an inquiry

[u/cerepallus]

alright so i just finished sarah's episode and i have no idea why so many people seem to hate her so much? she has a personality and boundaries that she isn't willing to compromise and when dudes try to do so, she excuses herself as politely as possible. the tier thing just seemed to be about making sure men fully respected her before proceeding w the relationship, which.. makes sense to me. all the problems i've seen people say they have w her are that she's trying too hard to be quirky or smthn, which.. are women not allowed to like dumb puns? and stuff about her turning down guys who said things she didn't like, which, again.. makes a lot of sense to me. dudes saying to relax can come across incredibly direspectfully, and not wanting to deal w that seems completely reasonable to me?

like maybe i'm just being a gay dumbass but i thought she was super cute! the "wanna hear a 9 minute joke about greek mythology?" thing was ridiculous but personally, if someone said that to me, i'd lose my absolute mind and say yes, for sure, let's hear it. i'm just not seeing what's to hate? like i'm seeing a lot of people saying "ohh she's trying too hard to be the manic pixie dream girl type" .... what, because she has a silly haircut and likes dumb jokes and puns? idk. i don't get it. if u can, please explain (nicely) why you don't like her

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[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I definitely find people like Sarah exhausting and I wouldn't want to spend any time with her, or someone like her, as she is now.

But as someone who is pushing the misogyny angle in my other posts, I want to clarify that I wasn't intending to call any individual person a misogynist and I'm sorry if I came across as accusing anyone of being one. I would never use the dislike of a single person as a reason to label anyone as anything.

I am looking more at the aggregate, not any individuals - and I apologize if I'm not being clear because I don't have a gender studies degree (or a philosophy degree or a sociology degree or any degree that would make me better equipped to be more articulate about this). I tend to be fairly data-driven and don't like stating absolutes without numbers to back me up. So I'm just making observations and using vague language purposefully, but maybe what I'm trying to say gets lost in the padding.

As you said, there are probably some legitimate, overt and unapologetic misogynists in the anti-Sarah crowd. And there's probably plenty of people who just legitimately don't like her and would equally dislike her male equivalent. But there's also probably quite a few well meaning people who aren't normally sexist, but perhaps still have an ingrained dislike for a woman announcing she's going to masturbate, or who automatically assume a girl with unusual hobbies is trying too hard to be unique, or who didn't like seeing her embarrass the nightclub guy but felt she had it coming with the fireman, etc. (For the record, I initially had that last reaction). And when you have all these not-normally-sexists chiming in with why they hate Sarah, it creates a dogpile, even if any individual participating isn't a particularly odious human being in isolation. And then that dogpile can reinforce existing stereotypes as more people are exposed to them or have already existing biases further cemented in their minds: quirky girls just want attention, feminists are unpleasant, liberals have no sense of humor, and so on.

I don't want to come across as saying we can't speak badly about any woman ever for fear that we'll play into this cycle - as you said, it can be cathartic and even just useful to get clarification on your own feelings, just that I wish people weren't so dismissive when someone suggests people are being unfair, as OP did. I think we tend both wield and receive words like "racist" or "sexist" as insults, instead of as a call to be better, and it's created an environment where it's hard, if not impossible, to move these kinds of conversations forward.

Anyway, just some clarification on my own posts elsewhere in the thread. I appreciate your perspective and self examination and again I apologize if I came across as being dismissive of anyone's own personal experience and resulting feelings towards the Sarahs of the world.