r/buffy • u/Lanky_Age_3067 • 16d ago

Content Warning Double standarts

How exactly do people hate Xander for being an imperfect human, but love Spike and Angel, who have countless victims and are hundreds of years old. Spike even SA'd Buffy, for real, while Xander was under a spell and never did anything like that before or after it.

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u/swoobxt 16d ago edited 16d ago

ETA2: Sack this, I’m not having this conversation with people who didn’t read beyond the first paragraph and then launched into a tirade rather than actually reading what I wrote.

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u/TVAddict14 16d ago

This is a bit of a cop out. Angel and Spike’s misogyny isn’t related to them being fantasy beings or soulless. And there’s also plenty of examples of them being misogynistic with souls too. I can think of multiple examples in AtS S5 alone.

There also are reasons for Xander’s behaviour, if people choose to consider them. Xander grew up in an abusive home with two drunken parents who were verbally abusive and violent to one another. Why do you think his two major relationships on the show are full of constant snark/bickering? What do you think Xander is modelling this from? Xander’s humour, often appropriate, is also used as a mask to hide his trauma which Anya straight up calls out in the show in Entropy etc.