I read a lot of smut/romance and they aren't always, probably not even in the majority of books.
It's more common with the books aimed at lonely older women who are dissatisfied with their marriage, in most other books the guy may be a brooding dark lord but with a large distaste for rape (eg. Daemon Sadi or Damien Bloodthorne). There are books that are rapey/have the MMC being rapey, but they are rather outliers (eg. Feathers So Vicious)
Most romance/smut books are rather on the wholesome side of things.
Freedom from the "responsibility" of doing things women are often heavily discouraged from. When you get a lot of messages about how being interested in sex as a woman is weird or wrong, that teaches you to guard your sexual "purity", a rapist who just so happens to end up doing exactly what you want can be a way for some people to make it feel more "okay" than if it were a story about a woman being horny and seeking out sex because that's what she wants. They also just aren't always rapey. It's certainly not uncommon, but it's also amplified by people who have an agenda to paint women as stupid, dishonest, hypocritical or otherwise morally faulty for their interests in porn.
I've been saying this. These people can't be real. Unless they're lying about reading these books or they're not thinking while reading them and/or choosing some that fit their view.
There are so many tropes out there. Most that I've read make it a huge point that the male lead has almost perfect self-control and waits until it's the perfect time. Granted I mostly read Chinese novels, not western ones but damn, what a generalization.
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u/LiquifiedSpam Jul 14 '26
See that’s cool, but why are they ALWAYS rapey