My personal experience with “dark romance”

Hello, I just want to express myself here about my stance with dark romance with those who likes books like I do. I’m not interested this subreddit, but I am very fond of books and reading. I am mainly a fan of psychological literature, classic literature and other kinds of books like manga and danmei.

I don’t usually care what people read within reason and won’t judge people based on what they read, but with how popular dark romance has become, I don’t know how to feel anymore. I am friends with someone who LOVES dark romance, has read Haunting Adeline and is currently reading Lights Out while I am reading American Psycho for class. I don’t have TikTok (shocking for someone like myself who is in high school), so I try to stay away from dark romance unless it is from my friend or analysis videos on said books.

While my friend has been reading the said books above (Haunting Adeline and Lights Out), they have been telling me the things that happen and describing the male love interests as ‘girly pop’ and other positive descriptions. I usually don’t judge what they read, but them describing these men who I see as deplorable and disgusting in such ways and defending their actions (breaking and entering, SA, etc.) with ‘they liked it though’ makes me feel wrong.

I have told them how men historically have used the same excuse when they rape and/or SA women, same goes for the other way around and for when men do it to men and women do it to women. They usually drop that part when I say that and continue saying how ‘girly pop’ the male love interests are, which the more I hear about it, the more uncomfortable I get about it. I don’t see these men that way, but as gross and horrible. It especially makes me uncomfortable since I have been sexually harassed, told to kill myself, and even had a boy try to grope me all in middle school.

I don’t want to ruin our friendship by telling them seeing them read those books makes me very uncomfortable and how them saying the defenses they have for men like Zade Meadows in these books makes me disgusted, as if they wish to read those books, than I cannot control it. I also feel like I’m being snobby, because I enjoy classic literature more than most books written in the past 10 years.

I am aware that I am uneducated in a topic like this, but I needed to let this off my chest to those who read like I do. Am I being too sensitive about this genre of fiction? Maybe. Are others free to enjoy this genre? Yes, as long as they don’t make others uncomfortable or simulate the actions in the books on other people.

Thank you for reading this rant, please leave a comment about your opinion below. Please be respectful to me, the friend I mentioned here and other commenters. Have an amazing day.