#Madonna-whore

[strawberrymilkyumyum]

i dont like the take that zutara is the like 'sexual' ship or something. not only bc im really uncomfortable with thinking that any relationship with teens is 'sexual' on screen - i really don't want to think about teenage characters in a kids show as sexual - but also because i feel like this perception of katara feels very madonna-whoreish

with a@ng, katara is the madonna, she needs to be perfect and pure. she can do no wrong and is held to an unrealistic standard that puts her under a lot of pressure. this results in katara's canonical traits and moments that don't fit this narrative being seen as monstrous, or even ooc. the problems with the madonna are the fact that by viewing katara like this, you won't ever see her as a character fully. she revolves around this idea of what she is to a@ng, and anything that strays from it is 'morally wrong' (it's not.)

according to antis, with zuko, katara is the whore. zutara explores a darker 'more sexual' side of katara that is connected to the canon moments that don't allign with a@ng. they are able to push all of the things they don't like about katara (and women) onto this ship of her with someone who is not a@ng. to them, katara's proximity to aang is what makes her the madonna, but with zuko, she is everything that they hate about her.

in all actuality, there is nothing inherently sexual about zutara. they don't have any moments that could even hint to sex when other couples in the show do. zutara is seen as sexual, not because there's anything actually sexual about the ship, but because they see katara without a@ng as a whore (not actually saying they call her a whore.) they feel more free to hate on her and allow themselves to call it sexual as a way to justify it. zutara isn't any more sexual than any other ship, less in some cases, but it will always been seen as such because antis see katara as a madonna with a@ng and a whore with zuko.

(i would just like to clarify that this is talking about generalizations. obviously not everyone who dislikes zutara feels like this, but i think this i a common way that people view it, even if they don't realize it.)

[rhaenin-time]

Will never get over how weird it is that dragon show (but mostly society's reaction to it) of all things is what made it more clear than anything else that white womanhood was predated by, exists related to, and has so many origins in a patriarchal concept of good women vs. bad women dichotomy that goes deeper than the term Madonna Whore complex. I'm sure there must be a term and concept already established that I'm just missing.

What is it though???????????????

Sidenote: this is why I don't fuck with the "old boys club" circles of Indigenous activism that really think you can address race and colonialization without addressing patriarchy. They're just as bad in the long-run as the newer colonizer-approved "inclusive" movements that reek of white feminism-adjacent surface-level acknowledgement of the patriarchy and also really make me wish I knew if there's a term for "when it acts like white feminism even though it's in a different context."

What I'm saying is, someone please rec me some good intersectional books on patriarchy that actually go deep.

[understandingbimbos]

I was going to wait to expand my thoughts on that last post but now I'm motivated, let's talk about disgust.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend a week ago, who's an outsider to all this bimbo fetish stuff, and they said this, which struck a chord with me immediately.

As much commentary there is about unrealistic and artificial beauty standards being pushed and average women (average people, really) being made to feel insecure, the reality is that most people will prefer "natural" beauty and what they consider sincere -- real. It's an extension of the Madonna-whore complex and goes back what I said about respectability. The ideal woman, to a lot of men, is a woman who would make a good wife and homemaker. In the long-term they want a woman who's proper, that they can view as a human being. This is not a new idea, not remotely. Think of Super Freak,

She's a very kinky girl The kind you don't take home to mother

Legally Blonde, The Girl Can't Help It. There's the woman you (men) see as a sex object and the woman you (men) see as a partner. Take Legally Blonde for example, Elle Woods is far from a bimbo but she's treated as one because she doesn't have the "right" look or attitude for a political career. Despite being smart, capable, and not slutty at all she's still too feminine to be taken seriously by Warner, she's an embarrassment.

In The Girl Can't Help It (1956) you have an inversion of that. Jerri Jordan is a Madonna (loves cooking, cleaning, wants to have several children) but her gangster boyfriend wants her to act like the whore, which she very much looks like, being played by Jayne Mansfield.

And there's so many more examples I can bring up (like Drake's entire career), but I think I've got my point across. Or have I? My point is that, historically, men don't really like women who look or act sexy. Or at least don't respect them. And part of that is tied to the look. It's actually not the norm or even that popular to like women who are very "done-up" and fake-looking, or women who are sexy of their own volition, despite what porn has told you. I CONSTANTLY see men talk about pornstars have "ruined" themselves by getting plastic surgery. But it's usually the "ruination" that attracted me to that pornstar, model, actress, or whatever in the first place.

There's also the botched surgery subreddit. On more than one occasion I've seen women I follow because I think they're very hot reposted there to be gawked at and called gross, sad, and disgusting by thousands of men and women. Same pattern on Twitter. A repost of a sex worker I follow will go viral with a caption like "surgeries are getting out of hand." Millions of disgusted gawkers and commentators.

Personally, I never got the memo. And my admitted unasthamed attraction to these women who look and act the whore was seen by my peers as an indication of desperation rather than a preference or I guess more accurately, a fetish.

Some people think bimbos should be cute or traditionally attractive, I don't. I think it's hot when a woman acts obnoxious and looks sloppy and ridiculous, like a parody of a woman. Or a bastardization of the human form itself.

I knew there was a disconnect when the last season of a Euphoria aired and people were mocking Chloe Cherry for her lips and saying she looked weird while referring to Sydney Sweeney as a bimbo.

To me, the bimbo exists in obscenity. She openly expresses her own sexuality, primps and preens herself to a vulgar degree, and is dumb as fuck. It's like if you took the stereotypical whore, of the Madonna-whore dichotomy, and turned her up to the nth degree. Like a whore monster. Not only is she the opposite of what men respect, to the point she becomes unattractive to most, but also an affront to public decency. And in that way, like my friend said, the performance of femininity becomes masculine. In expressing what she does the way she does the bimbo becomes both the embodiment and antithesis of male desire. For most men she's just... too much. Too dumb, too sexy, too fake, too confident, too over-the-top.

As @severedsheriff put it, the attraction is the taboo. The appeal can be found in the lack of appeal. I suppose a woman being dumb, plastic, and provocative is a bit more accepted now than it was in the early 2000s, but just barely.

[maddie-grove]

One trope I really dislike in love stories (mostly common to fanfic and romance novels but it can be found elsewhere) is when the author goes out of their way to (a) establish that a protagonist had absolutely no significant positive feelings for their previous sexual/romantic partners and (b) presents this chiefly as proof that the other protagonist is uniquely Worthy and that the main romance is True Love. This is a pretty specific scenario; I’m not talking about, say, the hero who has no romantic or sexual experience, or the heroine who married young and her husband was shitty in a specific way, or the protagonist who enjoyed their past relationships but they never totally clicked. I’m talking about “the hero has slept with so, so many women, but don’t worry! He never felt so much as slight fondness for them or admired any of their non-physical qualities. He might as well have been using a blow-up doll every time.” Or “the heroine has only ever loved the hero. She has never looked upon another man with lust in her heart. If she ever dated anyone else, she never felt affection or respect or admiration for him. This is proof of true love, not the result of dating only shitty guys or maybe being kind of a tool.” I promise, it’s not going to ruin a romance if the hero is like “my ex-girlfriend was a good person” or the heroine is like “I enjoyed having sex with the guy I dated for five years.”

[lunasglow]

they got high on that madonna-whore complex regarding rhaenyra and alicent and now they’re all scrambling to rebrand.

[k8lynjoy]

I genuinely want to know what show the people who say that Aang never respected Katara are watching. "Aang never let Katara feel anything other than what he wanted her to feel" "He idealized her" "He didn't care about her feelings" "He didn't support her the way she supported him". WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THIS FROM??? That's a rhetorical question because I already know what episodes/moments they're using to make those assertions (The Southern Raiders and the kiss in Ember Island Players), and even then, THEY'RE WRONG.

Let's start with TSR. This episode gets so misinterpreted it's not even funny. First off, Aang was never even upset with Katara in this episode, he's just warning her against killing someone??? He never gets mad at her or berates her. He just talks to her with a level head??? He openly acknowledges that he knows and understands how much rage and pain Katara is in, and he never tells her that she shouldn't feel it, he just advises her not to act rashly because of it??? Where is the lack of respect? Where is he ignoring her feelings or getting upset with her for not acting the way he wants her to? He lets her take Appa and even tells her that he understands that this is a journey she needs to take and supports her doing so, he just doesn't want her to kill someone. Honestly Aang shows more respect for Katara by knowing who she is as a person and not enabling her in her revenge than Zuko who is only going on this trip with her so that she'll forgive him, not because he actually cares that she's upset over the death of her mother (and this is not Zuko slander before people take it as such, I love Zuko, but it's not even subtext that his motivations in this episode are selfish and not about Katara).

As for the kiss in EIP, yes, it was not okay. Yes, it was a mistake. Yes, he shouldn't have done it after Katara laid a clear boundary, but he recognizes that immediately. After Katara- rightfully- gets upset with him, he gets upset with himself. We also see that he never repeats that mistake again and is fully okay with letting Katara lead after that. Which is why it's Katara who initiates the final kiss on the balcony. And if you still don't think he learned anything from it, he starts to ask for her consent in the comics before kissing her, showing that he absolutely DID grow from that mistake. So, we're really going to let one moment where a 12-year-old boy made a mistake dictate the entire show and negate everything that came before it??? That's coocoo banana's behavior.

I also think that those assertions are completely baseless because when does Aang idealize Katara? When does he hate her rage? When does he not support her? Is it when he laughed with her after she stole from pirates? Or in that same episode where he constantly reaffirms her skills as a waterbender- first by saying that he's able to pick it up so easily because she's a great teacher and then later when he refers to her as a waterbender which makes her so fucking happy? Is it when he gets so upset that Pakku refuses to teach Katara how to waterbend that he tries to walk away from his own waterbending training? Is it when he goes behind Pakku's back to teach her anyway? Or when he stands by actively cheering her on when she's raging against the patriarchy and fights Pakku? Is it when he calls her Sifu Katara because she expressed that he referred to Toph that way but not her? Is it when he helped her commit ecoterrorism and told her she was a hero for helping the people in that Fire Nation village? Is it when he holds her after she breaks down because she learned how to bloodbend? Is it when he comforts her after Jet's death? Is it... you get the point, don't you?

Aang recognizing Katara as someone who is strong and capable is not him idealizing her. Him not enabling her committing murder is not him hating when she feels rage. Aang actively supports Katara's rage on multiple occasions, he just doesn't enable her when he knows she's acting out of character. If you don't ship Kataang, that's fine, but please don't make up baseless accusations to try and tear them down just because you're mad that a ship that had no basis in canon (potential is not evidence) wasn't canon.

[randomfoggytiger]

The X-Files: the Madonna-Whore Complex

(Credit to @cecilysass, whose comment got these thoughts going.)

I have a theory.

In the fandom, the Madonna-whore complex is often attributed to Chris Carter's handling of Dana Scully. And, while I didn't give it much weight at first, going through his old interviews gave me pause.

THE CHRIS CARTER ANGLE

From 1993 to 1998 (where I stopped reading), Chris repeatedly stated that Mulder and Scully were (are) both sides of himself: “I’m equal parts of both characters,” says their creator. “I’m a skeptic like Scully, but I’m also ready to be enraptured, like Mulder.” Mulder represented his want to believe (and inner darkness-- which he doesn't outright state... but doesn't dissuade others from thinking, either) and Scully represented his skepticism with the paranormal or faith. A lot of his personal details leaked through into their lives-- Hegel Place, California childhood, a sunflower seed habit-- and his personal philosophy-- “Trusting people, generally, is bad,” he says with a slight smile-- became the backbone of the show. He used interesting turns of phrase when discussing his characters' names: "I grew up in L.A. where Vin Scully was the voice of God. Dana is just a nice soft woman’s name I like" and Carter gave The X-Files’ Mulder his mother’s maiden name.... And, as we all know, the repeating 10/13 and 11/21 are his (and Mulder's) birthday and his wife's birthday, respectively.

It could be as simple as a showrunner incorporating himself into his work... or it can make a lot of sense regarding Mulder and Scully's sexual misadventures.

Does this point to Chris Carter being a "puritan", shunning all sexual allusion? He seemed to be willing to hint at more-- letting Tea Leoni suggest a naked Gillian be cheek to cheek with David Duchovny, and teasingly gazing at David's deleted rear shot-- and was even persuaded to leave in the Millennium and Existence kisses (not to mention writing or cosigning the I Want to Believe "scratchy beard" scene.) But does a little lip-locking or a little nudity knock down the "never-nude" angle?

Ultimately, I think speculations on CC's "quirks" are fruitless: unless the man himself sits down and gives a clearer "yes" or "no", it would be equivalent to shooting blanks in the dark. Besides, the parallels don't need to be directly tied to his personal life to inform the decisions of (and for) his characters.

The parallels, though, can't be denied.

MADONNA-WHORE, SCULLY-MULDER

To draw back to the main point: both Scully and Mulder had complicated sexual hang-ups.

Scully wasn't "allowed" to definitively have sex with Ed Jerse while Mulder was only "allowed" sex under duress. Scully was "allowed" to go on normal dates while Mulder was only "allowed" porn fantasies (Chinga, Kill Switch, First Person Shooter) and an on-call phone sex operator. Scully was "allowed" past healthy relationships (except for the one Gillian created, ahem ahem) while Mulder wasn't "allowed" to have anything resembling joy or stability in his past.

All this to say: I think Mulder and Scully are two sides of the Madonna-whore complex: Scully is the Madonna, Mulder is the whore.

It makes sense, too: Scully followed the rules and was "too smart" to get entangled with people who degraded or hurt her-- which made her a little inhuman (according to Morgan, Wong, and Gillian.) Mulder too easily blurred professional lines-- which made him easily seduced by those who intended to harm him. Phoebe Green-- as written by CC-- mentioned Mulder's illicit past activities to draw him back in; and Never Again-- as vetoed by CC-- kept an element of denial about Scully and Jerse's bedroom activities.

(Scully herself was compared to the Virgin Mary once in canon-- though it was not, it appears, Chris Carter who gunned for the imagery; nor was it the writers' and director's intent to be anything other than a metaphor that was "on-theme" for the seasonal episode:

March 14, 1998

Q #16 – Hi, my name is Deborah. Two of my favorite episodes from this season are “Christmas Carol” and “Emily” and I found myself in some heated discussions with other fans who felt Scully was turned into a mere victim, that the religious iconography was heavy handed, being beaten over the head with the Virgin Mary / Scully kind of thing. None of which I agree with. I wondered if you could talk a little about the religious iconography in those two episodes and how you work that kind of thing in and was it as self-conscious as everyone else thinks it is?

FS – ...When we began again, we also took the Dickens story, A Christmas Carol, as our lead. So suddenly the story came together very fast and actually was one of the most satisfying to write for the three of us.

The use of the manger at the very beginning of “Christmas Carol” was deliberate. The idea of a “virgin birth” was conscious. I think the one image in that two parter that people really felt was heavy handed or was laying onto Scully as Virgin Mary idea was at the end of “Emily” there is a very slow dissolve to the stained glass and that was an image that the director chose to use because it was there on the set that day and all of us liked it. But I don’t think that we meant to suggest that she was anyway equivalent to the Virgin Mary and simply thought that, you know, it was a Christmas story and those parallels deepened the story we were telling.

Still.)

The Madonna-whore/Scully-Mulder complex explains a lot a lot a lot about their complicated sex lives.

If that be the case (whether consciously or subconsciously), it makes sense why Chris Carter only wrote a kiss for them after the world didn't end. Biblical mythology and fate were always his favorite tools, after all.

A RUN DOWN

The Jersey Devil-- written by Chris Carter-- is the first episode to tackle the boundaries of this theoretical complex.

Mulder introduces the theme with a porn magazine, at work.

Scully has to drive back to a birthday party, and Mulder immediately balks over the idea of her on a possible date.

Scully considers "a life", agrees to go out with Rob to a perfectly respectable establishment, and dances around the topic uncomfortably with Mulder later.

Mulder wants her to cancel-- not out of romantic jealousy, but because their working relationship might be hindered if her interests were divided elsewhere.

"Unlike you, Mulder, I would like to have a life"/"I have a life" brazenly slaps that motif down; and Scully on her respectable date, Mulder drawing nude jersey devil women at work, Mulder forming a charmed connection with a wild woman, Mulder getting peeved over Rob's call, and Scully leaving Rob for a place by Mulder's side continues to nail it home.

Mulder lunges for the lurid, the alluring, the impossible, with nothing but empty promises and unfulfilled expectations to show for his efforts. That pattern holds for romantic-- Fire, 3, War of the Coprophages, Syzygy (to a degree), The Field Where I Died, Kill Switch, Amor Fati, First Person Shooter-- and platonic-- Deep Throat, Krycek, CSM, Diana Fowley, sundry allies in-between-- relationships. "You think he [Deep Throat] does this because he gets off on it?" he challenges Scully, stunned when she responds, "No. I think he does it because you do."

Scully strides expectantly towards the normal, the stable, the predictable; and leaves all unsavory entanglements before they besmirch her dignity or self-worth (including the unconsummated romance with Daniel Waterston, according to Gillian Anderson.) Ed Jerse is an outlier, a symptom of how out-of-control Scully felt her life had become-- a rebellion against her expected or self-imposed or self-inflicted Madonna pedestal. "Hard to imagine, this day and age, someone having sex with a perfect stranger" plays well with the medical concern of the AIDS epidemic and her distaste for losing control completely in the throes of passion.

When the Gender Bender detective states, "Guy blew an artery-- must be some roll-in-the-hay", Scully is immediately annoyed while Mulder is immediately intrigued (and amused.)

CONCLUSION

I rest my case, Your Honor.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

[brucespringsteencomments]

[pynkhues]

I read somewhere that Rolin specifically wanted Louis to be a brothel owner because he thought it was important for his character that he have the same casual view on the exploitation of people’s bodies as book slave-owner Louis. These are important aspects of his character that I feel the show handles with more nuance and care than the books. Louis should get to have his negative qualities!

(x)

Yeah, I think I read that too, anon, and honestly, I think it really makes a lot of sense for his character, and also is a part of what makes him really interesting? This is a bit of a tangent, and I've got a half-drafted longer reply to someone else's ask about this that I'll post eventually, haha, but there's so much stress on Louis as the most 'human' vampire in fandom, when I think that's both true and untrue? I think Louis feels very connected to human expression (most clearly seen through his love of art and literature), while having detachment at best and derision at worst for the humans who create it (best seen through his cruelty around the artist in Paris, but also his gentrification of San Francisco in the 70s and abandonment of the people in 2.01).

In a lot of ways, even that in itself feels like the embodiment of capitalism, and like - - it's been fascinating to see this embrace in fandom of Louis as a capitalist and yet this sort of denial of the reality that successful capitalism relies on the exploitation and abuse of people for the sake of profit. That exploitation and abuse almost always involves intersections of racism, misogyny and classism, which Louis has absolutely been shown to participate in.

Like, God, in the first episode alone, the Alderman Fenwick tries to anally rape Bricktop, and someone (well, Lestat) murders Miss Lily, and Louis doesn't even bat an eye. Maybe you could make an argument that he had commercial interests at risk with Bricktop, and was distracted by his brother's death and Lestat's Whole Deal by the time Miss Lily was killed, but I think to deny that his flippancy towards both crimes isn't inherently steeped in misogyny and a devaluation of women's bodies and lives, is pretty naive.

I think people tend to think misogyny is just about hating women, and it's not. It's about upholding patriarchal structures and values that oppress and objectify them, and having ingrained prejudice against them. Louis absolutely uses women as a pimp, and I think even at home upholds patriarchal family dynamics with both Grace and Claudia. I've touched on that before, and linked to those posts there, so won't get into it here, but yeah! Louis' relationship with women is complicated and usually paternalistic, dismissive and - ultimately - about him, even with the women he - genuinely! - loves.

And when I say that, I mean it as literally the opposite of a criticism. Like you said, he should be allowed to have negative qualities! Those negative qualities give him texture and humanity and make him real, and are one of the reasons the show's version of him is so, so compelling.

[graveyardgremlins]

Imagine Danny describing Jazz to Dick, and our dear Richard thinking "Omg, we are a match made in heaven!" Only for Jazz to immediately ask him "Was your mom a ginger?" upon meeting him because "Then why is "ginger" your type? Did you have a strong female role model that was a ginger when you were a child? Perhaps someone else in your family?"

Sorry, Richard, but Freud is always right

[tha-star]

I feel like Kory isn't taken seriously, or her relationship with Dick, by current writers, because of a Madonna-Whore complex.

And Barbara is like the madonna in this case (I'm not talking about shippers, in fact I don't have much interaction with them either, but you can like friends to lovers, childhood sweetheart, first crush, second chance, so this ship you, makes sense), to the point of not even taking the feelings of both of them, Dick for Kory and she for him, seriously.

"It was just sex, they had it a lot", ok, if you have sex with your partner "a lot", then your connection no longer has romantic value? Romantic attraction and sexual attraction are different, and a couple can have both high, just because sexual attraction is high doesn't mean there isn't much romantic love. Just because Kory isn't usually jealous doesn't mean she doesn't love.

She has a different view of love and sex, one that doesn't really condemn women who love intensely and desire freely like we have here. But it seems she deserves to be punished for this. 🤷

It's like Kory is all about the fun and the party, and Barbara is the model wife, so their relationship can have layers (I'm glad the cheating is no longer canon), and not with Kory, it is dispensable, cuz she does not have the "correct values" of a "good woman".

She's there to be pretty and that's it.

How to take a relationship with a bimbo seriously?

Being a bimbo has a negative connotation in the madonna-whore complex, but nowadays? I thought we were past that. She can be a bimbo and be an interesting character, there is a lot to explore with her. She's an ALIEN, FOR GOD'S SAKE!

She's a bimbo (kind of not, but close to that) and Dick is a himbo (kind of not either, but also close), So the two of them together is really cute.

And I love that she's taller than him, and they're all over eachother, it's like a golden retriever finds another golden retriever, and they're in love (well, he was a black cat as Robin, but he softened over time)

Most of us saw the animation and were enchanted by it, isn't it curious that in a children's animation, since they couldn't just objectify her, they found plots for her?

I'm not talking about everyone, there are those who like Kory and writing her, or in the old comics, but... you know what I mean?

It's one thing to not have your m/m or f/f ships far from being canon, but to have a f/m canon, that in canon writers love to shit on it, is a totally different frustration.

Even more so when it's one of your female characters that you grew up adoring, being despised like this.

Well... we have fanfics, so 🫶

(I'm not particularly a fan of the triangle, between the two couples I like Dick/Kory more for many reasons other than the ones I listed. I like Dick and Kory together. But DickBabsKory is a ship I DO LIKE. I'm surprised it's not canon in any universe... it only exists in fanfics.. You know, the world of fanfics is a blessing in many ways)

[justanotherhh]

i feel like what i want to see on husk is more of the tension of the fact that he used to be an overlord, and the connotations of the flashback suggesting the callousness of how he gambled with souls for his own gain/entertainment. especially as it pertains to angel being a soul that's been at the mercy of overlords who have no regards for them, and the way i read (so far) that husk wants to see angel succeed but doesn't put the same stock in his own redemption, potentially partly as a form of contrition and projection of forgiveness that he doesn't believe in for himself

basically on the continued theme of who deserves redemption/what even is redemption, i would be interested in exploring more of the idea that husk used to be a pretty bad guy, and that he's got some working through all of that to do that comes from being at the hotel and his wanting things for angel

-- also that husk is very judgemental of everyone else's faults, and i think especially puts a lot of pressure on angel -- that cherri rightfully calls him on at one point -- but i imagine is because he's projecting this idea of being saved onto angel, but that in turn isn't fair (lot of people always projecting things onto angel, that's another interesting plot thread i hope to see more of RIP)

i wanna see some more exploration of the non-soft sides of husk, of which there are many (if not... most of his sides. he's not a very soft character), and how that could put him at odds with especially angel, both because he's been the kind of man in the past that wouldn't have thought twice about using someone like angel for his own gains -- and only stopped being that man because he literally didn't have the power to do so anymore -- and how he now puts angel on a pedestal and how that in some ways is still denying angel agency to be a whole person, even though it's unintentional

[alicenthelaena]

Rhaenyra and Alicent's current depictions and fan receptions scream Madonna/Whore. The debased Alicent who audiences are feening to see humiliated vs the respected Rhaenyra whose husband has erectile dysfunction.

[swordbisexual]

Gale is at once practically a virgin who’s never known “real” intimacy before meeting Tav and also a sex god who can make Tav come with just a look. What is the truth dot gif.

[ofpd]

madonna/whore complex for fictional sex scenes where you don't find well-written interesting ones sexy & you only get off to ones you think are bad

[jonathanbyersphd]

"St*ncy is the only way" Yea girl to getting stuck in the suburbs 💀