Male Roles Vs. Female Roles in Fiction: Discussion/Analysis/Troperwank

I think anti-mutant bigotry could be spun to stem from projection. The idea being that the regular population fears being replaced, that they fear the possibility of being the new neanderthals, replaced by a new breed of humans that are more "evolved".

This line of thinking isn't unprecedented nowadays considering the "great replacement" nuttery on the right-wing, and it doesn't help that some stories have used the phrase "homo superior" to refer to them. (though I'm not sure if it meant to be the actual genus or just a propaganda phrase).

A page topper to confuse them all, a Page topper to befuddle them.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jun 17th 2019 at 4:37:02 AM

Isn't "homo superior" just rhetoric used by Magneto and his ilk?

The only problem with "humans being replaced" is that not every mutant power is a benefit. Lets stay on Cyclops, basically it means that if you open your eyes you've become a deadly weapon, to say nothing to the effect that you're also essentially blind. He was lucky that they were able to make the glasses and visors to keep the lasers in check, but I'm sure he wished he could just be a normal human. Suffice it to say, there are plenty of mutants in the Marvel Universe who are Blessed with Suck .

To be fair, I kinda doubt anti-mutant bigots would think in such specifics. They probably generalize off of a few mutants with unambiguously cool powers.

Not helped for the fact we follow those mutants.

"Humans being replaced" is also something that only sociopaths and monsters would object to. Because the ones replacing humanity would be the next generation. Part of the metaphor is children replacing their parents.

Mutants aren't just metaphors for minorities but the Youth Struggle.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jun 17th 2019 at 5:44:32 AM

Dunno, I doubt there many young people that can kill dozens without much effort or external weapons.

If we're talking practiclity, we also need those people given the world is constantly in danger of demonic, vampire, and alien invasion.

Mutants should get paydays rather than robots.

But that leads to the idea that these people are obligated to use their powers to fight.

Which leads to superhuman conscription.

Plus, Mutants being "needed" to fight aliens and vampires (never mind the dozens of non-Mutants already doing that) doesn't mean they still aren't dangerous in their own right.

Besides, in a lot of X-Men story arcs, they spend their time fighting none of those things (outside of arcs where they face the Phalanx, the Shi'ar, the Brood, and Dracula). They're usually fighting other Mutants or anti-Mutant hate groups.

My point is the fact that mutant powers are beneficial to the world as a whole as well as outright needed. Also, that Charles Xavier and his people are the people best qualified to deal with the issue of mutant power dangers.

I also note that the public in the Marvelverse are a bunch of ungrateful assholes who go from "tools to deal with potential dangers" to "genocide the next generation" at the drop of a hat.

They also are very much interested in wiping out all superheroes—they just cover it up better when it's Captain America. It took no time to turn on any hero as we've seen repeatedly.

Except so many mutant powers are not beneficial to anyone, especially the mutants.

They're a crapshoot. Most mutants do not actually get powers that would be useful for a career as a superhero or even as a supervillain. Even some of the ones that do get such powers usually have to deal with horrible downsides.

The argument for being pro Mutant rights should not be "they'll be useful to us!"

The argument should be "because they're people!"

Edited by M84 on Jun 18th 2019 at 4:10:17 PM

This feels more appropriate for the other thread we have to argue about X-Men in.

Can we have an X-men argument thread?

So, anyway, going back to my Talia discussion, I can see why some people did accept Morrison's depiction since she never made an official face turn. Still having her just be doing it to get Bruce's attention wasn't any better.

Yeah, she really does shift between authors.

That is a case where I am legit conflicted. I like when we got a figth between female characters, especially when is protagonist vs antagonist. The actual issue comes when the story find contrived reasons to don't allow female character to fight male ones.

And in a personal level, I tend to give female Arch-Enemies to female protagonists, so I'm partially guilty of this. I should do anything with this or not? I mean, I enjoy writing female antagonists and making them interact with other characters, ranging from Friendly Enemy to "They try to kill each other as soon they are together"-

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jun 18th 2019 at 9:54:38 AM

I don't think giving female arch enemies to to female heroes is bad in and of itself provided they are well written. See Kim Possible and Shego for example.

The reason for this is simple, its because society still didn't overgrow the sexist thinking that man can't fight women (no matter their skills or any other context), because "it is unmanly" (largely due to thinking being that man can easily beat woman and thus, if he fights her he is "picking on the weak"). That's the reason why most media find contrived reasons to not have female fighters be in any serious fights (because "audience doesn't want to see anything actually hurt her face") and thus make them either too powerful or too weak (so there would be access to defeat them without punching or fighting).

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Jun 18th 2019 at 6:13:54 PM

My biggest issue with the Designated Girl Fight is not only the underlying sexism brought up above but the fact that those scenes are more often than not absolutely chock full of Male Gaze and fetishization. Likely to include a lot of She-Fu and tight outfits. Cat Fight is already a pejorative created to mock women by comparing them to animals fighting (most often over the affections of a man, I might add, and I’ve seen that used in media to set up a woman vs. woman fight way too often) for one thing, and it always feels like those designated fights are just an extension of that.

Giving a female protagonist a female antagonist is fine, as long as they’re written as people first with their own conflicts and motivations, and women second. Problem is, female antagonists with female protagonist are usually catty, jealous of her, or wanting her love interest. Female antagonists with male protagonists are usually damaged and misled or brainwashed, needing him to redeem her into a High-Heel–Face Turn.

Fanservice is a mayor issue as well, Action Girl is usually used as merely a way that a male author can do as much fanservice they can.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jun 18th 2019 at 11:04:25 AM

Lol, one of my WIPs has a five-foot nothing waifish female character from an (eventually) friendly rivalry with a six-foot seven mountain of muscle character because their powersets put them so far above the other characters in terms of physical strength and elemental powers that they can only really go all out against each other.

Designated Girl Fight stems from the idea that women are fundamentally weaker than men and that it is therefore unfair to pit a man against a woman. Indeed, it is often considered dishonorable for a man to strike a woman. The effects of this are twofold, and both consequences need to be addressed in media.

The first effect is that female protagonists may never get to fight male antagonists. This result is less common, and tends only to come up in profoundly sexist works. For the most part, society has become comfortable with letting female protagonists fight male antagonists - not because we've grown past the "dishonor" concept, but because antagonists are often meant to be dishonorable characters.

Even a fairly un-Woke mind can usually see the logic in letting a wicked bad guy fight a female hero. The bad guy is already dishonorable, so what does he have to lose by being a woman-puncher? This doesn't really solve the problem of Designated Girl Fight; it's a band-aid that works around the precise issue of "Women only fight women" while still retaining the spirit of Patriarchal condescension.

The second and far more common effect is that male protagonists may never get to fight female antagonists. This result comes up more frequently; the hero may have a female villain or two, but rarely will they actually fight this character the way they would fight a male character. We, as a society, have become comfortable with Wonder Woman beating the shit out of a mind-controlled Superman as a "You Go, Girl!" moment. But we're less comfortable with Superman beating the shit out of a mind-controlled Wonder Woman.

This is because even though we're willing to pay lip service to the idea that Wonder Woman is strong enough to beat up Superman, society still feels uncomfortable with the optics of Superman beating up Wonder Woman. We're willing to acknowledge her as an underdog capable of taking down her male peer, but not as a legitimate equal.

Female villains are already few and far between. Female villains with male heroes, even moreso. Female villains with male heroes who beat them down as physically as they would a male villain? Almost unheard of.

And it's not just main antagonists, either. Think about how many games you've played, how many action movies you've seen, that featured female mooks. How many faceless armies of doom even allow women to enlist?

If a woman is on Team Bad Guy, she's almost always a figure of special narrative importance. Because she is a rare presence amidst an ocean of mean, and because the male hero probably won't actually fight her. Either his female sidekick will do the job or, worse, she might even High-Heel–Face Turn to take the issue off the table entirely.

And that, when you get right down to it, is the key. We're never going to solve the problem of Designated Girl Fight until we get over the unwillingness to let a heroic man punch a villainous woman in the face or mow down a field of mixed-gender mooks.

It's not enough to let women be powerful heroes. We need to be willing to let them be menacing bad guys too. Without that, all the "Awesome Girl Fighter beats up Wicked Male Bad Guy" scenes in the world are just token gestures by a society reluctant to truly change.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jun 18th 2019 at 12:10:09 PM

This is the time I'm contractually obliged to bring up the word of our Lord and Savior John Wick, in which men and women (and one non-binary character) kill one another with no discrimination.

Edited by Gaon on Jun 18th 2019 at 11:21:36 AM

Big reason for why I like Hela despite her being underexplored is she's one of those rare female villains who gets to be traditionally intimidating, a powerful melee warrior, and unrepentantly evil against the male protagonist. Valkyrie is there as the female heroic opposition but it avoids getting into Designated Girl Fight or the unfortunate implications of God Save Us from the Queen!.