No, Spicy Books Aren’t Destroying BookTok: Romance, Censorship, and Policing Women’s Sexuality

CW: Rape culture, rape, sexual assault, reproductive freedom, MAGA hats, famous pickmes, and domestic abuse.

Every three to six months, the savior of the Book community gets on their soapbox and denounces spicy books for being the degradation of BookTok and the book community as a whole. There is no time or need for nuance. All you have to do to make things right is to stick to “clean books” and not give in to your clear porn addiction.

And then the book community will tear each other apart because they don’t see the bigger issues here. This is not clearly one hot bad hot take, but it’s a conscious effort to bring down romance and erotica and to control women’s sexuality because of the Heritage Foundation and the cis-White men who are terrified at the continuing decline of the birth rate. Why are they scared about the birth rate? Well, fewer white babies today means fewer white adults in the future to vote Republican and keep them in power.

They don’t want to vote for maternity leave, better healthcare, or social safety nets to help birthing people feel more comfortable having babies. Instead, they want to drag white women and white birthing people as a whole, kicking and screaming, back to the 1950s. The dismantling of Roe vs. Wade, the increase in book banning and censorship, and the focus on bringing Americans back to the nuclear family are all connected.

And one of the biggest threats is that birthing people are no longer settling for the bare minimum. There are talks, especially among white cis women, about the lack of emotional intelligence, weaponized incompetence, and the inequality when it comes to both household and emotional labor. This is why Republicans in every state are going after no-fault divorce because they want women to be forced to not only be in marriages that do not serve them, but they also want you to birth a load of kids with zero escape. Just like your great-grandmothers and your grandmothers were forced to. There is a reason why Meemaw had ten kids back in the day.

Every day, a birthing place is holding a mirror up to their relationships that society has told them is the pinnacle of the human experience, and realizing that love is not enough. And one of those biggest mirrors has always been romance books and erotica books. Romance books in particular show birthing people that there are men out there who will not only break your back but will respect you and love you in the morning. And in a world that wants birthing people to accept the bare minimum so they can spit out babies, romance books are a clear threat.

This is why the constant discourse of “clean” vs. “filthy books” and the increase in calls from people in the book community calling for “clean books” are playing right into the hands of the Christofacists who want control over birthing people’s bodies.

But let me back up here and break down exactly what Christofascism and purity culture are and why the anti-smut discourse is a clear method for the right wing to infiltrate our book communities to destroy sexually explicit content.

What is Christofascism?

According to Wikipedia, Christofascism, or Christian Fascism, is:

Christian fascism is a religious and political philosophy that blends Christianity with fascism, endorsing violence, authoritarian rule, and the regeneration of society on the basis of the Bible and its teachings. Christian fascists advocate for the establishment of the authority of religion and morals in the personal, social, and political life of the people of a nation. A nationalist movement asserts the superiority of a specific culture, nation, or ethnic group as possessing a status of chosen people. Christian fascism is generally characterized by its support for a dictatorial leadership and the subordination of the individual to the power of the state, seen as the main enforcer of biblical law.

And if that sounds like what we are currently experiencing during Trump’s second administration? You would be correct. These people want to create a country that ignores that America has always been a melting pot of different religions and cultures. They want to create a religious and cultural homogeneity by stripping marginalized people and birthing people of their rights.

In my opinion, there is very little difference or separation between the Nazis during the Third Reich and Christian Fascists today. Actually, quite a few neo-Nazis are Trump supporters, such as Nick Fuentes (an infamous Holocaust denier), David Duke (former leader of the Ku Klux Klan), and Richard Spencer (a proud neo-Nazi).

This is what your modern day Christofacist looks like.

 What is Purity Culture?

According to Wikipedia, Purity Culture is:

Purity culture places a strong emphasis on abstinence from sexual intercourse before marriage. Women and girls are told to cover up and dress modestly to avoid arousing sexual urges in men and boys. Purity culture also emphasizes traditional gender roles. Casual dating is discouraged entirely to avoid premarital sex. Purity cultures establish comprehensive moral systems in which sexual behavior is closely tied to spiritual identity, gender roles, and communal belonging. They can result in sexual violence that is characterized by the imposition of rigid and often unrealistic standards on individuals, often resulting in adverse physical, emotional, and psychological consequences for those who do not conform to these expectations.

And that is only the basics of Purity Culture. This was the shit that people like Focus On the Family, the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), Jerry Falwell, and Silver Ring Thing were pumping out in the 80s and 90s. If you lived in a Republican-run state that only gave you abstinence-only sex education as a kid? You have white evangelists to thank for that.

It only gets worse from there. These are the people who love to use rape culture against victims of sexual assault, who are running LGBT conversion camps, who probably, as we speak, are terrorizing abortion providers, and who are lobbying against your reproductive rights. They believe that the world has a pornography problem (this is why the talk about porn addiction amongst these groups is so high), and they believe that sex should only be between a man and a woman and that sex should be only for reproduction rights.

The Pick-Mess

According to Merriam-Webster:

“pick-me” (or “pick me”) is a slang term for a person, usually a young woman, seen as behaving in a contemptible way for attention and approval, usually from male peers. It is most often used in the expression “pick-me girl,” which disparages a young woman who is seen as faking interest in stereotypically male activities or conforming to traditional values at the expense of other women. It is also used in “pick-me boy,” referring to a young man who feigns emotional vulnerability to win the attention of women. More generally, “pick-me” can refer to anyone thought to be trying too hard to earn acceptance.

Now, let’s talk about a Pick-Me and why we seem to have an influx of them in the book community lately. Pick-me people are people who literally want to be accepted by their oppressors so badly that they are willing to throw the people who suffer from the same type of oppression for a pat on the back from their oppressors. The biggest example of a pick-me would be Pearl Davis, the way that she will uplift rape culture, misogyny, and racism in order to get a pat on the back.

Right-wing influencer and premium pick-me Pearl Davis.

Putting Pick Me and Christofacism Together

Pick-mes and Christofacisms are literally one and the same. They are living ‘biblically,‘ they are saying the right things, wearing the right clothes, and will happily make reels or TikToks talking about the porn addiction in the book community. Now, before I continue, I will say there is a bit of a problem with hypersexuality and objectification in this space. But the answer to that is not “clean romance.”

Romances that are not about having closed-door experiences between characters. That is fine, and I have personally enjoyed those types of romances in the past. No, this is about people (in this case, pick-me) who think that sex is dirty and that we should ban romance and erotica books that have explicit sex.

They are not talking about a personal preference here. These romance pick-me-ups are out here doing the work Project 2025 wanted them to do. They want to take away any avenue in which a birthing person can examine their own desires and sexuality. They want birthing people to not know that they deserve better than the bare minimum some dusty-ass man can give them.

Why You Are Never Going to Be Picked

There are a lot of romance readers and romance authors who believe that the ongoing book censorship that is going on is not going to affect them but what they don’t know is that there has been a wave of obscenity laws we haven’t seen since the 1970s that cover romance books.

The most famous one was Oklahoma’s SB593 laws, which was so bad the Authors Guild was actually concerned about it. And just because your closed-door romance does not have sex does not mean that those books are not on the chopping block. Romance as a whole is a threat to the Christofascist right because it challenges the idea that birthing people only exist to be parents and spouses. This was never about sex; in the end, it’s all about control. It’s about control over birthing people’s bodies and over their freedom, and by you clutching your pearls on a TikTok, you are only perpetuating Project 2025’s Christofascist agenda.

No matter how hard you try, you will never be picked.

Why Sex Is Not Bad

And let’s talk about the elephant in the room. I often see on social media people within the book community talking about how they are not anti-sex or anti-smut, but they think that every sex scene should have a reason for being there. That plot, what? Plot stories are ridiculous and should go away.

I hate to be the one to tell you that you are also being a pick-me. Choosing how much people (or in this case characters) have sex is straight-up purity culture. How about instead of demanding that we erase stories that have gratuitous sex, we instead curate our own experiences? Because every time you clutch your pearls about smut? You are helping the Heritage Foundation push their agenda.

Also, let’s talk about the porn addiction thing. Porn addiction is a made-up thing that does not exist and is not even considered a formal diagnosis among psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Evangelicals created the whole porn addiction thing as a way to fear-monger about sex and masturbation.

Again, does the book community have a problem with hypersexuality that often leads to objectification and fetishization of certain marginalized people? Yes, but the answer to that is not a ban on sex. The answer is respect and more boundaries. I need people to stop conflating the two and to really look at this situation with the nuance and the care that it needs.

Romance and erotica books do not exist in a political vacuum.

In conclusion

Instead of screaming at each other about what is allowed and what shouldn’t be allowed. We should recognize that romance and erotica books do not exist in a vacuum. For all those certain sections of BookTok who love to pretend that reading is not political? The truth of the matter is that it has always been political, and those politics matter now more than ever.

And now I leave it to you. I want to know what you think. What can we do better to stop Project 2025 in its tracks? Let me know down in the comments.