Why do males complain about female-led stories or too many female characters when the majority are still dominated by males?
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And I fully agree, the way the op posted it with “counter point” already send the discussion in the wrong way.
I think the 'discussion' failed the moment someone said "how come men are angry at women doing 'x'" and the entire fucking thread is full of men talking about men.
Like I'm not surprised, I'm just mildly amused I'm yet again changing accounts for awhile while my inbox fills with angry men shouting messages at me I never read. Every. Single. Time. A thread about an experience a woman has with men being shit in it is always filled with comments from men "nuh uh, whatabout...!" in response.
Every. Time. It's so fucking embarrassing I wish I could literally just not be my gender for awhile. We've been in power for almost the entirety of humanity but oh my God a woman made a comment about how shitty men are to them, so let's constantly make absolute ironic assholes of ourselves.
Peace out, men, you continue the trend of making us all look like whiny babies who can't handle not being talked about, and not being The Normal.
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Yes let's pretend men do this and then hurl insults at them all.
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I don't really talk to anybody
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I don't accept the premise of the question. People don't complain about female led movies, as long as those movies are well written. What people complain about (and this should include people looking for increased female representation) is projects that prioritise having female leads over having good writing.
Take the trend of gender swapped existing male characters into female ones. If, as a writer, you're prepared to follow through on that concept and explore how it changes the story, then it can be interesting. A chance to experiment with the differences in motivation between genders and how obstacles can be navigated in different ways.
If you're just going to swap "he" for "she" in the script and call it a day... Well that's boring and doesn't deserve anyone's time. It's not interesting or clever. In fact it's often bad take. You can end up with a woman on screen showing that to be a hero they have to display hyper-masculine traits. How is that a good female role model?
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For the same reason we want diverse casts in media.
Kids learn by putting themselves into the story. I don't want to see only girls kicking arse and boys being relegated into two dimensional villains or stupid sidekicks.
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I suppose the counter point is actually.
Why are there so many female leads in kid focused movies and so few female leads in adult focused movies.
What changes? Why do we lose out on these stories?
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If there's any universe in which it makes complete sense for someone to be born ultra powerful completely at random, it's Star Wars and superhero movies.
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and in Bluey almost all characters are girls.
Also in paw patrol, the good mayor is a black woman and the bumbling villain is a white man....
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The core complaint is for femwashed stories, where the male lead has been replaced by a woman.
It's very similar to Hollywood movies taking movies from Japan or China and then turning the Asian lead to a Euro-American.
The level of hatred for this type of content is very strong as it feels like a farce or fraudelent, like someone is trying to sell you a fake designer brand item.
Everything that made the item great is absent in the fake one.On top of that, there's a clear fascist takeover in the US from the rainbow liberal, evangelical and social capitalists. Fascists have weird superiority and inferiority complexes including towards women.
But don't worry, Chinese movies will become popular soon, so both sides of the US political aisle will have to adjust. -
There is also the fact that John gets punched in the face, kicked and beaten....and then gets back up to wipe the floor with the enemy.
Showing female characters getting their arses handed to them is not as commercially popular.
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I don't know what a Mary Sue is. Can you explain?
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Please give at least some clue before I give Google more clicks.
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It’s a humorous poem done with beat poetry (I think I don’t know much about poetry)using African instruments discussing gender identity and sexuality. It’s worth the click and doesn’t take long.
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I'd say the latest star wars movies were shit. It had nothing to do with Rey being a woman or even naturally gifted. Finn, Grumpy Luke, Swolo Ren (other poorly written characters), the writing team and the plot points (a spacecraft the size of a city needs to refuel but a lightsaber that can cut through anything has an infinite energy source) the writing team chose, should all share the blame. If your criticism is levelled at Rey alone, your argument isn't worth hearing.
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I don't have a problem with the character, just the way she was written especially in the second film, I didn't watch the third. And that film was terrible. The plot was bad, all the characters were bad, their adherence to star wars space stuff was bad
I don't know if the writers were bad at their job or whether they were required to change it
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I prefer it when the gender doesn't matter, and that the hero doesn't need to prove anything to the audience. They're just well-written and we're invested in their motivations and the wider story around them.
A good example of this is the excellent She-ra cartoon. I can't think of many good examples beyond that sadly...
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Bad writing is to blame for most of the criticism I think. They are just point scoring if they push a female lead because it’s a female lead. Shitty male leads are pushed constantly but the criticism of them is often ignored because the pedestal is often lower. I couldn’t give a fuck about anything Kevin hart or Dwayne Johnson is in for instance, same with plenty of other badly written male characters. Well written characters do more for films/tv than any shoehorning ever could.
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That does not seem to be what research shows, but rather your personal experience:
For animated children movies, I found that 80 % male leads are reported for 1990-2020. Source
Couldn't find data for children movies in general.
And I found for children books that there is still a slight male overrepresentation on average but in general it being around 50 %for the last few years. Source, search for "Fig. 2"
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Bit like how when women reach a threshold of 30% 'airtime' the perception is that they're taking up over half of it.
https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/adam-grant-communication-gender.html -
See it more positive, don't look at the amount of comments, but rather at the votes:
the 2 highest main comments and most of the high voted main comments are agreeing with the main gist of the post. That there are then people discussing that is a different thing, but a majority of the people watching this post agree that there is a problem and recognize it.
People who feel attacked by it are naturally more interested in answering and sending their own viewpoint out into the ether. But most votes are not agreeing with them. So society is on the right trajectory, but of course still has to do the walking towards that direction.
