see my brain just doesn’t register the idea of anyone having a ‘one true love’ which is why the common fandom tropes of making canonical love interests terrible in order to justify why your ship is better always bugs the shit out of me. it feels like the only reason you would do that is if the idea of the characters in your ship having any other sort of romantic relationship that was important to them, even in the past, is a threat to their current one, therefore all their past relationships need to be demonized in order to make them ‘not real love’ so that they remain pure and chaste and ready for the True Love of the endgame ship.

The show also has a really negative attitude toward sex I remember reading an article that talked about how Rory Lane and Paris are all punished for having sex for the first time. I wish that was something talked about it more Bc for as much as Lorelai likes to be the cool mom she has such negative views when it comes to Rory having sex. I do think it says something that their conflicts often center around Rory’s love life and Lorelai acting similarly to Emily but Amy seems to side with Lorelai

Definitely! The show has such a weird viewing of sex, which I very much hate since it's centered around two women and their complicated relationships with other people in their lives. It also very much punishes Rory, Paris and Lane for when they have sex for the first time, either by the event being followed with some immediate results or events that change their lives completely (namely Paris and Lane's), or by having Rory's first time be with a married man who lied about leaving his wife to sleep with her. Even when Rory expresses her interest in having sex with Jess, in five episodes later the writers throw in a scene where she has to push him away from her because he doesn't immediately stop when she tells him to wait. Their entire relationship then falls apart with that scene being a catalyst, and the worst part is that it wasn't even necessary in order for them to fight in that scene and for Rory to run off crying, which then leads to Dean attacking Jess. I absolutely loathe how that scene even exists, not just as a fan of their relationship but for the fact that Rory even has to experience such a thing. Even the way Rory's relationship with Logan that begins as a "casual" one predates Rory dropping out of Yale is strange to me, along with how once Rory is no longer a virgin and has sex with the guys she's involved with, her development takes a steady nose dive. The framing of Rory's regression in the revival itself is also connected to her being sexually promiscuous by being in a relationship with one guy, sleeping with someone whom she was supposed to interview on the job, and having an affair with Logan who is engaged. This doesn't even take into account her also becoming pregnant as a result of that affair, too. As a sidenote, I also hate that Rory and Logan were even questioned over having sex to begin with in season 6 when they were in a monogomous relationship with each other. Personal preferences aside, it's still insane to me that Rory was moved out of the pool house solely so that she stops having sex with her own boyfriend. I'm not expecting Emily and Richard to be handing out condoms to them, but what the fuck?

Lane's example feels like the most blatant one partly because of her overly religious upbringing, but also because, by religious "rules", she did everything "right". Lane got married first and then had sex for the first time, and even with all of that, she had to immediately get pregnant and didn't even get a chance to know whether she likes sex or what she likes about it. It's the grossest one to me because of that, since it gives off this idea that women can never enjoy sex as a completely normal thing or they can never experiment with it, they can only have it to get pregnant and that's it.

For Paris, while I get that she was likely placed at Yale in order for her and Rory to continue being friends, I hate how she had to publicly humiliate herself once she found out that she wasn't going to Harvard, and then thinking that she was possibly being punished because she had sex. Paris is also just never given a good relationship with a good guy for a longer period of time. Her first boyfriend is Jamie who seems nice and she actually has a normal relationship with him, but then she has to be taken advantage of by a significantly older professor who has a reputation for sleeping with younger students. It's so gross to me, and again weird how she was even given a storyline like this. And considering how she talks about him, it makes me further consider that this is another spiteful viewing of girls who have sex at a younger age. Nevermind the ever infamous "I got the good kid!" line uttered by Lorelai when Paris had her first time with a boyfriend that she'd been seeing for more than 8 months by then??

I don't think the show punishes Lorelai for having sex with men as much, but she still ends up pregnant when she does it for the first time and isn't really given the option to abort. But as a result, Lorelai definitely has a weird phobia of Rory having sex because of her own history with it, and the show never calls this out either. I think Daniel Palladino once said that Lorelai is somewhat of a reflection of Amy Sherman-Palladino herself, so I can see Amy 'agreeing' with Lorelai whenever she's overly strict or paranoid over Rory having sex for the first time. The show's general approach to sex itself is possibly a reflection of Amy's ideas on it too, because while its not strictly conservative the way you see Emily or Richard discuss it or think about it, it still punishes women who seem overly sexual or confident in it. Even women who are 'competitors' to the Gilmore girls for the men that they have feelings for, like Shane or Nicole, or even the bridesmaids that Logan slept with, are placed as promiscuous and are viewed in a negative way.

Even when the show wasn't written by Amy, namely in season 7, aside from the example with Lane, you also had Sookie be pregnant again because her husband lied about having a procedure that wouldn't make that possible. This in particular was so bad, because aside from Jackson lying to his wife about something that is extremely important for her to have known, it just taints a relationship that started off as such a sweet and healthy one in the beginning of the series.