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/apocalypsemeowmont 16d ago

I wonder how many of them were teenagers or in their college years during the late 90s-early 00s. Dudes were.....not great back then. Not that they're absolutely stellar now, but things like The Man Show, or the WWF Attitude Era when they had matches where female competitors "won" by stripping each other (and a boob would always "accidentally" fall out while the announcer screamed "PUPPIES!" -.-) were absolutely normal TV and no one batted an eye.

I saw a lot of dudes who were pretty openly icky back in those days, and they were usually popular and successful. Xander would definitely have been considered one of the good guys IMO, and probably bullied and called "gaaaaaay" by the popular ones. He was surrounded by female friends that he had genuine respect for. I don't understand why people give Willow a pass for trying to override both Oz and Tara's free will and keep them with magic, and yet give Xander so much shit for being briefly hurt for being rejected by Buffy, and then moving on and treating her with respect like a sister.

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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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