Changing the genre

Recently Colette asked us to share our sexual fantasies, and there seemed to be one recurring common theme--of being forced and helpless while Mr. Naughty with or without his friends, had his wicked way with you. And naturally it got me thinking about how erotic romance is probably the only place you could go in genre literature to have those fantasies addressed without judgment or moralizing.

And that's refreshing, considering what a very preachy genre romance is, or has been, with the emphasis on the "good" marriage (read any Harlequin contemporary and it saves you having to read Pamela by Richardson); or, the bend over backward virgin heroine--and by that, I don't mean an exotic sexual position, but a heroine who is a virgin under extremely unlikely circumstances. Working in a brothel? Check. Widowed? Check. Accompanying an entire regiment on campaign? Check (bless her, she's been darning socks and writing letters home for the lads). A critic of my Signet Regency with bondage scenes complained that one of my characters didn't get her come-uppance (I'm not sure which one she meant since so many of them were behaving in less than stellar ways.) But I digress. It's always struck me that not only has there to be a HEA but order restored to the universe, the good rewarded and the wicked punished--no messy loose ends flapping about.

I hope that the rise of erotic romance can give us a little more moral ambiguity and a little less political correctness. Don't we want men to behave badly between the sheets (of a book)? Look at all the flap online about Anna Campbell's marvelous Claiming the Courtesan which had, gasp shock, a forced seduction and a heroine who was a courtesan. If the book had been written and published as an erotic romance I don't think anyone would have turned a hair (because those who don't read that sort of thing wouldn't have read it and/or felt compelled to be shocked online whether they'd read it or not).

I'd also like to think it would give us a little more tolerance for the loose ends-ness of it all; that our notion of "a love story" might become less simple HEA than together and facing the complexities of what lies ahead (which certainly doesn't lead to a good acronym). Will we erotic romance writers make the genre grow (or grow up?)? I'd like to think so.

What changes do you think erotic romance will make on the romance genre?