The Man with Boobs Trope

[AJ_Lethal]

We're not talking about Bob from Fight Club? Oh. Awwww.

I expected that too.

OT: Wherether a woman with "masculine" personality traits is a good or bad thing depends on who writes it. Some people can pull it off, others just flop.

 

[Vegosiux]

I believe the term is applied to cases where they literally take a male character and make them female without any thoughts of how that'd change their attitudes, body language, inter-personal dynamics or really anything at all besides a switch to have female physical options (which includes boobs).

But the million dollar question is, if men and women are the same, why'd those changes occur at all...? Isn't saying that some sort of admission that there indeed are differences between men and women?

That's a can o' worms so many people are trying really hard to keep closed.

So, what is it? "Anything a man can do, a woman can do better" or "We acknowledge and celebrate the differences"?

 

[Something Amyss]

I have seen it on a feminist article somewhere...
Although it was in the meaning of making a sexist setting and then pretending it wasn't sexist when putting in a female character.
Rather than just criticism on tough female characters.

That doesn't seem very extreme, though.

I mean, maybe extreme by Thunderf00t standards, but not by anyone grounded.

 

[Notshauna]

I believe the term is applied to cases where they literally take a male character and make them female without any thoughts of how that'd change their attitudes, body language, inter-personal dynamics or really anything at all besides a switch to have female physical options (which includes boobs).

But the million dollar question is, if men and women are the same, why'd those changes occur at all...? Isn't saying that some sort of admission that there indeed are differences between men and women?

That's a can o' worms so many people are trying really hard to keep closed.

So, what is it? "Anything a man can do, a woman can do better" or "We acknowledge and celebrate the differences"?

The last one. But, such differences are societal, so in theory in a gender role-less society such things wouldn't exist, but Mass Effect is certainly not such a world as such a world is so different than our own to be completely beyond imagination.

 

[Olas]

We're not talking about Bob from Fight Club? Oh. Awwww.

Same here, that might have actually been interesting and not maddeningly tired. But no, more female representation.

I thought that "Men With Boobs" was a bit of an end-goal. Obviously, it would be better if activities didn't instantly cause assumptions of gender, but hey, small steps.

I don't think the end-goal was ever to remove all character traits that could identify someone as a woman besides physical appearance. That would seemingly defeat the purpose of having female roles to begin with. I think people just people want more variety when it comes to female characters, that would "men with boobs" and girly-girls and many other things as well.

 

[manic_depressive13]

I reject the notion that men and women are inherently different. However, being a woman does inform how you behave and how people behave towards you. Simply gender swapping a male character without changing the story to reflect such a change is lazy writing and denies the reality of being a woman in a gender divided society. It's different if you're writing about some post-gender futuristic culture. But most game narratives aren't trying to depict that.

Take Brienne of Tarth. She is a woman and that presents obstacles for her, even though she is a powerful knight. She feels like a real person who is relatable and able to be sympathised with. Now imagine that everything in the book was exactly the same, including dialogue and character interactions, but the Hound was suddenly female. That would be awkward and make no sense within the context of the world.

At least, that's how I understand it.

 

[Batou667]

Anita Sarkeesian. She actually did complain about the men with boobs concept:

"Not only are these games dominated by male characters but even the few women characters who do get staring roles are often made to replicate overly patriarchal, violent, macho behavior (but inside of a hyper sexualized female body). Not surprisingly the vast majority of game producers, designers and writers in the industry are still men.

To put it simply, there are just too many dicks on the dance floor!"

Apparently a woman displaying certain traits is just the same as a man. (which is quite ironic considering afterwards she's trying to convince us men and women are the same... Oh the backpedaling)

Bingo. On the one hand, Anteater Kardashian is trying to demolish gender roles, and on the other hand she's invoking very gendered and normative reasoning to make a point. (This female character is acting "too male"? I thought a woman with agency was allowed to act however she pleased, even if that meant bucking gender roles, hmmmm?)

Basically it's Sarkeesian's way of taking a cheap shot at "Patriarchal" values like strength, violence, stoicism, and so on. This is one of the reasons that I always felt it very disingenuous when she phrases her arguments in the form of an appeal for diversity: no, she doesn't want diversity, she wants to change the paradigm and shift the goalposts to suit her personal philosophy.

 

[Reaper195]

This is a stupid concept, and even worse whenever it's mention in a sexism discussion. Why? Because it means that certain personality traits are ONLY for a specific gender and no other. Gods forbid you were to have a pussy of a man, or an extremely hot-headed woman.

 

[Vault101]

So, what is it? "Anything a man can do, a woman can do better" or "We acknowledge and celebrate the differences"?

ugghh I hate that term....its always used in a terrible way...

I think we should be less concerned about how masculine/feminine characters are and more about how much development they get in the headspace

for example one bad example of "strong female charachter" is one (usually the token female) who acts angry and hot headed for no aparent reason and this sometimes is even a turn on for the mild mannered "everyman" protagonist eg they meet for the first time and she punches him for....reasons....

 

[Random Argument Man]

I always thought that FemShep was a pen-and-paper character. Since when women can't be hardened on the battle field?

(I'm going to regret my choices of words).

Besides, if this is a sexist tropes, why does it have its own "real life" section in the tropes page. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLadette

 

[elvor0]

Though it's legit if they're talking about a female character just being pasted over the male one (i.e. Femshep's Bro-walk).

I was more comfortable with that then the "female" walk/run they gave her in 3. *shudder* It was almost as bad as Yuna from FFX-2. Femshep don't have time to walk like a girl, she's here to kick ass and take names!

 

[verdant monkai]

I think they mean when a woman is so overtly foul mouthed/Aggressive/violent/muscular etc. When they basically display literally no feminine traits at all.

Its basically saying the writer is trying too hard and they have basically created a bland gravelly voiced bad ass, the like of which we've seen many times before, but this time said bad ass has tits.

Its a valid criticism. And it is bad if the character is the only one with real development in the story, it'd be ok say if there were other female characters to balance her out. Say if we were having very one dimensional characters, a crazy girl, a wily girl and a timid girl. I don't think the character is a bad female character as long as she is balanced out with a load of other different female characters, like in real life there are different kinds of women.

The same thing goes for male characters, they need balance. Gears of War for example isn't a bad example of this. Marcus Fenix is.
hear me out...

Marcus Fenix: Grim gravelly badass
Dom: Sidekick guy, beta male, chilled out dude
Baird: Sarcastic, witty, creative type
Cole: Cheerful, Enthusiastic

 

[Fairly Chaotic]

The only time I've seen that phrase or something similar used as a criticism is a passing mention in an Anita Sarkeesian video, accompanied with an image of Kara Thrace ('Starbuck') from Battlestar Galactica.

I might have seen it used once or twice as a criticism of Mass Effect. ("Femshep shouldn't count as a female character/protagonist since she's exactly the same as dudeshep, just a different character model and voice".)

...

It's funny that you mentioned those two examples. Starbuck has also been hailed as progressive as gender bending an originally male character into a strong female character.

About FemShep, I just find that to be silly. There are people (on this site) that beg for gender options to be the standard of every game but yet turn around and complain about mass effect having that very option. FemShep has a female appearance and voice (a sexy voice) but those differences are not enough for some people. A few people on here have mentioned the major complaint is the walking animation.
Yet, people herald Saints Row 2-4 as having the most and best gender options. At the risk of being wrong, I'm going to say that the female and male model have the exact same walking/mobility animations. So to me, those games have the same thing: different models and different voices. (I am open to being proved wrong)

I said all that to not debate you but to make a point. There are too many differing opinions and too many people saying this is "right or wrong" based on a trope. I think people have become too...obsessed with tropes and the word "trope" is slowly, if not already, becoming a word of negative connotations. Tropes should just be considered for what they are, observations of common themes and ideas.

Whether the character is a dainty guy or a butch woman, a hulking knight or a woeful damsel, it is not a matter of them being a right or wrong type character but a matter of how well done and how believable the character is in the context of the story they exist in.

To throw my two cents at the topic, I have also heard/read complaints about said trope. I think it's pointless to complain about it. Yes, people think that our society perceives physical activity and violence to be inherently male traits but there is a difference in what people perceive and what actually is. That perception is flat out wrong in our modern times. Certain things are gender-neutral despite the outdated perceptions people may have. Women can be physically aggressive and men wear eyeliner and get their nails done.

There are female body builders who are hulking and massive in musculature.
I don't know how this was resolved but some years ago female soldiers were complaining about not being able to serve on the front lines during combat. There are women that can run, jump, shoot, kill and cause explosions. Those kind of women, those kind of people exist in real life. Does anyone want to face them, call them men with boobs and call their lifestyle wrong?

People are varied and diverse. That diversity should extend to our fiction. People should stop focusing on "this one thing" to complain about it. People should focus on what they like and ignore what they dislike.

 

[Rabbitboy]

surprised no one has posted this yet
http://www.marvelousmanboobs.com/

OT: I don't see why females can't have masculine traits or why males can't have feminine traits.

 

[generals3]

Actually it's a Flight of the Concords reference mixed in with talking about how the people who are developing games are mainly male.

... It's a joke.

Feminists can make jokes, you know.

Not sure why you'd imply she's representative of feminists in general (and if she's than i'll be a sad panda). And second of all since all the video shows are male VG characters and not developers it seems to make more sense she's referring to said characters. But than again, it's not like making sense is her specialty.

And while it may be a joke of some sort it's quite clear that it's also serious. (Since she clearly had an issue with the actual amount of dicks)

 

[Phasmal]

Actually it's a Flight of the Concords reference mixed in with talking about how the people who are developing games are mainly male.

... It's a joke.

Feminists can make jokes, you know.

Not sure why you'd imply she's representative of feminists in general (and if she's than i'll be a sad panda). And second of all since all the video shows are male VG characters and not developers it seems to make more sense she's referring to said characters. But than again, it's not like making sense is her specialty.

And while it may be a joke of some sort it's quite clear that it's also serious. (Since she clearly had an issue with the actual amount of dicks)

Oh wow. That last part was also a joke. I'm not implying she's a representative of anyone.
I was merely pointing out the reference to a funny song. People take all this way too seriously.


I'm going to slowly back away from this thread now, avoiding eye contact.

 

[Harpalyce]

Let me see if I can back this up to the original point, because I think I know the phenomenon being talked about and it grates on my nerves like nobody's business too. I've never watched Ms. Sarkeesian's videos and don't plan to, but I think I know what's being discussed.

The problem is all because of this oversimplification that "power = masculinity", and the reverse that being feminine CAN'T be powerful.

It's kind of like somebody prattling on about how they "aren't like those other girls" because they don't wear makeup and watch Dr. Who and play video games. At first glance it might seem on the surface like a positive step forward if someone is proud about giving up those 'traditionally feminine' qualities and remaining a girl. However, there's still a big problem - and that is that when you do that "I'm not like those other girls!" thing, you throw other women under the bus. If you say you're "not like those other girls" because you're intelligent, you're really saying that all the other women are unintelligent, etc. etc.

This trope kinda does the same thing. It directly correlates having power, having battlefield prowess, having physical strength, kicking ass, having agency, being able to affect what's going on in the world around them, etc etc with... having masculine characteristics. That means they're also making the point that if you DON'T have these masculine characteristics, you can't have power, can't have battlefield prowess, can't have physical strength, can't have agency, can't affect the world around you, and can't kick ass.

Then it's just the same ol' same ol' bullshit wrapped up in a new package.

I'm not going to begrudge every female character that has masculine qualities for this. I think if people stop and make the character have reasons and depth, this can work. However unfortunately a lot of people don't go that far, and just put up a female character with the depth of a cardboard cutout, and go "look! she's empowered! you can tell because she's manly!". And that makes me want to bash holes in the wall with my head out of sheer frustration.

There's more than one way to be a girl, and you can have agency and be powerful many different ways. Not just by being like a dude.

(Unfortunately, when a lot of dumb writers try to make a girly girl that has that agency, they end up with something also detestable - because they think the only two states a girl can be are "manly" and "very fuckable". They think the only other way to be a woman is to be appealing to them and to be sexually available to them. Then you get a cardboard cutout character with zero depth that's just an insulting parody. The true solution is to stop thinking of women as weird strange things and to actually write them, design them, animate them etc. as PEOPLE, with DEPTH and REASONS FOR THEIR ACTIONS, but that is sadly pretty uncommon in media these days. It sucks. And that's kind of another topic anyway, lol.)

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Because those characters usually come across like someone wrote the script for an all male cast, and then they decided to cast Michelle Rodriguez for one of the parts instead. They often come off as well one dimensional, because being a badass is their only character trait.
It can work though. Real life military women are often more than capable of handing your arse to you, just like Starbuck or whoever. Just as long as they're, you know, actual characters. That feel like actual people.

 

[Gatx]

When was the last time you actually heard this criticism?

I keep hearing about criticism of criticism without actually hearing any criticism in the first place.

Anyway, I don't particularly give much of a fuck about the `Man with Boobs` thing, because I'm pretty sure if you described my personality and hobbies to a third party without mentioning my gender, they would think I was a boy. And I'm kinda fine with that.

Though it's legit if they're talking about a female character just being pasted over the male one (i.e. Femshep's Bro-walk).

I personally make that criticism sometimes. For one, I feel like that archetype isn't very deep or interesting character-wise anyway, but if they're female they get praised as being strong, female characters. Samus is the example that immediately comes to mind.

Second is that it kind of goes hand in hand with this trope [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealWomenDontWearDresses?from=Main.RealWomenNeverWearDresses]. It's definitely lessened a lot, but a while back it seemed like traits traditionally associated with femininity like wearing nice clothes, cooking, wanting to be mothers, etc. were being demonized. I mean, yeah women shouldn't be expected to be like that just because they're female but that doesn't mean that if women do like those things it's bad. Likewise in fiction, female characters can embody some of those traditionally female ideals and be strong (like being a resilient single mother raising a family in poverty or something) without having to kill things or subverting the feminine in some other way.