#fandom misogyny

[lizzie-queenofmeigas]

Something something the Dance showing how much harm can a loud minority cause something something the Green stans being a loud minority sprouting misogynistic retoric.

[fancyfade]

I bring a real "many female characters also have these traits you love male characters for" and "many of your fave male characters have done the same things you hate female characters for" vibe to the conversation they female character haters don't enjoy

[gemsandjunk]

people love ignoring canon to a brainrotting degree until you ask them why they don’t give any attention to female/poc characters then they start crying and sobbing about how canon doesn’t give them anything to work with

[tategaminu]

[regicidal-optimism]

You've been reblogging more stuff about female characters getting ignored by fandoms recently and I would be really curious to hear your full views on the topic.

The thing is that... look. I get it. Many fandoms do not have very many women in their canon, many of those women are treated pretty poorly by the canon or aren't given as much depth as their male peers, and if you're at all picky the pickings are kind of slim (I would love to be a fan of c!Niki, if I were able to watch six-hour vods, which I am not). It is not wrong that most works with large fandoms are really, really sexist, and the problem is not just in the fanbase!

But come the fuck on. It is not an accident that the DSMP and the MCU and BNHA, all of which are vast-majority male and the female characters are treated terribly, are megafandoms, and Revolutionary Girl Utena is eligible for yuletide. It is not wrong that if you want to see more female-character-focused fanwork you should go to Sailor Moon and not The Untamed, but it is also kind of missing the point to say that and not look at the difference in size between those fandoms. People can say "it's because the male characters are so often more interesting and have more meaningful interactions," and like, sometimes that's even true, I will be the first to tell you that quackbur has more to it than tinarose, but please compare the Clint/Coulson tag to the Utena/Anthy tag and look me in the eye and tell me that's the only thing driving the trend. With a straight face.

And even more there's a thing where— so, I was a mod in the @ao3topshipsbracket bracket. And femslash ships, once they were in the bracket, did really well. Like, absurdly well, like 80% of the f/f ships entered got to the top 16, and the last one was against blackbonnet which was never gonna lose in round 1. You might notice something about that number, though, which is that there were only five of them entered total, because people love to vote for femslash but they absolutely will not write it. And they won't say anything about it either! I was watching the activity feed the entire tournament, and I can tell you, for all of the "let's go lesbians" that populated our notes, nobody would say anything that was actually about the specific characters who made up their ship. I learned a lot about Naruto fandom, modding that bracket; I still know nothing about CW Supergirl, because the only thing anyone would say about it is "it has women in it". Because women are interchangeable. Because women are avatars of Being A Good Feminist. Because clicking a button is easy, and actually thinking about any specific woman and her traits and her internality is hard.

The thing is that guilt over misogyny does not actually fix misogyny. It gets you a lot of people who vote for women in polls, and who say "he's like a woman to me" about their male faves but notably don't have any canonically female characters they talk about, and who say that the only thing they care about in a fic is if it has women in it but will not ever actually say anything about any specific woman, and who never shut up about yuri but apparently yuri is everything and anything except women who have feelings about one another.

I'm tired! I'm very tired. I want people to actually give a shit about specific women and their specific traits, which do not begin and end with "woman". And, also, to stop treating women exclusively as the wingmen, advice-givers, mom figures, and accessories of men.

[ghastlytofu]

don't trust ppl who say "idk i just Don't Like ANY female characters. they're bitchy and whiny and useless, unlike my collection of deep nuanced three-dimensional war criminal husbands :)"

[hollow-dweller]

i think it's time for fandom to accept that some AUs are simply A Bad Idea. your lilo and stitch au with two white dudes is a bad idea. your portrait of a lady on fire au with men is a bad idea. your encanto au with a white family is a bad idea. culture and gender and race *matter* in many source texts, and erasing or appropriating that in order to see your two favourite white guys hug is, you guessed it, a bad fucking idea.

[redwiccanrobin]

Interesting that women who like Zutara get accused of projecting themselves onto Katara but men who like Kataang never get accused of projecting onto Aang. Almost like women can’t like anything without people criticizing them for it.

[samaspic31]

"Fandom is just for fun/escapism" means there's no quality threshold to meet to be allowed to contribute, and it is generally a space to share a common love for something rather than spend time hating.

It does NOT mean "everyone gets to publicly say, write and draw absolutely anything and be free from criticism, nothing can possibly have ties to real life harmful ideas and reinforce them, nothing should be taken seriously, everyone turns their brain off and analyzing fan content is pointless", especially since that attitude will automatically allow bigoted content to flourish and will push marginalized people out of fan spaces, or at the very least make those spaces hostile and put them in a position where they have to argue with the bigots empowered by that attitude. If it’s escapism, then make it an escapism that’s accessible to most people, which means being mindful of the consequences of the content put out, or else you’re just creating more spaces minorities are excluded from

[pessimisticpigeonsworld]

Mad Queen Misogyny

All the mad queen Dany takes, from both D&D and the audience, are just plain misogyny. They are literally just repeats of common misogynistic ideas. D&D have given a few reasons for why they wrote the mad queen ending for Dany, and all of them are the same old misogynistic tropes of fantasy and mythology.

The Mad Queen:

I'm going to start this off by going into how the mad queen trope itself is rooted in misogyny. This is one of the oldest tropes in fantasy/fairytales. Whether it's Snow White's evil step mother or the Queen of Hearts, literature is riddled with mad queens.

The idea of the mad queen is informed by the desires of men to keep women out of power. Yes there are historical women who were horrible people and unstable when in power. However, those examples are not enough to justify the amount of times the trope occurs, especially since some of the examples occur after many stories have already been written (ie, Mary I and medieval fairytales). These fictional women were written as cautionary tales of what happens when a woman is placed in power.

By writing the mad queen Dany arc in GOT, D&D are perpetuating an old trope rather than "subverting" anything as they claim. The most powerful woman in the world turning out to be a war mongering and mass murdering tyrant isn't subversive in any way. The only reason it was surprising was because it came out of nowhere narratively.

ASOIAF fans who constantly try to justify this turn for Dany's book character are attempting to do the same thing D&D did. They want to employ an ancient trope to justify their dislike for her in name of being "subversive".

The Violent Woman:

A trope that stretches back all the way to the Ancient Greeks is that of the angry, homicidal woman in power. From Hera to Medea, the myths are full of women who commit atrocities simply because of anger. This trope isn't just about avenging a slight or retribution on the guilty; it's about a woman taking out her anger on innocent parties.

Daenerys has fallen into the role of the avenger many times throughout both the show and and book. She killed Mirri Maz Duur for the murder of her son and husband. She killed the Undying for attempting to trap/kill her. She kills Kraznys mo Nakloz and many other slavers for the atrocities they commit constantly on the people they enslaved.

In the show, she imprisoned Xaro Xhoan Daxos and Doreah in a vault for killing Irri and helping the warlocks steal her children. She killed the Khals who threatened to rape her. She kills the Tarleys for rebelling against the Tyrells, thus getting them killed, and refusing to bend the knee.

Every time Dany killed up until season eight, it was purely because those she killed harmed her or her allies/children. That is why none of her past kills justify her burning KL. The people of KL did nothing to her; it's not an established part of her character to harm innocents out of anger. She even outright condemns the killing of innocents in earlier seasons.

The inconsistencies show how D&D chose to blatantly ignore the complexities of Dany's character in favor of a sexist trope. They perpetuated the idea that a woman in power who is angered will ultimately commit injustice and atrocities.

Dany antis in the ASOIAF fandom are no different from D&D. A common argument used by Dany and Targaryen antis is that they are bound to be corrupt and tyrannical because they have dragons. Essentially saying that Dany was doomed to be the villain the moment she hatched her children.

They point to her dragons' existence and her conquest in Essos as reasons for her "villain arc", despite the fact that none of her actions reflect the things they claim. Dany is simply being condemned for being a woman with power; it's expected of her to be a tyrant for those reasons alone.

The Woman Scorned:

This reasoning given by D&D in a behind the episode interview is probably the excuse that I hate the most. They said that one of the reasons for Dany's descent into madness was because Jon Snow refused to kiss her back once he found out they were aunt and nephew. This is an insanely misogynistic trope.

Used time and again by writers (mostly male), this trope is about a woman who becomes an antagonist due to rejection, unrequited love, or betrayal from a lover. In the case of Dany and GOT, it's Jon refusing to continue their romantic relationship.

For some reason, this is seen as a breaking point for Dany. A woman who has endured poverty, homelessness, sexual slavery, a traumatic miscarriage and death of a spouse/protector, and the stresses of war was broken by a man refusing to kiss her. Doesn't that sound fucking stupid? Well that's because it is.

Dany has never felt entitled to people's love (with the exception of shitty writing from D&D) let alone someone's sexual/romantic reciprocation. It's out of character and flat out insulting to women to believe that is enough to make Dany into a mass murdering tyrant.

Once again, there are members of the fandom who espouse this reasoning into their own theories and metas. Jonsas especially are guilty of this; some claiming that Jon's rejection of Dany in favor of Sansa will be a catalyst for the "mad queen".

An offshoot of this thinking, is the idea that Dany went/will go mad because she was rejected by the realm.

In the show, the Northmen are dismissive or outright hostile to Dany when she arrives (even after she saves them). Due to this rejection by the Westerosi people, Dany decides "let it be fear" and chooses to burn KL to the ground.

Once again, this idea isn't grounded in her past actions at all. Dany has always known she needs to earn people's love and respect as a ruler, why should she change her mind the moment she steps onto Westerosi soil? The answer is simple: she's a woman, so she can't possibly be able to deal with rejection.

Fans theorize constantly that Dany is going to go mad and destroy KL and Westeros because the people will definitely reject her in favor of Young Griff/Jon Snow/any other king they can think of. This theory is simply clinging to misogynistic ideas about women and it's disgusting in every iteration (it also dismisses the fact that there are people in Westeros excited about the idea of Dany and her dragons in the books but that's a different post).

The Woman Bereft:

This argument is probably the least outright in its misogyny. The idea that a woman who has lost everything will lose her mind isn't a new one and it can be played in a non-sexist way. However, GOT played it completely in the sexist roots of the trope.

Throughout seasons seven and eight, Dany loses basically everything. All but one of her children, her closest advisor and best friend Missandei, Ser Jorah, a massive chunk of her army, her other advisors, most of her allies, and is rejected by Westeros and Jon. That's a lot of loss to endure.

However, Dany has endured severe loss before and never reacted by murdering a city full of innocents. Again, this decision and descent isn't backed up by anything else in her storyline.

The sexism of this idea, that loss produces mad women, is that it's rarely applied to men in the same situations. For example: Tyrion lost everything he cared about, yet he's never written by D&D to be in danger of becoming a mass murderer. He even outright says he wishes he'd poisoned the whole court, but is never portrayed as a mad man by D&D or fans.

Dany is expected to go insane after enduring loss because she's a woman. She's perceived as being fundamentally weaker, mentally as well as physically, so she must be more vulnerable to madness than the male characters.

The Foreign Seductress:

The idea of the foreign seductress is a xenophobic and racist stereotype. For Dany, her antis use the instances of her exercising sexual autonomy and her life in Essos as fodder for this disparaging trope.

In the books and the show, Dany pursues sexual and romantic relationships outside of marriage. This is something that doesn't fall in line with the medieval setting of the world. In Westeros and Essos, it's common for men to do that, but not women, due to systematic misogyny. Because of this, Dany's antis often feel free to argue that because she doesn't act "pure", she is wrong and evil. Dany's bound to become a villain because she isn't a chaste and "good" woman.

In the same way, Dany is painted as wrong for wanting to take her family's throne purely because she wasn't raised in Westeros. She's perceived as a foreign invader by both her antis and D&D.

D&D wrote many scenes of outright xenophobia from the Northmen, Sansa, and Arya towards Dany and her forces without ever condemning those ideas. In fact, they justify them by writing the mad queen ending. The fact that Dany isn't "one of them" is used as an excuse for her descent.

Dany antis also employ this rhetoric, especially when people compare Dany's conquest for the IT to the Starks' desire to retake Winterfell. It's good for the Starks to want to retake their throne because they were raised in Winterfell, but Dany has no right to her ancestral home because she wasn't raised in Westeros.

However, this idea is never applied to Young Griff, who was also not raised in Westeros. Despite this, people will talk about how excited they are for his story and how sad it is that he's totally going to be murdered by his evil aunt. Once again a double standard is applied to Dany.

All this is because Dany is a woman who refuses to conform to patriarchal standards and was raised in a foreign country.

Never Good Enough:

Dany antis and D&D thrive on applying a different set of standards to Dany than other characters. They do this an a way that's reminiscent of the double standards set for women even today.

No matter what Dany does, it's never good enough for them. She dealt with Viserys and his death in the wrong way. She didn't protect her people in the right way. She tried to abolish slavery in the wrong way. She saved the goddamn world wrong. Like nothing Dany does is right in their eyes.

In their minds, Dany should've died in AGOT being a perfectly passive woman. She refused to submit to those (men) around her, and for that they punish her.

She's wrong for fighting the slavers, she's wrong for trying to avenge murdered children, she's evil for killing to protect herself. D&D used each of her actions throughout the show that they seemed too aggressive as justification for what they wrote. Dany's antis do the exact same thing in their theories.

The mad queen Dany theory is rooted completely in misogyny. It has no true justification in the narrative and every argument conjured up is just as sexist as the trope they want to perpetuate.

[justanisabelakinnie]

"We need more strong, fleshed out, well-developed female characters of color!" you bitches couldn't even handle the Madrigal women.

[lagosbratzdoll]

I get that you guys hate Daenerys. I don't understand it but I get it. What I don't get is why so many of you have these misogynistic fantasies about her death.

"She's villain-coded."

That's all well and good but there are tens of men in the books who have done worse and continue to do worse in pursuit of far less noble causes. I don't see people posting rape fantasies about them. I have never seen a single post where Gregor Clegane, Jamie Lannister, Petyr Baelish, Tywin Lannister or his odious brother Kevan are subjected to sexual violence before being murdered ignobly.

If anything people often blorbo-fy them. Jamie Lannister is apparently on a redemption arc even though there is little evidence of this in the books. Gregor Clegane has blinding headaches so we can't really judge him for how he chooses to destress. Tywin might be a monstrous person in canon but at least he loved his wife and that apparently forgives a multitude of sins. As for Petyr and Kevan, little is said of them but that's the point isn't it.

Aegon II the rapist without a single redeeming quality has fans who arduously defend him. "He's only a rapist because mummy and daddy didn't love him." "He's only a rapist because he doesn't know what rape is." It's fascinating stuff because many of those fans who arduously defend him are staunch Daenerys haters.

Funny how that works.

[hard--headed--woman]

i will never stop hating the fact that severus snape is so loved like the guy is a misogynistic asshole who bullied kids to the point they were traumatized because of him, mentally tortured a 15yo boy with the memories of his abusive childhood and made this boy's life hell just because his dad married the woman he has a creepy obsession on, joined a terrorist group to kill people he deemed inferior and take over the world, was a shitty teacher, favoured his own house, was ready to get a baby killed and gave the information that could have got him killed without batting an eye, called his best friend a slur, told everyone another teacher was a werewolf and so made him lose his job just because he was petty, was horrible to everyone, was terrible to the woman he "loved" and her son, and didn't even join the good side because he realized his mistakes... the guy is pure evil but he's loved because uwu he was in love with lily 🥺 huh no he was obsessed with her and a bastard actually. you love him and forgive him because he's a man. can you imagine if a female character did all of this ? she would be the most hated character ever.

[sevenrenny]

Coming from the IzuOcha fandom to the SonAmy fandom and seeing the familiar pattern of people hating the main girl characters over being 'badly written', meanwhile, a lot of the guy characters in the same series who suffer from the same issues (and sometimes worse) get a pass. Get worshiped, even.

I can't go on YouTube and not come across so many videos of "this female character is badly written and here's why" but I hardly ever see this done to the boys or even to this extent.

And they're especially critical if the girl is in love with the main character as if that's inherently a bad trait. They'll hyper-focus on that and actively ignore all her other traits that are very clearly there, in your face, even told to the audience word for word by the characters themselves. Romance isn't bad. Having crushes isn't bad. Yet people be acting like it's cooties.

She'll grow and change with the series over the years, and they'll pretend that never happened and still hold onto the image of how she first started out like she's stuck in a time capsule. They'd worship the character development if the character happens to be a dude, though.

If the character happens to be a girly girl, I'll inadvertently come across fics/videos/posts about 'fixing' her character, and most of the time their 'fix' is just stripping the characters' femininity, as if that was the issue.

They'll excuse a male character's history of doing awful shit, but the second a female character so much as has a crush it's suddenly the worst thing in the world.

[lizzie-queenofmeigas]

I swear every time I see someon call Lyanna "selfish" for not wanting to marry a man who she doesn't like and be maritally raped the rest of her life, my blood boils.

Seriously, what is wrong with you people?