The fandom: you know what, I just don't see it. Them being in love being both stated and shown? Don't see it. Y'know what, I think they were actually queerplatonic. Here's an essay against canon evidence, actually. No of course this has nothing to do with misogyny! I love women...I acknowledge when they suffer...sometimes. Also, look at that! Their relationship was not perfect! Aha! What's the point then?! This was clearly abusive! Anyway, I'm going to ship this man with every possible male character that was introduced instead, even though he didn't even like them and liking them actually goes against who he was, and I'm going to invalidate and discredit the canon ship at every possible turn, until people who ship the canon ship will be made feel bad for liking it or posting about it.

I'm going to hold your sexist head when I say this: people are allowed to ship whoever they want in fanon and to not be crazy about a hetero canon ship, but if you cannot see that fandoms are incapable of incorporating and caring about the female character from the story and only acknowledge her seperately from time to time, and almost always make it about the men she is surrounded by instead, misogyny is deeply rooted inside you. When the canon ship is discussed, it's always criticized and invalidated until people who like that ship are discouraged and tired of speaking. People cannot even acknowledge canon and things that came from that love without pulling teeth. But they're all for coming up with increasingly toxic dynamics for every male character and consider it cool. Pushing away the female character and replacing her with a male counterpart. There is no valid reason to not be able to celebrate an interesting canon dynamic, the fanon will still be popular, especially here.

This is an older draft that I don’t remember making at all XD

Maybe I’d allow myself to cry. To be vulnerable. To be awkward and silly. To be weak, to be small, to be protected.

I can’t do that as a female.

I need to be strong, stoic, an iron maiden. Self reliant, avoidant, strong.

Vulnerability is punished, is part of what makes me a second-class human, awkwardness is what makes me a pariah, neediness is what chained my ancestors to submission.

And I know this isn’t true and is all internalized misogyny. But why does I feel it down to my bones?

Why do I have to daydream I’m a man, silly, awkward and nerdy, artsy, horny, unhinged, a bit queer when the sun sets;

but now?? i love pink, girlblogging, skirts, perfume, makeup, bows, victorias secret, shopping, heels, singing, sanrio, dresses, manga and anime(specifically yuri, magical girls, or cutesy ones), jewelrey, being short, unicorns, girls, skincare, painting nails, and EVERYTHING CUTESY AND GIRLY AND WHIMSICAL!!!

Let’s not forget when Cho was treated like a traitor just because she chose to defend her friend (being the ultimate girls’ girl, a goddess, honestly, thank you Cho for so much, and I’m sorry for all the mistreatment) over a boy and even over political duty, exactly what a real girl would do, because friends come first, even when they mess up. But instead of being portrayed as the boss she is, Rowling paints her as a whiny, immature traitor.

Fleur is only respected by “the cool girls in the story” once she stops being herself and becomes a housewife who lives entirely for her husband. Basically, for Rowling, everything revolves around male validation: you’re only intelligent and brave if your friends are boys, because if your friends are girls, then you’re shallow, superficial, and a gossip. You’re only “cool and popular in a good way” if you’re admired for the same reasons a boy would be, and if they think you’re cool and popular, it doesn’t matter what the girls think.

I’ve read a lot of takes about this, about whether or not she deserves better, and honestly, I think that’s beside the point. What I haven’t really seen, at least so far, is a gender-based analysis of this idea that women “deserve” something better.

The idea that a woman deserves something better comes from a patriarchal tradition in which women, before we were considered political subjects and therefore not full members of society, were basically commodities used to arrange marriages that served family interests; especially in upper-class families. It’s true that in more humble families there was sometimes room for marrying for love, like just liking the neighbor, but in bourgeois or aristocratic families, marriage was purely about convenience.

Women had no power of their own. They had no value on their own. The only value they could have was the one granted to them by the man they married. In other words, they were only as “good” as the man who chose them. Because women didn’t choose; men chose them, since men held the power.

So if a “great man” —wealthy, well-positioned, from a good family— chose a woman, that meant she was valuable, because a great man had chosen her. But if she was chosen by a man of lower status or reputation, then she was worth less. This strips women of agency; not just in their romantic lives and future as wives, but also as sexual subjects. Women weren’t seen as beings who desire, but as passive objects of male desire. A woman doesn’t desire; she is desired. A woman doesn’t choose; she is chosen.

So when a woman who was considered “valuable” (because of her family, dowry, or social position) ended up marrying a man below her status, people would say she deserved better. Why? Because it wasn’t even conceived that she could have chosen him. Women didn’t have the right to desire or to want. They were only passive objects within male desire and patriarchal society. So people would say: “No, no, you should be able to choose someone better.” Because what she wanted didn’t matter. What mattered was how society perceived her through the man she was with. If he was poor, she was poor. If he was a king, she was a queen. Never on her own, always through him.

And this perception still exists today. Not in the exact same way, obviously, but it’s still there. Just look at fiction: it’s always fine for a rich, handsome man to end up with a woman “below his level”, it’s even seen as romantic. That’s because there has never been an issue with a man, who is already a social and political subject with inherent power, choosing someone “beneath” him. His status doesn’t depend on her. But a woman’s traditionally has depended on the man she’s with. That idea has been passed down through culture and literature to this day. We’ve grown up not only in a patriarchal society shaped by this history, but also consuming romantic narratives that reinforce it.

Which brings me back to Jaime and Brienne. Sure, maybe Brienne could “deserve better.” But that’s irrelevant. Because when we say that a woman deserves better than what she chooses, we’re stripping her of autonomy. We’re taking away her right to desire, her right to choose.

A woman doesn’t need a “better” man; more attractive, richer, morally superior. She needs what she wants. She has the right to want what she wants. So if Brienne of Tarth wants an idiot —because Jaime Lannister is an idiot, I love him, but he is— then that’s it. It doesn’t matter that she could have the greenest flag in all the Seven Kingdoms. It doesn’t matter that he could be someone without a dark past, someone who hasn’t slept with his sister or pushed a child out of a tower. None of that matters. What matters is what she wants. And if she wants him, then that’s what’s right for her. Because denying women the right to desire—to want, even sexually—is deeply sexist. Saying “you deserve better” ignores that women are independent individuals, complete in themselves, capable of making choices, even bad ones. And having the right to make mistakes also means having the right to choose.

So this whole “Brienne deserves better than Jaime” rhetoric feels incredibly sexist to me. It treats Brienne the same way patriarchal systems have always treated women: as beings whose value depends on the man beside them, instead of recognizing them as autonomous individuals who choose for themselves. What that does is take Brienne as a character and basically reduce her to a passive subject; that is, someone who has no value on her own and no individual worth to choose what she desires, what she wants, or who she wants to be with. Instead, it turns her back into a woman who is merely a complement to the man she’s with, someone whose value depends on his status or reputation in order to have any worth herself.

And no, she’s a woman, and like all women, she has value in herself. On top of that, she’s an incredibly complete character within the story. She has her own plotline, her own personal struggles, her own arc, her own goals, dreams, and conflicts. All of that makes her not just a fully developed, well-rounded, three-dimensional character, but also, as a female character, a deeply complex and human woman. As an individual in her own right, she has the right not only to exist independently, but also to desire. And yes, she can desire a guy who’s an idiot. Does she “deserve better”? No. A woman deserves exactly what she wants. She deserves to pursue her goals, her dreams, her desires, and her passions. Whether she could “aim higher” or not is irrelevant, because she doesn’t need to prove her worth by going further. She is already valid in herself.