In today’s post, I’ll look into why men the romantic fiction genre doesn’t seem to appeal to men. This will be based on some recent discussions I’ve seen and spotting connections between fiction and reality. Given that this topic is more complex than it might seem, I’ll tackle it over several posts in the coming weeks.

Disclaimer: this will be a topic that combines fiction and various views on reality. However, this is something that varies in customs by location, age, gender, sexual orientation, and other factors. This post isn’t intended to be a complaint-fest on modern dating, even if I’ll circle back to that aspect. And I’m not planning to analyze real-life romance and its problems aside from direct ties to fiction.

A chicken-egg problem

The relationship between men and romantic fiction seems to be very much a chicken-and-egg problem. Romance is, in general, a genre for women. They’re the primary consumers of the genre (be it in the form of books, movies, or TV series) as well as the primary creators of the source materials (again, in any form). Thus, it makes sense to build the genre with women’s preferences in mind.

This created a situation where the readership/viewership of such stories is so dominantly female, and the stories are so tailored to their preferences, that there’s little interest and high prejudice among men when it comes to consuming romantic fiction.

It also seems that the genre is – at least in the Western world – quite risk-averse. This, again, comes as little surprise – if there’s a stable and wide enough audience, it’s hard to justify deviating from what works for a small chance of gaining a male audience – especially if building it to a meaningful amount would probably take way too long to turn out a noticeable increase in profits. Now, to not just bash romance, there are also male-oriented stories that are very cliché-heavy and risk-averse, such as dragon rider fantasy (which I covered before in depth).

That said, romance (and similar cross-over genres with a dominantly female audience) book covers are so often done with a topless guy on the front that romance has been one of the genres that had the biggest growth in e-books (where no one can see the suggestive image). To put a muscular topless man on the front cover sounds like quite a sure-fire way to announce that a product isn’t created for a heterosexual male audience, maybe except for fitness supplements.

I also remember one of the boys my sister dated in her late teens mentioning something like “I take her to movies she likes and go see movies I like with the boys” on the topic of watching “girly” movies, saying it’s sometimes the easiest “activity” to plan, even if it means being exposed to “dumb” stuff for two hours. I’ve seen an opinion that this approach might be why many movies – even those oriented mostly at men (such as the Transformers series) contain cheesy romantic subplots – because movie dates are still a thing and they might be a high motivator for some men to go see a movie in the cinema instead of just watching it online later (more so now that they tend to hit streaming services, TV, and online stores quite fast after the screening period ends, not 1-2 years later like in the 90s).

Do men hate romance – or does romance hate men?

I’ve considered the above as the original title for this post, but opted against it. First, it’s a bit too long; second, it sounds a bit too much like exaggerated, cheap rage bait. But I’ve seen questions like “Why do men hate romance?” in various discussions, not always related only to fiction.

The fact is, men don’t hate romance in general. Not in fiction, and probably not even in real life. However, it’s something where male and female preferences differ too much. And I think there’s a simple proof in my genre of choice – fantasy. Even though they share many similarities, the genres mostly read by women (urban fantasy, paranormal romance) and the genres read mostly by men (sword and sorcery, coming of age epics, dragon fantasy) are, in many ways, very different. Yet even the books aimed mostly at men often contain some kind of romantic subplot, and many of them do quite well from a male’s point of view. Which proves that men don’t mind romantic elements, as long as they’re done in a way that doesn’t dismiss or ignore men’s view of the topic.

One question that might pop up instantly is: how much difference does it make whether the romantic elements are primary elements (in genres favored by women) compared to when they are secondary elements (in genres favored by men). I would say that the romantic journey – the way men would prefer it – is simply too straightforward and not deep enough to be a standalone plot element (hence the lack of a major market for male-oriented romance) but works well as a supporting element to delve into the characters (more thoughts on that in this 7-year-old post of mine).

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That’s it for what’s a taste of this topic. In future posts coming over the spring, I’d like to delve deeper into the particulars of some preferences, the connection to reality (especially in connection to escapism as one of the major drives for consuming fiction), views on relationships, and some of the aspects that drive men away from these stories the most, as well as the elements that could gain men’s interest in romantic stories.

In the meantime, I’ll welcome your thoughts on the topic.