Asklemmy

Because when you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

Oh, it's pretty simple, really.

Had a friend who I realized would always complain about women in his movies, shows, video games, and whatever.

Turns out: he just hated women. Oh, he loved looking at "attractive" women and fucking women, mind you. But he just hated women. He didn't even really grasp it and would deny it every time I to brought it up.

If a woman isn't "hot" and/or willing to fuck them, the woman has no value. Anything they say or do also has no value if they're not providing some kind of sexual stimulation for a man.

That's why.

Don't overthink it.
It's because they're pussies.

I think you're reading too much into intent here. The only reasoning that goes into these decisions is target audience. Who will buy what you are producing? When most of the comics that you mentioned were written, the perception was very much that their readers would be boys.

If there's anything to be mad about, it's that focus testing and demographic targeting makes for shit entertainment. It means companies are trying to make something that sells instead of trying to tell a story.

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.

I got back into scifi books recently as an adult and was disgusted to find that virtually all of the "great" scifi authors are menwritingwomen trope goldmines.

When there are female main characters that aren't just the authors fetishs, they're typically subjected to violence, with rape used so frequently as female "character development" that it would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.

I've begun to prefer scifi written by women, because then at least I know its not going to be completely cringe.

It's because they're used to male perspective being the default focal lense for all media they consume. Male gaze is more about perspective than it is about aesthetics, something that has seemingly failed to translate into current online discourse.

In essence, all media in a genre they deem belongs to them must see them as their primary audience and must reinforce the perspective they feel is theirs. It's a kind of patriarchal social egocentrism. Women can exist in those pieces of media, but they have to be defined in relation to a male perspective. This can be a male character within the same work, or it can even be the audience itself by presuming the audience is male.

It's been so pervasive throughout media over the years that they think of this as being "just how media is". When media deviates in really any way that media becomes the aberration of the norm. It can be as simple as one of the female characters having a side plot about her that doesn't involve any of the men, or a female character who isn't sexually appealing to what the current male psyche desires. The media in question becomes inherently an act of political activism. A transgression.

It's notable that media from genres deemed not "belonging to the male perspective" is not judged the same way. Men do not become outraged at chick flicks or romcoms or romance novels. They don't become outraged at drama TV shows made for women about women. Because those things are socially permitted to exist outside of men's perspectives. It's usually seen as unique when a man enjoys media that has a female perspective. It's assumed that he won't. This essentially means that female perspectives in genres they do see as belonging to them comes across as an explicit attack on them. They avoid the female perspective as much as possible, they denigrate it and demean/belittle it constantly. They do not want to be forced to see the female perspective and will actively resist it.

There's lots of examples that go beyond this. Lots of media over the past hundred years has broken the rules and been lauded instead of denigrated. But we live in a time where an organized effort exists specifically to promote patriarchal thinking among men and those efforts mean that more scrutiny is being applied to this than ever before. There are entire content engines driving constantly to produce as much patriarchal outrage content as possible, all the time. And it works.

These problems existed long, long before the modern far-right movement started. It's partly why it works so well. This male egotism in media existed before, and less resistance to it also used to exist. That change in social atmosphere means that men can be manipulated into further and further misogynistic beliefs. All it takes is dogwhistles and a loud, angry, entitled male gamer, and you can radicalize thousands of people into misogyny. And they will repeat that cycle with more or less any boy or man they know.

To make a long story short, anxiety about their perspective not being the default in their favorite genres of media presents a great opportunity to turn young men into fascists. The far right has capitalized on this, and that's why you see so much outrage about it online. It's also likely that algorithms have picked up on you being male and will probably show you more of this exact type of outrage content.

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

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.

I don't 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.

Because -isms exist in a binary world (sexism, racism, etc...)

Any increase in visibility for whatever minority they happen to hate, is a decrease in visibility for them (in their feeble transactional little minds) and it drives them bonkers.

A while ago, I read a sociology or social psychology study about children and how they were given attention by their teacher at school. The sample was like a bunch of 9yo, 50% girls, 50% boys.

It showed that when the attention given was like 30% for girls, 70% for boys, boys would feel the girls were given unfairly high and constant attention.

The way they're educated by their parents and, more potently maybe, society as a whole.

In a word: Insecurity.

As also a man, I don't know any person in real life that complain about women in movies.

I only see it online in spaces that I avoid because those places are generally speaking transphobic misogynistic echo chambers. I would argue those places are also misandristic, by creating a place were you have to follow the doctrine, but it is very different to the active hatred towards women.

So I think the answer is "insecure hateful men will hate on anything that they were told is their enemy."

I have explored misandristic spaces online as well. And unsurprisingly, you see the same general behavior. So I really think generally it is true that:

People like to have an enemy and they like to be told who is that enemy and then they mindlessly hate even to their disadvantage and beyond. Once the social cost has to be paid, they feel validated and jump deeper into the abyss.

And where is that hatred coming from? Gamer gate, which made feminist hating popular, which made hating "the left" popular, which made anything anti-"woke" popular. As the source is based in a profession focussed on maximizing engagement, the need to generate "new" "shocking" Events was big. Therefore any gay character was a scandal and obviously with the questionable attempt to seem humane of e.g. Disney, aka adding diversity, these "new" "shocking" events were any kind of diversity. (Sidenote: diversity yay!!! Corporate diversity program just tend to be rather questionable) As the degenerate hate mob had its target to mindlessly hate, they looked for any excuse to hate anything "woke"™©® and "strong female characters" have to had been a feminist propaganda Tool and not a normal character type in movies for at least a couple decades, so they mindlessly hate that now. I would love to say "as they do anything for a treat of their master" but there is no treat, there is just the self-induced pain of hatred.

And why gamer gate? I guess right-wing Propaganda worked on a group of people who were still afraid/annoyed to be the ones to blame for e.g. violence. remember the whole "video games make you a school shooter" nonsense?

Using males to mean men is as weird as men who says females when they mean women.

Because they are assholes.

Because they are so privileged they REALLY believe that they should see themselves in all stories.

Because they were taught from a young age that empathy is not manly.

Because, at the end of the day they were failed by their parents and society as a whole.