The intro needs to be rewritten: Insect Gender Bender

The article as it is now spends a great deal of time talking about how unacceptable it is to portray males in sapient insect societies as having equal representation. Both the intellectual condemnation (the idea that writers who do this are idiots who don't know anything about real insects, as opposed to people who realize that no sapient society that has one gender as quickly murdered sex slaves could possibly be sympathetic) and moral indignation (it's a rather blatant double standard that adjusting an animal society to be more fair to males must mean that the writers hate the idea of strong females, when I think we can all agree that there is nothing wrong with taking an animal with male dominated rigid gender roles and letting the fictional sapient females have more individuality/social power) are going too far. Making the main hero of a female dominated species male can have unfortunate implications, but changing sapient creatures to have more sexual equality needs more of a Tropes Are Not Bad attitude.

And so pointing this out is a bad thing? I think the point of the article is that having a male hero or male cast is apparently so important in our culture that writers actually make a complete sex change on an entire species to make it so. I think that's one step beyond simply canging the behaviour, to be honest.

edit: In any case, I think we'd better take a good look at Smurfette Principle, Monogender Monsters and Token Minority before getting worried about the lack of men in the media.

edited 13th Oct '10 7:21:41 AM by Mimimurlough

It doesn't just point it out, it uses double standards and ignores other possible reasons for the change. The article gives no middle ground between needing every main character to be male, and not wanting to positively portray a society of sapient creatures that use one gender for nothing but powerless sex tools.

Edit: This isn't about a lack of men in media, it's about attacking writers for not portraying men in a worse way than the tropes you listed (Smurfette may be the only female, but she doesn't spend her life tied up for the purpose of sex/being eaten afterwords). And "there are worse problems" can be used to trivialize anything.

edited 13th Oct '10 7:28:50 AM by SNESMasterKI

The first thing that jumps out at me is the trope name - Gender Bender, in TV Tropes usage, is about literal sex changes - e.g., in an insect context, it'd be about a drone literally turning into a queen in a story, or something along those lines.

Insect Gender Flip would probably be more appropriate (or perhaps just some different name altogether.)

General rule: A trope page should be telling us about the trope, not about what real life as actually like and how COMPLETELY WRONG AND EVIL anyone is who "gets it wrong" (as if everyone in Hollywood is trying for accuracy).

edited 13th Oct '10 7:21:50 AM by Shale

Yeah, I think it's a reasonable trope (albeit an almost ominipresent one - Anthropomorphic Insects Are Anthropomorphic), but it needs the editorializing dialed way back.

I don't see any problem with it as it is now.

Yeah, I'm usually against editorializing in trope descriptions, but the current writeup looks fine to me. Most of the "indignation" in the intro is tongue-in-cheek.

Yeah, I do see a little soapboxing in there. It starts to read more like a forum post than a trope description in some places. I think it could use a little cleaning to make it more concise, too. Some of it departs from actually describing the trope, going into opinion and/or natter that sort of rambles a little.

And I agree that the name is a little odd for what we usually use "gender bender" to mean in other trope titles.

Most of the examples aren't complete gender inversions of real life, because they don't set up insect societies in which males do all the significant tasks (worker, soldier, queen - er, king - and so forth) and females are just there to make babies and then die. The only example of such a thing I can think of is the Yaldiv species from Young Wizards, and they're a) aliens, not real-world insects and b) not sympathetic at all when considered as a species.

Technically, what usually happens with the trope is a situation where the role of drones is either not shown or Played for Laughs and every other role in the colony, except the queen, is played mostly by males with some females mixed in. Or perhaps it'll be mostly females but the protagonist will be male in defiance of real-world biology. It depends on what the creators are going for. However, "gender flip" is close enough to the intent of the trope to satisfy me. (Although if we did rename it, how about Insect Gender Equality?)

Also, I think there's a valid point to be made about how a lot of writers insist on having a male protagonist or a mostly male cast in defiance of the biology of their characters' species and even when there's no real necessity beyond either their own comfort zone or Executive Meddling. There are multiple reasons why that could come about, too. Sometimes it really is just because Most Writers Are Male, but I personally think it's more likely that either the meddling executives don't want to risk scaring off male audiences or the writers are just unimaginative/leaning heavily on the Rule of Funny (the latter of which isn't necessarily bad) and basing their talking bug society too closely on male-dominated human society. The thing is, though, the article shouldn't be ALL ABOUT how dumb it is to use this trope.

edited 19th Dec '10 9:46:56 AM by Cameoflage

This thread expired after 60 days of inactivity.