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

The 50s and 60s were incredibly misogynistic, who would've thunk it?

Yeah, that feels like one of those "huh I didn't know that but I am not surprised that is what occurred" types of facts. I would not be surprised if the daughter/sister had a similar origin.

It would also explain why Ken and his variants just exist at this point with minimal usage. If I understand correctly he has minimal new clothes or functions.

I recently watched the Smallville episode "Bound". Now, I'll admit there is certainly more to gender relations that I don't quite grasp but I can't help but feel the writers had some strange ideas about what is the most disrespectful thing a man can do to a woman and what implies about what he is also capable of.

The plot of the episode revolves around Lex trying to prove his innocence when he is found in bed next to a dead woman whom he seemingly had a one-night stand with. As the plot progresses, we learn that Lex has a habit of hooking up with women whose names and faces he doesn't remember, leaving them ear rings and then never contacting them again. The dead woman Lex is accused of killing is Eve Andrews, a woman he slept with 18 months ago and had been stalking him ever since. Ultimately, it is revealed that Lex is the victim of a Frame-Up by another one of his forgotten one-night stands, Shannon Bell.

Here's my issue: the episode's stance seems to be that Lex simply having had numerous one-night stands is reason enough to believe that he killed Eve. Clark is disappointed to learn that Eve is not the first woman Lex has slept with and other characters talk about how what Lex did to these women was so awful despite there being no indication he was coercive or abusive towards them. Not even the knowledge that Lex was stalked by Eve but also several other women he may or may not have slept with is enough to earn him some sympathy. Oh and did I mention that Shannon was engaged to another man the night she slept with Lex? Lex did not know this and yet the episode still presents Shannon as a broken woman driven to extremes because Lex slept with her and then didn't call her back.

I try not to use the "imagine if the genders were reversed" argument these days given how that well tends to be poisoned by certain people, but I can't help but wonder if this episode would not have me more significant pushback if it was Lois being accused of murder and the main source of evidence against her was that she had a lot of sex partners, some of whom had been stalking her.

There’s a weirdly pervasive attitude that men only want sex and women only want relationships, so relationships are something men offer women to get sex and sex is something women relent to to get and keep relationships. So a LOT of portrayals of men having lots of casual sex tend to fall into either “cool awesome badass getting what all men dream of without the downsides” if the author sides with that perception of men or “abusive shithead string along and abandoning women who are deeply in love with him” if the author sides with that perception of women.

I'm definitely familiar with that trope as seen in media like Two and a Half Men and John Tucker Must Die. The thing is, those do at least portray the scummy male character as someone who is awful to the women they date or sleep with, but that isn't even the case with Lex (not for this episode at least). He's just hit with a serious case of Informed Wrongness.

If you have been spending any time on the Internet in the past few months, you have no doubt heard of The Idol, a controversial HBO Max series created by Sam Levinson and Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye. The series follows Jocelyn, a troubled pop idol, who falls under the influence of the abusive and manipulative "self-help guru" Tedros who inserts himself into her life to control her career.

Or so it seems, as the finale pulls the twist that Jocelyn is the one using Tedros, that she has lied about being abused and is shown to be just as sadistic and evil as Tedros, if not moreso.

The show was already controversial due to people feeling the subject matter of abuse and corruption in the music industry was handled with the intelligence and care it deserved. This was not helped by Sam Levinson having developed a reputation for being exploitive with sexualization due to Euphoria). Adding more fuel to the fire is that the original director Amy Seimetz was allegedly removed from the series due to her vision being "too much of a female perspective".

The above, combined with the finale's twist, has only resulted in even more criticism of the series being misogynistic. Did I mention the first episode has a scene criticizing intimacy coordinators?

So why are female stalkers played for laughs compared to male stalkers?

Especially if both happen to be Yandere types.

Same reason male rape victims are treated even less seriously than female ones. Any attention a man receives from a woman is seen as a positive, regardless of consent or lack of it.

There's also the perception that female yandere stalkers are more funnier than male yandere stalkers.

Like I remember a defense of the dev of Yandere Simulator was that he doesn't find a Male Protagonist appealing because he finds the female yandere idea to be funnier or something like that.

I dunno, I don't find female stalking funny. Or stalking in general really.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Jul 7th 2023 at 4:43:37 PM

For the Lex episode, I would say an important factor is whether he was clear in advance about the one-night stands being one-night stands. Sleeping with someone once and then ghosting them when they’re looking for a relationship is a dick move whether you’re a man or women, though not enough to warrant suspicion of murder. Doing it repeatedly is even more so.

Edited by Galadriel on Jul 7th 2023 at 5:13:45 AM

This one is pretty easy actualy, no less problematic but the underlying logic is pretty clear.

Men are seen as stronger, so either he is able to defend himself, he actualy wants it, or he is weaker then a girl and that's the trait that is seen as funny.

Like it's sexist as shit but that's why.

The problem is that Lex is never proven to have led any of the women on. Shannon Bell claims that she thought Lex was in love with her but even she never actually states that Lex said he loved her and she also cheated on her fiancé with him, something Lex didn't know about and never would have gone near her had he known.

Ever wonder why I prefer the Sonic Boom incarnation of Amy over her games self? Her fangirl crush on Sonic is greatly toned down. Hope SEGA does(if it didn't do already) the same with canon!Amy.

Amy's crush on Sonic has been toned way down in recent years. I don't remember her having any obnoxious "episodes" in IDW or Frontiers. She still swoons a bit every now and then, but she's much more respectful.

Sonic Heroes did so much damage to Amy as a character.

As did Sonic X.

Funnily enough, Sonic Heroes was actually my very first introduction to her.

So her boss fight is her first impression.

Does anyone feel the Femme Fatale Spy trope is kind of outdated? Or at least in need of a severe deconstruction?

Why in particular?

No?

Honestly, that feels like an excessively prudish way of looking at things, and comes across as infantilizing women in the process.

Edited by Demongodofchaos2 on Jul 14th 2023 at 9:36:53 AM

Not really. Seduction and charm are long proven tools of gathering infomation and earning peoples confidences. Especially in the world of espionage. While it was glamourized as escapism for male audiences, James Bond bascially fits this archetype too.

Edited by Avenger09 on Jul 14th 2023 at 2:35:26 PM

Yeah to add to this, there's nothing wrong with portraying women as being able to charm men to get information since that shows intelligence and cunning. Not to mention beauty.

And as noted above, James Bond is a male example of this.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Jul 14th 2023 at 9:35:47 PM

It was literally how Kunoichi in Warring States Japan operated, too.

While it is true James Bond does use seduction and charm, it should be noted that male spies aren't as prone to being written that way as their female counterparts are. For every James Bond, you have at least two Jack Bauers or Jason Bournes. Those guys show plenty of intelligence and cunning without having to seduce anyone.

By contrast, when you have a female spy, it's practically guaranteed that being sensual is part of her character: Sydney Bristow, Nikita Mears, Sarah Walker, Natasha Romanov and Charlie's Angels all easily come to mind. Hell, Totally Spies!, which stars three teenage girls, has developed a reputation for catering to just about every fetish you can find on the Internet and that was a show marketed for kids. I don't think it's prudish or infantilizing women to point that out.

When I brought up a deconstruction, I was interested in something like examining how a woman would end up in a job like this, how such a job affects their mental state, possible pipelines from poverty to that job etc. Something that could make the female character more developed than a typical archetype.

Like EVA?