History Main / MenAreTough

* {{Wimpification}}: A powerful or tough guy is turned into a "wimp" in order to ship him into a romantic relationship (usually with another man).

* FireIsMaculine: Fire represents passion, destruction, aggression and violence, and thus is associated with men, in contrast to WaterIsWomanly.

* BromanticFoil: A raunchy, headstrong, and often perverted male friend or companion which makes another male (usually the protagonist look well-adjusted or normal by comparison.

* AgentPeacock: When an effeminate man is also an Action Guy.

* CampStraight: When an effeminate man, typically an example of CampGay stereotypes, is heterosexual.

* BillyElliotPlot: A boy has a feminine hobby, but someone else (usually his father) wants him to be manly.

'''[[Administrivia/ExampleSectionectomy No Examples Please]].''' This should be an index of tropes, and nothing else.

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* AllMenAreRapists: A very unfortunate and untrue extreme of this trope. Because men are so tough, and want sex so much, that they do not care if anyone consents to it or not, and will take sex by force.

* MessyMaleFancyFemale: Men (or male characters) are portrayed as unkempt or dirty to showcase their ruggedness or lack of domestication. Female characters are are portrayed as clean and well-kept to showcase their beauty or lack of ruggedness.

* StayInTheKitchen: A woman is forced to avoid danger by men because she's a woman.

* BadassGay: With the assumption that homosexuality is weak and unmanly, a homosexual character that is unquestionably a badass is a significant aversion.

* BattleCouple: In heterosexual relationships, having both a man and woman that are tough is treated as remarkable. In a homosexual relationship, it overlaps with BadassGay.

* MrSeahorse: A man carries a child the way women do, encountering many of the same delicate problems and issues.

* WhiteMaleLead: The most common {{Protagonist}} template in Western media, as a consequence of men being considered the generic "default". It may also be a [[WhiteAngloSaxonProtestant WASP]]. It falls under the "men are dominant" aspect of this trope because part of the dominant/centrist attitudes toward men comes from how normalized it is to see them as the center of a story or the person who drives a story. White Male Lead specifically does that, and has become so normalized that trying to get rid of it creates hostility and backlash.

* BromanticFoil: A raunchy, headstrong, and often perverted male friend or companion which makes another male (usually the {{Protagonist}}) look well-adjusted or normal by comparison.

An {{Omnipresent|Trope}} SuperTrope and SisterTrope to WomenAreDelicate. It can be assumed to exist in every form of media unless otherwise stated. For a number of reasons, fiction tends to treat men as the stronger, hardier, more reliable, and more resilient of the two genders. In most forms of human society, the assumption is that women are the more delicate of the sexes and are more suited for nurturing than the more aggressive roles undertaken by males of the species. This creates the assumption that ''every'' man is a natural badass or ''should'' be. This may be because MostWritersAreMale, or the implication that MenActWomenAre.

* MaleMightFemaleFinesse

* LightswitchSurprise: A husband sneaks home after doing some sort of activity his wife disapproves of and thinks he's gotten away with it until he hits the light switch and she's standing in wait. Simultaneously reinforces that husbands are untrustworthy/immature liars and cheats, and that wives are nagging shrews.

* ADayInHerApron: A guy struggles to do womanly chores around the house.

* AManIsAlwaysEager: Ready for sex any day, any night, during tidal wave, in the midst of a plague of locusts, etc.

* ManicPixieDreamGirl: He's grounded, but boring. She's flighty, whimsical and CloserToEarth, and is on a mission to spice up his life.

* PinkGirlBlueBoy: A feminine girl is matched up with a masculine boy.

* RealMenDontCry: Real men do not show their weaknesses or break down.

* WantedASonInstead: A parent wanted their child to be a boy; a holdover from the HeirClubForMen..

Regardless, a man being in a dominant, physical role is seen as natural while a woman in the same role is [[ActionGirl treated as exceptional]]. Even if a woman ''does'' take on a physical role, there still exist tropes which portray her as less tough than her male counterparts such as GuysSmashGirlsShoot or SheFu.