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?
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.
They become president and burn the country down
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.
because many people are uncomfortable with change and having women suddenly appearing more frequently thatn their use to upsets them. You’ll find this fear of the unknown a very common source of much stupidity.
You’re not over reacting. It is that fucked up. welcome to the insanity.
I think it really depends on why the story has a female lead.
I think Alien is a good example, Ripley could have been male and it really wouldn’t have changed the plot that much. If I’m not mistaken Ripley actually was male at one point in the movies writing.
Doesn’t matter that the shift happened, it happened, Sigourney Weaver fucking smashed it out of the park and the rest is history.
If the story is good and happens to have a female lead, I don’t think people are actually against it. The Menu is the first movie to come to mind, I don’t think anyone said anything about the lead in that being female (although being a lead in an ensemble cast with damn near equivalent amounts of screen time is kind of meaningless). I think what people are against is blatant pandering because it usually indicates that the product is poor.
Edit: this is my limited, anecdotally rooted opinion. There are probably a decent amount of people who will just not watch a female lead. I’ve known women who won’t watch something or play a video game without a female lead or the ability to create a female character, so I assume the same has to be true for men.
There are probably a decent amount of people who will just not watch a female lead
They probably would, if she acts like a man.
Isn’t that the problem though? Pandering by creating overly masculine women doing things that men traditionally do?
Idk, maybe I’m over simplifying it - but I’ve known a decent amount of sexists that love Alien. I don’t think she was overly masculine, nor do I think her role was overly masculine. Idk.
Ripley was… neuter enough in Alien and Mama Rambo in Aliens. I’m sure the whiners hate the cutesy scenes with Newt and love the Queen Fight.
In Aliens, it is precisely the caring about Newt that humanised Ripley.
Otherwise she would have been to badass, to robotic.
I’ve known women who won’t watch something or play a video game without a female lead or the ability to create a female character, so I assume the same has to be true for men.
I’ve seen women express confusion or even anger that the men in their lives choose to play as female characters in games, I don’t think I’ve seen the reverse.
Yup this is exactly the argument I bring when it comes to this. People act like female leads just suddenly started to exist, and usually get irritated if I state those particular movies suck. A character being female or gay should not be the entirety of that characters use in the movie. If the story is done we’ll and they happen to be female, gay, trans, whatever, and those things compliment and show a strength they wouldn’t have otherwise and assist them in the story: Fucking fantastic. But that’s not what we are getting majority of the time. We get ‘hey this character is female therefore this movie is amazing’. Nah.
Examples of well written female leads off the top of my head:
The Hunt (2020): I actually reference this one specifically because it destroys the trope of ‘females being weak and needing rescue’. This chick flips the whole movie on its head.
Kate (2021): Another action film (sorry) but more of the same. Well written gritty main character who happens to be female.
Everything, everywhere, All at Once: Pretty much everyone knows this movie at this point. I wanted to include this one specifically because it’s an example of being well written characters and story where being female is a strength and deepens the story and characters. The mother / daughter connection and the turmoil of growing children, etc makes the movie. Arguably it would be worse if they tried to replace them with men and have the same impact.
I could keep going but by this point I’m sure I’m beating a dead horse.
imo
Main Points
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most people (including most men) do not actually give a fuck.
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a tiny insignificant group mumbling in a dark corner probably do care, but noone should give a shit or listen to them.
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instead their voice is amplified in social/legacy media as a typical divide and conquer tactic (men vs women is ‘powerful’ as its half the planet vs the other half).
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unoriginal drones parrot those amplifications because they’ll get angry about whatever their screens tell them to this week.
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society has leaned male-dominant for too long, so genuine efforts to be fair are perceived by some idiots (see #2,#4) as “unfair”.
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corporations don’t actually give a shit about equality, so their maliciously half-arsed pretense at fairness rings hollow, adding more fuel to the flames.
Bonus
If you want to know more about this problem in general, see the Bechdel test, once you see it, you can’t unsee it everywhere you go:
The test asks whether a work features at least two female characters who have a conversation about something other than a man.
Apparently LoTR - which gets major bonus points for depicting its male protagonists as consistently not toxic - fails the Bechdel Test, HARD.
Enjoy this compilation of every scene from the trilogy that holds up to the test:
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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.
Bit like how when women reach a threshold of 30% ‘airtime’ the perception is that they’re taking up over half of it. https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/adam-grant-communication-gender.html
Insecurity. “Males” is a pretty wide brush in this case
Because we want the story, not the gender stuff.
Sometimes gender makes no difference. But sometimes the author wants to make a point about gender. I have zero interest in points about gender.
If that were true, there wouldn’t be so much noise whenever an action movie with a female lead is released.
Why is it gender stuff when it’s women but not men? Men and their gender is apart of their movies too, you just may not see it, like how a fish doesn’t see water. Take how a film is shot, how women and men are framed. You may not notice the camera assuming a het-male’s perspective by “eyeing” women a certain way because “that’s just house films are shot.” You may not go into a horror movie with the silent prayer that the male lead doesn’t get raped because that can just be thrown in there. You may not notice if every woman looks a certain way, and how no matter how old the actor gets, the female lead is still 25. Even in movies where it doesn’t even matter. You make not notice when a woman only gets to speak to and about men. You may not notice that one woman is usually tossed in to represent the entire female demographic because “they’re not the focus.”
But all those little details add up. Women have had men’s gender and their ideas and values soak into almost every part of society, even to how they value themselves. Men are not the default, and that means that they will have to go into some media knowing that they are not the main target and be okay with that.
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?
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.
Patriarchy.
Privilege and with it an overinflated sense of entitlement, which result in the most fragile of egos (E: see downvote ration lmao).
That’s at best.
At worst, and on top of the above, is conscious and deliberate misogyny and the unwillingness to give the privileges up.
This is the teeny-tiniest tip of the iceberg, but it sounds like you are willing to challenge your views and perceptions, so jump in, it (E: patriarchy, misogyny, feminism, intersectionality, and on and on…) is a terrifying, but also extremely well documented rabbit hole, just start looking…
I would add that hollywood just doesn’t know how to write strong multi-women content. It seems like every show or movie that is led by a majority female cast has a bunch of one-note women doing cliche bullshit. They really struggle to write deep, nuanced, flawed women in roles where that’s what the story needs. As to why, sure it’s patriarchy, but they keep putting out duds and using it essentially say “audiences don’t want female-led content”…
As to why, sure it’s patriarchy, but they keep putting out duds and using it essentially say “audiences don’t want female-led content”…
You’ve answered you’re own question - they put it out there so they can say they tried, people didn’t like it, so we’ll continue as we were, with them (patriarchal entertainment execs and the patriarchal capitalists who fund them) maintaining their positions.
This answer could greatly benefit from explaining how the higher-level concepts like patriarchy and privilege apply to this scenario in particular
No.
I’ve seen a lot of these complaints and it’s never about just a woman being in media. acting as if it is, is disingenuous and plain lying
People complain when changes are made for bullshit reasons, like virtue signalling. The problem becomes that a mobile company just switches someone’s race to whatever is darker, they’ll switch a character from male to female, and tadaaaahhh, we have a great product now, so let’s cut investments in writing, good actors, food producers and the end result it shit, yet we’re supposed to somehow cheer it because the main character is now an <insert minority group>
Take Ariel, the mermaid. The character who was known to be white with red hair was swapped to a black actress and the resulting product was shit. It ws shit not because of the character being black, but because the movie was a cheap cash grab using virtue signalling to make people care.
It can be done right when, you know, its not done for virtue signalling. Take battlestar Galactica. Starbuck was change to a woman and holy crap, did they kick it out of the park. The actress was awesome, the writing (mostly) was awesome, the production was awesome.
Too many times I’ve been told that some movie must be great because it’s against patriarchy and its just dog shit. If you want to “battle the patriarchy” then just make a good damn movie or show, I’ll watch it. I will NOT waste my time watching a shitshow just because “it has more women in it!!” I don’t care, just make it good
Maybe it’s not being female led that’s the problem, it’s Mary Sue’s that I think people are tired of.
I don’t know what a Mary Sue is. Can you explain?
A main character who can do no wrong. They’re the best, prettiest, most important person. Rarely has flaws, or flaws that are actually “cool.” Like, the lead in many YA novels.
Or Batman, or Harry potter, or Tony Stark, or Kirito… There are so many! But those aren’t a problem for some reason. 🤔
Thanks.
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.
I didn’t complain.
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.
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.
I’m sorry you’ve written so much here I want to underscore and shout to the heavens, yet there is so much and I fear I won’t do it justice. Fascism is on the rise, and young men-- just as last time–are carrying it forward. Misogyny has become an assumed character trait in huge swaths of men, to the point you see insane arguments online about how men ‘have it harder’ than the gender held in captivity less than a lifetime ago. It wasn’t until the 1960’s in Vancouver, BC that women could get a loan without a man co-signing (and it was a credit union, not even a large bank.) I grew up and lived as a male, white, for over 40 years, and right now is on par, if not worse in many cases, than it was in the 90’s. Men now rail at the idea they can’t always be ‘the default.’ That the reason for these pronoun-forward changes is because it’s always been man-first, from not even bothering to test drugs on women to ‘room temperature’ being what a bunch of middle aged white men, such as myself, find comfortable. To men being the vast majority of main characters, to the goddamn Bechdel test being oh-so-relevant.
So I wanted to add a quote about just how long this has existed, and the sheer length of fight women have had just to exist unchained. I have not gone through the fight you have, yet I hope you’ll allow me at your side.
"You see, when I was growing up at the time of the Wars of the Medes and Persians and when I went to college just after the Hundred Years War and when I was bringing up my children during the Korean, Cold, and Vietnam Wars, there were no women. Women are a very recent invention. I predate the invention of women by decades. Well, if you insist on pedantic accuracy, women have been invented several times in widely varying localities, but the inventors just didn’t know how to sell the product. Their distribution techniques were rudimentary and their market research was nil, and so of course the concept just didn’t get off the ground. Even with a genius behind it an invention has to find its market, and it seemed like for a long time the idea of women just didn’t make it to the bottom line. Models like the Austen and the Brontë were too complicated, and people just laughed at the Suffragette, and the Woolf was way too far ahead of its time.
So when I was born, there actually were only men. People were men. They all had one pronoun, his pronoun; so that’s who I am. I am the generic he, as in, “If anybody needs an abortion he will have to go to another state,” or “A writer knows which side his bread is buttered on.” That’s me, the writer, him. I am a man." -Ursula K. Le Guin, 1992
I can’t speak for anyone else. But for me personally. I don’t mind if they have a female or male lead. What I care about is if the story and characters are believable. Many times it’s like they just said well here we are going to have a female lead just because. Yet when you look at the story and at the character it doesn’t make sense.
Ex :
A strong female lead who is supposed to be commanding people and yet when she gives commands it just comes across as bitchy not assertive. And when you look at the story the character wouldn’t have the training to be able to know even what to do.
It’s like the director and writers just had to put a female on the screen.
The above example is just an example not meant to point at a specific movie or show.
A few of movies where they did it right.
The women in the movie Red. That was excellent writing and acting. The original Alien movie was awesome. Oh yeah and Mr and Mrs Smith kicked ass Angelina was awesome in that movie
To many current movies just feel like a board room full of people with an agenda of let’s make a movie with a female lead without asking if the scenario makes sense.
This is just my opinion as I can’t speak for others.
as bitchy not assertive
Too often, a behavior is considered bossy or bitchy in a woman, but would be considered assertive or commanding in a man.
A woman crying is emotional and can’t be trusted to ‘do what needs to be done’, a man punching holes in walls is just frustrated and can be relied upon when the going gets tough.
…or at least that’s what our rather misogynistic culture likes to tell us.
My favorite example of this is when Scrubs added Dr. Grace Miller, she was literally written to be Dr. Cox, if he was a woman.
And people despised her.
Too often, I would agree with you yes. But it’s also in the context of how they’re crying and the way that they are crying. There’s a type of crying where for example, a commander is leading troops across the battlefield, watched longtime friends get blown apart and the commander sits down and just quietly cries after the battle. Whether the commander is male or female isn’t going to matter. Most people would say OK that’s reasonable level of emotion for the commander.
That little context, there is what too many directors and producers don’t understand. The emotion has to fit the character and has to fit the scene In order for it to be believable…
As far as the whole bossy and bitchy versus assertive comparing men to women. Again, I can’t speak for what other people think and say
can only speak for my personal point of view. Where I have a real problem with it is when actors and actresses aren’t taught appropriately to be assertive without being bitchy. Men generally are able to pick up on it easier. Women sometimes they don’t pick up on it and they’ve gotta have voice Training. Now that is not saying all women are that way so I don’t want somebody coming back and saying hey this guy just said all women arethis way. Well no I didn’t. But many times women don’t have the role models needed in their life to understand how to be assertive. Well, how do you act assertive on a movie screen if nobody’s ever taught you how to be assertive?
It would be no different than if somebody asked me to lead troops and combat well I don’t know how to do that. I wouldn’t knowhow to be assertive in that manner so I doubt I’d do it very well. Or for example, if somebody said hey, go repair that engine well if nobody’s ever showing me how to do it I don’t think I’d be able todo it. Given ones a technical skill and one’s a skill of how to project your voice, but if you’ve never had somebody show you howto do it or teach you how to do it and you’ve never had a role model in that manner. You might have a hard time it.
I think that’s it. I was taught how to project my voice, how to use an authoritative tone and it has helped me get leadership roles. It’s a skill, and it’s a skill that any leader ought to have, in a film, at least.
Both men and women can do it, but you need to learn and I haven’t seen nearly as many girls trying to learn it as boys
I think this guy says it well.
A strong female lead
Women are strong in a different way to men and writers just gender swapping a male character is always fucking obnoxious.
A lot of writers apparently have no idea how to write interesting female characters. Some of the pushback from viewers / readers to increasing the number of female characters isn’t about the characters being female, it’s about them being bad characters. Boring, annoying, quippy, etc.
Nobody wants to admit that their movie flopped because it wasn’t very good, so they blame sexism. Or piracy, that one’s always popular.
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