fanthropology: From Mary to Gary.

Dragon Scholar (

dragonscholar) wrote in

fanthropology,
@ 2005-02-07 20:54:00

From Mary to Gary.
In our discussion of Mary Sues,

madmaudlin posted this link to

tartanshell's LJ looking at Mary Sues as being much like Barbie Play - and that indeed, Barbie is a sort of Mary Sue as is.

This made me wonder about Mary's counterpart, Gary Stu. Whereas we discussed cultural influence on Mary Sue, I'd like to open a second thread - what are the cultural influences on Gary Stu?

(Post a new comment)

dragonscholar
2005-02-08 02:09 am UTC (link)

Let me speculate here and let my mind ramble. This may only be so coherent and I may be full of it. Fair warning:

This essay got me thinking on Gary Stu and what traits I saw most often in a Stu:

1) He often had a wide variety of technology, gizmos, powers, etc. We often got these listed add nauseum.
2) His sexuality, if he had one, was either super-promiscuous, or he was ready to marry, settle down, and have kids, and stick around for life.

#1 puts me in mind of action figures (with plenty of accessories), and RPGS with their stats and equipment. Numbers often seem to be an easy way to express power as well.

#2 I think embodies two different views of manhood - either promiscuous, or very loyal and paternal/fatherly. I have seen Gary Stus that would have been utterly annoying - except they were at least very loyal spouses.

So I definitely see cultural influences on Gary Stus. I could go into power, popularity, etc., but these stood out for me.

(Reply to this)

tanacawyr
2005-02-08 02:12 am UTC (link)

It may be harder to generalize from that in fanfiction terms since male Mary Sue's are often ready-made and not generated by fans. I've said this before -- lots of male heros starting from James Bond to Luke Skywalker to the ubiquitous "male teenager who plays video games and learns that he has just the skills the aliens need to helpthem win their giant space battle" scenario, which is more common that we realize.

Male Mary Sue's are much more often canon. They're in the source. You need to ask about the cultural influences that George Lucas felt as much or more as those felt by (male) fans that might create them.

And as a result, I think that male Mary Sue's can hide in plain sight more often than female ones (this is changing, but the asymmetry is still there). A male fan doesn't have to create an OMC to play Mary Sue. As a result, their Mary Sue's may have a slightly different taxonomy.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	dragonscholar 2005-02-08 02:19 am UTC (link)
	Interesting theory there. I'd add to it that whenever I hear people complain about such characters, Mary Sues com up more than Gary Stus - yet, I would figure that they'd be equally common. Do Mary Sues stand out more because of what you said? Just theorizing. Oh, and twisted, twisted icon. ^_^ (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

tanacawyr
2005-02-08 02:33 am UTC (link)

Do Mary Sues stand out more because of what you said?

Because they have to be invented by the female fan, yes. I think they do. They're more likely to be original characters. Male Mary Sue's come prepackaged, so they sort of "hide in plain sight." And the fact that they are in the source means that there is less fear of being ridiculed for the young kid writing it.

Perhaps, it even means that they don't need to write it as much. If your wish fulfillment character is already in the source, you don't need to write a story that inserts someone you can identify with in there just because you want to be part of that universe so badly -- but aren't. The case can be made that a fan can identify with a character of the opposite gender, but after a while, you get sick and tired of having the ones you feel a connection to always being men. You start to want to see yourself, honestly, without male drag.

This is a tangent to the original question, though ... I think ...

Oh, and twisted, twisted icon. ^_^

Hey, there are few things in this world slashier than Nelson's Navy. :-D

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dragonscholar 2005-02-08 03:34 am UTC (link)
	No, not tangental, very insightful. Interesting. I think you do have a point here. I'm looking forward to what others have to say about it. Intuitively (and I'm not at my best this evening), I feel you're onto something. When I look at "Gary Stus" they also seemed to be less stand-outish as the fit their source mateiral more. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	st_crispins 2005-02-08 04:31 am UTC (link)
	You start to want to see yourself, honestly, without male drag. Oh, I dunno. I've always said Napoleon Solo was my Mary Sue, so I guess I'm kind of partial to male drag myself. :) (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	tanacawyr 2005-02-08 04:59 am UTC (link)
	I've always said mine was Han Solo, then Lando Calrissian, then whatever hotshot came next, then another one, then another one ... I got sick of it after a few decades. I want some canon self-inserts that sit down to pee. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dragonscholar 2005-02-08 10:14 pm UTC (link)
	1) There's something about guys with last names of "Solo" "I want some canon self-inserts that sit down to pee." is a sig file or a t-shirt. I'd like to know, and perhaps this is a separate subject, but what kind of characters of the opposite sex people find themselves attached to. (Reply to this) (Parent)

afeldspar
2005-02-08 06:55 pm UTC (link)

This is an interesting observation, but it does bring up the problem of definition: for many of us, "Mary Sue" or "Marty Stu" is identified by elements that are not found in your canon examples, or that may be in fact near-impossible to arrange for canon characters.

One of these possible elements is overwhelming the canon (this is the one that would be hard for a canon character to meet, since they're part of the existing dynamics, not a violation of it.) Just being phenomenally great at everything isn't enough to make a character a Sue/Stu (though it may still turn off some viewers/readers) -- Captain Kirk may be awesome at wooing women, shooting phasers, hand-to-hand fighting, alien diplomacy, and ship-to-ship combat, but he's also surrounded by others of strong talents, who he calls on for support and advice. Why would the classic Bones McCoy line be "I'm a doctor, not a _______?" if Kirk wasn't calling on him to play all those roles? What IMHO distinguishes an extremely l33t canon character from an overly-l33t Stu/Sue: it's not that the new ensign can out-logic Kirk and out-shoot Spock; it's the he/she can out-logic Spock and out-shoot Kirk.

The other factor that I think is distinguishing is the matter of treatment. One of the most frankly off-putting characteristics (and, I would submit, an identifying characteristic) is that the Sue/Stu gets special treatment from everyone. Everyone who's good loves and praises and defers to the Sue/Stu; anyone who doesn't love them must be a bad person. This doesn't tend to be the case with canon characters, even l33t ones like James Bond and Luke Skywalker (you could count Bond's effect on women in that context, but on the other hand it seems like every woman, good or bad, wants in his pants!) Look at Luke Skywalker: Han calls him "kid" and mocks his study of the Force; when he comes to rescue Leia, her response isn't "Oh! my rescuing hero!" it's "Aren't you a little short to be a stormtrooper?"

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dragonscholar 2005-02-08 10:17 pm UTC (link)
	Perhaps we need to distinguish between "canon benders" and "in-canon dominant characters," or come up with some better termniology than my clunky ones. Also I think really Sue/Stu is a continuity. Where the crossover point is . . . I'm not sure. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

mad_maudlin
2005-02-09 04:44 am UTC (link)

It's always been my understanding that a Sue is a Sue is a Sue, a character that strains all plausibility and bends the rules of the universe to the breaking point. The difference between Canon!Sue (or Stu) and Fanon!Sue is simply that, with an outside reference for the rules, it's easier to spot a fanfic character that's over the top. Profic authors get more leeway with their characters because they're writing the rules, so presumably they know what they're doing and the reader is willing to give them the benefit of the doubt when they do something implausible ("Wait a minute! He can't be a ninja and a cyborg and a werewolf! ...can he?")

(Reply to this) (Parent)

mad_maudlin
2005-02-08 03:10 am UTC (link)

What makes a Gary Stu?

BOOM.

As from the numbers obsession (oh my god I don't need to know the size of his dick to two decimal places) I think a lot of Gary Stus tend to be ultraviolent, sometimes to the point of sseeming sociopathic. It's the equivalent to Mary Sue's improbably romantic/sexual history: Gary gets to blow things up and kill people without repercussions, his weapons are always the best and everybody's scared shitless of him because he's such a badass. I think you wrote a Way with Worlds column about this, actually.

The way I see it, Mary Suism as a phenomenon tends to be the result of wanting to make a really cool characters--for whatever reason. And just like we have a lot of positive cultural images of pop tarts and Barbie dolls as "cool" for girls, our "cool" guys traditionally tend to be warriors, action heros, and gratuitious Blowers Up of Stuff. Emo geeks, computer nerds and manwhores are more recent variations on the theme.

(Interesting tangential note: I saw a documentary about eating disorders some months ago that noted, as feminism and equal rights for women have made progress, media representations of ideal forms have tended towards more extremely skinny women and more absurdly bulky men--sort of a Calista Flockhart/Fabio complex--with a predicatable rise in eating disorders and body-image dysmorphia in both sexes as a result.)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

dragonscholar
2005-02-08 03:53 am UTC (link)

I've seen hyperviolent Gary Stus, but I've also seen ones that were Perfect Dads/Sons/Husbands. So though I agree on the sociopathic Stu, there's also the weird contrast that I've seen them as family men/buddies at times. And of course, I've seen plenty of manwhores.

Which is most common? I have no idea. But at least in my experience, it breaks down to Killer, Lover, Supporter. Which i suppose could be thought of as three different Male Ideals in our culture.

I have noticed that Killer Gary Stus are usually the ones that also show Equipment Fetishism - lists of guns, descriptions of technology, etc.

And my usual disclaimer - just thinking here about some very deep issues.

(Regards to your ntoe, what conclusions did they draw?)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	mad_maudlin 2005-02-08 04:07 am UTC (link)
	The video didn't draw any conclusion, except for one rather batty-looking woman with strange earrings whose gist was that men threatened by feminism encouraged the change because skinny chicks looked unthreatening next to muscle men. The produces made the link between feminism and eating disorders, but I didn't agree with their reasoning. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

lady_eldarwen
2005-02-09 04:18 am UTC (link)

The idea is Feminism encourages women to demand the same respect as men and to occupy the same positions and spaces. The super slender, submissive and often silent women of advertisements is a supposed knee jerk reaction from men. These new women take up less space, say less and do less. Their power is taken away symbolically.

Then these symbols become ideals and women want to conform and blah blah bulimia. It's a few steps out but I see the path. It's also starting to effect men who are now trying to bulk up. My boyfriend feels uncomfortable with his always being skinny and tall. He feels the need to bulk up.

The flip side is as women are allowed to do more it is still devalued as it becomes associated with women. Men, also in a knee jerk reaction, lean towards hyper masculine symbols in order to reclaim lost dominance. How much they actually have lost is debatable.

*so says Killing Us Softly, Tough Guise, and my gender and prejudice profs.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	mad_maudlin 2005-02-09 04:25 am UTC (link)
	Well, that explains things a lot more clearly than the video did. (Not that that's surprising; it was produced for use in college-level health and wellness courses.) (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

lady_eldarwen
2005-02-09 04:42 am UTC (link)

Actually, I first saw Killing Us Softly 3 in a college level health class. They need to get on the horn and expand their library!

We've seen 3 videos in the last 2 weeks on gender images in the media and how it's changing behavior and they've each taken pains in laying out "images don't create behavior but they create an enviroment that the behavior can exist in more readily." It's a shame that the video could introduce A => B without going through how it actually gets there.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

rachel_martin64
2005-02-08 05:21 am UTC (link)

I think a lot of Gary Stus tend to be ultraviolent, sometimes to the point of seeming sociopathic. Gary gets to blow things up and kill people without repercussions, his weapons are always the best and everybody's scared shitless of him because he's such a badass.

Well, that pretty much sums up the character of Wolverine from X-Men. I had never before realized he's a canon Gary Stu. But, yeah. And if I follow this idea of Perfect Husband/Father/Son Stu, then X-Men has one of those too in the character of Cyclops.

I always thought Sociopathic Stu yearned to be the Perfect Husband/Father/Son, but the canon writers killed off his wife or parents or children so he had an excuse to evolve into Sociopathic Stu.

But this Perfect Husband/Father/Son Stu. I've actually never heard anyone before describe this kind of character as a Gary Stu. Do male fan writers really write such characters? I know many of us female fan writers do. But males?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

dragonscholar
2005-02-08 10:21 pm UTC (link)

The Perfect Husband/Father/Lover Stu is one I've seen several times:
1) He's monogamous or becomes so. Fanatically so. He may even jump into the sack right away, but he'll then be loyal. He's also good in the sack.
2) He's slavishly devoted and recieves admiration in return from his mate and others. He gives gifts, etc.
3) He's protective. This sometimes leads to ultraviolence.

I've seen this occur in D&D games, in Superhero stories, and in anime.

The Frustrated Perfect Husband/Son/Lover seems to be used as a vehicle for ultraviolence. "Something horrible happened to my loved ones, now I can engage in a hideous rampage."

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

mad_maudlin
2005-02-09 04:38 am UTC (link)

Actually, it seems like the Perfect Lover and the Ultraviolent Badass are often two sides of the same coin. Either the Perfect Lover is driven to become the Ultraviolent Badass for the sake of his (incompetant) beloved, or the healing power of his beloved turns the Badass into the Perfect Lover.

There's a series of novels called the Black Jewels trilogy by Anne Bishop that illustrate it: two of the male leads are the most powerful magicians in their universe, and spend a great deal of the first two books blowing up people and things labeled "evil" by the author without much backstory or relevence. But they're really just waiting for a prophecy to be fulfilled, so they can serve a perfect and uber-powerful queen; and once their queen appears, they both turn into utterly devoted servants (one as her lover and one as her adopted brother). And yet, when their queen gets pissed enough, they go out and blow people up some more.

::rereads:: Okay, that makes the series sound ridiculous; it's really not. None of the main characters are Sues or Stus, though they have the trappings of them. I was just using it as an illustrative example.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	executrix 2005-02-08 03:38 am UTC (link)
	As Oscar Wilde said, "Every woman becomes her mother. That is her tragedy. No man does. That is his." One thing I learned is that a lot of women in fandom have a very strong animus (in the Jungian sense), so their Gary Stu is the man they wish they had a chance to be (possibly as well as to have). (Reply to this) (Thread)

	dragonscholar 2005-02-08 03:52 am UTC (link)
	Ah, Jung! ^_^ This brings out an interesting question in what kind of Mary Sues and Gary Stus are written be people - does a man writing a Mary Sue make it different than a Gary Stu? (Actually in a weird way I became my mother ;) ) (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

The Jung and Restless

executrix
2005-02-08 04:04 am UTC (link)

It would be VERY unfair and wrong for me to say that when a man writes a MarySue, at 3 am she turns into a pizza. So I won't say it.

I think Wesley Crusher is an unconscious GaryStu, and Riley Finn is a conscious reverse GS--i.e., they're both insufferable but one of them is supposed to be. I also wonder if there aren't a number of androgynous female fanwriters with androgynous male POV characters.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

tanacawyr
2005-02-08 05:07 am UTC (link)

You know ... there is a certain class of male Mary Sue's that I babbled about in my LJ a while back -- the Reluctant Warrior. They seem to contain a lot of male ambivalence about their role in society. There's lots of examples of that; any Ultimate Soldier character will do.

The best exmaple of it is Logan from "X-Men." (Again, these are source characters and need not be created in fanfiction.) He was turned into a killing machine against his will, by forces he can't quite localize,and he wants to find out WHY and make them pay.

There's a lot of instances of that all the time in fiction -- I've seen it repeated in "Hercules" and "Star Trek" as well as a few action hero movies. It's the otherwise sensitive and thoughtful male who has been made into a super-soldier and hates it desperately, a philosopher trapped inside the body of a killing machine. I remember one of those characters lamenting that his super strength had permitted him to kill 85 people, and that his chemically enhanced memory meant that he remembered each and every face perfectly.

There's lots of warriors who regret having to choose to become warriors (that's all Mel Gibson plays anymore :-P), but this notion of someone who was turned into something with surgery and drugs, can't reintegrate into society, as a result is dysfunctional and isolated from it, can't fathom who did it to him, and is on an eternal search to find out who and why ... it's a special sort of thing. "I'm a monster. I hate it. Who made me this way and why?"

Or else I'm just bloviating ... Somewhere in this, I think there is a massive male ambivalence in a society that seems to want to make men into tin soldiers. That's the mold they get poured into. We get poured into the Barbie mold. Neither of us seem to like it very much.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	executrix 2005-02-08 05:48 am UTC (link)
	RoboCop! I never tried it myself, but I heard that all 11" dolls can wear the same clothes...including GI Joe and Barbie. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	fyrdrakken 2005-02-08 06:54 pm UTC (link)
	That's gonna be an interesting look for Barbie, frankly. (Especially if one had one of those modified talking Barbies from earlier in the 90s where the guerilla parents group swapped the voice chips out with those from talking GI Joes.) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	kannaophelia 2005-02-09 04:48 am UTC (link)
	Sadly, it's a myth. Even girl dolls from different brands have different proportions, and in fact Barbies with one body can't necessarily wear clothes from another Barbie. That's why sewing machines were invented, of course. (Reply to this) (Parent)

fyrdrakken
2005-02-08 07:00 pm UTC (link)

The "strong but really sensitive underneath" man seems almost like female wish-fulfillment except that, as you note, a large number of those characters are likely spawned by men finding themselves in a conflict between a certain cultural expectation that males should be strong and fearless and violent when necessary and the oft-heard demand that women want sensitive men (or, for that matter, annoyance with the unfairness in that some really obnoxious jerks are very successful with women despite treating them horribly while "nice guys always come last"). The man that "women want, men want to be" -- kicks ass and picks up all the chicks. (Because somehow I don't think sensitivity was very high on the list of characteristics for male heros predating the feminist movement. But note it being retconned into the characters in modern adaptations.)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dragonscholar 2005-02-08 10:24 pm UTC (link)
	I think another demand is the idea of the loyal Husband/Lover. It's actually pretty positive - a paragon of dedication, protective, loyal. It's just often taken so far in my experience and shoved in people's faces "LOOK HOW GREAT I AM." (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	fyrdrakken 2005-02-09 04:42 pm UTC (link)
	Maybe sort of the backlash against the feminist movement's spawning of a male-demonizing fringe element? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dragonscholar 2005-02-09 04:49 pm UTC (link)
	No, I think it's turning a positive idea into a way to show off. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

fyrdrakken
2005-02-09 07:22 pm UTC (link)

Well, that's the backlash part of it, that they aren't thinking of it in terms of, "This is the way a man is SUPPOSED to behave," so much as, "See how awesomely OTT I am with my l33t relationship skillz that none of you wretches can possibly live up to!" -- if only because it's become so trendy for women to gripe about all the ways the men in their lives let them down and complain about there being no good men left.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dragonscholar 2005-02-09 07:31 pm UTC (link)
	Actually that's not the impression I got. I think the Perfect Husband/Lover seems to be a general kind of showing off, not with anything involved with the "sensitive guy" idea or anything else. I never saw any context in that - and I've seen Perfect Husband/Lover characters who are also gay. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

fyrdrakken
2005-02-09 08:20 pm UTC (link)

That's right, I forgot the context -- it's not RL men doing it, it's writers writing male characters as the Perfect Lover and rubbing readers' faces in same. (Which, yeah, now that I think about it -- that's the kind of thing women do, showing off to other women how they're Supermommy or Superworkingmommy, but not the kind of thing men take so much pride in. But definitely something women consider worth bragging on if they luck out with a husband or BF like that.)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

tanacawyr
2005-02-09 01:47 am UTC (link)

Because somehow I don't think sensitivity was very high on the list of characteristics for male heros predating the feminist movement.

Why would you think that? I ask only because in my experience, men admire things like surface brutality and the power to throw a punch in men, and generally, they are convinced that, secretly, all women admire it as well. Deep down inside, they hold as scripture that women all love the violent uberwarrior and that our protestations to the contrary are just so much PC mush. Often, this appears to be nothing more than the male desire to "offload" his attraction to other men, even if he's straight.

Men admire other men who are action hero bodybuilder types (who comprises the majority of the audience for Jean Claude Van Damme movies?) but they have no vocabulary for saying "That guy's really hot," if they are afraid of being labelled as gay. So often, they turn to the woman standing next to him (who is more likely to be in line for a Leonardo diCaprio movie) and saying, "SHE thinks he's hot!" You guys watch football. Women watch figure skating, and it's not feminism that makes them watch it, either.

Men have a dominance hierarchy that has to do with who can lift the biggest boulder. That's the male hierarchy. It's a mistake to assume that women evaluate potential mates according to the same standards by which men evaluate potential top-dogs in their chain of command.

... really obnoxious jerks are very successful with women despite treating them horribly while "nice guys always come last" ...

This is another old wive's tale that I don't see as accurate. "Really obnoxious jerk" generally translates as "that guy who's dating the girl I want, the bastard." And often, "nice guys" are simply men who can't get a date with the best-looking woman in their social circle and are really angry about it. They tend not to pay any mind to the perfectly pleasant "nice girls" around them, but insist that because Claudia Schiffer won't give them the time of day, it's because they're too nice. Not because they're too shallow.

Speaking as a woman who has had to deal with more than her share of that sort of guy stepping over the other perfectly pleasant girls around them to get to me ... that sort of behavior is very transparent and offensive, not attractive.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	afeldspar 2005-02-09 05:48 am UTC (link)
	I'll just note that there is a certain irony in your explaining for us the inner workings of the male mind, including how grieviously wrong the male mind is in its understanding of the inner workings of the female mind. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	tanacawyr 2005-02-10 09:59 pm UTC (link)
	I cannot believe that you can write what you just wrote without an appreciation of the irony, frankly. "How dare you presume to tell men how the male mind works! How dare you presume to tell men that they can't tell you how the female mind works!" Um, dude ... Besides, if I'm wrong, the try replying to the ideas, mmmkay? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

afeldspar
2005-02-11 01:24 am UTC (link)

You know, if I had meant "How dare you presume!", I would have said "How dare you presume!" But hey, you seem to like inventing things to yell at me for saying that I never said -- I'm looking at the original version of your comment, which LiveJournal sent me before you went back and edited it, and I'm reading about how I was "incapable of making even the slightest reply to anyone without getting in a dig at feminism, what women want, how awful we are, how we don't want what you think we should, and what's wrong with our minds". I'm not sure just how you got that out of the exactly two posts I've made on this community. And you know something? I don't care. Goodbye. You're off in your own little world, and I don't see much point in sticking around so you can make up fantastic fairy tales about things I never said.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	dragonscholar 2005-02-11 04:30 am UTC (link)
	If this line of conversation continues, take it private as it is getting personal. Thank you. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	dragonscholar 2005-02-11 04:30 am UTC (link)
	If this line of conversation continues, take it private as it is getting personal. Thank you. (Reply to this) (Parent)

fyrdrakken
2005-02-09 04:31 pm UTC (link)

And the nice guys thing is based on personal experience of my own -- most of the men I've dated broke down into two categories: A) the immature flakes who were exciting and attractive but whom I dumped for being jerks (and/or expecting me to financially support them), and B) the stable (and self-supporting) guys who simply bored me silly or with whom I had no chemistry. From what I've heard I'm not the only woman who has this problem -- and for that matter some men have the same issue. (My father for example gets bored of the decent girlfriends and dumps them, but married two women in a row whose own families eventually acknowledged that they were in need of serious psychiatric care, as well as being fond of head games and out for a meal ticket.) When I say "nice guys," I'm talking about the decent ones ("straight, single, solvent") looking for a genuine relationship as opposed to the ones who look pretty and talk a good game but are stringing along half a dozen girlfriends or are abuse or expect their women to support them indefinitely "between jobs" or whatever: the providers vs. the users.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Excuse, posted to the wrong spot

fyrdrakken
2005-02-09 04:32 pm UTC (link)

Men have a dominance hierarchy that has to do with who can lift the biggest boulder. That's the male hierarchy. It's a mistake to assume that women evaluate potential mates according to the same standards by which men evaluate potential top-dogs in their chain of command.

Men and women both evaluate other men in terms of status and hierarchy -- the "alpha male" concept. In the modern world this automatic assessment of power and status is often based on wealth or political power or perceived status (i.e., fame) rather than physical power alone -- but all three are items under consideration both by men in their social interactions and by women in mate selection. (Which is why the football players didn't have problems getting dates in high school, and how Wilt Chamberlain was able to get so many notches on his bedposts.)

Physical strength and ability is no longer an especial selection advantage, at least in our society (barring the rare few who were able to parlay it into being a successful professional athlete or who went to college on an athletic scholarship -- but those were parlaying their physical skills into financial and status benefits, which *are* advantages in our society), but the hardwiring remains to be impressed by such things. (Which after all is why the jocks are on top of the high school hierarchy and the nerds aren't -- the nerds make more money in the real world but teenagers aren't thinking in the long term.)

As for what kind of behavior I meant with the catchall phrase of "really obnoxious jerk": It is no old wives tale that women with abusive husbands or boyfriends make excuses for their SOs' behavior -- not just, "I'm afraid he'll kill me if I try to leave him!" but, "He's been under a lot of stress lately," "I deserved it/provoked him," or, "He's really a good man, he's just got a bad temper." It is also true that in fandom one can find female fans of the most unregenerate thugs and bullies amongst the characters, from Sabretooth to Gul Dukat. Some of these women acknowlege that dating such a man in real life would be a nightmarish mistake but that in fantasy they feel free to do so, but others have a rather rose-tinted and apologist view of their faves.

I connected feminism with the rise of the "strong yet sensitive" stereotype because I don't think it was up until fairly recently that it was really acknowledged that just because the Bible says a man may "chastize his wife with a rod no thicker than thy thumb," doesn't mean that it's a good thing for a man to feel he has the right to beat his wife or girlfriend whenever he chooses to do so. Could be the social disapproval of same comes from a bit earlier (IIRC, the SPCA was created by the Victorians), and actually the medieval code of chivalry had similar ideas regarding the behavior that should be expected from a warrior when in civilized society (and for that matter codes of honor on the field of battle) that included not bullying the weaker members of society, but those tended to be rather ignored IRL. Certainly I think feminism is to be credited for making domestic violence a recognized wrong and a prosecutable crime -- and that I think is where the "strong but sensitive" thing comes in, the ideal of an alpha male type who won't be beating up on his girlfriend or kids but will be excitingly physically proficient and a skilled protector -- the best of both worlds.

(Continued in part 2)

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Excuse, posted to the wrong spot

tanacawyr
2005-02-10 10:07 pm UTC (link)

I'm not convinced that you can make some sort of biological argument from battered wives. Plenty of men date women who aren't good for them, too -- these women tend not to use their fists is the only real difference. Plenty of men are also fans of the bad girl characters in movies and things -- there must be a reason why there are so many babes in black leather carting around Uzis in James Bond movies. Why do we make blanket pronouncements about what women want based on fans of bad boys characters, and yet ignore the male fans of the bad girls? To continue with the X-Men comparisons, Mystique had more than her share of male fans, and not just because she was played by a very pretty woman. She was the bad girl, and a damned dangerous one at that.

"Strong yet sensitive" strikes me as just a decoupling of "strength" and "violence." Strength is a quality of the body; violence comes from the mind. I have a hard time seeing what the one has to do with the other -- but I think the awareness of that decoupling is what you're chalking up to feminism ... ?

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

Re: Excuse, posted to the wrong spot

fyrdrakken
2005-02-10 11:17 pm UTC (link)

My kneejerk response is to point out that there are alpha females as well as alpha males (in primate society, though wealth and social position are known to increase human attractability in both males and females) and so the same principle may well apply in terms of attraction (although these fictionalized bad girls always, always, always look like supermodels -- going straight to the more recognized source of male attraction -- and I suspect the majority of the women who get away with treating men like crap in real life are very physically attractive as well).

And yeah, a decoupling of "strength" and "violence" is I think exactly what I was trying to convey -- "strong but sensitive" is just the phrase that I think this concept is coupled to in popular culture. (And strength can indeed be a quality of mind or spirit as well as or in addition to of the body. But violence is too often taken as an outward indicator of the physical kind of strength, hence the need for a decoupling.)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Username:		Create an Account Forgot your login or password? Login w/ OpenID
Password:
	Remember Me
	English • Español • Deutsch • Русский…

About

Help

Get Involved

Legal

Store

LJ Labs