Tag: grantaire

sclez:

The thing that is most annoying about R’s misogyny though is how tacked on it is. He’s friends with women and evidently cares about them in his own weird Grantaire way(he certainly hangs out with women more than any other Amis except maybe Courfeyrac), but he constantly sabotages himself as part of his ridiculous ‘lol drunken lush’ routine. We know from the Brick that he apparently speaks kindly to women and looks fondly/gently towarfs them, but most of his anti-woman bile comes spewing forth when he’s drunk, so what’s the deal?

Personally, it just strikes me as a big bluff of  ‘look at how heterosexual I am, please don’t acknowledge that I’m also attracted to men.’ He’s subconsciously internalised this idea that there’s something ‘womanly’ about himself (his unacknowledged romantic interest in men), which is bad by social standards, so that must be hidden at all costs.

This is a guy who’s described as being gentle towards women, someone who reacts to rejection from women by pretending he didn’t WANT to sleep with them anyway and evidently hangs out with women enough to actually have female friends (Irma, Floréal, even the ladies at the pub.)

No other Ami is described as distinctly having female friends, not even Courfeyrac who is a bit of a ladies’ man, so what’s the deal?

I feel there’s more to R’s attitude towards women than simple lechery, misogyny and entitlement. He’s shown that his behaviour is layered and seemingly contradictory before. He’s still misogynistic, don’t get me wrong, but he isn’t an open and shut case of brodudeism.

I think it’s not exactly outrageous to suggest that a lot of R’s negative behaviour towards women is more complicated in its genesis than it appears.