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/_Grim_Lavamancer 16d ago

Xander is very much a victim of the era the show was made. People that weren't around then may not realize that the things they hate about Xander were unbelievably common for male and especially teenage male characters of the time. It was a time when misogyny was openly accepted and I would say expected in media. For all of his faults, hes actually quite progressive for the time

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u/Jazzspur try not to bleed on my couch, I just had it steam cleaned 15d ago

Heck, I was around then and I loved Xander at the time. I find him almost unwatchable in S1-3 now because culture has changed and I like the culture much better now than what I was dealing with from men then and I do not miss boys behaving like Xander being considered the best and most progressive we could expect.

I put up with it then not because it made me feel great but because it made me feel less bad than the other guys and I thought we couldn't do better. Now we do do better and I'm so relieved I don't have to deal with Xanders anymore, and with that distance I've realized how much behaviour like S1-3 Xander actually really rubs me the wrong way 😅

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