My current headache is the compartmentalization in the romance field itself, and how many times the authors/readers in one subgenre look down upon other subgenres. Silly me, I thought it was all Team Romance.
But while you may feel you're just pretending that you're an artist, there's no way to pretend you're making art. Go ahead, try writing a story while pretending you're writing a story. Not possible. Your work may not be what curators want to exhibit or publishers want to publish, but those are different issues entirely.
I've heard people say things like this as well, and I couldn't agree less.
To me, romance is one of the most challenging genres to write (besides horror) because romance is something most of us experience at some points in our lives, and we all experience it differently, making it challenging to write it in a way that many people can relate to.
Romance is complex and deeply emotional. I think a lot of people hold romance as this sort of mystical thing that can't be understood, only experienced, so they can't see how it can be captured in writing.
Same deal with erotica.
But romance is absolutely real writing.