Do people dislike Sansa because she's a woman?

[Sun]

As one who actually admires Sansa's strength and endurance, I readily admit that there are many good reasons to dislike the character, her gender not being one of them.

[Mladen]

As always Sansa's threads prove to be quite educational. For instance, it never seizes to amaze me how some arguments can be both sexist and so-called feminist at the same time. Truly, there is a talent pouring out of this thread, or as I call it from now on: How to promote sexism through "feminist" ideas...

There is of course the usual pattern to these threads. You will always find poster talking needlessly about Arya, going off-topic just for the sake of proving some non-existent point about Sansa and Arya, then you will always have the vigorous "feminist" debate where under the umbrella of feminist progressiveness, there is a deep notion of sexism that no matter how secretive it may look, it can't be missed. Needless to say, boardology rules at their finest...

Now, interesting how, for instance, there is like molded accusations for Sansa:

1. she lives in fantasies

2. she is selfish

3. she is spoiled

4. she is elitist

And without going into that argument and discussing whether these are true or false (and for most of them I do believe that they are false), allow me to point out something that is rather obvious: we don't judge male characters for the same things. Whether we talk about Jaime's idealism as young knight, or Jon's eloping from NW in AGOT, Tyrion's entitlement for CR, the fact that every single noble character is elitist, disregard of gender, somehow you will miss criticism on some of them. People will say that Tyrion deserves CR, that Jon returned to NW, or that Jaime was just a child. Needless to say that the same argumentation used in these cases is completely acceptable. We won't even start in comparing her actions to everything her father did, for they mirrors each other perfectly. So, why Sansa doesn't enjoy the same privileges?

Thing is that the answer is very simple. When people say they hate some traits Sansa, you can usually find the wonderful link with her being a woman. Being one of those achieving kids in what was supposed to be their role. People hate Sansa for being shallow. What is the proof of that? She likes pretty dresses. Sansa is elitist. Why? Because she found objectively smelly boy to be smelly. You see the pattern. May I ask all those who use these arguments whether they use the same arguments for any other character? When you answer that particular question, by doing comparative analysis with myriad of male characters, then I can say that the argumentation is right.

Naturally, the fact that lion's share of male characters share some negative traits doesn't excuse Sansa in some cases. But it does put a perspective on this and many other threads where Sansa has been put under the microscope... When we do this to every character, then we'll throw the sexism out of picture. Until that happy moments, these tiresome debates will continue and we will always have some "feminist" arguing that female character's story can't be remotely interesting without either rape or pseudo-incestuous sexual relationship.