I love your utterly fascinating essay. I don't have much inclination to think deeply about it, since I'm a slasher from way back, but even before then I read a lot of romances, and what you say here . . .

I'm enough of a post-modernist, intellectually, to read all this conflict, all human relationships, as essentially about power - who has it, under what circumstances, and how do they use it? Wisely, carefully, carelessly, to heal, to harm, to bully, to build? Add to that gender-based confusion and conflict

I think this is the basis of what even grocery-store line romances are trying to explore, even if they fall back into the bottom-line societal comfort zone at the end, and I think it's something that romances beyond Silhouette Blaze are exploring with a bit more freedom. Which explains a lot about what I liked about them in the first place. :)

Everybody wants to explore power -- although it's the powerless who *need* a thorough understanding of it, which of course is why women read books about relationships, and men don't. When men and women are equal, we'll know about it -- women will quit trying to figure out men. :)