On rakish heroes and faithful heroines

Something that might be jarring in romance novels (and this is purely preferential) - sex scenes, or at least sexually-charged ones, between the hero and another woman. This is usually to showcase the hero's rakishness, or if he isn't a rake, his sexual prowess and desirability as a mate, or something. I don't know. I also think it's an acknowledgement of the fact that lust is not love. That's alright, it's not, and showing just why things are different with the heroine is part of the journey. 

And then it hit me. I have never seen a heroine portrayed the same way.* And by that I mean, in a sexually-charged scene with a man other than the hero. You might say it is because I read mostly historicals, and (unmarried) women of times past are understandably constrained in their sexuality. But I'm not even talking about acting on it, I'm talking about sexual attraction, straight up. I find it unrealistic that these women with (almost always) repressed/unawakened passionate natures have some sort of lock to said nature, for which only The One (hero) has the key, and that all previous attempts to pick it by Not The One's have been bungled because...well, they are not the ones.

But it's romaaantic that way! Really? I didn't think it romantic to depict the hero with some other woman mere pages away from his meet-cute with the heroine, but I understood that these things happened. Also, sexual attraction is not love. I find it incredible that we can recognize that in the hero, but not in the heroine. If a heroine, on the first page, walks into a roomful of strangers and her sensual senses alight on a particular man, then the reader knows he is to be our hero, no question. Apparently the heroine's sex-o-meter is also a love compass. Every other man, even when observed to be attractive, is usually tagged with a but-in-an-aesthetic-way! qualification, thus stripping him of his sexuality (in the heroine's eyes anyway). 

I honestly don't get the reluctance to allow romance heroines to fall in lust (however briefly) with men other than the hero. It happens, yo. This brings me back to the theory of the heroine's love-sex compass (with North pointing to Love of My Life and South to Sex Me Up Now). What bothers me, is that it is built on the assumption of the tired old stereotype that women are incapable of separating love from lust but men do it all the time. Which is complete and utter bullshit.

So blahblahblah deeply entrenched double standards in romance genre blahblah okay this post seemed more well thought-out in my head. And more coherent too. My apologies. Blame it on the time of the year.

I need to find some new authors.


*Edit: Upon reflection, I can think of a few, but probably on one hand.