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So there's this article written by a man named Fred Head. He's a politician. He wants to get elected to public office in the great State of Texas. His opponent is a woman, named Susan Combs. She wrote a romance novel. So, in order to bring her down and appeal to the more conservative voters in his state, Fred Head has unearthed her novel and called for her to pull out of the race, explain herself to and apologize to the entire Republic Of Texas--for writing pornography.
Now, I understand that ignorant people who do not read romance novels are unaware of the message of hope and love these books send. I know people tried to get something on Dick Cheney for his wife's writing, which included a novel where two women became attracted to each other. And people still ignorantly assert that romance has to be put in a pigeon hole as "those" books for lonely housewives. But there's one thing I don't get.
Why is this guy mudslinging over running for Comptroller? He's out shouting at the rain over handling the money for Texas? He seems to want to get his hands on the money so much that he's clearly desperate to get into office by any means possible. He certainly doesn't think he can win on his own merits, so he's doing the age old trick--make people afraid of it, and tell them who's to blame for it.
Could it be that she's winning? Horrors, a woman might get the job he wants. Evil!
Well, Susan Combs has done so much more than Fred Head will ever do. Tom Clancy said, "Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world." Beyond that, she has done nothing but good, having campaigned for public health, served Texas in an exemplary fashion, and helped kids get a better meal at school.
You go, Susan Combs. You keep running your race, and don't apologize for having done something as wonderful and as difficult as having finished a novel and having seen it reach publication. It's the least of your accomplishments in a list that is amazing.
Fred Head, if you really want to get elected, you should remember one thing--if you're qualified for the position, talk about that, let pepole know that, because calling Ms. Combs a pornographer publicly isn't doing the job.
Oh, and one last thing you should remember--the largest writers association in the world is formed and has offices in the state of Texas--Romance Writers Of America®. And its members vote.
Sandra Richards
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Fred Head is clearly stating the facts.
Please debate how you can write a book of this nature and then took a public position of sex education (ABSENCE ONLY) bill. Can't have it both ways.
First off all, thank you for responding.
Second, I have to assume you don't mean Absence Only Sex, but Abstinence Only--meaning no sexual activity of any kind prior to being married, with the possible exception of chaste kissing.
You're position is that Susan Combs can't have it both ways in promoting abstinence and writing a book that contains scenes with sex. In actuality, I think they are consonant concepts and not in conflict at all.
Let me be clear.
As a romance writer, Susan Combs' job was to show a healthy, loving relationship. Healthy, loving relationships include sex, do they not? Writing a novel in this genre shows she's hopeful, because that's what the happy ending of a romance novel is about--hope that love does transform our lives, making it better. Striving for a working, committed relationship can give us a haven and joy in a world where it's harder and harder to find peace. What could be more positive than that?
There are a lot of frightening things older teens and young adults are aware of but don't take into consideration when their hormones are pushing them constantly. Susan Combs campaigned for abstinence because of HIV and AIDS and herpes and a plethora of things that are being linked to sex at an early age, including uterine cancer, of which I am a survivor. Pregnancy isn't the only problem here.
Which brings it back to what she's been striving towards for years--the health and safety of children. Susan Combs attacked obesity for the diseases associated with it. Didn't she go after the school lunches because of the same health issues? In many ways, Ms. Combs' work as the Commissioner of Agriculture not only includes moving the commodities in question, it also includes the quality, which I'm sure harkens back to public health.
Does this makes the Abstinence Only campaign far different from writing about two people falling deeply in love and making love? I think it is safe to say yes. Yet, they both still speak about the human condition and the improvement of the same. The novel doesn't conflict with a message of abstinence. The novel dovetails with it. Does that make her a hypocrite? No. She wrote her dream, not just as a hopeful adult, but the dream of every mother and father on the planet in that book--that someday her kids would find that sort of happiness too, fall in love with someone, and make love and have children.
Now she's just trying to make sure they stay alive long enough to get there.
With respect,
Sandra Richards
I don’t understand why Mr. Head is trying to brand the scarlet letter across Ms. Combs’ chest when this issue has nothing to do with her ability to serve as Texas’ Comptroller. Is Mr. Head saying that Ms. Combs is so obsessed with sex that she can’t see her way clear to add, subtract, multiply and divide? What, I ask, are the issues that are pertinent to this campaign that Mr. Head would like to discuss? This sort of muck-raking smacks of desperation and a lack of political ideology on which to base one’s campaign. It makes the Democrats look bad, and it makes Texas politics look bad. Stick to the issues, is what I say, and let the chips fall where they may.
If we want to go back and criticize every politician, by the way, for things they did in their past, then our last two presidents, who both admitted to indulging in illegal drugs in their younger days, would never have gotten elected. One of the greatest Democratic presidents of our generation, John Kennedy, had more to be criticized about his sexual activities outside of marriage than Ms. Combs ever will, I daresay.
I'm not sure why Mr. Head finds the idea of a book with sex in it so frightening; even the Bible has sex in it. Good parents teach their children judgment, and are aware of what their children are reading and seeing in the media. As a Texan with children, I don't feel the least bit threatened by Ms. Combs, and in fact I'm glad to know she has a healthy biological interest in the procreative act. She's a normal female, anyway. People who get so hinky about her book? I’m not so sure about that.
No, all I saw was him saying her book was pornography. Over and over.
And also, as Sandra pointed out, calling her an egomaniac for having her name at the top of every other page of her book. (Which is standard practice, of course. My book has the same. And even if we were egomaniacs, writers with the level of clout that I have now, and Ms. Combs had then, couldn't possibly tell the publisher how to print our books.)
If Fred Head has a real, political point to make, I think he should make it. I would respect him a lot more if he made the arguement you made, rather than the quite staggeringly ignorant (and therefore almost pathetically funny) diatribe he put on his website.
Cara
(And I'm still cracking up every time I read ABSENCE. I keep trying to figure out how one can have sex while being absent.)
And, since Leight Court sent me an e-mail that Anonymous said the exact thing word-for-word on about a half-dozoen other blogs on the same day, I can only form one conclusion: Fred Head had someone frame an argument and cut and paste it in every blog that mentioned him and this issue. Not hard to do a search and find the blog entries.
The reason I believe it is he or his office that is Anonymous: Each time he mentions Susan Combs he puts it in a statement that is fairly short. Two of them are within 10 words of the word "sex" the other is close to the word "hypocrite." The way search engines work is they look up whatever subject you are searching for by seeking for the individual words in a phrase within 10 words of each other. Example: Grandma Moses might return results about the artist known as Grandma Moses, and below that could be someone's story on their web site about how "Grandma loved that cat, but Moses, my Dad, couldn't stand it . . ."
The next line in the Anonymous post is "Fred Head is clearly stating the facts" and that puts HIS name next to hers in a search result.
I think he wanted us to use his name. so he'd come up higher on a search engine result. Funny. None of us used his full name. I think it's the writer in all of us. We'd never name a character with such an unfortunate preschool rhyme to it in a million years.
Is the unfortunately named Fred Head (or one of his staffers) truly Anonymous of the comment? Sadly, we'll never really know.
Women are less visual than men as a whole - sure, they like eye-candy well enough, but "romance" is more between the ears than in the eyes for females. Since most men don't get this about women, the fairer sex has long gotten away with indulging a good rollicking romance novel much easier in our repressed society than men with tasteful Playboy photos. Sneaky women and their superior romantic imaginations and all. :)
I think that's a load of hooey. And so is that comparison, with this exception: Perception of the opposite sex.
There's a long-standing joke men use. "I only have it for the articles." In all actuality, the articles in Playboy tend to be provocative and very good reading for either sex. Case in point, Danica Patrick posed for Playboy and they had a fantastic interview that asked her how she had made it in a very male dominated industry and still kept her femininity. In my book, that's not pornography at all. They were talking about her softer side and she was willing to show it in a magazine that has the most tasteful of all the photo shoots for women baring it all. While I'm pretty certain the photos that accompanied that issue wouldn't have been the first choice of Woman's Day Magazine if that publication had interviewed Ms. Patrick, I don't see them as doing anything but prove the point of the article--she's a sexy woman who is also able to compete with men and not lose her feminine side.
Your comment about Fabio does make me giggle a little. But I have to confess that he's not my cup of tea. In fact, when I chat with fellow romance writers and Fabio comes up there are two sorts of comments that are expressed. One is from the women who have met him. They say he is charming, sweet, and never forgets your name. The other comments are that they are glad that style of book cover is no longer in use, or at least not widely in use, because the romances he posed for are from 20 years ago and wouldn't be published today.
My husband does have trouble reading a romance with a "hunky guy" type cover--he feels uncomfortable about male nudity and he also has told me it turns him off to some romances he might otherwise read because it screams This Isn't A Book For A Man. But he does read romances.
Anonymous, Fred Head is not right. He's not even close to right on this subject. Pornography is something obscene and the word obscene means (according to www.m-w.com):
1 : disgusting to the senses : REPULSIVE
2 a : abhorrent to morality or virtue; specifically : designed to incite to lust or depravity b : containing or being language regarded as taboo in polite usage (obscene lyrics) c : repulsive by reason of crass disregard of moral or ethical principles (an obscene misuse of power) d : so excessive as to be offensive (obscene wealth) (obscene waste)
If that's what you think of romances, then you aren't reading them, which makes you uninformed and foolishly giving your opinion as repitition, not unlike the way a parrot or raven learns to speak.
I also want to address what you said about women being less visual than men. I suppose I could admit that is true in most cases, and I say "most cases" because there is always an exception, isn't there? However, I think that you are wrong on some level. If women were not visual, then it wouldn't matter if Fabio type book covers were on romances or not. By the way, we refer to them as the "clinch cover" because the heroine and the hero are in a "lovers clinch." I also think that, if women were so much less visual as you say, the covers of Playboy would also not mean anything at all.
In the end, all you seem to be saying is that romances are women's way of having a good time and are far less innocent than a man looking at Playboy. Frankly, I hate how puritanical the U.S. population is. I feel that sex should be far less a problem for an audience to see than violence. You know what I think is pornographic?
There's a show I saw advertised as having the most Outrageous Videos. This was in the afternoon on a cable channel, so the FCC doesn't have to do much about it. There was a rating that it was TV14--something my 9-year-old stepson's mom has deemed to be the highest rating he should view on TV as long as the content isn't too violent. On this particular show the day I happened to catch it they showed some men on a tarmac around a small private jet. The video clearly shows the jet starting its engines. When they are up to speed, one of the men literally walks in front of one of the jet turbines, sticks his head in to look at it moving, and is sucked through, coming out the back in flaming bits. That's pornography. It's obscene. It repulses me, and it should repulse me. It is something I fervently hope my stepson never grows up to experience.
I do hope my stepson grows up to experience love and love making. Susan Combs came under fire because she dared to dream that kids might need to survive in a world with AIDS and other STDs in order to get there.
Now, here's something I generally don't do, because my grandfather used to do it and it drove me crazy. However, I don't think I can not say this so here I go: You said, ". . . but "romance" is more between the ears than in the eyes for females. Since most men don't get this about women, the fairer sex has long gotten away with indulging a good rollicking romance novel . . ." That may be your opinion, but you're wrong.
Most men understand it better than you think. A good percentage of men either read romances, or watch films with romantic themes because they do like it. It's not cool to talk about it, but that's different. That's their real dirty secret. They like it. You're also suggesting something I have real problems with, and is actually another topic, but I have to say I don't think men don't get romance. I think they view what is romantic differently. I have found that, while we women tend to talk about them like they think below the belt line, men are surprising vulnerable and open to all the things that go into a romantic time with someone they care about. They love getting flowers from a girl, they love feeling like they are being chased, they do like someone who dresses specifically for them.
While a man and a woman looking deeply into each others' eyes might be thinking something else (She: He's falling in love with me. He: She wants me.)that connection is still vital and, in their own ways to each sex, the reaction they have is romantic.
Stop comparing what I write to what happens in Playboy. I wouldn't accept that analogy from a man OR a woman. I do not write anything morally reprehensible or repugnant. Neither does any other writer of romances. We write about the most important thing we know: the human condition. If that's pornography to you, I can only feel sorry for your spouse.