Why do so many male demographic romance stories include rape victims?

Sorry, I just need to vent about smut and this is the best place I know where to do it. I recently noticed this trend where like 3 out of 4 of every cutesy, slow burn romances that I read (with a male target demographic) include a female rape victim as either the main heroine or one of the main harem members (assuming it's a harem story). They always wait until you've already spent several, or even dozens of hours reading the story to give you the warning too, as a header right on the chapter where it's revealed. They rarely use the rape tag either, since I guess technically it happened before the events of the story. I get that they are using it as a plot device so they want it to be a narrative surprise, but that is not something that a lot of people want to be surprised by.

For context, rape is not something I can tolerate in long running romance stories. Once it's revealed, it always leaves my mental state in shambles for weeks (or in one instance months) after reading it, to the same extreme as the first time I accidently read NTR. I have probably wasted 150 hours at this point reading anywhere between 30-100 chapters of long running romances on this site that I get really emotionally invested in, just to have to immediately drop them because the author throws a rape plot twist in right as the protag is about to sleep with one of his romantic interests who I've developed an attachment to over the course of weeks of off and on reading.

It isn't something the readers like either, I'm not the only one who feels this way. Every single story I have ever read that did this saw an immediate plummet of views and likes immediately after the rape backstory reveal. They always lose between a quarter and half of their audience everytime they do it, but I keep seeing these stories pop up regardless. Why is dating a rape victim such a popular fantasy among male romance authors on this site? Male demographic, slowburn romance stories are so few and far between, as most guys just prefer sexual imagery over erotica, so it always sucks when I finally find a needle in the haystack story like that, only for it to end up doing the same rape victim drama. Slowburn romances are my favorite genre of erotica to read by far, no other genre comes close to how rewarding the payoff is, but the authors of those stories seem intent on alienating giant chunks of their audience halfway through the plot almost every time and it pisses me off that I rarely ever get to finish a story that I like because of this shit.

Sorry if you read all that. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

 

There's something attractive about the notion of being someone's saviour. It's not exactly a healthy dynamic, but in fiction you can more easily gloss over the problematic aspects of things you wouldn't want to see happen in real life.

See also fridging.

As for the rape tag, I'd argue that should refer to rape happening in the story. If a character merely goes "I was raped, so I have trouble trusting potential lovers, please give me time", that's not enough to warrant the tag. But if they tell their story in detail, then it is. Imo, anyway.

 

I understand the whole savior complex thing, I really like those types of stories myself, but why does it almost always have to be specifically rape trauma that the protag is trying to help the girl overcome? I swear it's a fetish at this point. They could have made the love interest a victim of an abusive family, a widow who lost her partner suddenly and tragically and thought she'd never love again, a poor and beaten thief struggling to survive in the slums and keep her younger siblings fed, or even the last survivor of a pillaged or plagued village who has nothing left to live for. Why is it that the vast majority of the time they choose rape victim despite knowing how controversial and triggering that topic can be? There are so many way better options to fulfill the savior complex that won't result in them losing readers in masse, so why do they so often choose the option that causes them to lose readers in masse? Is it just a trend or a fetish or what?

 

Oh, it's definitely a fetish! Sorry, was there any doubt of that?