MovieChat Forums > Black Widow (2021) Discussion > The Problem of 'Strong Woman'

The Problem of 'Strong Woman'

posted 2 years ago by avortac4 (3769)
5 replies | jump to latest

The archetype of a strong man rescuing a weak princess and then bringing her back to his castle, where she then rewards him with her 'feminine sweets', is easy to understand.

It's a direct, easy, linear story, with nothing complicated, it's pretty much self-explanatory. Everyone, from toddler to elder, can understand that story.

Now, I have written about this before, because it's such a difficult problem to fully understand. You'd think that all you do is swap genders and call it a day.

A woman rescuing a weak prince, bringing him back to her castle and then the man rewarding the woman with his 'masculine sweets' just doesn't work, though.

There are many things that rub the viewer the wrong way - suddenly the roles don't quite fit. You start thinking about how the woman acquired a castle, probably inheritance or something.

Then you start feeling disgusted towards the weak man, why is he so weak?

Another repulsive factor is the man rewarding the woman with anything 'masculine' - how would that ever work, when women can so easily get million simps to worship her just by sitting and looking 'relatively cute', and men have to always work hard for women's affection, and still might not get it?

My point is, when something is abundant, it doesn't feel like a reward. What if you worked very hard, then find out your reward is 'breathable air' or 'clean drinking water'? Only a poverty-stricken third-world inhabitant living in the most polluted place in the world could appreciate that as a reward.

A typical hollyweird movie audience would probably feel that the reward should be at least a sack of gold or something 'actually valuable'.

So male attention is not reward enough, because a relatively cute-ish, (not even pretty or beautiful) woman can just sit in front of a camera wearing 3-dollar bunny ears and gain thousands upon thousands of erec.. I mean, men simping for her.

Men don't have this power. Men can't just sit and look good and gain thousands of women's attention and adolation.

But even if men could, it would STILL not be the same!

You see, men are STILL the beasts of burden of this world, men STILL do all the hard work, gain all the resources, climb the corporate ladders, build everything, design everything, and get paid the most..

(because of said things - women just don't choose as lucrative careers, work as hard and dangerous jobs, as long, do overtime, ask for raises as much and so on - and then there's the whole 'motherhood' thing that gets in the way, plus the factor that men don't care what woman does, but it's important to women what a man's job is)

So no matter how many waves of fema-fascism hit the shore of equality and justice, they just can't change this fact, because women won't play ball (and when they do, they don't do it interestingly enough to gain as big an audience, but that's beyond this post's scope). Women simply don't want to work as hard, because women have OPTIONS.

This is yet another difficult thing to even mention, because we are not SUPPOSED to see it or talk about the fact that a woman can sit as a streamer, video creator or do 'only simps', and just lazily show off her physical body to gain vast amounts of money. This is not an option for a man.

Women ALWAYS had the option to 'be cute' and earn rewards that way, so why would they suddenly change this to a demanding career, where they have to be assertive, ask for raises, do overtime, work in sewers or in -25°C temperature with chainsaws when it's windy?

When women grow up from 'cute children' to 'sexy adults', they always have these options, but those options only grow in number. An adult woman still has the option to 'be cute' and twirl her hairs and that way get the man to do things for her, but now she ALSO has the option to use her sexuality and seductive skills, plus she has a magic wand now.

What am I talking about? What happens to a man that a woman decides to point her finger at and say certain words? The man goes to jail. That's called 'justice', 'believe all women' and so on.

If that's not a powerful magic wand, I don't know what is.

Women also have the support of everyone and everything, there are societies, there are groups, there are government-funded programs, shelters, institutions, ribbons, you name it, they have it.

We are allowed to talk about glass ceiling, but we're not allowed to talk about glass floor that women take for granted.

Women are the most protected group in the world, and they also have all these options on top of that.

Men have to either 'do or die', they have no options, no support, no one brings a man free drinks at the bar, no one caters to man's stupid opinions.

A man has to be a 'self-made man' or he'll become a 'loser and a creep' no woman wants to even look at.

[–] avortac4 (3769) 2 years ago

Women's and men's differences run so deep even on just biological level, where women are attracted to status, men are attracted to looks. Yet, even more knowledgeable men still project their own sexuality to women and think women go for looks. They don't.

The difficult thing here is that looks are obvious. It's like trying to debate a flat earther, who thinks that just because something looks flat, it must be flat. Just because it looks like women choose 'handsome men', it must be that women get turn on by looks.

I have tried explaining this many times, but it's such a difficult topic, because it looks like the opposite of how it actually is, and many things obfuscate it further. Let's just say both genders project a lot.

A woman sees a 'handsome man', and she immediately projects status onto him, whether he has it or not. This may be 'ooh, he must be a doctor' or 'ooh, he must live in a luxury mansion' or 'ooh, he must be a violent criminal and rapist'.

If the man turns out to be a shy Linux-nerd that doesn't dare look women in the eyes, let alone talk to them, does anyone think the woman will give her 'treasure' to him just because of his looks? Now, be honest.

Women also like to be 'chased', and because they are offered a thousand options every day, they don't have to chase a man or learn how to seduce him at all. This makes men valueless, and women the priced treasure.

It would only make sense for someone to kidnap a priced treasure, and a worthless man to rescue a priced treasure, this way earning his value, right?

But women do, and are supposed to (in a writer's mind) ALREADY have value, so this kind of story would never work. A woman can't shown to be worthless without it feeling really weird and manufactured. A pretty/cute/plain-but-cheerful woman will always, always have value from the beginning. She can't be shown to be valueless.

[–] avortac4 (3769) 2 years ago

She can't be shown to go on a dangerous quest, because she is not as expendable as a man. A man doesn't have anything but his 'strength' and societal position, his wealth/possessions, and that's about it.

A woman has more 'intrinsic' value, due to being able to give birth, being 'cute/pretty' so all men want her, so she gets to pick-n-choose, and so on. Women have options, women are 'valuable' on all possible ways that a living creature can be (we'll not discuss how animals are somehow food, but even then, plenty of men would gladly 'eat a woman', if you get my drift)

Think of a female slave vs. a male slave. Male slave is only worth something if he's strong and can work hard. A female slave can be valuable for completely different reasons, she can perform certain 'services' the man can't (well, in a limited capacity to certain kind of people, but it's not the same, it's not as universal, and it's certainly not valued).

So when you have all this cultural stuff going on, together with the biological and psychological stuff, then you add biology into the mix, a 'strong female character' just doesn't really work, at least not the same way.

Women DO have tremendous power, especially over men, but somehow that's not good enough a power for a strong female to have. When a female character is strong, it's always shown to be in the MASCULINE way.

It's not enough for women to be able to beat men at everything except the couple of tiny options men have in life, but women HAVE to be able to beat men in physical power, leadership and internal strength as well, as well as survival ability (the 'survivor'-type TV shows with female and male teams were supposed to prove something, I suppose, but no one is allowed to talk about it freely, after the women lost the thing miserably multiple times).

[–] avortac4 (3769) 2 years ago

Women somehow think that by women becoming CEOs, they have conquered the 'patriarchy' and won against men. What have they won, though? Men don't value a woman's corporate position, men value the feminine qualities of women.

A strong, masculine man with lots of wealth and status, would rather be with a young, charming, feminine peasant girl that has no job than the most powerful, aggressive female CEO in the world.

So writing a story, where a woman is 'strong', somehow always means 'strong the same way men are strong'.

The additional problems come from not being allowed to make women weak in any way, not even when that weakness could be a strength when using it for seducing and influencing men.

You are not allowed to say women are weaker than men, but displaying weak men is also not appealing, so you are in a pickle.

You can't make a woman rescue a man (watch every movie with strong female characters, and you'll see she's doing something else, like fighting 'aliens' or whatnot, as long as she doesn't have to go and rescue a man), you can't make a woman a feminine seductress that uses a very different power, you can't make weak men, because that's just boring, so what do you even do?

There's nothing inherently wrong with a woman lead, and no one would even care, if it wasn't for all these weird people making absurd claims.

I have happily played female characters in games, watched women 'kick donkey' in Hong Kong-movies (somehow they get it right, they make women very strong and good fighters, but yet feminine and charming at the same time, but they also TAKE HITS FROM MEN, which only makes them look stronger, because if they can do that, they're pretty darn cool), and never really minded when women do something cool and strong in stories.

[–] avortac4 (3769) 2 years ago

There have been 'strong females' in comics for decades and yet decades. We can take Enchantress that can seduce almost any mortal, and make it funny when she easily wraps Hulk, one of the strongest muscle-bound hero/antiheroes around her fingers in Secret Wars. That's an example of a 'feminine power' that a strong female uses.

She's still physically strong, but the thing is, why would women resort to physical force, when they have more subtle and arguably more powerful forces at their fingertips? What man's heart wouldn't melt seeing a helpless, cute, fearful female that's completely defeated and begging for mercy? How is this not enormous power? (Hint: it is!)

It's problematic to write a strong female, because 'strength' is basically the only thing men have, while women have options, that they now have to discard, but also because 'strength' is also interpreted to ONLY be the 'masculine kind', physical and stoic type.

It's also problematic, because with 'strenght', comes great resp.. I mean, expandability. You have to be able to be cannon fodder for people to sacrifice your life to go on that quest. You have to be worthless to be sent into danger so easily. Men have no 'intrinsic value', so they have to earn it, so it makes sense.

Women could give birth to a king's grandson, so it'd be insane to send a King's Daughter to face perilous quests, just to rescue some... man.

You see the problem? You can't just swap genders and expect to have a strong female lead, 'just like a man', and have full equality that way. It just DOESN'T WORK.

Watch some Hong Kong movies to see 'strong females' done perfectly - you are actually worried for them, although they have proven to be amazing at fighting, because they're charming, pretty and display actual vulnerability at the same time.

But most importantly, Hong Kong had the balls to let women take kicks and punches IN THE FACE from men! Now, if that's not 'strength', I don't know what is..

[–] Otter (24464) 2 years ago

"Men don't have this power. Men can't just sit and look good and gain thousands of women's attention and adolation."

Keanu Reeves has been doing exactly that for the last 30-40 years.