Lord that post you made about Dabi not being a misogynist man 😭 I still remember the days fighting people over them labelling a misogynist and women hater because of the things he said to his sister and mother as a child who was spiralling unhealthy like I get that what he said was misogynistic and awful but like they just wrote him off as a misogynistic woman hater for shit he said as a child a child in a unhealthy environment and it angers me so much!
the thing w dabi and misogyny is that it's so complex and interesting but horikoshi genuinely did NOT careeeeeeeee ab any of that one singular bit man it makes me sick 😭😭😭😭😭😭
like personally i don't think people should be reduced to the worst of them especially if the "worst" of them isn't even remotely close to being their actual worst and also happened when they were 13 bc seriously who among us wasn't evil at 13? exactly. dabi doesn't show any bias against women as an adult, not even casual "normal" misogyny and like the real reason for this is really that horikoshi didn't actually care about any of that as part of his characterization i seriously cannot stress this enough he just added that in for the sake of showing how touya has always been difficult and a bitch to everyone without really having any intention of exploring any of it later or beforehand and it really shows like i need everyone to know this so so urgently.
however, staying watsonian for the sake of blorbo enjoyment, this implies that at some point after setting on his quest to traumatize his father back, he did consciously decide to reject that mentality as part of rejecting his father? see because it actually makes perfect sense for touya to have crazy misogynistic bias. touya always knew the purpose for which he was created and the reason why his parents had gotten married, both he and his mother were just pawns for enji's goals. since he was born his family worked with strict gender roles and despite being as much his parent as enji, rei's level of authority or agency regarding touya growing up was always minimal, even during the good times she was little more than a glorified nursemaid going by the way enji treated her. she was never his equal and touya was always a perceptive kid; both he and fuyumi caught onto the gender roles modeled to them since early on and internalized them deeply. what enji modeled for touya was that strenght and heroism were masculine traits ("girls wouldn't understand it"), that femininity was weak, inferior and useless (the whole thing with his hair turning white like his mama's and his body not being able to handle his quirk because it's meant to have an ice quirk like his mama followed by enji's rejection and emotional abandonment) and that his worth depended on his usefulness and his usefulness depended on his ability to be like endeavor the pinnacle of hypermasculinity, which naturally led to the conclusion that the women in their family were useless because enji's behavior reflected that idea.
however this all happens in a very subconscious level as it was taught to him in a subconscious way as well (enji doesn't SAY or consciously believe that women are lesser, but he acts that way) which is why those attitudes only come out when he's emotional and feeling rejected which if you notice is a common theme in all three instances of this. he reaches out to fuyumi for connection by asking for her opinion and quickly starts venting, wanting understanding, but fuyumi expresses concern and since he's already internalized that vulnerability = weakness, it feels like rejection and he lashes out and says she wouldn't get it because she's a girl. then when he's venting to natsuo, natsuo doesn't fully engage and tells him to talk to fuyumi about it instead, and that too is rejection + that earlier experience, it makes him lash out and say the women in their family are useless and wouldn't understand him. lastly when rei tries to stop him from going to sekoto peak and encourages him to do something else than try to be a hero, that too is a form of rejection since he knows she doesn't believe he can do it, so he lashes out again. and each time misogyny comes out because his father is his model for strenght and identity and enji todoroki is a man who has always responded to feeling weak by exploiting the power that misogyny gives him.
so again, this behavior is a result of internalied subconscious bias on touya's part and not conscious feelings of hatred towards women, which is why i find it ridiculous when people try to imply that touya hated rei. touya loved his mom and sister and after waking up from his coma his first thought after wanting to see his dad again (bc that's always no.1 ofc) was that he'd said horrible things to his family and had to go apologize to his mom. because again, those aren't beliefs he consciously willingly holds but rather absorbed from his father, and he said those things while actively spiraling. touya todoroki loves his mom and if he hates his mom it's because he knows he is much more like her than he is like his father who he's tried his whole life to imitiate.
all this to say i really wish we had gotten to explore more of touya's relationship with femininity and misogyny and the women in his life from his mom to fuyumi to himiko but that never would've happen because in what world would any of that be possible in a story written by a misogynist? exactly ughhhhhhh i don't even have it in me to hate people who read touya as a misogynist i just think they're silly i'm too busy wanting to shake horikoshi by the throat for cooking up a five star meal and then immediately setting it on fire and throwing it in the trash.
