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Straw Misogynist

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Grumpy: She's a female! And all females is poison! They're full of wicked wiles!
Bashful: What are wicked wiles?
Grumpy: I don't know, but I'm agin' em!

A specific type of Straw Character, this is a character drawn as having hateful views of women so that he can be proven wrong and/or to show how bad he is for having these views.

The Straw Misogynist is usually male and hates or has contempt for women in general. Many times, he backs up his assumptions with pseudo-scientific evidence that men are inherently superior in every domain and that women ought to Stay in the Kitchen and grovel at the feet of men in light of these "irrefutable" proofs that all women are worthy of his contempt and ridicule. He is likely to interpret the fact that many women do well in business, science, and so on as some kind of insult and attack against him personally. When exaggerated, he has no problem bellowing (and sometimes putting in practice) the belief that exterminating all women (except for the ones that are necessary for some reason, and sometimes even then) will somehow make the world a better place.

This character often looks very unattractive, implying that he has this attitude just because he can't get laid. When he doesn't, expect him to be either a rapist, Serial Killer, Domestic Abuser or some other sort of outright villain. Of course, he can easily be all of this when the author feels especially Anvilicious. Conversely, the Big Bad who has not displayed this trait at all previously may suddenly bust it out in the final confrontation against the female main character, just to assure everyone that he's really evil and that it's okay to hate him because all the murder and whatnot up to that point apparently wasn't enough.

Despite being a staple of Feminist Fantasy stories, this specific kind of strawman is actually quite common in other works and may be used as an excuse for other forms of sexism in-story.

This trope often relies heavily on a pro-male, anti-female, version of Mars and Venus Gender Contrast. Compare He-Man Woman Hater, for a generally less extreme (and often more rounded) version, Effeminate Misogynistic Guy for especially feminine varieties of and Politically Incorrect Hero (formerly Licensed Sexist) for the comedic version.

If you are unsure if a character is a Straw Misogynist, they're usually anvilicious in execution, and are either painted by the narrative as being wrong or are proven wrong by events or characters in the story. Compare and contrast Straw Feminist, its usual inversion. Strangely, it's a rare story where both the Straw Feminist and the Straw Misogynist meet. The result of such an encounter is often Hilarity Ensues, as both archetypes are natural enemies but in a Sitcom Archnemesis flavor. Scale this trope up to an entire setting and you get No Woman's Land.

Do not add Real Life or Truth in Television examples in this page, as real people are not crafted for a specific purpose.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Shitsurakuen: Pretty much every male student or staff member at Utopia Academy.
  • Freezing: Louis El Bridget certainly comes across as one. Witness his treatment of his adopted sister Satellizer and his partner Holly.
  • The demon Salamander from You Are Being Summoned, Azazel, as a stab at samurai culture.
  • Berserk has General Adon, an incompetent Tudor soldier who slings whatever sexist slander he can think up at Casca every chance he gets. Sure enough, this ends up biting him, as he ends up getting his head slashed open by Casca during their final confrontation.
  • Halfway through Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Sayaka Miki is taking the subway when she overhears two men bragging about how one abused and then dumped his girlfriend. The two men laugh and talk about how women are nothing but stupid whores to be kept in line with beatings. Sayaka confronts them while clearly losing her grip on her sanity; while the original anime doesn't show what happened next, in the manga adaptation she is strongly implied to have killed them. She becomes a witch soon afterward. Apparently, this scene was based on a real conversation that Gen Urobuchi overheard on a train.
  • Naruto: Madara Uchiha is revealed to be this, degrading the Fifth Hokage Tsunade not only for being a weak Senju (which, compared with Hashirama, ANY Senju would be) but a weak woman too. Tsunade shuts him up by activating her ultimate technique and managing to destroy his Instant Armor with a single punch. He escapes — and admits she isn't a weak woman.
    • For more added irony, it turns out he's been an Unwitting Pawn to Black Zetsu, who happens to be the manifestation of the will of his female ancestor, who is far more powerful than even he could ever hope to be.
  • Emiru's older brother Masato in HuGtto! Pretty Cure has very old-fashioned opinions about what girls should do, and has no problem telling his tomboyish sister that she shouldn't play the guitar and that only men should be heroes. Thankfully, he's called out for his sexism more than once and starts seeing the error of his ways by episode 20.
  • In the Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid manga, Kobayashi's boss is mentioned to yell at her for the slightest mistake in spite of her being the single most competent worker in the department because of his sexist views on women in the workplace (he's just as much of a jerk in the anime, but no mention of misogyny is made). He ends up getting fired when Kobayashi records one of his rants and sends it to the company president (who is also a woman).
  • In Shirobako, Hiraoka is one of the biggest jerks in the cast, and has a bit of a sexist streak. In his first conversation with Aoi, he remarks that Segawa, a freelance animator, is nicer to other women than she is to men. After he nearly runs into Aoi's friend and kohai Midori, he complains that women only have to make "googly eyes" for men to forgive them.
  • Jujutsu Kaisen: Naoya Zenin embodies the archaic viewpoints posited by some of the more traditional clans in the setting, specifically the chauvinistic and demeaning attitudes towards women prevalent within Maki and Mai's backstory. He believes that a woman's only value in life is to support her husband, and coldly judges the worth of the women in his clan based on their appearance and obedience. He likes Mai a lot more than Maki entirely because Mai has the bigger tits and the fatter ass while also being more "obedient".

    Comic Books 
  • Most Golden Age Wonder Woman villains fit this category, notably Ares, who keeps women in chains as slaves. Dr. Psycho, in his first story, is a phony medium that can summon the "ghost of George Washington" and uses this fake psychic projection to denounce the inclusion of women in the US Armed Forces. As time goes on, Psycho eventually turns into a disgusting sadist with a particular fondness for torturing and utterly breaking women, which firmly cemented his status as one of the single most vile individuals in the DC Universe.
  • In the 1970s, when feminism became mainstream and Wonder Woman became a feminist icon, there was another surge in women-hating villains. See, for example, The Twelve Labors.
  • An unusual example in Astro City. Winged Victory's villain Karnazon is a die-hard misogynist, always kidnapping women and talking about how they're the weaker sex, but according to Winged Victory, he used to be more a Visionary Villain but deliberately flanderized himself into this over the years For the Evulz.
  • The Taurs from the 2016 series of The Awesome Slapstick, composite parodies of The Smurfs and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, are shown to be very sexist toward their Smurfette equivalent Taurette, thinking that she's helpless without them to rescue her all the time and stating that it's within their rights to be condescending toward her. Just in case it isn't clear that their treatment of her is bad, the Taurs' leader is even named Patriarchy Taur.
  • Just about every man the title character encounters in Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist is a misogynist dickhead solely so that whatever violent retribution Hothead inflicts upon them appears justified.

    Fan Works 
  • A frequent trait of Ron the Death Eater in Harry Potter fanfiction:
  • In Power Girl fanfic A Force of Four, the three Kryptonian outlaws are convinced that they can take on Power Girl or Badra because they are "only women". Several beatdowns later they're reconsidering their position.
  • Edo in Girls Und Panzer- International War Games. After bumping into Suzuki, he calls her a "stupid whore," and claims that she and the rest of the Oarai tankery team have no idea what real combat is. After Suzuki tells him off, he punches her, resulting in a fight that gets him kicked off the hohei-do team. In retaliation, he maliciously reveals that Kenji is responsible for his sister's death, and calls Kenji's dead sister a "whore" in the original version of Chapter 12.
  • Draco in Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles serves as straw misogynist in order to make Harry's (and all other "positive" male character's views) seem woman-friendly.
  • Snotlout in Lost Boy makes it glaringly clear that he does not care whether Astrid would want to marry him or not, thinking that as heir to Berk's chiefdom, he is entitled to own her as his property.
  • Vault from The Night Unfurls, if his motive of creating The Empire where every woman is a Sex Slave isn't blatantly clear enough. Him being the Big Bad who kicks off the plot means that being "proven wrong" is not his one and only purpose in the story.
  • The villainous organization in the Pokémon ROM Hack Pokemon PurePink, Team Xeno, aim to create a masculine world where women Stay in the Kitchen.
  • In Prison Island Break heterosexual major character Shadow the Hedgehog hates women, loudly classing them as sub-people. This is how he justifies his violence towards them to himself. The sole exception seems to be Maria. Interestingly, his hatred for women is the sole facet of his personality that is neither justified nor explained. Subtext suggests that Shadow doesn't really hate women (at least no more so than he dislikes just about every other living creature); he just rapes and murders them and claims that he did so because he hates them.
  • Played with in Total Drama Chris: One challenge has the campers pretending to be other campers. Justin is assigned Ezekiel, and takes advantage of this to rattle off a constant litany of sexist remarks, based off the one sexist comment Ezekiel had made in Total Drama. (Meanwhile, the Zeke seen here is a Fish out of Water Nice Guy who's mortified at this portrayal.)

    Films — Animation 
  • In The Book of Life, Joaquin's group of Yes Men agree with Maria as she sarcastically asks Joaquin if a pretty ornament who knows her place is what he wants in a woman; this results in Joaquin looking bad to her, and her deciding to leave and spend time with her pig.
  • Seder-Masochism: The movie presents all Abrahamic religions (primarily Judaism) as heavily patriarchal and oppressive of women, often in a comically exaggerated manner.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • 300 makes the Persians into a race of these, with a Persian diplomat making a sexist comment to immediately mark them as villains. By contrast, Leonidas treats his wife with respect, allows her to voice her opinion on diplomatic matters, and even seeks her approval before killing the messenger. It's kind of funny since this is an exact inversion of real life; while Spartan women did enjoy more rights than in other Greek city-states, the Persians were one of the most egalitarian societies in the ancient world, and women were allowed to serve as administrators and lead troops in battle. Seems to be subverted in the sequel, where a woman is both in charge of the Persian fleet and shown to be The Woman Behind the Man to the emperor. She's also the diplomat's adopted daughter of whom he's very proud, suggesting his comments in the first film were just to be annoying.
  • Jafar on the Aladdin (2019) film. His sexism towards Jasmine is highlighted to give her a struggle to overcome and sing about.
  • Parodied in Barbie (2023), when Ken discovers real world patriarchy and misunderstands it, later remaking Barbie Land into a world where all the Barbies now serve the Kens, who behave like typical frat boys.
  • Black Christmas (2019) has an evil fraternity as the antagonists - who are trying to brainwash the students into being misogynists and undermine empowered women. Of course in the finale the sorority sisters team up to burn them alive in their frat house.
  • Vascan in Blood Machines sees the female-coded AI of his ship with contempt, finds the idea of the Mima's all-female crew distasteful and kidnaps one of them while threatening to use her as a sex-slave. Even when he sees them perform actual magic, he continues to treat Corey with contempt.
  • The title character in Borat is a particularly over-the-top example, as befits someone from the movie's fictionalized version of Kazakhstan. Then again, the point of the character—a Funny Foreigner who spends the movie talking to real Americans as part of the mockumentary—is to embolden interviewees to express their own prejudices, thereby revealing that such attitudes are well and alive closer to home than we might assume.
  • Cleo Leo: Several characters, including Leo see women as someone to be taken advantage of and used.
  • Lloyd Hooks from Cloud Atlas claims he doesn't take "women's lib seriously" and says that right in front of Intrepid Reporter Luisa Rey.
  • The Craft: Legacy: The villain is revealed to be Adam, an evil warlock who runs a cult that not so subtly parallels a Men's Rights group and wants to uphold traditional masculinity and murders Timmy for being weak.
  • Don't Worry Darling:
    • Jack is shown to have expected Alice to cook and clean for him even when she's finished long shifts at the hospital as a surgeon, and is taking part in Victory so he can be celebrated as an ideal 1950s patriarch.
    • The entire Victory project consists of men trapping women in a simulation of a typical 1950s suburb where the husbands are celebrated as the family breadwinners and the wives only think of domestic chores, with the men resorting to Gaslighting whenever the women get suspicious.
  • In a World…...: Gustav. Carol's father shares many of the same attitudes but is more nuanced and, unlike Gustav, learns An Aesop by the end of the film.
  • Chucky the Killer Doll in the Child's Play movies really, really hates women and girls. It could have something to do with the fact women have frequently hindered his progress in getting to Andy, whose body he needs to possess to escape being a plastic doll that easily melts. He is fond of the terms "Bitch" and "Slut". In the third movie, he swears to kill the two teenage girls when they graffiti his face with lipstick. Seed shows that Chucky would hate to have a daughter and wants a son instead, as while in Curse he outright states he hates women and his backstory implies that a woman is responsible for him being forced to transfer his soul into a doll.
  • Little Women (1994): The offscreen character Mr Davis whipped Amy's hands in school when she was discovered with limes, which are forbidden, and then later ranted about how pointless it was to educate a woman - infuriating Marmee so much that she takes Amy out of school at once so that Jo can educate her at home. The film leaves out the moment in the book where he regrets doing this as Jo comes to collect Amy's things.
  • Little Women (2019): Jo's publisher orders her to make sure her heroine ends the story "dead or married" as a condition of picking up her book, and later when she writes a novel based on her and her sisters' lives, he heavy-handedly expresses doubt over anyone will want to read stories about women. This is naturally so he can be proven wrong when his three daughters excitedly burst into the room, wanting to know what happens next.
  • The Stepford Wives (especially the 1975 film version) has as its plot a specifically conservative town full of older men with liberated feminist wives who eventually Kill and Replace them with robots who think of nothing but cooking, cleaning and taking care of the children. Walter expects Joanna to make the house "sparkle" and is completely out of his depth when he has to entertain the children and their friends while she's busy with her photography.

    Literature 
  • 2666: Prejudice against women is common in Santa Teresa, which fuels the domestic violence and murders. One scene even depicts officers taking advantage of prostitutes that they arrested. Then again, the crimes in the novel are based on the real-life murders of literally hundreds of women in Ciudad Juárez, so this is arguably an extremely uncomfortable case of Truth in Television.
  • Mona Gardner's The Dinner Party: A guest at a dinner party in colonial India insists that women are useless in a crisis as they always scream and panic, whereas men have the nerve to suppress their emotions. Naturally, the plot of the short story involves him getting his comeuppance when a woman shows more control than a man in a situation where the guests' lives are at stake. To be specific, she's the first one to realize there's a cobra in the room, under the dining table — crawling across her foot.
  • In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, as if trying to make him as thoroughly dislikable as possible, Emperor Palpatine is revealed to be one of these in addition to being a racist, mass-murdering totalitarian maniac. It's quite ironic, then, that the warlords who make up the last of the dying Empire are essentially united and revived by a woman. In all fairness, the Emperor considers everyone beneath him, regardless of gender or species. He also appointed Mara Jade, one of his best students, "The Emperor's Hand" - making her essentially the third most powerful person in the Empire behind Darth Vader and himself (albeit secretly). So it's left unclear if he has any animus toward women, or just backed the attitudes of the existing boys club which makes up his officers corps.
  • In the Millennium Series, all of the male villains are either white supremacists or murderers, rapists and abusers of women (thus the "Men Who Hate Women" of the first book's title).
  • Rose Madder: Norman, committer of Domestic Abuse, believes that all feminists are lesbians and brutally beats his wife on a regular basis, even causing her to miscarry.
  • The Sword of Truth: Almost all male villains. For some specific examples, Darken Rahl thinks women are hardly rational or intelligent at all, good only for having children, while the villain of Temple of the Winds is a literal misogynistic Serial Killer. Emperor Jagang seems to view them as good only for sexual abuse by him or his army (or in the case of sorceresses, also as slave mooks).
  • Many villains in The Culture series, probably because the Culture itself is an egalitarian utopia.
    • This is practically the hat of the aliens in both The Player of Games and Excession, although it's played seriously in the former and for Black Comedy in the latter.
    • The misogynistic Azadians of The Player of Games are almost equally biased against males. Being a species with three sexes, the dominant pseudo-hermaphroditic sex, referred to as apexes, looks down on both males and females. Females are considered property (for breeding purposes) while males are considered little more than Cannon Fodder for the Empire's military. There's even a reference to them having spent a few generations with a eugenics/genetic-engineering program designed to leave all the males as Dumb Muscle.
    • Veppers, the Corrupt Corporate Executive villain of Surface Detail is also quite misogynistic in the sense that he sees them as little more than sexual objects. Then again, he hardly bears any more respect for men (he's just not interested in having sex with them). He's pretty much a narcissist who doesn't value anyone but himself.
  • Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: A number of male villains are very much this. Mitch Riley from the book Hide and Seek and Henry "Hank" Jellicoe would be some major examples.
  • The representatives to ASEAN in the Dale Brown novel Sky Masters. Those that we see speaking anyway.
  • The villain in Shadow of the Bear openly despises women and girls, even calling them uglier than men.
  • Drake from Gone. You can pick up on it in early books to some extent, but by the fifth book, practically every one of his perspective chapters has something about how much he hates women. Diana lampshades it.
  • The evil sorcerer from The Black Swan by Mercedes Lackey.
  • Subverted by most of the Graysons in the Honor Harrington novels - while they're sexist and patriarchal, they mean it when they say that they are protecting their women by keeping them out of the workforce and military. When Honor proves them wrong by saving their planet, they accept their mistakes and practically canonize her. In later novels, some Manticorans occasionally note that Grayson men still have a tendency to be protective of women. Played extremely straight by their fratricidal sister planet Masada, however. The true depth of their hatred becomes apparent when Honor discovers that of the nineteen female Manticoran personnel captured by the Masadans, only two survived the subsequent beatings and repeated gang-rapes. The Graysons are just as horrified as Honor, and later execute all the Masadan personnel responsible.
  • Kenny Homolka, a rapist serving time in The Mental State, genuinely believes that women live much easier lives than men, and their only reasons for existing are to reproduce and to give men pleasure. Inevitably, he gets his comeuppance along with all the other rapists in prison when he is tricked by the main character into getting trapped in a women's prison surrounded by a hoard of angry and particularly violent female offenders. Even the resident Sociopathic Hero cannot resist the urge to rant about how much he hates Kenny and his kind directly to their faces.
  • Joren of Stone Mountain, Keladry's main antagonist for the first two-and-a-half Protector of the Small books. He's completely obsessed with driving Keladry out of knight training. Even after they're both squires and ostensibly out of each other's hair, he hangs around to continue giving a name and face to Tortallan culture's deep-rooted misogyny.
  • William Hamleigh in The Pillars of the Earth spends the larger part of the story stalking, beating, and raping various women. It is implied that he cannot maintain an erection unless the woman he is having sex with is scared of him. To a lesser extent Alfred, who blames his wife Aliena for his impotence and forces her to sleep on the floor.
  • The Handmaid's Tale: The Republic of Gilead abolished all women's rights and made them wives, servants, or breeding slaves, aside from the Aunts (female enforcers of their policies). One part of the backstory is that they actually got into power by allying with Straw Feminist groups on the many issues they agreed on, then backstabbing them.
  • Into the Bloodred Woods: Prince Albrecht looks down on women, including his sister, which is one of the reasons he feels she shouldn't be allowed to rule.
  • Zero from The Passion of New Eve. He kidnaps young women and regularly beats and rapes them. He denies them the use of language and even lets his dog assault them on a regular basis. His plan is to locate the former movie star Tristessa and put her through everything he's put Eve and the other women through because he thinks she caused him to become impotent via one of her old movies.
  • Malthorne Draconius of The Jeremiah School is a rich young know-it-all prophet who thinks that girls shouldn't be prophets because they can be easily swayed by the Devil, and thinks that girls should instead be housewives and mothers.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Boys (2019): Soldier Boy is intended as a deconstruction of Manly Man superheroes, and of course has the accompanying chauvinism and misogyny to prove it. In a flashback, he flirts with the only female CIA agent right in front of his girlfriend, telling her she should smile more and be nicer, and assuming she's a lesbian when she shuts him down.
  • Charmed (1998):
    • The Demon of Illusion from "Chick Flick" makes sexist comments when the sisters confront him, even going out of his way to call them "bitches", setting up Billy Appleby from the film within a film calling him on the way he speaks to women.
    • "Hell Hath No Fury" sees Paige dealing with a sleazy, woman-hating co-worker who also wears a Dodgy Toupee - just so Paige can cast spells to give him Laser-Guided Karma.
    • The episode "House Call" has a chauvinistic rival advice columnist to Phoebe - Spencer Riggs - who says misogynistic things such as "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen...oh wait, that's a woman's place." Then when the Monster of the Week casts a spell on Phoebe, she ends up taking revenge by turning him into a turkey and trying to carve him up.
  • Joss Whedon's televised work:
    • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In the episode "Family" Tara's father reveals that demon blood runs through it on the female side so all female members of the family must stay home to avoid revealing the curse. Though by the end of the episode, everyone discovers that this is just a lie to make sure the women stay subservient. Tara's cousin Beth is there too, and she's an outright Female Misogynist.
    • The Angel episode "Billy" has a character who unleashes latent violent misogyny. Apparently, all men have these feelings inside them, they're just repressed... and sociopathic vampires are above such petty concerns.
    • Firefly: "Heart of Gold" included one of these as a villain. Anviliciously, he goes so far as to force a woman to service him in public. Somewhat counterbalanced by the adherence to the Hooker with a Heart of Gold trope.
  • Normal People's TV adaptation gives us Jamie - who rants several times about feminism and only ever raises this argument so one of the others can put him in his place. He's also possessive and jealous, existing as a Romantic False Lead for Marianne. This also features the rare time when there's a Straw Feminist in the same group - in Marianne's friend Peggy, who actually takes Jamie's side in an argument!
  • Robin Hood: Subverted by the Sheriff of Nottingham. Throughout the series, Vaizey makes several disparaging remarks toward women, and often refers to them as "lepers". However, there was an interesting subtext that suggested that it was all a show for the benefit of his Dragon, who he didn't want getting too close to any female who could threaten the influence Vaizey held over Guy. The only character Vaizey shows any love for is his sister, and he never underestimates Marian, even when Guy and Robin do. When an Abbess comes to the castle and a guard argues against letting her into a room where the tax money is kept, the Sheriff's response is notably not "she's just a woman", but "she's just a nun." Admittedly since the abbess turned out to be a thief who successfully stole all the money and escaped from a locked room in that case he did underestimate her, even though he clearly never trusted her.
  • The Sheriff in Robin of Sherwood has pretty strong elements of this. If there's a woman in his storyline, he's either dismissive, insulting, or trying to marry her for her money. And in those latter cases, he doesn't even pretend to care about them.
  • The Ferengi and Kazon from Star Trek. The Ferengi in particular take it to cartoonish extremes: it's illegal for a Ferengi female to own anything, get a job, leave the house unattended, or wear clothes. They're so ridiculously misogynistic that even taking informal advice from a female as a male is punishable by life in prison. In one episode, the Grand Nagus (the de facto leader of the Ferengi species) literally screamed in horror at the sight of a female because she was walking around and doing business in public (she had disguised herself as a man). In another episode, a Ferengi male is outraged by losing to Jadzia Dax in a card game, and only calms down when he realizes that due to her retaining the memories of Dax's past incarnations, he can justify it as having lost to the knowledge of a long-dead male. The Ferengi largely change their views when the economic benefits of having twice as many people (give or take a few) spending and making money become apparent, though they still count for this trope as it took the supposed Proud Merchant Race millennia to comprehend that basic economic principle.note  Aside from how they treat their own females, there's also the fact that every male Ferengi character will have at least one scene where they sexually harass a female of another species.
  • Doctor Who
    • Riddell from "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" who fits this trope perfectly. He exists solely as a token male with out-of-date opinions in order to make Amy and Queen Nefertiti look good. He does nothing else in the episode other than this. He clearly demonstrates through his words and actions that he thinks of women as inferior throughout the episode. He is, however, delighted when he's proven wrong by the both of them and becomes genuinely enamored with Nefertiti in part because she's so strong-willed.
    • The Sontarans from The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky" refer to women being weaker than men. By Christmas 2012, they're back to having trouble understanding gender at all.
    • One was retconned into this role during "Twice Upon a Time", where most of his interactions with Bill had him say something bigoted to show how old-fashioned he was. In the novelization of the episode he's explicitly playing it up just to watch Twelve cringe.
  • In Married... with Children, Al Bundy is portrayed this way a lot, a chauvinist who only judges women (at least those he doesn't know personally) in terms of how good they look eye-candy-wise; those he does know personally he doesn't get along with at all, especially Marcie (who herself is really no better). One good example had him call Jerry Springer, who was playing a male Straw Feminist (he even called himself "The Masculine Feminist"). The topic at hand was whether women should be allowed to form bowling leagues. Al tells him "If God wanted women to bowl, He would have put their boobs on their backs so we'd have something to watch."
  • One episode of New Tricks featured a misogynistic university professor who used jargon such as 'mangina' just so the main characters could say "if [not hating women] makes me a mangina, book me in for a Brazilian".
  • Agent Carter has Peggy's coworkers in the SSR, who initially appear to only exist to make Carter look put upon and oppressed. They're subsequently portrayed as being one step, or more, behind her the entire time (though not so far behind her that they can't complicate her investigation). They eventually start learning better that Peggy and women, in general, can be far more competent than they give them credit for... at the worst possible time, right as they find out that she's been running around behind their backs, making them think she's a deadly enemy agent. When they interrogate her, she tears into them with a "The Reason You Suck" Speech calling them on their sexism and pointing out how they made it easy for her to undermine them (even Sousa, who had until now generally seemed to be free of misogyny; he took the betrayal personally and Peggy accuses him of having a Madonna-Whore Complex). All of them take the speech to heart and have grown out of this trope by the season's end (not that their sexism has been completely eliminated, but what's left is no longer the "straw" version).
  • Still on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law features the Intelligencia, a group of anti-superheroine internet trolls, with particular hatred for Distaff Counterparts who they deem "unworthy" of getting the same powers of a male hero.
  • Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt plays it for laughs, typically making a character of either sex look ignorant or provincial by having them say something degrading about women. There's even a misogynistic GPS system.
  • Legend of the Seeker: The Margrave of Rothenberg, who allows women almost no rights within his realm, allowing Kahlan to anviliciously lecture his wrongly imprisoned wife on fighting for herself in "Princess".
  • Lessons in Chemistry: Phil, the cartoonishly sexist station owner who hates Elizabeth's practical manner and would prefer her to act like a sexy housewife on air, is promptly proven wrong when female audiences who love Elizabeth begin tuning into the show in droves.
  • The Handmaid's Tale: This is Gilead's hat. The regime's misogyny reaches cartoonishly self-destructive levels, with women banned from reading on pain of mutilation, going far beyond what even real-life Salafists or the Taliban have actually advocated. They have no rights, and those still fertile have been forced to serve as breeding slaves.
  • In Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, High Priest Faustus Blackwood often shows how he sees witches (and women in general) as inferior to men. Some warlocks from the coven seem to share his views, albeit being less vocal about them. Sabrina is often quick in wanting to show them wrong.
  • Control Z: Pablo is heavily implied to be this towards Isabela and María once the hacker exposes his secret, something that displayed many of his worst traits in season 2.
  • Young Sheldon: In "A Math Emergency and Perky Palms", James Guilford is initially against Mary quoting scripture in his living room, not because he's against religion, but because he believes only men should preach the Bible in his church. Mary shuts him down by stating that they're not in his church; they're in his living room.
  • The Middle has Mr. Elhert, Frankie's first boss. He is openly sexist towards Frankie, makes sexist comments all the time and pretty much exists solely to be a Hate Sink. Unlike most examples, he receives little to no comeuppance for his behavior.

    Music 
  • Eminem satirises his reputation for dangerous misogyny by having his Anti-Role Model Slim Shady character rap about extremely silly misogyny.
    You got it twisted. All 'cause I offered this bitch a doggie biscuit,
    you call me misogynistic?
    Bitch, get to massagin' this dick!

    Professional Wrestling 
  • This was pretty much the entirety of Andy Kaufman's in-ring gimmick, declaring himself "The Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion Of The World" - which, ironically, was also quite progressive in that he'd always wrestle female opponents (even if he had to cheat half the time). But since this all occurred before people were aware of Kayfabe, Kaufman was viewed as being overtly misogynistic, rather than a Mean Character, Nice Actor.
  • Paul E. Dangerously went through a period of running down the supposed inferiority of women in the face of men to justify Madusa kicking his ass in WCW.
  • Jeff Jarrett went through a period where his entire gimmick was to be one of these, who spent all his screen time ranting about how women should literally be "barefoot and pregnant." This culminated in every single female wrestler interrupting one of his monologues to kick his ass.
  • The Heartbreak Express Manager Gorgeous Gary Garvin was one during their 2004 in Southern Championship Wrestling, insisting a woman's place was not in a wrestling ring. He changed his tune next year by hiring Amy Love to take out Lexie Fyfe and three years later was managing Amber O'Neal and Sara Del Rey in United States Championship Wrestling.
  • RAW and Smackdown increasingly featured fewer divas matches since adopting the "Supershow" format. Worsening this is Michael Cole, who made an effort to bury the diva matches in what little time they have. This eventually led to him eating a signature move from Eve Torres and being chased out of the Royal Rumble by Kharma.
  • Santino Marella actually attempted to invert this by mocking all the Divas in the lead-up to the Miss WrestleMania contest in 2009 - but trying to justify it by claiming he was the victim of discrimination, wanting to compete for the title of Miss WrestleMania and claiming he was being unfairly excluded "because of my genitalia." Whether this was Inferiority Superiority Complex or just him trying to be politically correct is anyone's guess. Ironically, Santino really did enter the match disguised as a woman and managed to win the whole thing, with the result that s/he turned face.
  • Dean Malenko would occasionally utilise this trope, usually to set up a female wrestler challenging him to an intergender match. He put his Light Heavyweight Championship on the line against Lita on the condition that she had to go on a date with him if she lost. He likewise fought Ivory and Jacqueline in a handicap match, convinced he would easily defeat two women. He didn't.

    Theater 
  • In the stage version of Beauty and the Beast, Gaston becomes more misogynistic than his animated counterpart. His song "Me" features lines like Belle becoming his "property", "helping him extend the family tree" and "keeping house". He also forces a kiss on her in one scene, making him a sexual assailant.

    Video Games 
  • BlazBlue's Yuuki Terumi makes no secret of the fact that he hates women, openly expressing that he finds them emotional, irrational, annoying and weak. He also appears to take special pleasure in Break the Cutie acts of abuse and is not above subjecting Litchi Faye-Ling to what amounts to sexual harassment. This rampant misogyny seems to stem from his hatred of Master Unit: Amaterasu, his own sister, and appears to be an extension of his desire to hurt her in any way he can, even by proxy... Mind you, Terumi Hates Everyone Equally, so it's not like women are the only victims of his abuse, but he still somehow manages to make every single one of his subjects of hatred incredibly petty, personal and politically incorrect, so he still applies for this trope.
  • Extra Case: My Girlfriend's Secrets: In the ninth ending, Sally confesses to her crimes, but her deeds become viral, resulting in mass public backlash. Many of the online comments are outright misogynistic hatred of women, making it clear that those commenters are looking for "socially acceptable" ways to express their bigoted views. Other commenters criticize them for being oddly silent in cases where women are abused.
  • In Lunar: Walking School, the protagonists are a trio of girls who often contend with Ant, a Jerkass rival at magic school. He and his friends quickly establish themselves to be condescendingly sexist twerps. Iason, the Dojo teacher, is also obsessed with manhood.
  • Persona:
  • One bonus episode of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky stars the legendary all-female Team Charm. A minor character, a Houndoom, exists in that chapter and only gets two lines: one is expressing blatant sexism towards Team Charm, and the other reveals him as a hypocritical coward.
  • Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves: General Tsao's objective was to force Jing King to marry him and his plan to forcibly merge their bloodlines means he had some heinous plans for her after the wedding. When Sly tells him that Jing wants nothing to do with him, Tsao retorts "she's a woman. She doesn't know up from down!". This prompts Sly to specifically tell to Tsao's face that, out of all of the villains he's faced, he's undoubtedly the worst.

    Web Animation 
  • MoniRobo: Mr. Aizawa is a misogynistic asshole in charge of the company Ayaka and her friend Mina applied to, chewing female candidates out for anything they said and mocking them until they cried. However, he acts the opposite around male candidates.

    Web Comics 
  • Dominic Deegan: The character 'Stunt' started out as one, and still has many, many elements. He's also a plain ol' Jerkass. Evil Orcs also fall into this category. He's pretty much graduated to a standard He-Man Woman Hater at this point.
  • Sluggy Freelance's villain Dr. Nofun, is portrayed as extremely sexist; his beliefs are so over-the-top that it's clearly meant to be played for comedy. Recently, larger versions of his misogynist PSAs have been running as the weekend filler with the disclaimer: "The opinions expressed here are the views of a fictional two-dimensional villain and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Sluggy Freelance LLC, it's subsidiaries, subsidiaries, and slightly less fictional avian representation in perpetuity, esquire." This is played even straighter when it's revealed that his misogyny is all just an act to get a group of weak-willed women and terrified men that he can use the threat of the female bogeyman to control their every thought, so his minions won't rebel against him.
  • New guy Wes in Between Failures is this, most certainly. He claims that Mike, being male, should have "put [Carol] in her place," and seems to think that, given enough time, he can seduce any woman (even one as weird as Brooksie), which is clearly the only reason women exist in his world.
  • Overwhelmingly used in Shortpacked! in a large number of strips.
  • Bomango used one in a strip once. A coach of an all-male rugby team won't let she-beast, Gogo, on the team. Oddly enough, the creator outright admits it in the strip's description.
    VanHeist: Sexism's rarely this blunt, cartoony, or satisfyingly settled here in the real world, which isn't known for its just desserts. And of course, there are conditions that make it rather reasonable that men and women don't typically play the same field in the world of sports. But pragmatically speaking, if it walks like a man, talks like a man, and gives and takes hits like a man, let "the man" play. Here, the silent majority seems to get it.
  • Leon from White Dark Life is, along with being unbelievably stupid(even by the standards set by the previous Too Dumb to Live character) and secretly plots to take over the world with his patriarchy. For some reason, his best friend is the local Straw Feminist.
  • Dave from Misfile is introduced antagonizing Ash for many a Psychological Projection, but what he hates about Ash most is that Ash is currently female and a talented street racer, once even telling his friend that if he loses a race to Ash on what he considers "his" road, that would be as bad as having to squat to pee. There is no explanation given on why he hates women in particular.
  • In El Goonish Shive, Rich goes on an (unseen) tangent rant about Susan's feminist views, which are well after her own transition from a Straw Feminist to a more normal one, calling them "man-hating dumbness".
  • Heroine Chic has one such character in Vowel Ninja "Y", who makes a snide remark about Umbra wearing a Minidress of Power at her age while in earshot of protagonist Zoe (a fashion designer who caters to superheroes). Zoe pauses to calls him out on his attitude as he and the rest of the Vowel Ninjas are trying to kidnap her.
    Zoe: And you! How dare you tell Umbra what she should wear! That's body shaming and ageist! Fashion is a personal statement for men and women, and no one has the right to dictate the color, or the style, or the length. We each decide what's right for us!

    Web Original 
  • Omega Zell from Noob has his misogyny used mostly for making him a Politically Incorrect Hero, but showing him to be wrong about women is a recurring point of the franchise.
  • Similar characters are used several times in The Nostalgia Critic, depicted as repulsive Manchild, who very much need to prove their masculinity and who perceive any image of a strong woman as "the intrigues of feminists" when the Critic wants to ridicule the gender debate over a film. They're ususally contrasted with "Devil Boner", a character who gleefully represents Testosterone Poisoning and is a staunch feminist.
  • The Cinema Snob: "Walt Right" appears randomly to accuse an old Darna movie of "virtue signaling", presumably, just because it's a female-led superhero movie. He also sports a Creepy Monotone, stares bug-eyed into the camera, and wears sweaters that nearly blend in with the background behind him. In an unrelated video, he can be seen lurking in a random Freeze-Frame Bonus beside Brad's chair.

    Western Animation 
  • Johnny Bravo was flanderized into being a bit of a sexist jerk during the Kirk Tingblad run, though it was eventually reversed after Van Partible returned to the show.
  • King of the Hill:
    • One episode has Alan Rickman playing the "king" of a Renaissance Fair who treats female performers like garbage and hides behind the defense of "historical accuracy".
    • Cotton Hill as well, though he's just plain a Jerkass and an example of Screw Politeness, I Killed Fitty Men!
    • Coach Kleehammer makes Cotton look progressive with comments like "Title IX (was) Dick Nixon's biggest mistake!"
  • Futurama:
    • "Raging Bender" introduces Fnog, Leela's former martial arts instructor who claims that women lack the "will of a warrior". He basically exists solely to be a misogynist asshole who gets punished for his sexism by Leela beating him up.
      "Better than being a girl. Like you. You're a girl!"
    • "Amazon Women in the Mood" has Fry, Bender, and Zapp Brannigan brazenly insult the giant women who inhabit the planet Amazonia — women who could crush them like bugs, and who at the time have them in chains. Justified for Brannigan (for whom "womanizer" is a major part of his identity) and Bender (for whom Jerkass is a major part of his identity). Fry, not so much.
    • "Neutopia" turns all of the men on the Planet Express team into Straw Misogynists when Hermes points out a clause in their employment contract which requires all women to pose nude if requested (in this case, to publish a sexy calendar in hopes of saving the company from bankruptcy), and the other male employees support it.
  • Stōked: Reef (real name: Leslie), one of the main six characters, often argues that women are naturally inferior to men (mostly when it comes to sports, especially surfing), which especially ticks off Fin, one of the three girls of the main six characters. However, Fin has proven herself (multiple times) to actually be a considerable better surfer and athlete than Reef is—in fact, Fin's One of the Boys to the extent she can beat him at pretty much any "manly activity" he cares to name.
  • It was this specific trait in Total Drama that caused Ezekiel to gain the honor of being the first contestant to be eliminated in the entire series. Somewhat justified in that he was a sheltered, home-schooled farm boy.
    • Emphasis on "straw" in this one. Ezekiel wasn't mean-spirited, he just said something to the effect that women should be taken care of, and was genuinely confused that he'd somehow offended everyone. Had he received any sympathy from the cast, he would have quickly changed his mind, something which is proven when we see a much more laid-back and pro-equality Ezekiel later in the series.
  • Billy from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy acted this way in regards to Mandy in at least three episodes, first barring her from playing a board game with him and Irwin, then not letting her work on his and Irwin's go-kart and not letting her join their baseball team even though she was an amazing batter and his team stood no chance against Mindy's, and it was obvious that it was because Mandy is better than him at about everything.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • Master Pakku is introduced as one, refusing to train Katara in combative waterbending due to her being a girl in the name of it being tradition. However, by the end of his introductory episode, he's shown to realize the folly of his ways and how it has personally hurt him. Namely, he was supposed to marry Katara and Sokka's grandmother and genuinely loved her, but she chafed under the Stay in the Kitchen roles that the Northern Water Tribe enforced and left without a word, which soured his opinions toward women greatly until he met Katara and realized their connection, as well as how things could have been different if he hadn't acted as he had in his youth.
    • Sokka starts out as one early in the series, namely as the problem-of-the-day in "The Warriors of Kyoshi", where he is skeptical of the competency of an Amazon Brigade and promptly gets an asskicking. He later apologizes to their leader, Suki, and asks her to teach him some of their fighting moves. They end up becoming friends, and later, boyfriend and girlfriend.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (2016) has Man-Boy, a manly lumberjack that hates that Townsville has gotten soft by "women and effeminate men" and need to return to its manly roots. He constantly antagonizes the girls, especially Buttercup, and gets his ass handed to him as a result. He's so far up his own ego that he yells "You throw like a girl" after Buttercup flings him across Townsville. Despite looking like a very short man, beard and all, he's really a boy who acts like how he thinks a real man should act.
  • Atom Eve's father in Invincible (2021) was a slightly more sympathetic example as he genuinely cared for his wife and daughter, but had outdated ideas that strained his relationship with the latter. He says that the only reason he was ok with her being a superhero was that her boyfriend Rex was there to protect her, even though she's much stronger than he is. When she angrily retorts that he cheated on her, he quickly tells her to forgive him, saying "all guys make mistakes" and "Don't be a-" before stopping himself and telling her that an 18-year-old girl can't be a hero on their own. Granted, she almost died during the Flaxan invasions even with a team backing her up so he did have a valid point regarding teamwork, but he did a terrible job getting the point across and caused her to angrily run away from home.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door has Numbuh 19th Century who, just like his name suggests, was frozen at some point in the early 1800s and then unfrozen in the modern-day. He's missed out on two centuries and therefore his views on women are somewhat... outmoded. Theoretically, the trope justifies itself, but what makes him a Straw Misogynist is a) his views on women are even more patronizing than the Stay in the Kitchen attitude you might expect from the 19th Century, b) he's directly contrasted to the boy-hating Numbuh 86, with whom he has Belligerent Sexual Tension, and c) his antiquated social views should go far beyond merely being condescending to women (he should, for example, be rather surprised that the black Numbuh Five is a KND Operative rather than, you know, being enslaved). This one can probably be chalked up to Politically Correct History.
  • In Animaniacs (2020), there's the Russian director of the Animaniacs knock-off in the short "Anime-nyet". The Warner Siblings were already upset over the show, but when the director claims that the joke about "Hello Female Medical Practitioner" (a knock-off of Hello Nurse) is that women aren't smart enough to be "Medical Practitioner"s, Dot takes the lead in trying to inflict violence on him.
  • The Simpsons: "Girls Just Want To Have Sums" starts its plot with Principal Skinner making a blatantly sexist remark about girls being not as good at math or science as boys. This despite the fact that previous episodes had him acknowledge Lisa Simpson as Springfield Elementary's top student (and as such better at those things than any of their male students).

 
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Hell's HR

Satan is preparing his "employees" for women in the workplace. Considering this is Hell, he wants to be sure that these women feel as "welcomed" as possible.

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