Why do males complain about female-led stories or too many female characters when the majority are still dominated by males?
-
One thing people do seem to hate is hoe they add a token female character who is just badass for no justifiable reason. Rey from starwars, that ninja turtle who they gave multiple weapons. That just feels like shameless pandering.
Also female characters complaining about female problems to people who went through actual hell.
Like in she hulk and she hulk was going off to Bruce about how she has to constantly keep her anger in check due to men. Completely tone deaf and ridiculous as a statement alone, but saying this ti Bruce banner of all people from the mcu is crazy. It's either bad writing or intentionally inflammatory.
Just make female characters who feel genuine and aren't trying to be the jock character and people wouldn't complain as much. And they need to stand on their own, not try to eclipse a counterpart character
-
Dissect all ya want. But in the end it usually comes down to exactly that. Why do we have to expend so much mental energy on fools?
-
Because fools appear to be natural leaders in this mad world of ours? Again, not saying you're wrong.
-
In Aliens, it is precisely the caring about Newt that humanised Ripley.
Otherwise she would have been to badass, to robotic.
-
It's what you know, i lived more years with my gran than i didn't and before she slipped into the madness of Alzheimer's and i got to watch her die a little bit everyday, she still used females when ta looking about women as a group.
Seemed a little old fashioned to me because she was old (born 1934) but its hard to see that term used as something particularly weird, just seems antiquated to me.
But that being said people are really struggling to find terms what won't offend people or be inaccurate, its bloody impossible but therec are plenty o people who are just trying to make better word choices, even if they are failing and mixing in with the weirdos
-
Anime is great if you want you kids to think they are supposed to surrounded by a harem of women so possessive of their crush that they can't function for themselves without that crush their site reason for existing, more often than not
-
I do not have a problem with a female lead in a show. One thing that may be overlooked her is when they make a movie with a female lead and make a bad movie.
My wife watches a lot of spy, military action type movies. A lot of the time, the stories are poorly written and cheesy when they put a female lead in the show.
One example of this was a movie where the girls dad who died was CIA. His daughter somehow ends up involved in some CIA thing and is able to survive the whole thing even though she has no formal training. So, while this issue occurs with male leads, there are fewer movies like this with female leads so it may look like there is a higher percentage of movies with female leads that people do not like.
Look at the movies with female leads that are great, (Almost anything with Michelle Yeoh), Star Trek Discovery, Star Trek Lower Decks, hidden figures, Alien, Zero Dark Thirty. I am sure there are more that I can't think of.
I think that the female lead may get blamed for a bad movie, or people just don't like bad movies and it is assumed it is because it is a female lead.
-
The imbalance in numbers isn't just in movies. Think about the judiciary, legislators, business leaders... It's everywhere. In my own career I was the first woman to hold a senior position with one of my employers. Crazy. Achieving even what we have has been uphill all the way. I'm glad you've woken up to this - maybe you can keep spreading the word!
How do I feel about it? Really fucking exhausted. It's not just the movies, it's my everyday life. Being patronised, talked over, ignored, belittled... Ugh. A lot of men seem to outright despise women. On the bright side, most of this behaviour comes from men of my own generation (I'm old). Young men in general seem much less arrogant, more respectful of women. My sister suggested this is because we remind them of their grannies, lol, but they speak well about women their own age too, and regard them as equals. (Apart from this one young bloke who talked about "women and other minorities", sigh.)
-
Men that are scared of women leads are pussies
-
Context matters. "Male/female" is objectifying and can be used for "objects" like jobs. "Men/women" is more personal and should be used for people. The poster is using almost exclusively "male/female" even where "men/women" should be used, which leads to some clunkiness.
-
Yea, idk maybe I'll have moments of introspection but the default should be the flippant response I gave. OP, don't give more then you want to people like that. Tell them to put in the work to be better or just leave them to their pud.
-
I agree with your reasoning but I think it highlights a major difference between genders in those stories. The hulk has decades of backstory that lets you just throw him into any plot as a badass. You don't need to invent why he's a badass because we all know it and the origin story is so played out that we all gloss over it. Now do that with a female character. Writing the equivalent to decades of lore in one origin story and then doing something with that origin in the same movie is way harder. Wonder Woman would be kinda similar but those origins are muddy with misogyny vibes. So now you have to use well established S tier characters to garner attention and bring in a fresh female face of similar calibar of power and act like they earned decades of respect in one movie. Either you're Mary sue or treated like a child in those situations. The lore fights female empowerment because of baggage. I feel sorry for anyone trying to write for a character like she hulk with all of the obstacles that exist, but I get why the attempts weren't successful.
-
This isn't an excuse for the difference, but I wonder how exposure bias played into their perception. If a person was more accustomed to men in a specific situation and a woman "surprised them" by being involved, it could lead to time passing being perceived as longer. It would be similar to how any new experience is often perceived as taking longer than a familiar one in the same time period. Underrepresentation of women in that scenario would support it.
-
I've had excellent and poor women leaders. The difference with a poor male leader, I could argue with them head-to-head, no harm no foul. But with a poor female leader, if I argue head-to-head I'm suddenly hurting their feelings or being misogynistic.
-
I remember I was watching the show Batwoman or Batgirl or whatever it's called, and all of a sudden they just replaced the lead character with a black women. Like wtf happened there, literally just yoinker her and replaced her.
-
Why do males complain about female-led stories
They don't? Or are you taking 4chan and Twitter as representative of the whole videogame audience?
-
A couple of month ago I was volunteering in my youth centre. We always have the radio on. On air was an interview of a female author writing about a woman and her struggles as a mom and wife, falling for another man. The male interviewer had the audacity to ask if there are any themes in the book which could interest him as a male reader (imagine a very condescending tone).
Reducing “female” themes to lesser themes is so annoying, hurtful and stupid.
-
It's a wild world.
-
Eh, the character was written as "Ripley", sex unspecified. IIRC none of the characters had their gender written into the screenplay and it was intentional.
-
Have you read A Memory Called Empire yet? It's amazing.
