MOD NOTE: Please note the following part of the forum rules:
The initial OP posted below covers it well enough: the premise of this thread is that men's issues exist. Don't bother posting if you don't believe there is such a thing.
Here's hoping this isn't considered too redundant. I've noticed that our existing threads about sexism tend to get bogged down in Oppression Olympics or else wildly derailed, so I thought I'd make a thread specifically to talk about discrimination issues that disproportionately affect men.
No Oppression Olympics here, okay? No saying "But that's not important because women suffer X which is worse!" And no discussing these issues purely in terms of how much better women have it. Okay? If the discussion cannot meaningfully proceed without making a comparison to male and female treatment, that's fine, but on the whole I want this thread to be about how men are harmed by society and how we can fix it. Issues like:
- The male-only draft (in countries that have one)
- Circumcision
- Cavalier attitudes toward men's pain and sickness, AKA "Walk it off!"
- The Success Myth, which defines a man's desirability by his material success. Also The Myth of Men Not Being Hot, which denies that men can be sexually attractive as male beings.
- Sexual abuse of men.
- Family law.
- General attitudes that men are dangerous or untrustworthy.
I could go on making the list, but I think you get the idea.
Despite what you might have heard about feminists not caring about men, it's not true. I care about men. Patriarchy sucks for them as much as it sucks for women, in a lot of ways. So I'm putting my keyboard where my mouth is and making a thread for us to all care about men.
Also? If you're male and think of something as a men's issue, by golly that makes it a men's issue fit for inclusion in this thread. I might disagree with you as to the solution, but as a woman I'm not going to tell you you have no right to be concerned about it. No "womansplaining" here.
Edited by nombretomado on Dec 15th 2019 at 5:19:34 AM
The law in the night
Like NGE Madoka was also a brutal deconstruction of its respective genre.
Methinks, Madoka's flipping everything upside down was very intentional.
Inter arma enim silent leges
United Earth
Weirdly enough, Madoka is the only well-adjusted person in this story, and she has a strong relationship of trust with her parents.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Planeswalker
Does Sayaka even have any parents?
I mean we know Mami's and Kyoko's are dead, and so is Nagisa's mom at least... But do we know anything at all about Sayaka's parents? Not to mention, where are Homura's parents?
edited 29th Aug '16 4:33:27 PM by PhiSat
Oissu!
It's true that Silva is portrayed as better than Kikyou relatively speaking. He's taciturn and stoic, doesn't do anything about Illumi's needle, and a big reason why he lets Killua go off and do stuff is because he believes he'll come back of his own volition, but he also tells Killua that he understands that his son is different from him and that it was wrong for him to expect otherwise, in addition to acknowledging that his son needs friends to properly grow.
Also from the same series is Gyro's father, who isn't as over-the-top as some of the other examples, but that only makes him come off worse since his bad parenting and asshole behavior is a lot more realistic and he doesn't have the redeeming qualities that Ging and Silva possess.
edited 29th Aug '16 4:50:20 PM by Draghinazzo
Queen of Good Things, Honest
We see her mother talking to Madoka's mom after Sayaka's body is found dead in a hotel room, covering up her true cause of death.
My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.
Planeswalker
Do we? I thought Junko was talking to their class teacher. Ah well.
Oissu!
In regards to Harry Potter, it should be remembered that Snape's memories are colored by his own prejudices, so it's not really surprising that Lily comes out looking great and James comes out looking like an ass. I think Dumbledore even says something to that effect at one point.
Sayaka mentions her mother at some point too. Homura's are never seen and I think the implication is supposed to be that she's an orphan somehow.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Not to methion the fact that James gets a lot of praise and a lot of bravery moments, now there's certainly a bias for a mother's love but consider the other characters around. Harry has maybe two surrogate mother figures but around five surrogate father figures, so it makes sense that the mother figures have a stronger concentration of good.
I mean yeah mothers are going to come off better, Harry Potter was written by a single mother who had to get a restraining order against her ex-husband, there's going to be some creator bias.
Jupiterian Local
Not as angry as the name would suggest.
Actuallly, I believe the reason is that James was going to die no matter what, but Voldemort (on Snape's request) wasn't planning on killing Lily. He tells her to stand aside, but when she refuses, he just figures "fuck it", and we all know what happened next.
Oh God! Natural light!
Planeswalker
Jupiterian Local
That's the Watsonian reason; James was killed while attempting to kill Voldemort, while Lily was given the option to survive by giving up Harry and consciously rejected that choice. In Doylist terms, though, a mother's love is "purer" or something than a father's. Because, you know, actively trying to stop someone from murdering your child is less of a sacrifice than passively letting them kill you (and then, presumably, your child as well).
The Dragon of the Eastern Sea
I was always under the impression that she was fighting too... Just later.
Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you
Jupiterian Local
No, they make it pretty clear that James fights (and is quickly killed), while Lily does not. Voldemort tells her to stand aside so he can kill Harry, but she refuses, so he kills her. She never actually fights him.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
United Earth
An interesting variation on the scene, as remembered by Harry while a Dementor drains his humanity:
"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him!" shouted a man's voice. "Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"
And Harry couldn't help but think, in the empty depths of his dark side, how ridiculously overconfident James Potter had been. Hold off Lord Voldemort? With what?
Then the other voice spoke, high-pitched like the hiss of a teakettle, and it was like dry ice laid on Harry's every nerve, like a brand of metal cooled to liquid helium temperatures and laid on every part of him. And the voice said:
"Avadakedavra."
(The wand flew from the boy's nerveless fingers as his body began to convulse and fall, the Headmaster's eyes widening in alarm as he began his own Patronus Charm.)
"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!" screamed the woman's voice.
Whatever was left of Harry listened with all the light drained out of him, in the dead void of his heart, and wondered if she thought that Lord Voldemort would stop because she asked politely.
"Step aside, woman!" said the shrill voice of burning cold. "For you I am not come, only the boy."
"Not Harry! Please... have mercy... have mercy..."
Lily Potter, Harry thought, seemed not to understand what type of people became Dark Lords in the first place; and if this was the best strategy she could conceive to save her child's life, that was her final failure as a mother.
"I give you this rare chance to flee," said the shrill voice. "But I will not trouble myself to subdue you, and your death here will not save your child. Step aside, foolish woman, if you have any sense in you at all!"
"Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead!"
The empty thing that was Harry wondered if Lily Potter seriously imagined that Lord Voldemort would say yes, kill her, and then depart leaving her son unharmed.
"Very well," said the voice of death, now sounding coldly amused, "I accept the bargain. Yourself to die, and the child to live. Now drop your wand so that I can murder you."
There was a hideous silence.
Lord Voldemort began to laugh, horrible contemptuous laughter.
And then, at last, Lily Potter's voice shrieked in desperate hate, "Avada ke-"
The lethal voice finished first, the curse rapid and precise.
"Avadakedavra."
How thwat was...rude from Harry mind
That's all, folks
Lol, I wonder if any anime/manga flips around the disposable male trope 
edited 31st Aug '16 7:30:51 PM by SalaamAleikum
I think that Attack on Titan "flipped" it out rather nicely. On the first episodes, after their military training, an entire squad is taken out by the titans, and the female deaths were basically trivialized, they weren't treated as more "tragic" than the men who died. It was inverted because ironically the only death who was portrayed as something that mattered was the death of a male character.
Queen of Good Things, Honest
Like, in the confines of a small home, I'm not sure it's actually that ridiculous. If James had spent less time shouting to Lily and more time tackling Voldemort with his body, he might actually have been able to do it. I give Big V even odds to wrestle him off and kill him nonetheless, but that's better odds than anyone's ever had against him. I don't think either Tom or James has an impressive physical stature.
Suddenly the ultimate Dark Wizard's unstoppable murder of the Potter family becomes two underweight nerds writhing on the ground, each trying to get their hands on a stick.
I've said it before, I'll say it again: the easiest way to beat a master is to make him play a different game.
edited 1st Sep '16 10:18:37 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.
United Earth
I see your "disarm by hand" and counter it with wandless magic, plus buffs and enhancements.
Queen of Good Things, Honest
It's never been suggested that Avada Kedavra can be cast wandlessly, and James is on an even playing field with anything else.
Voldemort's a one-trick pony.
edited 1st Sep '16 11:19:13 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.
Amused
Tokyo Ghoul flips it a bit as well although the character in question does not die. A lots of people of all genders die or are very damaged in that series due to just how frankly violent the world they are in is.
However while there is plenty of tragic female characters one of the most tragic people in that entire series is a male character. Said male character is very shy and pacifistic (not for a good reason, he was abused in the past by prominent women in his life no less which was also taken very seriously), yet very kind.
He gets kidnapped and tortured in a really nasty way. And since he is a half-ghoul he can regenerate full limbs and he can even can regenerate his own brain in some cases. This is not treated as a good thing at all. By the time the sadistic torturer is done with him his personality changes into a standard quiet, cold, stoic badass type of character. The interesting part is the simple fact that this is not treated as a good thing at all (he is mentally unstable and a lot of people liked his previous personality) with some characters of both genders upset over being too late to save him as his change in personality is just that obvious.
That wasn't only the tragically lost or broken male character in the series. Tragic female characters are also just as prominent as well. Ironically the only people welcoming his change of his personality as a good thing was a small number of people in the fandom that complained about the character being whiny early on (despite having a good reason to not be happy with his situation). Those people somewhat shut up much much later on in the series as the amount of pain this character goes through for power is scary to be quite frank....
edited 1st Sep '16 11:21:16 AM by Ecrivan
Formerly known as Bleddyn And I am feeling like a ghost Resident Perky Goth
Queen of Good Things, Honest
Like, if Big V could cast Avada Kedavra wandlessly, the entire conflict with the phoenix core wands wouldn't be a thing. He'd just put his down and AK Harry into oblivion with his bare hands.
And throughout the series, that's the only thing he has. His entire conflict is that he can't AK Harry and there is nothing else in the entire universe he could possibly think of that would kill Harry, so he goes to more and more ridiculous lengths in order to find a way to AK Harry. And then the final showdown consists of Harry pointing out that he STILL can't AK Harry and Big V being so completely stupid and uncreative that the only workaround he has left is just, "Do it anyway."
He needs his wand to AK, he cannot do anything but AK, thus without his wand, Voldemort ceases to be a mighty wizard and becomes a helpless bookworm.
My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.
For another HxH example, arguably both of Killua's parents are terrible people but I believe Killua's dad is portrayed a lot better than his Ax-Crazy mother. Still, his dad is cold and taciturn, and again not really a great parent in his own right.
How about parental gender roles? In Puella Magi Madoka Magica, I recall Madoka's dad is a stay at home parent while Junko, Madoka's mom, is a businesswoman and possibly one at a high-level position. Talk about abnormal for anime and manga.
edited 29th Aug '16 4:07:33 PM by PhiSat
Oissu!