Sansa's Little Bird Speech: Survivors, not Victims.

*Alert: I'm going to talk about my own experience here, because this hit really close to home and trying to pretend I don't have skin in the game would be disingenuous.*

The misplaced self-righteousness here is appalling.

Everything that we experience and what we do with those experience is in fact what makes up our identity. Anyone who has been raped can never get away from that fact. We cannot forget, and we cannot ever act like it never happened. I will never be able to go into a romantic or sexual relationship with anyone without discussing boundaries first: because I was hurt, and because I hurt someone else. I can't just "fall for" someone like I did back when I was sixteen. But that does not mean I can't have a satisfying sexual and romantic life. I have a wonderful girlfriend, and I have had and will have other partners. I have found a new system for protecting myself while allowing for fun. I have had amazing experiences in romantic and sexual relationships because I decided to ditch the rom-com model of romance.

Sansa in this scene is not forgiving her abusers: and she is certainly not saying that she or Sandor are defined by their abuse. Her abusers are dead for the most part, or they are far away and unable to touch her. The same is true of Sandor. Rather she is saying that it is now time for Sandor to become his own person and see himself in that light. Sandor is just like Sansa: an idealistic person who believes that his dreams were crushed by his abuse. For so long, Sandor has believed in nothing and indeed been suspicious of people who believe in something. But, Sansa is saying that this attitude is wrong. After all, she achieved her dream of being a Lady: not despite, but because, of those who tried to abuse her. If Joffrey had been nice to her she would have been killed with him at the Purple Wedding. Instead, she saw that no bully stands forever. That gave her the courage to kill Ramsay Bolton herself. She has destroyed her abusers and stepped on their metaphorical broken bodies to become Lady of Winterfell. Her abusers are pathetic idiots, not people to be afraid of, or even angry at. Certainly, they are not people who can control her or define her: they are dead. So is Gregor Clegane (although his corpse has been animated, he is functionally gone) and Tywin, Littlefinger, and Joffrey: all of whom used to mock Sandor. The only person who hurt both Sansa and Sandor and is still alive is Cersei: who is definitely doomed in the last episode.

Remember Maggy the Frog's prophecy? most theorists have assumed that the "younger brother" referred to as the person who will kill Cersei will be one of her younger brothers: Tyrion or Jaime. Well, it won't be Jaime: however much he might have changed, Jaime will never hurt Cersei. His love may be immoral, but it is sincere. It won't be Tyrion either, although Cersei thinks it will be. He demonstrated that last season after the Dragonpit Meeting. He is unwilling to hurt Cersei even though he doesn't like what she's doing. Cersei is using the corpse of Gregor Clegane as her bodyguard. It won't be her younger brother who kills her but his younger brother: Sandor. And it will be Sansa, the other person whom Cersei has most deeply hurt, who will set up the prophesied moment. What she is trying to do is get Sandor to an emotional and mental place where he can confront Cersei, and defeat her. Normally he runs away from abuse, unwilling to face it.

Dealing with abuse requires going through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and finding meaning. Sansa has successfully done this: and this is what her statement indicates. She has found meaning in what happened to her. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, that she has created meaning: and I think this is perhaps what David Kessler, author of "The Sixth Stage of Grief", really meant. The idea of meaning as something that lies around waiting to be found is a little bit silly. Sandor however is hung up on depression. But, in order to understand why our article writer is wrong, and why the people who have objected to this scene are wrong, we need to discuss the fifth stage of grief: acceptance. Here is what Kessler's website says about acceptance:

"Acceptance is often confused with the notion of being 'all right' or 'ok' with what happened. This is not the case. Most people don't ever feel 'ok' about losing a loved one. [gah, why does this need to be said?] This stage is about accepting the reality that our loved one is gone, and recognizing that this is new reality is the permanent reality.  We will never like this reality, or be OK with it, but we can learn to accept it. We must try to live in a world where our loved one is missing." Someone who suffers rape, or indeed any trauma, cannot ever go back to living as if they never suffered. Suffering permanently changes a person. Accepting our trauma means accepting that change in ourselves. It means learning to live as a changed person.  Remember the end of Lord of the Rings? Frodo cannot stay in the Shire or indeed anywhere in Middle Earth. What he suffered was too great. He must pass into the West: only there can the new Frodo find a life. The new Frodo who speaks elvish and has more in common with the elves than he does with other hobbits. Frodo journeys into the West because he accepts this reality. Likewise, we must metaphorically journey into the West.

What Sansa is saying here is that the proper way to deal with abuse is to change the system which allowed the abuse. In order to do that though, you need to have dealt with and found meaning in your own suffering. Sansa has not simply killed those who abused her. She, with Jon's help, has changed the system. Theon doesn't change his behavior because of what Ramsay did to him. Theon changes his behavior because of what Jon and Sansa did. While it is true that Ramsay held a mirror up to Theon, showing him who he would become if he continued to act in an abusive manner: that is not enough to change anyone's behavior. What will change someone's behavior, is seeing another way to get what they want.

You see, for all that the Starks talked about honor their talk was always somewhat hypocritical. They could talk about honor, because they were too feared for anyone to challenge them. Why? because of the Boltons. The Boltons were the Starks' bannermen: and known for sadistic torture. Their castle, the Dreadfort, was supposedly impregnable. Because the Boltons who were feared bent the knee to the Starks, the Starks benefitted from their terrifying reputation. Jon, in a single afternoon, destroyed that legacy that had endured for centuries. Jon could do this, because he does not need fear to rule. Unlike the Starks of modern times, the ancient Starks were up against far greater forces: forces they could not defeat, only ward against. They also could not rule through fear. Jon understands this. This is Jon's reason for his altruism, for his self-sacrificing generosity. Jon knows that if he is to keep the people together in the coming Winter, he cannot do it with fear for his enemy is far more fearsome than he can ever be. He must rule through love, like the ancient Starks did. When Lyanna Mormont stands up and says "I know only one King, the King in the North, and his name is Stark": this is what she is telling Jon. The ancient Starks ruled because they were loved, not feared, and therefore the Boltons are disposable.

Jon has the courage to disbelieve the legends that say the Dreadfort is impregnable.  He realizes of course that it would be impossible to take with conventionally available siege weapons, but he also realizes that he has access to an unconventional siege weapon: Won-won the Giant. Won-won may not be a brilliant thinker, but he would never fear a human: he's a giant after all. He also surely understands two things: 1) that the assault on the Dreadfort will likely kill him and 2) reciprocity. Anyone can see the fort is extremely well defended: but Jon sacrificed himself for Won-won and his Wildling friends. Therefore, Won-won sacrifices himself for Jon. Because of that, Jon is able to completely expose the legend of the Dreadfort as a lie. It is not an impregnable fortress, and the people who live in it are not monsters. It is a castle, and with the right person's help it can be taken. The Boltons are men, who can be defeated. Sansa takes advantage of Jon's assault and his wounding of Ramsay to deal the final blow: setting Ramsay's dogs on him as she leaves with Theon. Not only is the Bolton family completely wiped out: but their legacy is totally destroyed too. This was possible because it was built on a lie: a lie about what strength means. Ramsay is not strong, for all his boasting and swaggering. He is weak, because he is fundamentally alone. Because he rules by scaring and abusing people, as soon as someone isn't scared of him, he can be taken down. Jon isn't scared of the Dreadfort or the Boltons the way other people are: because he has been at the Wall. He has see White Walkers and other things far scarier than Ramsay Bolton. That give Sansa the opportunity to take out Ramsay that she's been waiting for, and she strikes using Ramsay's own weapons against him: his hungry dogs. She has been abused by Ramsay, and she has watched him abuse others. Because she saw the swaggering and boastful Joffrey be taken down by the Tyrells, Sansa understands that she does not need to be afraid of Ramsay either. She puts on a show of obedience, but is actually plotting against him. As soon as he's vulnerable, she goes for it. Although Jon and Sansa had no way to communicate, they are still working together: such is the strength of their relationship.

Thus, Sansa inadvertently teaches Theon what true strength is. True strength is found in building relationships with others, not in swaggering and boasting, not in an aura of invicibility. The Dreadfort and the Bolton family's power were founded on a lie: the lie that the Boltons were not quite human. Like, legit, for a long-ass time I thought the Boltons were going to be revealed as descendants of White Walkers. Nope, they are just humans. The Bolton's are not invincible, nobody is. True strength does not come from being invincible, from being never hurt. True strength comes from perservering and surviving through suffering, and coming out on the other side of it. True strength comes from confronting one's abusers, and learning to live with the scars they've given you. Now that this belief has been revealed to be a lie, so the system which gave the Boltons and people like them power has been revealed as unjust. That is, it can no longer be justified to the common people: or indeed to the knights who directly serve the lords. Jon and Sansa together have taught the common people in the North that they should not give their allegiance to a leader who is simply scary: because there exist leaders that they can love. It is Brienne who puts this into words and action: after she saves Sansa and Theon from the Bolton's thugs. She swears allegiance to Sansa, and during this scene says "I've looked a long time for a lord I could believe in".  This confirms that Lyanna Mormont and the northerners aren't simply obsessed with the Starks for the sake of tradition: Brienne is originally a southerner.

Sansa and Jon are taking a wrecking ball to the abusive system that for centuries has held sway in Westeros: aided by the chaotic aftermath of the War of the Five Kings, Cersei's madness and the danger posed by the White Walkers. Jon is probably not conscious of this: but Sansa is. She is able to do this because she has herself suffered under the old abusive system. They are slowly but steadily building up a new society: with people like Brienne, Theon, Sandor, Bran and Thoros of Myr. People who were outcasts in the old system: people who have suffered under the old system. But let us remember the Sansa we met in Season 1 Episode 1. Could that Sansa have done what current Sansa is doing? Would she have been able to break the abusive system with a flick of her wrist? no. That Sansa did not even realize the system was abusive. Only because she suffered did Sansa become aware of how unjust the system is, and how to break it. This is an uncomfortable truth: suffering is not meaningless. Suffering does indeed make people stronger, braver and wiser. That does not justify it: just as the wealth generated by war does not justify war. Wealth is only desirable because it is a way to minimize the pain of an unjust world. Strength is only desirable because it is a way to minimize the pain of an unjust world as well. If the world was more just, we would not need to be as strong. This is the answer to our article-writer's objection. Sansa has found meaning in her suffering: that is a good thing. It does not mean that her suffering was justified or that she is unwilling to change the system which made her suffer. The meaning that she has found for her suffering is in fact to break the system. The same conclusion that Danaerys and Jon and others have come to. Now she is persuading Sandor to accept this view as well.

This author erroneously assumes that if women are not portrayed as helpless victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault then the problem will never be addressed. The author is assuming that what motivates people to help others is pity. That is simply not true, as any beggar would be able to tell you. Rather, pity largely prevents any significant action from being taken to bring justice or change. Think about cancer. When I was a little kid, people who got cancer were objects of pity even well after their cancer was in remission: they were victims. They were also outcasts, unacceptable in normal society. Now, we speak of cancer survivors: even though the people may not have actually "survived" but only be in remission. But this change in words was deliberate. Nobody likes a victim. They are a burden on others: worthy perhaps of gentle treatment, but not of respect. Certainly they are not acceptable in normal society. So, why are we encouraging the victimization of abused women? We should not be calling people victims of domestic abuse or rape. We should be calling them survivors: as we did with the hashtag #BelieveSurvivors. It wasn't #BelieveVictims because they aren't victims. Sansa is not a victim: so she shouldn't talk like one. I'm not a victim, my mom is not a victim, my girlfriend is not a victim, my brothers' girlfriend's mom Tamara Kincaid was not a victim. She was a firebrand of a lady, despite a degenerative illness, who went out fighting for all the abused of this world. We are not victims, we are survivors. We do not want pity, we want change: and we have the power to make it. Our suffering was not meaningless: and it will only be meaningless if we fail to make any change in the abusive system that has oppressed those like us for so long. We will start by changing how we define ourselves, and how we speak of ourselves. We will stop speaking of ourselves as victims, and start speaking of ourselves as survivors. We will stop concentrating on the downfall of individual abusers: and start concentrating on the system itself. We will expose the powerful abusers as the frauds they are, and take a wrecking ball to the abusive system as their illusions collapse around them. We will take power not despite what was done to us, but because we have survived it and learned from it. The system has produced the instrument of it's own destruction, as abusive systems always do. And we will dare to imagine a new type of society that no longer rewards this abusive behavior.

Oh, and the writer made a factual error. Danaerys Targaryen did not fall in love with her rapist. It was never implied that she objected to Khal Drogo having sex with her. This was made abundantly clear in the books because we saw the meeting of Dany and Drogo from her perspective. She is indeed terrified, until she actually sees Drogo and realizes he's pretty hot. As soon as he opens his mouth, she realizes he's actually nice even though he looks scary. She's basically like 'oh, ok, I can live with this' as Drogo leads her away. She is kind of weirded out by the Dothraki wedding, but not to the point that she wants to leave. As soon as Drogo takes out Viserys, Dany is 100% ok with being his wife (and that's before he does anything sexual with her). The book also makes it clear that she didn't find the particular sexual position he wanted to use painful or anything: she just realized it wasn't what she really liked. She wouldn't have eaten a horse heart if she wasn't fine with Khal Drogo (even though she didn't exactly love him yet).  The person who abused Danaerys from her own perspective was Viserys, not Drogo. The nature of the TV show means that perhaps wasn't quite as clear as it was in the books.