to be honest i think there’s a large number of people who conflate the very real and widespread phenomenon that women tend to be written off as just mothers or love interests in order to diminish their importance in a given story with the fact that a huge reason they’re sent to narrative purgatory in this way is BECAUSE the labels of “mother” and “girlfriend/wife” are systematically devalued and seen as inherently inferior because they’re terms that have been associated with ownership and/or control over women. like the amount of people who’ve told me that a certain female character is uninteresting or badly written because she happened to have a kid or be a man’s girlfriend or sister just to find out she was actually fleshed out very well and carried significant narrative importance frustrates me soo bad. there’s a huge problem with how those roles (specifically “wife” and “mother”) are systematically devalued and yet also perpetuated as the only viable options for women to achieve their societal roles in the patriarchy but acknowledging the devaluation of those labels to begin with is an important discussion in itself.
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