I Respond to the Haters

Well, not really, because there aren't a lot of haters in this discussion, just a couple of people who are offended by the thought that they might be (however unconsciously) perpetuating gender stereotypes. I have made posts further down in the threads, which people might have missed, in clarification of the views expressed in my original post. A roundup here:

Re: me being a fangirl whining about how people don't like my favorite character,

I'll admit that Brienne is not the most charismatic character. I totally respect people's rights not to like her. But it is just frustrating that on the whole, when you look at which characters seem to draw the most vitriolic responses from the fan community, those characters are female. Dany, Catelyn, and Sansa also get their fair share of the hate. (And for that matter, Cersei, who gets the most hate, with perhaps the greatest reason, but also with the most pathos… if she'd been born a man, what a different situation her life would be.) What is up, for instance, with people who can't seem to get their heads around Danaerys simply being queen of Westeros, without having to "share" with Jon (the most popular theory) or Tyrion or another male character? Now, I'm not necessarily saying she'll be queen in Westeros, as I think the situation is more complicated than that, and GRRM is not as black and white as that, and Dany's own motives for going there are questionable and it's clear she hasn't put a lot of thought into them. It's just an example.

I believe GRRM has a good variety of interesting female characters, yet they seem to polarize the fan community the most. Why can't we read more into this? What's wrong with having a discussion about how maybe– just maybe– it's because it's not customary for female characters in fantasy to play so many different roles? Look at The Wheel of Time, where the female characters are largely the same personality with different names and hair. The women in ASOIAF are differentiable, and for whatever reason that polarizes people in a way that just does not seem to happen to the same level with the male characters.

Your comments about Brienne? I could definitely have a conversation about them, because they have to do with the text. And you have a good argument. What I resist is the idea that, in order to talk about the character in many threads, you usually have to sift through umpteen snarky comments about how she's big and ugly. I think there is something about her ugliness combined with her heroism (or would-be heroism, whichever you prefer) that makes many readers distinctly uncomfortable.

I'm much more interested in that than in "fangirling" her.

And re: me 'bashing' that particular forum,

And, to everyone more generally, my Brienne post was planned to be the first in a series. Because, as I mentioned above, I don't think it's just Brienne. I think it's Catelyn, Sansa, Dany, etc. Oh, I'm not done! There's a trend of female characters being either put on a pedestal or demonized. I think this is a larger issue in society in general than a few idiots at one board, and I think it's indicative of gender stereotypes that are deeply ingrained in us. Woman characters across many different types of media are typically responded to by being placed on a romantic pedestal or seen as evil. In hindsight, I think this article might have been poorly written, because I've really brought up two issues at once. People are focusing on the part about the forum, which I think is somewhat distracting from the other point I made about Brienne. Admittedly, this is my fault for putting the two issues into one post. When I wrote it, I wasn't sure how much intro the topic of Brienne needed.

When I talk about gender stereotypes being deeply ingrained, I'm going to give a personal example. When my posts come under scrutiny, there is a part of me that squirms uncomfortably and wants to placate people. Why is that? I certainly stand by my opinion. I believe it's because as women we're raised with more of an emphasis on pleasing people, on compromise, on being communicators and peacemakers. We're trained that we're supposed to interact more passively with the world around us. Why is it that, even though I think I'm right, a small part of me feels badly about being offended by stuff I saw in a forum? Like, "Oh, sorry guys, I'm going to shuffle off now, it must be my fault that I'm offended, never mind…"

I am a feminist, with majors in Philosophy and English and a minor in Gender Studies. And I'm putting out there that I fight against feeling this way even though I realize I, as a woman, am conditioned by society to feel this way. If I struggle against feeling like the mean girl who ruined people's fun, imagine all the women who aren't aware of what's going on and how it feels to them. "Oh, I guess every other woman ignores rape jokes by idiot 13-year-olds because it comes with liking fantasy novels. There must be something wrong with me because I'm offended. It's my fault for reading 'boy' books."

OK, so some of us might not want heavier forum moderation. But me? I don't want any woman reader to feel the way I just described. As I said, larger issues at play here than one forum.

By the way, my favorite character in ASOIAF is in fact Jaime Lannister. Should I put that in bold? People seem to keep assuming something I never actually said. Brienne's probably in the top 5, but still.