Straw Feminist/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character identified as a feminist expresses extremist misandrist ideology.

  • Straight: Alice often discusses men as being inherently inferior to women.
  • Exaggerated: Alice often wishes and plans for the complete extermination of men as a gender.
  • Justified: Alice is a Troll who opposes feminism and purposely tries to annoy men and true feminists with her strawman performances.
  • Inverted: Female Straw Misogynist.
  • Subverted: Bob assumes that Alice is going to be like this upon hearing that she's a feminist, only to learn that she's a moderate.
  • Doubly Subverted: Alice only pretends to be a moderate for her own reasons; her views are actually more extreme than she lets on.
  • Parodied: Alice is presented as a naive, ill-informed imbecile who represents every possible stereotype of feminism.
    • Bob often wishes and plans for the complete extermination of men as a gender.
  • Deconstructed: Alice's vicious and extreme opinions alienate her and ensure she remains friendless and unloved.
  • Reconstructed: The heroes are in a quest to bring equality to all, and Alice is one of the antagonists (the others being chauvinists and bigots).
    • Alternatively, Alice is from a place/dimension/era where Straw Feminism is the accepted philosophy, and if anything Alice's views are milder than the general public. She somehow ends up in the modern world however, where her views seem extreme to normal people.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice claims to be tolerant but secretly loathes and distrusts men ... hoping that by her actions, men will be spurred to be less lazy, be cleaner, treat women better, or do whatever the story requires, and thus "earn" an equality with women that is societal ("you're not allowed to abuse your spouse") and 'practical' ("wow, honey, thanks for cleaning your stuff, even when I didn't ask").
  • Averted: Alice is presented as a reasonable, intelligent and moderate woman.
    • Alice is never identified as a feminist.
  • Enforced: "Feminists are crazy! How can I lampoon them to best effect?"
  • Lampshaded: "You'll have to excuse Alice -- she's one of those crazy feminists..."
  • Invoked: "You can't be a feminist without wanting to completely crush all men, honey!"
  • Defied: "Being a feminist doesn't mean you have to subscribe to extremism; men and women are equal, after all..."
  • Discussed: "Surely all feminists can't be as bad as Alice..."
  • Conversed: "What a ridiculous stereotype!"