xena interesting in the context of like. hm. what is the tidiest way to phrase this...suspect radfem-influenced* fear of power in modern femslash fandom?? to whit: house of the dragon is a show entirely about power (obviously). and rhaenyra targaryen and alicent hightower are two queens who are high level power players in the brutal hierarchical political system of their patriarchal feudal society. they are both victims of patriarchy and perpetrators of patriarchal control of other women. alicent more obviously, when she, a child bride herself, marries off her daughter as sister-wife to her rapist son; rhaenyra to a less sharply gendered degree (though there is i guess gender neutral oppression of the poor, including women, i.e. the "sacrifice" of the dragonseeds), but you have the ways she distances herself from alicent's suffering - the ideal of uncomplicated solidarity between women in such a system is often subverted - or in how she uses rhaena's reproductive labor in s2 in a way that though different is eerily reminiscent of how her father entraps alicent in bearing and raising his children, in the moment she is attempting to follow him as king.
but the ship fandom...rejects all this. the men are the ones with power (partly true, in that men have access to more power, and partly very false, as aristocratic and royal women in this universe and generally still have power). this is Bad. luckily, rhaenyra and alicent are Good, because they are excluded from power (false and false). any examples of them wielding power over others is something they have been forced into and anyway, all can be redeemed - either in fanfiction, or in projections of where the show will go - when they learn to REJECT EVIL MEN and EMBRACE LESBIAN LOVE.
*the way this radfem-influenced is obvious to me...it's a certain vein of like pop lesbian separatist rhetoric that has a far wider seep into lesbian-dominated fandom spaces, where men - and therefore being "male centered" - is the domain of power, of violence sexual and otherwise, and the rejection of men - lesbianism - removes one from the taint of unjust power both in interpersonal relationships between women and more broadly. it gives me hives.
this is most marked in the fandom, and as i say the show undercuts any romanticism pretty frequently. but there is also a strong vein of insidious cultural feminism in the show, mostly centered around war, but occasionally around rhaenyra and alicent's bond (being the ones who are more “anti-war” in contrast to men who oppose them). the internecine civil war the narrative is centered around kicks off at the end of s1. and, in one of dumbest deviations from the book, they pull this really unfortunate move where all the women do not want to go to war, and all the men are slavering war mongers. and since they all come from the exact same social class and political background the only conclusion is like it makes their womanly wombs hurt or something. my problem is not any insult to men (fair enough, i guess), but the implicit idea that women have never prosecuted or championed war or carried out war violence, that there is something about women as victims of patriarchy that makes them fundamentally horrified by war violence, is really repugnant in a world of hilary clintons, just to start with our immediate moment. it is entirely nonsensical when it is about feudal aristocrats in a society based around a highly militarized warrior culture, for women who want to wield authority in that culture, and completely at odds with the source text. it sucks. but then the rhaenicent ship fandom picks up on this literal worst aspect of the show (and again, thank god, it's not like the show is consistent with it - rhaenyra in s2 at least comes to be really committed to human sacrifice to get more dragon war machines - and in all the places where this extremely irritating thread doesn't show up we get some interesting and messy material in this area) and is like we loooooove it.
anyway back to xena! how refreshing in this extremely gay show that it's all about how xena has a violent past in war she was an extremely active agent in. and yes she regrets it now and wants to make amends, but there is not hint that this is because she is returning to some peaceful feminine nature she was diverted from only by male coercion. and more importantly to me, the only way to make amends is not to absent oneself from power, not renunciation - what is to me dereliction of moral choice that in the framework above is praised as the only moral life path - but to use the power one has been given (being really good at killing people in this instance) to try to protect the weak instead of oppress them. and already the deep moral contradictions and compromises in using power to aid the powerless are immediately apparent, but it's nice to have a show about women who want to finger each other where on no level is the response to those contradictions and compromises in a horrifying quasi-historical fantastical world of pervasive gendered sexual violence somehow "um just hit da bricks and don't worry about it lol! scissoring is the only thing these intelligent and ambitious and socially invested women should concern themselves with, and THIS is lesbian feminism"
