(feminist) thoughts on kara and ruthye's back-and-forth on the 'ruination' of spirits, souls, and hearts. ruthye and kara are resting in a room, and unbeknownst to them, the couple downstairs is ready to trade them to traffickers (two girls for one). kara shares her past, telling ruthye that clark, he's not 'like them'--- he's not ruined, not broken or tainted like she is, like how ruthye is. and ruthye's reaction to that is visible; she comes from a place of safety, only recently torn away from her by traffickers that exploit girls and women. she is new to this notion of taintedness, of brokenness. it's hard not to frame that as a metaphor for virginity, in some way: clark is hopeful, he is safe, he is a man. kara and ruthye have both been torn away from something, and with that, something has been torn from them, as young girls.
i love how this theme recurs throughout the film, with ruthye begging kara to let her kill krem: "i'm ruined anyways". and in that moment, kara realises what she's, unknowingly, dropped onto ruthye; the thought that ruthye, in having something (her family, in this case) torn from her without her consent, is forever adulterated, tarnished. the way that when women are sexually assaulted, they are adulterated by society. so kara is quick to fight that, realizing the weight of her words. i think the power in this sort of feminist narrative is kara's understanding that she is unintentionally treating ruthye as she treated herself, and finally seeing the flaws in those self-destructive modes of thought. similar to how all women must unlearn misogyny in order to love ourselves.
in the end, the two of them are not ruined. their bodies have seen pain and violence, and they themselves have enacted pain and violence, but that doesn't mean that either of them are sullied or irredeemable, or have some kind of permanent darkness within them. neither are women who have been assaulted or trafficked. supergirl 2026 discerns these concepts in a gentle but wonderfully nuanced way, and i absolutely adored it.
