Asklemmy

Insecurity.

I don't know. I live a good female lead. Ripley, Furiosa, Marge Gunderson. There's so many, that's just the first three that come to mind. Half the time when I'm playing Fallout, it's female characters.

There are definitely bad female leads in things, too. Just like there are bad male leads. Like, Borderlands 3, basically unplayable. I never finished it. And I really want to be clear, the characters aren't bad because they are women, they are bad due to poor writing. That game had such potential, but it felt like the script was written entirely by highschoolers.

I mean, look at the news; there's a LARGE number of anti-DEI people out there who would say exactly what you're complaining about.

That said, Hollywood is trying Wanda and Agatha were both very diverse. She Hulk was pretty diverse, and Wednesday was pretty mixed. Even captain marvel and ms marvel tried to fill out the stands better.

Of course, it's hard to tell what's going to happen now. Will government force the hands of the show runners to reverse the trends?

One of the ways i select a movie or series is by watching the poster. That tells me enough about whether it will be about male heroes and (maybe) female sidekicks or mothers in the kitchen. Particularly american ones have a lot of those movies. So, these i will not even try to watch anymore.

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'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.

Some people see themselves as the default, and any change is abnormal or pandering. Same thing happens in video games. Anything that brings attention to the idea that they aren't the default audience is seen as a an offense. They assume these stories are an attack, an expensive way for people to say their way of doing things is wrong and therefore they are wrong, so they get defensive. In reality, it just someone else telling a story for another audience.

To them, the argument is, "why add more poc/genders if we're all the same? Are you saying something is wrong with people like me so they have to be gotten rid of? How come it's always me that's getting removed? Why am I under attack!" They see the addition as the erasure of some, like, Schrodinger's self-insert that would have been there if they didn't have to force a" woke" choice.

All YA books for a while targetted woman, boys get progression novels and litrpgs, but those didnt show up on book stores

I'll preface with I'll agree that for the most part, it's men being whiny about "woke" and other nonsense. They're assholes. I really don't have anything to add to that front.

So I'll add a perspective of the small other crowd in situations friends of mine and I have found ourselves in, that having criticisms of women led stories gets us lumped in with the above group when the same criticism of a male led roles/stories are fine and dandy. And we're not exactly a group that hates women led stories despite our love of scifi action. Sarah Conner, Ripley, Jesse Faden if anyone has played the game Control.

Some of it I get as a female led cast movie/show will get hate before the first previews even launch so legitimate discussions can happen. However, I can go on absolute rants about how terrible movies can be: Tom Cruise remaking The Mummy was, attempting to do Hellboy without Ron Perlman and Guillermo Del Toro, whatever the Conan the Barbarian attempt Jason Mamoa had, and no one bats an eye. (Lets be honest, those were all terrible movies) However I've been called a misogynist when I talk about in the list with those above ones how absolutely terrible the all women cast remake of Ghostbusters was. Again, I knew there was a lot of undue hate, but if I ever discuss it, I've had to outright asterisk it every time that none of my complaints were to the actresses themselves but the movie from worldbuilding to some of the concept of it being made itself (As in: It's Ghostbusters, an IP that's been around for decades, did we need to dedicate screentime to remaking it from scratch? A complaint I'll have at every reboot of a popular IP.)

And there's legitimacy to the why. As you point out, there's very few women led movies/stories which (I assume) means that with some representation there's the want to nicer to it, especially as there are people who are outright assholes about it. Vs Another White Guy Does Things is easy to deride a movie because... speaking as a white guy, I'm going to be there mocking that movie too. But that's why I put the "(I assume)" earlier, because it's not like I'm lacking in some form of representation, so it's easy to mock it.

I will wrap up this though with again, it's a small extra outside perspective for a different viewpoint. If people just complain "There are too many women in x", no, they've stopped having legitimate complaints and are just being jackasses.

Because some boys are little bitches.

Maybe it's not being female led that's the problem, it's Mary Sue's that I think people are tired of.

The following is a representation of conservative thought:

Because it defies belief! Everyone knows any real superhero team would have NO women, women couldn't be superheroes! Movies only force us to have women there because of Woke. We can "tolerate" (will still complain about but will give Hollywood our dollars anyway) a 5/6 men/women ratio. If we gotta pretend to be Woke, it better not be more than five sixths!

Source: I was raised in a conservative household and did not fully reject that poison until I was 27.

so much was comics at the start I was wondering if it was more a comics thing. I know I don't like when they change the characters in most cases (green lanterns being a job makes it easy to change it up). But then it went into other genres. is this really a widespread complaint. I have just not been watching much modern stuff really so maybe Im missing the drama.

I think it's cool, but I also really like strong women so.......