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Alex Naylor’s “‘My Skin Has Turned to Porcelain, to Ivory, to Steel’: Feminist Fan Discourses, Game of Thrones, and the Problem of Sansa” explores debates on Tumblr over the sword-fighting, genderbending figure of Arya Stark and her princess-turned-stoic-survivalist sister, Sansa. Fan perspectives on Sansa, Naylor finds, take the form of intense appreciations of her, reflections on how her narrative refracts issues of young women’s victimization and survival, and “defenses” that confront her detractors and implicate the role of sexism and misogyny in some fans’ vocal dislike of the character. Because, for many young women, this kind of online popular culture critique is their first introduction to feminist ideas, argues Naylor, it is most productively explored within the context of a wider debate in both feminist and fandom social media spaces about what a modern feminist ethics of media consumption might look like.

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