Abused women like Sansa know what it is like to be utterly powerless and make bad decisions or ‘people please’ for the sake of their life, safety and sanity.
Why do people love Dany and hate Sansa so much? Because people would rather see abused women as a cruel badass conquerer than the gentle , empathic , mentally strong women of todays world.
Sansa is more of a strategist and a survivor than a murderer — what’s wrong with that?
Her strength and power lie in her mind and in her ability to assess, adapt to, and manipulate situations by means other than brute force
“The female characters we tend to applaud typically adhere to a particular formula for strength, one that breaks the patriarchal mold of how a woman should behave. This can be empowering, but the constant regurgitation of this one type of ‘strong female character’ limits the kind of women we value on screen and dismisses the merits of those who prove themselves in a different way.”
Sadie Gennis at TV Guide describes this as the double-edged sword of the show, but it’s also the double-edged sword of pop culture in general. Speaking to the publication about that very issue, Turner said that: “It annoys me that people only like the feminine characters when they act like male characters. And they always go on about feminism. Like, you’re rooting for the people who look like boys, who act like boys, who fight like boys. Root for the girls who wear dresses and are intellectually very strong.”
