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Gender Dynamics Index: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}{{page should be category}}''MOD: or a collection of categories.''
This index compiles tropes that illustrate how gender is used in fiction.
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This index is divided into five sections:
* Gender Dynamic Metatropes: Illustrating the underlying dynamic in characterization of male and female charaters that give rise to many [[Double Standards]].
* Female Tropes: How the Gender Dynamic Metatropes manifest for female characters.
* Male Tropes: How the Gender Dynamic Metatropes manifest for male characters.
* Contrasts: Direct contrasts between [[Always Female]] and [[Always Male]] Tropes that illustrate gender dynamics.
* In Real Life: Research that illustrates aspects of Gender Dynamics. (Acceptable: studies on double standards in how we view men and women or media that illustrates a double standard. Unacceptable: Political writings aiming to use evidence of double standards to advance an agenda.)
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* [[Men Are Strong, Women Are Pretty]]: Being active adds to a man's appeal, being passive detracts; being active can detract from a woman's appeal while being passive does not.
* [[Men Act, Women Are]]: Men are expected to be active and create their value through their achievements; women are allowed to be passive and take their value from passive attributes.
* [[Men Use Violence, Women Use Communication]]: Men physically destroy the enemy, accepting a compromise only if all else fails. Women parley with the enemy and compromise, resorting to physical violence as a last resort.
== Female Tropes ==
As a rule in fiction, the default assumption is that [[Women Are Delicate]]. Used as plot devices and story trappings, female characters tend to be used as [[Ms. Fanservice|fanservice]], [[Disposable Woman|to provide motivation for other characters]], a way of generating a feeling of [[Monster Misogyny|horror]] in the audience and as a source of in story [[Screaming Woman|emotional reactions]] to events. In terms of characterization, female characters tend to be characterized by their [[Never a Self-Made Woman|relationships to other characters]] and by their [[Male Gaze|passive attributes]], and tend to exhibit more passive emotions.
Overall there are four categories to how women are portrayed in fiction: Objectified, Reactive, Relational and Motivational.
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* [[Bait and Switch Lesbians]]
* [[
* [[Cat Fight]]: Fights between women are often played as fanservice or amusing bickering rather than legitimate, serious battle.
* [[Cute Monster Girl]]: Female monsters still have to be attractive to human males.
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* [[Lesbian Vampire]]: Same deal as above, with the added benefit of being inherently evil.
* [[Vasquez Always Dies]]: One reason why women with lots of agency might be earmarked for death is because they are not helpless and vulnerable, thus have lower passive value.
* [[White Dwarf Starlet]] and [[Hollywood Old]]: Old women (ie past 50) are sexually undesirable thus have lost all intrinsic passive value they could have had. They can sometimes play to the relational part of the dynamics but almost always as a [[Disposable Woman]], proving one more time that old age is a female character's doom.
A side effect of Objectification is that women can only be moral objects and not moral actors. Consequently, more often than not, a woman's chastity and general attitude towards sexuality is the sole unit of measure of her morality. Many of these tropes are being challenged in Western media, however they still hold considerable sway, possibly because their inverse, that male sexuality is [[All Men Are Perverts|dirty, damaging and defiling]] has not been addressed to any great degree. It may be that men have to be seen as having sexual innocence (and, conversely, women an equal sexual potency) in order for women to stop being judged by '''their''' innocence.
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* [[Females Are More Innocent]]: Female [[Complete Monster]]s are rarer because it is believed women never partake in evildoing for the sake of it. There's almost always a man responsible for making her that way. [[Never a Self-Made Woman]] meets [[Women Are Wiser]].
* [[High Heel Face Turn]]: Consequence of the above. Since women are never moral actors, villainesses need a man with a stronger morality to orient them in the right direction. Thus, females are more redeemable than men.
* [[Karma Houdini]]: more often applied to villainous female characters.
* [[Villainesses Want Heroes]]: All that a villainess needs to be redeemed is true love. Or just good sex.
* [[
In summary, objectification is when a female character is reduced down to her passive attributes and her agency denied. It can manifest in being valued for fanservice, but more subtly when a female character is characterized as good or competent ''because'' she's female or her negative actions downplayed as the fault of a male character. The implication is that objects, namely women, don't have the ability to make moral choices; their existence is summed up by their attributes and all their apparent 'choices' are the result of the agency of real people, namely men.
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Women are often used for reaction shots. This heightens horror, imparts a sense of urgency and distress, deepens the emotional impact of events, and sets a mood.
The reactions of female characters are also used to characterize other characters. A character who causes distress to a woman is usually a [[Designated Villain|villain]] or at best a dark Antihero. This distress can be caused by as little as arguing with her or speaking harshly to her. In extreme cases, this is one reason why the trope [[
In terms of characterization, female characters often put more emphasis on their emotional reactions to events and actions taken by others than actual actions taken in response. A female character's emotional sensitivity is seen as a big part of her femininity (see "[[The Princess and the Pea]]"). In essence, the more vulnerable, the more delicate, the more she suffers, and the greater emphasis on her inability to recover or take proactive action—her victimhood—the more feminine she appears. Even in modern works this holds true. Active women may be portrayed as positive characters, but their [[Men Are Strong, Women Are Pretty|agency does not make them more feminine]].
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* [[Hysterical Woman]]: Pulling women's reactions to a ridiculous extreme.
Another example is how emotional reactions tend to be portrayed as more of the concern of female characters, particularly positive or empathetic emotions (as opposed to anger, hate and jealousy). Female characters are often shown mediating disputes between male characters, offering solace to other characters caught in a reactive moment (where they are depressed or upset at something), and if a mook expresses concern over the morally dubious behavior of the [[Big Bad]] or his orders, almost invariably it will be a female mook (the lone female mook of a bad boss is always the one to bet on for a [[Heel Face Turn]]; she is almost never depicted as [[For the Evulz|relishing]] the evil she does). Rarely are male characters depicted offering each other an emotional safe space as this might come across as uncomfortably effeminate or gay (the only exception seems to be war movies). This has the effect of making sympathetic emotions the domain of female characters, which somewhat ridiculous because all people have them and there is [https://web.archive.org/web/20120410133518/http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/05/vulcans-nixed-y.html evidence] that we can't think or make decisions without emotions and this includes the positive and sympathetic emotions. Essentially without them, far from being more effective, we are paralyzed with indecision.
* [[The Chick]]
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* [[Female Gaze]]
* [[Effortless Amazonian Lift]]: An attempt to show a woman's unexpected physical strength or her dominance in a relationship.
* [[Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy]]: Reversal of gender roles.
* [[Real Women Don't Wear Dresses]]: Strong women aren't feminine and shouldn't be; opens up a whole set of characterization problems.
* [[Rebellious Princess]]: The antithesis to [[Princess Classic]], who rejects her relationship-based inherited status to make her own fortune. Unless, of course, her "rebellion" boils down to substituting one man (her father) with another (her love interest).
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== Male Tropes ==
As plot devices and story trappings, male characters tend to be used as [[Men Are the Expendable Gender|expendable minions or pawns]] creating a sense of danger in a story or establishing a [[A Real Man Is a Killer|protagonist as a badass]]. Certain [[
'''Actified'''
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* [[A Real Man Is a Killer]]: "True" manhood is primarily about being violent and enjoying it; also associates men with death and destruction.
* [[Testosterone Poisoning]]: Manliness often has to be stereotypical and blown out of proportion to be perceived as credible.
* [[Training
Male characters who fail to live up to an impossible standard of action-taking or being successful,<ref>And just like you can never be too busty or too thin if you're a woman, there's always more to achieve if you're a man! Trying to achieve masculinity or femininity? Always a losing battle.</ref> are failures as men and just like women who fail to be properly feminine, are punished by death or ridicule:
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In situations where a character needs more passive, nurturing emotions to succeed, male characters are often shown as useless or actively malevolent. This includes raising kids and other family situations.
Men's relationship to their children is often portrayed ambivalently. On the one hand if they don't want children and their partners do (or are pregnant) they are often portrayed as [[Panicky Expectant Father|unprepared]] and [[Man Child|immature]]. If their partner [[The Baby Trap|gets pregnant on purpose to jumpstart or upgrade]] their relationship they are usually told to man up rather then having it recognized in story that forcing a person into parenthood is [[
* [[Awkward Father-Son Bonding Activity]]
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* [[All Abusers Are Male]]: People who abuse tend to be abuse victims themselves. Poverty and drug use also play a large role. In a lot of media men are not only portrayed as abusive, and the only abusers, but they are [[Flat Character|one-dimensional]] and [[Large Ham|over-the top abusers]] with no effort to examine why.
* [[All Men Are Rapists]]: All men are rapists and only the exceptions are notable.
* [[Complete Monster]]: More often than not a male character is pure evil than a female one.
* [[Female Angel, Male Demon]]: Demons are representations of unexamined evil. Why are they evil? No reason, just made that way. Due to this they are often portrayed as male.
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* [[Circumcision Angst]]: Regardless where you sit on the pro versus con end of circumcision, genital surgery on infant boys without anesthetic is a pretty good example of ignoring male pain.
* [[Conscription]]: With the exception of Israel (which still exempts women from combat), the draft or registration for the draft only applies to men. See [[Stay in the Kitchen]] which is often THE argument used against female military training.
* [[Draft Dodging]]: Historically men who were not willing to die or kill for their country were put to death. In [[World War
* [[Honor-Related Abuse]]: One third of all honor killings target men. Men are sometimes targeted for failing to live up to the ideals of manhood.
* [[We Have Reserves]]
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'''Overall'''
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20150419143411/http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wegner/pdfs/Gray%20
* [[wikipedia:Women are wonderful|Men and women associate more positive characteristics with women and more negative characteristics with men.]] Despite this, women are still discriminated against for certain job positions that require a perception of greater agency. In light of the research into Moral Typecasting, it's possible that women are viewed more positively than men because they are seen as moral patients who are incapable of doing bad or good. This view subsequently hampers them when they wish to achieve positions associated with greater agency and responsibility.
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'''Proactive/Reactive'''
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120608021857/http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110524/sexual-attraction-happy-110524
'''Expendable'''
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-57-i1S95Kk&feature=relmfu Video depicts what happens when a woman spikes a man's drink versus a man spiking a woman's drink.]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlFAd4YdQks Video depiction of bystander reaction to male-on-female and female-on-male abuse]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20141101233152/http://abcnews.go.com/WhatWouldYouDo/video/stealing-blind-intervene-6746215 People help a blind woman who is cheated more often than a blind man.]
* [http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=183059 Male civilians more likely to be targeted in wartime and less likely to be evacuated from dangerous areas.]
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Sociology Tropes]]
[[Category:Characters As Device]]
[[Category:Gender and Sexuality Tropes]]
[[Category:Narrative Tropes]]
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