Basic Trope: Women use weapons, men fight unarmed.
- Straight: Master Swordswoman Alice, who's never without her trusty blade 'Vera', teams up with Bare-Fisted Monk, Brother Bob, in order to take on the forces of evil.
- Exaggerated: Walking Armory Alice, who doesn't even sleep without a pair of loaded pistols under her pillow, teams up with Brother Bob, a martial artist of such legendary skill he can catch bullets in his bare hands and blast holes in his enemies with bolts of weaponized ki.
- Downplayed: Boxer Charlie settles fights with Good Old Fisticuffs; Diane finds she has to beat people whatever Improvised Weapon is lying around, or stab them repeatedly with her hatpin.
- Justified: Brother Bob belongs to a Technical Pacifist order which forbids the use of weapons for religious reasons, but makes up for it with a strict regimen of physical and martial arts training as part of its 'spiritual' disciplines, along with a range of Ki Manipulation techniques. Alice on the other hand is a (relatively) Weak, but Skilled Badass Normal who finds using a weapons gives her some advantage against bigger, stronger, and usually male opponents.
- Inverted: Men fight with weapons while women fight unarmed.
- Subverted: Alice proves to be a skilled unarmed combatant when deprived of her trusty sword; Brother Bob proves handy with an Improvised Weapon as a last resort.
- Double Subverted: ???
- Parodied:
- In this setting, male fighters are physically incapable of using weapons, or at least, weapons tend to slow down their fighting.
- Brother Bob attacks a tank with only his fists.
- Zig-Zagged: Similar numbers of men and women fight with and without weapons.
- Averted:
- Nobody fights.
- Everybody fights with a weapon.
- Everybody fights without a weapon.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: ???
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- Alice insists on fighting unarmed, to match Bob.
- Bob demands a gun and a sword, to match Alice.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- While Brother Bob is a champion martial artist, he later learns that his fists and strength are no match for weapons when he faces Carla, who promptly riddles him with bullets before he gets within punching distance.
- Brother Bob's instance on using only his fists and strength eventually fails him when he meets Clark, who easily no sells his punches and then then promptly knocks his lights out with a single punch.
- Due to Alice focusing solely on her swordsmanship, she is completely helpless without her sword.
Back to Armed Females, Unarmed Males.
