Not Always: Always Female

I currently have two YKTTW Indexes going (has been disputed, likely to be taken down) regarding Female Character Archetypes and Typically Female Archetypes. It started as one index, but a split was requested regarding some character types that were by no means gender exclusive, but were still overwhelmingly female. Take for example Girl In A Box or Girl In A Tower. Is there any reason for these to be specifically girls? Nope. Girl In A Box has a number of male examples, and that number is dwarfed by the female examples. Girl In A Tower? One male example. It didn't seem fair or accurate to put tropes with one oddball example on the Not Always Female index (we want indexes to be useful more than we want them to be 100% accurate, right). So I instituted a Rule of Three: three male examples, it goes on the other page. Is this the perfect rule/example? No. Does it work? I believe so. Writing takes turns and changes.

I definitely support a split in the page for accuracy and usefulness's sake. Do I think that a trope should be moved from one page to another just because one writer wanted to play around with traditional roles for deconstruction/subversion/laughs? Nope. Do I support a Rule of Three until a better rule (five?) comes up? Indeed I do.

Girlin A Box and Girl in the Tower are also good demonstrations of why a rule of three doesn't work well: They are functionally very similar tropes, but the former has a lot more examples, this is how it also collected more male examples.

It's not that towers are more strongly associated the female sex than boxes, it is simply a phenomena of our own example listing that we didn't manage to gather enough examples.

That's why in my earlier example counting, I didn't even start counting male examples, if the description noted that it can be done with males, or there was a male redirect.

I believe one other topic merits discussion, as it can really define how this entire thing comes out: the issue of usefulness and accuracy.

The entire point of an index is to be both useful and accurate, true? That's the entire reason we have indexes and why we're on a TV Tropes repair discussion. Right now Always Female is not entirely accurate, but it is generally useful (and one for two isn't bad, but it can certainly be improved, right?).

One issue that was raised is that Always Female was originally supposed to be an index of only female character archetypes, which is both useful and generally accurate. Then people took Always Female to mean anything that was always female, like All Women Love Shoes and Boobs Of Steel. Are these character types? Nope. Did the index title say they had to be? No. But with these included, does the Always Female index still pass the test of being both useful and accurate? It is still useful for finding Always Female tropes, and it is still generally accurate to being Always Female.

I wholeheartedly admit that Rule of Three is not the best or most accurate rule to go by, but if there is to be a separation of lists, let's still look at the test of Useful and Accurate. Is it accurate to say that all ManicPixieDreamGirls are female? No it is not. But since the overwhelming majority are female, would it be fine to include it on an Always Female index? I would say so. But is it useful to take one trope away from one list just because the troper who wrote the the blurb said "nothing requires this to be female" when there isn't a single male example, or there's only one or three odd-ball examples? That's where I begin to think that this gets away from being useful and accurate.

Is there anything wrong with an index focusing on just the character types? No—I wouldn't have proposed the YKTTW if I did. But would an index be more useful if it included character types and other tropes that are Always Female, since this is the Always Female index? I emphatically say yes.

Here is what I propose: We keep the page Always Female, but subdivide it. Section A: Character Types that must be female. Section B: Character types that have no inherant need to be female, but typically are anyway. Section C: Description Tropes. And so on and so forth. This way the page is even more accurate and even more useful. This way, we are not creating more pages over nit-picking differences (not to say that calling a trope inaccurately Always Female is nitpicking), we recognize the differences brought up by each party, and the index is overall improved to be more accurate and therefore more useful.

But then past a point, it's covered by Unisex Tropes. We need a dividing line.

I suggest that a trope is unisex if one-third to one-half of the examples are of the opposite sex. Acceptable?

It's not just that of course, but also the name implies one gender is involved. Under that line, it could be one third or anything higher.

As for this index and Always Male, I think it should be "Always gender by definition" and "This just happens to be always about gender, but has exceptions".

I made a crowner here that probably needs some work. I just thought it might be a good idea to organize the different options for this index and try to gauge the level of support for each one. Please edit the crowner as you see fit.

What's the difference between the two offerered crowner options?

Female Gender Tropes and Female Sex Tropes were only title suggestions for Character Types that must be female, and Character types that have no inherent need to be female, but typically are anyway.

My impression was that Elaine Rose was arguing for a subdivision of the actual Always Female page itself while you wanted to have two different Female trope indexes. If I was wrong about that then I guess we could either take out one of the two options or keep it because I like the splitting into two indexes idea.

Thank for editing the crowner and sorry that I was not clear before.

edited 24th Apr '11 2:19:57 PM by LouieW

Oh, I missed "subdivide" I thought both are about hard splits. I'll edit the crowner to make it more clear.

Because of the ground covered in this discussion, I went ahead and discarded both the Female Character Types index and the Typically Female Character Type index from YKTTW.

I don't really like the Female Gender Tropes and Female Sex Tropes names they dont really get the point across and sound wrong.

Mostly Female (something that is 90% female but in theory can be applied to a male or does have the rare male example.) and Always Female (No male examples possible except for rarely a Wholesome Crossdresser depending on the trope.) work for me for this.

edited 25th Apr '11 2:09:46 PM by Raso

I agree that we shouldn't make a split based on "sex" and "gender" terms. TV Tropes usage of those terms, for better or for worse, doesn't at all follow the terminology used by some others (here, for instance.)

Gender Bender and its various related tropes are actually about "sex" by that usage, but we use "gender" for the trope names anyway.

And considering the PC way of saying Sex Change is Gender Reassignment as well only adds to that.

Actually, these days, the PC term does seem to be Sex Reassignment Surgery or SRS.

Personally, I kinda fall in the "Ah, screw it, use whichever word you want" camp in Real Life.

... well I feel stupid. The point still stands it was PC at one time.

edited 25th Apr '11 10:35:46 PM by Raso

But we still need to find two titles, that go around the current title's problem. (Since Always Female is used for both, none of them can sound like the counterpart to Always Female).

Why not? Always Female will remain how some editors are treating it (as something that can't be male ever.) and Mostly Female would be for those with 90%+ of the examples are female or tropes with the off chance it could be applied to a male.

It's an easy split just make sure to link the other index in the write up.

edited 26th Apr '11 1:58:26 AM by Raso

Because of 2,684 inbounds.

Some eitors used it in the more limited way, but as I showed in the exampe check in post #21, they were in the minority, the large majority of the examples on the page would fall into what we want to call Mostly Female.

Since these entries didn't directly contradict the description, it's likely that most of these inbounds used it in that way too, anyone who linked to it intended to link to a list of "Mostly Female" tropes, that happens to be called Always Female.

It makes far more sense to make up two original names and redirect Always Female to the more broad one for the time being, than to split off 90% of the established content to a new page, and rewrite the established page with new content.

Ehh that's a not really an issue if you just put a link to Mostly Female in the the always index. It's not like we are getting rid of the thing we are just making it match it's name.

Redirecting Alway Female to the Mostly Female index while having an index where they are always female is just going to compound the problem. Your making this far too complex than it needs to be.

The main problem with the Always Female index is not it's title, but the fact that it is used for two different things. Otherwise, the rare events of people misunderstanding it for Literally Always Female, are relatively low.

Technically, by our standard splitting procedure, (of keeping the major, popular trope on the old page, and splitting off the minor trope), it would make the most sense to keep Always Female as it is, about feminine tropes, and launch Literally Always Female as a new, more specific sub-index.

It's already a bonus adventage, that we can also grab this opportunity to find a better main name to the old Always Female index, and shove the old name back to an index, to start phasing it out.

If anything, completely repurposing a well-established page is what would complicate things too much.

Now, if you say that "gender" and "sex" are interchargible, how about Feminity Tropes for Always Female, and Female Gender Tropes for Literally Always Female.

I still say Always Female is, and for the most part has been taken as, Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Weed out the erroneous examples that aren't ALWAYS female, and make a new page for the other thing.

Personally, I think Always Female is interesting and useful for reasons stated earlier, while a Kinda Sorta Usually Mostly Female page strikes me as having somewhat dubious utility, but that may be just me.

I already provided proof that most of the examples use it as Mostly Female, and there is nothing in that directly calls these incorrect.

We could also do a wick check, but I think it would be quite redundant, as probably it is only wicked from the dscription of the same tropes that are listed.

My argument is, that's mostly misuse, either on the Always Female page or in the trope examples (and few established tropes are free of misuse.) The trope description itself (not to mention the image and its caption) all point to a strict definition. I also don't think "most" of the examples show this misuse, though admittedly I'm not inclined to systematically go through the entire list. But moving 10 more from the bottom (apologies for inconsistent formatting):

• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Always
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Always, has Spear Counterpart
• Vasquez Always Dies: Always
• The Vanna: Described as Always, but has some male examples
• The Vamp: Described as Always, but has some male examples
• Valkyries: Always
• Valley Girl: Always
• Vain Sorceress: Mostly. Description waffles ("This leads close to being an Always Female trope") and there are some legit male examples.
• Uncanny Valley Girl: Looks like Always (but reading it I don't see why there couldn't be male examples.)
• The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: Mostly, similar to Vain Sorceress

Tangentially, a lot of the ones that ARE "mostly" could probably use a Spear Counterpart split.

edited 26th Apr '11 7:49:08 AM by suedenim

What's wrong with getting rid of the word "always" entirely? Inherently Female and Typically Female, say. Then we can fix the wicks, and for externals, leave Always Female as a redirect to, like, Female Tropes as a super for those two.

edited 30th Apr '11 2:48:33 PM by HersheleOstropoler