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[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

[With all these people graduating lately and all her wardens gone off, Arya has been doing a lot of thinking. She's wormed her way into the CES - she always seems to find a way - and is sitting against Nymeria, using the direwolf as a pillow. She's wearing a modern looking zipper hoodie over her usual threadbare attire; the zipper is open, but the hood is up, and on its top are two fuzzy, gray wolf ears. There's dirt on her face when she clicks the feed on, in a swoop from her cheek to her jaw; on the other side she's managed to accumulate a couple scratches. She doesn't seem to notice either.]

There's no one left from Westeros, besides me. Tyrion's gone. Viserys used to be here; I don't think there are a lot who remember him. Jon Snow was here, too. But he left.

[They all left is what she doesn't say out loud. She scratches at her jaw, somehow missing the dirt.]

I've been here a long time, though. I checked - it's two years, now. [She doesn't pause; she's already let that sink in.] Your worlds are all different from mine. You treat people like babies till they're old; you call them kids until they're eighteen, twenty. In Westeros, and Essos, and all over in my world - a girl is grown when she's flowered. [She makes a face, because it's a dumb euphemism, but it's ingrained.] My brother was a king when he was fifteen. He wasn't a boy, he had a beard and led men and killed his enemies. [And he died.

She pauses for a moment, looking up as a shadow passes over her, presumably a cloud.]

When I was littler, I wanted to know if I could build castles, or be a High Septon, or be a councilor to a king. He said I could marry a king, and my sons could be Septons and builders and knights and lords. Well I'm not getting married, and I'm not having sons, not ever.

Is that what it's like in your worlds, too? I don't mean, do they say no and you do it anyway, that's not any different. Are girls allowed to be rulers and builders and fighters where you all are from?

Comments

[mistconduct]

.....




...Sorry, what was the question? I can't stop staring at your hoodie.

I want one.

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

You'd look stupid in one.

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[fire_punk]

[Kevin has to think a bit about that one. There's a lot he doesn't remember well from before Yvette and there's a lot he never knew after she happened.]

Girls do a lot of shit in my world. Building, fighting... We don't have kings, though. And we don't have castles anymore. Not real ones.

[Knights and lords he remembers from fairy tales when he was little but...] What's a Septon?

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[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

....Do you have fake ones? [What is a fake castle, Kevin.

She shrugs at his question, though, and frowns, trying to work it out.] They teach people about the Seven. They're the new gods. There are Septas, too, but there's no High Septa.

[indispensible]

There aren't any children where I'm from. You're born and you fight.

I got married. I ruled. I fought. I killed. I did what was needed.

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

[That's new and intriguing, and she looks away from the clouds again, her brow crinkling.]

Why did you marry?

[deadliestviper]

Yes. Some places will let women do more than others, but there are always women rulers, and always women craftsmen, and always women warriors. My squad, in my world, had four women and two men.

You remind me of a queen in my world. She never got married and refused to have sons as well.

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

[That's flattering, and a smile tugs at the corners of her mouth, but she doesn't let it out entirely.]

And she kept her kingdom?

[pvtparts]

It used to be considered an Abomination for a woman to dress in men's clothing where I'm from.

Of course, the color blue was also considered an Abomination, so you couldn't very well look up at the sky if you were all that devout.

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

How can a color be an abomination?

[yeahscience]

Hey, you can be anything you want, yo, okay? And if you ever want to come to Earth, we totally got... girl queens and girl tough guys and everything. You can do whatever.

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

Are there a lot of them?

Video: Because RELEVANT TO INTERESTS.

[tis_disapproval]

Theoretically, yes. In practice... 'Tis a rather different matter.

I prefer proving assumptions wrong through actions.

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[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

How do you do it?

[darknessb4me]

My only friend when I was your age became a king when he was nine. I think he'd have preferred to wait, though.

Women can rule. It's usually seen that they're better at magic than fighting, though.

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

Why?

[chlorophylliac]

[Oh, well, she gave some of this lecture to Tyrion but she can do it over.]

It depends on what you mean by 'world'.

In some nations of my homeworld, women are treated as chattel. Forbidden from education, married off the moment they can bear children, bought and sold over national borders, mutilated as a rite of passage. They have little protection under local law and in many cases the wider world is slow to respond because they don't wish to seem intrusive or disrespectful of foreign cultures. [She curls her lip slightly at that.]

In the country where I lived, there are laws to protect the rights of women. They can vote for their leaders as men can, own property, be educated, choose their own jobs and their own partners. They can run businesses, hold political office; a woman could be voted into the highest seat of power in this and many other nations. Some men even claim that the balance has swung too far the other way and that my country is becoming an oppressive matriarchy.

[Everybody take a guess at what Ivy's opinion on MRAs is. Go ahead.]

That's the theory. The reality is different. Our present was inherited from a past where women were practically or literally their husbands' property, expected to keep house and raise children and do little else. Women were considered inferior; subservient, even subhuman. Slaves. And the cultural inheritance of that is a society where a woman is a woman but a man is a person. To be 'normal' is to be male. To be female or feminine is - demeaning, lesser.

And while women have been allowed to do most of the work that is considered traditionally 'male', many men cannot be convinced to do the domestic work that is traditionally 'female'. Women with families are crushed under the dual burden of earning a wage and keeping a home; those without will still earn less than their male counterparts for the same work, they are less likely to be hired and less likely to be promoted.

Beatrix is right. Women have always ruled, and fought, and done whatever they wanted with their lives - but it's most often as you said. They're told no, or they live in the confines of a culture that says no, and they do it anyway. And the best our most 'civilized' societies tend to offer is a message of 'you're allowed to do all these things but really, we'd prefer you stay in the kitchen'.

[indispensible]

What's the difference? Between the countries you're talking about.

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

Oh.

[There's a moment or two where she's really disappointed, because she wanted to believe that the Earths like Jesse's were better, or at least that better existed. But that isn't the case at all, and she knows she should have known better.]

That's not any different from Westeros. Being feminine is being-- [There's a fraction of hesitation, because she wouldn't hesitate to call Sansa demeaning, but she wouldn't say that of her mother. Still.] --Lesser.

[intelligently]

People can do what they want. Not everyone likes it but there's choice. [ And opportunity. Like Lydia plans on being winning a Fields Medal - something that no female has won before ]

There aren't that many kings, either. Only in some countries.

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

But you have rulers. What sorts of choices are there?

[godsays]

If a woman is skaa - if she's a slave - she works as hard as the men who are skaa. No exceptions.

If a woman is a noble, she's meant to look beautiful. She's married, and her intelligence is only of use in women's ways: at balls, at dinners. Places where nobles conference and scheme. Men are the heads of Houses, and the only ruler was the Lord Ruler, and he wouldn't allow anyone else to take what was his.

If she's an Allomancer, only then she's thought of as equal. Allomancers are rare, and an assassin can't be ignored because she's a woman. And that just means she's used, just like every other Allomancer is used by the people who shouldn't control them.

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

There are no slaves in Westeros or Braavos. But there are smallfolk. Their women work just as hard. Ladies have to do that, be pretty and marry and all that.

Allomancers do those metal tricks? [She's watched, even if she hasn't spoken.]

[tactical_alert]

I suppose that entirely depends on which worlds one is talking about. Or your definition of a girl.

[He should be more fair; not everyone here is used to space and aliens and the like, not like him. But still, most of the other answers he could mention about Earth specifically are already more or less spoken for.]

On other planets, in other species, there are societies that are matriarchal in manner, or even look down on men. And there are species that don't have gender at all. Or have genders, but they don't exactly correspond to male and female. Or have any concept of what a girl is. And some have so many genders that two is thought of as strange.

Humanity is just one iteration, and the way our societies deal with the biology and psychology of men and women and everything outside and in between can change so drastically depending on location or time period.

...Is that a wolf? [You know, because that's the one strange thingout of all of this.]

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

[You are blowing her mind, Malcolm. She's screwing up her face more and more to figure out what he means, but that is some crazy shit from her medieval perspective.]

If you're not a man or a woman, what are you?

[No the strange thing is definitely this extra gender business. But she glances toward Nymeria's head and lifts a hand to pet her ear.]

She's a direwolf. Her name is Nymeria.

[myresponsibility]

Yeah, definitely. I'd say it's too bad you can't talk to Gwen, but I don't actually want her to be here. She'd flip out if the only thing she could do was get married and have kids.

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

What does she do?