#sansa fans (in my experience) are either lovely people with very good media literacy or the complete opposite and there is no in between

[sad-endings-suck]

I personally dislike how some Stansas gender certain actions and traits. As if being determined, resourceful, and standing up for the little guy is inherently masculine and enjoying stories, sweets and watching from the shadows is inherently feminine. I’ve noticed this weird privileged white woman idealist of “soft power” being thrown around a lot lately (in many fandoms, but especially in ASOIAF) that is often used to describe Sansa. Except it seems that people who use this talking point fail to see that having a specific term to describe women who have interpersonal power, can be seen as innately sexist. Whereas a man with such power would never have been referred to as having “soft power”. He would just be seen as powerful, with no need to differentiate what kind of power he wields based on whether or not he’s picked up a weapon in his life.

It feels like the same fans that hate Dany and Arya for being “girl bosses” forcefully paint them out that way (when they are not) and then use that fanon misinterpretation as the reason why they don’t like them. Then they proceed to infantilize Sansa and rebrand that infantilisation as “femininity”. It’s this weird practice of removing the context of Arya and Dany also being children from their analysis of those characters, and then overly emphasizing the context of being a child when discussing Sansa. I’ve also seen people go even further down that route to equate childlike attributes to femininity and “independent” attributes to masculinity. Which is deeply misogynistic in its own way, as media has a long problematic history of portraying femininity as childlike and masculinity as mature.

I also find this new brand of “reclaiming old femininity” as concerning. There has been a recent trend of people (especially young women and girls) who have (for lack of a deeper description) rebranded the 1950s housewife “aesthetic” as empowering (re: lobotomy core), and I’ve noticed it taking over certain corners of the feminist movement and various fandom corners as well, but branded as “feminist” instead of sexist (which it is).

In AGOT, Sansa thoroughly enjoys the tourney of the hand and the jousts. She is surprised by how unaffected she is by the violence and gore, even noting that her interest in it goes beyond polite and is outright “unladylike” but she doesn’t care. Do these gender essentialists ever remember that or use it in their analysis of what is “feminine” about her? Nope, never. Because having a tolerance for blood must be innately masculine, and they can’t project their weird sexist gender fantasies onto Sansa if they acknowledge she’s a dimensional character and not a blank face for them to self insert themselves into.

I think it creates a real dissonance between what is actually feminine or masculine coded and replaces it with an older and more prejudiced world view of feminine and masculine ideals. Sansa, Arya and Dany are all feminine in their own ways, but some stans pick and choose which parts of their characters to ignore or notice. And pushing old world view gender essentialism onto any of theses characters does them all a disservice.

Mind you the "girl bosses" in question are Dany: who has been sold as a bridal slave at 13, been on the run and feared for her life since she was born, rarely known safety and security, been used as payment by her abusive brother and further abused by the husband she was given too, who has made it a point to protect other women around her from further harm despite having little agency, who faced multiple assassination attempts and the painful loss of her child, vowed to defend others who couldn't defend themselves, has faced constant misogyny on her journey to doing so, has put her own ambitions on hold in order to help others, and is currently the only character enacting wild scale revolution in order to protect a class of people nobody else is fighting for. And Arya: who has been on the run since the end of AGOT starving and scared, has been thrust into a warzone and directly affected by the violent impact, was witness to the horrific torture of the smallfolk by the mountain and his men, was captured and forced into servitude at Harrenhal, was beaten and threatened with sexual violence, who has witnessed countless people she cared about die including her father, mother, and brother, and who still remembers those who lost their lives when nobody else has and done her best to get justice for them.

Yeah, It's soooooo feminist to treat these two female characters like they're lesser because they aren't traditionally feminine. I find it funny how the ones who talk about the importance of valuing "feminine" strengths are the same ones who erase them from Dany and Arya. All of their intelligence, kindness, empathy, etc. get thrown out and their characters are reduced to ones who only know violence. Even the suffering and abuse they've gone through is treated as less impactful and they're given no sympathy. It's an interesting circle of them being misogynistic so that they can justify their misogyny to themselves. It also highlights how little they believe in the things they're saying. Supporting "feminine" characters has just become a convenient way of propping up their favorites; feminism is nothing but a disposable tool. If they actually cared then they wouldn't be rewriting characters to make them seem more "masculine", and in fact wouldn't care about that distinction at all. The female characters have a lot of overlapping experiences afterall.

No one is saying you have to like Arya or Dany, but being misogynistic toward them and trying to disguise it as feminism is disgusting. There's also no way of doing so that won't inevitably reflect poorly on the characters you claim to love. There's nothing productive about making such restrictive boxes for female characters. If you really don't care about them then you don't have to talk about them. It's as simple as that. But if putting them down is the only way you have of propping up your fave, then maybe it's time to find a character that you actually like.