Straw Misogynist

""Shar-teel, your lot in life is to bake cookies and bear children, now shut up.""

- Eldoth Kron, Baldur's Gate

A character drawn as having hateful views of women so that he can be proven wrong.

The Straw Misogynist is usually male (but not always) and hates or has contempt for women in general. Many times, he backs up his theories with pseudo-scientific evidence that men are inherently superior in every domain and that women ought to Stay in the Kitchen and grovel at the feet of men in light of these "irrefutable" proofs that all women are worthy of his contempt and ridicule. He is likely to interpret the fact that many women do well in business, science and so on as some kind of insult and attack against him personally.

Almost any male character can become this without warning, like a twisted version of Epiphany Therapy. If a male character is set up in opposition to a female character who's meant to be viewed positively, the easiest (read: laziest) way to show him as wrong (especially if someone has an axe to grind) is to have them "reveal" a hatred of women that was supposedly hidden just beneath the surface all this time. Need to have the heroine's relationship end for whatever reason? Boyfriend suddenly turns into a ranting misogynist. Heroine is about to face off against the final boss, who's a man? He'll make a few statements revealing he thinks it's impossible a weak, stupid, pathetic woman could beat him, even if he hasn't uttered a single other opinion on gender during the entire work, thereby making the heroine's defeating him pure catharsis and a supposed feminist statement.

This trope often relies heavily on a pro-male, anti-female, version of Mars and Venus Gender Contrast. Compare He-Man Woman Hater, for a generally less extreme (and often more rounded) version, Effeminate Misogynistic Guy for especially feminine varieties of misogynist, and Licensed Sexist for the comedic version.

If you are unsure if a character is a Straw Misogynist, they're usually Anvilicious in execution, and are either painted by the narrative as being wrong or are proven wrong by events or characters in the story.

Related to Straw Feminist, though take note it is not an inversion.

Anime & Manga

 * Shitsurakuen: Pretty much every male student or staff member at Utopia Academy.
 * Freezing: Louis El Bridget certainly comes across as one.
 * The demon Salamander from Yondemasuyo, Azazel-san, as a stab at Samurai culture.

Comic Books

 * Most Golden Age Wonder Woman villains fit this category, notably Ares, who kept women in chains as slaves. Dr. Psycho, in his first story, was a phony medium who could summon the "ghost of George Washington" and used this fake psychic projection to denounce the inclusion of women in the US Armed Forces.
 * This has very much seen a revival in recent years, where it seems the only reason anyone opposes Wonder Woman anymore is if they hate all women.
 * When the writers decided to take Thor's powers away and give them to a woman, much like the above example, every single male opponent she faced became a complete misogynist, with one even making a nonsensical rant that was clearly intended as a straw representation of the female character's critics. The male character then had his jaw broken by his female partner (and wife), who surrendered to the female character wielding Thor's powers as a show of "female solidarity". The female wielding Thor's powers then knocked the other woman out, apparently just to establish pecking order.

Fan Fiction

 * Played with in Total Drama Chris: One challenge has the campers pretending to be other campers.  is assigned Ezekiel, and takes advantage of this to rattle off a constant litany of sexist remarks, based off the one sexist comment Ezekiel had made in Total Drama Island. (Meanwhile, the Zeke seen here is a Fish Out of Water Nice Guy who's mortified at this portrayal.)
 * In the Harry Potter fic "Becoming Female", Harry becomes female and Ron becomes this trope, changing his name to "Ron Raper" midway through the story. See here for a "fan" art depiction of Becoming Female Ron.
 * Ron also becomes one of these in The Last War, where he abuses Hermione and the kids before suffering a Karmic Death, and Dark Secrets where he does the same to Mary Sue and is killed by the literal Draco in Leather Pants. It's a far too common fate for him. The Last War also goes Up to Eleven by revealing the entire wizarding world to be made up of this character type.

Film
""Lisa, whatever female-driven, emotion-based dilemma you may be dealing with right now, you have my sympathy. But for the sake of time and sanity, let's break this down into a little male-driven fact-based logic.""
 * In Red Eye Jackson Rippner holds some rather sexist views about women.


 * In Mulan, this is the trait that justifies Chi-Fu's treatment as a minor villain. He's otherwise unpleasant but well-meaning and loyal.
 * 300 makes the Persians into a race of these. Which is such a blatant case of Artistic License that it's ironic, since the Persians, by the standards of their time, were pretty progressive about women's rights, and the Spartans were probably the most rampantly misogynistic culture in human history.
 * Actually, the Spartan women had an incredible amount of agency, given the time. The highest honor was to have a child, sure, but girls were educated and trained in ways paralleling the boys in order to make them physically strong - they would even compete against each other and practiced in the nude like the boys did, separating themselves from every other Hellenistic polis. And the women could choose not to reproduce if they wished not to risk their life, which was more than a male soldier could do - he would be forever labeled a Trembler and ostracized.
 * And the "progressive" nature of Persians is very much a case of Historical Hero Upgrade largely applied by people angry at the movie.

Literature

 * Mona Gardner's The Dinner Party: A guest at a dinner party in colonial India insists that women are useless in a crisis as they always scream and panic, whereas men have the nerve to suppress their emotions. Naturally, the plot of the short story involves him getting his comeuppance when a woman shows more control than a man in a situation where the guests lives are at stake.
 * In the Star Wars Extended Universe, as if trying to make him as thoroughly dislikable as possible, Emperor Palpatine is revealed to be one of these in addition to being a racist, mass-murdering totalitarian maniac.
 * In The Millennium Trilogy, all of the male villains are either white supremacists or murder, rape and abuse women (thus the "Men Who Hate Women" of the first book's title)
 * The Sword of Truth: All male villains. Yes, all of them.
 * Many villains in The Culture series, probably because the Culture itself is an egalitarian Utopia. This is practically the hat of the aliens in both The Player of Games and Excession, although it's played seriously in the former and for Black Comedy in the latter. Veppers, the Corrupt Corporate Executive villain of Surface Detail is also quite misogynistic.
 * Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: A number of male villains are very much this. Mitch Riley from the book Hide And Seek and Henry "Hank" Jellicoe would be some major examples.
 * The representatives to ASEAN in the Dale Brown novel Sky Masters. Those that we see speaking anyway.
 * Every single conservative male in the world is portrayed as this in the In Death novels. The Conservative/Republican party's only goals seem to be to strip away every single possible right they can from women and to (obviously) plunge the country back into war by un-repealing the Second Amendment.

Live Action TV

 * The Cosby Show gives us Kenny, with whom Rudy spends an awful lot of time for reasons never explained. Elvin may qualify occasionally as a more soft-and-sweet variety.
 * Joss Whedon's televised work:
 * Angel had a character that unleashed the latent violent misogyny. Apparently, all men are these, they're just repressed. And that sociopathic vampires are above such petty concerns.
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Caleb; Warren Mears.
 * Firefly: "Heart of Gold" included one of these as a villain. Anviliciously, he goes so far as to force a woman to service him in public. Somewhat counterbalanced by the adherence to the Hooker with a Heart of Gold trope.
 * Note that none of this has stopped feminists from declaring Joss Whedon to be a misogynist himself. Repeatedly, at any provocation.
 * Robin Hood: Subverted by the Sheriff of Nottingham. Throughout the series, Vaizey makes several disparaging remarks toward women, and often refers to them as "lepers". However, there was an interesting subtext that suggested that it was all a show for the benefit of his Dragon, who he didn't want getting too close to any female who could threaten the influence Vaizey held over Guy. The only character Vaizey shows any love for is his sister, and he never underestimates Marian, even when Guy and Robin do. When an Abbess comes to the castle and a guard argues against letting her into a room where the tax money is kept, the Sheriff's response is notably not "she's just a woman", but "she's just a nun."
 * Admittedly since the abbess turned out to be  in that case he did underestimate her, even though he clearly never trusted her
 * The Sheriff in Robin of Sherwood has pretty strong elements of this. If there's a woman in his storyline, he's either dismissive, insulting, or trying to marry her for her money. And in those latter cases, he doesn't even pretend to care about them.
 * Star Trek: The Ferengi, which is sort of strange, because as Quark once points out, the Ferengi's love of money has actually made them largely immune to many other human vices, like racism. The end of Deep Space Nine implies this will be reformed soon.
 * They were probably looking for a way to reduce some of the competition on the planet. Instead of 100% of the people being greedy merchants only about 50% can be.
 * More like the Ferengi were Straw Capitalists, and so other negative traits were tacked onto them to increase their strawman status.
 * Star Trek: Voyager: The Kazon.

Tabletop Games

 * Inverted with Straw Misandrist (not Straw Feminist) Tepet Lisara in Exalted.

Web Comics

 * Dominic Deegan: The character 'Stunt' started out as one, and still has many, many elements. He's also a plain ol' Jerkass. Evil Orcs also fall into this category. He's pretty-much graduated to a standard He-Man Woman Hater at this point.
 * Sluggy Freelance's villain Dr. Nofun, is portrayed as extremely sexist; his beliefs are so over-the-top that it's clearly meant to be played for comedy. Recently, larger versions of his misogynist PSAs have been running as the weekend filler with the disclaimer: "The opinions expressed here are the views of a fictional two-dimensional villain and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Sluggy Freelance LLC, it's subsidiaries, supersidiaries, and slightly less fictional avian representation in perpetuity, esquire." This is played even straighter when
 * New guy Wes in Between Failures is this, most certainly. He claims that Mike, being male, should have "put [Carol] in her place," and seems to think that, given enough time, he can seduce any woman (even one as weird as Brooksie), which is clearly the only reason women exist in his world.
 * The Straw Fan in Shortpacked also doubles as this, among all his other numerous strawmannish traits.
 * Amazingly, the side comic of El Goonish Shive manages to turn the Legion from Fallout: New Vegas into this. How do you turn an explicitly sexist, slaving, patriarchal faction into a strawman for misogyny? Why, portray them as college fraternity-esque "dudebros", of course!

Video Games

 * Quoted above, the party member Eldoth from Baldur's Gate is a sleazy bard who makes his living seducing women to take advantage of their riches. If the player groups with him and Shar-teel, a vocal misandrist, the two inevitably come to blows. The mismatch in combat strength between Eldoth (a bard) and Shar-teel (a warrior) means that Eldoth is almost always slaughtered in the confrontation, barring luck or the hero's intervention. Whether or not this was intended by the developers isn't known.
 * Persona 4 has . Bitches and whores, indeed.
 * One bonus episode of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky stars the legendary all-female Team Charm. A minor character, a Houndoom, exists in that chapter and only gets two lines: one is expressing blatant sexism towards Team Charm, and the other reveals him as a hypocritical coward.

Western Animation

 * Waterbending master Pakku's misogyny is tailor made to be proven wrong. His stance is that women waterbenders should not learn offensive waterbending skills and should only learn healing. Katara challenges him, and while she doesn't win, she helps him overcome his actual issues, which have to do with being hurt by an old flame rather than actual misogyny. Thus, he sees the error of his ways, teaches Katara offensive waterbending techniques, and, at the end of her training, he calls her a Waterbending master, meaning that she can take charge of protagonist Aang's training.
 * Pakku is more of a subversion. The straw part remains, but the misogynist part does not. Pakku's attitude would better be described as cultural chauvinism than outright hatred.
 * Family Guy: Peter Griffin becomes this for one episode, to the point of thinking that it's illegal for women to drive.
 * King of the Hill:
 * One episode has Alan Rickman playing the "king" of a Renaissance Fair who treats female performers like garbage and hides behind the defense of "historical accuracy".
 * Cotton Hill as well, though he's just plain a Jerkass and an example of Screw Politeness, I Killed Fitty Men!.
 * Total Drama Island: Ezekiel might be one of these (he was voted off before we could find out for sure). His father definitely is.
 * Futurama has Leela's old martial arts master, a rather transparent parody of Yoda. He's so over-the-top that there's at least a decent chance he's a parody of this trope, but it can be hard to tell with Futurama sometimes.
 * Generally all of the male characters turn into this any time the issue of men versus women comes up. Normally Fry is at worst just clueless about women, Bender doesn't care about gender at all, Zoidberg is from a species that doesn't even have the concept of romance, the Professor is just a cranky old man who's 95% beyond caring about sex at all, and so on. But the moment sexism comes up, they all turn into sneering, smirking sexists who can't wait to tell women to get back in the kitchen.
 * And, of course, there's Zapp Brannigan. If you've seen an episode with Zapp Brannigan, you don't really need an explanation. If you haven't, no explanation would convey the full impact of his strawman status.