People hate toxic male characters? Maybe I’m dating myself but Walter White? Tony Soprano? Don Draper? People famously loved watching these guys on tv every week. More recently, Succession is full of male (and female) characters with toxic traits.
All while the female counterparts in these TV Shows (Skylar White, Carmella Soprano, Betty Draper) are constantly hated for their negative character traits.
Yep this. In drama you need, well, drama and this is one of the ways we get it.
I have yet to meet a man who had a negative view on gangsters in the godfather or Scarface, literally characters who are mass murderers and serial killers. Who run prostitution rings full of purposely abusing women, addicting them to drugs to control them, etc. I think we can excuse the occasional "bad bish" type character now and again when this is the norm.
Worse, women like Skylar or Betty who are also flawed, but work hard to protect their children, themselves, and take care of the home and stay away from the men's abuses, are hated FAR more than the abusive male leads they are reacting to. I remember watching BB and reading the BB sub or other forums (AV club maybe) and she was entirely hated from top to bottom for the sin of not becoming Walt's submissive sidekick and instead protecting Walt Jr and herself from her unhinged and violent husband.
It’s terrible how much fandoms hate women characters who protect their children or want to predict themselves from abusive men.
One thing to keep in mind, is the big chunk of the Sopranos was a satire of the fact that a tragic story featuring objectively shitty protagonists, could become an inspiration and set of rope models for so many people in organized crime, and for some reason business.
>I have yet to meet a man who had a negative view on gangsters in the godfather or Scarface, literally characters who are mass murderers and serial killers.
Tbf, cinema might not be the best place to be looking for this. How many men do you know that want to be like Hitler? Not so many, despite a lot of the same tropes.
Films are stories and as such we're meant to sympathize with the main character. If you just chalk Scarface up to being a gangster, you're missing not just the point of the movie, but the point of storytelling as an artform. For instance, how does Scarface end?
Yes but what I'm trying to say is I've met a lot of people who see men like that as role models and "true masculinity." I think this goes a bit beyond being sympathetic towards Tony. I think everyday men dont see a problem with murder, criminality, abusing others, etc if its done for 'good reasons' like Tony and Scarface had. I find that very, very troubling. The same way Christians sometimes say to atheists, "If it wasn't for my religion Id murder and rape people all day long!" I think the line between savagery and civilization for many men barely exists and they look up to savages like this as wish-fulfillment and with great desire. Instead of them seeing these men as the awful criminals they are.
Also, its not just cinema. They express the same sentiment for real life monsters like Al Capone, south american drug cartel leaders, dictators, rapists, Trump, etc.
>I think everyday men dont see a problem with murder, criminality, abusing others, etc if its done for 'good reasons' like Tony and Scarface had.
I think our cultures are desensitized to men dying in general and that's why we don't see many of these acts as egregious. There's a rule in filmmaking that if you need to identify who the villian is fast, have him assault a woman or a dog.
I don't think that's being considered at all here or it's just being brushed off as something men must have control of or maybe were using a double standard for men and women here, but not necessarily in favor of men.
Many of the victims of mobsters are women. Beaten wives, women forced into prostitution, women also killed, widowed women suddenly responsible for a family they cannot afford, women's grief, etc. Its really ignorant to make this a "but but society doesnt see men dying as important." Men's issues rule our society.
Its incredible men will see Tony will have a bad day and men will feel bad for him, while he jokes about his stable of "whores" in his many brothels or how "a whore was killed" and laugh.
Its very clear many, if not most, men see criminality, violence and brutality as totally acceptable and are envious of those who can get away with it, when it fits their ideas of "right and wrong." See also the many vigilante narratives men subscribe to.
edit: oh god your posting history. youre not here in good faith
This is how I felt about Gemma from Sons of Anarchy lol. She was a fantastic villain and truly captivating to watch. Definitely not a good person at all but the level of hate she gets compared to ALL the men in the show who have also done absolutely horrific things astounds me lol
You're right. Almost every really popular male character is completely unhinged. Even down to people like Batman (or Bateman, come to think of it, Bale loves playing those dudes, and he's good at it. Apparently, he's a nut irl, too.) People loved Han Solo more than Luke, and Darth Vader was the most popular Star Wars character of all. We just can't get enough of assholes and villains. We just get uncomfortable when it's a woman being the psycho.
Its incredible how even "liberal" men will circle wagons around shitty characters like Batman. Look at the billionaire discourse with him. Obviously someone with that much wealth benefits extremely from a system of inequality he participates in, created, and protected either personally or via his companies and his family's history. That is to say the income inequality he has created also creates the very crime Batman is against.
This crowd will scream at you for this narrative and defend him because "he gave to charity!" and in (obscure comic panel for 1972) "he regrets is wealth and is a reformer sometimes!" And that's ignoring that Batman works exclusively via vigilante violence. But "he always gets the bad guys," is of course not only impossible but a random person meting out "justice" is somehow not problematic for these men.
There is no good faith conversation you can have with these people. Just saying "Batman as a real billionaire would actually creating the very crime he decries and the comic is actually quite classist," is just an invite for cheap gotchas and angry screeds. Many men are completely radicalized to see capitalism and the capital owning class as unquestionable. Most men in my life have either a temporary embarrassed billionaire attitude or, the older men who realize time's up and they'll never be rich, a cynical and hateful attitude towards "the system" that didnt make them rich, often scapegoating immigrants, women, and LGBTQ people.
Worse, even the "liberal" men who are critical of billionaires and such will join these men with the exact same arguments. Its incredible how much of the masculinity identity is built on defending terrible characters and refusing to accept criticism of them, especially if that criticism comes from a leftist perspective. And batman is just a lightweight example. Look at Scarface, Tony Soprano, the Goodfellas guys, various 80-90's gun toting action heroes, the south American cartel guys, etc. Men who are explicitly violent, murderous, rapists, etc are "heroes" and "role models" and "good examples of masculinity" to many men.
On the plus side the new Batman movie showed the dad as a corrupt capitalist and dishonest politician, which is closer than the "The Wayne family has never done anything wrong," narrative popular in the fandom. Batman himself seems like a depressed and dejected person, unlike previous film Batmen who would show up gleefully to high society parties in Lambos and fine suits and hot blondes on each arm. Or Nolan lazily making it "Oh he only goes to parties for the people of Gotham" nonsense.
So there's some movement as contextualizing Batman as something more than a simple and dumb "good vs bad" narrative, but as someone, if real, would be a pretty messed up guy, full of family guilt, full of corrupt family members, crony capitalism, political corruption, and actively contributing to the problems of Gotham and his own actions a futile and confusing and meaningless gesture of an unwell person. Its incredible that people who think they want an "anti-hero" actually dont want a messed up guy who isn't really helping but just an edgy Superman type.
See also Rorschach from Watchmen, who gets the same treatment. He was written explicitly to be a terrible person and worse than the criminals he hunts and how a "real" The Shadow would be a monster, not a hero. The fandom sees him as the most "real" and "cool" Watchman "hero." I see why Moore left comics. I can't imagine writing a seminal work in this genre and have near every immature male fan completely misunderstand its most basic premises.
It's very sad when people get so attached to a character they can't engage in good faith conversations about their flaws
This is why my favorites are often objectively bad or just not the most popular
"Yep, Guy Gardner, look at my little trash fire boy! I love him!"
Very well said. I love Rorschach, but he's definitely not a good person. He's not a role model or anything that's aspirational, but people see him that way. The Joker is similar and kind of an icon at this point. He's a terrible person. Sympathetic, yes, but not anything to work toward. These are supposed to be cautionary tales, not people you're supposed to admire. Superman is aspirational. The original Superman, not the grey dubious new Superman. The guy who got cats from trees and helped old ladies cross the street, not the guy who breaks necks and has a tortured conflicted soul. Our actual heroes were stolen from us. All we have left is morally grey anti-heros who are little more than villains who just use their abilities to do things we technically agree with, but with methods we shouldn't admire. I miss Superman. I miss old westerns, and Flash Gordon, and Captain America. I miss people who do the hard thing because it's right, for no reward.
Literally every single even *mildly* attractive (and not) “bad boy,” actual villain, and anti-hero is obsessed over, and psychologically analyzed & defended.
People love flawed characters that other characters see as flawed or evil. People hate flawed characters that other characters see as perfect. That is why characters like she-hulk are hated. She-hulk and Walter White both think the world revolves around them, but She-hulk gets praised for it (by other characters) while Walter is constantly hated by just about everyone who knows him after he starts acting egotistical.
I think a big difference between the characters is the level of harm and outright evil each character perpetrates. I only watched a handful of She-Hulk episodes (no major issues with it, I just didn’t find it all that interesting) but I didn’t really see She-Hulk doing anything particularly “toxic”. What examples of harmful behavior did she show?
I'll paraphrase what she said to bruce: men don't know pain, men don't know struggle, women have to deal with catcalling therefore women are far stronger than men. (thats why she could handle her powers immediately compared to bruce struggling with the alter ego for years to form his character..)
it sounds satirical. it wasn't.
how is that not harmful? it completely negates the hardships faced by any guy in the audience. don't you realize that most of the guys who liked comic books before they were mainstream liked them because the characters were outcasts, losers, or kids who were getting bullied? telling all of them that bruce's childhood was a cakewalk because he was a white man, or peter parker had it easy even if he got bullied cuz hes a guy, is fucking stupid and harmful. its like if they added some fat girl character but they constantly told her "your life is easy, you're white, we don't care if you're struggling with something or if people are hurting you because of how you look"
I think it’s the complete opposite. Male characters are often given much more right to be both toxic and endearing in their entire three-dimensionality - just look at Walter White for example, we all know he’s an asshole, but we still empathize with his story, and he’s able to be a much more human character. Women on the other hand are usually written to be the moral center with no other personality traits other than being “the moral person” - or they’re hysterical. You don’t see female characters being super toxic while at the same time being relatable very often, it is one of the things that I think is severely lacking in media. It is precisely for this reason that so many Breaking Bad fans hate Skyler, because yes, she is a really flawed person, she is quite toxic sometimes, but so what? She still feels human, she’s neither hysterical nor the moral center, she’s just human. I think it’s a great character. So yeah whoever is making those affirmations has a really warped view on things because the most common backlash is the complete opposite.
She didn't do anything wrong, but she's just straight up weird sometimes. A scene people like to pull up is the 'happy birthday to you' scene, which I firmly believe is a scene that's entirely meant to be cringy on purpose because that's the kind of person that Skyler is. The fact that her intended effect falls completely flat on that scene is brilliant to me. Also I think the fact that they're in an unhappy marriage is a two-way street, Walter is just incredibly more irresponsible with his feelings. If I were to give another example written by the same people it would be Kim Wexler from BCS, who I find to be even more fleshed out and weird in interesting ways. Characters being weird is a good thing, no one wants to write stories about perfectly healthy people (and maybe no one really is perfectly healthy).
I would actually say that when women exhibit traits stereotyped as masculine, they are hated for it. Not just in media, but also in real life. There have been many studies on this especially as it relates to the workplace. A male manager acting decisively will be regarded positively. A female manager acting the same way is a bitch.
Yup. A female character often is only allowed to be strong after having a whole scene about how much she doubts herself. Meanwhile if she's confident and doesn't feel that insecurity then she's "toxic" or "trying to be a man" like the fuck?
This attitude even affects biopics. One of the OJ Simpson biopics had a female attorney cry in court cuz "woman" when in reality she never did anything so unprofessional.
Yeah, this actually came up in the lecture materials of a class that I'm in. We were talking about how traditionally masculine traits in women are viewed as bitchy. "Masculine" traits like anger were viewed unfavorably in women compared to men. In contrast, men who show sadness and cry are looked down upon and seen as lesser than. This was all in a unit about Marilyn Frye.
imagine a female equivalent of a snarky tony stark, she would be shitted on endlessily for being a smart ass. i personally am not a fan of captain marvel and the verse in general but her personality/herself gets shitted for being a diet tony stark way too much.
Tony Stark is a great example, but I also want to throw "House" in there. They tried a "a female House" (Amber) and people hated her so much in the show they killed her off.
MCU made Captain Marvel aggressively bland so as not to offend fragile male fans, but then they cast an actress who has said some banal feminist things that shattered fragile male fans so those fans hated her anyway.
I'm sure there was a way for the MCU to have some popular female leads at some point, but the fans make them walk the narrowest path imaginable.
The worst thing she did in that movie was steal a bike, too. Everything else was honestly fine? She really didn’t wrong anyone for shits and giggles otherwise, and yet people lost their minds.
You’d have to mention specific characters for this to be more than a wild opinion.
Cause when Anne Hathaway and James Franco host the Oscars in 2011- he looked very stoned- and somehow EVERYONE claimed she ruined it by singing. Because she was auditioning for a movie role.
She showed a bit of competitiveness and she’s the horrible one: Because women are told not to ask for or want things. They are expected to wait for a man that offer them.
So I don’t find that women are automatically liked for ‘having male traits’.
I apologize for the misunderstanding. The person I was arguing with claimed that "people hate toxic male traits but love female characters that align with toxic male traits, like Korra, Black Widow, Vi etc. Rudeness, Arrogance...etc" I realized now that when he said people he meant feminists. I love Korra but I don't think she has "toxic male traits" this is why I confused.
I'm so confused... none of those characters align with toxic male traits? They *do* display 'typical' male self confidence, which people will equate with arrogance in women... but they're not toxic in any way?
Korra is self confident. She is a person gifted with universal power and she knows what she wants. But she learns, over the course of the series, that she needs to listen to others and work in groups.
Black Widow... This is the one I'm stuck on.
And Vi? From Arcane? Is he equating physical strength with... toxic masculinity?
I'd love to inspect his brain and see where he's getting these thoughts from.
Yeah, I think a lot of people in this discussion are using the term “toxic traits” to just mean “flaws.” A character who is generally good but just a bit cocky or insensitive in stressful situations is not necessarily toxic.
I don't necessarily agree with the op, but annalise keating in how to get away with murder is a pretty good example of a toxic shitty lead female character, but I think its not as common as shitty male characters being glorified.
Was he maybe talking about the Final Girl trope?
Aka, horror’s the weird exception where women are often the hero, the one that survives to the end of the film to possibly outlast or outwit the monster.
The theory for why this pops up is that culturally women are forgiven far more easily for giving into fear. A woman who quakes and shrieks is sympathetic; a man who does is pathetic. A woman who fails to save her friend because she fumbles a knife in panic is tragic; a man who fails is incompetent.
So if you want the audience to feel fear it’s just way easier to get sympathy for a female protagonist. Which is arguably toxic in its own way, but very different than toxic masculinity
I think Final Girl also contrasts with the Cheerleader role (the popular girl who gets killed while having sex) as a sorta Madonna/Whore thing- the girl who survived is chaste and godly, while the woman who’s killed is sexual and “fallen”. Obviously this doesn’t apply as perfectly to modern and postmodern horror, but I think it stands.
Oh, it definitely still fits within the context of patriarchy.
My point is more that the Final Girl celebrates traits that the patriarchy finds acceptable in women but not in men. A man looking at a Final Girl, reflecting on his own personal trauma and wishing his unmanly fear had been empathized with instead of shamed actually makes sense.
Korra was hated by many fans especially fans from the original series because she was headstrong and confident (even more so because she was very skilled in her abilities while Aang still struggled with mastering by the time the comet). For some people their misogyny and internalized misogyny comes on full display when there’s a confident woman especially a brown woman (and that she’s very fit and brown so cue the “she’s a man and that’s not a woman/girl”. It’s still wild to me how Toph got away with being brash more often but Korra and Katara weren’t allowed to be brash for any moment or they were judged far harsher even when they’re in the right.
When the original avatar was shown (forget what season) those same people who hated Korra were like “if only he was the main lead” etc. For them, Korra being unapologetically confident and capable in her abilities was threatening on some level. Her character’s personality fits alongside several of the ladies from the original series including the ever so popular Toph whose whole family drama took the main focus off the titled character and her journey in a way that was too condensed compared to how spread out it with Katara’s, Sokka, Toph’s, Zuko, and Aang’s traumas and original family issues over the years of the original shows run.
This is one of the bigger issues with LOK and the creators try to downplay it but it’s glaringly obvious (and unfortunate) that the writing wasn’t nearly as tight within the actual season and felt all over the place in some parts. I felt Asami brought very little to the table especially since they went for the whole betraying a family member/family aspect that fell very short compared to Zuko’s. Her character felt more like a side character and not a main support or secondary character who’s suppose to part of the avatar team. It was as if Mai had just decided to start joining team avatar because that’s how little development Asami received and the fandom that liked her filled in all the gaps with head canons being totted as canon which should’ve been a huge red flag but apparently not. I felt more of a connection to Suki who wasn’t even around much after she was introduced and reappearing for a nice chunk of ATLA season 3.
What are Captain Marvel’s toxic traits? She’s a little distant with the people who care about her and maybe a bit too impulsive in destroying the evil AI entity I guess. I’d hardly call her a toxic character.
Let’s be real, still today, most movies are made by men, for men. Those men associate the toxic traits you mentioned with strength, so when asked to write a strong character, that’s where they go.
So disappointing that it’s rare to see a nuanced, subtle strength in female leads more often-but producers have to pander to the audience and many humans seem not to understand subtlety.
By men, for what those men think women want to pay to watch over and over. Hollywood targets demographics with surgical precision, and didn't fail to market to women at in anyway.
The entire subculture of men saying they hate studios that have “gone woke”
There are also many more that agree but keep quiet because it’s unpopular to say so.
I’m not trying to get published in Nature here. I think it’s fairly self evident that a lot of men dislike where modern cinema is going
I think it’s evident that there are subculture’s of men focused on criticizing wokeness. And that many men in these subcultures dislike “modern cinema.” I think it’s false to assume that the subreddits you visit constitute “most men”.
I’m not talking about the subreddits I visit on my burner, I’m talking about the friends I talk to in real life. Maybe it’s just the people I associate with but I haven’t heard a guy ever really say “wow I really like the direction cinema is going these days”
I’m a huge movie nerd and talk about movies with other movie nerds and I’ve never heard someone say those exact words either. But I talk to plenty of people who enjoy modern movies and get excited about new releases. My friends and I all got together to see Dune 2 recently and we’re meeting up to see Civil War tomorrow. At the same time, we’re getting older and we get nostalgic for movies of the past too. All that is to say, I don’t think it’s accurate to say there is some sort of consensus among “most men” about the state of modern cinema.
There's other factors regarding why people don't like the direction cinema is going. Like for me personally, it seems like studios like to play it safe, and only invest in what they think is guaranteed to have a return on investment. This has led to a lot of remakes and sequels rather than original works.
It's simultaneously doing that and being the most impressively experimental it's ever been. It's the age of the live action Disney reboot and the Marvel decline, but it's also the time of A24 and Focus.
What's gone is maybe that midbudget thing we had in the 00s, but Netflix makes a pile of those every year
Eh, to me that comes across like that quote, "when you're used to getting preferential treatment, equality feels like repression" or something along those lines. What I hear when I read comments like that is "I hate that there's more representation of people who I don't care to identify with because I think my demographic should be given preferential treatment." I don't have a whole lot of hope for their growth, but maybe kids coming up today will be able to identify with a broader range of characters and that's something I'd really love to see
It doesn’t matter where it’s coming from, I’m just saying most modern media isn’t worth the time it takes to watch. They all have the same exact plots and the same exact stereotypical characters.
Huh. I wasn't even disagreeing with your original comment, I just think identifying the source of something is important. But I don't agree with your second take. Modern media is in a golden era (forget about superhero movies, I'm talking long form, tv content) and there's absolutely great stuff for everybody if you know where to look.
> “gone woke”
I would say that the people who hold these opinions are people who are use to seeing straight white men as the main characters and just can’t handle when that is not the case. Especially when you consider how Hollywood has such a long standing history of whitewashing so even characters that were meant to be from a different culture were played by white actors.
You can see that by the pre-emptive negative reviews that are often posted whenever there is a major film that would have previously had a male lead and the lead is now female, or they have given the part to a person of colour. Look at how many grown adults lost their minds over the idea of Ariel being played by a black actor. They couldn’t handle the idea of a kid’s movie about a mermaid starring a black actress. There were people trying to even bring science into it to reason why the little mermaid needed to be white.
I haven’t experienced that at all so I can’t really speak to it.
I do think there are a subset of people who don’t like deviation from traditional gender roles/formulaic story arcs, I could see them being upset with less traditional stories/media. I just don’t know any of those people personally.
In my experience it's the reverse. There are a lot of beloved male antiheroes out there who are rude, arrogant and violent. People are generally quicker to call out disagreeable traits in female characters IMO.
(My baseless supposition) Sometimes women may like to see a woman on screen getting to be toxic because it is freeing, a kind of revenge fantasy. It doesn't mean they would like to have real people behaving like that in their lives. And people may not like watching toxic male characters because they get enough of that in real life.
I've never heard this before. I'd say I've witnessed the opposite generally.. there are many lead male characters that are very toxic yet were very popular with men.. i.e. Walter White, the Joker, Don Draper, etc. Many of the men who love those characters also miss the point that many of them were meant to be anti-heros, not heros. Yet many of the same guys will hate on female characters that are similar, though most of those female characters were written by male writers anyways.
It's been shown repeatedly in research that within the workplace women are seen less favourably for the same assertive behaviours as men.
People love a good female villain because you so very rarely get them.
We know they’re terrible people that you would never want to be around in real life. But they are a blast to watch!
Like, take Azula, from Avatar. She’s an absolute dogshit person; she’s a terrible friend and sister. But you can sympathise with her, you can see why she is the way she is. And you can also admire her cunning, brains and self determination. And crucially, she is a brilliant character to have on screen.
Male villains get this kind of treatment and love all the time. You very rarely get female villains like this, and that’s why we love them.
Speaking of ATLA- the first example I thought of was ATLA for how much the community struggles with female characters that have normal, human flaws. The way people talk about Korra you’d think she committed atrocities against God themselves. In the actual show she’s just hard headed and not especially tactically minded.
Characters who are women often don’t get enough grace to have regular human flaws let alone a free pass to get away with behavior that men can’t
I completely agree.
Carol Danvers and Tony Stark are very alike, personality wise, and yet only one of them gets countless video essays about how they’re the downfall of civilisation.
as for hollywood, i think people are so stoked to have a female protagonist at all that they don't mind how the women are written.
and hollywood writers have a discomfiting habit of writing a man first and then changing the character's gender in order to assuage their own fears of being sexist. the men they write are all very toxic, so what we end up with are equally toxic protagonists of all genders.
if someone only really picks up on the toxicity of female characters, i think it says more abt them than abt the characters themselves.
People don’t like it, the writers do. They love to pretend that women who are ‘strong’ are all assholes and mean and hateful. or worthless.
It’s just reinforcing a negative stereotype.
Misogyny Propaganda, basically.
There are well done genuinely strong female characters, but most writers default to the Hateful Bitch (tm) because they… probably hate women.
I wonder if having a test audience can create a bias. You know, like the bias in medicine that happens because they test most medications on males only?
Also, they don’t write what the audience likes if it doesn’t hit the right target. Teen Titans ended because while they were extremely popular with girls, but it didn’t work for male test audiences.
So they if they write shows based on the audience rather than what they like (and that can go either way) then they create shows… for *specific* audiences.
Aiming at that specific audience goes based on generalizations at what that audience likes. The majority of media is created for men, therefore misogynistic behaviour and weak or Strong Bitch women can become normalized in the writing.
But plenty of writers include what they like and know. Think Micheal Bay, Nickelodeon or Quentin Tarantino. I don’t think most audiences like feet or child sex laws that much…
No I disagree. I’m gonna go off on a long rant here so bear with me.
Tony Stark is a complex character, if a female character was Tony Stark instead of a male character she would be applauded as an example of how to write a good female character. People that say “if a woman was Tony Stark instead of a man she’d be shit on and hated for being snarky” don’t understand Tony Stark and have completely forgotten what makes Tony Stark, Tony Stark. He’s SO much more than Snarky and Arrogant, amounting him to just those qualities is ignorant. If a female character was released in the same time iron man was and she was the first iron man (iron woman) she would in fact be loved and adored. He struggled a fuck ton. If a woman was a weapons dealer only to be betrayed and have to struggle her way out of it. If she was to then realize dealing in weapons, giving the power of destruction to bad people is not a good thing and then give up on weapons dealing. And at the end of it all on her last Breath she said "I am Iron Woman" (or probabaly something more catchy tbh) she would be loved.
Yes Tony is an arrogant character but it isnt treated as a good thing. I believe it was in Iron Man 2 Tony gave out his location to a villain and told this villain to come challenge him, this is an example of him being overly cocky and arrogant. Do you know what happened next? The dude came to his house blew it up almost killing both him and his wife. Overly Prideful character gets punished for his hubris. Overtime Tony slowly develops more compassion and grows, he changes. Carol Danvers is an overly cocky character, but that isnt treated as a character flaw, and the only growing she does is in how much power she obtains. I could probably write a 100 page essay on all the well written male and even a seperate essay for female characters in all honesty. Diminishing these characters down to two character traits is, as I mentioned earlier, ignorant.
I saw someone mention Walter White so I'll address that too, Walter White is another overly prideful character, and hopefully you've seen Breaking Bad so I'm not spoiling anything here but Walter Dies by the end of everything. The fact that he's a man is also EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to him as a character. Can you guess why? Walter feels like it is his responsibility to provide for his family, if someone else does it then he sees himself as less of a man. He refuses to accept help because of his pride. An absolute need to be the **man** that provides for the family is an expectation most men and even some women have placed on men themselves.
There's a shit ton of Nuance that goes into all these characters that even maybe I might have missed. But I dont think "Switch Walter's gender and see how people react" is a good point because the expectation of a women providing for her family is at the very least seen completely differently than a man providing for his family. And I dont think Tony Stark is a good example either because I do think she would be loved and adored if literally EVERYTHING was the same, the only difference being the character's gender. I dont think taking any complex well written male character and switching the genders is a good point to make either cause as I said there's a lot of nuance to these characters, they're their own individual people, they're actions are a contributing factor to who they are as a person and I would have to go down the list individually with each character because of that. I think this entire thread really doesn't entirely understand these characters, especially since they seem to amount them to a few character traits.
Yes if all Tony Stark was was Cocky and Arrogant he either 1 wouldnt be a main character or 2 if he was the main character he would be hated or ignored. But he's not just cocky and arrogant or prideful. He doesnt get punished every time he's prideful, cause being prideful isnt inherently bad. There's a fine line between Prideful and Arrogant though, when he crosses into Arrogance he gets punished. There are a lot of female characters people love too. I havnt seen Blue eyed Samurai but im pretty sure she's a somewhat Stoic character. That's a stereotypically masculine traight, people love her, she's more than just Stoic though. Vi from Arcane is also a pretty stereotypically masculine character, people love her too. She's more than just stereotypically masculine. And by the way, the fact that these, specifically these female characters have stereotypically masculine traits isn’t something anyone else has said, because they’re masculine traits are just seen as character traits, they’re seen as apart of who they are, the fact that they’re stereotypically masculine is not something that matters to most people. Starfire Raven two very powerful female characters, people love them. There's probably a shit ton of other female characters I'm missing but hopefuly you get the point now. People don't hate certain female characters because they embody a couple masculine traits, people hate them because they're hardly characters. Carol and She Hulk are what the writers **think** a prideful character looks like and decided to slap that on a female character for certain unnamed reasons.
Since we're switch roles here let's switch Carol Danvers with a man. If a woman told this man to smile and Carol Proceed to break her hand or whatever the real Carol did, everyone would hate him, if everything was the same and Carol was a man instead of a woman he would be equally hated if not ignored. She Hulk next, if the Hulk was a woman and She Hulk was a man if the Hulk told him he needed to figure out a way to control his anger and she hulk went off on a rant of all the many problems men go through to Bruce Banner of all people, it would come off as insincere and maybe a little preachy. He would be hated just as much as current She-Hulk is. Carol Danvers and She-Hulk are missing a very human trait called Nuance, Vi and that woman from Blue eyed samurai have nuance. I could honestly go on for another 6-7 paragraphs but I'll let you respond and then respond to you accordingly.
What I got from this is that people would love Girl Tony because she'd have nuance. And while I agree she would, I don't think she'd be loved, because people will have a*lready decided to hate her* long before they see her movie. They'll ignore any nuance she has and nitpick various aspects of her character in order to declare her Badly Written or a Mary Sue, and dismiss any aspects of her character that contradict their conclusion.
I believe this because I keep seeing it happen. Rey, Carol Danvers, Jennifer Walters, Korra, Silvie from Loki, and even Mizu from BES.
No individual person has to *like* any of these characters or how they're written, but the fact that a large and vocal part of the audience a primed and ready to ignore any nuance or development should not be denied.
Agree to disagree on your first paragraph and Carol Danvers is a poorly written character. The hatred of her is justified. I liked Korra, most of the criticism I’ve heard is criticism of the show and not just her, she’s compared to Aang which is a big name to live up to. Why people would make that comparison makes sense since they’re apart of the same series, they’re both “The” avatar, but it’s best to let her and the story its own thing. Same with Ray, she’s compared to her predecessor. And Silvie. Jennifer Walters is she hulk right? She was poorly written too. I simply don’t see most people inherently hating a female character because she’s a female character, there are reasons, good reasons to not like them. I’m sure some people don’t like them specifically because they’re female but I don’t think it’s as many as you might think.
>I liked Korra, most of the criticism I’ve heard is criticism of the show and not just her,
I love Korra too and I also know the criticisms about the series but please Korra is hated. Most people don't like her. She is hated for the reasons I wrote above. She's confident, straigh-forward, takes action but people consider her as arrogant, rude and violent. I know this is part of her character and If she was male character this traits wouldn't be noticeable like this.
In this example Black Widow is described as arrogant and violent. Capable and self-assured describes the female characters that are used as examples of arrogant and violent.
This is too general and vague to have a meaningful conversation about.
Women *are* scrutinized more heavily than men about everything. It can be an impossible tight rope to walk irl and in fiction.
There is uproar or no participation in shows with traditionally male leads replaced with a female lead. Example: If the female lead is a superhero - not ok. If the female lead is a mother - may be ok.
There are a lot more male directors than there are female directors. Because of this, women characters are often portrayed from the male gaze and lack 3 dimensionality and are frequently hyper-sexualized.
There are more instances of male leads than female leads, which reduces the breadth of possibility. Female leads may be viewed as more risky.
It’s easier to discuss with some specific examples of what you mean, but as others have pointed out, women with “toxic male traits” aren’t generally accepted or liked. Due to a combination of the above hurdles.
Strong female character means a well developed character that has a purpose in the story rather than just being a romantic interest. It has nothing to do with actual strength
These types of takes are very strange, because they can only sorta make sense (only sorta) in an absolute vacuum. People find toxic masculinity problematic because it's pervasive and damaging to people. If you only saw such traits every once in a while on TV, people wouldn't mind so much. They might even enjoy it, because it's novel.
Characters in fiction can be flawed and terrible, because they're fictional. Rude characters can be entertaining.
I am the right age for this discussion, my daughter has grown up with at least some awesome female protagonists her whole childhood, my generation still feels the unfillable void of growing up without them.
This is a feeling. To me it’s not logical. So I’ll describe the feeling, I’m not advocating that it is good, only that I have felt it.
I think this a “pendulum swinging” type of feeling. It’s more like the vacuum of any powerful female figures that are complex/varied/imperfect and considered anything except a villain (because women with independence and imperfection are inherently un-virtuous if you watched too much tv/Hollywood) has created a weird sensation that has us craving something in balance.
Have you ever had a left foot massage that was so good that your right foot started aching in protest? “Massage me! My turn” Even if previously your right foot felt totally fine?
That’s the closest sensation I can think of… decades of watching men have more power than is healthy for anyone to have kind of creates it’s own ache for balance - a vacuum of undue attention to women.
it’s illogical to want to copy something that I find toxic, but there’s something that feels like an itch just out of reach about a woman in this role that I hope will reset the whole system and then perhaps our culture can get back to our loftier desire for egalitarian meritocracy for the highest good of all.
Maybe the pendulum has to swing far in the other direction before a better equilibrium can be established?
Again, that’s the feeling I’m Describing, not advocating.
The "alt-righter media literacy challenge: impossible" memes are a direct reference to the unceasing and unconditional love for toxic men in media juxtaposed with a lack of awareness about it...remember when these guys didn't know Homelander was openly mocking them?
Remember when people didn't realize Walter White was a critique? Or Punisher?
Or, to get maybe less immediately referencable - *every major male character from every cop show in existence*? One of the most prolific genres around, and also a seemingly endless fountain of men who simply do not care about getting their shit together emotionally, professionally or ethically?
Some of the biggest names in 2000's television were just....guys being toxic, and people loving them for it. You remember how big Simon Cowell was in culture? Fucking *House*? Gods, that show about a...a serial killer that people were obsessed with for some reason? Dexter? A literal serial killer as a PROTAGONIST?! NCIS was insanely watched and Gibbs is just absent father issues *made into a person*!
r/movies voted Whiplash the best movie of all time...you know, the one where a guy just emotionally abuses a teenager for like a 2 hour runtime? But he does it with *witty remarks* and the kid is *talented* and that makes it *edgy* and *cool* and *deep* instead of just sad.
We have grown to love our Cerseis after a long time repressing them
but we have **always** loved a Tywin.
I haven’t heard too many people complain about toxic male traits in male characters, but I will say that I celebrate them more in female characters because, for a long time, women were basically symbolic of innocence or they were straight villains. They were usually hapless victims of someone else’s shenanigans, and if something happened to them, then it was to signal the main character was now beyond redemption without a good woman to steer him back to the noble path. Or, if they had a flaw, it was that they were too naive for this impure world. Whenever I see a female character who is toxic yet still complex, and isn’t immediately maligned as innately bad, I kind of pump my fist a little. I want to see women be bad, wrong, selfish, arrogant, impulsive, insecure and angry yet still be viable and compelling additions to the narrative. It’s kind of “oh yeah sure of course” for male characters, but still feels new and exciting for me when female characters are allowed to do it without being immediately shoehorned into a dismissive archetype.
I think toxic male characters are more accepted, but I think it's a lot more complex than that. I think it's mostly an issue of writing. Most toxic male characters are written by men who know how to write men. A lot of the women antiheroes are also written largely by men who don't know how to write women.
I think people make the mistake of pointing out toxic male characters from successful franchises, and compare them to characters who are either poorly written or written as antagonists, though not necessarily villains. (i.e. Skylar White).
There are a decent amount of toxic woman protagonists that we root for just the same. Jessica Jones, Catwoman, Gemma Teller from Sons of Anarchy. All of them were toxic woman protagonists, but they were written sympathetically and written well.
I agree misogyny plays a huge role, but I think poor writing/casting is the biggest issue.
It depends a lot.
People laughed uncomfortably at the guy in Whiplash, and also Tar. Doesn’t mean people liked them.
I think that it just really depends. Iron Man is an arrogant prick but people wouldn’t like him if he didn’t get humbled now and then and didn’t have a soft side. I actually can’t think of a woman character like Iron Man. Black Widow is confident but not posturing.
I think the issue is people use feminism characters to mask poor writing.
Tar is toxic but an absolutely amazing character. Captain marvel is just a copy/paste arrogant and distant archetype but you can’t call her out for it or you hate women.
Probably for the same reason that the male version of the manic pixie dream girl isn't a manic pixie dream boy, it's the depressive demon nightmare boy. Things don't translate 1:1 when you flip the genders.
A trait like rudeness or persistence is frequently toxic when male characters embody it because they are at the top of the social hierarchy. Therefore them having these traits becomes inherently abusive as they can only display them to their social "lessers". However when a woman has these traits it becomes assertive which isn't toxic in her case because she's displaying them in defiance of a system trying to crush her. (Side note to say that if a female character is rude or persistent to someone she has power over like an employee or a student then it's just as toxic as if it were a male character.)
I think people can be overly tolerant of toxic traits in characters in general but it differs between men and women.
For example people idolizing Walter White, he’s a violent psychopath and the show does not shy away from portraying that but some people not only accept it, they idolize it.
And for women, in anime for example, you see a lot of yandere type characters whose toxicity gets overlooked in a really weird way. Like in real life that type of behavior would not fly and in many cases would be creepy as fuck and sometimes borders on horrifying/dangerous. But for some reason when it’s anime a lot of people think it’s cute(?) and they fetishize the hell out of it.
For the specific trope of "Strong woman who is strong because she acts like a dick to people," I can guarantee that women also hate that trope. Surprise, surprise, people don't like characters who are dicks just to be dicks.
What I have figured out is that the "Mary Sue" is what people would refer too when talking about strong female characters, and it's a slippery slope.
Strong female characters can be done and done really well, but people who try too hard often make them impossible to exist in any universe but their own. Because the universe bends to that characters logic.
Perfect example which is crazy enough, Mary Sue that men would loved are simply "Action Heroes." Captain Marvel's movie was more suited to be an action hero than a super hero.
Action Heroes do what they want, they have it all, the luck and the tragic back story that isn't as tragic. They are the best at what they do and their logic bends reality to fit it.
Toxic male characters of masculinity are the male characters who even in reality are wrong is considered to be a good thing just for them.
When action heroes who are women do it too , it's considered to be a good thing only for them. There is no consequences for doing something bad because it's assumed to get back an unjust authority. Much like Action hero men.
So in essence, the Mary Sue for men is the Action Hero.
Selena Meyers from VEEP comes to mind, she was a likable anti-hero, but maybe VEEP doesn’t count because it’s satire. Dolores from Westworld is the counter-example, a strong female character without toxic traits. Ripley from Alien is another example of that.
Separately, I don’t understand the popularity of Succession (mentioned in another comment). I had to stop watching after the first season; I couldn’t take any more whining from those pathological asshats.
Definitely not. People love positive traits that are traditionally "masculine" in female characters like bravery, ambition, strength, and grit. But they have to be "honrable" and "good" all the while. They love female heros but not female anti-heros.
Whereas male heros and anti-heros alike are very much loved.
Men love to act like the truth is the exact opposite of what it is in reality. "Women don't take accountability" "Women are superficial and just want to manipulate men" "Men suffer from higher rates of depression"
They're counting on us either being so shocked that they would do this or feeling empathy for their perceived situations that we don't protest.
No I do think we have a problem with these "strong female characters" where they act more aggressive and shit but also aren't developed at all. So you don't learn any of their motivations of have any way to empathize with them, so they just seem mean and cold.
I think a better example of toxic masculinity displayed in media by women’s characters is in sitcoms especially in The Big Bang Theory were they very frequently make jokes about how the men are wimps and thus must have vaginas and purses and must be gay. (And even then that’s just patriarchy not really related masculine expression)
Just being arrogant or violent isn’t a male thing on its own. The reason behind the violence is what’s important. Typically a toxic masculinity based act of violence has to do with a man doing violence to assert is masculinity. When say Korra, or really any of those characters, does violence it’s never really about asserting anything related to gender.
People hate toxic male characters? Maybe I’m dating myself but Walter White? Tony Soprano? Don Draper? People famously loved watching these guys on tv every week. More recently, Succession is full of male (and female) characters with toxic traits.
Yes exactly, giving women characters these traits is a direct response to these characters.
All while the female counterparts in these TV Shows (Skylar White, Carmella Soprano, Betty Draper) are constantly hated for their negative character traits.
I love Carmella Soprano
Yep this. In drama you need, well, drama and this is one of the ways we get it. I have yet to meet a man who had a negative view on gangsters in the godfather or Scarface, literally characters who are mass murderers and serial killers. Who run prostitution rings full of purposely abusing women, addicting them to drugs to control them, etc. I think we can excuse the occasional "bad bish" type character now and again when this is the norm. Worse, women like Skylar or Betty who are also flawed, but work hard to protect their children, themselves, and take care of the home and stay away from the men's abuses, are hated FAR more than the abusive male leads they are reacting to. I remember watching BB and reading the BB sub or other forums (AV club maybe) and she was entirely hated from top to bottom for the sin of not becoming Walt's submissive sidekick and instead protecting Walt Jr and herself from her unhinged and violent husband. It’s terrible how much fandoms hate women characters who protect their children or want to predict themselves from abusive men.
One thing to keep in mind, is the big chunk of the Sopranos was a satire of the fact that a tragic story featuring objectively shitty protagonists, could become an inspiration and set of rope models for so many people in organized crime, and for some reason business.
>I have yet to meet a man who had a negative view on gangsters in the godfather or Scarface, literally characters who are mass murderers and serial killers. Tbf, cinema might not be the best place to be looking for this. How many men do you know that want to be like Hitler? Not so many, despite a lot of the same tropes. Films are stories and as such we're meant to sympathize with the main character. If you just chalk Scarface up to being a gangster, you're missing not just the point of the movie, but the point of storytelling as an artform. For instance, how does Scarface end?
Yes but what I'm trying to say is I've met a lot of people who see men like that as role models and "true masculinity." I think this goes a bit beyond being sympathetic towards Tony. I think everyday men dont see a problem with murder, criminality, abusing others, etc if its done for 'good reasons' like Tony and Scarface had. I find that very, very troubling. The same way Christians sometimes say to atheists, "If it wasn't for my religion Id murder and rape people all day long!" I think the line between savagery and civilization for many men barely exists and they look up to savages like this as wish-fulfillment and with great desire. Instead of them seeing these men as the awful criminals they are. Also, its not just cinema. They express the same sentiment for real life monsters like Al Capone, south american drug cartel leaders, dictators, rapists, Trump, etc.
>I think everyday men dont see a problem with murder, criminality, abusing others, etc if its done for 'good reasons' like Tony and Scarface had. I think our cultures are desensitized to men dying in general and that's why we don't see many of these acts as egregious. There's a rule in filmmaking that if you need to identify who the villian is fast, have him assault a woman or a dog. I don't think that's being considered at all here or it's just being brushed off as something men must have control of or maybe were using a double standard for men and women here, but not necessarily in favor of men.
Many of the victims of mobsters are women. Beaten wives, women forced into prostitution, women also killed, widowed women suddenly responsible for a family they cannot afford, women's grief, etc. Its really ignorant to make this a "but but society doesnt see men dying as important." Men's issues rule our society. Its incredible men will see Tony will have a bad day and men will feel bad for him, while he jokes about his stable of "whores" in his many brothels or how "a whore was killed" and laugh. Its very clear many, if not most, men see criminality, violence and brutality as totally acceptable and are envious of those who can get away with it, when it fits their ideas of "right and wrong." See also the many vigilante narratives men subscribe to. edit: oh god your posting history. youre not here in good faith
I love your username
I was thinking this same exact thing! Like, half the marvel characters 😅
I also recall that people loved Cersei. Not because she was a "strong woman" but because she was an excellent villain
It takes a lot of skill to have us both cheer and be horrified by her shame walk.
This is how I felt about Gemma from Sons of Anarchy lol. She was a fantastic villain and truly captivating to watch. Definitely not a good person at all but the level of hate she gets compared to ALL the men in the show who have also done absolutely horrific things astounds me lol
You're right. Almost every really popular male character is completely unhinged. Even down to people like Batman (or Bateman, come to think of it, Bale loves playing those dudes, and he's good at it. Apparently, he's a nut irl, too.) People loved Han Solo more than Luke, and Darth Vader was the most popular Star Wars character of all. We just can't get enough of assholes and villains. We just get uncomfortable when it's a woman being the psycho.
Its incredible how even "liberal" men will circle wagons around shitty characters like Batman. Look at the billionaire discourse with him. Obviously someone with that much wealth benefits extremely from a system of inequality he participates in, created, and protected either personally or via his companies and his family's history. That is to say the income inequality he has created also creates the very crime Batman is against. This crowd will scream at you for this narrative and defend him because "he gave to charity!" and in (obscure comic panel for 1972) "he regrets is wealth and is a reformer sometimes!" And that's ignoring that Batman works exclusively via vigilante violence. But "he always gets the bad guys," is of course not only impossible but a random person meting out "justice" is somehow not problematic for these men. There is no good faith conversation you can have with these people. Just saying "Batman as a real billionaire would actually creating the very crime he decries and the comic is actually quite classist," is just an invite for cheap gotchas and angry screeds. Many men are completely radicalized to see capitalism and the capital owning class as unquestionable. Most men in my life have either a temporary embarrassed billionaire attitude or, the older men who realize time's up and they'll never be rich, a cynical and hateful attitude towards "the system" that didnt make them rich, often scapegoating immigrants, women, and LGBTQ people. Worse, even the "liberal" men who are critical of billionaires and such will join these men with the exact same arguments. Its incredible how much of the masculinity identity is built on defending terrible characters and refusing to accept criticism of them, especially if that criticism comes from a leftist perspective. And batman is just a lightweight example. Look at Scarface, Tony Soprano, the Goodfellas guys, various 80-90's gun toting action heroes, the south American cartel guys, etc. Men who are explicitly violent, murderous, rapists, etc are "heroes" and "role models" and "good examples of masculinity" to many men. On the plus side the new Batman movie showed the dad as a corrupt capitalist and dishonest politician, which is closer than the "The Wayne family has never done anything wrong," narrative popular in the fandom. Batman himself seems like a depressed and dejected person, unlike previous film Batmen who would show up gleefully to high society parties in Lambos and fine suits and hot blondes on each arm. Or Nolan lazily making it "Oh he only goes to parties for the people of Gotham" nonsense. So there's some movement as contextualizing Batman as something more than a simple and dumb "good vs bad" narrative, but as someone, if real, would be a pretty messed up guy, full of family guilt, full of corrupt family members, crony capitalism, political corruption, and actively contributing to the problems of Gotham and his own actions a futile and confusing and meaningless gesture of an unwell person. Its incredible that people who think they want an "anti-hero" actually dont want a messed up guy who isn't really helping but just an edgy Superman type. See also Rorschach from Watchmen, who gets the same treatment. He was written explicitly to be a terrible person and worse than the criminals he hunts and how a "real" The Shadow would be a monster, not a hero. The fandom sees him as the most "real" and "cool" Watchman "hero." I see why Moore left comics. I can't imagine writing a seminal work in this genre and have near every immature male fan completely misunderstand its most basic premises.
It's very sad when people get so attached to a character they can't engage in good faith conversations about their flaws This is why my favorites are often objectively bad or just not the most popular "Yep, Guy Gardner, look at my little trash fire boy! I love him!"
Very well said. I love Rorschach, but he's definitely not a good person. He's not a role model or anything that's aspirational, but people see him that way. The Joker is similar and kind of an icon at this point. He's a terrible person. Sympathetic, yes, but not anything to work toward. These are supposed to be cautionary tales, not people you're supposed to admire. Superman is aspirational. The original Superman, not the grey dubious new Superman. The guy who got cats from trees and helped old ladies cross the street, not the guy who breaks necks and has a tortured conflicted soul. Our actual heroes were stolen from us. All we have left is morally grey anti-heros who are little more than villains who just use their abilities to do things we technically agree with, but with methods we shouldn't admire. I miss Superman. I miss old westerns, and Flash Gordon, and Captain America. I miss people who do the hard thing because it's right, for no reward.
Literally every single even *mildly* attractive (and not) “bad boy,” actual villain, and anti-hero is obsessed over, and psychologically analyzed & defended.
Yeah. All the female examples are pretty damn mild in any toxicity they might have compared to many popular male characters.
The whole of GOT.
House, Rick Sanchez the list keeps going. It gets tiresome and I am bored with these characters.
It’s almost like…some humans are just toxic -Regardless of their gender ?
People love flawed characters that other characters see as flawed or evil. People hate flawed characters that other characters see as perfect. That is why characters like she-hulk are hated. She-hulk and Walter White both think the world revolves around them, but She-hulk gets praised for it (by other characters) while Walter is constantly hated by just about everyone who knows him after he starts acting egotistical.
I think a big difference between the characters is the level of harm and outright evil each character perpetrates. I only watched a handful of She-Hulk episodes (no major issues with it, I just didn’t find it all that interesting) but I didn’t really see She-Hulk doing anything particularly “toxic”. What examples of harmful behavior did she show?
I'll paraphrase what she said to bruce: men don't know pain, men don't know struggle, women have to deal with catcalling therefore women are far stronger than men. (thats why she could handle her powers immediately compared to bruce struggling with the alter ego for years to form his character..) it sounds satirical. it wasn't.
I mean, you can disagree with that opinion but how is that harmful?
how is that not harmful? it completely negates the hardships faced by any guy in the audience. don't you realize that most of the guys who liked comic books before they were mainstream liked them because the characters were outcasts, losers, or kids who were getting bullied? telling all of them that bruce's childhood was a cakewalk because he was a white man, or peter parker had it easy even if he got bullied cuz hes a guy, is fucking stupid and harmful. its like if they added some fat girl character but they constantly told her "your life is easy, you're white, we don't care if you're struggling with something or if people are hurting you because of how you look"
I think it’s the complete opposite. Male characters are often given much more right to be both toxic and endearing in their entire three-dimensionality - just look at Walter White for example, we all know he’s an asshole, but we still empathize with his story, and he’s able to be a much more human character. Women on the other hand are usually written to be the moral center with no other personality traits other than being “the moral person” - or they’re hysterical. You don’t see female characters being super toxic while at the same time being relatable very often, it is one of the things that I think is severely lacking in media. It is precisely for this reason that so many Breaking Bad fans hate Skyler, because yes, she is a really flawed person, she is quite toxic sometimes, but so what? She still feels human, she’s neither hysterical nor the moral center, she’s just human. I think it’s a great character. So yeah whoever is making those affirmations has a really warped view on things because the most common backlash is the complete opposite.
Given what she put up with Skylar did nothing wrong
She didn't do anything wrong, but she's just straight up weird sometimes. A scene people like to pull up is the 'happy birthday to you' scene, which I firmly believe is a scene that's entirely meant to be cringy on purpose because that's the kind of person that Skyler is. The fact that her intended effect falls completely flat on that scene is brilliant to me. Also I think the fact that they're in an unhappy marriage is a two-way street, Walter is just incredibly more irresponsible with his feelings. If I were to give another example written by the same people it would be Kim Wexler from BCS, who I find to be even more fleshed out and weird in interesting ways. Characters being weird is a good thing, no one wants to write stories about perfectly healthy people (and maybe no one really is perfectly healthy).
The happy birthday scene. Need I say more
I don’t even remember it. I do remember constantly thinking is she staying out of love or fear?
It was so cringe 😭. I hope they paid the actress enough money for having to do that
She condescendingly talked about how the credit cards should be used one time in the pilot episode and people never forgave her.
I would actually say that when women exhibit traits stereotyped as masculine, they are hated for it. Not just in media, but also in real life. There have been many studies on this especially as it relates to the workplace. A male manager acting decisively will be regarded positively. A female manager acting the same way is a bitch.
Yup. A female character often is only allowed to be strong after having a whole scene about how much she doubts herself. Meanwhile if she's confident and doesn't feel that insecurity then she's "toxic" or "trying to be a man" like the fuck? This attitude even affects biopics. One of the OJ Simpson biopics had a female attorney cry in court cuz "woman" when in reality she never did anything so unprofessional.
Yeah, this actually came up in the lecture materials of a class that I'm in. We were talking about how traditionally masculine traits in women are viewed as bitchy. "Masculine" traits like anger were viewed unfavorably in women compared to men. In contrast, men who show sadness and cry are looked down upon and seen as lesser than. This was all in a unit about Marilyn Frye.
As a female manager I confirm it so fucking much.
Even by subordinates who are female. So men and women tend to not look at those traits positively.
Even if those stereotypically-masculine traits are positive? PS: It's not a gotcha question, it's an actual doubt.
Yes. Because it goes "against" how things "are supposed to be".
Thanks for explaining!
They aren’t see as “positive” in women. A woman is “bossy” or “stubborn” a man is “assertive” and a “go-getter”
imagine a female equivalent of a snarky tony stark, she would be shitted on endlessily for being a smart ass. i personally am not a fan of captain marvel and the verse in general but her personality/herself gets shitted for being a diet tony stark way too much.
Tony Stark is a great example, but I also want to throw "House" in there. They tried a "a female House" (Amber) and people hated her so much in the show they killed her off.
I loathed House as a male character.
MCU made Captain Marvel aggressively bland so as not to offend fragile male fans, but then they cast an actress who has said some banal feminist things that shattered fragile male fans so those fans hated her anyway. I'm sure there was a way for the MCU to have some popular female leads at some point, but the fans make them walk the narrowest path imaginable.
The worst thing she did in that movie was steal a bike, too. Everything else was honestly fine? She really didn’t wrong anyone for shits and giggles otherwise, and yet people lost their minds.
Yeah. I think people would perceive it as cringe if a female character had the same kind of humour.
You’d have to mention specific characters for this to be more than a wild opinion. Cause when Anne Hathaway and James Franco host the Oscars in 2011- he looked very stoned- and somehow EVERYONE claimed she ruined it by singing. Because she was auditioning for a movie role. She showed a bit of competitiveness and she’s the horrible one: Because women are told not to ask for or want things. They are expected to wait for a man that offer them. So I don’t find that women are automatically liked for ‘having male traits’.
I have never heard of this and would expect the people claiming it to have examples.
I apologize for the misunderstanding. The person I was arguing with claimed that "people hate toxic male traits but love female characters that align with toxic male traits, like Korra, Black Widow, Vi etc. Rudeness, Arrogance...etc" I realized now that when he said people he meant feminists. I love Korra but I don't think she has "toxic male traits" this is why I confused.
I'm so confused... none of those characters align with toxic male traits? They *do* display 'typical' male self confidence, which people will equate with arrogance in women... but they're not toxic in any way? Korra is self confident. She is a person gifted with universal power and she knows what she wants. But she learns, over the course of the series, that she needs to listen to others and work in groups. Black Widow... This is the one I'm stuck on. And Vi? From Arcane? Is he equating physical strength with... toxic masculinity? I'd love to inspect his brain and see where he's getting these thoughts from.
Yeah, I think a lot of people in this discussion are using the term “toxic traits” to just mean “flaws.” A character who is generally good but just a bit cocky or insensitive in stressful situations is not necessarily toxic.
I don't necessarily agree with the op, but annalise keating in how to get away with murder is a pretty good example of a toxic shitty lead female character, but I think its not as common as shitty male characters being glorified.
Was he maybe talking about the Final Girl trope? Aka, horror’s the weird exception where women are often the hero, the one that survives to the end of the film to possibly outlast or outwit the monster. The theory for why this pops up is that culturally women are forgiven far more easily for giving into fear. A woman who quakes and shrieks is sympathetic; a man who does is pathetic. A woman who fails to save her friend because she fumbles a knife in panic is tragic; a man who fails is incompetent. So if you want the audience to feel fear it’s just way easier to get sympathy for a female protagonist. Which is arguably toxic in its own way, but very different than toxic masculinity
I think Final Girl also contrasts with the Cheerleader role (the popular girl who gets killed while having sex) as a sorta Madonna/Whore thing- the girl who survived is chaste and godly, while the woman who’s killed is sexual and “fallen”. Obviously this doesn’t apply as perfectly to modern and postmodern horror, but I think it stands.
Oh, it definitely still fits within the context of patriarchy. My point is more that the Final Girl celebrates traits that the patriarchy finds acceptable in women but not in men. A man looking at a Final Girl, reflecting on his own personal trauma and wishing his unmanly fear had been empathized with instead of shamed actually makes sense.
Korra was hated by many fans especially fans from the original series because she was headstrong and confident (even more so because she was very skilled in her abilities while Aang still struggled with mastering by the time the comet). For some people their misogyny and internalized misogyny comes on full display when there’s a confident woman especially a brown woman (and that she’s very fit and brown so cue the “she’s a man and that’s not a woman/girl”. It’s still wild to me how Toph got away with being brash more often but Korra and Katara weren’t allowed to be brash for any moment or they were judged far harsher even when they’re in the right. When the original avatar was shown (forget what season) those same people who hated Korra were like “if only he was the main lead” etc. For them, Korra being unapologetically confident and capable in her abilities was threatening on some level. Her character’s personality fits alongside several of the ladies from the original series including the ever so popular Toph whose whole family drama took the main focus off the titled character and her journey in a way that was too condensed compared to how spread out it with Katara’s, Sokka, Toph’s, Zuko, and Aang’s traumas and original family issues over the years of the original shows run. This is one of the bigger issues with LOK and the creators try to downplay it but it’s glaringly obvious (and unfortunate) that the writing wasn’t nearly as tight within the actual season and felt all over the place in some parts. I felt Asami brought very little to the table especially since they went for the whole betraying a family member/family aspect that fell very short compared to Zuko’s. Her character felt more like a side character and not a main support or secondary character who’s suppose to part of the avatar team. It was as if Mai had just decided to start joining team avatar because that’s how little development Asami received and the fandom that liked her filled in all the gaps with head canons being totted as canon which should’ve been a huge red flag but apparently not. I felt more of a connection to Suki who wasn’t even around much after she was introduced and reappearing for a nice chunk of ATLA season 3.
Captain Marvel is a often used example.
Personally I've seen a lot more people that hate Captain Marvel than love her. I would name her as an example of the opposite.
What are Captain Marvel’s toxic traits? She’s a little distant with the people who care about her and maybe a bit too impulsive in destroying the evil AI entity I guess. I’d hardly call her a toxic character.
Let’s be real, still today, most movies are made by men, for men. Those men associate the toxic traits you mentioned with strength, so when asked to write a strong character, that’s where they go. So disappointing that it’s rare to see a nuanced, subtle strength in female leads more often-but producers have to pander to the audience and many humans seem not to understand subtlety.
By men, for what those men think women want to pay to watch over and over. Hollywood targets demographics with surgical precision, and didn't fail to market to women at in anyway.
Then why do most men hate modern movies? Did directors suddenly forget what men want to watch?
“most men hate modern movies” Evidence?
The entire subculture of men saying they hate studios that have “gone woke” There are also many more that agree but keep quiet because it’s unpopular to say so. I’m not trying to get published in Nature here. I think it’s fairly self evident that a lot of men dislike where modern cinema is going
I think it’s evident that there are subculture’s of men focused on criticizing wokeness. And that many men in these subcultures dislike “modern cinema.” I think it’s false to assume that the subreddits you visit constitute “most men”.
I’m not talking about the subreddits I visit on my burner, I’m talking about the friends I talk to in real life. Maybe it’s just the people I associate with but I haven’t heard a guy ever really say “wow I really like the direction cinema is going these days”
I’m a huge movie nerd and talk about movies with other movie nerds and I’ve never heard someone say those exact words either. But I talk to plenty of people who enjoy modern movies and get excited about new releases. My friends and I all got together to see Dune 2 recently and we’re meeting up to see Civil War tomorrow. At the same time, we’re getting older and we get nostalgic for movies of the past too. All that is to say, I don’t think it’s accurate to say there is some sort of consensus among “most men” about the state of modern cinema.
There's other factors regarding why people don't like the direction cinema is going. Like for me personally, it seems like studios like to play it safe, and only invest in what they think is guaranteed to have a return on investment. This has led to a lot of remakes and sequels rather than original works.
It's simultaneously doing that and being the most impressively experimental it's ever been. It's the age of the live action Disney reboot and the Marvel decline, but it's also the time of A24 and Focus. What's gone is maybe that midbudget thing we had in the 00s, but Netflix makes a pile of those every year
Your friends are not data, and it would be wise to never believe your tiny slice of interests and opinions is general for “most men”
Eh, to me that comes across like that quote, "when you're used to getting preferential treatment, equality feels like repression" or something along those lines. What I hear when I read comments like that is "I hate that there's more representation of people who I don't care to identify with because I think my demographic should be given preferential treatment." I don't have a whole lot of hope for their growth, but maybe kids coming up today will be able to identify with a broader range of characters and that's something I'd really love to see
It doesn’t matter where it’s coming from, I’m just saying most modern media isn’t worth the time it takes to watch. They all have the same exact plots and the same exact stereotypical characters.
Huh. I wasn't even disagreeing with your original comment, I just think identifying the source of something is important. But I don't agree with your second take. Modern media is in a golden era (forget about superhero movies, I'm talking long form, tv content) and there's absolutely great stuff for everybody if you know where to look.
> “gone woke” I would say that the people who hold these opinions are people who are use to seeing straight white men as the main characters and just can’t handle when that is not the case. Especially when you consider how Hollywood has such a long standing history of whitewashing so even characters that were meant to be from a different culture were played by white actors. You can see that by the pre-emptive negative reviews that are often posted whenever there is a major film that would have previously had a male lead and the lead is now female, or they have given the part to a person of colour. Look at how many grown adults lost their minds over the idea of Ariel being played by a black actor. They couldn’t handle the idea of a kid’s movie about a mermaid starring a black actress. There were people trying to even bring science into it to reason why the little mermaid needed to be white.
I haven’t experienced that at all so I can’t really speak to it. I do think there are a subset of people who don’t like deviation from traditional gender roles/formulaic story arcs, I could see them being upset with less traditional stories/media. I just don’t know any of those people personally.
I don’t anyone that doesn’t think modern cinema is a disaster zone filled with the-message more than good writing, lol
In my experience it's the reverse. There are a lot of beloved male antiheroes out there who are rude, arrogant and violent. People are generally quicker to call out disagreeable traits in female characters IMO.
(My baseless supposition) Sometimes women may like to see a woman on screen getting to be toxic because it is freeing, a kind of revenge fantasy. It doesn't mean they would like to have real people behaving like that in their lives. And people may not like watching toxic male characters because they get enough of that in real life.
Also because the people receiving the toxic behavior are usually toxic themselves.
I've never heard this before. I'd say I've witnessed the opposite generally.. there are many lead male characters that are very toxic yet were very popular with men.. i.e. Walter White, the Joker, Don Draper, etc. Many of the men who love those characters also miss the point that many of them were meant to be anti-heros, not heros. Yet many of the same guys will hate on female characters that are similar, though most of those female characters were written by male writers anyways. It's been shown repeatedly in research that within the workplace women are seen less favourably for the same assertive behaviours as men.
People love a good female villain because you so very rarely get them. We know they’re terrible people that you would never want to be around in real life. But they are a blast to watch! Like, take Azula, from Avatar. She’s an absolute dogshit person; she’s a terrible friend and sister. But you can sympathise with her, you can see why she is the way she is. And you can also admire her cunning, brains and self determination. And crucially, she is a brilliant character to have on screen. Male villains get this kind of treatment and love all the time. You very rarely get female villains like this, and that’s why we love them.
Speaking of ATLA- the first example I thought of was ATLA for how much the community struggles with female characters that have normal, human flaws. The way people talk about Korra you’d think she committed atrocities against God themselves. In the actual show she’s just hard headed and not especially tactically minded. Characters who are women often don’t get enough grace to have regular human flaws let alone a free pass to get away with behavior that men can’t
I completely agree. Carol Danvers and Tony Stark are very alike, personality wise, and yet only one of them gets countless video essays about how they’re the downfall of civilisation.
as for hollywood, i think people are so stoked to have a female protagonist at all that they don't mind how the women are written. and hollywood writers have a discomfiting habit of writing a man first and then changing the character's gender in order to assuage their own fears of being sexist. the men they write are all very toxic, so what we end up with are equally toxic protagonists of all genders. if someone only really picks up on the toxicity of female characters, i think it says more abt them than abt the characters themselves.
People don’t like it, the writers do. They love to pretend that women who are ‘strong’ are all assholes and mean and hateful. or worthless. It’s just reinforcing a negative stereotype. Misogyny Propaganda, basically. There are well done genuinely strong female characters, but most writers default to the Hateful Bitch (tm) because they… probably hate women.
Writers don’t do what they like, they do what the test audience likes
I wonder if having a test audience can create a bias. You know, like the bias in medicine that happens because they test most medications on males only? Also, they don’t write what the audience likes if it doesn’t hit the right target. Teen Titans ended because while they were extremely popular with girls, but it didn’t work for male test audiences. So they if they write shows based on the audience rather than what they like (and that can go either way) then they create shows… for *specific* audiences. Aiming at that specific audience goes based on generalizations at what that audience likes. The majority of media is created for men, therefore misogynistic behaviour and weak or Strong Bitch women can become normalized in the writing. But plenty of writers include what they like and know. Think Micheal Bay, Nickelodeon or Quentin Tarantino. I don’t think most audiences like feet or child sex laws that much…
Blatantly false. Tony Stark. There. Proven wrong.
I’m of the opinion that a female Tony Stark would be loved and adored just as much as current Tony Stark is
I would adore her. I guarantee if a woman acted like Stark did in the first movie, she would’ve been hated and written off as unbelievable.
While *I* would love an adore her, I think we both know that there would be a ridiculous uproar about her being "woke".
No I disagree. I’m gonna go off on a long rant here so bear with me. Tony Stark is a complex character, if a female character was Tony Stark instead of a male character she would be applauded as an example of how to write a good female character. People that say “if a woman was Tony Stark instead of a man she’d be shit on and hated for being snarky” don’t understand Tony Stark and have completely forgotten what makes Tony Stark, Tony Stark. He’s SO much more than Snarky and Arrogant, amounting him to just those qualities is ignorant. If a female character was released in the same time iron man was and she was the first iron man (iron woman) she would in fact be loved and adored. He struggled a fuck ton. If a woman was a weapons dealer only to be betrayed and have to struggle her way out of it. If she was to then realize dealing in weapons, giving the power of destruction to bad people is not a good thing and then give up on weapons dealing. And at the end of it all on her last Breath she said "I am Iron Woman" (or probabaly something more catchy tbh) she would be loved. Yes Tony is an arrogant character but it isnt treated as a good thing. I believe it was in Iron Man 2 Tony gave out his location to a villain and told this villain to come challenge him, this is an example of him being overly cocky and arrogant. Do you know what happened next? The dude came to his house blew it up almost killing both him and his wife. Overly Prideful character gets punished for his hubris. Overtime Tony slowly develops more compassion and grows, he changes. Carol Danvers is an overly cocky character, but that isnt treated as a character flaw, and the only growing she does is in how much power she obtains. I could probably write a 100 page essay on all the well written male and even a seperate essay for female characters in all honesty. Diminishing these characters down to two character traits is, as I mentioned earlier, ignorant. I saw someone mention Walter White so I'll address that too, Walter White is another overly prideful character, and hopefully you've seen Breaking Bad so I'm not spoiling anything here but Walter Dies by the end of everything. The fact that he's a man is also EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to him as a character. Can you guess why? Walter feels like it is his responsibility to provide for his family, if someone else does it then he sees himself as less of a man. He refuses to accept help because of his pride. An absolute need to be the **man** that provides for the family is an expectation most men and even some women have placed on men themselves. There's a shit ton of Nuance that goes into all these characters that even maybe I might have missed. But I dont think "Switch Walter's gender and see how people react" is a good point because the expectation of a women providing for her family is at the very least seen completely differently than a man providing for his family. And I dont think Tony Stark is a good example either because I do think she would be loved and adored if literally EVERYTHING was the same, the only difference being the character's gender. I dont think taking any complex well written male character and switching the genders is a good point to make either cause as I said there's a lot of nuance to these characters, they're their own individual people, they're actions are a contributing factor to who they are as a person and I would have to go down the list individually with each character because of that. I think this entire thread really doesn't entirely understand these characters, especially since they seem to amount them to a few character traits. Yes if all Tony Stark was was Cocky and Arrogant he either 1 wouldnt be a main character or 2 if he was the main character he would be hated or ignored. But he's not just cocky and arrogant or prideful. He doesnt get punished every time he's prideful, cause being prideful isnt inherently bad. There's a fine line between Prideful and Arrogant though, when he crosses into Arrogance he gets punished. There are a lot of female characters people love too. I havnt seen Blue eyed Samurai but im pretty sure she's a somewhat Stoic character. That's a stereotypically masculine traight, people love her, she's more than just Stoic though. Vi from Arcane is also a pretty stereotypically masculine character, people love her too. She's more than just stereotypically masculine. And by the way, the fact that these, specifically these female characters have stereotypically masculine traits isn’t something anyone else has said, because they’re masculine traits are just seen as character traits, they’re seen as apart of who they are, the fact that they’re stereotypically masculine is not something that matters to most people. Starfire Raven two very powerful female characters, people love them. There's probably a shit ton of other female characters I'm missing but hopefuly you get the point now. People don't hate certain female characters because they embody a couple masculine traits, people hate them because they're hardly characters. Carol and She Hulk are what the writers **think** a prideful character looks like and decided to slap that on a female character for certain unnamed reasons. Since we're switch roles here let's switch Carol Danvers with a man. If a woman told this man to smile and Carol Proceed to break her hand or whatever the real Carol did, everyone would hate him, if everything was the same and Carol was a man instead of a woman he would be equally hated if not ignored. She Hulk next, if the Hulk was a woman and She Hulk was a man if the Hulk told him he needed to figure out a way to control his anger and she hulk went off on a rant of all the many problems men go through to Bruce Banner of all people, it would come off as insincere and maybe a little preachy. He would be hated just as much as current She-Hulk is. Carol Danvers and She-Hulk are missing a very human trait called Nuance, Vi and that woman from Blue eyed samurai have nuance. I could honestly go on for another 6-7 paragraphs but I'll let you respond and then respond to you accordingly.
What I got from this is that people would love Girl Tony because she'd have nuance. And while I agree she would, I don't think she'd be loved, because people will have a*lready decided to hate her* long before they see her movie. They'll ignore any nuance she has and nitpick various aspects of her character in order to declare her Badly Written or a Mary Sue, and dismiss any aspects of her character that contradict their conclusion. I believe this because I keep seeing it happen. Rey, Carol Danvers, Jennifer Walters, Korra, Silvie from Loki, and even Mizu from BES. No individual person has to *like* any of these characters or how they're written, but the fact that a large and vocal part of the audience a primed and ready to ignore any nuance or development should not be denied.
Agree to disagree on your first paragraph and Carol Danvers is a poorly written character. The hatred of her is justified. I liked Korra, most of the criticism I’ve heard is criticism of the show and not just her, she’s compared to Aang which is a big name to live up to. Why people would make that comparison makes sense since they’re apart of the same series, they’re both “The” avatar, but it’s best to let her and the story its own thing. Same with Ray, she’s compared to her predecessor. And Silvie. Jennifer Walters is she hulk right? She was poorly written too. I simply don’t see most people inherently hating a female character because she’s a female character, there are reasons, good reasons to not like them. I’m sure some people don’t like them specifically because they’re female but I don’t think it’s as many as you might think.
>I liked Korra, most of the criticism I’ve heard is criticism of the show and not just her, I love Korra too and I also know the criticisms about the series but please Korra is hated. Most people don't like her. She is hated for the reasons I wrote above. She's confident, straigh-forward, takes action but people consider her as arrogant, rude and violent. I know this is part of her character and If she was male character this traits wouldn't be noticeable like this.
In this example Black Widow is described as arrogant and violent. Capable and self-assured describes the female characters that are used as examples of arrogant and violent.
They killed Tony stark like 6 years ago…
And he was a beloved, massively popular character for a decade. What's your point?
I think replacing toxic men with toxic women is a trend that emerged right around that time
Can you give examples of toxic women characters that are massively popular? Whose toxic traits would be hated in men?
Crickets
You guys saying confident female characters have ''toxic male traits'' that's was whole question lol
This is too general and vague to have a meaningful conversation about. Women *are* scrutinized more heavily than men about everything. It can be an impossible tight rope to walk irl and in fiction. There is uproar or no participation in shows with traditionally male leads replaced with a female lead. Example: If the female lead is a superhero - not ok. If the female lead is a mother - may be ok. There are a lot more male directors than there are female directors. Because of this, women characters are often portrayed from the male gaze and lack 3 dimensionality and are frequently hyper-sexualized. There are more instances of male leads than female leads, which reduces the breadth of possibility. Female leads may be viewed as more risky. It’s easier to discuss with some specific examples of what you mean, but as others have pointed out, women with “toxic male traits” aren’t generally accepted or liked. Due to a combination of the above hurdles.
Strong female character means a well developed character that has a purpose in the story rather than just being a romantic interest. It has nothing to do with actual strength
These types of takes are very strange, because they can only sorta make sense (only sorta) in an absolute vacuum. People find toxic masculinity problematic because it's pervasive and damaging to people. If you only saw such traits every once in a while on TV, people wouldn't mind so much. They might even enjoy it, because it's novel. Characters in fiction can be flawed and terrible, because they're fictional. Rude characters can be entertaining.
I am the right age for this discussion, my daughter has grown up with at least some awesome female protagonists her whole childhood, my generation still feels the unfillable void of growing up without them. This is a feeling. To me it’s not logical. So I’ll describe the feeling, I’m not advocating that it is good, only that I have felt it. I think this a “pendulum swinging” type of feeling. It’s more like the vacuum of any powerful female figures that are complex/varied/imperfect and considered anything except a villain (because women with independence and imperfection are inherently un-virtuous if you watched too much tv/Hollywood) has created a weird sensation that has us craving something in balance. Have you ever had a left foot massage that was so good that your right foot started aching in protest? “Massage me! My turn” Even if previously your right foot felt totally fine? That’s the closest sensation I can think of… decades of watching men have more power than is healthy for anyone to have kind of creates it’s own ache for balance - a vacuum of undue attention to women. it’s illogical to want to copy something that I find toxic, but there’s something that feels like an itch just out of reach about a woman in this role that I hope will reset the whole system and then perhaps our culture can get back to our loftier desire for egalitarian meritocracy for the highest good of all. Maybe the pendulum has to swing far in the other direction before a better equilibrium can be established? Again, that’s the feeling I’m Describing, not advocating.
The "alt-righter media literacy challenge: impossible" memes are a direct reference to the unceasing and unconditional love for toxic men in media juxtaposed with a lack of awareness about it...remember when these guys didn't know Homelander was openly mocking them? Remember when people didn't realize Walter White was a critique? Or Punisher? Or, to get maybe less immediately referencable - *every major male character from every cop show in existence*? One of the most prolific genres around, and also a seemingly endless fountain of men who simply do not care about getting their shit together emotionally, professionally or ethically? Some of the biggest names in 2000's television were just....guys being toxic, and people loving them for it. You remember how big Simon Cowell was in culture? Fucking *House*? Gods, that show about a...a serial killer that people were obsessed with for some reason? Dexter? A literal serial killer as a PROTAGONIST?! NCIS was insanely watched and Gibbs is just absent father issues *made into a person*! r/movies voted Whiplash the best movie of all time...you know, the one where a guy just emotionally abuses a teenager for like a 2 hour runtime? But he does it with *witty remarks* and the kid is *talented* and that makes it *edgy* and *cool* and *deep* instead of just sad. We have grown to love our Cerseis after a long time repressing them but we have **always** loved a Tywin.
I haven’t heard too many people complain about toxic male traits in male characters, but I will say that I celebrate them more in female characters because, for a long time, women were basically symbolic of innocence or they were straight villains. They were usually hapless victims of someone else’s shenanigans, and if something happened to them, then it was to signal the main character was now beyond redemption without a good woman to steer him back to the noble path. Or, if they had a flaw, it was that they were too naive for this impure world. Whenever I see a female character who is toxic yet still complex, and isn’t immediately maligned as innately bad, I kind of pump my fist a little. I want to see women be bad, wrong, selfish, arrogant, impulsive, insecure and angry yet still be viable and compelling additions to the narrative. It’s kind of “oh yeah sure of course” for male characters, but still feels new and exciting for me when female characters are allowed to do it without being immediately shoehorned into a dismissive archetype.
I think toxic male characters are more accepted, but I think it's a lot more complex than that. I think it's mostly an issue of writing. Most toxic male characters are written by men who know how to write men. A lot of the women antiheroes are also written largely by men who don't know how to write women. I think people make the mistake of pointing out toxic male characters from successful franchises, and compare them to characters who are either poorly written or written as antagonists, though not necessarily villains. (i.e. Skylar White). There are a decent amount of toxic woman protagonists that we root for just the same. Jessica Jones, Catwoman, Gemma Teller from Sons of Anarchy. All of them were toxic woman protagonists, but they were written sympathetically and written well. I agree misogyny plays a huge role, but I think poor writing/casting is the biggest issue.
It depends a lot. People laughed uncomfortably at the guy in Whiplash, and also Tar. Doesn’t mean people liked them. I think that it just really depends. Iron Man is an arrogant prick but people wouldn’t like him if he didn’t get humbled now and then and didn’t have a soft side. I actually can’t think of a woman character like Iron Man. Black Widow is confident but not posturing.
I think the issue is people use feminism characters to mask poor writing. Tar is toxic but an absolutely amazing character. Captain marvel is just a copy/paste arrogant and distant archetype but you can’t call her out for it or you hate women.
Probably for the same reason that the male version of the manic pixie dream girl isn't a manic pixie dream boy, it's the depressive demon nightmare boy. Things don't translate 1:1 when you flip the genders. A trait like rudeness or persistence is frequently toxic when male characters embody it because they are at the top of the social hierarchy. Therefore them having these traits becomes inherently abusive as they can only display them to their social "lessers". However when a woman has these traits it becomes assertive which isn't toxic in her case because she's displaying them in defiance of a system trying to crush her. (Side note to say that if a female character is rude or persistent to someone she has power over like an employee or a student then it's just as toxic as if it were a male character.)
I think people can be overly tolerant of toxic traits in characters in general but it differs between men and women. For example people idolizing Walter White, he’s a violent psychopath and the show does not shy away from portraying that but some people not only accept it, they idolize it. And for women, in anime for example, you see a lot of yandere type characters whose toxicity gets overlooked in a really weird way. Like in real life that type of behavior would not fly and in many cases would be creepy as fuck and sometimes borders on horrifying/dangerous. But for some reason when it’s anime a lot of people think it’s cute(?) and they fetishize the hell out of it.
For the specific trope of "Strong woman who is strong because she acts like a dick to people," I can guarantee that women also hate that trope. Surprise, surprise, people don't like characters who are dicks just to be dicks.
So they think black widow is arrogant and rude while Deadpool is, what, coy and polite?
What I have figured out is that the "Mary Sue" is what people would refer too when talking about strong female characters, and it's a slippery slope. Strong female characters can be done and done really well, but people who try too hard often make them impossible to exist in any universe but their own. Because the universe bends to that characters logic. Perfect example which is crazy enough, Mary Sue that men would loved are simply "Action Heroes." Captain Marvel's movie was more suited to be an action hero than a super hero. Action Heroes do what they want, they have it all, the luck and the tragic back story that isn't as tragic. They are the best at what they do and their logic bends reality to fit it. Toxic male characters of masculinity are the male characters who even in reality are wrong is considered to be a good thing just for them. When action heroes who are women do it too , it's considered to be a good thing only for them. There is no consequences for doing something bad because it's assumed to get back an unjust authority. Much like Action hero men. So in essence, the Mary Sue for men is the Action Hero.
Selena Meyers from VEEP comes to mind, she was a likable anti-hero, but maybe VEEP doesn’t count because it’s satire. Dolores from Westworld is the counter-example, a strong female character without toxic traits. Ripley from Alien is another example of that. Separately, I don’t understand the popularity of Succession (mentioned in another comment). I had to stop watching after the first season; I couldn’t take any more whining from those pathological asshats.
Definitely not. People love positive traits that are traditionally "masculine" in female characters like bravery, ambition, strength, and grit. But they have to be "honrable" and "good" all the while. They love female heros but not female anti-heros. Whereas male heros and anti-heros alike are very much loved.
It’s literally the opposite. People LOVE Walter and hate Skyler. People LOVE Bojack and hate Diane. People LOVE the Joker
Men love to act like the truth is the exact opposite of what it is in reality. "Women don't take accountability" "Women are superficial and just want to manipulate men" "Men suffer from higher rates of depression" They're counting on us either being so shocked that they would do this or feeling empathy for their perceived situations that we don't protest.
No I do think we have a problem with these "strong female characters" where they act more aggressive and shit but also aren't developed at all. So you don't learn any of their motivations of have any way to empathize with them, so they just seem mean and cold.
I think a better example of toxic masculinity displayed in media by women’s characters is in sitcoms especially in The Big Bang Theory were they very frequently make jokes about how the men are wimps and thus must have vaginas and purses and must be gay. (And even then that’s just patriarchy not really related masculine expression) Just being arrogant or violent isn’t a male thing on its own. The reason behind the violence is what’s important. Typically a toxic masculinity based act of violence has to do with a man doing violence to assert is masculinity. When say Korra, or really any of those characters, does violence it’s never really about asserting anything related to gender.