MovieChat Forums > The Matrix Resurrections (2021) Discussion > Why do females have to be strong?

Why do females have to be strong?

posted 3 years ago by avortac4 (3742)
11 replies | jump to latest

I have seen so much of this 'strong female' stuff, people defending movies by saying they 'already have strong females' or 'females in The Matrix have always been strong', and so on.

This got me thinking; why?

Why is STRENGTH the defining element females just _HAVE_ to be? Is it because they're weak in real life? Is it for compensating something? A fantasy to keep alive to cope with reality?

I think the problem is not whether females are strong or not - there have been, in my opinion, ENOUGH 'strong females', and it has gone as far as it can. How many Mary Sues movies need before they can say "ok, I am satisfied, there are now enough strong females, we can look in other directions now and take these flabs off of our eyes that direct our concentration to one direction only"? - there is a bigger problem baked in this BLIND LUST for 'strong females'.

Has anyone - seriously! - ever stopped to think how strength is defined? What is a 'strong female'?

Is a cute, feminine, giggly seductress strong, because she gets what she wants by exploiting mens weakness for cute and feminine females?

Is a masculine bodybuilder martial artist-type strong, because she can - strangely enough - kick the buttockses of so many bigger, burly men?

Wait, by making women fight and beat MEN, doesn't this imply that MEN are the strong ones, and that it's an exception, a miracle, a show of 'go girl' power, the ULTIMATE power that women don't USUALLY achieve, when a woman ACTUALLY BEATS UP A MAN?

Doesn't this usual trope of 'one woman beats up 200 men' imply that men are strong - otherwise, why would it be noteworthy - or heck, why would it be worth ANYTHING, if women are strong and men are weak? Of course strong women can beat up weak men.

Why is this an achievement? Women strong, men weak = women beat up men. What's wrong with this picture?

Wouldn't it be even MORE ultimate achievement if women beat up.. wait for it.. OTHER WOMEN? Women are so strong, they can not only beat up weak men, but OTHER strong women! Wouldn't that be the most 'badass' moment of all time? (I almost vomited lowering myself to use that non-word, ecch)..

There's certain illogical inconsistency going on here - we're supposed to believe that women are strong, stronger than men, a 50kg woman can EASILY beat up two 100kg men with one punch without even breaking a sweat!

At the same time, wer'e supposed to believe it's some kind of amazing feat of strength that a woman does this. The staggering implications are not thought about.. so we basically see 'strong individual beating up weak individuals' and we're supposed to marvel as to how that proves that individual is strong..?

[–] avortac4 (3742) 3 years ago

My actual point, however, is this:

Doesn't anyone stop to think how many different 'strengths' there are?

Why would women try to be 'the same' as men, and just beat up men in combat, melee, and physical conflicts?

What about tactics, what about intelligence? What about street-smarts? What about intuition? Stealth? Blending in? Being a spy?

Why can't we ever go towards 'natural strengths', why does everyone have to be the same? Why is STRENGTH even defined SO NARROWLY?!

How about strength of character?

Why does it always have to be 'women beat up men easily, ha! That proves women are strong!'

Why can't it ever be 'that woman totally fooled me, seduced me, made me fall in love with her, and then took my secret passkey and broke in our organization, stole our secrets, and then vanished'?

Why can't it ever be anything but just simple brawl that the woman easily wins?

Why can't it ever EVEN be 'woman takes just as much beating as men do'? As 'Cracked' once mentions, women are some kind of schizoid goddesses that have to always be 'strong' in the most stupid, superficial, narrow-minded, predictable, clichéic way, but they can never TAKE as well as they give - their point was about HEADSHOTS, where you _NEVER_ see a woman being shot in the head and blood spurt out.

Now, people have been screaming about EQUALITY for ages, but from where I stand, women have never really wanted it, and movies have never really dared try it. Women are always Mary Sues - that's not equality. Show me a women getting beaten up like the blonde guy in Fight Club. Where's THAT movie? Where's THAT strength, the power to take a beating until your face is a bloody pulp, and going on without complaints? THAT is strength.

Somehow we never see that kind of 'strong women' - we only see these 'captain marvels' that don't look like women, don't act like women, have short haircuts and just overpower everyone and everything easily. That's not strength, that's just superficial power.

[–] avortac4 (3742) 3 years ago

Any weakling could do the same, man or woman, given the same powers. That's just boring. You're not god or goddess just because you can sneeze a galactic battle fleet into oblivion.

Women and men have different natural strengths. Physical power, leadership, strength of character, stoicism - that's pretty much all men HAVE. Men don't have the sexual-social power, where the whole world runs to protect a woman that broke her nail - men can have their limbs or penises cut off and people think it's hilarious (yeah, Bil Burr said this, should I credit him for saying something obvious?).

Women have SO many strengths and so much power over men, so much power in society - how many 'women's societies' are there for making sure women never have to become homeless? How thick the glass floor has to become before we see it? Men fall straight through, women are always rescued. People care what happens to women, but not what happens to men. 'There is no excuse to hit a woman' - so no one does, even in movies. But plenty of excuses to hit men, so men get horribly beaten up and tortured in movies.

Even the famous 'pretty boys' get beaten up - look at the Lou vs. Brad Pitt-scene in Fight Club. It's BRUTAL. Can you even IMAGINE woman in Brad Pitt's place? People would lose their minds and their knickers would be in prema-twist after that.

There's no equality and women are not seen as strong unless we start seeing their brains splatter in movies, and their faces beaten up to bloody pulp without any simps rushing to help. I mean, in movies, remember, not in real life (it's stupid that I have to even specify this - wouldn't have to, if women were ACTUALLY strong, or if we were talking about men, because no one cares about men).

People see a homeless man with a dog, they pity the dog (although psychologically, it's probably healthier than 99% of the dogs of this world, because it gets exercize, it gets to be lead by a pack leader, it gets to be outdoors, gets discipline..)

[–] avortac4 (3742) 3 years ago

My point is, because there are different strengths, even men are different in strength - some are physically strong, some mentally, others psychologically. There are emotionally strong men that couldn't lift a paper bag, but who could make a bodybuilder cry with their witty insults and no one could break their spirit.

There are artistic men, mathematically skilled men, computer geniuses, strategically excellent men, there are men that won't cave in to kids screaming at them, but consistently applies proper discipline - and as the result, the kids will grow up to be happy, healthy and balanced. There are men that can resist temptations. There are spiritual men that can't be seduced, persuaded or convinced to do anything they don't want to do, etc. There are men resistant to suggestions, hypnotism, brainwashing, and so on.

Then there are persuasive men, social charmers, PUAs, I could go on - there are SO many different ways someone can be 'strong', it's so stupid that movies always define it as "being able to easily beat up 20 men (but never women for some reason..)".

It's like the Worf-problem - Worf looks like he's the weakest character in Star Trek: The Next Generation, because the show has a tendency to prove someone's strength by making them beat up Worf - if they can beat up WORF, then they must be REALLY strong!

But the problem is, because of this, Worf gets beaten up all the time, which makes Worf look actually weak.

It's a similar problem with 'strong women' in movies - when they defeat SO many men SO easily, it makes men just look weak, which means it's NO WONDER the women beat them up so easily. This makes the women look 'not-especially-strong', because all they did, was beat up weaklings. Any weakling can do that..

How often do we see a strong man beating up a woman in the face with a fist? Just compare how many times it happens to men and you see women are still protected and pedestalized. They can't be TRULY seen as 'strong' that way.

[–] avortac4 (3742) 3 years ago

They can only be seen strong after we take them down from the pedestal and bring them to EQUALITY, where they not only kick mens - AND OTHER WOMEN'S - buttockses, but also take beatings just as well and as much as men. But we are still shocked to see a woman being punched, especially in the face, so movies usually use the 'only acceptable hit', which is some kind of slap or backhand-slap to a woman's face - and even then, only to show how EVIL the villain is, how DARE he (usually a 'he') hit a woman!

If men have all kinds of strengths, not just physical or 'martial arts-skillz'-type, then it's only logical to realize that women have even more diverse 'strenghts'.

Things women are good or strong at, do not always look like strengths on the outside, and sometimes it just takes a long time to see it, but it's there.

Things women are good at, include: gossiping (this is actually a good skill for the community, the family and its position in the social networks, and could be effectively used in a movie to show a strength), 'emotional intelligence', reading people and their body language, intuition (they always talk about 'women's intuition', although all humans have it - it just lies dormant in many people, but since women are allowed to be more human and more spiritual more easily, they have not been forced to block these more sensitive sides as much, and as a result, they are usually more readily able to utilize them), and all kinds of social skills that men can sometimes remain completely clueless of.

These could be used to show off women's strengths BEAUTIFULLY. Think about your 'femme fatales' that can wrap even the physically toughest men around her finger - and she doesn't even have to land one punch to make those men helpless, drooling piles of useless goo.

Women are good at seduction, making men lose their minds due to 'feminine charms' (and this goes deep (sometimes literally), but I'll keep this family-friendly (too late?)). Women have power over men.

[–] avortac4 (3742) 3 years ago

Women's power over men is multi-layered; there's the social power, where the society is geared to helping women and blaming men. A woman in a movie could easily use this to her advantage. There have been lame attempts, like in the 'Superman (1978)' movie, where the whole army group forms a circle around a 'helpless woman' to gawk at her, but if this was done skillfully, a woman could easily get the whole world against a man so easily (think of the 'metoo'-movement just for one example - a woman's man-blaming pointing finger (at least in the real world) radiates more power than captain marvel's whole body).

Why can't we ever see women use that superpower?

Then there's the direct sexual charms, that are very difficult for men to resist - but they're forced to. Men's sexuality is vilified, so 'sexual men' equals 'monster' in real life. Women's sexuality is 'you go, girl!', no matter how weird or kínky it may be. This leads to an unfair situation, where men are expected to 'hold it in' and 'take cold showers', while women can wear any kind of provocative clothing to keep men in a state of perpetual lust (so they really need those cold showers).

This could be used in a movie so easily to show a woman's power - an evil woman could absolutely destroy a protagonist this way, or a protagonist-woman could attack an evil man who would then have so much trouble just trying to stay afloat. Women have this ability to be super unfair - they can dress provocatively and then proceed to seduce a man, and if the man does pretty much -=ANYTHING=- (even moves his eyes the wrong way), now the woman has him where she wants him, and can choose to put the man in jail for sexual harassment or seduce him or whatever she wants.

A man can't even DREAM of such power - what is physical muscle against THAT?

But no, strong woman is always shown to just beat up 200 'strong men' easily. Sigh.

[–] 123Guy (7259) 3 years ago

current women's movements (sorry, but they do come into play here (even though I dispise them)) wants EQUAL OUTCOME, not EQUAL OPPORTUNITY. Which is just a silly, unsupportable dream.

They want equal profits from CHARLIES ANGELS as Expendables - both ACTION movies - but it didn't happen.
They DID GET Equal OPPORTINUTY to make the film. There are no guarentees to outcome.

[–] 123Guy (7259) 3 years ago

a lot to digest here.

I will summarize the deep level back end answer as: because women have unrealistic views of reality due to incorrect feminism calling out everything incorrectly. in strives for "Equality" (which will never occur while two sexes exist) they point out imbalances that are easily explanable, while ignoring reality based facts like "GENERALLY, men ARE stronger than women", pointing out there are not enough women heroes, when, in fact, there have been plenty but it was not "ENOUGH" so they want more, which is counter productive to the FACTS of what makes money and what doesn't.

They can keep propping up waifish young girls kicking all the large grown men's asses, but those DO NOT make the money to suddenly make them equal to men's films of the same nature. Ignoring this reality: "Oh, men are not supporting women action films", which is true. We are not, because WE DON'T CARE FOR THEM, thus we don't fund them. They can't make us like something we simply don't like. But they'll keep crying over it.
Neither do we support "Women's films" like "Yaya sisterhood traveling pants" etc and there is no reason we should. They simply don't interest us, and never will, because we will ALWAYS be different and not EQUAL in our tastes, as it always has been, and always will be, no matter how much modern feminism cries about it.

REALITY of life inequality will always line up in box office profits and there is no reason it shouldn't. That's life.

(I am not against equal pay, women's rights etc, at all, but the simple math is, we go after different jobs. because we are very different sexes. But in moves, I will pay to watch harley quin jump around in tore clothing way more often than some man-looking feminist EQUAL female in a lead. Because I am a male and that is my interest)

[–] Strazdas (2472) 3 years ago

Because if a female isnt a mary sue thats sexist. If a female isnt a prude thats sexists. Welcome to feminism.

[–] unlockingfreedom (231) a year ago

that line from Trinity was awful, "you Betta get you hands of me"

[–] BKB (9880) a year ago

Because strength has been used against a female out of intimidation for God knows how long, so in hindsight, they choose to see what all the hub bub is about and the rest they say is History.. As for people like Lia(m) Thomas who's clearly a Male posing as a female to get on the female's swim team?? It's because people like him or it can't hack it on their own male biological sport's team and instead, crash the women's team knowing he's stronger than they are and can easily win and it's just plain wrong and I blame the Biden Administration squarely for this because in the end, it undermines female sports

[–] fc31 (5364) a year ago

It is all about driving up female work force participation. Feminism, black life matter, all the equal opportunity movements, it is all about lowering labour cost for employers, increase union memberships for labour unions, I think that is why all sides of politics support it.