Sinners & Stardust

So recently, a dark romance book con took place called Sinners & Stardust. It was like a ball and a book signing combined into one, celebrating dark romance (you know, the genre all about grape, Stockholm syndrome, stalking, and kidnapping of some delicate, helpless girl by some tall, macho, alpha, masked biker-mafia leader). Things got really bad. Many guys there were SA’ed and groped, and people were being indecent in public. I even heard someone wore a strap-on and others would suck it and the like. It was supposedly so bad that even the author of Haunting Adeline (you know, that problematic, over-the-top book?)—yeah, even she—called it out. She had brought a male friend to the event, and he was touched all over in every way by so many women. He was asked about his hotel, and he lied about which one he was staying in, only to later return to his real one and realize someone had actually put a tracker on him. Other guys at the con faced similar things, being harassed, and even some who had accompanied their wives or girlfriends were hit on, asked uncomfortable questions, and touched.

It made me remember that these women have done similar things in the past. Like harassing a married hockey player. And that one time where they all kept recommending an explicit book to a 16 year old boy and kept hitting on him.

It just made me realize that fiction, in the wrong hands, can very well translate into reality. Like, if we keep pardoning it, then people are bound to feel that it may be okay because no one is calling them out on it. Kind of scary...

What do you guys think?