One Woman in the Justice League
Just one woman, maybe two, in a team or group of men.
Also watch Jimmy Kimmel’s "Muscle Man’ superhero skit - “I’m the girly one”
The Avengers:
In Marvel Comics:
“Labeled “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes,” the original Avengers consisted of Iron Man, Ant-Man, Hulk, Thor and the Wasp. Captain America was discovered trapped in ice in The Avengers issue #4, and joined the group after they revived him.”
5 / 6 original members are male. Only one is female.
Modern films (MCU):
The original 6 Avengers were Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, and Black Widow.
Again, 5 / 6 original members are male. Only one is female.
Justice League
In DC comics:
“The Justice League originally consisted of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and Aquaman”
6 / 7 original members are male. Only one is female.
In modern films (DCEU):
The members were/are Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Cyborg. (+ introducing Martian Manhunter (in Zack Snyder’s Justice League director’s cut))
5 / 6 main members in both versions of the Justice League film are male, with appearances by a 7th member in the director’s cut who is also male. Only one member is female.
The Umbrella Academy (comics and show)
7 members:
- Luther (Number One / Spaceboy)
- Diego (Number Two / The Kraken)
- Allison (Number Three / The Rumor)
- Klaus (Number Four / The Séance)
- Five (Number Five / The Boy)
- Ben (Number Six / The Horror)
- Vanya (Number Seven / The White Violin) Later becomes known as Viktor and nonbinary in the television adaptation after Elliot Page’s transition but that’s not really relevant to this.
Here, 5 / 7 original members are male. Only two are female. Only slightly better than the other more famous superhero teams, and they had to add another member (compared to Avengers’ 6 members) to improve the ratio (maybe executives still demanded to have 5 males).
Now let’s look at some sitcoms and other stories.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
4 males, and 1 female slightly less prominent character who is abused constantly. The show claims to be politically aware and satirical but gets away with a lot of misogynistic comedy, tbh, that I’m willing to bet a lot of people are finding funny for the wrong reasons.
Community:
Jeff, Britta, Abed, Troy, Annie, Pierce, Shirley. This one is a little better, 3/7 are female. Notice it’s always more males though, they never let it become more than 50% female, or else then it’s a “chick flick” or a “female team up” or “gender flipped” story. And of course the main character, and the leading few characters, are almost always male or mostly male.
Stranger Things:
Main original group of kids consisted of: Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas, and El (Eleven). 1 original female member, who is comparable to an alien and even plays the role of E.T. in direct homage. When they added Max, I saw people complaining that although they liked her, there should be only one female member. 🤦
Why is it ‘iconic’ to have only one female in a group of males? Does that just mean it’s the tradition, the way it’s always been? Can’t we change that? Is it so that all the men can have a chance with the one girl, or so the males can always dominate the discussion with their use of force and manliness? Or so that whenever the team saves the day, it’s mostly a bunch of men doing it, but with ‘a little help’ from a female/a few females (at most), too!
It’s so fucked up and disgusting to me I’ve realised. And men don’t seem to care. I’m a male and this is really disturbing to me now that I’ve woken up to it. How do women feel about this? Am I overreacting?
Most of those superhero teams were originally created by comic book companies staffed almost entirely by men. The heroes created are therefore how they visualize heroes being, which mostly takes inspiration from their own experiences, and therefore creates mostly men.
The core complaint is for femwashed stories, where the male lead has been replaced by a woman.
It’s very similar to Hollywood movies taking movies from Japan or China and then turning the Asian lead to a Euro-American.
The level of hatred for this type of content is very strong as it feels like a farce or fraudelent, like someone is trying to sell you a fake designer brand item. Everything that made the item great is absent in the fake one.
On top of that, there’s a clear fascist takeover in the US from the rainbow liberal, evangelical and social capitalists. Fascists have weird superiority and inferiority complexes including towards women. But don’t worry, Chinese movies will become popular soon, so both sides of the US political aisle will have to adjust.
I believe the answer can be broken into three parts:
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valid criticism, when a movie is genuinely bad and has a female lead, the valid criticisms of the film are overdhadowed by slop online articles criticizing fans for not supporting women and hating a female lead. Captain Marvel is a good example of this. The movie has genuine issues, and is not considered a good Marvel movie, but the overall online discussion focused around Marvel fans not supporting a female lead superhero movie, when Wonder Woman found success and Captain America: The Winter Soldier is arguably colead by Scarlett Johanson.
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Pre box office reactions. Any movie which can be summed up as “X but with women” lands here. Same with any movie which intentionally admonishes the male audience and advertises itself as for women and only, then get mad men didn’t see the movie. Charlie’s Angels, Ghostbusters, and Captain Marvel fall into this category.
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Genuine oddities and sexism. I believe this applies to the gaming industry more than the film indistry, but it can blead over. I believe the initial outrage over _The Marvels _ was this, but the movie ended up having major issues and went to category 1.
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I agree with your reasoning but I think it highlights a major difference between genders in those stories. The hulk has decades of backstory that lets you just throw him into any plot as a badass. You don’t need to invent why he’s a badass because we all know it and the origin story is so played out that we all gloss over it. Now do that with a female character. Writing the equivalent to decades of lore in one origin story and then doing something with that origin in the same movie is way harder. Wonder Woman would be kinda similar but those origins are muddy with misogyny vibes. So now you have to use well established S tier characters to garner attention and bring in a fresh female face of similar calibar of power and act like they earned decades of respect in one movie. Either you’re Mary sue or treated like a child in those situations. The lore fights female empowerment because of baggage. I feel sorry for anyone trying to write for a character like she hulk with all of the obstacles that exist, but I get why the attempts weren’t successful.
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Now I know this isn’t a new observation or anything and I never watched episode 9, but in 7 and 8 Rey felt like just as much of a Mary Sue as Luke did in the ot. Now the well worn observation is that Luke Skywalker is like, the textbook Marty Stu.
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It is damn tin-eared to affix “she” to a female superhero’s name. Or “black” to a black superhero’s name.
Using males to mean men is as weird as men who says females when they mean women.
I’d argue the difference is that when people say “females”, it’s usually in a vague sexual context- and that term includes girls and teenage women
Why when a lot of those males aren’t men, they’re boys.
At that point, you could say “male characters.”
I guess my reply was coming from women typically find being called females odd, often by “incels,” so I thought males had the same tone. I didn’t mean weird in a rude way! You have a good point.
Yes, we get that, but I think they mean that when incels call women “females” it’s cringe as hell, because we know it’s coming from a place where they don’t think of women in a healthy way, so this comes off as stooping to their level
In their defense, when talking about entertainment media (especially the industries at large) people usually say “male audience” and “female audience.” Also “male characters” and “female characters.” They’re just common terms in this context.
That’s still a bit different than saying “males” or “females.” Using those words as nouns makes it feel like a nature documentary narration.
Yeah but he’s using it in a context that frequently says “male” and “female.” Honestly I didn’t even notice until folks complained.
It’s not the same as “you know how females are.”
Well humans are animals, maybe we should question why it makes some of us feel uncomfortable to be referred to in the same way we would refer to other animals. It could be ingrained biases of human supremacy/anthropocentrism/speciesism that we use to justify differential treatment of nonhumans that we wouldn’t want done to ourselves 🤔 just a thought
Yeah I’m aware of the problems with saying “men and females” but I thought the issue was more about a double standard of using different terms for different genders… If we say “males and females” and use the equivalent terms for both, is there a problem with this? Because it’s not treating them differently so I don’t really understand
I think, as with many things, it is about context. When doing a scientific reproductive study about “rats - 5 male, 5 female” it makes sense to use biological descriptors, and when paramedics do it in a biological emergency, etc. A good way to understand it is via other similar trajectories, like racism. Would you consider it reasonable to refer to a “white man” while referring to another “man who’s a black”? For example only a few decades ago you might have heard a cop in the US (or South Africa, in Afrikaans) say e.g: “I saw 5 men leave, and 2 of them were blacks” vs what you would (hope to) hear now: “I saw 3 white men and 2 black men leave”. Look at those 2 sentences substituting “white, black” -> “male, female” and “men” -> “people”, and that should highlight the point (in a slightly grammatically clunky way though because I don’t have time to come up with a more elegant example).
In your examples, I would definitely think we shouldn’t use differential/non-equivalent language between different groups of people/members of society, including races or genders. So that includes not saying “white man” and “man who’s a black” -> I would think this should probably be “white man” and “black man” or “man who’s white” and “man who’s black”. I think being consistent with our language used to refer to people is important to not promote or uphold discrimination. There could be other problems even if it’s consistent, I’m not denying that, but I think lack of consistency of treatment (linguistic or otherwise) is a key issue. I believe in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity to a degree, that language shapes/influences how we view the world & informs a lot of actions & behaviors in society. So linguistic discrimination is a real thing that can lead to or perpetuate more overt (physical/social) forms of discrimination. For the same reason, it should be consistent between genders (and as a side note, I don’t view male and female to be strictly biological terms to refer to biological sex, but rather that they can be used for gender identity too, as in MtF / FtM [male to female or female to male], which other sociology institutions seem to agree with as well, in case you thought I was being a “sex absolutist” or transphobic).
The case of using “male and female” for rats in an experiment is interesting because to me it represents a double standard where we are okay with using those more kind of basic fundamental terms for non-human animals, even if we’re not okay with using them for humans (and it’s not like we have terms like men and women for other animals, so it’s somewhat understandable in working within the language). But it also shows that if we only reserve those terms for other animals, it can uphold harmful differential treatment of them (such as conducting experiments/testing on them that they can’t consent to–and wouldn’t since they’re typically cruel in ways we would never do to humans–which could be seen as exploitation/taking advantage of sentient beings), as tied to a belief that humans are superior and are not animals, which is used to rationalize these actions & arguably discrimination (speciesism) of another kind. That’s partly why I question if it’s really valid for us to be opposed to using terms like male and female for humans, or if it reveals something deeper about how we think of ourselves in relation to other animals- as well as just curiosity about if there is really a problem there, and what/why that might be.
If I’ve read your comment correctly I think we actually agree on all points, but my hurriedly written comment didn’t communicate two of them as clearly as I would’ve liked.
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We concur that consistency of terms matters, words are the skeletons of thought-processes and therefore biases, etc.
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I realise my emphasising the phrase “biological descriptors” was a bit misleading and strictly speaking actually wrong, but in my partial defence I was trying to avoid more scientific words when not necessary (not wanting to drift into pretentiousness). In light of your observation about biology vs gender identity (which I agree with), probably my point would be more correct if I’d used a phrase like “reductionist differentiation descriptors”. Even if accurate that sounds a little pretentious so I’d love any domain-expert to chime in with a more accurate-yet-concise phrase.
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I used the rat example purely as an example of a research context divorced from social/political connotations, not as a human-animal vs non-human-animal differentiator (not implying any double-standard there), hence why I followed it with the example of how paramedics also use it. My point could equally have used a “10 humans…” example.
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Honestly, ask a few woman how they feel about the usage and go by what they say. A bunch of men/boys discussing this have no skin in that game.
Yes, that’s what I meant. Thanks for explaining it better!
What’s an inclusive term for both men, teenagers, and boys?
Most of the males are matched with females (two were more solo). The poster was consistent.
Because when the norm to these people is media that exclusively panders to them, even one single piece of media that doesn’t represent them is a zero-to-100 change. Going from even 0 to 1 piece of inclusive media is startling, new, and scary to them, because they’re simply not used to it.
It’s the root of the entire conservative mentality (which is why you’ll primarily see conservative men talking about this) since all conservatism is based in a desire for things to remain the same. Change is just scary to these people, no matter how benign the change may be.
Because the majority of dudes complaining are incel man babies who need to feel like they are the focus of society. If its not exactly how they like it its not right. Its time we start shouting down on them loudly.
And if you dare question their masculinity by suggesting a woman might be able to do something other than be eye candy then they’ll… well I don’t know what they’ll do. Probably just complain about it on social media.
I found they usually huff until nearly shitting themselves before schoffing once more.
Sometimes, they’ll start a podcast or a YouTube channel. Those ones are the worst.
They become president and burn the country down
I have no idea, but I think this video is on to something.
Please give at least some clue before I give Google more clicks.
It’s a humorous poem done with beat poetry (I think I don’t know much about poetry)using African instruments discussing gender identity and sexuality. It’s worth the click and doesn’t take long.
Thanks.
No problem
Please remove the
&pp=ygU...tracking parameter from your link.Ok
ty!
No problem, I’m just so doxed already that I kinda forget that the whole internet was made to spy on people.
Thank you for bringing this into my life.
Once female speaking time reaches 30% or more, males believe that the females are dominating the speaking time.
Female encroachment on what has traditionally been considered male spaces is not taken well. Female empowerment is considered taking from deserving males.
Essentially the general male population don’t like females, and only tolerate them as a subservient subclass who should be seen and not heard.
Female encroachment on what has traditionally been considered male spaces is not taken well. Female empowerment is considered taking from deserving males.
The problem is that in the context of a “winner-take-all” society it does do that though.
Obviously the general solution is to make a society that is overall more equitable between those who succeed & those who don’t.
But if you aren’t going to do that then you will get a reaction from those who are losing ground, even if that happening is the morally progressive outcome.
This is one reason why shows like Ms Marvel and She Hulk tanked so bad.
Essentially the general male population don’t like females, and only tolerate them as a subservient subclass who should be seen and not heard.
This is a WILD claim to make.
It’s a wild world.
Yes, but not like that
Who complained about the female led movie Alien (93% audience rating on rotten tomatoes)?
I think the issue is that the movies aren’t written well. Rey in the third trilogy never saw a challenge she couldn’t master on the first attempt. A story about a character born perfect and never faltering isn’t fun
I’d say the latest star wars movies were shit. It had nothing to do with Rey being a woman or even naturally gifted. Finn, Grumpy Luke, Swolo Ren (other poorly written characters), the writing team and the plot points (a spacecraft the size of a city needs to refuel but a lightsaber that can cut through anything has an infinite energy source) the writing team chose, should all share the blame. If your criticism is levelled at Rey alone, your argument isn’t worth hearing.
I don’t have a problem with the character, just the way she was written especially in the second film, I didn’t watch the third. And that film was terrible. The plot was bad, all the characters were bad, their adherence to star wars space stuff was bad
I don’t know if the writers were bad at their job or whether they were required to change it
I think the issue is that the movies aren’t written well. Rey in the third trilogy never saw a challenge she couldn’t master on the first attempt. A story about a character born perfect and never faltering isn’t fun
John Wick gets a pass, though?
You can’t really compare the two movies, John Wick takes the route of being so over the top to the point of becoming funny. I don’t think they were aiming for that with the new SW trilogy.
You can’t really compare the two movies,
I’m not exactly, I’m asking why:
A story about a character born perfect and never faltering isn’t fun
Can be true, but also John Wick can never falter and that be fine. Kinda seems like a double standard to me.
John works where Rey doesn’t because he’s had the career and experience to back up what he does. Other characters are terrified of him, he’s been in the setting long enough to become a legend.
Rey a scavenger in the arse end of nowhere goes from knowing literally nothing about the outside world and starting at about the same power as Luke’s ability in new hope to by the end of that first movie Luke’s ability in return of the jedi with no training involved.
John is an example of a legend in action, an unstoppable force, it’s satisfying to watch because the film does such a good job of building him up. That one with the mob boss talking about the pencil comes to mind. Rey gets none of that, she’s just great at everything without trying. She can fly a ship like the falcon on her first go ever flying a space ship well enough to out fly trained fighter pilots. Luke at least has flown similar ships in similar situations before the death star run.
One that is better is when she beats Kylo with the first time using a saber because it shows she is letting the force guide her so it makes much more sense why she can do it.
There is also the fact that John gets punched in the face, kicked and beaten…and then gets back up to wipe the floor with the enemy.
Showing female characters getting their arses handed to them is not as commercially popular.
If there’s any universe in which it makes complete sense for someone to be born ultra powerful completely at random, it’s Star Wars and superhero movies.
I love The Force Awakens but I know someone who complains that it’s really distracting that the three main protagonists have a black guy and a woman, and it’s “trying so hard to be woke” that it spoils the film for him. He really truly honestly believes that he’s not racist or sexist but the “blatant DEI” ruins it.
NONE of the the main 9 star wars films are particularly subtle or deep, but they’re great fun, and if you can’t get over one of the lead characters being female or one of the main characters being ridiculously powerful for no other reason and you try to justify that in terms of consistency or good writing, you’re definitely using double standards.
I think he should reconsider how racist and sexist he is, and I think bleating about Rey being effortlessly at Kylo Ren’s level in the force isn’t worth the effort you put into justifying it.
There’s a thing in movie writing that’s called the suspension of disbelief which is the mechanism of being involved in a story by “what do I have to believe in order for the movie to make sense”.
SW3’s premise is the classical hero’s adventure, where the main character undergoes a journey of betterment. And in this particular case, if you already are the best there is no journey.
John Wick’s premise is “this guy is going to kill everyone” frome the minute one, you just sit down, switch your brain off and enjoy what he’s doing for the next two hours.It’s not about the sex of the character, is about how the character is written.
The bit I didn’t say was I meant such a character in a hero’s journey style story
It works in that genre. The main guy in Nobody also was pretty good from the start. The fast and furious flicks also don’t do a great deal of character development
Those all have characters presented as good at whatever the movie is about
I’ve always thought that it might be disingenuous. Like they just throw in minorities, lgbt+ people, and women just for the the sake of appealing to the young progressive crowd.
I’m totally fine with it but some movies you can kinda see that it’s not done tastefully.
Yeah, i like it when they mix it up. Diverse backgrounds make for interesting stories and engage new people with the genre. Its really lame and insulting when it feels like theyre just trotting a character out to meet a quota and don’t give them any development beyond they’re cultural origin though.
If women want to see more female characters, they should definitely write them and probably not do it with the intention of creating a character “for women” to resonate with, but the larger comic book Fandom as a whole. Whenever people declare a target audience, they inevitably alienate orhers.
I remember I was watching the show Batwoman or Batgirl or whatever it’s called, and all of a sudden they just replaced the lead character with a black women. Like wtf happened there, literally just yoinker her and replaced her.
Your comic book examples with one woman on a team of mostly men are probably due to the audience for conic books having been almost exclusively boys. I suspect the one woman was indicative of the market share going to girls
I wonder if umbrella academy’s gender balance was due to the power archetypes being perceived as gendered
I actually have a person in my life complain about this shit with the last Bond movie (I havent watched it, i just heard complaining). Oh and Into the Spiderverse, he disliked spiderman being non-white - even though Peter Parker is in that fucking film. He also uses the phrase woke all the time.
I really don’t value his opinions on these sorts of issues and neither should anyone. He’s got so little in his life and these stories are a powerful escape from the shit he isn’t dealing with. I won’t go into it, not my circus etc.
Basically, he likes to imagine himself as Luke Skywalker and he can’t imagine himself as Rey so she’s woke and bad. It’s a boring way of consuming media and he’s an idiot. He says there’s an agenda but can self identify the agenda is maybe letting the women and coloured people be on screen sometimes. However, they do not look like him so they are bad and the agenda is bad.
They’re not worth listening to.
It’s sad that those people make discourse over actual criticism so hard.
Rey is a wonderful example here. Your acquaintance dislikes Rey because she’s a woman. I (and a bunch of other people) dislike Rey because she’s terribly written. If you exchanged her for a man he would still be terribly written. But of course, that legitimate criticism is often lumped in with people crying „woke“ at the sight of a female protagonist.
Me, a male reading mostly manhwa of the romance fantasy genre where 99% of it have female protagonists: yeah, this is not talking about me. This kind of discussions are more about creating conflict rather than understanding. If people have time to start fights about the sex of the characters they have no interest in the story itself. Statistics on who is drawn more are kinda useless…
/me re-watching bocchi the Rock for the millionth time “You know, I never noticed before but there’s a distinct lack of Males here”
I don’t know understand how the genders of the lead characters is important in any way. It’s not as if the films were about the genders of the characters.
