Lesbian Romantasy: Why She-Ra Gets It Right (and Disenchantment Mostly Doesn't)

And yet only one of them feels structurally aligned with what lesbian romantasy does best.

She-Ra: Basically Lesbian Romantasy in Animated Form

From a feminist and bisexual perspective, She-Ra plays almost exactly like a high-quality lesbian romantasy novel - just without the explicit sex scenes.

Scholars and critics have repeatedly pointed out that She-Ra constructs a queer-normative world, not a straight one with queer “exceptions”. That distinction matters.

Why She-Ra Works Like Lesbian Romantasy

1. The Romance Is Structurally Central

Adora and Catra's relationship isn't decorative. It drives the plot. Their emotional history shapes wars, alliances, and character arcs. This mirrors lesbian romantasy novels where the love story reshapes the entire world, not just the ending.

2. Power Is Negotiated, Not Gendered

No automatic protector/protected dynamic. No masculine dominance standing in for erotic tension. When characters hurt each other, the narrative interrogates it instead of romanticizing it.

3. Trauma Isn't Sexy - It's Consequential

Catra's cruelty isn't framed as "hot because damaged." It's treated as harmful, and redemption requires accountability. That's something lesbian romantasy often does better than straight romantasy, which frequently eroticizes male emotional violence.

Critics have noted that She-Ra treats queerness not as subtext or novelty, but as infrastructure - it's baked into the worldbuilding itself.

In other words: this is what lesbian romantasy looks like when it's done right.

Disenchantment: Feminist Aesthetics, Patriarchal Engine

Now let's talk about Disenchantment. And why it sucks in comparison... Is it funny? Yes. But it has issues.

On paper, Princess Bean should be a feminist icon. She drinks, rebels, rejects marriage, and mocks tradition. Some critics have praised the show's attempt to blend romance and adventure.

But structurally? Disenchantment behaves much more like heterosexual romantasy at its weakest.

Where Disenchantment Falls Short

1. Romance Never Rewrites the World

Bean's relationships - queer or straight - don't meaningfully transform the political or social order. Romance exists alongside the plot, not within it.

2. Power Structures Stay Intact

Monarchy remains largely unquestioned. Class critique is shallow. Bean's rebellion is aesthetic rather than systemic, a problem critics have repeatedly flagged.

3. Queerness Is Additive, Not Foundational

While Disenchantment includes queer moments and characters, they don't restructure how power, inheritance, or desire function in the world. Compare that to lesbian romantasy, where same-sex love forces the fantasy logic to adapt.

From a bisexual feminist perspective, this difference is glaring. Disenchantment gestures toward liberation, but it never escapes the gravity of patriarchal storytelling.

Lesbian Romantasy Novels vs. These Two Shows

When you compare lesbian romantasy books to these series, a pattern emerges:

Plot Element	Lesbian Romantasy	She-Ra	Disenchantment
Gendered power scripts	Actively dismantled	Dismantled	Mostly intact
Romance impact on world	World-altering	World-altering	Minimal
Dominance eroticized?	Rarely	No	Occasionally
Queerness	Structural	Structural	Supplemental

This is why many feminist readers intuitively group She-Ra with lesbian romantasy, even though one is a children's cartoon (or Young Adult) and the other is often considered to be a fantasy meant for adults.

A Bisexual Perspective on Why This Matters

As a bisexual reader, I don't experience lesbian romantasy as exclusionary. I experience it as clarifying.

It shows what happens when fantasy romance stops orbiting men entirely:

She-Ra demonstrates this visually and emotionally. Disenchantment demonstrates how hard it is to achieve the same effect while keeping patriarchal fantasy scaffolding in place.

Regardless of whether you like Romantasy, or hate it, this doesn't change the fact that many men definitely hate it.

There's a familiar sneer that shows up anytime romantasy is mentioned in certain fantasy spaces - forums, Reddit threads, YouTube comments, even book reviews:

None of this is accidental. From a feminist perspective, male disdain for romantasy isn't about quality - it's about control.

Fantasy has long been treated as male cultural property, and romantasy threatens that ownership in ways men find deeply uncomfortable. Fantasy was canonized through male-centered works like "The Lord of the Rings", where emotion and romance were secondary to masculine heroism. Romantasy breaks that mold by centering relationships, interior lives, and desire - often written by and for women.

That shift threatens male dominance over the genre, and it provokes male backlash for the following reasons:

It isn't written for men. Emotional focus gets mislabeled as "bad writing."

It exposes male fantasy as preference, not default. Lone heroes and domination aren't universal ideals.

It removes male centrality. Especially in queer and lesbian romantasy, men aren't the heroes, prizes, or audience.

"Trash" becomes a gendered insult. Romance, YA, and fanfiction - women-dominated spaces within bookstores - are routinely dismissed wholesale, while badly written epic fantasy is forgiven because it reinforces patriarchal belief structures. Some men, the gatekeepers, essentially don't want to share space in fantasy bookstores with women because they're afraid that women will take over the space and dominate it.