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Unknown Troper: I've moved Distressed Damsel to under the "Frequently sexist in execution or delivery, but not sexist in nature" category. A damsel in distress isn't sexist by nature, it's just a simplistic, if overused, plot device. If the damsel in question exists only to get rescued (ie, has no story impact otherwise), it's sexist. Otherwise, it's no more sexist than the gender flipped case, which isn't listed at all.
Violet: Why is Rape as Drama here? From the article I presume that its because its usually male on female, but is that really a double standard as it simply reflects real life. Khym Chanur: Why is Death By Childbirth a double standard? Men can't get pregnant (at least not yet). Ununnilium: Taking out: More general examples:
I've got a problem with the formulation : some tropes exist because of a backlash against "traditional", misogynist sexism that went so far as to become a new form of misandrist sexism. Most of the exemples given as sexism against males are actually traditionnal sexism, in that they refer to traditionnal male model. It's not actually backlash. Cliche: "This goes both ways; sexism also manifests as misandrist tropes. (Just look at this obviously female-biased introduction)" Okay, so instead of merely Lampshading the trope, why couldn't we simply avert it? The irony in all this is that the wiki frequently mocks this kind of behaviour, yet this engages in it in a different kind of Double Standard. —- Narvi: I don't follow why Hood Ornament Hottie is sexist against women. It's just Fan Service after all. Like a Page Three Girl.
Slvstr Chung: I just want to add a funny quote from an Orson Scott Card re-telling of Sleeping Beauty, Enchantment, which hopefully someone can use somewhere:
Gentlemens Dame 883: Is there any page for other, non gender-related kinds of so-called "double standard", such as... well... No Holds Barred Beatdown is okay, it's "interesting" (would deliver some sort of Take That, but this is not the place), but Curb Stomp Battle is "boring"? Or anything else that might exist... Is this  an example of a trope? —Document N
Cliche: Due to the fact that the argument over whether Mary Sue qualifies on this list is getting overly cumbersome, but interesting (as I have a part in it), I decided to move it to purgatory and hope that we can continue our lovely discussion here, and maybe eventually come to a conclusion we all can agree on. ADD: I'm removing the rest of the justification for now.
Removed the discussion under the Groin Attack listing. Regardless of who's genitals are more painful when attacked (That's what Troper Tales are for), it's still a Double Standard that women are never attacked here.
Pulled this: Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgement
Rann: So I'm guessing that at this rate, every single trope on the wiki will be listed here with some way it's been twisted into being gender-offensive by... oh, May at the latest. ((Jester)) >I've got a problem with the formulation : some tropes exist because of a backlash against "traditional", misogynist sexism that went >so far as to become a new form of misandrist sexism. Most of the exemples given as sexism against males are actually traditionnal >sexism, in that they refer to traditionnal male model. It's not actually backlash. >Cliche: "This goes both ways; sexism also manifests as misandrist tropes. (Just look at this obviously female-biased introduction)" >Okay, so instead of merely Lampshading the trope, why couldn't we simply avert it? The >irony in all this is that the wiki frequently mocks this kind of behaviour, yet this engages in it in a different kind of Double >Standard. Fixed some of the 'What about the MENZ!!' whining; the fact that we have this page is great and it shows an attempt to document the existence of sexism in the media by a great media site. Let's not have it clogged up by some man (who's making the other men look bad) whining that some Straw Feminist stole his precious privilege, plz. It's just ridiculous to act as if the Double Standard relating to gender cuts just as bad both ways; why have this page in the first place if that was the case?
Anonymous Internet Person: I was wondering why only gender-related double standards are discussed on the main page, and why they are considered to be exclusively a bad thing (perhaps because this is only in regards to double standards related to gender?). Double standards exist that encompass things other than the whole gender binary dealio. A double standard is defined as "any code or set of principles containing different provisions for one group of people than for another". Age, race, social class, all sorts of stuff can be used to create double standards as well, and oftentimes double standards can even be considered justified. For instance, consider the belief that it is immoral for children to consume alcohol, but acceptable for people older than a certain (widely-varying) age to imbibe. Also, the notion that it's okay certain people to use certain slurs as long as the person using them is a member of the group that the slur is targeted against (ie. it's okay for black people to call each other niggers, and gay people to call each other fags, but a white person can't call a black person a niger and a straight person can't call a gay person a fag) can be seen as a double standard as well. However, whether these are believed to be justified for one reason or another doesn't matter because by holding different people to different standards you would be engaging in a double standard. The term itself can be neutral, but the justification behind holding double standards is prone to a whole lot of Moral Dissonance. So that said, I don't know why this is under the list of "bad" tropes, or why the definition used in the article covers such a narrow range of double standards. TBeholder: First, because let's face it, for post-protestant cultures (let alone their freudistic offshot) sex is one of "default" themes, or no phrases like "talking about it | this" without providing specific context would be used. Second, " pages or on N Word Privileges respectively.
Whitelaughter Those figures on child abuse are flat out wrong. Figures from sexual abuse textbooks {frex Courage to heal, Victims no longer) put abuse of boys as being as prevalent as amongst girls, and interviews with child abusers indicate that most don't care what gender their victims are. Grab some more up to date figures, or cut the entire paragraph!
Leigh Sabio: Will someone please remove Rape As Drama from "sexist against women." Portraying women as always the victim is not any more sexist against women than portraying men as always the rapists is sexist against men. Should we never adress rape, even seriously and realistically for legitimate Emotional Torque? (Sorry, rhetorical) That sounds very much like Political Correctness Gone Mad to this (Female and feminist) troper.
Leigh Sabio: I think Vasquez Always Dies should be on the list. Does anyone second? Twin Bird: I've removed...
Idler: The Millionaire Playboy is not the Spear Counterpart of the Rich Bitch. A Rich Bitch's defining traits are wealth and nastiness, a Millionaire Playboy's are wealth and having lots of sex with different people. Bruce Wayne is a Millionaire Playboy but I doubt anyone would call him a bitch, for example. He's too good a person. Aquillion: Please do not try to discuss the validity of double standards in the description. That is even slightly not important; tropes are neither good nor bad, and the description therefore does not have to try and convince people either way. That topic is highly controversial and would require a massive essay just to provide even a fair overview of the most common interpretations. The back-and-forth sniping that started to blossom the instant the subject was brought back up is exactly the sort of thing that I trimmed the previous huge essay to avoid; it's sufficient to say that these tropes reveal our assumptions abousectionst genders, without trying to explore the extent to which those assumptions are valid — this is a quick description of the trope, not an essay about the larger place of gender in society. It probably goes without saying, but I also hate the way the page is currently divided into 'sexist against XYZ' . There are so many things wrong with that. First, by separating things into sexist and non-sexist, you turn the charge of sexism unnecessary value judgment on the underlying reasons for a trope, which are complicated and not necessarily easy for anyone to dissect; it implies that the tropes under there draw on assumptions that are 'bitchslapping' a particular gender, while the ones that are "not sexist in nature" are not. This division is not meaningful. A distinction between tropes that reveal or embody a double standard, and tropes that are generally applied as a double standard might be more useful, but even then, there's going to be a huge amount of overlap. Likewise, dividing it up by gender makes no sense, since genuine double-standard tropes usually reveal and imply gender roles for both genders. A Man Is Not A Virgin, for instance, implies an entire framework of sexuality that is applied to both sexes, even if the trope itself describes males. Alrune: I agree with most of the things you say but I think planning to sugar-coat a page in the name of "correctness" or because it's too offensive is like putting a veil on the problem. Sexism is sexism. Period. Trying to make it look like a more convoluted problem with many underlying implications doesn't help. Some tropes are sexist against one gender, some are sexist against both, others often put a gender down despite not being sexist per se. Sometimes yes there is more to the trope than its sexist aspect, sometimes there's not. I understand that a Double Standard is supposed to concern both genders but currently it is divided in who gets put down by applying the trope in question and I believe it's a pretty fair way of doing it. Idler: I'm not sure Charlize Theron being cast in Monster is an example of discrimination against unattractive looking actresses. They made her up to look really, genuinely hideous, not Hollywood Homely, so they would have had an easier time casting someone naturally bad looking, which suggests that she was cast purely on the merits of her acting. Alrune: Feel free to remove it if you think it's inappropriate. I'll just point out that there has been a (short) fashion among beautiful actresses to alter their beauty in order to give themselves more depth. Nicole Kidman in The Hours is another example. But then again, Hollywood would likely never cast a really unattractive female in a major role and make her famous, which is why they chose regular actresses that accepted to make themselves ugly. MercuryinRetrograde: Re: Women In Refrigerators"At best, it's a cheap method of applying Emotional Torque utilized by bad writers, as something bad happening to a woman is supposed to pack more punch than something bad happening to a man. At worst, it comes across as a terrible sort of subconscious male power fantasy." At _best_ it exploits a social meme that male death is less important then female death? Wow. Why is that the _best_ way of looking at it, ie. the way that sort of excuses it? Think about it. Appalling. Gfrequency: Original editor here. Neither way of looking at it excuses it. The former is simply the least actively vicious. To clarify, as I can't help but feel my point's been missed entirely here: 1) When did I say it was excusable? 2) Of course the perception that male deaths are somehow less important than female deaths; I did say that something bad happening to a woman is supposed to be more heinous than something similar happening to a man; this is clearly the accepted social view, particularly in America. I did not say it is more heinous. It's a cheap method of exploiting the unfortunate preconception that women are less capable of taking care of themselves and therefore must be looked after by men or else come to harm. While regrettable, do I find this interpretation of the trope less horrifying than the possibility that the writer is getting off on a subconscious desire to see a powerful woman brought "down to size" and devalued through rape or butchery? Yes. Yes I do. "At best" does not mean "good." MercuryinRetrograde: I don't think society's indifference to male suffering and/or death(when compared to female) is less horrifying. I think it may be more horrifying because, at least, most people automatically think a guy who fantasizes about raping and killing women is evil. Whereas most people think our indifference to male suffering is either justified or irrelevant. (Evil is banal, after all.) Incidentally, isn't that somewhat slanderous? Saying that these specific authors(who are specifically identifiable by their specific works) fantasize about raping and killing women? Alrune: Many fans do. Why wouldn't the authors? MercuryinRetrograde: Yep. Fans are f-ed up. Gorn for Girls Alrune: @ Mercury In Retrograde: I read your page darling, I know where you're coming from. I know that in Real Life, many women use the Wouldnt Hit A Girl trope in order to get their way and that many Double Standard tropes are demeaning to men. I know you must be somehow tired of Straw Feminist always shouting they want equality, and that women are NOT automatically Closer To Earth. I saw your and Twin Bird's editing. I think you're not doing the page a great service by simply making it more complacent towards males by putting an equivalent in each and every female trope. Baby, don't be a troll. Replacing a bias by another is not solving any problems. I mean yes, there are tropes that are outrageous against men such as Men Are The Expendable Gender and Pedo Hunt. But there ARE also tropes that treat women like shit. Most Writers Are Male hence there IS more bias against women since men tend to describe them in a fashion that is often far from accurate, themselves not being women. The whole Moustache De Plume thing further supports this. Don't get me wrong Double Standard IS unjustifiable, whichever gender it's aimed at. Also, as for your whole Gorn For Girls being Ryona's counterpart thing, it's not. It WOULD have been if it featured a woman martyring a man. But Gorn For Girls is just a redundancy of Guro, a genre that is exactly what you described and that applies to both men and women. PS: I read your page. You're NOT a woman. MercuryInRetrograde: As I posted in the discussion page of Ryona, the point is that a female(male) creator is depicting and enjoying violence done against a male(female) character. If you want to get really technical, there is so much acceptable female-on-male violence in media, no one has to recreate it in fanworks. Just like het tends to be less common in fanfiction. It's partly the thrill of the forbidden. When I first came across yaoi guro, as a yaoi fangirl, I just shook my head and moved on. But then I saw the Ryona entry and was like... look at all that bitching about how evil men are! Yet I've seen ten times worse from women. I can't really prove that I'm a woman. *shrug* But glad to have challenged another gender traditionalist's assumptions about what constitutes male and female traits. Alrune: You don't challenge anything. You just support the same Double Standard you seem to oppose by being biased against women, making it worse if you're a woman yourself (which I somehow find hard to believe but whatever). I understand you statement about Guro on men, but the same exists on women. It's not a Double Standard, it's a genre - a gruesome one yes - that applies to both men and women, hence not sexist. If you need to know, I first didn't think Ryona was that much of something that needed to be addressed to but after reading many comments and talking to viewers, I figured it might need to be put in the spotlight for everyone to know. Yes I said that Ryona lovers were twisted, I never said something along the lines of "ALL MEN ARE TWISTED". I think this genre does men a great disservice, just like the overuse of All Men Are Perverts with almost no All Women Are Lustful in many works of fiction. And I'll repeat myself, replacing a bias by another more appealing to you doesn't solve anything. MercuryinRetrograde: I'm not biased against women, I'm biased against people thinking that women are somehow less human. That they don't have the same struggle with evil as men, that they don't have the same dark desires. Particularly when there is evidence that they do. Ryona is just as much a subset of Gorn as Gorn for Girls is. No need to single it out and point fingers at men. Or say things like "Often leads the female viewer to further believe that All Men Are Perverts." [1]  ◊
Alrune: I'm happy you made your position clearer. Still there is something you seem not to understand.
My problem is NOT to deny the existence of Gorn For Girls or soemthing like this. It's that it's already treated under Guro so it's a redundancy. But thinking about it, I believe the problem is more with your examples actually. Your examples would be much more convincing if they featured female-on-male violence/maiming etc... because as it is, it only features male-on-male violence, supporting one mroe time the idea that women can't hurt men with sex. Also, I think you should develop more in your entry.
MercuryinRetrograde: I think they support more HetIsEw. IME, women seem to be more interested in drawing/writing media that depicts man-on-man. I think it may be due to the fact that these relationships/situations are inaccessible to women, therefore they have much more exotic allure. (Or it may be my own sample bias as a yaoi fan.)
MercuryinRetrograde:It's more then just I want women to be seen as fully human, which includes human frailties and evils. I also think it's my social duty to protect men from this kind of 'guilty until proven innocent' gender-smearing. Most of the men I know are decent human beings with human failings, just like most of the women I know are the same. I believe it leads to Men Are The Expendable Gender as it gives the average person the impression that all men are guilty of something thus unworthy of audience compassion or sympathy. When I see something like Ryona, with it's last line implicating all men, I see this dynamic playing out and my instinct is to say 'yeah, but women are just as guilty.' Not because I think women are worse, but because I think men and women are equal. (It just seems like I'm playing one side of the field because of the overabundance of the 'men are bastards' meme.)
Alrune: If you think that I was trying to put down men one more time by putting this last line, you're mistaken. I've written this from my own experience about female's reaction to Ryona and yes it's usually something around the lines of All Men Are Perverts.
I understand your view about men being considered perpetually as expendable or as Complete Monsters who love mistreating women and children. But fact is, tropes like Ryona, Women In Refrigerators, Female Success Is Family and Monster Misogyny are not helping to change this. And let's not even get to Most Writers Are Male, Most Gamers Are Male or worse Moustache De Plume. Yes, men are far from responsible for all these tropes' existence. Meddling Executives are. And they mostly cater to a male audience that is considered to be macho, stupid and looking like a standard TV-advert male. It's a vicious circle.
My purpose upon creating Ryona was to inform people about this trope. Yes, I'm being harsh. But the conversations I've had with people who enjoy watching Ryona vids were far from pleasant, especially when they knew I was a woman. Once more, I believe it's not doing men any good. If men want to disprove the whole "men are bastards" meme, they must take notice and acknowledge the existence of such genres because it simply furthers the idea of them being "guilty until proven innocent".
MercuryinRetrograde: I've never really engaged the women who draw Gorn for Girls in conversation but I imagine I wouldn't appreciate their view point very much either. It sounds like you think AllMenArePerverts and MenAreTheExpendableGender are justified until men shut down the small minority of men who like Guro. Your message is: 'Men need to make this small minority of men behave! Or society will continue to treat all men as disposable!' Or, perhaps, 'Because a small minority of men don't behave, all men deserve to be treated/viewed badly.' Well, I can tell you now that this is an impossible condition. There will always be men who behave badly and like things you don't like because men are human. And other men won't have any way of stopping them because they are human too and not omnipotent god-like beings. In fact this entire construction, blaming all men for the actions of a few, ties into traditional constructions of gender very well. Ryona's assumption is that men have the ability to stop this behavior somehow, thus deserve to be punished for allowing it to continue. But what if they don't? What if, instead of super-potent, men are impotent in this situation? And what Ryona is assuming is brazen bastardry is actually ineffectual weakness. I seriously doubt men have the ability to change this stuff at all, in fact I think women have more social potency when it comes to saying things like 'these stereotypes hurt me or someone I care about.' Thus it may be time for women to step up and say 'these stereotypes about men are not acceptable'—and not justified because of a minority of men doing X bad thing—because men are weak in this area. Alrune: That's not what I meant. I never said neither did I meant that men where Acceptable Targets because Ryona existed. Nor do I blame the entire male population for the misdeeds of a Vocal Minority either. You're quick to put words in my mouth.As you may have noticed, I have removed the last sentence from Ryona's main page. I said I put that there because this is the reaction I've mostly had when female viewers got to know it. And that's all. Men don't deserve being viewed badly as a whole. I never said such a thing. Just because I state the unfortunate motivations of Ryona viewers as they are doesn't imply all men are just the same. I'm no Straw Feminist with an agenda against men and I readily recognize that men get just as much flack from the Double Standard as women. If you look up the history of the Double Standard page, I also put up there tropes that are sexist against men. But Most Writers Are Male. It's a fact. Also, many do practice the Double Standard thing unknowingly because, as you said earlier, there is a whole societal construction around Double Standard that many of them are so deep-rooted in our minds that we don't even notice we abide by them. And said writers are not "bad" writers. They just know less about how a woman would react in said situation since they're no women, just like women know less about male's reactions in certain given situations because they're not men. And sometimes the Double Standardis intentional. And it's not more acceptable for males than for females. MercuryinRetrograde: I don't think MostWritersAreMale means that men can change anything. The people who are capable of social change are quite distinct from the people who gain prestige through parroting comfortable memes and social truthies. If male writers challenged the status quo, they may well see an end to their careers. Not only that, but they may be so emotionally invested in the gender dynamics of society (man strong; woman weak) that they can't conceive that men might need sympathy. I think women, far more then men, set the social agenda. And the social agenda decides what's considered acceptable for main stream consumption. (Internet, being a Monster from the ID, is sort of the exception to this.) Alrune: Maybe you're right. It's true that many men just can't challenge the gender roles they are given by default but are rather expected to enforce it. I think some men DO want (and need) sympathy but in our society, it's way too often equated with weakness when such a thing comes from a man for any of them to explicitly state it. But women are not much more powerful when it comes to putting up a social agenda. At least not for now. But I'd be really happy to witness such a change or to be part of it. I think you should check out Mother Nature Father Science... MercuryInRetrograde: Having the power to maintain the status quo doesn't mean you have the power to change it. For the last couple generations one of the main reasons these tropes have evolved and changed is because women have said they were unacceptable(although there were also women saying the changes were unacceptable as well.) It seems to me that often the people who loose most from the status quo are the ones most invested in maintaining it and believing its rationales. It's bad to be hurt, yes, but it's far worse to be hurt because you're a dupe, better to believe you're a white knight taking knocks and not a patsy being played. I'm not sure what you wanted me to take from Mother Nature Father Science but I will say this. I've noticed that many people who believe that men are more intelligent but somehow less human(lacking the full range of human emotion) often also think that Asians are more intelligent then white people but also less human. I don't think that kind of stereotyping is beneficial to Asians and in the exact same way, it's not beneficial to men. Gfrequency: I give up. Every time I add something in as non-confrontational a fashion as possible, someone else edits it to include some sort of sniping at the opposite sex. Alrune: Since I last made the edits, may I ask what you're talking about? I just tried to sum up the longest entries and develop some other ones... Gfrequency: Honestly? It's probably just me being in a sour mood and reading too much into the edits made, for which I apologize. The addition to the Fan Service entry seems extraneous and I was probably assuming too much to say it was meant to imply that All Men Are Perverts. Condensing the second half of the Moe entry (which was not one of my contributions to the page) without touching the first, on the other hand, seems to skew it toward implied chauvinism rather than a true Double Standard, and the addition to No Bisexuals was just snarky. Adding Most Writers Are Male and Girl On Girl Is Hot to any trope touching upon homosexuality seems just as disingenuous as adding Men Are The Expendable Gender as a gender-flip to any trope involving the gruesome death of a female character. MercuryInRetrograde: Ah, f*ck it. Alrune: Look, Armor Piercing Slap and Girls Hit Harder Than The Villains ARE ONE AND THE SAME PAGE! This is why I deleted it. Nothing else. Just putting two alternative titles in a list is redundant and useless. If you want to put your text in Girls Hit Harder Than The Villains, then just do so but don't make two entries for the same page. As for Stalker With A Crush, the trope itself is NOT sexist by nature. It's a gender-neutral characterisation. Now the playing of it, that's another story and I fully agree with what you wrote. Anything else? MercuryinRetrograde: Cut "being sexually submitted is humiliating to men but normal for women" from the entry beside Rape Is Comedy When Its Male On Male I'm hoping this was just badly phrased, but to me it implies one of three things: 1. All heterosexual sex is rape for women (this is not being sexually submissive, this is rape.) 2. That male-on-male rape is seen as _worse_ then male-on-female rape because it is seen as humiliating to men whereas male-on-female rape is not seen as humiliating to women 3. Something even more incoherent. Alrune: Maybe I'm just wording it badly. I didn't intend to mean anything around those lines. What I meant is that, since men aren't supposed to get raped, it doubles the feeling of being humiliated because they are being degraded to female status. Yes it's very sexist against both males and females but that's how it works. Being submitted is something men tend to stomach even less than women in general due to what society expects from them. Women live in the fear of getting raped because it comes with the territory when you have a vagina. Not saying that women OUGHT to live in that fear but it's an innate reaction. For men, not as much since they are not supposed to be potential victims in general. But I don't know how to explain it properly. Maybe you can do better than me? MercuryInRetrograde: Maybe I'll start with an assumption I'm seeing in your post. "Women live in fear because they have vaginas". Rape is not being penetrated; it's being forced to have sex against your will. Having a vagina does not make women more vulnerable to rape in and of itself. Men have sexual organs that can be abused as well. It's just that, in our society, we see men's sexual organs as somehow invulnerable or even weaponized. Conversely men's vulnerability in this area(groin attack) is the height of humor—I wonder if it's the paradox between seeing penises as invulnerable yet simultaneously highly vulnerable that creates the humor. We could easily hold the same attitude to women's sexual organs as this attitude is entirely arbitrary. Vaginas and penises, both constructed of similar stuff and both vulnerable to injury are not objectively more or less invulnerable, nor is either more innately weapon-like. (Contrast swords with bear-traps for example and remember both are made of steel, not tissues.) As for being 'degraded to the status of a woman'. I agree there does seem to be that dynamic, particularly in prisons. However it's another paradox. The same men who are 'degrading other men to the status of women' by raping them are also the same men who would brutally murder and rape those men in prison for DV or rape of women. So while they're seeing women as degraded, they're also violently opposed to degrading them. Or maybe, although they see women as vulnerable and vulnerable men as superficially womanly, they don't think a 'real man' exploits women's vulnerabilities although it's perfectly acceptable to exploit men's. A woman's vulnerabilities elevate her to the status of protected person; a men's vulnerabilities lower him to the status of acceptable target. Just as an aside, one thing that really eased my fear of rape was the realization that, in general, rapists are rape victims themselves. Actually, re-contextualizing women's vulnerabilities in relation to men's was, and continues to be, liberating to me on a personal level. Alrune: I agree with most of what you said here. Still, I believe that women fear rape more than men do and not because of how society relates to genitalia. It has more to do with the fact that women, being physically weaker than men, are likely to be successfully subdued and forced since seldom can a vagina impede penetration while men can't be raped by women unless they are put under some drug. It doesn't mean that women can't hurt men with sex, it just means that they can't outright force him to have an intercourse; whereas another man who is stronger than the male victim can much more easily have his way. Gfrequency: Removed Female Gaze and Male Gaze. Both entries were essentially saying the same thing. It also occurred to me that neither are inherently sexist. They're both fanservice tropes, nothing more, and fanservice is already covered under its own entry. Likewise, the natter beneath Male Gaze is already addressed in Right Through His Pants. Cleaning up redundancy, more or less, though if someone thinks they really do belong here, by all means.... MercuryInRetrograde: "men can't be raped by women unless they are put under some drug". This isn't true. Men can become erect due to stress or fear; they normally have erections while asleep. An erection is an involuntary reaction to a lot of different stimuli; it isn't always a signal of sexual desire. So men can be raped by women pretty much in any situation where you can imagine the reverse. As for women being physically smaller; guns and knives are great equalizers, as are threats of violence by proxy. (One man I know was compelled to submit because his rapist threatened to tell the cops he had raped _her_.) Alrune: Guns and knives are great equalizers Do you always walk around with a gun or a knife in any given situation? I don't. Firstly because, in Europe, guns are strictly forbidden to anyone who doesn't hold a licence to wear firearms. Second, because having a knife that is longer than 2 inches is also forbidden unless you need them for your job (butcher, cook etc...). In the absolute, what you say is true. But when it comes to bare hands confrontation, only a superiorly trained woman can actually stand a chance to an equally trained man. Also, if the woman is petite, she's not at an advantage against a 6'2'' or taller man. Like any man her height that's true but men have greater upper body muscular strength on the average. Women can also be strong but we are stronger in the leg area (obligatory for childbearing) and have denser bones but it isn't an advantage when it comes to physical confrontation. BTW have you ever been in a REAL hand-to-hand fight against a trained man? Or even in a REAL fight against another woman (Cat Fight does NOT count, I mean fight with punches, kicks and intent to kill)? Threats of violence by proxy Now this can work. As for men having compulsive erections, it's true. But when a man isn't willing, it's much more difficult for a woman to have him become erect. If the man really doesn't want to have his erection, he won't. Also, some men are impotent which makes them impossible to rape by women. By men, that's another story. Um, at the last paragraph of the above: I am guessing you are female, and Did Not Do The Research, because no, a man cannot prevent himself from having an erection just by really not wanting to get one. It is true that not all men get erections with equal ease, but it is not something that is consciously controllable by any man. The closest you can come to controlling it is calming yourself, and focusing your thoughts on something calm and unexciting — and this is under optimal conditions, in a relaxing environment, and half the time it's still like trying not to think of pink elephants. In a stressful situation like a confrontation, it is not realistic. This often leads to embarassment for young men who get erections at inconvenient times (and of course, trying to will the erection to go away just makes things worse for them) — and no, men do not get some sort of magical ability to turn off an involuntary body function as they get older, either, although they may not get erect as often or as easily (which is obvioulsy not the same as being able to control it). Anyway, the fact that men are stronger than women on average is not relevant in all situations, and does not prevent men from being raped. For starters, many rapes (of either sex) happen with the use of drugs or intoxication by the attacker, and if a man is either drugged or drunk, it doesn't really matter if he's ten times stronger than the woman who wishes to take advantage of him — he won't be able to resist anyway, and probably won't even realise what's going on until afterwards. Also remember that one Double Standard in many societies is that it is more acceptable for a woman to hit a man than for a man to hit a woman. (Obviously, this doesn't stop those men who perpetrate domestic violence, but it does have a great impact on many men). This alone may give a woman the edge in attacking a man — he may have never been in a genuine fight with a woman before, and he might have had it drilled into his head from early childhood that hitting a girl is wrong under any circumstances, so he might choose to let the woman take advantage of him rather than fight back well enough to escape. What takes place in such a scenario is still rape. Another Double Standard — men are supposed to want sex all the time. Men know that this is expected of them. A man who is being raped might feel a conflict as a result: He knows he doesn't want to have sex, but he's a man, and since puberty he's been bombarded with the message that he should pretty much always be willing and ready, so how can this be? This, too, can make resisting more difficult from a psychological perspective rather than a physical one. And afterwards, it adds extra problems if the man tries to report the crime — in many places, the response he will get if he says that he was raped would be, "you're a guy, so what's the problem?" A female attacker might take this into account, knowing she may be less likely to face consequences as a result. Also, what does it matter if you do not "always walk around with a gun or a knife in any given situation?" Obviously, if someone is planning to commit an assault, it is not "any situation!" They may take a weapon with them even if they don't normally carry one around — and since they are already intending to commit a very serious crime, local laws restricting weapons may not be enough to stop them anyway. Mind you, of course it is true that in the majority of rape cases, women are victims, and men the attackers. But please don't try to make the rape of a man by a woman sound completely implausible by using bad or irrelevant arguments. In particular, the suggestion that a man can somehow will himself to not have an erection strikes me as particularly insulting — it basically implies that you think every time a man is raped, he must have not really wanted to prevent it. In other words, Blaming The Victim. ~~ MercuryInRetrograde: "Mind you, of course it is true that in the majority of rape cases, women are victims, and men the attackers." Actually, I think statistically the majority of rape cases a man is both victim and attacker. This is because rape in prison outnumbers rape outside of prison. I've also read surveys of college men and women that put victimization rates of rape and sexual assault comparable between the genders. (Men were around 40% of victims). Plus due to social stigma surrounding male rape victims we really have no accurate way of assessing the situation. What you say may be true, but it's not proven definitively. Gfrequency: Bear in mind also that not all men are hulking gorillabeasts and not all women are frail and weak. Of course a petite woman is at a disadvantage against a 6'2" man, but you're taking it to extremes on both ends of the spectrum. If that's your point of contention, I could easily point out a close female friend of mine who's 6'3" and could very easily beat the crap out of me if she were so inclined. My sister is two inches taller than me as well (I'm about average height), and quite capable of taking care of herself physically. What you're saying is true enough on average - women do fear rape more than men, and most reported rapes are male-on-female - but to claim that women are entirely incapable of fighting simply doesn't hold true across the board, nor does the assumption that a man can't be taken advantage of by a woman by means of physical force. You can generalize across a population, but not among individuals. And many people would take issue with the notion that lower body strength is useless in a fight. MercuryinRetrograde: Re: lower body strength. Ever tried to overpower someone with a strong closed guard? Most real fights go to the ground anyway. Alrune: My question remains, have you ever been in a REAL fight yourself against a man or a woman? Also, have you ever been a victim of a rape attempt. Alrune: The difference between Abusive Parents and Evil Matriarch is that Abusive Parents has mostly instances of abusive fathers BECAUSE Wicked Stepmother and Evil Matriarch already exist. There is no such trope as Abusive Fathers or Evil Patriarch hence all examples of "bad" fathers go to Abusive Parents, while "bad" mothers are already dealt with by Evil Matriarch and Wicked Stepmother. As for Evil Matriarch being sexist underneath, that's another matter. The term "matriarch" implies power-wielding and power-wielding women (except for the seldom seen High Queen) are all regarded with at best suspicion, at worst mistrust because "Only a fool would take orders from a woman" (qv God Save Us From The Queen). And since a matriarch, particularly if the father is absent, is a woman who wields power over her family...yeah. And there are almost no instances of a good matriarch, other than in a Lady Land Mary Suetopia. Hence Abusive Parents being sexist underneath does not apply here. If most instances are male, it's not a matter of characterisation, it's a matter of non-existence of a particular Evil Father sub-trope and already existing sub-tropes about bad mothers. MercuryinRetrograde: To be honest, I don't have the energy to argue with you anymore. So much of this page is completely arbitrary whining, I don't even know where to begin. I wish society had as little tolerance for listening to women whine as it does for men. But that's not to be. The pendulum swings; the broken record repeats. As for my personal experiences regarding fighting and rape; I prefer not to share. Thanks. Alrune: Welcome. Strangely, your own entries are often nothing else than reverse whining. Yet you seem highly knowledgeable and intelligent. I don't know what you were trying to prove. Were you just trying to say that there is no such thing as misogyny in the media? Or, if there is, it's insignificant compared to misandry? I don't know. Just bear in mind that media and Real Life, despite being linked, are not copies of each other. While I agree with you that Western women complain way too much in Real Life and that seldom do they realize that they are highly privileged in comparison to women from less advanced countries, I think there are some things worthy of discussion about how women are depicted by men in media, and conversely about how women view men in media such as Lifetime Movie Of The Week. That's all. MercuryInRetrograde: "Strangely, your own entries are often nothing else than reverse whining." I don't think you can 'whine-by-proxy' but regardless. In my estimation the entire double standard for women can be distilled down to one cultural artifact: We value women's femaleness more then their personhood. Conversely we devalue men's maleness. This has everything to do with Chickification, Most Common Super Power, and Right Through His Pants. We over-emphasize femininity to an insane, annoying and pathological degree that, although men seem to enjoy it, I think many women can agree is exhausting and tedious. (Side Rant: If guys want to get an idea of how exhausting and tedious it is, they should go to a gay men's clothing/magazine store and just stand in the center of it and soak in the atmosphere. Most won't be able to stand it for fifteen seconds. That's what it's like for women in our society EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN DAY. And then we're constantly subjected to whining about the miniscule amount of fanservice aimed at women that's starting to crop up.) Making femaleness a net positive and maleness a net negative leads to some really stupid attitudes towards both. On the one hand you have female characters treated like Mac Guffins—important because of a feature they have, their 'femaleness' but completely lacking in any other characterization and carted around like a child. On the other hand, male characters have to 'make up' for their maleness by being extra self-sacrificing, extra pro-active, extra-stoic, essentially extra-adult (or they're not sympathetic characters). Women have too little to live up to; men have too much. Alrune: I really wish you would have said that to begin with. Because I fully agree with what you say. Like you said we emphasize and idolize femaleness NOT femininity. IE extra emphasis on physical appearance, ability to seduce men and mother children. In other words, the basic things that any woman can do. About maleness, men are supposed to be the "doers" that actually participate in the society's life and must live up to impossible standards that are indefinitely increasing. Women are treated like accessories, a little like we treat children nowadays, who only exist in relation to men. Men are supposed to be overachievers, overperformers, over everything. About femininity, it's treated as a weakness, as seen in What Measure Is A Non Badass and Real Women Never Wear Dresses. It's treated as a childish, ineffectual and silly way of dealing with things when it should actually just be the way women deal with things as opposed to how men do with none presented as better than the other. Just a neutral aspect of reality like Harmony Versus Discipline. All in all, nothing has changed. If you look closely, today's society has simply become more subtle in how it attributes gender roles. And it's still incredibly imbalanced as you said: too much to live up to for males, too little for women. girlyboy: I'd disagree on a couple points with both the above: Firstly, women are not always held to a lower standard than men. Remember Closer To Earth? Often, women are expected to be more mature than men, and it's a cliche that a woman has to work twice as hard as a man to be taken as seriously. Women are expected to work full-time and still pick up their husbands' dirty laundry, and can't get away with things that men can get away with on the philosophy of "boys will be boys." So I do not think it is accurate to say simply that society holds men up to high standards, and women to low ones. I think it's more that by default, much more is expected of men than of women, which is both insulting to women and over-demanding for men, but if a woman wants to achieve something, a lot more is expected of her than would be expected of a man, if she wants to earn the same level of respect. Also, "when it should actually just be the way women deal with things as opposed to how men do": I think the idea that there's a female way to deal with reality, and a male way, is part of the problem. It's a kind of essentialism. Until society as a whole accepts that there is no such thing as a female way and a male way to do things, we will always have some brand of sexism, because it will always lead to black-and-white "girls are like this and boys are like that" thinking, which will always be unfair to both sexes, and will always unfairly pressure people to fit into rigid molds that they might not want to fit into on the basis of their sex. Dissonant: Characterizing something as "whining" is one of the first steps toward intellectual marginalization. It is possible for intelligent, well-intentioned people to disagree without one of them trying to establish anything untrue or offensive. Not that I disagree with Alrune about anything (well, except the female-on-male rape thing), I'm just sayin'. First edit, please excuse my noobness. MercuryInRetrograde: "Often, women are expected to be more mature than men," Expected to be? Or portrayed as? We're not really shown the process by which women are shown to become 'more mature'; I don't think I've ever seen a 'maturity' boot camp wherein a female character proves her maturity metal whilst less mature women are washing out left and right. I think in order for this to be expected of women like being a badass is expected of men, you'd have to show female characters failing to live up to the maturity ideal. A lot of them. In the same proportions as there are mooks to heros. And they'd have to be openly mocked or treated with contempt or simply get the maturity crap kicked out of them. Like with men. Not every male character is a badass, and the ones who aren't are laughed at. In fact usually there's one or maybe two male badasses and the rest of the male characters are comedy relief, cowards, cowardly assholes, villains, mooks or dead. Basically, in order for this to qualify as an 'expectation' there has to be very visible situations where women fail to live up to it. Otherwise it's just a case of race ability; women are just more mature because femaleness is more mature then maleness. "and it's a cliche that a woman has to work twice as hard as a man to be taken as seriously." I've heard a lot of people say this, but I've never seen proof. Thus it strikes me as a generally accepted, but completely vacuous 'truthie'. So what you're saying is that the average Action girl has to save twice as many Distressed Misters as a hero has to save Distressed Damsels to be seen as heroic? How would we go about testing this? Gfrequency: Must agree with girlyboy on this one. What's wrong with double standards isn't that they're sexist against women or men - it's that they exist at all. It's the old "nature vs. nurture" argument, of course, and I doubt anyone is going to say anything final on that anytime soon. But yes, I believe that if we didn't simply cram predetermined gender roles down the throats of our children from the moment we put boys in blue blankets and girls in pink, if we didn't assert so aggressively that there must be a fundamental difference in thought, word and deed between one half of the species and the other, we wouldn't have most of these tropes. girlyboy: Um, about adding a "non-gender-related" folder (which was added with the comment "While Gender roles are a large source of Double Standards, I figured that it wasn't the ONLY source of course.") : I think this trope was intended from the start to be about gender specifically, so yes, in the context of this trope, I believe gender actually is the only source of double-standard. Perhaps the trope should be renamed, to something that makes it clear that it's about gender, as opposed to all double standards found in Real Life? Anyway, the first paragraph of the article reads: "Double standards for the genders are Older Than Dirt; separate gender roles have existed for hundreds of thousands of years [...] A double standard trope exemplifies this; these are tropes whose persistence reveals our collective assumptions about gender roles, drawing in one fashion or another on enduring, often unspoken assumptions that men should be like this and women should be like that. " So... this trope is about just gender, and nothing else. I think there are a few possibilities here:
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