Jessica Scott

The post I wrote first and is turning out to be the most contentious one yet is up over at PBS POV Regarding War.

I encourage you to read the comments and leave one, whether you agree or disagree. I think the whole debate on women and war is fascinating and intriguing, more so because I look at how people outside the military view us who are in today versus how we see ourselves.

Please, stop by and read some of the posts, as well as my piece on sexual assault and military women.

http://www.pbs.org/pov/regardingwar/conversations/women-and-war/sex-and-the-military-woman-female-soldiers-are-not-just-victims.php

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I’ve bragged multiple times about how much I love my home chapter of RWA, Austin RWA or AWRA to those of us who love her. But today, I get to do something a little extra special as a way to say thank you to the chapter that took such excellent care of me last year while I was far from home.

I’m having a giveaway to celebrate, not one, not two, but three Austin RWA RITA finalists. And I can safely say that, if you haven’t read any or all of these authors, you are missing out.

Tracy, Sherry and Laura are on my auto buy list. Anything they write, I’m reading quite simply because their books rock.

Sherry Thomas’ Private Arrangements is the book that brought me back to historical romance novels. Before that, the last one I’d read had been Laura Kinsale’s The Shadow and The Star. Now, I’m as likely to pick up an historical as I am romantic suspense. So when Sherry sent me a copy of Not Quite a Husband when I was in Iraq, I had the excellent pleasure of being able to give away a copy, because I’d already ordered it. Not Quite a Husband is an excellent novel, not only because its a reconciliation story, which I love, but because the setting is so unique and beautiful and the characters, in class Sherry Thomas style, are deeply and truly flawed.

It takes more than true love for them to overcome their burden, but Sherry always delivers. Not Quite a Husband is a beautiful story and I’m thrilled that it finaled in the RITA.

Tracy Wolff also sent me her first single title Full Exposure while I was in Iraq and all I can say is whoa. The sensuality was intense, the characters beautifully tormented (are you noticing a trend) and the story pulled me right in. It’s deeply moving and beautifully erotic. What’s more, her category romances are incredibly touching and moving, a tough task when you consider that categories are usually much shorter in length. The Christmas Present is also a redemption story and is perfect for the Christmas season or any time of year.

Last but not least, Laura Griffin’s Whisper of Warning was nominated for best romantic suspense. Laura made my to be read list before I’d ever met her. I absolutely loved Feenie and Marco in One Last Breath. I was hooked but I’ve got to say, Whisper of Warning is my favorite Laura Griffin. Courtney is one of the most deeply flawed heroines I’ve ever read and her ability to overcome her past is by far one of the best journeys I read last year. I won’t give it away but the end, when Courtney has to make her choice is one of the most touching scenes I’ve ever read. It brought tears to my eyes.

So it’s with great honor that I’m giving away a copy of all three books today to one lucky commenter. Tell me about your favorite RITA nod from this years nominees and Friday, I’ll pick one random winner to send all three of these incredible books by amazing authors!

Winner will be announced Friday, April 2.

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Twilight was Stephanie Meyer’s first book. She pitched it to Judy Reamer, who snapped it up and the rest, as they say is history. Allison Brennan’s first sale The Prey debuted on the NY Times Bestseller list.

Dude, we all want to be that guy. But for every writer that it does happen to, there are thousand more still stuck in the slush pile.

I’m willing to bet that every single writer looks at that first book and goes oh yeah, this is the one, baby. And when it doesn’t get immediately snapped up for a bajillion dollar advance, movie deal and foreign rights, well, then publishing sucks and they don’t know what they’re missing out on.

Welcome to reality. Publishing is hard to break into. Regardless of how much ‘crap’ you’ve read, someone read the same book, liked it, offered on it and put it into print. Part of the reason that publishing is so hard to break into is that you have to find that one yes in a pile of no’s that can feel higher than Mount Everest. Writing is easy.

Writing something that sells?

Not so much.

The first writer’s group I ever stumbled on had several unpublished writers in it. They weren’t seeking publication because, well, they wrote for themselves and they didn’t want someone changing their work. This was what the world was meant to be and they weren’t going to budge. Which is fine. That does not mean it’s saleable and many, probably the majority of writers out there, are fine with writing just for themselves.

I’m not one of them, which means that I need feedback. The harsher the better. I might not want to hear it at the particular time, but I recognize that I do need to hear it. And I might not do anything with it right off the bat but in the back of my mind, I’m working on it. Looking at how I can make the story better.

Revising, for me, is a bigger part of writing. When I first started out, I looked at what I’d slapped on the page and loved it. Every word. Every fragmented sentence and awkward phrase. I. Loved. It. I wasn’t able to look at it and see what needed to change, which meant that by and large, my so called revisions were window dressing. They weren’t the kind of change that the book needed to really take shape. I queried. And I got rejected. A lot. A hell of a lot, but you know what? Every rejection that came in that wasn’t a form rejection, I read. I saved. And when I started to really think about revisions on a certain project, I could finally see the things that were wrong.

I ended up throwing the whole book out. I rewrote it. And I haven’t pitched it again because it’s sitting in my Scrivener file folder, waiting on its turn. Because it’s back to being a first draft and if I’ve learned anything at all, it’s that my first drafts need major work.

Same story with the second book I pitched. That book landed me an agent but it never went anywhere. I was waiting for revision comments to help me see what needed to change. I never got the comments I thought I needed and my agent and I parted ways, primarily because I wasn’t getting input on the manuscript. I wanted to work. Hell, I was in Iraq and I needed to work. I needed guidance but ultimately, I think I needed too much guidance for her.

I still need guidance but the one thing I took away from every single rejection that came after I left my agent was that its MY BOOK. I am responsible for how it turns out. So while I thought my agent was going to give me guidance, until I could see what was wrong with it, I wasn’t going to be moving forward.

I am agentless now but I am not without guidance. As I work on the 3rd project I am getting ready to query, I am better prepared. I am able to take comments from my critique partner and see what’s wrong with, unfortunately, entire chunks of the book. I am able to see better what needs to cut and tighten and trim. Not entirely. I still need her input to give me prompts, but as I work through this book, it is my responsibility to be able to see it.

No one is going to do that for me. No agent is going to snap me up and turn me into the next Allison Brennan or Stephanie Meyers. Writing the book that gets me sold is my responsibility. I still need guidance and I still need advice and I’ve had some incredible support from the romance writer’s community.

But it’s my book and I need to be able to see what’s wrong with it before anyone else, agent, editor or otherwise is going to polish it up with me.

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When I first started writing, my fabulous mentor Candace Irvin said go to the bookstore and figure out what you’re like. You need to know the market before you can start to see where you fit.

So I went. I read Joann Ross, Cindy Gerard, Suzanne Brockmann, Marliss Melton and others. I read Robyn Carr after Roxanne St Claire said maybe you’re more like her. After all, I’ve got military heroes, I’ve got to be like one of these great ladies, right?

Oh how wrong I was. Here’s the problem and its not one I’m sure I can overcome. I’m not romantic suspense. So my War’s Darkest Series is not like Suzanne Brockmann’s Seal Team series where there’s a cast of eight or so strapping men to pick a story from. None of my characters are Special Operations Forces.

My characters are also not prior military like Robyn Carr’s heros, who have all gotten out and headed up country to Virgin River, hoping to find a new life away from their military experiences. My guys are the Everyman, my women spouses, nurses and warriors themselves. No Special Forces, Navy Seals or Black Ops. Just regular soldiers, fighting the good fight.

So my books don’t fit. They aren’t small town based like Robyn’s and they’re not suspense like Joann, Cindy or Suzanne. In short, there’s nothing out there that I can compare to because everyone has either written prior military characters or Navy Seals.

When I wrote military romance in a query letter, little did I know I was speaking in code for romantic suspense. When agents are reading it, they’re looking for suspense. Fast pacing, action, action, romance, action. And that’s not what I wrote. I wrote a character based, contemporary romance with men and women who are all still in the military. I wrote books that were not suspense except that by putting military in the query, I was telling agents that’s what they were.

I screwed myself, apparently. I feel like when I sent out this last round of queries, I should have put in big bold letters, THIS IS NOT ROMANTIC SUSPENSE. I don’t know that it would have helped. I’m reasonably certain there are other issues in my current WIP but I’m also reasonably certain that the main problem agents are seeing is that they’re reading for romantic suspense and putting the book down when it doesn’t live up their expectations, wrong or not.

So, bluntly, I think I’m screwed. How do you pitch a book that doesn’t fit into a nice neat genre? Especially in this market? You can pitch to your hearts content but if you can’t get past the gatekeepers, you can’t get sold. I’m not complaining about agents, mind you. I’m simply stating that I think I pitched my books wrong to the fabulous agents who asked for the full manuscript and ultimately passed with great comments.

So that’s the end of this, for now. I’m revising once more because I’ve got a song in my head that is making me work on this book, even though I’m pretty sure it’s a dead end. I’ve learned a lot, but the one thing I don’t know how to fix is how to query the next project correctly. Maybe I’ll put in the query: this is not suspense.

Maybe not.

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I haven’t gotten very far into Black Hearts by Jim Frederick. As in I’ve made it through the first section of the first chapter and have read the most horrifying description of what men who wore our uniform did to an Iraqi family.

I don’t want to read this book because I don’t want to look at the men of that platoon and see them as human beings. I don’t want to feel anything other than loathing for the men who committed one of the most notorious war crimes of the Iraq war, if not the worst. I don’t want to know their names and I don’t want to understand what motivated them.

Reading this book is going to take me to a place I don’t want to go. To confront the true horror that walks among us, simply waiting for the right cocktail of things to go wrong.

I don’t know if I can read this book, but at the same time, to turn away is to turn away from the truth of what our men did. Because as much as I want to view them as murderers and monsters, they were ours. Until the day they walked off that COP, they were ours. But the moment they made the choices they made, they ceased being ours. They ceased being human and they joined a class of other for which there is no repentance. You cannot come back from a crime like they committed.

I don’t believe justice has been served by sentencing Steven Green to life in prison. The horror that he inflicted on one Iraqi family is too great for him to sit in a prison cell the rest of his life. The shame he brought to our nation is too great for him to still be breathing.

Reading Black Hearts is going to be one of the hardest books I’ll ever have to read. The other war narratives I have read have had our boys trying to get home. Black Hawk Down. The Long Road Home. These were stories of soldiers. Of ordinary men.

I don’t know that Black Hearts is going to tell me the story of ordinary men. I don’t want to believe that ordinary men could rape and murder a young girl, then set the body on fire and murder her entire family to conceal the crime. How does an ordinary man do something like this, no matter the stress.

It is easy to sit back and call the monsters. I never walked in their shoes. I am comfortable in the thoughts that I would never walk in their shoes. I would never look at a child and dream up the most horrific crime.

In the end, not to read this book would be an act of cowardice on my part. So I’ll read it. But I don’t think it will be easy. And I don’t think I will be able to look in the face of my fellow soldiers with an easy heart again.

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This post has been building for a long time. I’ve been trying to keep my mouth shut and act like a grown up, mature professional.

But who the hell am I kidding?

Friday was the rededication of the First Cavalry Division’s Memorial to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. This was be the third time the Cav has rededicated the memorial since the war began, etching new names of our fallen brothers and sisters into the black granite. The memorial stands in front of the First Cav headquarters for all to see, a silent tribute to a soldier who gave their life. Friday, we added 69 more names to the immortal wall.

Standing in that crowd and paying respect to my fallen brothers and sisters means something to me, as it does to everyone who has ever lost someone next to them who wore the uniform. The American Flag became more than cloth to me the first time I stood on that airfield in Mosul and saluted a flag draped coffin. And my uniform means something to me because my brothers and sisters in arms have bled and died in these colors.

When someone, man or woman, raises their right hand and volunteers to become a soldier, they are signing on to become someone different. We are taught to uphold the Army Values. Those Army values may be just words on a poster to many but to some of us, they are more than words.

So when people who have never worn the uniform dare to call all the men and women who wear it dishonorable, disloyal, liars or criminals, it deeply offends me to the very seat of my soul.
I just ordered Dark Hearts: One Platoon’s Journey into Madness. The book is about the Mahmoudiya murder committed by Stephen Green and his platoon. These men raped and murdered a 14 year old Iraqi girl and then murdered her entire family to conceal the crime. This was not warfare. This was murder. This was dishonor.

Being willing to kill in combat is not the same as murder.

In Fareheitt 9/11, Michael Moore dared to portray soldiers as amoral killers because they listened to Drowning Pool’s Bodies as they rolled outside the gate. What Mr. Moore fails to realize is the loyalty and bonds that will enable you to do anything to bring the men and women next to you home alive. If Bodies got our boys in that tank in the right frame of mind to go out and come home alive, then so be it. They are soldiers and it is not a kind, gentle thing that soldiers are asked to do for our nation. Our nation asks us to kill and while we will do our best to do so with restraint, if you have never worn a uniform, then you have no right to pretend to know what my brothers and sisters in arms go through each time they roll outside the wire.

I’m supposed to say I’ll defend to my death your right to free speech. I’m supposed to say that diverse opinions are what makes America great. But when you take an entire Army of soldiers, noncommissioned officers and officers and call them dishonorable, there is no further dialogue. We have reached mutually exclusive terrain that can not be shared. There is nothing I can say that will convince you that even if your point has ANY semblance of validity, you should not say that ALL soldiers and leaders are dishonorable.

Is there dishonor within the ranks? Yes. I will not sit here and lie to you and pretend that we do not have criminals, thieves and cowards wearing our uniform. But you cannot stand there and call us all by these names because a few actually deserve it.

Honor means something to me. Doing the right thing means something to me and it means something to a majority of the men and women I stood next to last week as we honored our fallen brothers and sisters.

Question the policy. Question actions of individuals. Demand that individuals be held responsible for their actions.

But don’t you dare call me or the men and women I serve with dishonorable.
You don’t know the meaning of the word.

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I’ve been working on getting published since 2007. Late 2007 to be fair, but 2007 nonetheless. It is now 2010 and I remain not only unpublished but unagented as well.

We’re talking 3 years now that I have been working toward something I have yet to achieve. While I had an agent for a brief smattering of time and it was a huge learning experience for me, I still remain essentially where I was in November 2007 when I first wrote The End.

This is not bad. Frustrating? Yes. But not bad.

Repeat after me. Not being published for me, at this point, is not bad. Looking back on everything I have learned in the last 3 years, the amount of change I have undergone as a writer is phenomenal. I know I am stronger today than I was in January 2008 when I had my first partial request (thank you Stephanie Evans). She was the very first agent who said send me your stuff and oh by the way, its not quite there yet.

I am glad she and the others have passed. I know this sounds like sarcasm but it is not. To be honest, I would not want to look back on that first book and see it in print. It was beyond terrible. I had no business querying it but I couldn’t see it.

The second book I queried, I see much improvement in. But I still have much to learn. While I would like to see this book in print because I believe in the story and the characters, if it does not happen, I’m okay with that.

I look at my writing career as a bit of self torture. The more brutal the critique, the harder it is to look at it and say, okay, what’s really going on. But being able to look at those comments, when you’re fortunate enough to get them, and learn from them is a key piece of growth for any writer. So no matter that comments are brutal, are they true? Being able to determine not if they are but why they are or are not is the key lesson to learn.

As I dig into revisions on my 3rd project that I’m going to query, I find myself looking at huge chunks of text and saying, I really don’t need this. Its cool info but it does nothing to advance the plot. Cut. This, I could put into dialogue and show. Revise. This makes my character look like a coward but I need the scene. Fix.

Being able to look at my manuscript and not love everything about it is a huge lesson for me. Major. Culling 30 pages is not easy but in my case as I found with the first 100 pages, necessary. Being able to see that it’s necessary without my fab critique partner Julie thumping me over the head with the printed manuscript, even better.

So in the 3 years since I decided “I’m a writer” I’ve learned a ton. I’ve had an amazing amount of support from fellow writers, offering advice, guidance and, quite often, a shoulder to cry on. I will continue to learn and grow. And in the event that an agent decides to take me on, neuroses and all, I will endeavor to keep learning.

At the end of the day, that’s all I can control.

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My second post is live: I’m writing for PBS POV Regarding War: Women and War. My 2nd post is up and so far, this whole adventure has turned out to be quite controversial!

http://www.pbs.org/pov/regardingwar/conversations/women-and-war/women-in-combat-is-a-moot-point.php

Jess

http://www.jessicascott.net

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Things have been a little too serious here on the blog for the last couple of posts. I’ve been literally obsessing about the questions that PBS has raised in my brain and am starting to annoy myself.

All work and no play make Jess way too serious a girl.

So on that note, I’m going to share some of the oddball things that I’ve done or heard or experienced that cracked me up over the years. It’s the off crap that you really can’t see anyone doing, let alone find funny, unless you’ve been in the Army and been around a bunch of bored 18 year olds trying to keep themselves amused.

If you’ve never read the Skippy List, it’s a good primer. I first saw it in the late 90s in Germany and more recently, in BOLC II, met a guy who said he wrote it, which of course made it all the funnier.

But I digress.

So y’all know there’s a no porn rule in the Army right? Well, there wasn’t always such a clear cut message and whenever we went to the field the guys had their TMs (titty mags). (Seriously, try not to be offended. I could care less what these guys were whacking it to so long as it wasn’t me). Anyway, back in the 90s we had signal shelters called SENs (small extention nodes). It was a phone company on wheels and I was part of quite possibly the funniest SEN team in Germany. So my old team chief, who is probably reading this and who shall not be named, was really excited about going onto main base and getting the new Playboy. I mean, little kid at Christmas excited.
It was embarrassing. And I loved nothing more than screwing with this guy. Man we used to laugh. I’m pretty sure I drove him nuts.

But he was really excited. So I caught the bus from Vilseck Airfield onto main base and bought a Playgirl, which is kind of shocking if you’ve never seen one. Anyway, it’s three am and I’m on shift, taping the cover of his Playboy to the Playgirl. I’ve got the edges lined up perfectly and I’m snorting I’m laughing so hard. I wasn’t going to be there to see his face, but man, I could picture it.

Apparently, when he did open the mag, his scream could be heard across the base. I mean, I spent hours making those covers line up. It was the ultimate coup. I can’t remember what he did to get back at me but for some reason pushups and lots of them come to mind.

Its stories like these that stick with you over the years and its something intangible that people who haven’t been here just don’t understand. There are probably people reading right now going huh? That’s not funny, its offensive. Soldiers have porn?

But it is funny. It was then and the memory is even better now. Its what people do to each other when you’re around them non stop for days, weeks or even months on end.

Finding the flux capacitor in Iraq is one of those memories, but that’s for another time. There is a certain rawness about being in the Army that I enjoy. I can relax and laugh with the gang and it’s fun. It’s about the only time I really feel like myself.

I guess my overall point is that if I spend all my time thinking about the serious stuff, I’ll miss the funny stuff that makes the Army so great.

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The Army teaches officers how to deal in expectation management. Don’t tell the brigade commander he’s going to have Time Warner Cable in Iraq. Make sure he knows its going to be like dial up, then he’ll be happy if he gets DSL.

The Army also warns about expectation management when you come home. Don’t come in and take over, it tells Dads coming home to kids they don’t know and a wife who has done it all for the last year. Tell her she’s done a good job and ask where you can help out. Don’t expect the kids to be all over you. They might not want to talk to you or be afraid of you or worse, might not know you.

Except that these expectations deal with the majority of folks in the Army: dads and husbands. There really isn’t a good guide out there on how to deal with the mommy guilt, what to do when your kids says I don’t think you love me or is just plain stubborn because she can be. They don’t tell you what to do when you just want to scream. Actually they do tell you what to do: get pills and get counseling.

But that doesn’t alleviate the mommy guilt that makes me wonder just how good of a parent I am, am I doing the right thing. Do my kids know that I love them, even if I have to take some time for myself? Or do I really need to sacrifice everything that makes me who I am in order for them to be reasonably well adjusted adults.

I made a comment on Twitter this morning about the Virgin Mary screwing me (and all mothers) by raising the bar to impossible heights. I mean, hell, she raised the savior of humanity, I’m just hoping not to raise an ax murderer. (FYI, I am Catholic and I do pray to the Virgin Mary, so I’m hoping She understands, if anyone could, the trials and tribulations of trying to be a good mom). But no one ever pictures the Virgin Mary losing her temper or arguing with Jesus about what to wear to school or would He please eat so He’s not late.

No, instead the ideal of being a good mom, for me, would mean less self doubt. A little more calm. A lot less yelling and a lot more hugs.

And it would have helped if the Army recognized that moms go through a whole lot more when they come home than the dads do. Most Dads have a wife who has held it together for the last year and they get to fit back in. They don’t have to start completely over from scratch with two kids who thought you’ve abandoned them and who feel guilty for loving the grammy who took such awesome care of them.

And the only people who really understand just how challenging this is is another mom. But all of our situations are different. All of the demands we place on ourselves are different. I want my kids to be well fed and well rested and happy. I’d like to start the morning off without screaming and crying and yelling just to make it out the door. I thought those were pretty reasonable expectations.

Guess I need to readjust the bar. Hope the Virgin Mother will help me with that, cause it’s a pretty big struggle right about now.

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I tend to want to know all I can about a subject and once a subject takes hold, it doesn’t let go. It will haunt my sleep, my dreams. Every conversation becomes about whatever the subject might be.

So I stopped following politics because I was too passionate and could speak about nothing else.
I’ve also stopped following writing industry emails like Publisher’s Marketplace because of my frustration with seeing news that, because of my unpublished status, I could not control. Reading about deals for friends was exciting. Otherwise, reading about deals was simply salt on a wound of something I have not yet accomplished. So I stopped reading to stop second guessing myself.

But writing for PBS POV Regarding War has created a new focus in my brain and I can’t turn it off. Everything I talk about is the other author’s posts. I fall asleep composing posts in my brain (of course, without writing them down, so that when I do start writing, all that is gone). I wake up at night and the drum beat of thoughts and questions and debates fills my head once again.

It’s like being back in Iraq when I would lie awake, unable to shut my brain down. It’s frustrating because there’s nothing I can do to change other’s minds and my experience, backed only by the anecdotal evidence of the women I’ve served with, feels somehow less credible than these women who site studies and reports and interviews. As part of the legal agreement allowing me to participate in this blog, I can’t interview other soldiers and I can’t use any information that is not freely available to the public.

This job is taking up my brain and it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating because I am just a soldier, part of the misogynistic machine that supposedly oppresses every woman other than myself. I am a soldier, part of a military that still requires the ability to fight and win our nations wars with the best soldiers to accomplish the mission.

I can’t turn my brain off about this subject. It’s keeping me awake and driving me to distraction.
And I’m not sure what to do about it.

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The biblical adage you reap what you sow has consequences, both in real life and in fiction. For women, you reap what you sow can have even steeper consequences and the adage is so deeply ingrained in the psyche of the masses, it will probably never be erased.

We don’t like whores, either in fiction or in reality. In fiction, the whore may be the slutty best friend or the scheming other woman but she is almost never the heroine. In real life, the whore has almost no recourse to address any real wrongs that might have happened.

No where is this a bigger problem than in the issue of rape. When we talk about rape, we talk about attackers and victims and this language muddies the waters in the minds of both men and women, because they call up images of masked men jumping out of bushes and dragging helpless women away by their hair. The reality of rapes is that they happen between people who have interacted together, maybe even live together in college dorms, apartment buildings or military barracks and they almost always involve alcohol.

Therein lies the problem. Because these assaults involve alcohol, it automatically falls on the woman to defend her choice to go out drinking, something that only ‘bad girls’ do. How many historical romance novels have you read where the hero is in a bar and wrongly assumes the heroine is a tavern wench. A fun misunderstanding ensues, but the overall message is still relatively consistent: tavern wench = good time, not good girl. Good girls don’t go to bars and they damn sure don’t get drunk. If they do get drunk, well, then whatever happens to them happens. They made the choice to go out drinking and therefore put themselves at risk.

The problem with this societal norm is that when we don’t teach our sons that it is not okay to go out trolling for drunk chicks to take home, we leave them vulnerable to the messages on MTVs Real World and Jersey Shore that drunk chicks are fun to take home. We don’t teach them about the risks of such behavior nor do we teach them about the morality of making such a choice and it’s a dirty little secret that yes, a guy will go home with you but he probably won’t date you if when he met you, he thought of you as an easy lay.

Romance novels have tackled this issue somewhat by beginning with a random encounter in a bar or a one night stand that turns out by the end of the book to have been the soul mate after all. Unfortunately, this is fiction not reality and women who have one night stands are often branded a whore and therefore un-marryable and un-defendable. How many prostitutes are killed and the police look the other way? How many girls got drunk, were raped and were told that, no you just changed your mind the morning after? Are these women not people, too? Or are they simply reaping what they sow? And can you really rape a prostitute? Legally and morally, no. But to the masses?

In order for us as a society to truly move forward, we must start with cultural change with the masses. Intelligentsia can sit in their ivory towers and argue that yes, a prostitute does have the same rights as a housewife, but until you can convince the masses of that, it is simply another platitude that has no impact on real life.

The fact that we cannot write a whore as a heroine in a romance novel speaks to a deeper truth in our society. Sexual immorality still equals credibility and worth no matter how much feminists try to tell us that our worth is not tied to our virginity or purity. One of the only whores I can think of in fiction who was not tarred and feathered because of her sexual appetites was Starbuck in the remake of Battlestar Galactica. She found true love and ran screaming and screwing in the other direction. Her character was complex but her worth as a pilot was not tied to her sexuality. A Starbuck, however, is much harder to write in a romance novel and even harder to find in reality. We as readers are unforgiving of our heroines and sins that we would forgive a hero for we still tend to crucify a heroine for. We as a society are even more unforgiving.

This is the exact problem we have when we talk about rape involving alcohol. Because the female was drunk, she surrendered her ‘good girl’ status and therefore deserved whatever she got. College campuses are a disgrace when it comes to treating women who come forward skeptically. But this stems from a deeper societal issue.

There are no easy answers for the whore versus housewife dichotomy that we still find ourselves in. Reality is not dictated by intelligentsia and no matter how much critical thinkers might decry the injustice, it will persist at the practical reality for most people. Reality will never reflect the utopian ideal of true equality for women. But that does not mean that we must continue to equate credibility with sexual morality, nor does it mean we have to continue to kill the whore in our fiction.

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