and live vicariously, a place to find comfort, be thrilled, chilled or soothed. It’s also a genre where social constraints between people are explored in historical, modern and future contexts.

In 2016, inside contemporary romance, it shouldn’t be a place where misogyny stands unexamined. We have enough of that in our real lives.

It shouldn’t be a place where we let our heroines be inadvertent victims of superior men. (Or our male lead characters for that matter). Where we write heroes who would trample on a woman’s will, because they can, and heroines who accept that behavior too easily as if they deserve it and it’s a thing of wonder.

That’s not loving our heroines or creating the kinds of heroes worth reading about.

Head over to Bookthingo to read the whole thing, and join the conversation in the comments, which is already looking very interesting!