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There are now women politicians, women soldiers, women scientists, women astronauts. But our mission is only half-done: we still haven't prevented men from doing those things!
Just then, a feminist jumps out of a manhole - oh, and she didn't like that.
Bill Bailey
This standard TV "feminist" character isn't very nice at all. Most real-life feminists are only out to get equal pay for equal work, respect for their rights as people equal in dignity to a man, and a lot of other phrases that use the word "equal" in similar ways. A lot of female characters have this as an understated part of their personality. Indeed, so do quite a few male characters.
However, a character identified as a "feminist" in the media nowadays is often really a "militant feminist", the radical, paranoid, potentially violent misandrist type who wants to bring the patriarchy to its knees so she can more easily kick it in the gonads. The Right Wing uses the term "FemiNazi" to describe this type. She'll be hostile to any heterosexual males nearby, and possibly gay men as well. She'll insist on spelling the words "woman" and "women" differently, possibly with one or more Y's. She'll insist that the honorific "Mrs." is the possessive of "Mr." Any object that is longer than it is wide will be seen as a phallic symbol intended to express patriarchal power. Camo optional, but skirts are a definite no-no. And be careful if you happen to say either that God is a man or that women can choose to not work outside the home. It goes without saying that she'll often be depicted as a complete hypocrite, automatically buying into any Double Standard that denounces in outrage particular actions of men whilst simultaneously applauding any woman who engages in the exact same behaviour, usually under the justification that women are "reclaiming" themselves or "striking back" against the evil tyranny of men.
If she's not a lesbian, she'll either be "sex-negative", i.e. opposed to sex on principle, as the act itself is seen as biased in favor of men, or take the exact opposite approach, and try to use men as she perceives they use women. In the most extreme cases, sadly enough not totally made up, she'll see men as walking abortions, half-formed humans who deserve nothing short of extinction. She will define rape as any method by which a man might convince a woman to have sex, including a sincere emotional relationship. And if the man ever stops loving her, he raped her retroactively!
She's a special case of Strawman Straw Woman Straw WOMYN Political, and usually, if this character expresses any opinion not directly related to women or the oppression thereof, she'll be speaking like a grown-up Granola Girl.
May be due to the writer's own dislike of feminism, but note that it's not always all the writer's fault; many people in Real Life expect this trope in its entirety whenever the word "feminist" is uttered, to the extent that normal feminists can be reluctant to be identify themselves as such, due to the pervasive nature of this stereotype. Some might prefer to be known as egalitarians, a term with broader application, but no less accurate for someone who wants equal rights to bridge the gender gap specifically. This trope (like most) does have a basis in Real Life: Andrea Dworkin famously remarked, for instance, that "Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women", and who can forget Valerie "I Shot Andy Warhol" Solanas and her Society for Cutting Up Men? They're just a much smaller minority than you would think from watching TV, is all.
A society built upon this mindset is a Lady Land.
Examples
Anime
- Benio and the Zuka Club from Ouran High School Host Club are a troupe of lesbian actresses (parody of the real-life Takarazuka Revue) who advocate female superiority and one point perform a Nazi salute against a backdrop of a flag reading "woman" — literal feminazis. Their radicalism is probably just a result of being headstrong teenagers who are just as silly as the Host Club, though, and at the end of the episode Haruhi, whom they'd been trying to recruit, tells them that she respects their feminist viewpoint but just doesn't feel like leaving her friends in the Host Club.
Comic Books
- DC Comics' Amazons hinge upon this trope, at least in the post-Crisis incarnations where all the Themysciran Amazons are the reincarnated souls of women who were abused and killed by men.
- Martha Moore from Preacher, occasionally seen on TV and heard in radio interviews opposite a straw conservative. Cited as "editor of True Clit, an anthology of radical women's poetry". Eventually forced to reveal what she truly wants, she cries out that "poetry's not enough any more; I need cock!". The straw conservative sheepishly says that he, also, wants cock.
- The Cirinists and Kevillists in Cerebus the Aardvark are straw constructions of the second and third waves of feminism, respectively. Ironically, the writer's own misogynist rants made him a real-life male equivalent to this trope.
- Goldilocks from Fables seems to be this, but she's really cynically using her rhetoric as a tool to manipulate the people around her.
- Both used and subverted in Y The Last Man, which contains both the insane, violent Amazons as well as other, peaceful, rational feminists. In fact, the entire series can be seen as a look at feminism in its numerous permutations, often at odds, as in real life. In writer Brian K. Vaughn's words, "...before I started work on Y, I read as many feminist writers as possible. Because if you put Andrea Dworkin and Naomi Wolf in a room together, they'd fight to the death."
- Although her pro-feminist stance was portrayed as a good thing in the '70s, by the Justice League Europe days of the late '80s, Power Girl was portrayed as an obnoxiously outspoken feminist; this may have been a reflection of the more conservative attitudes of the Reagan years. Today, her attitudes are portrayed in a positive light again (though the Fanservice has been dialed up a bit as well).
- Marvel Comics supervillain Superia wants to either eliminate, enslave, or feminize all men— and doesn't mind sterilizing 90% of Earth's women to make it happen. As Anaconda of the Serpent Society puts it, "What'samatter, you didn't get asked out to the prom or somethin'?"
- Diane Di Massa took this to the extreme in Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist, who dreams of "a world without penises."
- Y The Last Man sort-of subverts the trope. While it does have a group that is pretty much the logical extreme of the Straw Feminist in the form of the Daughters of the Amazon, the comic does treat the issue fairly sensitively. It's often indicated that the Daughters of the Amazon are a fairly understandable reaction amongst certain poorly-treated women to every man they've ever known dying horribly at the same time. While the group's original leader is pretty much the definition of insane, other, far more sympathetic characters have been known to be part of the organisation, Yorick's sister Hero being probably the foremost example.
Fan Fiction
- There is a recognised species of Mary Sue (possibly a sub-trope of the well-known Tsundere Sue) known as the Grrl or Psychofeminist Sue, who behaves like this and is especially prevalent in male-dominated canons such as Lord Of The Rings.
Film
- The entire faction from PCU called the Womynists.
- Sarah Connor gets a monologue like this in Terminator 2. To be sure, she's not exactly well balanced at that point.
- In 100 Girls, the main character takes a Women's Studies class. Every time we see him in this class, the camera zooms in to the teacher's underarm hair with a dramatic sound effect. Towards the end of the movie, there's an anvilicious scene where he tells the teacher that inequality doesn't exist and it's all just a case of men and women misunderstanding each other. The teacher replies by painting men as evil, but the entire class full of females breaks into applause for him.
- Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) from Mona Lisa Smile. She encourages female independence, which is admirable, but not only she and Elizabeth (Kirsten Dunst, who of course believes marriage is the only way to go) are quite the bitches, at some point Katherine goes to the wedding party of Joan (Julia Stiles) and borderline bitches her out for choosing marriage over law school. The fact that she's presented as the heroine can be seen as "you MUST trade in the apron for the briefcase, and if you don't, you're a BAD female".
- This tropher knows several women who were extras in the film. The school it takes place at became more famous for feminism due to the movie. Ironically the school is mostly for women who want to marry rich men (or soon to be rich from good schools). Sometimes it does both, with at least one straw feminist who attended the school just to get a rich man.
Literature
- 98% of the female population of the Wheel Of Time series, as evidenced most Anviliciously by Nynaeve at one point where she remarks that she occasionally "thinks the Creator put men on earth to get in the way of women." Then again, Nynaeve is extraordinarily full of herself even by Aes Sedai standards. She seems to regards most of the world's population as an impediment.
- This is made particularly vexing by the fact that there is no real evidence that Robert Jordan disagrees with them - rare indeed is the instance where any male character does more than grumble to himself as he utterly knuckles under, even if that means getting tortured or raped by women who owe him their life.
- General Jinjur from The Marvelous Land of Oz plotted the overthrow of King Scarecrow because she thought the Land of Oz was ruled by men for too long. May have actually been an Affectionate Parody of the early women's movement, as L. Frank Baum was actually the son-in-law of one of the movement's prime movers. The Other Wiki has more on the subject.
- LeftBehind. No, really, ugh.
Live Action TV
- Marcy Rhoades (later D'Arcy) from Married With Children was a proud feminist, but she only showed this side when she was around Al. Her constant bickering about women's rights eventually led him to start his own pro-male club called NO MA'AM.
- Samantha Carter in Stargate SG-1 was originally written like that, to the point of having an entire episode (aptly titled "Emancipation") dedicated to her fighting a male-dominated society. Needless to say, it's considered a Dork Age and that episode is considered one of the worst ever. The infamous "reproductive organs" speech from the pilot (which Amanda Tapping herself reportedly hated, saying that "nobody talks like that") was twice parodied in the later seasons (in the episodes "Moebius" and "200"). By that point, the Straw Feminist aspect of her character had long been toned down - instead, she proved feminist points by actually doing things.
- Dr. Luisa "Lu" Delgado from Strong Medicine, also an adult version of a Tsundere Sue. The series is produced by none other than Lifetime Channel, so what do you expect?
- Sometimes, Action Girl Olivia Benson gets straw-feministic lines in Law And Order: SVU.
- The only episode in which that happened that this one can think of involved interrogating a woman who had much more clear straw feminist ideas. Detective Benson has been shown in the past acting sympathetic to suspects to get them to open up to her. Doesn't explain the tirade she gave Stabler a little later, though.
- The episode Power from Blakes Seven contains two warring societies of - you guessed it - men (Hommiks) and women (Seska). Naturally, the women are depicted as abominations who were happier when they'd been tamed by the men. This was particularly depressing, considering up until then Blakes Seven had featured a large number of actual feminist characters.
Tabletop Games
- GURPS Transhuman Space features an all-female colony that edges this trope, especially with some of its members experimenting with genetic engineering to make males unnecessary for reproduction. It's pointed out in the books that it is in fact obsolete within the context of the setting, as transhumanity has achieved true gender equality by 2100 when the game is set.
- In the World Of Darkness game Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the all-female Black Furies fit this trope to some extant. While some are into the spirituality of womanhood and/or seek gender equality and reproductive freedom, others are on a sacred quest to castrate every male they come across. But even the more well-rounded Furies have the Tribal Weakness of an easier time Frenzying against men. They eventually became more well-rounded with later editions, going from man-hating Amazons to a mystical cult of warrior women that worshipped Gaia in her guise of Artemis and provided the Garou Nation with necessary prophecy.
Video Games
- Sam And Max: Season Two has Mrs.- sorry -Ms. Momma Bosco.
- One interviewee on the talk radio channel in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was one of these, contrasting with hip, somewhat stupid 80s girl Amy. The key comedy aspect in that interviewee was that she'd just spent a year "undercover" as a man and written a book on her findings. Moreover, the interviewee mentions learning various things about men over the process of being disguised as one, including how men find sports interesting, like looking at pictures of naked women, wear hats and smoke cigarettes. She's a pretentious Straw Feminist to boot, lambasting "half-hearted bra burners" in her interview.
- In lieu with the Grand Theft Auto series' satiric bent, the character in question was a straw parody of one real-life feminist who wrote a book about being disguised as a man. But, for the record, that feminists book was far more positive.
Web Comics
- Susan in El Goonish Shive is introduced as a misandrist female supremacist. A cringeworthy portrayal by itself, but luckily she gets some Character Development later on. It also helps that she has a well developed Freudian Excuse in the form of catching her father in the act of cheating on her mother with another woman. Her own mother subtly 'poisoned' her with her bitterness causing Susan's misandristic behavior. This event also gave Susan a Freudian Excuse for dying her natural blonde hair black as she felt she had a strong resemblance to the woman her father cheated on her mother with. Don't forget, she feels some guilt about it: she was the one who told her mother of the affair.
- Your Mileage May Vary on whether that's a "well-developed" excuse; this troper shook his head over yet another "daddy was a meanie" explanation. And after her Character Development, she's notably unable to get anyone to help her with her less-extreme views. Hmm...
- Then it seems you completely missed the point, which wasn't "daddy was a meanie" so much as "Maybe my general prejudice against men is really an excuse to allow daddy to escape individual blame for his behavior.".
- Jade from PvP once qualified as a Straw Feminist. This was most notable when she left Pv P to start up her own women's gaming magazine, where she even drove her fellow female writers insane. Of course, she had just been groped by Francis, so maybe this incident was justified.
- No stranger to Strawfolk, the webcomic Nip And Tuck, has Hortense, perpetually angry lizard womyn. (Although she seems to exist less to potshot Feminism, as to piss off the local Troglajocks so Tuck can swoop in play the badass, and to give Tuck's girlfriend Thelma someone to look good next to.)
- The Wotch has D.O.L.L.Y. a militant feminist terrorist organization lead by Ms. Natasha Dahlet who want to eradicate men from the world. Not by killing them, but by turning them female via Magi Tek. They try to recruit Anne who is well known for using her magic for Gender Bending. While a physical personification of Anne's anger does join them, Anne herself turns the tables on them by turning many of the members of D.O.L.L.Y. male. Notably, most the members of the group are actually brainwashed, only really Natasha and her Dragon (of sorts) Cory are really committed to the "cause". The author actually precedes the arc with a strip where she appears and explains that there really isn't suppose to be any political message or anything.
- In an early appearance of Melna on Dominic Deegan, Oracle for Hire, Luna gushes about how much she loves Dominic and would be nothing without him, and Melna is about ready to kill her. Of course, in this case, Dominic saved Luna from suicide and gave her some confidence. Melna's opinion is also justified as she is an Orc, and while many orcs are quite civil, most seem to be horrible brutes who treat women as property (Melna's parents were killed and she was raped because of this), a female orc is LITERALLY nothing without a husband or father and are killed as useless.
- Straw Feminist appear constantly in Shredded Moose, though the Strawwomen tend to be more reasonable and intelligent than the Author Insert.
Western Animation
- Beavis And Butthead get maced by some of these after the dimwitted duo misinterpret (as only they can) a speech at a feminism rally as a come-on line.
- Futurama gets in a quick shot in one episode; after Old Man Waterfall (a bisexual Satanic polygamist hillbilly lawyer) dies under the foot of the MobileOppression Palace, his granddaughter loudly proclaims him (in a fake female voice) "another victim of the malecentric male-ocracy!"
- It wouldn't be surprising if 'she' was either a cross-dresser or a transsexual.
- The Power Puff Girls had Femme Fatale, a man hating criminal who only stole Susan B. Anthony coins and convinced the girls to not help men and not arrest her because she was a woman. Her flawed logic was countered by the more mainstream equality-based feminism of Sara Bellum and Miss Keane who convinced them otherwise. Not helping Femme Fatale was the fact that women were also hurt by her actions and that she didn't even know who Susan B. Anthony was.
- Yin Yang Yo has Saranoia, who is an unstable misandrist sorceress and wants to exterminate Yang but likes Yin. Her hatred seems to be based on her feelings towards her own brother, Mark, she indicates she was The Un Favourite growing up. She has a tendency to call Yang Mark.
- Parodied in The Venture Brothers when a parody of the Scooby Gang (the originals, not Buffy and pals) show up in the episode "Viva Los Muertos!" Parody-Velma is constantly spouting this talk, going so far as to actually tell Parody-Daphne that men are "walking abortions". Of course, Parody-Fred is a sociopathic gang leader in the Manson mold, Parody-Daphne was kidnapped 30 years ago and is so stupid she still thinks Parody-Fred is going to take her to visit her parents, and Parody-Shaggy is a murderous lunatic who needs to take his "Groovy treats" to make the dog stop telling him to kill everyone. Velma gets off light, comparatively.
- Velma's talk in that episode isn't original Straw Feminism; they're nearly direct quotes from the "S.C.U.M. Manifesto". The four members of the mock Scooby Gang are modeled after specific (crazy) people from the 60's and 70's: "Ted" is a mix of Ted Bundy and Charles Manson, "Sonny" is David Berkowitz (aka the Son of Sam), "Patty" is Patty Hearst, and "Val" is Valerie Solanas.
- Despite being the source of the opening quote for this page, Chilly Beach's April June is mostly a parody of this misunderstanding of feminism.
- An episode of Justice League had a rogue Amazon taking her people's views of "Man's World" to its logical extreme by developing a plague that will wipe out every creature with a Y chromosome. It's eventually learned that she's not really an Amazon (just a regular human girl granted haven and raised by the Amazons), and her deep hatred of men stemmed from the military coup that drove her from her homeland and washed her up on Themyscera (she balked after learning a man sacrificed his life to save hers, claiming the good deeds of one man couldn't salvage the crimes of males altogether). The incident, ironically, taught her fellow Amazons (including Wonder Woman) to not too soundly preach the inferiorities of men.
- This trope is noted when Hawkgirl tells Wonder Woman "don't knock it 'till you've tried it".
- Family Guy used this in an episode where Peter is forced into sensitivity training... He was so trained that he himself did a feminism equivalent of the heel face turn and became an extremely fluffy combination of this and a cookie baking, bridge playing young biddy...
Other
- A substantial number of the jokes in "lad mags" like MAXIM, FHM, Stuff, etc. come at the expense of these strawmen.
- Gilbert And Sullivan's Princess Ida (adapted from a poem by Tennyson), the Girl Graduates of the women's college at Castle Adamant learn that "Man is Nature's sole mistake." Of course, they repent in the end.
- Stand-up comics often mock this. "Ladies, when a guy holds the door open for you, scream that he's a sexist pig. This will really improve his opinion of women."
- Nellie Mc Kay's song "Mother of Pearl" mocks the attitude behind this trope via Unreliable Narrator: the opening line is "Feminists don't have a sense of humor" and it continues on from there.
- Played for laughs in Red Vs Blue. When Donut is possessed by O'Malley, he mouths off about how bad patriachal society is.
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