Men Are the Expendable Gender: Difference between revisions

* ''Mother's Day'' (the 2010 film, not the 1980 flick it is loosely based on) has seven male characters and nine female ones. {{spoiler|six of the seven men die while only three of the women do - and all three women who die are presented as someway 'unsympathetic' (one is an adulteress who has been sleeping with the heroine's husband and the other two are spoilt and obnoxious rich girls and very minor characters to boot). The men who die regardless of whether they are presented as sympathetic or not.}}.

* Every human death in ''[[Jurassic Park]]'' male - at least, in the film.

* Not a numerical situation but this happens twice in ''[[The Dark Knight]]''. First Batman chooses to save love interest Rachel Dawes instead of Harvey Dent. Then, later in the film Dent kills corrupt male cop Wurtz but leaves equally corrupt female cop Ramirez alive.

* The 2005 remake of [[King Kong]] has this trope in spades. Ann Darrow, the beauty to the beast, is the only major female character and survives the film relatively unscathed. On the other hand, numerous male crew members (seventeen by the film's count) die in the attempt to save her - including the only two non-white cast members. Of the natives killed in the initial clash, only a man is shown shot to death. Kong does accost several women in New York trying to find Ann, but none of them are explicitly shown to have been killed or even seriously injured. Though the male deaths are treated sympathetically, the comparatively brutal and gory nature of them makes this trope seem especially egregious.

* Dr. Warren Farrell examined this trope (which he calls "male disposability") in ''The Myth of Male Power'', which is about the ways the system that feminists often call "patriarchy" actually serves to harm men as well as women. Adam Jones wrote ''[http://adamjones.freeservers.com/effacing.htm Effacing the Male: Gender, Misrepresentation and Exclusion in the Kosovo War]'', which examines the way this trope applies to discussions about victims of war.

* [[Robert A. Heinlein]] has [[Lazarus Long]] defend it full bore:

 

 

== [[Music]] ==

* This trope is the subject of the song "Men" by Loudon Wainwright III:

They know they're expendable; after all, they're men }}

 

== [[Stand-Up Comedy]] ==

* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by Jason Manford in his 2011 stand-up show. He references the trope by name without ''quite'' decrying it.