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 not just movies. My partner and I steadfastly try to do all "interacting with kid's school, extracurricular and social groups" stuff 50/50. We always strive to go to (and host) such important events together. We always indicate we should both be added to mailing lists, and give both our phone numbers as contacts, etc, etc. However, much (sometimes most) of the time people only ever call her about kids playdates, medical professionals default to discussing his issues with her exclusively even though I am sitting next to her and commenting too, when there is a parents' chat/mail group for his classes or other activities usually she gets added and then has to help me muscle my way in to the group (and the groups are often all women). Once at a preschool party a parent saw me interact with my kid, came and asked me to point out his mother, then went to her to invite our kid to a birthday party. It's never-ending for a father who strives to be a "caring father", and not just an infantile "toxically masculine, one-dimensional, emotionally stunted cliché" in terms of "role model". It is exhausting for both her and me, but is also extremely demoralising for me because trying to be what you believe to be the right kind of role-model is one of the most important yet virtually undocumented parts of parenting, and even more demoralising because it still happens even after I hugely reduced my external workload in order to be the primary "stay at home" parent. One small positive step is that the country we live in introduced "paternity leave at child-birth" legal requirements (much smaller than for maternity leave though, and only introduced after my kid was born [sigh]). In popular culture it has become a trope that women suffer endlessly trying to play the role of both parents to compensate for idiotic (or selfish prick) fathers, but it glosses over the fact that a man who actively tries to "be the change" (and any woman who tries to facilitate that change in solidarity) are so often tripped up at every step by this pervasive (and often subconscious) intellectual and emotional inflexibility. One other small positive is that I occasionally find another father who feels the same way (and who is often just as frustrated and burned out by the state of things) ...sometimes - just one or two. Having previously lived in many countries/continents I also know that the country I live in is far from the worst offender for this, which makes it even more pathetic globally.
Everything is based around violence. Like really, is that all boys are good for?
Oh yeah, you are so right. It feels at times like - when I'm not teaching him to play football (violently), and not egging him on to emulate (violent) action figures, and not buying him fake guns to play with (violently), and not telling him to "man up" instead of taking time to understand his feelings, etc - there seems to be a degree of subliminal judgmentalism directed at me for not "sticking to the job description". It seems many people will prefer to see the world burn in preference to accepting someone disregarding parts of the "normality" rulebook based on rational introspection, including those who would never admit it out loud, and even some who haven't yet consciously realised they are standing on that side of history - perhaps because it holds up a mirror to them not doing so (out of fear?, laziness?, bitterness-fueled pulling-up the ladder?).
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It’s sad that those people make discourse over actual criticism so hard.
Rey is a wonderful example here. Your acquaintance dislikes Rey because she’s a woman. I (and a bunch of other people) dislike Rey because she’s terribly written. If you exchanged her for a man he would still be terribly written. But of course, that legitimate criticism is often lumped in with people crying „woke“ at the sight of a female protagonist.
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I understand your point and to avoid two apparently valid points talking past each other I suggest these both look like cases of suffering under the general "stay in your lane" mentality. In that context the "counterpoint" you are replying to seems to support the initial point rather than conflict with it. To clarify, that context is the very outdated mentality of "Women 'should' raise the kids and keep the family healthy, while men 'should' go out and do society-stuff. Girls 'should be' raised to handle interpersonal challenges and ignore other stuff, while boys 'should be' raised to ignore interpersonal challenges and handle other stuff".
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A main character who can do no wrong. They're the best, prettiest, most important person. Rarely has flaws, or flaws thay are actually "cool." Like, the lead in many YA novels.
Or Batman, or Harry potter, or Tony Stark, or Kirito... There are so many! But those aren't a problem for some reason.
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I think, as with many things, it is about context. When doing a scientific reproductive study about "rats - 5 male, 5 female" it makes sense to use biological descriptors, and when paramedics do it in a biological emergency, etc. A good way to understand it is via other similar trajectories, like racism. Would you consider it reasonable to refer to a "white man" while referring to another "man who's a black"? For example only a few decades ago you might have heard a cop in the US (or South Africa, in Afrikaans) say e.g: "I saw 5 men leave, and 2 of them were blacks" vs what you would (hope to) hear now: "I saw 3 white men and 2 black men leave". Look at those 2 sentences substituting "white, black" -> "male, female" and "men" -> "people", and that should highlight the point (in a slightly grammatically clunky way though because I don't have time to come up with a more elegant example).
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Ellen Ripley's gender doesn't matter until Resurrection, which isn't the highlight of the movie.
A lot of media have strong female characters but their gender or sex does matter for the story so can't easily be replaced
Susan in the book Soul Music (plus some others) as well as the Witches, Tiffany Achings and more from Pratchett
Death from Sandman (even though the author is very controversial, but you could check the books out from sources that doesn't give him a kick back)
Was a long time since I read them but the Polgara books feature a strong female protagonist
We got classic youth/kids media that shows strong female characters even if some stuff are coloured by weird takes (Such as Xander Harris):
Xena, Buffy and Pippi Longstockings -
I mean, there is definitely a crowd that don't like women as lead characters. While not directly related to movies, just see how a bit of peach fuzz on Aloy upset people when they showed bleeding the new Horizon game. And that's not poorly written game or character.
Something like Captain Marvel does suit your argument. A poorly written character and movie, so people who criticise it get lumped in with the "women are bad" crowed. But there definitely are people who just hate things that put women in the spotlight.
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There's a thing in movie writing that's called the suspension of disbelief which is the mechanism of being involved in a story by "what do I have to believe in order for the movie to make sense".
SW3's premise is the classical hero's adventure, where the main character undergoes a journey of betterment. And in this particular case, if you already are the best there is no journey.
John Wick's premise is "this guy is going to kill everyone" frome the minute one, you just sit down, switch your brain off and enjoy what he's doing for the next two hours.It's not about the sex of the character, is about how the character is written.
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Oh true -- Alien did it pretty good
I do find cartoons the best examples here. Pippi Långstrump is an interesting choice since I think that's aimed primarily at girls, but PepperAnn did it pretty well with an ambiguous audience. Daria (arguably, though she's a bit of a toxic character). Kim Possible maybe? Again probably mostly aimed at valley girls, but the show was interesting enough that anyone could watch it.
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If the story keeps you invested, genders are pretty irrelevant.
This^ When the director/writer throws in a woman's role to try to appeal to everyone while not actually adding to the story it just comes off as a cheap ploy.
I think Dr. Who fell into this trap. Story about a man who travels through time and is reborn as a man for 60 years of TV, suddenly is reborn as a woman ( to fulfil inclusion of women as main character). Their ratings tanked. Not because Jodie Whittaker was terrible, but because the story was altered with no addition of anything better.
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And those things mean they couldn't have just had at least ONE of the 5 boy dogs as an additional girl? I don't see what another show or the race of characters has to do with this.
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In a word: Insecurity.
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There are a lot of female lead movies / tv shows, but on the internet there are also a lot of toxic, misogynistic little bastards. I think you're waking up a bit to the media you consume.
Black swan, alien, death becomes her, million dollar baby, thelma and louise, ghostbusters afterlife, crazy ex girlfriend, orange is the new black, schitts creek (50/50) Buffy, dead to me, xena, just off the top of my head. All massive hits, all majority / equal female presences.
That said, there are screechers and the whiners all over the internet..and they're dipshits being amplified beyond what they should.
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Well humans are animals, maybe we should question why it makes some of us feel uncomfortable to be referred to in the same way we would refer to other animals. It could be ingrained biases of human supremacy/anthropocentrism/speciesism that we use to justify differential treatment of nonhumans that we wouldn't want done to ourselves
just a thought -
I mean, there is definitely a crowd that don't like women as lead characters....
There are always crazies, but I don't think that's a large number of voices. I seriously think that most people just want well written characters that are true to themselves and the situation and don't give a shit if its a man / a woman / black person / white person / pig or sentient blob of jelly.
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Ripley being a woman didn't matter much in the first film. It's crucial to her character in the second. It's her maternal instincts that drive her protection of Newt and that drive her into direct conflict with the alien queen.
The final battle is two mothers fighting for their children.
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Female encroachment on what has traditionally been considered male spaces is not taken well. Female empowerment is considered taking from deserving males.
The problem is that in the context of a "winner-take-all" society it does do that though.
Obviously the general solution is to make a society that is overall more equitable between those who succeed & those who don't.
But if you aren't going to do that then you will get a reaction from those who are losing ground, even if that happening is the morally progressive outcome.
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I was talking about the people complaining about female characters in media lol. Those people are usually males who are often not (chronologically) mature, making it strange to call them men. I guess some of the characters might not be men either. But yeah we could say male characters rather than e.g. "7 characters: 5 males, 2 females" etc. But it could get a little clunky. Also I'm just not sure what the problem with it is, since saying "males and females" has always been acceptable to me and a basic component of language until patterns of differential linguistic treatment were observed between genders: "men and females" etc, which I understand could be offensive on a gender basis and agree can promote sexist attitudes. I already thought it should either be "women and men" or "females and males", using the equivalent terms in the same context consistently (though somewhat interchangeably), but for there to be an inherent issue with using "males" and "females" even when we apply them equally seems like a separate objection that was new and unexpected for me. I'm curious to find out why that is that some people don't like those terms in general, and I think maybe we should question it, because I have a feeling it could be tied to feelings of human entitlement and the problematic (imo) belief that humans aren't animals, as used to justify speciesism. But I could be wrong.
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I saw that as parental instinct since protection of young are not gender coded, but you can read it as maternal for sure as a mirror to the Queens hatred after the egg burning
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It’s so fucking embarrassing I wish I could literally just not be my gender for awhile.
You should probably delve that particular line of thought more deeply, tbh.
