Do Omegaverse Dynamics Promote Toxic Relationships?

Recently, I was reminded of a screencap of a conversation that supposedly happened. When I saw it, all I could think was ah, the straights got a hold of the omegaverse.

In this screencap, the texter was discussing their partner’s admission that they liked and read omegaverse fiction. The texter was sending a lengthy rumination on this revelation.

The long and short of it was that this person felt uncomfortable with their partner’s professed love of omegaverse fiction. Their discomfort was founded on some, shall we say, surface-level understanding of the trope.

At the same point in time, their misgivings aren’t necessarily unfounded. Omegaverse, on the surface, often does look like a trope founded on oppression, sexual violence and control, and rape and abuse.

The problem here is that this person was automatically assuming that omegaverse dynamics glorify this kind of thing. And this is where I blame cishet folks: in some cases, some books do glorify this subject matter.

Yet that isn’t what all omegaverse books are about. In fact, if you look at the trope when it’s invoked by queer folks, it’s often a lot more nuanced than that.

Do Omegaverse Dynamics Glorify Oppression and SA?

The text post contained the texter’s initial impressions of omegaverse. In their post, they indicated that they thought omegaverse was all about non-consensual sex, ultimately glorifying sexual assault, abuse, and rape. They said the trope made them uncomfortable. Why would someone like to read this stuff, unless they were a walking red flag?

I’d argue that omegaverse dynamics can certainly seem to glorify situations where non-con is par for the course. And I’ve read plenty of works that explore precisely that idea. One of the very best omegaverse fanfics I’ve read in a long time featured an alpha who believed he “knew best” what a fiery omega character needed and mated that omega against his will.

This fic was a total mindfuck. The biological responses meant the omega character was effectually helpless against the alpha. The entire time, the alpha believed he was doing what was right for the omega character. Keep in mind that this wasn’t a romance. The story ended with the omega character exercising his own agency by starting an affair with another alpha.

I’m pointing out this fic because it’s a great example of how alpha-beta-omega dynamics loan themselves to this kind of dark, twisted narrative. Yet I’m also pointing out that this fic was not a romance. It was a look at how omegaverse dynamics, if they existed, could and would be abused.

Omegaverse Is a Reflection of Reality—Dialed Up to 11

Anyone who read that fic would likely point out that it was extremely fucked up. And it was. I enjoyed it, one because it was well-written, and two, because the author did a great job handling the nuance of the two characters’ conflicting ideas about how they should operate. The villain of the story was the alpha. Yet at no point did he believe or realize he was the villain. He saw himself as a sort of hero, “saving” the omega from a misguided existence that could only make him unhappy because it went against his nature as an omega.

That should sound familiar to anyone who has lived in this world as female for five minutes. There are plenty of “well-meaning” men out there who believe that today’s women are miserable because they’re not fulfilling their “natural biological drives.” If women just stopped chasing higher education, career advancement, and equality, everyone would be so much happier! It’s just nature, after all!

Omegaverse Sometimes Borders on Satirical

That’s the reality omegaverse is playing with. It takes the everyday, garden-variety sexism we encounter irl and dials it up to eleven. In doing so, it’s pointing out how utterly ridiculous, how heinous, these attitudes are.

Reading this fic should convert anyone to a feminist, is sort of what I’m saying here. Because the alpha is representative of a particular kind of masculine thinking, one that still permeates many cultures around the world. The omega’s ordeal in this fic is one that should resonate with a lot of women. Maybe we don’t have to worry about some guy biting our neck and bonding us to him forever after (or risk dying). But there are men out there who think that women are too emotional to be in charge of their lives. They need a big, strong man to make decisions for them.

Omegaverse takes these attitudes and dials them up, to the point that they could almost read as parody. Readers might encounter something like this fic and say, “There’s no way someone could actually think like that.” It’s unbelievable. It’s practically satirical.

Omegaverse Authors Are Often Deriding Rape Culture

I also acknowledge that the poster in the screenshot is, to some degree, stating what they see. They see a genre full of big, cocky alphas telling omegas that they know what they need. That kind of set up seems like a breeding ground for SA and rape fantasies, doesn’t it?

Yet in most of the stories I’ve read, the narrative wants us to root for the omega. It’s almost a little cliche—there’s always the omega who “isn’t like the others,” just like a YA novel heroine. The omega who doesn’t want kids, or the one who’s nerdy and wants to study, or the one that is a bit of a “tomboy.”

In this sense, omega characters often become stand-ins for women or other feminized characters.

These are compelling stories for a lot of readers. And they’re doing virtually the opposite of glorifying rape culture, even when they go to dark places. They are, more often, a critique of rape culture and the social attitudes and beliefs that inform it. Omegas are often treated as though they’re inferior. They’re often discussed as not being capable of making decisions or knowing what’s good for them. Alphas need to be their protectors.

All of that should smack of infantilization—which is precisely what happens in so many cisgender, heterosexual relationships. Our culture infantilizes women. We may not be as bad as the Victorians were. After all, they figured women couldn’t go to school and keep learning, or their womb and ovaries would shrivel up because the brain needed all the blood to think. Attitudes through the early twentieth century also suggested women shouldn’t be involved in sports, because it could hurt their reproductive systems. (Hm. Sensing a theme here.)

Victorian Attitudes Are Still in the Room with Us

We still infantilize women. Ever heard someone say a woman is too emotional? What they mean is she’s not “thinking logically” (like a man) and therefore her thoughts on the subject aren’t valid. Because her itty-bitty brain can’t possibly process rationality. It’s the modern version of “don’t think, darling.”

What about our disdain for women’s sports? That’s still rooted in the same sexist ideas. Women should be dainty and demure, not physically fit and muscular or powerful. We might not come out and say, “Oh, boy, she’s hurting her chances at having a baby by doing all those sports!”, but the implication is that feminine women don’t do that. Masculine women, maybe, but then, they’re too butch to be having babies. The idea that doing sports makes you less of a woman and more of a man is alive and well.

Even the idea that girls are bad at math is infantilizing. Math is logical and rational, and girls are supposedly not, ergo women must suck at math!

Once you start looking, it’s not precisely subtle. And this sexism, these beliefs, are used to exercise control over women and oppress them. And that, in turn, parallels what we see in the omegaverse.

So, in a lot of ways, if omegaverse contains a lot of SA and non-con and rape and so on? It’s just reflecting daily life for about fifty-one percent of the human population. And, as I said, the narratives often work to convince us this is wrong. Omegas shouldn’t face these circumstances. They should have equal rights! They should be allowed to study what they want and live their own lives, and “well-meaning” alphas should just butt right out.

If Omegaverse Dynamics Make You Uncomfortable, Straight Romance Should Too

Another thing I want to point out here is that if, like this poster, omegaverse makes you uncomfortable because of these “alpha male” characters stomping all over the agency of the omega characters, then almost all straight M/F romance should make you uncomfortable.

Just like omegaverse dynamics are real-life sexism on steroids, so too is omegaverse a mockery of the kinds of dynamics we see playing out in so many cishet romance novels. These books often contain incredibly toxic relationships, “alpha” males, and women who swoon over having their agency taken away because some guy with a magical dick makes her see stars.
Unfortunately, a lot of these novels—contemporary and otherwise—play this (excuse the pun) straight. They don’t see the “alpha male” behavior of their male leads as toxic or problematic. Instead, it’s presented as incredibly romantic. And while it’s fine for someone to be into that, there is absolutely no self-reflection on why or how the female MC finds this kind of treatment acceptable, let alone romantic.

Then we translate that into omegaverse. People writing cishet romances have taken a fundamentally queer trope that questions gender, identity, and gender roles in society, one that basically satirizes that stereotypical “me alpha, that my woman” type of het relationship. And they just kind of ported it back over to M/F with zero critical thinking.

Of Course M/F Omegaverse Is Toxic

Not that this is unexpected. As I noted, the vast majority of heterosexual romances don’t interrogate the relationship on the page in any capacity. We are simply told it’s hot for men to act this way. Over and over again.

So, yeah, when the straights got a hold of the world-building trope that takes that toxic male, the literal alpha, and dials it up to eleven, they absolutely ended up creating a body of work that effectively glorifies and romanticizes abusive relationships, SA, and rape.

That should not surprise anyone. It should disappoint us, sure. But it’s not surprising.

The Shortcoming of Omegaverse Is Something Different

The actual problem with omegaverse dynamics—especially when it’s in the hands of queer writers—is that, all too often, it ends up taking the side of nature in the great debate.

That’s partly the fault of folks demanding porn, and trust me, I get it. Spicy stories sell. There’s a reason so many, many fanworks are rated E for “explicit” over on AO3.

But the issue here is the message this imparts to readers. When an omega fights tooth and claw against the establishment, only to succumb to a heat episode and end up bonded, bound, and pregnant, it suggests that nature will always win out. People will always be reduced to their biology.

And that’s a troubling message, in part because so much sexism is rooted in biological argument. Women are thought to be more emotional because of their hormonal cycles. They’re thought to be kinder and more caring, to possess a maternal instinct and a love of children, because they’re mothers. And from there, we get arguments about women being the weaker sex, about having less prowess as athletes, as not being able to keep up with men, about their brains and their bodies not being able to handle higher learning or mathematics.

It’s just biological reality, don’tchaknow?

So when omegaverse shows us even the scrappiest of omegas being tamed, the message says that this kind of thinking is correct. Biology is inescapable.

If there’s anything science has truly shown us, it’s that biology isn’t set in stone. It’s a messy, messy field, much as nature itself is messy. And that, in turn, means that a whole wide range of things could be considered “biologically normal.” Trying to lump people into neat little boxes doesn’t usually work very well, because it’s reductive.

So, It’s Not All Wolf-Porn and Non-Con Fantasies?

Nope. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be. And I’m not saying every M/F omegaverse is bad or every queer version is oh-so-deep. That’s untrue. There are shallow queer omegaverse books. There are probably good M/F omegaverse books that dig a little deeper and do a little more reflecting.

But the long and short of this is that if you look at omegaverse and cringe, you probably need to a) find some different books, and b) analyze your relationship to romance novels as a whole. Because, at the end of the day, a lot of them—particularly the het variety—are all glorifying and romanticizing some pretty toxic “alpha male” behavior.