Fandom Misogyny - Tumblr Posts

The amount of mental gymnastics and willful ingnorance that goes into coming up with arguments for TG and against Rhaenyra is fucking ridiculous. They really will do anything to support their own internalized misogyny lmao

Anyone with a modicum of reading comprehension knows GRRM’s message in F&B is, in large part, that misogyny = bad. It may sound obvious but it is actually crucial to make this point out loud, in fact louder than the naysayers. The shitshow gave cover to a bunch of losers who vocally and unapologetically spew their misogyny. They’re out here claiming that reinforcing and supporting sexist tropes is subverting them.

Show TG “arguments” summarized:

Alicent: pure, behaved as expected, duty and sacrifice, muh tradition

Rhaenyra: wh0re, should’ve r*ped her gay husband for pure-blooded legitimate children, used her vagina wrong, didn’t know her place

Not to mention they minimize book Alicent to an evil stepmother—another sexist af trope— because she was ambitious and ruthless. She was a schemer like Tywin and Roose and so many men in F&B and ASOIAF who are never described as one-dimensional. I’m sorry, a female character isn’t one-dimensional just because you can’t handle a woman that betrays and schemes and does evil. If you think making antagonistic women more moral and palatable is an improvement, I have news for you—that’s misogynistic af.

On top of that, we’ve all seen the vile things they say about Rhaenyra. They wish she died in childbirth, they call her fat and ugly, they relish the thought of her being subjected to intimate partner violence a la the shitshow, they salivate over the fact that her brother k!lls her because she dared to reject the notion that women can’t inherit.

It is hatred of women that do not perfectly conform in its baldest, most gleeful form, and these types think they should be safe from criticism because they’re aiming this loathing at fictional characters. Rhaenyra wasn’t even remotely a feminist, and in fact “conformed” in many ways, but the little bit she didn’t conform—that she had the audacity to believe she could be traditionally feminine and a mother and a lover and still be Queen in her own right—is enough for these people to wish death and abuse upon her. Because she’s not their perfect representation of a meek and dutiful woman, she deserves scorn, hatred, and violence. This is a sickness.

This level of hatred and the specifically gendered attacks don’t come from nowhere. Some people may be TG because they think the actors playing Aegon and Aemond are hot, or they aren’t doing anything more than consuming fast-food media, but there are enough people out there with hearts full of hatred for women and it shows. Then they come into the fandom and insist loud and proud that their vile interpretation is canon.

Like sweetie, you wouldn’t know canon if it smacked you upside the head, you’re just grasping so you can cover for the fact that you’re a misogynist. But we see you.

And yes, this was inspired by me seeing a thread of incredibly gross and sexist takes on Twitter.

This quote really shows just how little Condal and Hess care about adapting the actual story of the Dance. In Fire and Blood, the Dance is about a woman being usurped because of misogyny. That's it. It doesn't matter that Rhaenyra had bastards (literally no one cared other than the greens), or that she married Daemon so soon after Laenor/Laena's deaths, or that she had premarital/extramarital sex, or whatever other reasons TG stans spew out.

By taking George's story of misogyny and the harm it does and turning it into a former friends/starcrossed lovers story, Condal and Hess have completely distorted the message. Now I know they still want to have a "feminist" message, but clearly they're failing, as misogyny it thriving in the fandom and people are being more sexist towards Rhaenyra than the lords of Westeros.

One of the key parts of ASOIAF and it's related works is dismantling the harmful bigotry of the world it takes place in. That means that no, sexism and bastardphobia are not ok even though they're the norm in Westeros. That's the equivalent of arguing that rape is ok because it's considered ok by the Dothraki, Westerosi soldiers/lords, and Essosi slavers. One of the main points of F&B is the message that the conventions of Westeros and planetos are flawed and oppressive. Not that the Targaryens are the antichrist, or that misogyny is actually totally ok, or bastards are evil, or that the houses of Westeros are all great and nothing needs to change just because it's a fictional world.

HOTD has distorted the point of F&B in the name of their shitty rhaenicent fanfiction. They chose to make the issue more "complex" which misogynistic people in this fandom used to "prove" that Rhaenyra actually is evil. They claim to care about feminism and instead support the sexist narrative Rhaenyra's opponents came up with.

To summarize: Condal and Hess' obsessions with rhaenicent and making Alicent an uwu victim have destroyed the message GRRM was trying to send and undermines any "feminist" message they wanted to send.

The ASOIAF fandom is so funny about discourse; both in topics and reactions. The other main fandom I frequent on Tumblr is Tolkien, and the difference is remarkable.

For instance, in the story of the Fall of Numenor, there's a story about the usurpation of a woman that leads to tragedy. I'm talking, of course, about Tar-Míriel. She was the rightful queen of Numenor, but was usurped by her cousin Ar-Pharazôn, who caused the destruction of Numenor.

There is not a single person in the Tolken fandom who argues that Ar-Pharazôn was in the right, was actually a good person, or that Tar-Míriel deserved to be usurped. Granted, the story isn't actually the same as that of the Dance, but the bare bones are pretty similar.

Tar-Míriel isn't a morally gray character like Rhaenyra, in fact we know very little about her, but the parts we do know are good. However, both Rhaenyra and Tar-Míriel were declared their fathers' heirs despite the existence of close male relatives. They were both usurped and ultimately killed (Míriel indirectly) by a male relative.

Ar-Pharazôn and Aegon II are both written as almost cartoonishly evil. They both were horrible rulers and warmongers. Their reigns caused massive tragedies; Aegon II and his faction caused the deaths of the dragons and Ar-Pharazôn's actions caused Iluvatar to destroy Numenor.

Now, I'm not saying that these two stories are meant to be connected or paralleled, they simple capture a similar story pattern rooted in history. My point is that the ASOIAF fandom has a major issue.

The greens are not secretly heroes, good people, or morally superior to the blacks in any way, shape, or form. The obsession of the ASOIAF fandom to turn them into more "sympathetic" characters is ridiculous. Fandoms like the Tolkien one are able to embrace a character being a villain without trying to turn them into a hero.

It's so frustrating because this obsession with making the greens into protagonists damages fandom discourse. It's turned the Dance into a cheap "choose your team" issue, rather than a story of the damage of misogyny, the patriarchy, and warring lords. The arguments over which team is right is absurd and creates a space were misogyny is fostered and encouraged (even some TB fans)

I know, a majority of my posts are complaining about TG and their stans, so I'm guilty of perpetuating the cycle. But there's a difference between analysis of a character and arguing with people's rotten takes and just reducing the story to team discourse; I try my best to avoid the latter.

I'm sure a large part of this issue can be traced to HOTD, but I think it's indicative of deeper problem in the fandom. People reduce the issues in the main books to "who's gonna take the throne" rather than actually addressing things. They're so comfortable spouting misogyny in regards to Daenerys and Arya. The ASOIAF fandom has deeper issues that are being exacerbated by the writing decisions of HOTD and, before that, GOT.

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.

The one time I visited Twitter/ X back in 2021 while still part of the MCU fandom, it was a mess (basically, dragging Wanda Maximoff for almost no reason.), so maybe it's best of I just stay off of there.

Not to mention all the misogyny toward Grace Van Dien a few years back. Because people thought that bullying an actress over their ship was a mature thing to do. And, as @mzannthropy said, all the negative talk about Sam Claflin. I don't even wanna see anything Taylor Swift related, I see enough hate on Instagram. (Again, don't like, don't look. Taylor Swift being successful does not affect you.)

Also, Instagram, going off of my recommended reels or whatever, seems to think: I hate Taylor Swift, I ship Daisybilly, and I'm homophobic/transphobic.

"Anti"/ "Bashing "tags that surprise me:

Anti Maddie Buckley / Han

Anti Eddie Diaz

Anti Eddie Munson

Camila Dunne bashing (not a tag, but I've seen it.)

Maddie Han bashing

Chimney Han bashing.

The reason behind most of these is like racism / misogyny.

Also, why are people anti Eddie Munson? Jason apologists?

@hellopsycho44 do you know anything of the anti Eddie thing? I've never heard of it until now.

The amount of fanfics I have seen where Jon hatches dragons, takes over Daenerys’ storyline/one-ups her storyline, and becomes the PtwP is insanely high. Daenerys as a man would have been Aegon the Conqueror come again (even though she IS Aegon the Conqueror come again already). People would treat her like Aragorn rather than Anakin Skywalker or Paul Atreides. Her actions would not have been questioned as heavily. Her fate wouldn’t be deemed as one of madness or death.

A lot of fans hate that Daenerys is the one that brought dragons back in the world, and the only hope for survival in Westeros. If Daenerys doesn’t go to Westeros, everyone dies! There’s no hope to defeat the Others without her, but people still think that she isn’t the Prince that was Promised. And please the Song of Ice and Fire is about a war between Ice and Fire, not someone who comes from Ice and Fire (Jon being the son of a Stark and a Targaryen is not a union of Ice and Fire), it’s a war between the side of death (Ice, the Others) and the side of life (Fire, Daenerys and her dragons).

All true. And I think people purposefully "misunderstand" what the Prince that was Promised & Azor Ahai's roles are in ASoIaF's world's legends so they can deny they both refer to the same person AND that Dany is ultimately neither. That bc the term "ptwp" is used more often by Westeorsi and the term "Azor Ahai" is used more often by Essosi people, that these are two completely different entities. That because the Azor Ahai has a specific mythic story to it (Nissa-Nissa being the sacrifice for AA's sword, the gods in the Yi-Tish [but not exclusively] and how they/humans/Amethyst Empress-Bloodstone Emporer brought about the first Long Night), that the Prince is completely unrelated to Azor Ahai...even though the Valyrian word meaning "prince"--which is where the word that is part of the term in the first place--is a gender-neutral and can refer to a woman.

Other than the word, it is rather because comparatively the "PTWP" has less information or place of origin than the lore for AA that it actually always stemmed from the myth of AA AND is actually just another name for AA. We know Essos and many of its present societies are far older than any Westerosi civilization and we know that both the FM and the Andals came from Essos in their separate migrations and at least the Andals have lived at one point under Valyrian exapnsion and rule. When humans migrate, they bring with them the most relevant or inspiring stories for their cultural and mental survival, not to mention that the stories of AA have existed for millennia in most of Essos, from the Narrow Sea to the where we could touch Sothoryos. Many Essosi cities are inheritors of Old Valyria's rule or have developed their own socieiites much from the remnants of Valyrian rule. Through old Valyria's wide colonization and empire, places with great distances b/t them would have had stories and other things translated through Valyrian or carried through Valyrian devices and for hundreds of years. Much of Westeros' commerce and other sorts of exchanges--we hear several times in AWoIaF of maesters learning some tidbits about some Essosi, scientific, legends of Westrsoi travelers like Lomas Longstrider, etc. Even just the knowledge of how people continue to travel b/t Essos and Westeros provides another way as to how the AA prophecy reached Westeros and just as in real life people develop different names for either the same thing. Melisandre, who travels to Westeros from her mission given to her or iparted to her by the Red Priests uses "PTWP" and AA interchangeably, and says AA more often bc it is the most familiar and the older of the two.

Thereby, that the PTWP prophecy came from Essos and is thus just the most recent iteration for AA is proven and very obvious but people are in extreme denial, ignorant, and/or just purposefully sexist. For god sake's, we have THREE separate sources linking the PTWP to AA: Melisandre, Maester Aemon, and Archmaester Marwyn, with the same refrain of "bleeding star", under which Dany is told to us has already hatched her 3 eggs. PTWP is often pictured as having some sort of sword...a principal part of the AA prophecy contain a story about a "sword", and both often have "light" and fire symbolism to connote driving away the "cold" and "dark" of an all consuming, destructive evil. The "last hero" that supposedly drove away the Others with DRAGONGLASS/obsidian (again, a material often shown to be from Valyrian origins and very connected to Valyrian steel swords).

But even with all this reference to an actual sword, we know a singular sword is not gonna do much against a force such like the Others and even a whole army isn't enough (dead bodies coming back and all): magic and fire that come in the form of dragons--who are fire embodied as well as just magical creatures--to utterly obliterate and "purify" the threat is necessary. The fire x "light" creates swords but is a weapon in of itself, not just an "ingredient", as the Others are a mass elemental problem that needs and elemental solution--fire spreads, swords cannot, when we want to get literal.

It's ironic bc in the metaphorical language and paradigms of fantasy and other sorts of fiction narratives in the West, eomen are constantly relegated as "material" to be used by men and either they or whatever makes them strong or notable is shaped for another thing so the man/boy can use the new creation to defeat evil...and in ASoIaF, Dany is creator, material, director. In our own formula, she really manifests more as a "goddess". which is why people are so eager to relegate her back to being "material" for Jon.

Fuck this misogynistic fandom

i’m gay but i’m always gonna choose the well developed straight ship over the 2 bland and incompatible white dudes that have 500,000 fanfics written about them. you guys just hate women.

I still hate the fact that Sakura vs Hinata debate exists. Like, if I was a Sakura fan who hated Hinata, I'd just shit on her without bringing Sakura up. Likewise if I hated Sakura. Those two characters had entirely different paths, entirely different backgrounds, entirely different... everything. And it's clear that they like each other.

male character: *is vulnerable for 0.00005 sec*

fandom: hEs oBviOuSlY gAy😍😍😍🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🌈🌈

women- especially women of color- aren't completely and totally pushed aside in fiction for the favor of m/m ships that usually have little to no chemistry. i swear. the reason there's no content for them in fan media is because. uh. (sweating buckets) they're less interesting in canon. unlike the men, who have been projected onto by fans to the point of having whole new personalities. which is different