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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"To put it simply: men are neither supposed nor allowed to be dependent. They are expected to take care of others and themselves. And when they cannot or will not do it, then the assumption at the heart of the culture is that they are somehow less than men and therefore unworthy of help. An irony asserts itself: [[Morton's Fork|by being in need of help, men forfeit the right to it.]]"''
|'''Peter Marin''', [http://keddycsi.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/abandoning-men_-jill-gets-welfare.pdf Jill Gets Welfare--Jack Becomes Homeless]}}
A sub-trope of the [[Double Standard]]. In media, female characters start with automatic audience sympathy because women are seen as [[Closer to Earth|moral]], [[Incorruptible Pure Pureness|innocent]], [[Beauty Is Never Tarnished|beautiful]] or simply because they have [[Male Gaze|sexual value]]. Male characters are less likely to be seen that way and must earn audience sympathy by acting appropriately manly and heroic, which, more often then not, involves saving the [[Damsel in Distress]].
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Conversely, if a man is [[Non-Action Guy|unable to take care of himself or others]] he forfeits audience sympathy. Women, on the other hand, do not lose audience sympathy—or at least not as much—for being [[The Load|helpless]], [[Stop Helping Me!|incompetent]] or [[Dirty Coward|abandoning men to their fates in order to save themselves.]] Strangely, this can still hold true if the woman in question has already been established as a [[Badass]]. See [[Chickification]].
This trope has its origins as a real life ''survival strategy''.<ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusive_fitness For the group as a whole, not specifically the men, of course]</ref>
The consequences of this are complicated, but in summary:
* If the story requires random anonymous characters to die just to move the plot forward, they'll be male. If the plot requires a [[Stuffed
* Female characters can lose audience sympathy, but they have to work harder. Female villains are [[High Heel Face Turn|more likely to be redeemed]] and also less likely to be taken seriously in their villainy.
* Male characters get more explicit and brutal deaths. If a man and a woman are killed in equally brutal ways, the woman's death is treated as worse.
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There are a ''lot'' of related tropes:
* [[Always Save the Girl]]
* [[Closer to Earth]]
* [[Disposable Woman]]
* [[Damsel in Distress]]
* [[Double Standard Abuse (Female on Male)]]
* [[The Dulcinea Effect]]
* [[Her Heart Will Go On]]
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* [[Sacrificial Lion]]
* [[Stay in the Kitchen]]
* [[Stuffed Into the Fridge]]
* [[The Unfair Sex]]
* [[White Knighting]]
* [[Wouldn't Hit a Girl]]
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'''<big>Fun questions to think about:</big>'''
▲2. If so, was her death considered no more noteworthy than the deaths of other anonymous male extras?
▲3. Was the female character's death classifiable as [[Gorn]]? Was it on screen?
▲4. Was her killer a male protagonist and did he retain audience sympathy?
Answer 'yes' to all four, and, congrats, you've got a complete aversion.
{{deathtrope}}
----
{{examples}}
== Played Straight ==
=== Anime
* ''[[Baccano!]]'': The only female character to even get noticeably injured in the bloody events aboard the Flying Pussyfoot is Rachel—and we never actually see her injury, only the gunshot and her subsequently bandaged leg.
* ''[[Bleach]]'': Earlier on, there's a limited example of the lack of anonymous women in the Soul Society arc. At the beginning Soul Reapers are generally being used as [[Mooks]], and all such are male, as opposed to the leading cadre which includes a handful of females. Once the named characters have been shown enough that we can start sympathetically viewing Soul Reapers as a group, we start seeing Academy flashbacks in which a reasonable proportion of the anonymous Soul Reapers are female, and proceed from there, making it clear this trope is the ''Raison d'être''.
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* ''[[Noir]]'': The two main characters are female assassins who mow down the male [[Mooks]].
* ''[[Saint Seiya]]'': Despite the high death count, all the female Saints, Marin, Shaina and June, manage to survive while all but the five main bronze boys die.
* ''[[Strike Witches]]'': Men are pretty much [[Cannon Fodder]] for the Neuroi. On the other hand, the show treats all deaths as equally tragic; even Minna's boyfriend was given a well-rounded backstory which is more than can be said for a lot of [[Disposable Women]]. Witches are the only ones who can seriously harm Neuroi; conventional weapons are fairly effective, but not nearly as much. Obviously the military brass are not too happy that the women are getting all the military glory while the men are sent back in body bags or soup cans - on other hand, it's not expanded upon exactly how much male combatants are actually involved in direct combat, and as such it seems that most men are limited mostly to support roles while the Witches do all the heavy lifting. Most instances where men actually do fight seem more accidental than intentional. The fact that there are no non-Witch women serving on the front-lines is on the other hand justified by simple reality and explained in universe. The brass originally didn't want girls on the battlefield (just like in [[Real Life]] during [[World War II]]), which is why they were almost all male but had to conscript teenage magical girls because nothing else was effective. Despite this, there do appear to be non-Witch women serving on battleships, but even their roles are not elaborated upon. If there's any reason women aren't being hired as cannon fodder, it's because the brass doesn't think non-Witch women are competent enough.
* ''[[Sky Girls]]'': Mentioned but never expanded upon. It was stated that nearly 90% of the male population aged 20–30 was wiped out in the first war with the WORMS. Among the surviving humans actually seen, however, there appear to be just as many young adult men as women.
* In ''[[Freezing]]'', the idea of turning civilian girls in [[Super Soldier|Pandoras]] was initially met with much opposition, the argument being only those naturally burdened with the task should not rely on those whom they should be protecting. Bringing ''boys'' in, however, turned out to be a-okay. There is the point that the boys as their role as a Barrier Warrior is a major advantage for the side of humanity, but the fact is that the main fighting force is quickly being mowed down.
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*** Male corpses are still dealt with in a much less humanized manner ''by the story itself''. They're generally used for horror value or as just another way to show the trials and tribulations of the post-genderpocalypse... characters are more often grossed out than saddened to see them. It's also noteworthy that Yorick has had every single male member of his family and every male he ever knew die... even discovering the corpse of his best friend in a state of advanced decomposition... but apparently the thing that ''really'' traumatized him was having to shoot a woman that was trying to kill him.
* When the [[Justice League of America]] moved to Detroit they introduced a group of new superheroes that had an equal number of males and females. However after the new additions proved to be unpopular DC decided to get rid of them by killing of the men and having the women leave the team. The only reason for having only the men killed appears to be this trope.
* In a letter column for Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming's ''[[Powers]]'', in response to the the first several story arcs, a female reader wrote in to ask why Bendis felt the need to kill so many women in his ''Powers'' stories. Bendis's reply was that, looking back over the stories the reader mentioned, 3 women had been brutally killed, but so had something like 40 men.
** This viewpoint (and the trope) essentially define the original [[Women in Refrigerators]] complaint. The fact that male characters die just as or more often than female characters, and for the same reasons, is ignored because some people automatically get upset when a female character (no matter how minor) is killed, but not necessarily when a male character is killed. This has led to such ridiculous statements as saying that [[Batman]]'s mother was "stuffed in the fridge"... but apparently not his father, who died near-simultaneously with her.
* A Conan the Barbarian comic has Conan finding out just how many of the men he is presently dealing with (most of whom need killing) have had carnal knowledge of his current concubine. She responds with a quiet dignity, "it's not easy being a woman in a man's world." Conan then bluntly subverts the trope by countering, "you should try being a man in it."
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*** Which is an [[Audience Reaction]] example of this trope.
* In the ''Merlin'' episode ''Excalibur'' the [[Big Bad]] is extorting food from the peasants and punches a woman who tries to stop him. A man runs out to save her and is shot with a crossbow. The camera lingers on the woman, and another man is shown coming to her aid and holding her, the man shot with the crossbow is apparently irrelevant as he isn't seen again nor is it shown that anyone comes to his aid. It's obvious that the audience is expected to worry more about a woman getting punched then a man being shot in the chest with a crossbow.
* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "Tooth and Claw", the only victims of the alien werewolf were male.
** In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "Journey's End", when the Doctor's soul is revealed, he flashbacks through all the secondary characters whose deaths he was indirectly responsible for. Although a good number of men have died throughout the series, apparently only the women are noteworthy as they comprise a vast majority of the deaths he regrets.
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** In "The Maquis," a Deep Space Nine two-parter, the [[Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters|Maquis]] are shown to be about equally male and female in the first part, but in the second part, when Captain Sisko and crew raid a Maquis base and shoot several Maquis in a firefight, there are no female Maquis.
** In the 2009 [[Star Trek (film)|''Star Trek'' film]], almost all of the Romulans, the villains, were male. Starfleet, the heroes, were somewhat more equal (though the vast majority of Starfleet characters actually shown doing dangerous, action-y things were male as well).
*** The comic book that expanded Nero's backstory indicated that the ''Nerada'' did indeed have female crewmembers. Apparently it was the filmmakers' decision to only depict males onscreen (possibly because the MPAA is a big believer in this trope and might have bumped the rating up if Captain Kirk shot a woman).
* On ''[[Lost]],'' several male members of the others are killed by the survivors but are quickly forgotten about, however after a minor female other named Colleen Pickett is killed by Sun we see the others give her a big funeral. Of course Col death would have some lasting consequences considering that her husband Danny Pickett was the Jailer of Kate and Sawyer.
* In Day 6 of ''[[24]]'' CTU is attacked (again) by a group of Chinese mercenaries who take everyone hostage and ask for the person in charge to step forward. This is a woman, but her love interest steps up and claims to be the boss, and is promptly shot. When the lead captor finds out that the woman is charge, he tells her to stand up, asks her about it....and then tells her to sit back down.
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** Could be [[Truth in Television]], the majority of serial killers are male.
** Dexter targets any type of killer, not just serial killers.
*** Indeed, and Dexter kills a couple that had been murdering illegal immigrants they'd taken money from to ferry into the country. They're treated as interesting only because they're a couple in love, not because one of them's a woman. While Dexter kills women more ''rarely'' than he kills men, he generally treats them exactly the same as he does his male victims. To a certain extent, this trope is in evidence with the audience reaction rather than the show... Dexter often goes to elaborate lengths to set the stage for all his victims, but because most of them are men this treatment is considered "normal" and instead the fact that only a few of them are women stands out.
* ''[[Once Upon a Time (TV series)|Once Upon a Time]]'': Name me a female character who dies during the show. I ''dare'' you.
** So far, Cinderella's fairy godmother and {{spoiler|Maleficent}}. Although the show plays this trope straight in that far more men die, and all the mooks cut down are male, there's an emotional subversion in that neither of the female deaths are counted as particularly heinous, whereas some male deaths are hugely emotional and serve as [[Start of Darkness]] or other important moments for the female mains.
*** Which would, in fact, be a basis for a [[Women in Refrigerators]] complaint if the genders were reversed, as "killed off just for the emotional reaction of those who knew them" is a primary aspect of that trope.
* In ''The Expanse'', Holden is perfectly fine with passing up the distress call from another ship so that he can get back to Ceres Station faster... until he messes with the call and discovers there's a ''woman'' calling for help. Then he "just can't shake it", and winds up logging the call so that the Canterbury has to go to the rescue.
=== [[Music]] ===
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=== [[Tabletop Games]] ===
* Tabletop RPG sourcebook: ''[[GURPS]] Lensman'' includes an interesting analysis of the phenomenon in the section "Women and Lenses", pp. 9–10.
* ''[[Warhammer
** [[Executive Meddling]] is behind this as Games-Workshop doesn't belief women models sell well.
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* In ''[[Dragon Age|Dragon Age: Origins]]'', there is a main quest in which the player can choose to help defend Redcliffe Village from an undead attack. The young adult women remain in the church with the elderly and children and do not help defend the village, while the men (labeled "militia" in-game) fight, despite the fact that the villagers expect this attack to overwhelm them, in which case all the noncombatants will die anyway. While helping the villagers prepare for the attack, the player can persuade (or intimidate) a few more men into joining the militia, but no one mentions arming any of the women, and even the player character (who might ''be'' a female warrior who is planning to fight alongside that very militia) doesn't get a single dialogue option to suggest it. What makes this so strange is that there are female warriors throughout the game - not only female party members but also random anonymous female soldiers in battle scenes, and even female enemies - yet the all women of Redcliffe were portrayed as defenseless in a way that civilian men weren't. Apparently the women of Ferelden will travel to the frontier to do battle and waylay travelers, but they won't fight to defend their own village from certain destruction.
** Even Sten, who doesn't think woman can be warriors (as in, you're either a woman or a warrior), thinks this is very stupid, claiming that if it was a village of his people every man, woman and child would take up arms to defend it.
** Note that at least one of the men you can press-gang is middle-aged and overweight... meaning he's probably far less suited for battle than any of the young women, even if the setting ''didn't'' have an egalitarian warrior culture.
* ''[[Gears of War]]'' The first two games and the novelizations play this straight with the military. Only men do the fighting. All fertile women are used for reproductive purposes, while non-fertile women serve in support roles. The third game, however, subverts this. The women fight alongside the men. This is because humanity is down to its last throes and needs every available body to fight.
* In ''[[Jak and Daxter]]: The Lost Frontier'', we meet the Aeropans in the beginning and see both men and women ([[Hide Your Children|no kids, though]]) wandering around the city. Once {{spoiler|it's revealed that the Aeropans are bad guys, not only do they all become identical [[Mook]]s, but they all become male.}}
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** Female rebels and civilians die just as much as males.
* This behavior is encouraged in one of the missions in ''[[Warcraft]] III: Reign of Chaos'', called ''Ravages of the Plague''. There you pass through a village that is about to be sacked by bandits. Only one female villager appears there, and she is also the only named villager there - her name is Splendora. It doesn't matter how many male villagers get killed by bandits, but if Splendora survives, she gives you a potion.
=== Web Comics ===
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* Some mild but significant examples in ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]''. In the episode "Zuko Alone", we learn that the soldiers lord their power "mostly over women and kids", this small dialogue serving both to damn the soldiers in the audience's eyes as well as gain more sympathy for Zuko and forgive him nearly killing the guy with firebending towards the end. Also, in the [[Grand Finale]], {{spoiler|Zuko agrees to an Agni Kai with Azula so "no one else has to get hurt", implying Katara being hurt is worse than him losing and possibly dying (this despite knowing firsthand how competent she is).}} Both these examples are particularly interesting as he comes from a [[Equal Opportunity Evil|surprisingly liberal]] country.
** However, Zuko pointed out that he noticed something was deeply wrong with her before the fight, believing she wouldn't be as competent as she usually was (which was true, but it unfortunately didn't mean she was any less ''dangerous''....)
*** Zuko's decision to have an Agni Kai with Azula is definitely not an example of this trope, starting with the fact that he was explicitly challenging her to the Fire Nation's ritual combat to end her reign; when he's saying "no one else has to get hurt", he's probably mostly talking about the Fire Nation soldiers (almost exclusively male) who will not have to go to war if he wins the Agni Kai. An Agni Kai is ritual combat between firebenders, and ''Katara's not a firebender'', and wouldn't be eligible to take the throne even if she did win against Azula. Also, Zuko had been specifically training to fight his sister and/or father. Also, waterbending versus firebending is generally shown to have the waterbender at a disadvantage and eventually on the defensive, unless you're fighting on top of an ice floe or something (which they weren't).
* Spoofed in an episode of ''[[The Simpsons]]''. Homer and Marge find that Lisa went with Marge's reporter friend to a feminism convention and go to find her, only to learn that she and the reporter went to an erupting volcano instead. Homer says "I'll go save Lisa, you stay here!" and the feminists boo at the perceived [[Stay in the Kitchen]]. So Homer says "Okay, you go, I'll stay here", and gets more boos. Exasperated, he asks "What do women want?!"
=== [[Real Life]] ===
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* US Government manuals for operating fallout shelters emphasize that women of childbearing age & children are to get the best spots from a shielding standpoint. This is to minimize genetic issues from radiation exposure for the next generation. (Sperm are produced on an ongoing basis, while the eggs a woman was born with are all she'll have.)
** Which is interesting as there is evidence that paternal exposure to environmental toxins can also have [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080217133251.htm seriously negative effects on children].
* Until the end of the 20th Century, women were not allowed to serve in Combat roles in any branch of the U.S. military. Additionally, American men are still required to register for the draft while women
** This has applied to most militaries throughout history, usually averted only when the nation in question is facing a ''serious'' manpower crunch.
* The majority of men in [https://web.archive.org/web/20121030033533/http://www.utahcrossroads.org/DonnerParty/Statistics.htm The Donner Party Expedition] died, while the vast majority of women survived. This might not have had as much to do with gender roles as it had with the fact that most of the women belonged to family units. Most of the men were single workers. Family units that banded together to pool their resources and care for each other tended to survive better than those who were unattached.
== Numerical Aversions ==
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=== [[Film]] ===
* The ''[[Evil Dead]]'' trilogy. Of the seven people killed in the first two movies, five of them are women. The [[Sole Survivor]] of the party is a man. Admittedly, a man who [[Took a Level
** ''Army of Darkness'' zig-zags a little on the spirit of the trope, besides the first movie's numerical aversion. While Ash is more upset with Sheila being kidnapped than he is by any male deaths, it's because he knows Sheila and she's his nominal girlfriend at the time. However, when she turns up corrupted into a Deadite, he doesn't treat her particularly differently than any of the male Deadites.
* The ''[[Blade]]'' Trilogy, where female vampires get ashed in the background to no more note than the male vampires, though there are far more male vampires getting killed.
* ''[[Inglourious Basterds]]'': none of the female characters survive, whereas three important male characters do. However, the women's deaths are far less graphic than some of the men's.
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* In [[Sanctum]], the lead female character (Victoria) dies, with her dead body later seen.
* The 1997 adaptation of [[Starship Troopers]] featured both men and women being ripped apart by giant space bugs. One womand gets dragged down a burrow by her crushed legs, another is bisected by a closing emergency door, while another is impaled through the shoulder. The women suffer just as much as the men, and Paul Verhoeven goes into excruciating detail with every kill, making it hard to really find standouts. The only notable female death given any attention is Dizzy, but even then, her death was no cleaner than any other in the film.
** However, one of Verhoeven's aims with the film was to demonize the military... the fact that the future military of Earth considers women just as expendable as men was almost certainly intended to show how evil they were, while the male deaths were just business as usual, notable only for the sheer number of them.
=== [[Literature]] ===
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** The new DLC for the third game allows boss and a female supporting character to kill literally dozens of space amazons with laser weapons. The whole thing is just the setting of a movie, but the weapons are all shown to be quite lethal and if boss is a woman herself, then the whole thing is a massive [[Action Girl]] [[Cat Fight|Fight]] with no men even being seen. Still not convenced? There are TWO achivements for killing 35 amazons with one of the ray guns and another for beating 7 to death with melee attacks! [[Saints Row]] may be a lot of things, but it DOES NOT descriminate against its characters.
*** The main game also had a mission called "Trojan Whores" where one of the Saints cribs is attacked by an army of hookers and strippers. By the end of the mission all of them are dead and many lonely men are left without company for the evening.
** The third game also allows you to decide exactly which varieties of the various purple-colored mooks will spawn out in the world as gang members or when you call for backup... allowing the player to either enforce this trope by making them all male, or completely invert it by making them all female.
* ''[[Thief the Dark Project]]'' had only male enemies, but its sequel went out of its way to avert this; nearly half of all guards, police, enemy zealot Mechanists or others were female.
* ''[[Final Fantasy X-2]]'' had pink-clad female goons fighting alongside green-clad male goons in the Leblanc Syndicate. Since the main characters (all women) have to go undercover in the Syndicate at one point, they would have stood out a bit more if there were no other females in that force.
* ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' has large percentage of female [[Mooks]] in game, all of whom are able to die in the same brutal, gory fashion as their male counterparts. One mission even has you taking on an all-female mercenary group.
* Similar to the [[Streets of Rage]] example, [[God Hand]] also averts this. The only exception is in the first stage as all the enemies are men. Some of the hostages are women though and can be killed if not saved or [[Video Game Cruelty Punishment|"accidentally"]] killed by the player.
=== [[Web Original]] ===
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** A remarkable number of stewardesses (and stewards, it must be said) have not survived in 'survivable' fires in aircraft on the ground. It's one of the dangers of being required to help people get off the plane...
* In shipping disasters where the "Women and Children first" ethos of the ''Titanic'' doesn't apply (ie; very rapid sinkings, and situations where the survivors are adrift in cold water for many hours) men often have a better chance of survival as they are usually larger and retain heat better in frigid water; in the ''Estonia'' sinking most of the survivors rescued from the sea were young men.
* For a while the world only recongnised "International Women's Day" as a woman only holiday without a corresponding day for men. However, in recent years several countries across the world (including major ones like the U.S.
* The [http://ncfm.org/ NCFM] is an anti-discrimination group founded in 1977 for the sole purpose of helping male victims recieve fair and equal treatment in areas where they would normally be overlooked. They provide help for men who have become victims of domestic violence, rape, or just discrimination in general as well as their familes. Over the years they have helped save and improve the lives of countless innocent and victimized men who were ignored by other organizations.
== Gorn Aversions ==
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** [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Through the glass window of a launching spacecraft in zero-gravity while floating amidst debris in a space-suit.]]
* The animé ''Angel Cop'' features a female terrorist being shot several times, with the final bullet blowing her skull into pieces in full Gorn-y detail. The death isn't remarked upon as anything particularly noteworthy by the nearby police officer witnessing it other than an impressive display of marksmanship.
* ''[[Berserk]]'' makes its second appearance here. In the Berserk-verse, [[Gorn]] is for ''everyone'', and we mean E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E. Men, women, children, babies, pets... '''No one''' is safe from a [[Cruel and Unusual Death]] at the hands of the Apostles. That is, if [[Humans Are
* In ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'' everyone dies horribly, often. It seems however, that the woman have the worst deaths.
* [[Antichrist|Lars von Trier hates women.]]
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=== [[Film]] ===
* Exploitation films are very fond of torturing women, usually in a sexually charged way. For an example, look at schlock like [https://web.archive.org/web/20130731212129/http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/bj/tcs/22744-the-body-shop The Body Shop]
* ''[[The Midnight Meat Train]]'''s first onscreen death is a woman whose head is smashed in with a meat tenderizer. Later in the movie it gets hard to tell if it's played straight or averted, because the camera rarely settles on the victims long enough to tell their gender.
* Women end up in unpleasant traps all the time in the ''[[Saw]]'' movies - most memorably, one woman ends up chopping her own arm off to escape a trap in part ''V''.
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=== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ===
* ''[[Sonic X]]'' tends to avert this trope particularly in series three, where Molly and Cosmo both die. Cosmo's death is long, tragic and beautiful; Molly's not so much, perhaps because she's only in one episode while Cosmo is a character throughout the third series. Of course if you watch the 4Kids English dubs you'll walk away thinking they [[Never Say "Die"|were just Put On A Bus or something]].
=== [[Literature]] ===
* The death of Charity Burbage in the [[Villain Opening Scene]] of ''[[
=== [[Video Games]] ===
* ''[[Saints Row]] Again''. During the final mission of the Vice Kings arc {{spoiler|Tanya Winters (female) is confronted by Jhonny, King, and Playa (all male) and brutally shot several times before King sends her plunging out the window onto a parked car below, killing her. The entire death plays out as if she were just another male boss and no one even bothers to comment on it.}}
== Characterization Aversions ==
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=== [[Live
* Eddie Orlofsky of ''[[Desperate Housewives]]'' is a [[Serial Killer]] who only targets women (including at one point the fan favourite Julie Mayer, though she survived) but the show is remarkably [[Sympathetic Murderer|sympathetic]] towards him, depicting him as very much a [[Tragic Villain]]. He is even given a [[Freudian Excuse]] that explicitly ''blames'' a woman for what he became - his mother.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Death Tropes]]▼
[[Category:Women Are Delicate]]
[[Category:Gender and Sexuality Tropes]]
[[Category:Double Standard]]
[[Category:Depressing Tropes]]
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