The Twilight Saga has gained a lot of infamy to the point of being nearly iconic of a bad book, just short of the book that was almost Twilight fanfiction, 50 shades of Gray.
There are legitimate problems with the book, which I'll address. If you like it while acknowledging those flaws, go ahead. You not liking the book is not the point of this blog. The point is to shed some light on some history about the books.
First, the book did not start a vampire craze or change vampires to something sexual they never were before. Vampires have always been sexual predators when they were called Vrykolak (spelling may vary depending on your resource for research), from the Romanian/Romani mythology. This, along with a rash of mysterious attacks reported in a newspaper in the 1600's where the terms 'vampire' was first used, along with two similar books published before it, were all the cumulative inspiration for the famous Dracula.
In that book, which scholars say was the beginning of mainstream vampire novels, Dracula seduced several women, convincing nearly all of them into pre-marital sex before killing them. Most film versions, from those trying to stay true to the book, to expansions, to spoofs kept the sexuality and made it a prominent part of the movie
Twilight didn't bring vampires to worrying about what they were or wanting to stick it to beautiful women, either. That honor goes to Anne Rice of the Vampire Chronicles fame (and much infamy) and the Carpathians romance series.
Here's where things get tricky, and for several reasons. The Twilight Saga did and did not do something new, and it's one of he more legitimate complaints against those who hate the series. Decades ago, fantasy short stories were all over magazines. Dungeons and Dragons didn't exist, computers games were all text and one color, and the genre was proud to be a 'No-Girls-Allowed' club. Sadly, this defined fantasy and still does today; nearly every story was blatant wish-fulfillment. While there was nothing wrong with escapism, these stories had a fierce male-empowerment edge, granting men voluptuous women who sought after nothing more than his muscles and what lay beneath his loincloth.
To this day, these stories and attitudes are what generate the sexism found throughout geekdom and nerddom. Men should be granted titles, men should be ornaments while weak men are those who don't conform to a testosterone-filled heterosexual ideal and strong women really just want to ride a man's maypole and will instantly become submissive to the might of one afterward.
The relevance to the Twilight Saga is only obvious when one considers the story if the genders of the main characters are switched. Bella, the man, is perfect, loved by all, highly skilled while aloof in being learned and deep. He is torn between two women, Edward and Jacob. The first is very proper, but refuses sexual congress despite wanting it so much due Bella's good looks, skills, depth, and aloofness, for he is afraid on the consequences and what his family would think. The second is a wild woman, a child of nature and magic, whose free spirit entices Bella. The villain is jealous of how so many are drawn to Bella's attractiveness, and he uses both women to his gain with promises of sex and love, making not only them, but many others willing to die to protect him.
This is stick archaic fantasy, but now catered to women, but with the same male empowerment. The ones who recognize this have the most legitimate complaint without seeing the history, merely the symptom of it. For both those who look at the past and those who don't want a future spawning from the flaws of this book, the major question is the same: what if a woman threatened suicide after physically striking a man hard enough to make him bleed?
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