i just watched the second to last ep of got and the finale with my dad and my brother and they didn't find anything wrong with daenerys' arc and ending and said I was overreacting for finding it very upsetting and said that i see sexism everywhere. now i'm really questioning myself; am i overreacting?
consider you walk into a class and see that the classroom is filled with these chairs for the students:
you see no problem with it, you sit down. suddenly, your friend is saying that the chair is of incredibly poor design and perhaps discriminatory. you feel it’s perfectly fine and your friend is imagining things.
it seems as if you are being reasonable and your friend is over-reacting. your friend sees discrimination everywhere!!!
now what if i tell you: your friend was left-handed? that he/she had no writing desk/pad on the side of their dominant hand but had to contort their body and write in a very poor handwriting to take down any notes at all!
now, it does seem that the chair does have poor design and never took into account that left-handed people can also be students and perhaps they were a bit discriminatory after all…
it’s the same with sexism. those who are unaffected by it or privileged by it can’t see it. it just doesn’t concern them. i can totally see why your family members may not have thought GoT’s ending was sexist. But, the world does.
But female ambition being demonised, women wielding power being demonised (unless the power is granted to you by your brother/husband) is an incredibly sexist portrayal. Two “mad queens” fighting for power while their male lovers (jaime/jon) always get a redemption and is regarded as “good guys” is sexist. Especially when you consider that jaime was ready to kill a kid and jon did kill a kid.
“TaRgaRyEnS aRe MaD” is canonically false, but even if we accept the premise, Jon is not mad despite being a Targaryen (acc. to the show). Using fire to kill your enemies is BAD, unless you are Jon/Tyrion or a male character. Your male advisors are poisoning you and/or actively undermining you and openly say so? You should still just believe in them, how dare you question them?!?! You are paranoid and mad!!
I mean the show was always sexist, but the finale was just like watching an incel jerk off on screen. Seriously, the ending was soooooo sexist that it defies belief. Even publications that were previously anti-Dany said that the ending was bullshit and weird circle jerk male fantasy.
As for why it was sexist and how almost all media called them out on it, I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, instead I’ll lead you to two beautiful posts by @tomakeitbeautifultolive here and here.
