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

Could you elaborate?

From what I've heard, the existence of kunoichi (and actually ninjas as a distinct group) is somewhat contested historically. There are some scant documents that point to possibility of kunoichi existing, but other historians based the current conception off a Japanese novel series from the 1950s. And some of the documentation that even mention the possibility of historical kunoichi are I believe more general about using women when men would be more difficult, with an example of hiding her in a double bottom chest, which pointed more towards their small stature rather than seduction capabilities.

And there is something to be said about how there is a difference between James Bond portrayals and the standard Femme Fatale (as to not fall into the standard trap of saying men are sexualized in fiction in the same way as women). There is also the ubiquity of it, in the sense that women spies that also are Femme Fatales are much more common than women spies who aren't. From the top of my head, I only know of three spy movies where seduction wasn't a major part of their repertoire and they were all comedies (Spy, DespicableMe2 and TheSpyWhoDumpedMe, the final one because the spies were actually normal people). There is also something to be said about treating all women espionage as being a honeypot, even when it doesn't make sense, like how Widowmaker from Overwatch is dressed as a seductress, despite being a sniper, so her clandestine activities would be more focused on surveillance from afar and staying hidden, instead of charming people up close.

Edited by HeyMikey on Jul 14th 2023 at 7:17:52 AM

Pretty much what I said last page. Nice example in also bringing up Widowmaker.

Its... kinda worth mentioning that it is quite literaly part of training for women to use there bodies as a tool for information gathering when it comes to intelegence agencies.

And that is AFIAK universal to all of them from the CIA to KGB/FIS.

When your in that specific feild your suposed to use all posible advantages you have, and bluntly most people act really stupid around members of the opposite sex they are interested in.

There is also something to be said of tailoring tactics to locations, as well as noting that this is fiction, not the real world.

On the former, honey trap tactics are not universal. Honey trapping, like most clandestine tactics, are tailored to the location and targets. You wouldn't try to use a woman honey trap on say a gay target or someone with a reputation for being in a faithful committed relationship. Or when infiltrating targets that have opsec or counterintelligence training that are made to notice this kind of thing. There are times and places.

Secondly, this is fiction and real world espionage is vastly different (and much more boring) than fictional espionage. So as with all fantasy, it can be tailor made to an audience and those who tend to use the Femme Fatale trope usually do so in a manner that's only servicing very specific audiences. This is not an indictment of the Femme Fatale trope's existence, mostly that the media landscape hasn't been much for catering to differing tastes. We never seen James Bond go down on a gay tech who lives in a homophobic society and use that as blackmail material for information extraction while it gets framed as the power of his sexual virility. And again, the portrayal of the targets are different. A Femme Fatale's success is "haha men get stupid with sex", while James Bond's success is "he's so awesome to be able to win her over like that".

Edited by HeyMikey on Jul 14th 2023 at 8:04:17 AM

I mean... we should, that would be great

Daniel Craig has mentioned he personally thinks Bond would be willing to do just that for the mission,.

Would be cool to see, or really any major spy flick. But unfortunately, Male and female sexualization portrayals in fiction in our current media landscape are very different and that unfortunately extends to queer male and female relations.

Daniel Craig's Bond has flirted with enough men that I don't think it would be a stretch to say he's bisexual, or can at least pretend to be for the job.

Recently I've read that some didn't like how Rayla, the female lead of The Dragon Prince, was portrayed in season 4 of the show. That she was made "too girly" because she was trying to emotionally reconnect with her boyfriend and now had a Ridiculously Cute Critter she was affectionate with.

Personally I think the show does an excellent job of portraying Its characters as well rounded people. They can be profound, sad, silly, kind and angry. So I don't see why they can't also be romantic as well.

In fact I very much enjoy how affectionate the characters can be in their interactions, no matter the pairing, as It feels very genuine that people who are in love would act this intimate around their partner in private. Which I don't think you really see much outside of the romance genre.

This Tumblr post puts it well, while comparing the show to RWBY's handling of romance.

This pushback against an Action Girl having a tender side to her feels like It's worth discussing. Especially since her boyfriend Callum, was, by contrast, the emotionally available one with instances of toughness.

Edited by Avenger09 on Jul 14th 2023 at 7:10:03 PM

That kind of pushback is nothing new. A lot of female characters get absolutely dumped on when they're not being badass 24/7. Noteworthy that a lot of girls go through a phase of hating "girly" things as well, which I'm pretty sure is a related phenomenon.

Also not really thread related but I can't believe of all the awful writing in season 4 of Dragon Prince that's what people are choosing to complain about.

Edited by PhiSat on Jul 14th 2023 at 1:13:24 PM

This actually came into play in an episode of Chuck. Tricia Helfer's character's mission requires her to steal a key card from Chuck's future brother-in-law who is a doctor. She goes undercover as a stripper at his bachelor party but he tries to stop her from going further because he loves his girlfriend so she just tranqs him.

To play a bit of devil's advocate, some of it is also motivated by well-meaning rebellion against the somewhat stifling expectations that female characters must retain stereotypically feminine traits. Which isn't helped by how the "don't demonize femininity" well has kind of been poisoned by people who see any female character devoid of overt femininity as an attack.

Tying this to what I was talking about above, I recall Priyanka Chopra giving an interview bragging about how her character in Citadel2023 was an action heroine who didn't sacrifice her femininity and could fight in heels and a dress. I remembered being baffled by this statement considering how many action girls were distinctly feminine, especially those in the spy action genre. The irony is Chopra's character only fights in heels and a dress in the series premiere and is in practical or drab clothing in other fights. The only other time we see her fighting in heels, she is wearing a pants suit.

Edited by windleopard on Jul 14th 2023 at 9:06:08 AM

It's bizarre how a tilt in either direction can set people off like that. Even the well intentioned.

I don't think Season 4 was badly written, there was just a lot of things it had to juggle, but that's off-topic.

Edited by Avenger09 on Jul 14th 2023 at 10:36:49 AM

I have argue that a lot of shipping nonsense in RWBY stem simply for the lack of obvious intimacy in the show meaning fans often have to judge when a interaction have meaning or not.

Well, when it comes to female characters, it doesn't help that there's plenty of people with garbage opinions who help poison any sort of well. The amount of weaboos decrying the death of femininity because the main character of Horizon Zero Dawn isn't a supermodel for example. And well, the related fetishistic worship of japanese culture (especially the sexist stuff). and well, especially especially the transphobia element.

It doesn't help that there are a non-zero amount of tradfems, so it's not like women are shielded from the oozes of bad takes on female characters either.

So, uh, i think that female characters (or writers writing female characters) struggling with femininity is kind of understandable when half the playing field is a minefield and the other half a hostile army. It's not a fight you can really win because half the players simply don't want you to, and the difference between ironic and unironic can be razor thin even on the good half. Like, a woman doing badass things in a dress can pretty easily go either way here, i'm pretty sure it's been done as both a female empowerment thing and a sexist fetish thing.

I haven't played Horizon Zero Dawn but doesn't that game take place in a post-apocalyptic world? I don't think you'd find a woman with supermodel looks in such a setting.

Would you say that female villains and antiheroes are more likely to get a pass on there horrible actions/reimagined as more benevolent from the writer, audience or both? Or is it the reverse? Or are both just as likely to receive such treatment?

I want to say the last one is the correct answer. For every Maleficent (2014), we've gotten a Venom (2018).

Edited by windleopard on Jul 16th 2023 at 2:29:34 PM

Oh yea, but don't be surprised, these people don't care about things like logic or realism. They just want their female characters to be hot supermodels. Preferably also not as the protagonist.

I think it depends too much on context to really get a solid answer. Especially since so much of it seems to be purely reactionary, like a CEO with his hand on the dial moving it back and forth while checking the audience response.

Edited by devak on Jul 16th 2023 at 3:30:02 PM

Possibily. Though there are cases like Apollyon where they are recognized as monsters but are also respected for their charisma and wholly committing to their philosophy, in and out of universe.

She's like the medieval post-apocalyptic Big Boss.

Edited by Avenger09 on Jul 16th 2023 at 2:16:18 PM

I'm pretty sure that the negative responses to Aloy's appearance in Horizon Forbidden West^* Specifically because the game's graphical evolution from the first game allows it to render her face with a noticeable peach fuzz.◊ came from, like, a handful of fringe social media accounts which then got blown up several orders of magnitude by the people wanting to dunk on them. We don't need to give terminally online weirdos legitimacy by acting like they're far more influential than they actually are.

I mean yea i know it comes from online weirdos, thats why i mentioned in the first place. It's what poisoning the well means.

Aloy was also subject to a lot of edits making her a lot uglier than she was in-game getting passed around online by people who took those posts at face value not knowing the context thinking she got turned from an average-to-pretty woman in the first game to a troglodyte in the second.

Just like female actors vs male actors, female characters are judged a lot more harshly than male characters when they're "ugly".

Edited by PhiSat on Jul 17th 2023 at 10:06:20 AM

Or judged more harshly in general.

I imagine the sheer volume of male characters in media over the years results in the average ones blurring together but for female characters, every flaw or lack of a flaw depending on who you talk to gets put under the microscope.

That is a good point, but is only partial explanation most of that is just sexism I would say. EDIT: Specifially people looking for excusing to complain about political correctness, double standarts etc.

Edited by Risa123 on Jul 17th 2023 at 10:34:56 AM

That is one aspect of it but like many things it isn't always just that. People will always complain about changes. There are also always people that do the minimum regarding certain character types for 'points' without doing anything significant with it.

Not to mention most generic of types most tend to be more forgiving of generic than flopping on more diverse types of characters.