Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-3486995-20131124234755/@comment-31231929-20170303172856

Nightling13 wrote: Some of these comments are so full of hateful misandry and blatant sexism against men in assuming women are automatically victims (actually that's offensive to women!) but also assuming all men must be guilty.

The comment about Belle's reflection and how "Milah is right" are just disgusting.

I am in awe that there are still people who post the statement “Milah was trapped by Rumplestitlskin” in regard to when he was human and decided against going to the next town over.

Yes, she wanted to leave but let us look at the facts.

Fact 1: Their source of income was his thread spinning. This is established fact. Every village had at least one thread spinner. This isn’t headcanon, it’s historic fact. I know this isn’t an historic setting but they are wearing clothes and the show has established where thread and yarn come from. So every village had to have had at least one spinner. There is no denying that wherever they’d go there would be competition.

Fact 2:  And this is a big one. They have no horse. In the middle ages (as I am making the comparison for established canon reasons) no one would just lend away a horse, especially to a family obviously intent on fleeing town. And they clearly can’t afford a horse, they can’t even afford a proper front door (It’s a flap of fabric0>  When Rumplestiltskin tried to flee with Baelfire in the night during Desperate Souls they were on foot despite Rumplestiltskin’s hobbled walk.  If Milah, little Baelfire, and Rumplestiltskin fled their home they would have to take Rumplestiltskin’s spinning wheel with them or beg to survive.   How exactly would they carry his spinning wheel?  Rumplestiltskin had enough trouble staying up right.  Milah isn’t likely to carry it (and those things are heavy).  And Baelfire is out of the question, he was only maybe six-years-old.

Fact 3:  Assuming they left the spinning wheel behind how would they earn an income in the next village? Beggars and vagabonds are rarely welcome in already poor peasant villages.

Fact 4: Milah constantly mocked and belittled him for running away and called him a coward and yet she was recommending running away. He chose to stay even though the situation was bad, in the hope that it would get better. That takes courage. It’s quite an hypocrisy that she wanted to run away but constant berated him for running away.

I’m not justifying what happened in The Underworld. That was pretty damn horrible, but Rumplestiltskin (when human) did NOT abuse Milah. She verbally abused him and neglected their child. Yes, men can look after children too, but she was just at the bar drinking and mocking her disabled husband, who had been out earning money. Think how you’d feel about a disabled woman coming home to a child by a burning Fireplace and the husband is in a bar with strange women mocking her.

If it’s not okay for a husband to treat his wife like that, it’s not okay for a wife to treat a husband like that. Gender does not automatically equate to fault. That, children, is sexism and goes against true feminism which originally entailed looking at both genders as equal and being able to assess any situation the same way despite the genders of the participants. If you change how you view something strictly based on the genders, that is sexism. I think I read this exact same thing on the IMDB message boards before they were taken down.