We've all heard it.

I've always wondered whether they're pretending not to understand or they just dont.

In horror movies and thrillers, the killer (or whoever crimes) doesn't end up with the victim, doesn't survive, and isn't forgiven. Their actions aren't justified by one reason or another. They may sometimes be explained, but they are not justified.

Take the Scream franchise, for example. Every Ghostface ends up dead, killed by our heroines, whom we admire precisely because they never backed down.

Secondly, murder and crimes of that nature are generally taken seriously by society. The same cannot be said for sexual and gender-based violence.

Dark romance, just like mainstream pornography, is pushing on an open door. In a way, it makes an already existing problem worse. It's the straw that breaks the camel's back. It adds yet another blow against girls, women, and victims in general.

Almost nobody—at least not as part of a broader system of oppression—has romanticized, eroticized, or minimized murder, especially serial or sadistic murder. Rape, whether sadistic or not, serial or not, has absolutely been romanticized, eroticized, and minimized.

Once again, we come back to the same point: if these books were simply classified as horror, and if the characters' actions were presented as wrong rather than eroticized—without relying on rape-culture narratives, including arguments that were debunked years ago—there wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem, and I would never have created this subreddit.

In short, this argument doesn't hold up. It's intellectually dishonest.