The Term "Clean Romance" Isn't Helpful for Anyone, Here's Why

If you have written or edited fiction, you have seen a lot of discussions about the romance genre. Discussions about queer relationships, toxic relationships, rushed or underdeveloped relationships, and others. One of the most popular discussions is about "clean romance," which basically means non-sexually explicit romance. But is that a good way to call it? is this term detrimental in any way to the author and the work itself? what would be a better approach for writers? Let's get into it:

First off, a writer is free to include as many sexually explicit scenes in their work as they want. Maybe they want a sexually explicit scene per chapter, maybe they don't want anything explicit in their work at all, and that's okay. However, a term like "clean romance" is useless for writers, editors and readers because of these 3 reasons:

-"Clean romance" implies that sexual acts are "dirty romance" and no sexual act is dirty. Calling explicit scenes "dirty" only promotes the idea that sex is dirty, which is wrong. It's a natural thing (some) humans decide to partake in. Sex and other sexual acts being "dirty" is a myth promoted by conservative people who are not educated in sexual education.

-The concept of "explicit" can vary from person to person. Let's say a writer takes their "clean romance" manuscript to a publisher, only for their agent to say characters making out is "too explicit" for a "clean romance" book and tells the writer to rewrite it. This may happen multiple times with different people because everyone has a different idea of what is sexually explicit, and "clean romance" doesn't offer any clear parameters.

-This is mostly about queer romantic stories (which could have its own blog post) but "clean romance" is specially damaging to queer romance stories since the idea that queer sexual activities are "dirty" is a myth that hasn't disappeared yet. People fight and advocate for the truth every day, and people promoting queer books with no same-sex explicit sexual acts as "clean" just adds to fire to the myth.

Because of these reasons, I think the term is detrimental to a writer and their manuscripts. It does not help the writer who wants to limit explicit scenes in their work, it propagates a myth about sexuality, and it does not help the readers who (depending on their age and the type of media they are into) get used to the idea of "clean" and "dirty" romance, and start applying those terms to other media and real life situations.

So what can be done about this? What I recommend clients when they have specific ideas of how explicit they want to make their work is to think the age demographic they "want to aim at" and use it as a reference. For example, a book can be for adults but the writer is not comfortable writing sexually explicit scenes, so they decide to write those scenes as if the book was aimed to 12 to 15 year olds. It's not about the book suddenly turning into a book for young teenagers, it's about how explicitly the scene in question is described.

Of course, people will have different opinions about age demographic as well, but its a clearer way to reference the kind of scenes a writer is presenting. This makes it easier for the author to write, for their editor/agent to understand the writer's vision, and for the reader to expect what coming when it comes to explicit scenes.