"Why wouldn't you travel by main roads?"

Episode 3, Betrayer Moon - Tissaia (& the Brotherhood)

Tissaia: "There is not a person alive that does not look into the mirror and see some deformity. Except for us. We remake ourselves on our terms. The world has no say in it. Look. You can free the victim in the mirror forever."
Yennefer: "I don't know where to begin."
Tissaia: "Close your eyes. I said close them. Imagine the most powerful woman in the world. Her hair, the color of her eyes, yes but also the strength of her posture. The poise of her entire being. Do you see her?"
Yennefer: "Yes."
Tissaia: "Open your eyes. She is stunning."

I mentioned in Tissaia's last chapter that she really believes in Aretuza and we're seeing this here. This is an attitude people hold, and there are contexts where it might be ambiguous if this was meant to be empowering. Those contexts are not this one. The show takes pains to establish that in the larger context of the episode, what's best for the sorceresses is not a consideration. This isn't something the boys go through, only the girls, and it's done to make them more appealing to the men they're about to be given to. Some people might love the idea of this and consider the loss of their uterus totally worth the cost (or a bonus, even) but as far as the Brotherhood's concerned, this benefiting a sorceress is entirely coincidental.

Tissaia seems great and powerful to Yennefer, but she doesn't feel that way herself. She said last episode, "There are mages like Sabrina who ignore their emotions. And then there are mages like us who are consumed by them." She relies on the rigid discipline she was raised under because she doesn't trust herself not to be consumed otherwise, and that means she doesn't second-guess the way Aretuza works. She rationalizes everything as either necessary or good because she doesn't dare question it - because what if she found it wasn't, and found herself angry about it? And if it is wrong, then what she's doing to the girls who are under her is also wrong but she can't actually do anything about that. Much better for everyone if this is something that's good. (And I do think she's trying to make this as untraumatic a process as she can, for once - it's not being sprung on them, she responds to anxiety with surprising kindness, and encouraging them to spend a long time thinking about what they want to look like probably means that even in the worst cases it's not bad enough to provoke dysphoria.)

Then we go to her meeting with the rest of the Brotherhood. There's twelve people sitting in a circle. She's not the only woman there, but it looks to me like there's only three other women. So, they're 1/4 of the group. Just enough to say, oh, of course we're not excluding women.

(If Yennefer's group is representative, only half of the girls with magic potential actually become sorceresses. If Ban Ard doesn't cull their students, then there's twice as many sorcerers as sorceresses. But that alone would give us a 2:1 ratio and the group we're seeing here is 3:1. Whether or not the eeling is female-only, sorceresses do not get the same treatment as sorcerers.)

Tissaia: "Cintra continues their animosity towards our organization."
Artorius: "Don't tell me they're employing druids or worse--fortune tellers."

We've had several episodes about prejudice and it's very interesting to suddenly have a lack of it right here. Cintra does not hold an animosity toward magic but specifically this group of people. As soon as it's brought up, the next line makes it clear they're fine with unaligned magic users.

"King Dagorad has banned mages from Cintra, God knows why."

And we still don't.

This and the previous episode establish that the Brotherhood is an extremely political organization. Its politics seem to closely align with the interests of monarchs but it's quite possible the condescending belief they're needed to tidy up after idiot kings is reason enough to object to them. It's also possible King Dagorad is paranoid or had some other bad reason. And it's possible the mages' interests actually don't align in his case, since the next line is Stregobor saying, "I've heard rumors he's taken ill. Now, if the king dies, perhaps his heiress will be more pliable." Is he killing the guy? We don't know. We know Calanthe continues this policy and is never killed by the Brotherhood, which points to this just being a happy accident, but that may be because there's a limited number of murders you can do before it destabilizes things too much or it may be that Calanthe, being Calanthe, stabbed whoever they sent to poison her. And certainly, even if the mages aren't to blame for this happening, they're not interested in offering any help.