Brief Thought on Instacast

Published April 15, 2019 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hi hosts!! (Wait is that only the Westworld title?)

I wanted to first say that I am a long time listener- I couldn’t imagine GOT or Westworld without y’all.

I wanted to call out some casual misogyny that I heard on the Instacast this weekend- i am not accusing anyone of being sexist, we live in a world that promotes patriarchal hierarchy and we all say things that we don’t mean to be sexist.

Your guest host mentioned that he found Dany fundamentally unlikeable because she was a “spoiled brat.” I want to challenge that idea and argue that if she were a man, you wouldn’t say that about her. She was called “uppity” which I would argue is embodied by most of the leaders in the show [portrayed as self-confidence or royalty] (except Jon Snow which is lead to his literal demise). I challenge y’all to think more critically about how you speak about female leaders- are they annoying because they are genuinely flawed or because they are women with power? Dany definitely has some critical flaws, but calling her a “spoiled brat” is reductive and sounds like a gendered attack from two men.

Again, not calling anyone sexist- just trying to bring this kind of dialogue into our discussions of women in power, especially in a political moment when women are not taken seriously.

Thanks for reading,

Claire Vivian Fry
B.A. Drama and Theatre Arts
Columbia University

(415) 439-3282

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