These Women Deserve Better
You read a book. For the first twenty minutes, everything is going splendidly. Then it happens. A random woman character unfathomable horrors happen to her... But the male characters have either no horror or a reasonable amount of horror happen to them. Or maybe it's a woman that should have more to do in the plot. It feels out of nowhere and you feel inclined to gloss over it. Don't. Think about it. Is there a pattern? Whatever the case, this list is my way of keeping score.
created by Techystatic
last updated July, 2026
Comments
Yes, this list was made because the movie adaptation of In the Tall Grass pissed me off, HOW did you knowwwww? But seriously, I really wanted to read the book and then I realized Stephen King wrote it halfway through the movie. I also don't want to say every author on this list is a misogynist because I don't know yet. All I know is that Neil Gaiman, at least, DID do some heinous things to women and I feel like his books DO have tropes that may have had red flags within them. This list is just me trying to pay attention. Also I will put the instances that put these books on this list in the forum section under a spoiler so I don't spoil it here.
Also the various reasons are as follows and spoilers
Screwtapes kills off the main character in a war and it's supposed to be a great thing ... Yeah so he had a Christian girlfriend who was basically perfect by narrative who basically got punished by the narrative for no reason with his death. Either because she has to wait to go to heaven or because her fiance just died and she gets to grieve that. Fucked up.
In the last book, Twilight gives Bella a scary pregnancy literally the first chance it can be justified. Edward does not suffer half as much. "Oh but that's bio-" Half the cast are vampires so it is still a choice to give a fictional character a scary ass pregnancy, especially when, in real life, pregnancies aren't always scary. You could make Edward carry the baby for all its worth. You could make it a nice pregnancy. You could make vampires infertile. But Stephanie Meyer chose to make a female character suffer purely because of her biology. Interesting.
Also Bella as a character just sucks and is poorly handled. She is completely dependent on Edward.
Also Jacob imprinted on her baby and that is HORROR from the baby's perspective.
In Harry Potter, Hermione is constantly criticized for her appearance. In Goblet of Fire her teeth, an insecurity of hers, get hit with a spell. Ron and Harry don't really get anything like this. Closest thing is Eat Slugs. It's just because she's a girl. In the same vein, Hermione has no girlfriends. We hear about Dean Thomas and whatnot as acquaintances of Harry and Ron but nothing about who Hermione knows.
Also Umbridge is an evil character whose main character trait is her femininity.
In Good Omens, Anathema's book of prophecies says that she will end up with a man named Newt. So Neil Gaiman, the alleged abuser of women, wrote a scene where a woman is cosmically forced to do something with a man and focuses on the man's POV throughout... Yeah. Ok.
In The Tall Grass has a woman eat her own baby and I just want to say I can put up with some fucked up shit in horror AS LONG AS IT IS THEMATICALLY RELEVANT. The baby eating and for that matter the horrible labor could have happened in any book. Why put it in this book where it's so discordant with the rest of what's going. It's tangential and it's just there to be sexist.
