Double Standards in the ASOIAF fandom and Misogyny
This post was made because I saw @rhaelyas post about Lyanna Stark and the misogyny that comes with how people write her in fanfiction and it made me think about how the fandom does the same thing to Elia Martell, the overall double standard involving female characters that isn't there with male character and howthese two issues tie into each other.
Anyway, In the Asoiaf fandom, fans have always put female characters against each other and villanized them unfairly while allowing male characters (who are different) to co exist and let fans love both characters and it's obviously an issue that needs to be addressed. There are plenty of examples of this like Catelyn, Daenerys, Cersei, Sansa and Arya, Visenya and Rhaenys, and the pair I am going to be mainly talking about, Elia and Lyanna.
First, let's start with the other female characters before we start with Elia and Lyanna specifically just to provide some context. Catelyn Tully and Daenerys are at the very least disliked and at the most despised by the fandom for starting a war, hating Jon Snow, and causing chaos by killing the slavers and saving people from the horrors of slavery respectively. While they make excuses for Robert Baratheon and Tywin Lannister, men who had absolutely no issue killing innocent children, support a system that practically treats the common folk of Westeros like slaves, and committing heinous crimes left and right .
Next is Sansa and Arya, Sansa is hated for telling Cersei information about Ned , making stupid decisions (like every other character in the series), and for just not being like Arya and Arya is hated for being a cold heartless assassin and for supposedly being "bad mannered and arrogant just to name a few. There is literally a post called "15 reasons why Arya Stark deserves the hate" and do I even have to list the numerous posts or comments made by antis that hate Sansa. Also let's throw Cersei into the mix. There are some people who still don't believe Robert r*ped Cersei because Ned said that Robert was a good friend and that Cersei HAD to be lying in her own pov.
And then there is Visenya and Rhaenys. From my personal experience, the problem with this pair is usually from fanfiction writers that depict Visenya as this one dimensional, evil woman who was nothing but pure evil coming in between Aegon and Rhaenys. I even read a fanfiction where Rhaenys hoped Aegon would "acidentally" kill Visenya while they were flying.
Now onto Elia and Lyanna and the misogynistic and even racist ways they are depicted especially compared to their male counterparts. Elia and Lyanna are always set apart from each other by fans from both sides. Lyanna is this 14 - 16 YEAR OLD awful harlot who seduced Rhaegar and started a war while Elia is this poor woman who could do nothing but weep as her husband ran away with this teenage girl or how Elia was this perfectly submissive woman who agreed with everything Rhaegar did BeCaUsE sHe WaS DoRnISh (This is something that I would like to talk about in more detail in another post.) The saddest part is they don't have to be portrayed this way.
Why can't Elia be this intelligent woman who was making moves behind the scene, secretly communicating with her family, and making plans that ensured not only her safety but her children's safety as well? Why can't Lyanna be this complex morally grey character who is defying the oppressive Westeroisi system and going about it the best way she knows how, while growing, changing, and learning ? Why do writers make these characters so one dimensional to hUmBlE them and punish them for not being who they want them to be while letting their male counterparts like Oberyn and Brandon retain what little we knew about their original personalities and still make them likeable and not have them go through trauma after trauma?
I have come across quite a few fanfictions and headcanons that depict Elia as a miserable, power-hungry, and just unlikeable character as a way to make the readers root for Lyanna and I have also seen people do the same to Lyanna to make Elia look better. Like Rhaelya said the problem isn't hating the character. If you don't like Elia, Lyanna, or any other character that is fine. You don't have to. The problem is when you write these fictional characters going through massive amounts of trauma and basically punishing them for not being written the way you want them to be written . Especially when the male characters in your stories don't get the same treatment.
Male characters are allowed to make choices, they are allowed to be cruel, good, and arrogant. They are allowed to be complicated and morally grey. The fandom is perfectly okay with male characters that have done far worse and they are always humanized . Female characters can only be these sweet, quiet, and submissive angels that can do no wrong and heaven forbid they say even one bad sentence about another character let alone escape an awful situation or think about the best way to protect themselves in a system that is automatically set against them not only because they're a woman but also because of racism. With female characters there is absolutely no room for discussion, no middle ground, no reasoning. If they even do one thing the fandom doesn't like, OFF WITH THEIR HEADS ! Here comes the heinous fanfictions where they (These FICTIONAL characters) are suffering any and every vile action imaginable all because they weren't saints.
And if you don't see anything wrong with this then I sincerely worry about the women in your life.
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