Why do males complain about female-led stories or too many female characters when the majority are still dominated by males?

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:

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.
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.
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I don't know if it's because i'm not a native speaker, but i consider people who use "male" and especially "female" instead of "men" or "women" very very weird at best.

As a native speaker yeah though depending on where I am I may assume a non native speaker because it's an irregular adjective-noun pairing and I know that's the sort of thing that trips people up
Context matters. "Male/female" is objectifying and can be used for "objects" like jobs. "Men/women" is more personal and should be used for people. The poster is using almost exclusively "male/female" even where "men/women" should be used, which leads to some clunkiness.
- I mean, it's just shorter than saying "women and girls" and "men and boys" if all female and male persons are the subject, not just adults
It's what you know, i lived more years with my gran than i didn't and before she slipped into the madness of Alzheimer's and i got to watch her die a little bit everyday, she still used females when speaking about women as a group.

Seemed a little old fashioned to me because she was old (born 1934) but its hard to see that term used as something particularly weird, just seems antiquated to me.

But that being said people are really struggling to find terms what won't offend people or be inaccurate, its bloody impossible but there are plenty o people who are just trying to make better word choices, even if they are failing and mixing in with the weirdos

Sexism

Probably. As others have said here no one seems bothered by female leads in good stories - but the focus on gender when it's a bad story is probably sexist.

I'm likely guilty of this myself, grumbling about "woke nonsense" and blaming the ideological messaging for the bad writing rather than just the bad writers.

It's not all doom and gloom though - check out this list of books. Lots of highly rated entries there with female protagonists - many of which are targeted at a broad audience, not just women.
A simple answer for a very long post.

I don't accept the premise of the question. People don't complain about female led movies, as long as those movies are well written. What people complain about (and this should include people looking for increased female representation) is projects that prioritise having female leads over having good writing.

Take the trend of gender swapped existing male characters into female ones. If, as a writer, you're prepared to follow through on that concept and explore how it changes the story, then it can be interesting. A chance to experiment with the differences in motivation between genders and how obstacles can be navigated in different ways.

If you're just going to swap "he" for "she" in the script and call it a day... Well that's boring and doesn't deserve anyone's time. It's not interesting or clever. In fact it's often bad take. You can end up with a woman on screen showing that to be a hero they have to display hyper-masculine traits. How is that a good female role model?

I mean, there is definitely a crowd that don't like women as lead characters. While not directly related to movies, just see how a bit of peach fuzz on Aloy upset people when they showed off the new Horizon game. And that's not a poorly written game or character.

Something like Captain Marvel does suit your argument; a poorly written character and movie, so people who criticise it get lumped in with the "women are bad" crowd. But there definitely are people who just hate things that put women in the spotlight.

Edit: fix shockingly poor grammar and spelling.
- I mean, there is definitely a crowd that don't like women as lead characters....
  
  There are always crazies, but I don't think that's a large number of voices. I seriously think that most people just want well written characters that are true to themselves and the situation and don't give a shit if its a man / a woman / black person / white person / pig or sentient blob of jelly.
- To prove this point, The Marvels was received better than Captain Marvel, and it had 3x as many women in leading roles
I prefer it when the gender doesn't matter, and that the hero doesn't need to prove anything to the audience. They're just well-written and we're invested in their motivations and the wider story around them.

A good example of this is the excellent She-Ra cartoon. I can't think of many good examples beyond that sadly...
- Ellen Ripley's gender doesn't matter until Resurrection, which isn't the highlight of the movie.
  
  A lot of media have strong female characters but their gender or sex does matter for the story so can't easily be replaced
  
  Susan in the book Soul Music (plus some others) as well as the Witches, Tiffany Achings and more from Pratchett
  
  Death from Sandman (even though the author is very controversial, but you could check the books out from sources that doesn't give him a kick back)
  
  Was a long time since I read them but the Polgara books feature a strong female protagonist
  
  We got classic youth/kids media that shows strong female characters even if some stuff are coloured by weird takes (Such as Xander Harris): Xena, Buffy and Pippi Longstockings

A lot of it comes down to genre, target audience, and writer's personal experience. Even MC and DC are characters written decades ago. Batman is basically from the 1930s/40s.

Compare that to last decade's best selling YA novels. Hunger Games was constructed to be very balanced from the start including a female main lead, same for Percy Jackson.

My hot take is that most of these instances are actually fine as is because Hollywood in general sucks total ass at writing new characters into existing franchises, especially for the exact purpose of introducing diversity without any depth.

There's literally a 3+ hour series on youtube of how bad the new star wars trilogy is, and a solid third of that rant is about how poorly written the female lead is.

The issue here is that having an equal or majority female (or any other metric) set of characters wouldn't automatically make your story or writing better. You have to develop each character just like the rest, otherwise you end up with inserts that have no purpose other than to equal out a fraction.

Whether that is due to the writers being able to create male characters easier, or just a perceived audience target, you'd much rather have a well written character than a soulless one.

And that is likely not even correlated with male vs female writers. So much so that some critics even believe female writers are better at writing male characters than male writers, which is funny to think about. Ex: Harry Potter is still a 2:1 ratio.

Again though, there are plenty of good examples (mostly books) with very successful stories with equal or majority female characters.

If it makes you feel any better, this argument is old as hell lol. You can find ye olde forum posts discussing the exact same things mentioned in this entire thread from as far back as early 2000s, with plenty of in text examples from books and screenplay.

The general concencus though, is that if the characters are good, the plot is good, and the writing is good, no one really cares about the number because you're absorbed into the story. Your attachment to the story is a direct reflection of your own personal identity. If you notice the lack of X whatever while reading/watching and it breaks your immersion, then it's probably a viable critique of the writing. If it's something you notice after outside the story, then it might not matter as much as you think.

This is really well written and I agree with a lot of your points...but when I read "as far back as the early 2000s" I felt about 100 years old.
- Haha I meant for WWW forums.
  
  Dunno how many people here remember BBS or having to look up stuff in the library.
  
  That being said damn it's been 25 years already :O

I’m male, I’ve never complained about this. I think it’s not good to generalize everyone

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.

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.

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

An interesting counter point to this.

Kids movies, I'm a dad, I only have boys. Trying to find new movies that have good male parts is challenging. There are plenty of "girl empowerment" movies, but ones with good role models for boys are few and far between.

Everything is based around violence. Like really, is that all boys are good for?

...and not just movies. My partner and I steadfastly try to do all "interacting with kid's school, extracurricular and social groups" stuff 50/50. We always strive to go to (and host) such important events together. We always indicate we should both be added to mailing lists, and give both our phone numbers as contacts, etc, etc. However, much (sometimes most) of the time people only ever call her about kids playdates, medical professionals default to discussing his issues with her exclusively even though I am sitting next to her and commenting too, when there is a parents' chat/mail group for his classes or other activities usually she gets added and then has to help me muscle my way in to the group (and the groups are often all women). Once at a preschool party a parent saw me interact with my kid, came and asked me to point out his mother, then went to her to invite our kid to a birthday party. It's never-ending for a father who strives to be a "caring father", and not just an infantile "toxically masculine, one-dimensional, emotionally stunted cliché" in terms of "role model". It is exhausting for both her and me, but is also extremely demoralising for me because trying to be what you believe to be the right kind of role-model is one of the most important yet virtually undocumented parts of parenting, and even more demoralising because it still happens even after I hugely reduced my external workload in order to be the primary "stay at home" parent. One small positive step is that the country we live in introduced "paternity leave at child-birth" legal requirements (much smaller than for maternity leave though, and only introduced after my kid was born [sigh]). In popular culture it has become a trope that women suffer endlessly trying to play the role of both parents to compensate for idiotic (or selfish prick) fathers, but it glosses over the fact that a man who actively tries to "be the change" (and any woman who tries to facilitate that change in solidarity) are so often tripped up at every step by this pervasive (and often subconscious) intellectual and emotional inflexibility. One other small positive is that I occasionally find another father who feels the same way (and who is often just as frustrated and burned out by the state of things) ...sometimes - just one or two. Having previously lived in many countries/continents I also know that the country I live in is far from the worst offender for this, which makes it even more pathetic globally.

Everything is based around violence. Like really, is that all boys are good for?

Oh yeah, you are so right. It feels at times like - when I'm not teaching him to play football (violently), and not egging him on to emulate (violent) action figures, and not buying him fake guns to play with (violently), and not telling him to "man up" instead of taking time to understand his feelings, etc - there seems to be a degree of subliminal judgmentalism directed at me for not "sticking to the job description". It seems many people will prefer to see the world burn in preference to accepting someone disregarding parts of the "normality" rulebook based on rational introspection, including those who would never admit it out loud, and even some who haven't yet consciously realised they are standing on that side of history - perhaps because it holds up a mirror to them not doing so (out of fear?, laziness?, bitterness-fueled pulling-up the ladder?).
- Just for a specific example. Bluey vs Paw Patrol. Both HUGE kids shows, about dog-based characters.
  
  In Bluey all of the important characters except Bandit are female. The stories are awesome, they revolve around family, caring and over coming challenges. They are almost never violent, the stories are rich and interesting and somewhat entertaining even for an adult watching for the infinity+1th time.
  
  In Paw Patrol; all the important characters are male except Mayor Goodway and Skye. The stories are repetitive and boring, they revolve around working together, being heroic and solving problems. They are regularly violent, and as the show has progressed it has gotten stupid with massive power creep and a group of antagonists. Paw Patrol just kinda sucks.
  
  In Bluey often Bandit is used for comic relief; none of the female characters are. In Paw Patrol, the comic relief is handled by Mayor Humdinger who is often the antagonist, Mayor Goodway is often scatterbrained but rarely is the comic punching bag.
Same for kids books. It's great for my daughter, but it's hard to find good movies and books for her younger brother.
- First, I'm confused as to why you'd need to segregate books and film by gender, these all have either a male or non-gendered lead: Captain Underpants, Nate the Great, Hal The 3rd Class Hero, The Hobbit, The Lord of The Rings, Treasure Island, Danny the Champion of the World, The Outsiders, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Percy Jackson (all 40 billion of the series), The Giving Tree, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Bridge to Terabithia, James and the Giant Peach, Holes (series), Where The Wild Things Are, The Heroes of Olympus (more Percy Jackson I think), Ender's Game, Winnie The Pooh, Narnia (series), The Wind In The Willows, The Indian in the Cupboard, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Neverending Story, I Am Every Good Thing, Don't Hug Doug (He Doesn't Like it), King Arthur's Very Great Grandson, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Wild Robot (series), Stuart Little, Mr. Popper's Penguins, George's Marvellous Medicine, Lord of The Flies, Calvin and Hobbes (series), The Dangerous Book for Boys, The American Boys Handy Book.
  
  (You didn't specify age, so I tried to add our family suggestions for about 4-12. Once he's older, depending on your thoughts on the language, we also have a lot of suggestions for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn)
Branch out of American media; European and Asian media have much less tolerance for on-screen hardcore violence. American media freaks out over a nipple in children's media, but war and graphic fighting are A-OK!
- Totally.
  
  I love Shaun the Sheep.
I appreciate what you're saying, however:

Women are, regardless of any other stat, still under-represented. 2000-2009 is depressing.
- Yes, it's not a counter point but rather an also important parallel discussion. We need to have higher standards for male role models, or we will continue to have incels fill the space.
- No problem with the stats.
  
  But I'm really interested in movies aimed at the under 10yo segment
Must not be an anime fan.
- Anime is great if you want you kids to think they are supposed to surrounded by a harem of women so possessive of their crush that they can't function for themselves without that crush their site reason for existing, more often than not
I recommend Onward, especially if they're a little older enough to really resonate with the ending
Why can't a girl be a good role model for a boy?

(I'm not completely disagreeing with you btw - if all the boy leads are "stereotypical boy" then it's just perpetrating the problem)
- For the same reason we want diverse casts in media.
  
  Kids learn by putting themselves into the story. I don't want to see only girls kicking arse and boys being relegated into two dimensional villains or stupid sidekicks.

Bad writing is to blame for most of the criticism I think. They are just point scoring if they push a female lead because it’s a female lead. Shitty male leads are pushed constantly but the criticism of them is often ignored because the pedestal is often lower. I couldn’t give a fuck about anything Kevin hart or Dwayne Johnson is in for instance, same with plenty of other badly written male characters. Well written characters do more for films/tv than any shoehorning ever could.

There are a lot of female lead movies / tv shows, but on the internet there are also a lot of toxic, misogynistic little bastards. I think you're waking up a bit to the media you consume.

Black swan, alien, death becomes her, million dollar baby, thelma and louise, ghostbusters afterlife, crazy ex girlfriend, orange is the new black, schitts creek (50/50) Buffy, dead to me, xena, just off the top of my head. All massive hits, all majority / equal female presences.

That said, there are screechers and the whiners all over the internet..and they're dipshits being amplified beyond what they should.

Titanic literally the box office champ for a decade with a female lead (close to 50-50 to be fair). Terminator 2 as well, and Mad Max Fury road, 2 of the greatest action movies of all time (you can fight me but, name aside, that story is all about Furiosa). Those movies work because the female leads are just good. The selling point isn't that they have women in them, the selling point is they are really really good movies.

Edit: and Kill Bill, where a lot of critics call The Bride (the lead of the movie) the greatest movie character of all time.
- Those movies work because the female leads are just good.
  
  The usual suspects whined about Furiosa, precisely because as you say the movie was about her.
  
  The selling point isn't that they have women in them, the selling point is they are really really good movies.
  
  Yeah, but whiners whined anyway.
I was thinking of some of those too - Buffy, Xena, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, etc., but aren't those also targeted towards a female demographic?
- Not particularly. Whedon's work in particular caters to his particular fetish, small women kicking ass. Compare Buffy, Dollhouse, Firefly, The Nevers.
First, I don't think I can find anything not perfect about Alien or Aliens, but the "female-led" context there is emotionally strong in very primal sense, liking those movies doesn't prove anything because both movies (especially the second one) just give a new spin to pretty traditional perception of women.

Xena is nice, but uses some stereotypes as well, just more lesbian than traditional, ahem.

Anyway, I wanted to say I've been accused of being such a whiner and screecher about Disney fake Star Wars, and Rey there is just a shitty character.

Star Wars outside of movies has plenty of very cool female characters, and the "conservative fans" Disney accused of being racist and misogynist are supposed to know most of them.

So let's please remember that companies are sometimes trying to do damage control with things that are just bad, by accusing people not liking those of racism or misogyny.

It's a huge difference when you hear just that some movie is not cool and when you also hear that those calling it not cool are very bad people. If you didn't like the movie in question yourself, you might stop telling others it's bad, and even try to reconsider your opinion, probably buying another ticket.
- liking those movies doesn’t prove anything because both movies (especially the second one) just give a new spin to pretty traditional perception of women
  
  Blatantly untrue, Ripley was written as assumed to be a man in the script and they didn't change it after the lead actor got the role as a woman.

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.

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.
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.

Men that are scared of women leads are pussies

I've had excellent and poor women leaders. The difference with a poor male leader, I could argue with them head-to-head, no harm no foul. But with a poor female leader, if I argue head-to-head I'm suddenly hurting their feelings or being misogynistic.

I've always thought that it might be disingenuous. Like they just throw in minorities, lgbt+ people, and women just for the the sake of appealing to the young progressive crowd.

I'm totally fine with it but some movies you can kinda see that it's not done tastefully.

Yeah, i like it when they mix it up. Diverse backgrounds make for interesting stories and engage new people with the genre. Its really lame and insulting when it feels like theyre just trotting a character out to meet a quota and don't give them any development beyond they're cultural origin though.

If women want to see more female characters, they should definitely write them and probably not do it with the intention of creating a character "for women" to resonate with, but the larger fandom as a whole. Whenever people declare a target audience, they inevitably alienate others.
- I remember I was watching the show Batwoman or Batgirl or whatever it's called, and all of a sudden they just replaced the lead character with a black women. Like wtf happened there, literally just yoinker her and replaced her.

I don't think there's a significant amount of people that complain about women led movies. Certainly not enough to just say "men" as a group.

Probably it's just a low quality ragebait post. Because I also don't think that there's a significant amount of people that believe that "men" don't like female led movies, first example that comes to mind is Kill Bill, most if not al men I know love that movie.

Edit: Funnily enough, I've been thinking and I don't think Kill Bill would pass a reversed Bechdel test: "two man talking to each other and the subject is not a woman". As there are little conversations between two man in the movie and probably most of them refer to the protagonist. Still a widely loved movie.

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.

Once female speaking time reaches 30% or more, males believe that the females are dominating the speaking time.

Female encroachment on what has traditionally been considered male spaces is not taken well. Female empowerment is considered taking from deserving males.

Essentially the general male population don't like females, and only tolerate them as a subservient subclass who should be seen and not heard.

EDIT: This should probably annoy you a little too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mt2qCjL6-n4

And it may also explain why people complain that there should only ever be one female character - it minimises the chances of males having to watch two females interact, because that would be excluding the male experience and they couldn't possibly relate to two females interacting.

EDIT2: comments in that video do claim there are more scenes... whether or not that really adds much is up to you.

Essentially the general male population don’t like females, and only tolerate them as a subservient subclass who should be seen and not heard.

This is a WILD claim to make.
- It's a wild world.
This is one reason why shows like Ms Marvel and She Hulk tanked so bad.
Female encroachment on what has traditionally been considered male spaces is not taken well. Female empowerment is considered taking from deserving males.

The problem is that in the context of a "winner-take-all" society it does do that though.

Obviously the general solution is to make a society that is overall more equitable between those who succeed & those who don't.

But if you aren't going to do that then you will get a reaction from those who are losing ground, even if that happening is the morally progressive outcome.

“Men who feel inferior to other men are always anxious to establish their superiority over women.”

Makes me think of this quote from Mary Wollstonecraft

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.

imo

Main Points

most people (including most men) do not actually give a fuck.
a tiny insignificant group mumbling in a dark corner probably do care, but noone should give a shit or listen to them.
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).
unoriginal drones parrot those amplifications because they'll get angry about whatever their screens tell them to this week.
society has leaned male-dominant for too long, so genuine efforts to be fair are perceived by some idiots (see #2,#4) as "unfair".
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:

https://youtu.be/7fshOP7x0GM

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

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

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 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.

It’s sad that those people make discourse over actual criticism so hard.

Rey is a wonderful example here. Your acquaintance dislikes Rey because she’s a woman. I (and a bunch of other people) dislike Rey because she’s terribly written. If you exchanged her for a man he would still be terribly written. But of course, that legitimate criticism is often lumped in with people crying „woke“ at the sight of a female protagonist.

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.

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.

Have you read A Memory Called Empire yet? It's amazing.
I’ve begun to prefer scifi written by women, because then at least I know its not going to be completely cringe.

If you haven't, check out Ursula K. Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness. Absolutely fantastic novel.

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.

Asimov is so, so difficult to read through now that I'm older, as the female characters are just... ouch. The ideas are there, but good gods I wish he'd just avoid writing out conversations at all.
- Asimov is so, so difficult to read through now that I'm older, as the female characters are just... ouch.
  
  Case in point: Noys Lambent in The End of Eternity. She was added by editor mandate, and she's hollow: a kept woman who's secretly a perfid ally of an opposing faction. The hero is somewhat redeemed by his understanding that the rebel cause is just, but she's pure cardboard and eye candy. 13 y.o. me loved her. Years later... She's cringeworthy.

I've never heard anyone complain about it unless it was a remake or different from the original story.

Being a woman is "marked" while being a man is just the default, so anything that strays from the "default" sticks out and it seems reasonable that it requires justification. This goes in reverse in some cases, like the need to refer to someone as a "male nurse" - why do we feel we need to say this? Because the default nurse is assumed to be female.

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

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

I'd say the latest star wars movies were shit. It had nothing to do with Rey being a woman or even naturally gifted. Finn, Grumpy Luke, Swolo Ren (other poorly written characters), the writing team and the plot points (a spacecraft the size of a city needs to refuel but a lightsaber that can cut through anything has an infinite energy source) the writing team chose, should all share the blame. If your criticism is levelled at Rey alone, your argument isn't worth hearing.
- I don't have a problem with the character, just the way she was written especially in the second film, I didn't watch the third. And that film was terrible. The plot was bad, all the characters were bad, their adherence to star wars space stuff was bad
  
  I don't know if the writers were bad at their job or whether they were required to change it
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

John Wick gets a pass, though?
- You can't really compare the two movies, John Wick takes the route of being so over the top to the point of becoming funny. I don't think they were aiming for that with the new SW trilogy.
- It works in that genre. The main guy in Nobody also was pretty good from the start. The fast and furious flicks also don't do a great deal of character development
  
  Those all have characters presented as good at whatever the movie is about

In a word: Insecurity.

It's not like they'd feel any safer with female superheroine.

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.

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

Most of those superhero teams were originally created by comic book companies staffed almost entirely by men. The heroes created are therefore how they visualize heroes being, which mostly takes inspiration from their own experiences, and therefore creates mostly men.

First, you’re generalizing males. It comes off as you asking this question rhetorically and in bad faith.

Second, you do realize that movies are for entertainment purposes, right? How many non-activists do you know who watch movies with the mindset of caring which gender is dominating in lead roles or whatever?

I’m a male and I prefer to keep politics out of my escapism, thank you very much.

I could say there are plenty of movies I enjoy that have female lead roles. I could say that there are also movies with female lead roles that I didn’t enjoy. But in the end, would you even care? It’s clear with your post that you’re not really asking anything and just wanted to make a political rant.

Edit: It was fun watching the doots on my comment go up and down throughout the day before finally settling in the negatives. Internet whiplash let’s go. Didn’t realize it would be so controversial. lol

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?

You're really narrowing down a much much bigger issue to try and make it digestible. But the patriarchy is systemic. Misogyny is systemic. Male privilege is systemic. Gamergate is a symptom, and honestly, a mild one at that.

Insecurity.

people who are socially functional do not actually complain about this. the internet does not represent humanity

This issue isnt exclusive to the internet. But I agree, these complainers do not represent humanity, because they show none.

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.

Furiosa irritated the hell out of many men with a wounded pride.

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?

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

Why when a lot of those males aren't men, they're boys.
- I guess my reply was coming from women typically find being called females odd, often by "incels," so I thought males had the same tone. I didn't mean weird in a rude way! You have a good point.
- Yes, we get that, but I think they mean that when incels call women "females" it's cringe as hell, because we know it's coming from a place where they don't think of women in a healthy way, so this comes off as stooping to their level
- At that point, you could say “male characters.”
Most of the males are matched with females (two were more solo). The poster was consistent.
What's an inclusive term for both men, teenagers, and boys?
I'd argue the difference is that when people say "females", it's usually in a vague sexual context- and that term includes girls and teenage women

I've always thought it was absolutely insane that the kids show paw patrol has 6 dogs with just ONE girl dog, along with the human lead being a boy.

and in Bluey almost all characters are girls.

Also in paw patrol, the good mayor is a black woman and the bumbling villain is a white man....
- And those things mean they couldn't have just had at least ONE of the 5 boy dogs as an additional girl? I don't see what another show or the race of characters has to do with this.

I complain about popularity of fantasy romance vis a vis non-fantasy romance, and that now most published (or advertised) fantasy books are fantasy romance.

That genre is typically written for women, with female lead and is heavy in certain tropes.

That genre isn't for me.

Am I a person that you're ranting about OP? If not, could you point me to an article or opinion piece that you're talking about, so I can read it and come back here?

I don't think you are. The intrusion of "romantasy" is a serious issue with book publishing because they're chasing what makes the most profits, and right now that's the trend. No matter that romantasy is not proper fantasy...
- I like the ringantasy over romantasy any day. Sometimes I also read sword-and-sandalsantasy.
  
  +Old man grumbles over the youths word usage+

I hate when a story is forced into any agenda. Like making Daneel a woman in Foundation is atrocious because it has other implications across all of Asimov's stories like with Gladia and Jander, the relationship with Elijah and family dynamic, how Solarians perceive Daneel, and the nuance and contrast between Daneel and Dors just to name a few off the top of my head.

These are stupid people making last minute frivolous and agenda based pandering nonsense decisions. It is disingenuously stealing from the richness of the story these films are supposedly depicting. If they can't tell the story they claim, they should be creating an independent work that stands entirely on its own instead of butchering the original art that should be told with full scope in the long term.

If you want to tell a female lead story, awesome. Pick a good one to start with. God Emperor of Dune is all about super strong women in roles. I mean there is an army of all women that outright rape men in battle. There are all levels of women present in that story. Chapterhouse Dune is another all about female leading roles. Tell the story around Susan Calvin in Asimov's stories. There are tons of these types of stories. Hacking and butchering a universe or fitting a female lead in by committee agenda is absolutely garbage. Like Star Wars is a story about inevitable authoritarianism and exceptionalism where no one else is relevant. Trying to make that into some diversity flick is absurd. It is ultimately the wrong story from the start. I loved it growing up, but it is what it is and nostalgia is often blind. The story has an underlying ethos that is the foundation of the universe. It is flawed. So what, it can still be entertaining. When that ethos is in conflict, the story stops having any relevant value. Build a new story on a better foundation. Reshaping old stories shows that the entire premise is overly conservative bankers that treat art as investment. Bankers are shitty artists. They are incapable of being bold and trying new and novel things. There is no art in such endeavors. I have no problem with female leads. I take issue with terrible art by committee and bankers.

It is disingenuously stealing from the richness of the story these films are supposedly depicting.

Strangely enough, as a woman, I see it generally adding to the richness...

Men doing all of the interesting stuff isn't rich.

Hell, even I Robot, a movie that should have had a female lead, turned Calvin in to a supporting role to put a man in the lead.
- If men in a story are doing all the interesting stuff, the story is the bad choice. Adding oil paints to an existing watercolor does not make art. Paint a beautiful oil painting.
- Hell, even I Robot, a movie that should have had a female lead, turned Calvin in to a supporting role to put a man in the lead.
  
  That's exactly the point, arbitrarily changing the characters is unsatisfying. I, Robot should have been about Calvin.

There's a saying, something like "When you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression." It's the same with white folks who feel like it's a big deal when there's more than a token POC in something. It must be DEI, right?

I'm a straight, white, middle class male, but I'm fully aware that my life experience is much different from so many other peoples'. And I've never understood why some people feel like it takes away from them when someone else gets something, like the straight folks who feel like it takes away from straight marriage if gay folks can marry.

People are weird.

Insecurity. "Males" is a pretty wide brush in this case

I think its just that people don't like shoe horned female empowerment, idk what percentage of female lead content is that but it does detract a lot from the experience.

I don't really talk to anybody

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

Just pure fragility. You’d think at least a film from a different perspective might be interesting, but no - can’t even deal.

Me, a male reading mostly manhwa of the romance fantasy genre where 99% of it have female protagonists: yeah, this is not talking about me. This kind of discussions are more about creating conflict rather than understanding. If people have time to start fights about the sex of the characters they have no interest in the story itself. Statistics on who is drawn more are kinda useless...

/me re-watching bocchi the Rock for the millionth time "You know, I never noticed before but there's a distinct lack of Males here"
Funny thing with books is you can tell whether the intended audience is men or women by the cover art, but the art is (perhaps was) all aimed at women because they don't find a significant number of men buying books, the man's wife or mother buys them for them

So books aimed at men have cover art aimed at attracting women buying for a man.

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.

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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- https://youtu.be/F40F5qivFIw
  
  I think this guy says it well.
it just comes across as bitchy and not assertive

The problem is men get way more leeway than women in this regard. Their voice, their demeanor, the way they dress, everything must perfectly match whatever the dude is expecting or “it’s not believable.“ Male characters are rarely as scrutinized.

I didn't complain.

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.

Depends on show type you choose. If you watch a series like Deep Water or DeadLoch its all woman driven stories, and minor roles for men. If you pick a superhero genre that has been male dominated forever, it is going to be mostly men still.

It didn't even occur to me that Deadloch is mostly about women, even though that shouldn't be surprising, given who made it.

I had a similar revelation after I played through Forspoken. I assumed it would be a target for the anti-woke brigade since the protagonist is a black woman, but it was only after finishing it clicked that every character of consequence is a woman (with one exception I won't mention for spoiler reasons).

If the story keeps you invested, genders are pretty irrelevant. I think genre expectations can shift if we don't draw attention to them.
- I think genre expectations can shift if we don’t draw attention to them.
- If the story keeps you invested, genders are pretty irrelevant.
  
  This^ When the director/writer throws in a woman's role to try to appeal to everyone while not actually adding to the story it just comes off as a cheap ploy.
  
  I think Dr. Who fell into this trap. Story about a man who travels through time and is reborn as a man for 60 years of TV, suddenly is reborn as a woman ( to fulfil inclusion of women as main character). Their ratings tanked. Not because Jodie Whittaker was terrible, but because the story was altered with no addition of anything better.

I’ve never met anyone who acted like this, nor even seen someone on the internet complaining about it, besides reviews in movie sections. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, it’s just I believe that you’re probably seeing a vanishingly small portion of society do this.

Your comic book examples with one woman on a team of mostly men are probably due to the audience for conic books having been almost exclusively boys. I suspect the one woman was indicative of the market share going to girls

I wonder if umbrella academy's gender balance was due to the power archetypes being perceived as gendered

I have no idea, but I think this video is on to something.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CGL7_CO3YDg

Please remove the &pp=ygU... tracking parameter from your link.
- Ok
Please give at least some clue before I give Google more clicks.
- It’s a humorous poem done with beat poetry (I think I don’t know much about poetry)using African instruments discussing gender identity and sexuality. It’s worth the click and doesn’t take long.
Thank you for bringing this into my life.
- No problem, it’s one of the best things I’ve seen on the internet in a while.

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.

Nobody notices things that conform to their expectations—but when anything violates their expectations, they assume it’s a deliberate message. (Even if it’s fiction violating their genre expectations in the direction of reality.)

And if they can’t figure out what the message is supposed to be, they let other people tell them. And if people tell them different things, they go with the one that makes them feel the strongest reaction.

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.

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.

Gamers complain about cancel culture, but they're the first to demand changes and threaten to boycott a game for daring to include any "woke" (diverse character) content.

It's absurdly ironic and hypocritical.
- There are reasons women have very often chosen not to use voice chat in games for decades now. You will get some sort of harassment. Often that harassment is framed as being well-intentioned ("I'm not part of the problem--I talk to girls!" -"Okay, but maybe talking to them just because they have vaginas is still not desirable.")

Because men run entertainment, we can make sure men are making it. Because men are making it, their Mary sue stories are the ones that get released.

That’s how it happens, in my opinion, but I don’t get how more men aren’t completely fucking bored looking at it and listening to it! Seriously, as a middle aged, acerbic, bearded white man, I’m sick of seeing characters that only I can relate to. It’s not a compelling character anymore. I want different characters with different stories!

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. 🤔

Inherent sexism in society to control people into doing what the dominant majority of society wants (which got there by force and enslaving and manipulation of the "lesser" people)

Because some boys are little bitches.

Keeping with OP's theme of referring to people as if they were dogs, I see.

Which is not to say that I disagree with your opinion as such. This world does have an issue with fragile masculinity, and that may well be the answer to OP's question.
- Dissect all ya want. But in the end it usually comes down to exactly that. Why do we have to expend so much mental energy on fools?

Because men are babies.

Yup, poorly paraphrasing a well know quote: When you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression

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 have seen this kind of behavior only on the internet. Maybe I just know people who aren't stupid misogynist or then people are hiding their opinions in real life because they know that what they are thinking is wrong. There should absolutely be more females on major roles in movies, series and videogames.

Why do men complain?

I think most people's issue is with the Steven Seagal, but a lady, protagonists like Rey from Star Wars, where they are just expressions of what is basically a male power fantasy, but female, which virtually nobody actually wants. There's a fairly limited audience for even the original Seagal male version. While there DO exist better, Die Hard-style the protagonist gets their ass kicked female properties from this century, like Jessica Jones season 1, nobody wants to see a lady getting her ass kicked to the same degree as a man, so I can't think of another example after that, despite innumerable ill-conceived girlboss-powered action movies like G20. Nobody would try to do Hallmark movies for dudes, doing male power fantasy action for ladies is equally ill-conceived, as shown by box office numbers, and a still 70% or more male audience.

To add to this, the "default" for a three-character ensemble in circa 90s kids media was: one (white) boy, one (white) girl, one (non-white) boy, for a 1:2 gender/race and 2:1 "diversity" ratio, which made the media feel diverse (back then this was generally considered a good thing) while still making male and white the default. In other words, a win-win that still was a setback to true diversity. Examples: Wishbone TV show and Harry Potter (if you count ginger as non-white).

Aye, gingers are their own filthy race.

/s

Idk I'd guess for a lot of people it's just pinning their dislike which might come from anywhere to a superficialy unfamiliar part of whatever media they are watching. The other reason is like, conservative patriarchal propaganda, trolling, bait whatever and just sorta falling into the crowd on any of these.

Also there is media written for women that likely doesn't have this problem, or at least not as much. But then again the normative position to sell to is a male one.

Now being male I never really see an issue with my media representation(because there is none at least from numbers), but also I generally complain about media not for it's cast of characters. If I complain it's usually, either because I just feel uncomfortable/bored with it for whatever reason, or because it comes of as disingenuous or lazy, both of which will get me to drop it.

Art by committee/ marketing aim doesn't feel right to me usually and casting female/progressive can sometimes happen for that reason. As in a part of the cast makeup is decided in order to bait a particular reaction to generate publicity, and conservatives being angry is still publicity.

In this case then the real issue of bad art is doubly masked by one one hand people complaining about woke cast, while on the other hand people consume slop they would've never known if not for baited conservatives complaining. While the production behind it laughs it's way to the bank.

I'm just one guy tho who hasn't really even seen all that much what do I know about art, content and the world.

I didn't complain about females whatsoever.

I complain about complainers.

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.
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
This answer could greatly benefit from explaining how the higher-level concepts like patriarchy and privilege apply to this scenario in particular

Scene:

There's a huge monster attacking the city, it blasts a building and it's about to crash on a group of people. A female superhero flies in and starts rescuing people and placing them out of harms way. Quickly she gets to the incel who stops her with a hand gesture and says "I'm okay I'll wait for the male superhero"

The core complaint is for femwashed stories, where the male lead has been replaced by a woman.

It's very similar to Hollywood movies taking movies from Japan or China and then turning the Asian lead to a Euro-American.

The level of hatred for this type of content is very strong as it feels like a farce or fraudelent, like someone is trying to sell you a fake designer brand item. Everything that made the item great is absent in the fake one.

On top of that, there's a clear fascist takeover in the US from the rainbow liberal, evangelical and social capitalists. Fascists have weird superiority and inferiority complexes including towards women. But don't worry, Chinese movies will become popular soon, so both sides of the US political aisle will have to adjust.

Yes let's pretend men do this and then hurl insults at them all.

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.

Men are not the only ones that watch movies...There are plenty of movies either female led or majority female but they are typically not very popular amongst women either and consequently don't make very much money