No, not because there are implied sex scenes and suggestive language - but because they make you feel CONNECTED and ATTRACTED to the characters. In fact, they refer to it as "emotional gooning."
Ugh, I could not get Andrew Briggs out of my recommended reels fast enough for this. He kept saying that romance novels and smut for women was just female gooning and had zero difference from porn and a porn addiction, and anyone in the comments arguing otherwise got tardraged away with the usual "gooner detected" "sounds like this touched a nerve" etc.
PornHub was exposed for its staff surreptitiously boosting videos that they knew to be CP. "Barely legal" is always one of the most viewed tags, along with petite, stepdaughter, daughter's friend, babysitter, etc. As soon as you have internet access you can easily look up pain porn, women crying while choking and getting anal, petite BBL gang bang, rape play, etc. You have teenage girls reporting in horror that their very first boyfriends are insisting on anal and slapping. Men post videos of their disgust at their wife's postpartum bodies because they're so used to the bodies of pornstars. Redditors call their gfs dead starfish prudes if they don't want daily hardcore sex.
What does fantasy smut or otome games do, exactly? They may not always be well-written, and yes the "bad boy" trope is everywhere (though always hinging on turning him into a softie) but most of the time the fantasy is not hardcore or borderline illegal content but a partner who is interesting, handsome, protective, romantic, and involved. Never will you find a love interest who spends all day jacking off to exactly-18-years-and-zero-days-old porn, refusing to wash dishes, or ripping ass on the couch while refusing to wash his ass or trim his beard.
Moreover, there are plenty of videos about guys trying out smut lines or actions irl and the gfs just giggle and can't take it seriously, preferring their IRL selves. Not so for men who break up or cheat or have death grips because they are so fucking pornsick they can't function normally.
"B-but girls can read smut at the gym on the treadmill! Imagine if muh role reversal!" lol and? Guys jerk off in their offices at work, in the bathroom, the gym showers. You had a guy exposer on camera for jerking off under a towel while filming a girl lifting weights just a few feet away and I just scrolled past a video of a pajeet bricked up staring laviciously at a 14-year-old on the train because her knees were showing.
Most men see literally nothing to learn from female-targeted romance by tearing it down as being unrealistic faggotry, women cannot do the same in return because they've been conditioned from an early age to BE the fantasy, though since men fetishize tomboys, bimbos, stud lesbians, goths, redheads, nerdettes, Catholic school girls, whatever, they didn't even have to really try.