❈ | 031 | Video

[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

[chlorophylliac]

There are a lot of theories, and cultural complications across the map, but the most reliable correlation is between a nation's economic status and the rights afforded to its women. As a society grows richer, improves technologically, can provide better access to healthcare - it becomes less necessary for that society to demand male strength in the workplace, or to expect that women spend their entire reproductive lives acting as brood mares in the expectation that most of their children won't survive to adulthood.

I'm simplifying, but - if a wife and mother needs to have only one or two children in her entire life, and the most time-consuming domestic work is done or simplified by machines, she will have more free time - becoming, from the male perspective, a burden on the household rather than a contributor to it. It then becomes practical to give her economic rights - to work, and to own property - because her financial contribution to the household means more wealth for that household overall, and more security for its children.

Political rights tend to follow from that, largely because when women contribute visibly to a nation's economy they will fight for the right to influence how that country is run. And because primarily male politicians must make concessions to their female voters, equality and bodily autonomy follow on from that.

[indispensible]

[Bodily autonomy. And brood mares. She thinks of Straff Venture, and a flash of anger passes across her face, easy to miss.]

We didn't have any of that. Wealth or technology or healthcare. But even so, some women were more valuable.

[chlorophylliac]

[Not challenging, just curious.] Why?

tw from here for institutionalized sexual violence

[indispensible]

Some were noble. And some were valuable because they weren't noble. Because they could be used and discarded without repercussions.

[chlorophylliac]

All societies bestow those values on its women, in those terms or otherwise.

[indispensible]

So you were told no.

[chlorophylliac]

In my country it's more insidious. It's more that you're told yes by someone who's shaking his head and staring at your breasts.

[indispensible]

What do you do?

[chlorophylliac]

About that? Well. Personally I wouldn't describe myself as a member of society.

[indispensible]

You're outside the rules?

[chlorophylliac]

I have to be an Inmate for something.