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?
I’m a woman. Yeah it’s bothered me my whole life. I used to be really angry about it. Now I just accept it as the status quo. In the last few paragraphs of your post you are basically describing the Smurfette Principle, Two Girls to a Team,and other tropes. Also the Bechdel test.
I heartily recommend Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Season 1 is rough, but it’s got good gender equality.
Nowadays though, you get a lot more racial diversity on western TV than you used to. I think that’s something which has improved quite a lot.
Sometimes I do get what they mean though when there are women or other minorities when coupled with bad writing. I can kind of understand why people complain about “woke” media when I see shows like Supergirl or Star Wars: The Adept. Meanwhile, - Andor, Rogue One, Alien are great and have diversity, and people don’t complain about these being “woke” so much. So, I guess, shitty writing can score an own-goal.
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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Welcome to feminist media analysis. It’s an existing academic field and you can find books and YouTube videos on it (and it can go pretty deep into related topics).
One of my favorite examples was when the creators of Avatar the Last Airbender were deciding to create their sequel about the next avatar they decided to make their protagonist a woman and executives at nickelodeon complained that boys wouldn’t be able to relate to a female protagonist.
The explanation I’ve largely heard that makes sense to me is that women are taught women are generally expected to learn to empathathize with male protagonists whereas the inverse is much more optional. You have plenty of men who do get into wonder woman and she ra and korra, my childhood best friends are among them, but you also get a lot of men who don’t in a way where I can’t think of an inverse that I’ve seen
The avatar bit is kinda funny because, if anything, between Ang and Korra, I (male) find Korra more relatable. Their ages had a bigger impact on that than their genders.
Can’t help but feel like you’re mansplaining how women are underrepresented and that your favorite female led shows and movies should be more appreciated and men are cancers.
It really is very simple. Well written shows and movies do well. Good actors/actresses make a well written movie better. It doesn’t matter if it’s men and women. I’m no expert but the majority of female led movies are poorly written and the actresses act bad but that may be because of the writing. That also doesn’t mean there aren’t good female movies that do well.
Where much of this marketing goes wrong is the studios try to take something that’s male led and change it to be female led. That will obviously not go well for an audience that preferred the male led material.
the majority of female led movies are poorly written and the actresses act bad
You were doing so well
My favourite kind of movie is when they take a classic movie and recycle it by making a much worse version of it, but with female characters.
I’m man and one of my favorite type of stories are historical stories with women who defy the gender roles of their time. Also in general historical stories from perspective of someone else than white guys. I find them empowering even though they are not about my empowerment. Also I just find the stories more interesting than watching just another historical war movie with almost all men except main characters wife at home or smth.
Although there is this “girlboss” archetype I see in movies I really hate. Kind of one that feels like a committee wrote feminist character because it sells. Well we are likely to see less of those with all the anti DEI stuff, so I guess monkey paw wish came true.
Why do males complain about female-led stories
They don’t? Or are you taking 4chan and Twitter as representative of the whole videogame audience?
Do you mean Twitch and YouTube? The biggest gaming content platforms where the largest accounts do complain about women being in movies/games quite a lot?
A couple of month ago I was volunteering in my youth centre. We always have the radio on. On air was an interview of a female author writing about a woman and her struggles as a mom and wife, falling for another man. The male interviewer had the audacity to ask if there are any themes in the book which could interest him as a male reader (imagine a very condescending tone).
Reducing “female” themes to lesser themes is so annoying, hurtful and stupid.
I’m not sure the interpretation has to be that “female themes” are “lesser”. People will generally and naturally relate more to themes that strongly correlate with personal, lived experience. It is not strange that a man would relate less to motherhood as a theme. Similarly, a woman might naturally relate less to fiction on father-son relationships. A city dweller might relate less to stories about life in the countryside. And so on. It is useful and instructive to get out of one’s own skin and mind now and then. It helps build empathy and works of fiction can be very helpful in that regard. But that does not change the fact that themes hit much harder when you can relate from personal experience.
As a man, strongly female themes and lead female characters are a-ok and can be touching even, but some male themes hit me much harder because I know what that feels like in my own skin so to say.
I get you and sure some themes hit harder than others. I myself no kids etc thought pet sematary was an ok book and I have read many comments saying it hits harder being a parent/father.
But there is a difference between: will we get the male perspective and I am not interested in the plot of a female one. Therefore devaluing it.
In a radio show introducing an entertainment to your audience, giving a platform to an author and then being dismissive feels so stupid.
I am especially enjoyed since it was on air in the youth centre. Boys and man constantly use girl and woman and anything related to it as insult. (And obviously gay, which is my personal journey to remind everyone that it is not an insult.) Just selecting a female team in FIFA was nearly too much to ask.
Yeah well I wasn’t there, so just going by your post and pitched in to say that it’s a valid question in general: how is this book relevant for me? If asked in good faith, the author I suppose can see it as an opportunity to explain for example why that woman’s story can be interesting to a male audience. Maybe even school the interviewer if so inclined.
I just feel like we should sometimes check our feminist impulses and recognize that some questions are valid, even when we may suspect that they come from a bad place.
I don’t know. I’m a guy and I really enjoy the horizon games including the dialogue and character development. I don’t think the interactions and dialogue would work if Aloy were a dude.
The imbalance in numbers isn’t just in movies. Think about the judiciary, legislators, business leaders… It’s everywhere. In my own career I was the first woman to hold a senior position with one of my employers. Crazy. Achieving even what we have has been uphill all the way. I’m glad you’ve woken up to this - maybe you can keep spreading the word!
How do I feel about it? Really fucking exhausted. It’s not just the movies, it’s my everyday life. Being patronised, talked over, ignored, belittled… Ugh. A lot of men seem to outright despise women. On the bright side, most of this behaviour comes from men of my own generation (I’m old). Young men in general seem much less arrogant, more respectful of women. My sister suggested this is because we remind them of their grannies, lol, but they speak well about women their own age too, and regard them as equals. (Apart from this one young bloke who talked about “women and other minorities”, sigh.)
Plus, every time you bring it up (such as this thread) a large number of the responses are of the “not all men” sort. And yes, not all, but more than enough, and those comments are the opposite of helpful
All YA books for a while targetted woman, boys get progression novels and litrpgs, but those didnt show up on book stores
I do not have a problem with a female lead in a show. One thing that may be overlooked her is when they make a movie with a female lead and make a bad movie.
My wife watches a lot of spy, military action type movies. A lot of the time, the stories are poorly written and cheesy when they put a female lead in the show.
One example of this was a movie where the girls dad who died was CIA. His daughter somehow ends up involved in some CIA thing and is able to survive the whole thing even though she has no formal training. So, while this issue occurs with male leads, there are fewer movies like this with female leads so it may look like there is a higher percentage of movies with female leads that people do not like.
Look at the movies with female leads that are great, (Almost anything with Michelle Yeoh), Star Trek Discovery, Star Trek Lower Decks, hidden figures, Alien, Zero Dark Thirty. I am sure there are more that I can’t think of.
I think that the female lead may get blamed for a bad movie, or people just don’t like bad movies and it is assumed it is because it is a female lead.
I’m a woman, and what bothers me is when the woman is not believable in that role. Men are generally stronger than women – that’s just a fact. But some women are exceptionally strong and trained in combat. If you’re going to cast someone in a role that’s supposed to show us a strong woman, then for fuck’s sake, she’d better be a strong woman, not a gorgeous woman who just looks great in a tank top and a sheen of sweat. It’s obvious she would be easily overpowered by any of her male opponents, but we’re supposed to believe that she’s kicking all their asses.
Someone else suggested Alien would be accused of wokeness had it been released today. I don’t think so. Ripley was just a regular, somewhat fit woman, and the things she did were believable for someone with her physique and level of training. That’s why that movie works.
I agree with you, I think that issue can be handled if they make her a great martial arts fighter.
But she can’t just magically know it, there has to be a reason why she knows how to fight, but that applies to men too.
Man Lower Decks was fucking awsome. Loved it!
If alien came out nowadays, people would complain it was woke.
Forced diversity characters are generally just cringe.
Characters who are normal people who just happen to be female, of a minority ethnicity, non-heterosexual and so on are generally as good as all other characters because that’s just about people living live in an imaginary situation, so just like in the real world not everybody there is a white heterosexual male and people who aren’t white heterosexual males are, just like the white heterosexual males ones, not some stereotyped cartoon cutout of a person.
(That said, in Action movies, especially XX century, often all characters are stereotyped cartoon cutouts of a person)
This also dovetails with how Modern Acting techniques work: good actors will naturally play more believable characters in more believable situations because the actor also has their own version of “suspension of disbelief” going on.
If you want a neutral metaphor, it’s like the difference between seeing a scene in a Film or TV Series which is pretty obviously product placement for a cola brand were one or more of the characters are using said product in a way that makes sure its brand is seen and mentioned vs a perfectly normal scene were somebody just happens to be drinking something that looks like a cola - the entire vibe is totally different between having something which is not a natural story element shoved there to fulfill objectives other than telling a good story and just telling a good story that naturally reflects the real world in its many facets hence all that’s there just feels natural.
You may want to look up the study “Speaker sex and perceived apportionment of talk” for a potential explanation of why this could be happening.
Basically, psychologists did a study where they asked participants to rate excerpts from a play. They started by attempting to control for male and female “role” bias from the script itself; They had university students read the scripts (with “A” and “B” listed as the speakers’ names, gendered pronouns swapped for neutral pronouns, etc) and try to intuit the sex of the characters in the play. So this gave them a baseline on the socially perceived gender of the roles in the script. So if one role was filling a more traditionally feminine or masculine role, had more fem/masc speech patterns, etc, this part of the study was designed to check for that.
Next, they had actors perform the script, and took some recorded excerpts to play for participants. The excerpts had a male and female actor, and the participants needed to rate how long they believed the excerpt was, and how much they believed each actor spoke, from 0-100% of the conversation. So for instance, if they believed the female actor spoke 40% of the time, they would list 40 for her and 60 for the male actor.
Virtually every single participant (both male and female) over-estimated the female actor’s participation to some degree. Female participants were closer to reality, but male participants were pretty far off. Some of the male participants began saying the woman was an equal contributor when she was only speaking 25-30% of the time. Interestingly, these numbers were closer to reality (not totally accurate, but closer) when they flipped the script (literally) and had the actors play the opposite roles. So the female actor was now playing the “male” (determined by the earlier script reads) part of the script. So societal role expectation does play some part in the determination… But it’s not the entire reason.
It could be a large part of why so many terminally online men pipe up about “feminism is ruining my hobbies” whenever more than a token woman is added to media. Because many men genuinely feel like women are an equal contributor when they’re only a small fraction. Does it excuse the behavior? Absolutely not. But it could at least begin to explain it.
This is very interesting! Thanks
This isn’t an excuse for the difference, but I wonder how exposure bias played into their perception. If a person was more accustomed to men in a specific situation and a woman “surprised them” by being involved, it could lead to time passing being perceived as longer. It would be similar to how any new experience is often perceived as taking longer than a familiar one in the same time period. Underrepresentation of women in that scenario would support it.
I’m male, I’ve never complained about this. I think it’s not good to generalize everyone
