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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost" data-source="post: 5030691" data-attributes="member: 4720">I did some research and talked to a few people since yesterday, and I'm increasingly of the opinion that the treatment of this subject by these books is bad news.The comparison to Star Wars are, frankly, silly.  The potentially negative interactions in Star Wars that you describe center on mythic figures and bizarre corner cases.  I'm not going to claim they are totally benign, but the also don't correspond one-to-one with real world problems.  Additionally, the negative states described here don't last.  The characters step out of those negative roles almost immediately.  Luke and Leia drop their almost non-existent sexual tension before they even discover their parentage.  Han doesn't even make it a full movie before reforming from a pirate to a freedom fighter.  And so on.Incidentally, Han was the most benign "pirate" ever.  He killed no one but bounty hunters and stormtroopers.  What he really is isn't a pirate at all but a whiskey runner, the old American precursor to NASCAR.  The Kessel Run is probably related more to the Cannon Ball Run (the real one) than anything remotely piratical.Romanticizing a space version of the Duke Boys who only ever kills bounty hunters and stormtroopers is a little different than romanticizing the brooding, secretive loner in your high school who has a tendency towards controlling and abusive behaviors.The negative interactions in Twilight are endemic in our culture and are being celebrated in the text.  The men are controlling and physically aggressive towards the women.  The romantic lead fits every descriptor of a man who will abuse his partner.  And he is celebrated and romanticized for these traits and actions which we have data showing are the exact traits of actions of men who will physically, emotionally, and sexually abuse women.Ask yourself this: Would I want my daughter dating a guy who behaved this way?We literally have epidemic levels of domestic abuse and <a href="http://www.oneinfourusa.org/statistics.php" target="_blank">sexual assault of young women</a>.  Romanticizing the traits of abusive men isn't exactly going to turn those statistics around.  That kind of characterization of "love" is why I had female friends in high school who were desperately trying to marry guys who used them as punching bags.Some of these are themes that can be explored with good intentions.  Mass marketing the rigorously confirmed traits of abusers as romantic to a population that is already at risk?  That's more than a little sketchy, wot?</blockquote>

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