Women Are Wiser/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: The female character is wiser, more intelligent and morally superior to the male character.

  • Straight: Alice is a more moral, smarter and wiser human being than Bob, who often gets in trouble due to his impulsive, boorish nature.
  • Exaggerated: Alice is The Messiah and practically a candidate for sainthood, whereas Bob is a complete Man Child sitting on the couch unemployed and slovenly pounding back beers.
  • Justified: Bob's issues stem from a dysfunctional childhood, whereas Alice was raised in a stable, happy family.
  • Inverted: Bob is a more moral, smarter and wiser human being than Alice, who frequently gets into trouble due to her impulsive and boorish nature.
  • Subverted: Alice likes to think that she's morally superior to Bob and acts in such a fashion, but she's actually a Hypocrite and no better than Bob. Or even worse.
  • Doubly Subverted: ... except that Alice is nevertheless still presented as morally superior to Bob.
  • Parodied: Alice is a deeply self-righteous individual constantly subjecting Bob to pious lectures, meaning that Bob goes to extreme and absurd lengths to avoid her.
  • Deconstructed: Alice looks down on Bob due to his numerous failings, whilst Bob resents Alice's superior and judgemental attitudes towards him. Their relationship breaks down.
    • Being always the moral voice of reason, most people go to Alice asking to help and she is always the one who must solve all mishaps thanks to her maturity and intelligence. However, she is so overloaded with problems that, eventually, she gets mad and explode into a brutal rage
  • Reconstructed: Alice attempts not to be so judgemental, and Bob attempts to improve himself. They mend their relationship.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice and Bob keep switching between who has the highest morality.
  • Averted: Alice and Bob are presented as people with both genuine flaws and genuine virtues, neither being superior or inferior to the other.
    • Alternately, Alice and Bob are in an ensemble cast that features men and women of various levels of maturity and common sense favoring neither gender even if Bob and Alice in isolation would seem to be playing it straight.
  • Enforced: "We don't want to upset any women in the audience by treating Alice as inferior to Bob -- let's give Alice moral superiority at least."
  • Lampshaded: "Bob, you don't know the meaning of the word 'morality'. Only Alice can know about that, she's a woman."
  • Invoked: "Women are morally superior to men -- just accept it, Bob!"
  • Defied: "Alice, being a woman doesn't automatically make you a moral person."
    • Alice ends up bored about having to be always the intelligent and sensible voice of reason, seeing that she is very emotionally repressed for it and decides to whoop it up.
  • Discussed: "Is this one of those arguments that you're going to win automatically because you're a woman?" "Yes. Because I have morals."
  • Conversed: "Men have no morals! That's what women are for!"

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