Complaining: Men Are Generic Women Are Special

The trope is used almost entirely for Real Life examples, and most of them are about how men and women get different things at different times. For the most part, the trope is either complaining if there's any gender disparity, and making claims about it reflecting this trope.

For instance, the Charmed example: the fact that it seemed like only women could be witches wouldn't be an example, here, because there's no "generic man" to back it up against. Women are special, yes, but men also fulfill special roles. The Tangled example is about how the marketing focused on the male hero and not just the female heroine to appeal to a wider audience...which points out how men are generic somehow?

Also, the title might need some work. The actual trope seems to be Men Are Default Women Are Unique—although that implies this trope is always positive on the side of women. As the description notes, it has negatives and positives for both sides. "Generic" seems too negative towards men. "Special" seems too positive towards women. It seems to be affecting the tone. I think there are legitimate examples—the Peter Pan example mentions how he thinks one girl is worth twenty boys. In Mass Effect, krogan women are highly prized and protected. Krogan men are canon fodder. So I think we have trope, it's just been re-purposed as another soapbox to complain about Double Standards, perceived or otherwise.

You're right, it does seem a bit complainy.

Maybe we should clean up the description and examples, keep a watch over the examples to prevent Trope Decay, and a change in name doesn't sound too bad.

Ok, those initial examples can get the nuke. They're really unnecessary and make scrolling difficult.

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

I don't see why "generic" is bad, but if people want a different title, whatever. But note that the "special" part in the current name isn't to indicate that women are necessarily better or more valued, but that they are different from the normal default-male state (often in a negative, inferior way). So I don't think "unique" works.

"The Tangled example is about how the marketing focused on the male hero and not just the female heroine to appeal to a wider audience...which points out how men are generic somehow?"

The point here is that while both men and women are assumed to be interested in stories about men (generic), only women are interested in stories about women (niche). So with a story that has a major female role, in order to reach a broad audience you have to emphasize that there is also an important guy. Whether or not you believe this is true, it is a commonly repeated bit of marketing advice. And this is one of the foundational assumptions derived from this trope, so it is a perfectly good example.

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

I don't think the words "generic" or "special" are negative or positive so much as neutral terms for how this trope treats them. I don't think there's anything wrong with the title, in that case.

The Tangled example is a better fit under Girl-Show Ghetto. In fact, it might already be there.

"What's out there? What's waiting for me?"

Girl-Show Ghetto ought to be listed as a subtrope. But the entire point of the Tangled marketing was so that it wouldn't be labelled as a girls' movie, so it's an attempted aversion of Girl-Show Ghetto.

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

I know. But I feel "generic" is a word that implies negative normality, and "special" implies positive abnormality. "Unique" seems less biased than "special", but I noted it doesn't seem as neutral as I'd like, either.

As for Tangled—that's the problem with the trope: you are assuming that is the implication, rather than, say, little girls like things marketed to little girls and little boys like things marketed to little boys, and Disney decided to market Tangled to both because it was a movie made for both. Tangled was not marketed to just boys. It had an emphasis on romance, adventure, the heroine and the hero, slapstick, etc. My Little Pony is a franchise most often marketed to girls, and Transformers is usually marketed to boys. That is not this trope—or it shouldn't be. That is a page devoted to saying that men also get marketed to sometimes, and girls also get marketed to sometimes, and surprisingly even at the same time.

edited 22nd Mar '12 12:35:02 PM by helterskelter

"Tangled was not marketed to just boys."

No-one is saying that. The example says that a) the ads were cut to emphasize the hero, even though Tangled is based on Rapunzel and the main character is female, and b) this was done to appeal to potential male viewers, because c) it was felt that men and boys wouldn't watch a move that was mainly about a female character. And as I said, that assumption (men and boys won't watch a move that is mainly about a female character, whereas women and girls will happily watch a movie that is mainly about a male character) is alive and well and living in Hollywood, and it is an example of Men Are Generic, Women Are Special.

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

They also emphasized the heroine! The movie itself is devoted to both, with Rapunzel serving as the perspective character for most (but not all) of it.

This doesn't imply it's because men are generic and women are special. It implies it's because girls like girl things and boys like boy things.

Except marketing also put an emphasis on the girl. For instance this. Why are you assuming that elements like slapstick and adventure mean they are only targeting boys?

"This doesn't imply it's because men are generic and women are special. It implies it's because girls like girl things and boys like boy things."

So why isn't it assumed women and girls won't watch movies about male characters?

Here's some links about Tangled. In order to appeal to boys, Disney made it clear that Tangled was not solely about a girl. Because they felt boys won't watch a movie about a girl.

• there was a concern about the “princess” concept in general. This movie is called Rapunzel overseas, but Tangled here.
• Disney’s controversial decision to play down this film’s musical and princess elements in marketing materials [helped its success]
• In response, Disney altered its tack with the new film, changing the title from Rapunzel to Tangled and aggressively marketing the movie, and its "swashbuckling male costar," Flynn Rider, to boys, despite its princess-fairy-tale roots.
• The studio renamed its next animated film with the girl-centric name "Rapunzel" to the less gender-specific "Tangled." [...] Disney can ill afford a moniker that alienates half the potential audience, young boys, who are needed to make an expensive family film a success.

"Why are you assuming that elements like slapstick and adventure mean they are only targeting boys?"

Did I say that? Did anyone say that? We are talking about relative emphasis on the male character vs the female character in the ads versus the story.

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

This is probably nothing but trivia, but the name was changed*

to market it to boys.

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

This is the supertrope for The Smurfette Principle and stuff like that, right?

edited 22nd Mar '12 2:36:43 PM by troacctid

Rhymes with "Protracted."

What is the difference between this and Double Standard?

Double Standard is far more general and an index to boot.

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

But how does "boys don't want to watch things marketed to girls" this trope? That doesn't imply men are generic—it implies they have separate tastes. I would see your point if Tangled only pursued marketing to boys, since it would imply they either didn't care about the girl demographic (laughably unlikely) or they felt girls would be more open to what boys watch.

That said, it would still be missing the "women are special" part. Without both to juxtapose each other, you can't claim it's this trope. Sort of like the female on male abuse trope—if you aren't being shown that the reverse isn't true, you can't claim the trope is in play.

Yes. They decided to market to boys too. How does that say men are generic and women are special? It says 'boys want to watch boy stuff and not what they perceive as girly stuff'. The film did not forgo marketing to girls, so I cannot see your argument.

edited 22nd Mar '12 6:00:10 PM by helterskelter

I don't see how I can make this any more clear. The application of this trope is not that they attempted to market to boys as well as girls, but that in order to market to boys as well as girls, they decided to downplay the fact that the main character is a girl. You seem to have completely accepted the idea that kids don't want to watch stories about the opposite sex, which is not true; for instance, Up has only male characters for the majority of the run-time, but nobody though that girls would be turned off by that, they didn't market it based on the opening sequences when the female character was still alive, and lots of girls went to see it. The idea that everyone is interested in stories about men/boys but only females are interested in stories about girls/women is a classic example of this trope.

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

And none of that has anything to do with the trope itself.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

One more time: "The idea that everyone is interested in stories about men/boys but only females are interested in stories about girls/women is a classic example of this trope."

The academic-wank terminology for the concept behind the trope is that men are "unmarked" whereas women are "marked"; that is, men are normal, unexceptionable and the default state, whereas women are abnormal, exceptional and require special labeling. So a story about a man is a story about a generic human being that everyone can enjoy, but a story about a women is a story about a special category, and therefore a niche product that only a subset of humans (women) will relate to. It's directly analogous to the expectation that everyone will go see a movie with all-white actors, but only black people will see a movie with a black cast; white is "unmarked", black is "marked", everyone can relate to the generic class but people in the generic class cannot relate to the special, marked class.

Again, the use of "special" in the current trope name is not implying that women are good. It is implying that women are different.

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

This trope is about In-Universe characterization. Not academic wank about marketing.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

"This trope is about In-Universe characterization."

I don't see that specified anywhere. Admittedly, the description spends a lot more time talking about gender markers in various languages than saying what the trope is about. As the sponsor put it in the YKTTW discussion: "It's not just that a single female character is defined by her femaleness, it's that femaleness itself is treated as a special category that excludes men while maleness is inclusive of femaleness." That point should probably replace the language discussion, which can go in the examples.

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

What you're talking about isn't something that's an objective trope. It's a mix of trivia speculation and Audience Reaction. It doesn't belong on the page.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

It's an extremely widely discussed phenomenon in academic circles and it definitely affects fiction. It's a big floppy issue, but so is sexism generally, or racism. I do think it might be better off without specific examples, perhaps just the issues it raises and the related tropes.

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

The marketing stuff doesn't need to be on there. Now if you were comparing the fact that all the men in Tangled are rather mundane while the women are the ones with special powers, that would be the trope.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

If there's going to be examples, why shouldn't the marketing stuff be on there? It's an example of the trope in action in the real world.

edited 23rd Mar '12 9:32:38 AM by lebrel

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

Because Real Life is messy and a trope like this is bound to attract opinions and natter if it has a Real Life section.