Anime Misandry

@-YaoiBoy- When you release this novel, will it be available on Kindle, or exclusively paperback?

@Kenzolo-folk If you want, I can recommend an anime about this, both towards more ecchi and less fanservice.

@RobertBobert

sure go ahead. the only thing I've been watching at all anime-related these days is weekly one piece episodes.

Misandry is a lot harder to categorize considering the fact that men in the real world weren't historically oppressed in the same way that women were unless they also fell under some other sort of minority group. My boyfriend who is extremely socially aware and has studied a bit of politics and gotten involved in local activism sees misandry as a set of behaviors that reinforces negative behaviors in men such as mocking a man for asking for help, being emotional, and having traits or interests that are seen as feminine by society. Pure outright hatred for men also falls under that, but that is rarer as a lot of people who are uncomfortable around men have valid reasons such as trauma from abuse, sexual harassment/assault, men being openly misogynistic towards women, etc. and most people who say that they hate men usually are saying a hyperbolized statement as very few people think all guys are pests, but as a woman a lot of us need to be very cautious around men, especially those who we don't know in order to avoid being put in a situation where we are harassed or abused.

If a piece of media or a character explores some of these topics, it may be exploring misandry. But I can't off the top of my head name any Japanese animated shows that tackle these topics, or many Western shows for that matter. I tend to actually see more misandry under these criteria in the discussion of media rather than the media in and of itself. A great example would be how I've seen fans of anime shame characters like Deku from MHA and Shinji from Evangelion for being emotional characters and having vulnerabilities.

@Kenzolo-folk

Shimoneta to Iu Gainen ga Sonzai Shinai Taikutsu na Sekai - The anime itself is generally more about satire on the obsessive censorship of lewd content, but part of the message is also devoted to how purism and prudishness affect sexual education and relationships between the sexes. The fanservice is intentionally crude as it is a satire of negative attitudes towards sexual content.

Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo - The main messages are to deconstruct prejudices about girls' asexuality, as well as the problems caused by the lack of proper sexuality education. Also a wide range of female sexuality, from "oh my god, my childhood friend-kun is thinking about sex!" and to attraction to a teacher or formation of a lesbian identity. The author is a proud feminist, but I will still warn you that the anime contains a number of sensitive topics.

Midara na Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai - The main character is the daughter of the author of hentai LN, so she constantly sees sexual predators in all men.

Temple - mostly 00s style harem, but a lot of jokes about how sexual tension and stereotypes about it prevent the characters from communicating normally.

@RobertBobert

i've seen all of these except temple, haha. I'll look into it.

Well, maybe you'll enjoy Black Lagoon :) have you tried it? I don't remember how much fan service it had (if any). I just thought it was super boring, for an action show, and also tried too hard to look "cool" on purpose, which made it look kind of stupid lol and most of the characters also annoyed the hell out of me + the misandry tropes that I described above. I can't understand how I managed to endure both seasons, but it was 10+ years ago, and no-drop rule was still strong back then :p

You should watch Noir! I don't know if you'll enjoy it, but it definitely has "women superior in fighting" and no fan service at all, as far as I remember. I just didn't like the main girls, so I couldn't enjoy it properly, but overall, it's a nice anime, even though I definitely have some things to say about it on this topic. There are two other series made by the same studio with a similar theme of girls-with-guns, but I haven't seen them.
Anyway, with enough vodka anything could be enjoyable lol

It's also nice to see Wolf's Rain in your favorites ^_^


Lol I think it'll stay MAL-exclusive :P


Thanks for mentioning that character :) I've "officially" dropped One Piece after episode 195 because I couldn't handle watching it fully anymore, but I also skimmed through many future arcs in search of interesting scenes, so I'm aware of the story and the main characters in general, but I don't remember the more minor ones. She looks familiar, but I have zero recollection of her character. Does she get physically beat up by guys? That's kind of an important point.

I also wouldn't call Sanji a "commentary", since it sounds too political, but his depiction is just very reminiscent of similar depictions of many anime male characters (and not only anime), so it's kind of meh, nonetheless. I know that One Piece has good character backstories, but it doesn't make him any less annoying in my eyes. I'm not advocating for anything political here or starting a censorship campaign, god forbid! I'm just complaining about all the tropes regarding misandry that I find both unfair and annoying.

Well well well, I randomly decide to check the forums and my favorite topic is here! Must be fate :p

I had this long response saved ever since I couldn’t post it in a similar topic last year (it got locked). I can finally utilize it!


Great Teacher Onizuka. "An ode to misandry", as I like to call it :p people can defend it for being "just a comedy" all they want, but I don't think this excuse holds up and it simply went way too far with its annoying aspects, at least from my perspective. Disgusting portrayal of male characters as henpecked stupid perverts aside, the amount of grief male characters go through in this anime is simply astronomical, mostly without any reason. The highlight of this is Yoshikawa x Anko plotline, of course, easily the worst thing I've ever seen in any anime. Not only the anime belittles the bullying and suicide attempts that Yoshikawa's character goes through by shifting the sympathy at the end of his arc entirely to his bully, Anko, by saying "but she is a victim too, look at how dysfunctional her family is!", she continues to actively abuse him, both physically and mentally, throughout the entire series and somehow it's "comedic" now? On top of that, at the end of the series they become "a cute couple" that we're supposed to cheer for. Wow, no matter how much I recall this piece of shit anime, I always feel like I'm at a loss for words. Somehow, this shitshow is perceived as totally okay, but when some anime like Aho Girl comes out, also a comedy, where the roles are reversed and it's a male character who is punching the shit out of a female character, suddenly tons of people are butthurt, writing angry reviews about it being "misogynistic". Seriously? Even as far as double standards go, I think that's too much hypocrisy. In any case, I find this anime idiotic and annoying in almost every other aspect as well, so I wouldn’t have liked it even if this particular plotline was absent.

Eureka Seven. The MC is being told "you're a man you're a man you're a man you're a man you're a man" every goddamn episode, as if it's a brainwashing procedure lol directed at both Renton himself and the young viewers from shounen demographic, I'd assume. In itself, such conformist bullshit is not really the end of the world, but since there were also quite a few female characters resorting to physical violence against the male characters, while never being reprimanded for it or suffering retaliation + plus typical misandry tropes, like kick in the balls, were used in this series, I feel like Eureka Seven definitely qualifies as another one of "those" series. Those "disposable males" won't create themselves, Eureka Seven to the rescue, able and ready to subliminally brainwash its shounen demographic! lol Also, was any female character kicked in the vagina for doing horrible things? Spoiler: of course not. I can mostly forgive Anemone for being violent against the best boi Dominic because it makes sense but combined with all of the other "red flags" in this anime, it just feels excessive, as if someone was fulfilling a fantasy of beating up men. None of that random violence is ever portrayed as outright bad either.

Vampire Hunter D (1985 movie). This one is just hilarious :p why would our MC refuse to kill a vampire, who probably mercilessly murdered dozens of innocents? Because she is a girl! Best reasoning ever lol all the gynocentric bullshit tropes would applaud in approval to this statement :p there is also a lot of "boys don't cry" and other crap packed into this movie. Honestly, it's so short, but it basically consists of every possible sexist/conformist remark you can think of, it's quite an achievement! Not the kind of achievement I approve of, but I definitely recognize it lol ironically, it almost made me want to read the source material, to see what the hell the author was thinking writing this crap (especially considering that the newer Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust movie is pretty great and anyone reading this should watch it!).

Black Lagoon. It represents one of my "favorite" tropes that I usually encounter in games. "We're going to give all the female characters only important or significant roles, but as for cannon fodder - male characters, of course!” And then we're going to demonstratively murder, mutilate and otherwise harm that male cannon fodder. Dozens, hundreds of them. Will there be any "strong independent women" among that cannon fodder, at least some, for fairness' sake? Pfft, of course not! Because normalizing violence against men is "cool", especially female-on-male violence, and no one cares anyway. It's not like we don't have forced military conscription for men in many countries that can be equated to slavery (including my own), it's not like we don't have spiking male suicide levels, it's not like we don't have quite a few countries where exclusively male homosexuals are executed. Who cares if some anime just jumps on the bandwagon with some good old en-masse men mutilation, am I right? But, god forbid, we add a bunch of female enemies to be slaughtered! Privileged "class" can't be subjected to something like that! Misogyny, discrimination, abuse! Alarm, alarm, alarm! :/
Was there any reason not to include "regular" female enemies in Black Lagoon? Of course not, considering what kind of almost otherworldly fighters the "main" women are. Creating entire groups of such background female characters was not a problem at all when it comes to the internal logic of the setting.


Neon Genesis Evangelion. Who could I be talking about, hmmmmm? :p Well, bitch Asuka, of course! Who else. Our "queen of abuse", one of my top-3 most hated anime characters of all time herself! Quite a celebrity, as we can see lol constantly, unapologetically abuses Shinji left and right, not to mention acts like a complete piece of shit overall. Why am I supposed to sympathize with her insecurities and problems again? All I want is for her to be repeatedly kicked in her private parts. I, unironically, want another NGE remake to be made, with changed plot, solely so that I can see how she dies a painful and agonizing death. This another "wonderful" female character teaches us that you can never talk back to a girl and should take the abuse "like a man", even if you couldn't care less about this imbecilic chivalry crap. As a reward for your patience, you can only meekly strangle your abuser and not even to the death! lol

One Piece. I'm going to take a shot at Sanji, unsurprisingly. Wow, what a doormat! That "pussy slave" quirk of his might have been amusing at the beginning, but it quickly overstayed its welcome. Someone may ask what makes his character so different from a lot of female characters that fall for crappy guys in romance stories and suffer from that? Well, for starters, I'd like to know how many of these girls with no self-respect and/or gentle hearts actually suffer any physical harm or real abuse from those crappy guys. I highly doubt that any of such girls turn into complete pathetic doormats like our dear Sanji, getting kicked, punched, pushed etc. on a regular basis, AND it’s portrayed as funny/comedic instead of tragic, like it’s usually with girls. Sure, a quirky exaggerated character, all good fun blah blah blah - but have you ever seen an even remotely similar female character? I haven't. If anyone can help me find "Sanji's soulmate" among the female anime characters, maybe I'll be less hard on him. Still, he is not the only character who propagates similar tropes in this anime.
Someone mentioned Boa Hancock, and yeah, she obviously qualifies as well, but she is mostly a secondary character that I don’t care enough about to rant.
Anyway, One Piece would be better for me with Nico Robin as the MC and everyone else from the “good guys” just fucking off permanently, never to be seen again lol

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. In FMA:B we have two very peculiar "badass bitches": Olivier and Izumi. Both are such pathetic characters that the only validation they can receive is when they're acting rude, violent or abusive towards other characters, all of whom are male, of course. And I don't mean the actual fighting against their enemies, I mean their horrible behavior under normal circumstances. Both can't keep their hands to themselves and never get "called out" for any crap that they pull. But I guess when you can't be competent and sensible like Hawkeye or classy like Lust, you can only be a pathetic rude bitch, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Another reason to like FMA 2003 version more, at least it doesn't have Ms. Blowjob Lips Olivier! Maybe my enhanced negative attitude towards these two characters is due to the fact that I hate FMA:B overall, but I still feel like both neatly fit into this topic. A reminder for people who like to say "oh, women use violence in anime because no one takes them being strong seriously in real life": those two women are not meek housewives, and their violence can be compared to a well-trained fighter. How many male superior/master characters have you seen who act this way towards their female subordinates/students? I can answer that: extremely close to zero, if not zero. Nevertheless, I'm always happy to see examples of the opposite, if anyone would present them.


There are more series among the ones that I've seen that have such minor crap, of course, but thankfully, I’m either forgetting them or I don't think it's anything worth complaining about (aside from maybe the character of Ringo in Mawaru Penguindrum, but I don't want to drag that anime into this discussion as well because the problems I have with her character mostly don't concern this topic, even though she had a tendency of being an abusive bitch and Asuka's faithful disciple in that sense).

A lot of battle shounen series have problems that I mentioned above, long-running or otherwise. Shounen anime seems to love turning its male characters into pathetic doormats. Does it influence its young male viewers in the same way, I wonder? And I don't mean mild-tempered guys or anything like that, of course. I love such guys! Cute, shy, kind - you name it. My favorite type. What I mean is how they're written when they interact with a). women, who continuously beat the shit out of them or abuse them and never suffer any retaliation b). the world and each other, where men go through unnecessary grief, and it's not done for historical accuracy or to maintain the internal logic of the setting, but simply because they were born male, which means: being used as "evil cannon fodder" in action anime, having no self-preservation and always putting women first, not allowed to be weak and continuously being told to "man up" etc.

Well, that's about it. Always thought about writing such a big comprehensive...rant? Complaint? Analysis? But never got the opportunity or desire to actually do it. Well, stumbling upon such a topic allowed me to :) at least I was able to do so before it'll inevitably be locked into oblivion, like the previous one. Even if no one reads this shit ton of text, I'll at least have a template for the future, in case I need it for something.


I don’t appreciate these kinds of mental gymnastics, and I’ve seen this one used by people quite often. We have men, who are “by default” assigned the role of being “strong protectors” and all the similar stuff. Whether we like it or not, the society is riding on the backs of men and over-relies on them when it comes to dangerous hazardous work, especially a physically taxing one, or fighting in some war etc. In many cases, they’re forced to do such things, either directly or by the circumstances they find themselves in. “Expendable males” phrase didn’t just appear out of thin air. When it comes to women, they’re mostly left in the background, as “support”, and in most cases it’s about “prohibiting” them to do what they want, since they’re precious child givers and princesses that must be protected blah blah blah. Typical conformist and gender role bullshit as we know it.

Now, when a man becomes more sensitive and gentle or tries to “imitate” women (wearing clothes that are considered “women’s clothes”, acts too meekly etc.), our societies react to it aggressively not because being a woman is seen as something inferior, but because said man is trying to “take” a woman’s spot. Society is like “who the hell is going to do all the horrible work, fight in a physical conflict and protect us all if men become ‘pussies’?!”. That is why any attempts of men to highlight their problems as a group are met with so much hostility and mocking. Both women and other men try to put them down. For women, it’s beneficial to let the men handle all the thankless work in society, which most women would never do even if offered (or they just don’t have the strength needed, for example), so that’s the reason for aggressively pushing any discussions of misandry out of the public space. It protects women’s place in society as “secure and privileged”, despite the fact that in many countries they’re no longer simply getting certain rights to become equal in some aspects with men, but are receiving outright privileges in comparison to men in almost every aspect possible. Quite a good arrangement, don’t you think? Only honest and conscientious women would be able (or would want to) to see when they’re treated as a “higher caste” overall and call out people on that. It doesn't mean that every woman is automatically successful or anything like that: I'm just talking about the trends for women as a group where their main trait is being a woman. For other men, it’s just about being conformist idiots or maybe even somewhere deep inside realizing: “If I don’t let the other men take the fall, ‘unpussify’ them until it’s too late, I may be the one who’ll be burdened with all the hard work and conflict that men are often thrown into”.

Women are free to wear men’s clothes because it doesn’t really mean anything. So what if a few of them are doing something dangerous or fight in wars like men? Those percentages are insignificant and if you remove those daredevil badass women from this equation, society will still endure and continue to rely on men for everything thankless and dangerous. It’s like…a small percentage of badass women adds a small flair to all the men doing the same, which doesn’t decide anything, but a small percentage of men “pussies” are actively detracting from the dangerous and essential jobs that men are supposed to do. Therefore, women wearing “men’s clothes” and doing “men’s job” = doesn’t matter to society, while men wearing “women’s clothes” and doing “women’s job” = alarming trends for the overall security in the eyes of society.

And again, speaking of patriarchy as a term people usually describe this phenomenon with: if 1% of men hold more power than 100% women, but 100% women are in better, more secure, more protected position than 99% men, how can it be called patriarchy? It’s like people assume that just because a man from a deeply traditional society treats his wife as an accessory, in some ways, means that the man himself is automatically in a better position. Sure, a lot of women would agonize over being locked up like a doll, not being able to realize their potential in the outside world (if they want to begin with), but what about the husband? Forced to do what’s expected of him and would suffer even worse and more violent consequences if those expectations are not met. I agree that in a way it depends on the perspective: some people would say “staying at home as a woman, not being able to do anything, losing your husband and son in some war and then getting raped on top of that by an enemy soldier is worse”, but I still think that being a man who is forced to go and die in some war is overall worse, because we’re talking about one’s life and place in society. Sure, a woman would suffer A LOT, but she can still choose to live her life in whatever way she wants (or end it, her choice), even confined to some husband, but a man who dies in a war or doing some thankless job doesn’t even get this chance. I think having a choice to live your life on your own terms and die on your own terms, even if it’s due to limited and unfair circumstances, is better than dying just because someone forced you to fight, do something dangerous etc. under societal pressure.

Therefore, can what we see around many countries in the world be really be called patriarchy? Just because someone “rules” with certain genitalia between their legs? What about direct beneficiaries? In my country, not only women receive less jail time for the same crimes and their official retirement age is lower, despite living far longer than men statistically, even holidays like March 8th were considered national holidays, while no one even knows about the existence of November 19th. Among other things (like women not being forced to serve in an army, for example), with no alternatives for men as a group to balance it out, let alone any sensible equality. We can clearly see a preferential treatment of women as a group, simply because they’re women. So, how is this patriarchy? Women are allowed to rule and lead as well, pursue any profession (except for maybe a few obscure physically hazardous ones that usually prohibit women, yet again, for their protection due to it being too physical etc.) and just because there isn’t a lot of them doing it, doesn’t mean that they can’t, BUT the main beneficiary of the system in the end are women as a group. That looks like matriarchy to me. Women rule simply by being women and by having the societal norms and laws tilted significantly in their favor. Just because there isn’t a billionaire woman sitting at the top, “manspreading” and giving orders to society, doesn’t mean that it’s a not a matriarchy. If anything, patriarchy would be something like this: women being forced to lead and make all practical decisions, army would consist of women only, and men would leisurely stay back, protected and somewhat revered, and consulted on certain topics for their input. In this case, even though women are burdened with all the hard roles in society, men are still receiving the benefits of their work and looked up to for being men (just like women often being romanticized as gentle fairies, treasures to be protected etc. in our reality).

Finer points of my own argument may be up for a debate, but I strongly disagree with the whole "men are discriminated because misogyny and patriarchy" stance.

As for your second paragraph: when it comes to misandry, most of the things can be argued when it comes to interpretation, yes, but the same is true for misogyny.


Indeed. When so-called feminists and similar activists complain about “why are there not enough female characters in media?!”, they of course mean female characters with power and importance, not “anime mob soldiers or villains”. Those will all be men, of course, that those female characters will be killing by the dozens. I’ve also seen people applying incredible mental gymnastics: saying that it’s misogyny not to have more generic female soldiers/goons/enemies etc., but when asked why none of the “generic enemies for the slaughter” are female, they’d describe such thoughts as misogyny too! lol Apparently, it’d solidify discrimination and violence against women if such characters are added, but it’s okay to do the same with male characters :/ double standards at their best. Also reminds a bit of when US would replace generic female characters in Japanese games with men or transwomen, for censorship reasons, because apparently beating the shit out of men and transwomen is okay, but not women lol


People always seem to find a way lol all those manipulations are really tiring to deal with >_< (not claiming that logopolis is manipulating or anything - just in general), especially when you’re trying to get to the bottom of the issue and discuss it from different perspectives, not “win” an argument, and other people are focused on proving that “everything is misogyny and you must agree, no alternatives”. That’s why I kind of gave up on arguing when it comes to these kinds of topics and prefer to just observe from a distance, rather than getting involved in the discussion myself (but couldn’t help myself this time and posted, A LOT lol).

Oh, this discussion randomly reminded me of when back in the day someone accused you of "cosplaying as a woman" or something like that lol that was one of the funniest nonsensical things I’ve seen on MAL xD I just imagined you here with your evil plans, masquerading as a woman, waiting for years to execute your Order 66 lol I don't remember what the topic was about exactly, but I think it had discussions similar to these, so I guess that's why I got reminded of that hilarious accusation.

@Zarutaku well, I mean those women were sexy af, how do you think he'll react to? xD yes, he is like that at the beginning but then he had a development. I like the part where he's totally not lewd towards the girl that lives with her parents... it's okay if you didn't like gb, but yeah it ain't the most raunchy thing out there heh

Just saying, but trauma does not justify the behaviour of a person openly being misandrist and talking shit about men in general. The world isn't made to pamper them and other unrelated people are not responsible for dealing with bs just because they have some trauma.


Yeah this is a perfect example, and it's even funny because i'd like these people to do better than shinji when they were a 14 year old child.

Well well well, I randomly decide to check the forums and my favorite topic is here! Must be fate :p

I had this long response saved ever since I couldn’t post it in a similar topic last year (it got locked). I can finally utilize it!


Great Teacher Onizuka. "An ode to misandry", as I like to call it :p people can defend it for being "just a comedy" all they want, but I don't think this excuse holds up and it simply went way too far with its annoying aspects, at least from my perspective. Disgusting portrayal of male characters as henpecked stupid perverts aside, the amount of grief male characters go through in this anime is simply astronomical, mostly without any reason. The highlight of this is Yoshikawa x Anko plotline, of course, easily the worst thing I've ever seen in any anime. Not only the anime belittles the bullying and suicide attempts that Yoshikawa's character goes through by shifting the sympathy at the end of his arc entirely to his bully, Anko, by saying "but she is a victim too, look at how dysfunctional her family is!", she continues to actively abuse him, both physically and mentally, throughout the entire series and somehow it's "comedic" now? On top of that, at the end of the series they become "a cute couple" that we're supposed to cheer for. Wow, no matter how much I recall this piece of shit anime, I always feel like I'm at a loss for words. Somehow, this shitshow is perceived as totally okay, but when some anime like Aho Girl comes out, also a comedy, where the roles are reversed and it's a male character who is punching the shit out of a female character, suddenly tons of people are butthurt, writing angry reviews about it being "misogynistic". Seriously? Even as far as double standards go, I think that's too much hypocrisy. In any case, I find this anime idiotic and annoying in almost every other aspect as well, so I wouldn’t have liked it even if this particular plotline was absent.

Eureka Seven. The MC is being told "you're a man you're a man you're a man you're a man you're a man" every goddamn episode, as if it's a brainwashing procedure lol directed at both Renton himself and the young viewers from shounen demographic, I'd assume. In itself, such conformist bullshit is not really the end of the world, but since there were also quite a few female characters resorting to physical violence against the male characters, while never being reprimanded for it or suffering retaliation + plus typical misandry tropes, like kick in the balls, were used in this series, I feel like Eureka Seven definitely qualifies as another one of "those" series. Those "disposable males" won't create themselves, Eureka Seven to the rescue, able and ready to subliminally brainwash its shounen demographic! lol Also, was any female character kicked in the vagina for doing horrible things? Spoiler: of course not. I can mostly forgive Anemone for being violent against the best boi Dominic because it makes sense but combined with all of the other "red flags" in this anime, it just feels excessive, as if someone was fulfilling a fantasy of beating up men. None of that random violence is ever portrayed as outright bad either.

Vampire Hunter D (1985 movie). This one is just hilarious :p why would our MC refuse to kill a vampire, who probably mercilessly murdered dozens of innocents? Because she is a girl! Best reasoning ever lol all the gynocentric bullshit tropes would applaud in approval to this statement :p there is also a lot of "boys don't cry" and other crap packed into this movie. Honestly, it's so short, but it basically consists of every possible sexist/conformist remark you can think of, it's quite an achievement! Not the kind of achievement I approve of, but I definitely recognize it lol ironically, it almost made me want to read the source material, to see what the hell the author was thinking writing this crap (especially considering that the newer Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust movie is pretty great and anyone reading this should watch it!).

Black Lagoon. It represents one of my "favorite" tropes that I usually encounter in games. "We're going to give all the female characters only important or significant roles, but as for cannon fodder - male characters, of course!” And then we're going to demonstratively murder, mutilate and otherwise harm that male cannon fodder. Dozens, hundreds of them. Will there be any "strong independent women" among that cannon fodder, at least some, for fairness' sake? Pfft, of course not! Because normalizing violence against men is "cool", especially female-on-male violence, and no one cares anyway. It's not like we don't have forced military conscription for men in many countries that can be equated to slavery (including my own), it's not like we don't have spiking male suicide levels, it's not like we don't have quite a few countries where exclusively male homosexuals are executed. Who cares if some anime just jumps on the bandwagon with some good old en-masse men mutilation, am I right? But, god forbid, we add a bunch of female enemies to be slaughtered! Privileged "class" can't be subjected to something like that! Misogyny, discrimination, abuse! Alarm, alarm, alarm! :/
Was there any reason not to include "regular" female enemies in Black Lagoon? Of course not, considering what kind of almost otherworldly fighters the "main" women are. Creating entire groups of such background female characters was not a problem at all when it comes to the internal logic of the setting.


Neon Genesis Evangelion. Who could I be talking about, hmmmmm? :p Well, bitch Asuka, of course! Who else. Our "queen of abuse", one of my top-3 most hated anime characters of all time herself! Quite a celebrity, as we can see lol constantly, unapologetically abuses Shinji left and right, not to mention acts like a complete piece of shit overall. Why am I supposed to sympathize with her insecurities and problems again? All I want is for her to be repeatedly kicked in her private parts. I, unironically, want another NGE remake to be made, with changed plot, solely so that I can see how she dies a painful and agonizing death. This another "wonderful" female character teaches us that you can never talk back to a girl and should take the abuse "like a man", even if you couldn't care less about this imbecilic chivalry crap. As a reward for your patience, you can only meekly strangle your abuser and not even to the death! lol

One Piece. I'm going to take a shot at Sanji, unsurprisingly. Wow, what a doormat! That "pussy slave" quirk of his might have been amusing at the beginning, but it quickly overstayed its welcome. Someone may ask what makes his character so different from a lot of female characters that fall for crappy guys in romance stories and suffer from that? Well, for starters, I'd like to know how many of these girls with no self-respect and/or gentle hearts actually suffer any physical harm or real abuse from those crappy guys. I highly doubt that any of such girls turn into complete pathetic doormats like our dear Sanji, getting kicked, punched, pushed etc. on a regular basis, AND it’s portrayed as funny/comedic instead of tragic, like it’s usually with girls. Sure, a quirky exaggerated character, all good fun blah blah blah - but have you ever seen an even remotely similar female character? I haven't. If anyone can help me find "Sanji's soulmate" among the female anime characters, maybe I'll be less hard on him. Still, he is not the only character who propagates similar tropes in this anime.
Someone mentioned Boa Hancock, and yeah, she obviously qualifies as well, but she is mostly a secondary character that I don’t care enough about to rant.
Anyway, One Piece would be better for me with Nico Robin as the MC and everyone else from the “good guys” just fucking off permanently, never to be seen again lol

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. In FMA:B we have two very peculiar "badass bitches": Olivier and Izumi. Both are such pathetic characters that the only validation they can receive is when they're acting rude, violent or abusive towards other characters, all of whom are male, of course. And I don't mean the actual fighting against their enemies, I mean their horrible behavior under normal circumstances. Both can't keep their hands to themselves and never get "called out" for any crap that they pull. But I guess when you can't be competent and sensible like Hawkeye or classy like Lust, you can only be a pathetic rude bitch, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Another reason to like FMA 2003 version more, at least it doesn't have Ms. Blowjob Lips Olivier! Maybe my enhanced negative attitude towards these two characters is due to the fact that I hate FMA:B overall, but I still feel like both neatly fit into this topic. A reminder for people who like to say "oh, women use violence in anime because no one takes them being strong seriously in real life": those two women are not meek housewives, and their violence can be compared to a well-trained fighter. How many male superior/master characters have you seen who act this way towards their female subordinates/students? I can answer that: extremely close to zero, if not zero. Nevertheless, I'm always happy to see examples of the opposite, if anyone would present them.


There are more series among the ones that I've seen that have such minor crap, of course, but thankfully, I’m either forgetting them or I don't think it's anything worth complaining about (aside from maybe the character of Ringo in Mawaru Penguindrum, but I don't want to drag that anime into this discussion as well because the problems I have with her character mostly don't concern this topic, even though she had a tendency of being an abusive bitch and Asuka's faithful disciple in that sense).

A lot of battle shounen series have problems that I mentioned above, long-running or otherwise. Shounen anime seems to love turning its male characters into pathetic doormats. Does it influence its young male viewers in the same way, I wonder? And I don't mean mild-tempered guys or anything like that, of course. I love such guys! Cute, shy, kind - you name it. My favorite type. What I mean is how they're written when they interact with a). women, who continuously beat the shit out of them or abuse them and never suffer any retaliation b). the world and each other, where men go through unnecessary grief, and it's not done for historical accuracy or to maintain the internal logic of the setting, but simply because they were born male, which means: being used as "evil cannon fodder" in action anime, having no self-preservation and always putting women first, not allowed to be weak and continuously being told to "man up" etc.

Well, that's about it. Always thought about writing such a big comprehensive...rant? Complaint? Analysis? But never got the opportunity or desire to actually do it. Well, stumbling upon such a topic allowed me to :) at least I was able to do so before it'll inevitably be locked into oblivion, like the previous one. Even if no one reads this shit ton of text, I'll at least have a template for the future, in case I need it for something.


I don’t appreciate these kinds of mental gymnastics, and I’ve seen this one used by people quite often. We have men, who are “by default” assigned the role of being “strong protectors” and all the similar stuff. Whether we like it or not, the society is riding on the backs of men and over-relies on them when it comes to dangerous hazardous work, especially a physically taxing one, or fighting in some war etc. In many cases, they’re forced to do such things, either directly or by the circumstances they find themselves in. “Expendable males” phrase didn’t just appear out of thin air. When it comes to women, they’re mostly left in the background, as “support”, and in most cases it’s about “prohibiting” them to do what they want, since they’re precious child givers and princesses that must be protected blah blah blah. Typical conformist and gender role bullshit as we know it.

Now, when a man becomes more sensitive and gentle or tries to “imitate” women (wearing clothes that are considered “women’s clothes”, acts too meekly etc.), our societies react to it aggressively not because being a woman is seen as something inferior, but because said man is trying to “take” a woman’s spot. Society is like “who the hell is going to do all the horrible work, fight in a physical conflict and protect us all if men become ‘pussies’?!”. That is why any attempts of men to highlight their problems as a group are met with so much hostility and mocking. Both women and other men try to put them down. For women, it’s beneficial to let the men handle all the thankless work in society, which most women would never do even if offered (or they just don’t have the strength needed, for example), so that’s the reason for aggressively pushing any discussions of misandry out of the public space. It protects women’s place in society as “secure and privileged”, despite the fact that in many countries they’re no longer simply getting certain rights to become equal in some aspects with men, but are receiving outright privileges in comparison to men in almost every aspect possible. Quite a good arrangement, don’t you think? Only honest and conscientious women would be able (or would want to) to see when they’re treated as a “higher caste” overall and call out people on that. It doesn't mean that every woman is automatically successful or anything like that: I'm just talking about the trends for women as a group where their main trait is being a woman. For other men, it’s just about being conformist idiots or maybe even somewhere deep inside realizing: “If I don’t let the other men take the fall, ‘unpussify’ them until it’s too late, I may be the one who’ll be burdened with all the hard work and conflict that men are often thrown into”.

Women are free to wear men’s clothes because it doesn’t really mean anything. So what if a few of them are doing something dangerous or fight in wars like men? Those percentages are insignificant and if you remove those daredevil badass women from this equation, society will still endure and continue to rely on men for everything thankless and dangerous. It’s like…a small percentage of badass women adds a small flair to all the men doing the same, which doesn’t decide anything, but a small percentage of men “pussies” are actively detracting from the dangerous and essential jobs that men are supposed to do. Therefore, women wearing “men’s clothes” and doing “men’s job” = doesn’t matter to society, while men wearing “women’s clothes” and doing “women’s job” = alarming trends for the overall security in the eyes of society.

And again, speaking of patriarchy as a term people usually describe this phenomenon with: if 1% of men hold more power than 100% women, but 100% women are in better, more secure, more protected position than 99% men, how can it be called patriarchy? It’s like people assume that just because a man from a deeply traditional society treats his wife as an accessory, in some ways, means that the man himself is automatically in a better position. Sure, a lot of women would agonize over being locked up like a doll, not being able to realize their potential in the outside world (if they want to begin with), but what about the husband? Forced to do what’s expected of him and would suffer even worse and more violent consequences if those expectations are not met. I agree that in a way it depends on the perspective: some people would say “staying at home as a woman, not being able to do anything, losing your husband and son in some war and then getting raped on top of that by an enemy soldier is worse”, but I still think that being a man who is forced to go and die in some war is overall worse, because we’re talking about one’s life and place in society. Sure, a woman would suffer A LOT, but she can still choose to live her life in whatever way she wants (or end it, her choice), even confined to some husband, but a man who dies in a war or doing some thankless job doesn’t even get this chance. I think having a choice to live your life on your own terms and die on your own terms, even if it’s due to limited and unfair circumstances, is better than dying just because someone forced you to fight, do something dangerous etc. under societal pressure.

Therefore, can what we see around many countries in the world be really be called patriarchy? Just because someone “rules” with certain genitalia between their legs? What about direct beneficiaries? In my country, not only women receive less jail time for the same crimes and their official retirement age is lower, despite living far longer than men statistically, even holidays like March 8th were considered national holidays, while no one even knows about the existence of November 19th. Among other things (like women not being forced to serve in an army, for example), with no alternatives for men as a group to balance it out, let alone any sensible equality. We can clearly see a preferential treatment of women as a group, simply because they’re women. So, how is this patriarchy? Women are allowed to rule and lead as well, pursue any profession (except for maybe a few obscure physically hazardous ones that usually prohibit women, yet again, for their protection due to it being too physical etc.) and just because there isn’t a lot of them doing it, doesn’t mean that they can’t, BUT the main beneficiary of the system in the end are women as a group. That looks like matriarchy to me. Women rule simply by being women and by having the societal norms and laws tilted significantly in their favor. Just because there isn’t a billionaire woman sitting at the top, “manspreading” and giving orders to society, doesn’t mean that it’s a not a matriarchy. If anything, patriarchy would be something like this: women being forced to lead and make all practical decisions, army would consist of women only, and men would leisurely stay back, protected and somewhat revered, and consulted on certain topics for their input. In this case, even though women are burdened with all the hard roles in society, men are still receiving the benefits of their work and looked up to for being men (just like women often being romanticized as gentle fairies, treasures to be protected etc. in our reality).

Finer points of my own argument may be up for a debate, but I strongly disagree with the whole "men are discriminated because misogyny and patriarchy" stance.

As for your second paragraph: when it comes to misandry, most of the things can be argued when it comes to interpretation, yes, but the same is true for misogyny.


Indeed. When so-called feminists and similar activists complain about “why are there not enough female characters in media?!”, they of course mean female characters with power and importance, not “anime mob soldiers or villains”. Those will all be men, of course, that those female characters will be killing by the dozens. I’ve also seen people applying incredible mental gymnastics: saying that it’s misogyny not to have more generic female soldiers/goons/enemies etc., but when asked why none of the “generic enemies for the slaughter” are female, they’d describe such thoughts as misogyny too! lol Apparently, it’d solidify discrimination and violence against women if such characters are added, but it’s okay to do the same with male characters :/ double standards at their best. Also reminds a bit of when US would replace generic female characters in Japanese games with men or transwomen, for censorship reasons, because apparently beating the shit out of men and transwomen is okay, but not women lol


People always seem to find a way lol all those manipulations are really tiring to deal with >_< (not claiming that logopolis is manipulating or anything - just in general), especially when you’re trying to get to the bottom of the issue and discuss it from different perspectives, not “win” an argument, and other people are focused on proving that “everything is misogyny and you must agree, no alternatives”. That’s why I kind of gave up on arguing when it comes to these kinds of topics and prefer to just observe from a distance, rather than getting involved in the discussion myself (but couldn’t help myself this time and posted, A LOT lol).

Oh, this discussion randomly reminded me of when back in the day someone accused you of "cosplaying as a woman" or something like that lol that was one of the funniest nonsensical things I’ve seen on MAL xD I just imagined you here with your evil plans, masquerading as a woman, waiting for years to execute your Order 66 lol I don't remember what the topic was about exactly, but I think it had discussions similar to these, so I guess that's why I got reminded of that hilarious accusation.

Misandry is very rare and usually misidentified, most of what might look like misandry is actually backfiring misogyny. For example, the sort of show in which it's fine to hit a boy but you should never hit a girl will likely be based on the idea that boys and men are strong and can't really be hurt, and if they can be hurt, they deserve it for being too girly. Women can wear anything, but men can't wear skirts because a woman looking like a man is seen as an improvement, naturally they would want to take on some maleness, but how dare a man abandon their superior masculinity and wear women's clothes.

It does exist. But I certainly can't think of any anime in which it's a noticeable factor. At least not seriously. Prison School I haven't seen but I assume it's catering to a fetish there.

That's a fair point about Sanji, since I was just thinking about whether the girls actually punched him a lot or not. Nevertheless, his archetype usually does suffer from a lot of violence. His example is mostly to showcase that when a guy behaves like that and gets punched, then it's a comedy, but when it's the other way around, then it's a discrimination and people write angry reviews that the author hates women lol by that logic, almost every idiotic conformist creator in media hates men because it happens to male characters literally almost everywhere and on a regular basis. Double standards are annoying, which is my main point here. Let girls punch guys and be punched by guys, let guys punch girls and be punched by girls. Do it as comedy, do it as something serious - I don't care, do whatever you want as a creator, since by the end of the day it's just entertainment anyway, but when it gets one-sided, then it starts to get a bit annoying for me and becomes hard not to question what goes through the head of such authors. I can't imagine creating such nonsense in any of my own stories, so it's just weird. Don't they something more interesting to offer to their audiences anyway?

Yeah, after dropping it I kind of just skipped the bullshit and comedy that I didn't find funny (including almost all of Sanji scenes, I assume lol) and watched only the important scenes and some fights. The only arc that I watched almost 100% was Marineford Arc because it had a lot of important characters having a go at each other, which was kind of exciting and interesting. I was actually asked to watch One Piece to begin with, it wasn't really my decision :) I never really wanted to try it on my own.
Anyway, there was a lot more that I didn't like while watching, so Sanji is just a small part of it :) my tolerance for all the things typical for long-running battle shounen anime gets lower and lower each year it seems, so it's hard to properly enjoy that kind of anime. I try to avoid it these days, even though I like fighting scenes in anime overall, but I still have this hope that if one day I'll start some long-running anime series like that, it'll click with me, won't annoy me, and I'll be able to fully enjoy it for what it is. Maybe it'll happen, maybe it won't - who knows.


Yeah, I understand Asuka's character and her relationship with Shinji (I just don't like her!), but the point is that if the roles were reversed, the reaction to that character would be a lot more unfair :) another point is the reverse situation doesn't happen a lot, if ever. I really can't remember a single male character acting like a brat who is being aggressive and physical towards a girl but is still considered a sympathetic character. And if such a guy exists somewhere in media, I'm sure he would be painted as a jerk while he does such things anyway because he is a guy and not a girl. I don't really remember Asuka being painted as a jerk by the narrative and all of her actions had either a dramatic or comedic atmosphere.

All other examples are of the same nature: strict teacher, making us laugh through violence etc. - why always at the expense of male characters? Why is Sanji not a girl who is obsessed with guys and gets punched a lot and acts weird for hundreds of episodes? Why is Olivier not a guy who commands a regiment of girls and acts "badass" towards them by being a jerk? Why is Izumi not a guy who teaches a pair of girls and punches them to show that he is a strict teacher? It's always the other way around, and that's my problem. It's not a problem of taking it seriously or not, but it does show that creators are conformist idiots, which is kind of annoying.

@-YaoiBoy-

i mean shes a fighter so its a given she'll get in fights with guys. she didn't suffer any random physical abuse not that I know of, but neither has sanji (from women).
Shes from the Dressrosa arc, she worked for Doflamingo. Its a good thing u stopped when you did because his simpish behavior only gets 1000x worse. something that was just a fairly minor part of his character has become his entire identity by the Fishman arc and onward. kind of sad. he's become a bit of an annoying character.

@Kenzolo-folk How can you still be around here? You're the literal reason this discussion even exists (you didn't have to prove it again and again) and basically 95% of your existence here consists of insulting people and spreading paranoia. Did the mods at least ban you for a couple of days? Tf.

You're like this one russian guy here who always tries to talk people into loving yaoi and when they refuse he just implies that they are either homophobic or closet gay. Fck this page man.

@Weeaboo_Bomber

Spreading paranoia about what? The real pedos on this website? what does this have to do with misandry.. I've never voiced my opinions until now about a topic like this. ive only insulted actual real creeps that bother me on the website. what are you talking about? I'm genuinely confused.

"

bro.. WHAT..
please tell me how what I said implied this at all?

@Kenzolo-folk

What pedophiles do we have on this site?

Sources?

Also, @ColourWheel , posting politics isn't allowed, especially controversial topics like misogyny which you clearly knew would upset people lol.

@GoatPieceLuffy

fuck that. the last time i told people about the pedo on this website i got banned for weeks. i already talked to the mods about it and had a forum with all the screenshots and its clear they dont give a shit.

It's hard to think of any examples of real unabashed misandry lol. Even when a show has misandrist characters it's usually written in a way to appeal to guys. Like the misandrist gets punished by the story or is portrayed as a villain. Or a woman might be shown to hate men but then still end up falling in love with the main guy anyways. Or maybe even using misandry to play into a femdom thing.

@Kenzolo-folk

Was she/he/they a lolicon or like a straight up pedophile?

I'm not a big fan of the mods but I feel like they wouldn't be that dense? Who knows though, I'm sorry you went through that.

@GoatPieceLuffy

Both,
in one of the forums they were talking about how its normal for men to find real underaged women sexually attractive, and people only don't act on it from fear of stigma. he was saying how real underaged women are virgin and pure and that women have an "expiration date" (18 years).

i was telling the mods about it and was saying how they should do sumthin about how none of the guidelines talk about repercussions for creepy pedophilic language like this but I think I just came off as a karen social justice warrior, so I got blocked and banned.

no the mods are that dense.

@Kenzolo-folk

If that is truly the case, then wtf but from the looks of it, it seemed like you & @zamus_edits were being VERY political & aggressive towards lolicons lol. It doesn't help the fact that @Zamus_Edits label lolicons as pedophiles.

@logopolis Now that's some of the most blatantly toxic gaslighting I've seen in a while, even on this page. "yeah no sorry but you can't be hurt because you're the bad guy and even if you can, you deserve it because you're the bad guy (because I say that) and since I try really hard to look away when you're hurt, people who hurt you can't exist." - Wow.

I would totally disagree here. Characters in fiction literally can be objectified. While the fictional characters themselves can't actually feel objectified, objectification isn't limited to the living. If an artist creates a sculpture it's an inanimate object that doesn't possess consciousness or feelings. Though the sculpture itself can still reflect objectification highlighting sexualized features to sexually objectify it. It's not a very hard concept to wrap ones head around.

My original statement was never about some moral imperative or anything being wrong. Never said anything was specifically bad, this is something you have injected into the discussion yourself.

I was simply debunking this here when calling me out on my original post...



I just completely disagree with your premise because it's not even a subjective matter. Things that are not alive can be totally objectified, it doesn't even have to be real people. Not to mention your post on this was a bit late to begin with. You could have made this proclamation on your 1st post in this thread but waited to suddenly bring it up on your 3rd post?

I mean if you are like assaulted or something its perfectly understandable to be cautious around strangers

My original statement was never about some moral imperative or anything being wrong. Never said anything was specifically bad, this is something you have injected into the discussion yourself.

I was simply debunking this here when calling me out on my original post...



I just completely disagree with your premise because it's not even a subjective matter. Things that are not alive can be totally objectified, it doesn't even have to be real people. Not to mention your post on this was a bit late to begin with. You could have made this proclamation on your 1st post in this thread but waited to suddenly bring it up on your 3rd post?

Well well well, I randomly decide to check the forums and my favorite topic is here! Must be fate :p

I had this long response saved ever since I couldn’t post it in a similar topic last year (it got locked). I can finally utilize it!


Great Teacher Onizuka. "An ode to misandry", as I like to call it :p people can defend it for being "just a comedy" all they want, but I don't think this excuse holds up and it simply went way too far with its annoying aspects, at least from my perspective. Disgusting portrayal of male characters as henpecked stupid perverts aside, the amount of grief male characters go through in this anime is simply astronomical, mostly without any reason. The highlight of this is Yoshikawa x Anko plotline, of course, easily the worst thing I've ever seen in any anime. Not only the anime belittles the bullying and suicide attempts that Yoshikawa's character goes through by shifting the sympathy at the end of his arc entirely to his bully, Anko, by saying "but she is a victim too, look at how dysfunctional her family is!", she continues to actively abuse him, both physically and mentally, throughout the entire series and somehow it's "comedic" now? On top of that, at the end of the series they become "a cute couple" that we're supposed to cheer for. Wow, no matter how much I recall this piece of shit anime, I always feel like I'm at a loss for words. Somehow, this shitshow is perceived as totally okay, but when some anime like Aho Girl comes out, also a comedy, where the roles are reversed and it's a male character who is punching the shit out of a female character, suddenly tons of people are butthurt, writing angry reviews about it being "misogynistic". Seriously? Even as far as double standards go, I think that's too much hypocrisy. In any case, I find this anime idiotic and annoying in almost every other aspect as well, so I wouldn’t have liked it even if this particular plotline was absent.

Eureka Seven. The MC is being told "you're a man you're a man you're a man you're a man you're a man" every goddamn episode, as if it's a brainwashing procedure lol directed at both Renton himself and the young viewers from shounen demographic, I'd assume. In itself, such conformist bullshit is not really the end of the world, but since there were also quite a few female characters resorting to physical violence against the male characters, while never being reprimanded for it or suffering retaliation + plus typical misandry tropes, like kick in the balls, were used in this series, I feel like Eureka Seven definitely qualifies as another one of "those" series. Those "disposable males" won't create themselves, Eureka Seven to the rescue, able and ready to subliminally brainwash its shounen demographic! lol Also, was any female character kicked in the vagina for doing horrible things? Spoiler: of course not. I can mostly forgive Anemone for being violent against the best boi Dominic because it makes sense but combined with all of the other "red flags" in this anime, it just feels excessive, as if someone was fulfilling a fantasy of beating up men. None of that random violence is ever portrayed as outright bad either.

Vampire Hunter D (1985 movie). This one is just hilarious :p why would our MC refuse to kill a vampire, who probably mercilessly murdered dozens of innocents? Because she is a girl! Best reasoning ever lol all the gynocentric bullshit tropes would applaud in approval to this statement :p there is also a lot of "boys don't cry" and other crap packed into this movie. Honestly, it's so short, but it basically consists of every possible sexist/conformist remark you can think of, it's quite an achievement! Not the kind of achievement I approve of, but I definitely recognize it lol ironically, it almost made me want to read the source material, to see what the hell the author was thinking writing this crap (especially considering that the newer Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust movie is pretty great and anyone reading this should watch it!).

Black Lagoon. It represents one of my "favorite" tropes that I usually encounter in games. "We're going to give all the female characters only important or significant roles, but as for cannon fodder - male characters, of course!” And then we're going to demonstratively murder, mutilate and otherwise harm that male cannon fodder. Dozens, hundreds of them. Will there be any "strong independent women" among that cannon fodder, at least some, for fairness' sake? Pfft, of course not! Because normalizing violence against men is "cool", especially female-on-male violence, and no one cares anyway. It's not like we don't have forced military conscription for men in many countries that can be equated to slavery (including my own), it's not like we don't have spiking male suicide levels, it's not like we don't have quite a few countries where exclusively male homosexuals are executed. Who cares if some anime just jumps on the bandwagon with some good old en-masse men mutilation, am I right? But, god forbid, we add a bunch of female enemies to be slaughtered! Privileged "class" can't be subjected to something like that! Misogyny, discrimination, abuse! Alarm, alarm, alarm! :/
Was there any reason not to include "regular" female enemies in Black Lagoon? Of course not, considering what kind of almost otherworldly fighters the "main" women are. Creating entire groups of such background female characters was not a problem at all when it comes to the internal logic of the setting.


Neon Genesis Evangelion. Who could I be talking about, hmmmmm? :p Well, bitch Asuka, of course! Who else. Our "queen of abuse", one of my top-3 most hated anime characters of all time herself! Quite a celebrity, as we can see lol constantly, unapologetically abuses Shinji left and right, not to mention acts like a complete piece of shit overall. Why am I supposed to sympathize with her insecurities and problems again? All I want is for her to be repeatedly kicked in her private parts. I, unironically, want another NGE remake to be made, with changed plot, solely so that I can see how she dies a painful and agonizing death. This another "wonderful" female character teaches us that you can never talk back to a girl and should take the abuse "like a man", even if you couldn't care less about this imbecilic chivalry crap. As a reward for your patience, you can only meekly strangle your abuser and not even to the death! lol

One Piece. I'm going to take a shot at Sanji, unsurprisingly. Wow, what a doormat! That "pussy slave" quirk of his might have been amusing at the beginning, but it quickly overstayed its welcome. Someone may ask what makes his character so different from a lot of female characters that fall for crappy guys in romance stories and suffer from that? Well, for starters, I'd like to know how many of these girls with no self-respect and/or gentle hearts actually suffer any physical harm or real abuse from those crappy guys. I highly doubt that any of such girls turn into complete pathetic doormats like our dear Sanji, getting kicked, punched, pushed etc. on a regular basis, AND it’s portrayed as funny/comedic instead of tragic, like it’s usually with girls. Sure, a quirky exaggerated character, all good fun blah blah blah - but have you ever seen an even remotely similar female character? I haven't. If anyone can help me find "Sanji's soulmate" among the female anime characters, maybe I'll be less hard on him. Still, he is not the only character who propagates similar tropes in this anime.
Someone mentioned Boa Hancock, and yeah, she obviously qualifies as well, but she is mostly a secondary character that I don’t care enough about to rant.
Anyway, One Piece would be better for me with Nico Robin as the MC and everyone else from the “good guys” just fucking off permanently, never to be seen again lol

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. In FMA:B we have two very peculiar "badass bitches": Olivier and Izumi. Both are such pathetic characters that the only validation they can receive is when they're acting rude, violent or abusive towards other characters, all of whom are male, of course. And I don't mean the actual fighting against their enemies, I mean their horrible behavior under normal circumstances. Both can't keep their hands to themselves and never get "called out" for any crap that they pull. But I guess when you can't be competent and sensible like Hawkeye or classy like Lust, you can only be a pathetic rude bitch, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Another reason to like FMA 2003 version more, at least it doesn't have Ms. Blowjob Lips Olivier! Maybe my enhanced negative attitude towards these two characters is due to the fact that I hate FMA:B overall, but I still feel like both neatly fit into this topic. A reminder for people who like to say "oh, women use violence in anime because no one takes them being strong seriously in real life": those two women are not meek housewives, and their violence can be compared to a well-trained fighter. How many male superior/master characters have you seen who act this way towards their female subordinates/students? I can answer that: extremely close to zero, if not zero. Nevertheless, I'm always happy to see examples of the opposite, if anyone would present them.


There are more series among the ones that I've seen that have such minor crap, of course, but thankfully, I’m either forgetting them or I don't think it's anything worth complaining about (aside from maybe the character of Ringo in Mawaru Penguindrum, but I don't want to drag that anime into this discussion as well because the problems I have with her character mostly don't concern this topic, even though she had a tendency of being an abusive bitch and Asuka's faithful disciple in that sense).

A lot of battle shounen series have problems that I mentioned above, long-running or otherwise. Shounen anime seems to love turning its male characters into pathetic doormats. Does it influence its young male viewers in the same way, I wonder? And I don't mean mild-tempered guys or anything like that, of course. I love such guys! Cute, shy, kind - you name it. My favorite type. What I mean is how they're written when they interact with a). women, who continuously beat the shit out of them or abuse them and never suffer any retaliation b). the world and each other, where men go through unnecessary grief, and it's not done for historical accuracy or to maintain the internal logic of the setting, but simply because they were born male, which means: being used as "evil cannon fodder" in action anime, having no self-preservation and always putting women first, not allowed to be weak and continuously being told to "man up" etc.

Well, that's about it. Always thought about writing such a big comprehensive...rant? Complaint? Analysis? But never got the opportunity or desire to actually do it. Well, stumbling upon such a topic allowed me to :) at least I was able to do so before it'll inevitably be locked into oblivion, like the previous one. Even if no one reads this shit ton of text, I'll at least have a template for the future, in case I need it for something.


I don’t appreciate these kinds of mental gymnastics, and I’ve seen this one used by people quite often. We have men, who are “by default” assigned the role of being “strong protectors” and all the similar stuff. Whether we like it or not, the society is riding on the backs of men and over-relies on them when it comes to dangerous hazardous work, especially a physically taxing one, or fighting in some war etc. In many cases, they’re forced to do such things, either directly or by the circumstances they find themselves in. “Expendable males” phrase didn’t just appear out of thin air. When it comes to women, they’re mostly left in the background, as “support”, and in most cases it’s about “prohibiting” them to do what they want, since they’re precious child givers and princesses that must be protected blah blah blah. Typical conformist and gender role bullshit as we know it.

Now, when a man becomes more sensitive and gentle or tries to “imitate” women (wearing clothes that are considered “women’s clothes”, acts too meekly etc.), our societies react to it aggressively not because being a woman is seen as something inferior, but because said man is trying to “take” a woman’s spot. Society is like “who the hell is going to do all the horrible work, fight in a physical conflict and protect us all if men become ‘pussies’?!”. That is why any attempts of men to highlight their problems as a group are met with so much hostility and mocking. Both women and other men try to put them down. For women, it’s beneficial to let the men handle all the thankless work in society, which most women would never do even if offered (or they just don’t have the strength needed, for example), so that’s the reason for aggressively pushing any discussions of misandry out of the public space. It protects women’s place in society as “secure and privileged”, despite the fact that in many countries they’re no longer simply getting certain rights to become equal in some aspects with men, but are receiving outright privileges in comparison to men in almost every aspect possible. Quite a good arrangement, don’t you think? Only honest and conscientious women would be able (or would want to) to see when they’re treated as a “higher caste” overall and call out people on that. It doesn't mean that every woman is automatically successful or anything like that: I'm just talking about the trends for women as a group where their main trait is being a woman. For other men, it’s just about being conformist idiots or maybe even somewhere deep inside realizing: “If I don’t let the other men take the fall, ‘unpussify’ them until it’s too late, I may be the one who’ll be burdened with all the hard work and conflict that men are often thrown into”.

Women are free to wear men’s clothes because it doesn’t really mean anything. So what if a few of them are doing something dangerous or fight in wars like men? Those percentages are insignificant and if you remove those daredevil badass women from this equation, society will still endure and continue to rely on men for everything thankless and dangerous. It’s like…a small percentage of badass women adds a small flair to all the men doing the same, which doesn’t decide anything, but a small percentage of men “pussies” are actively detracting from the dangerous and essential jobs that men are supposed to do. Therefore, women wearing “men’s clothes” and doing “men’s job” = doesn’t matter to society, while men wearing “women’s clothes” and doing “women’s job” = alarming trends for the overall security in the eyes of society.

And again, speaking of patriarchy as a term people usually describe this phenomenon with: if 1% of men hold more power than 100% women, but 100% women are in better, more secure, more protected position than 99% men, how can it be called patriarchy? It’s like people assume that just because a man from a deeply traditional society treats his wife as an accessory, in some ways, means that the man himself is automatically in a better position. Sure, a lot of women would agonize over being locked up like a doll, not being able to realize their potential in the outside world (if they want to begin with), but what about the husband? Forced to do what’s expected of him and would suffer even worse and more violent consequences if those expectations are not met. I agree that in a way it depends on the perspective: some people would say “staying at home as a woman, not being able to do anything, losing your husband and son in some war and then getting raped on top of that by an enemy soldier is worse”, but I still think that being a man who is forced to go and die in some war is overall worse, because we’re talking about one’s life and place in society. Sure, a woman would suffer A LOT, but she can still choose to live her life in whatever way she wants (or end it, her choice), even confined to some husband, but a man who dies in a war or doing some thankless job doesn’t even get this chance. I think having a choice to live your life on your own terms and die on your own terms, even if it’s due to limited and unfair circumstances, is better than dying just because someone forced you to fight, do something dangerous etc. under societal pressure.

Therefore, can what we see around many countries in the world be really be called patriarchy? Just because someone “rules” with certain genitalia between their legs? What about direct beneficiaries? In my country, not only women receive less jail time for the same crimes and their official retirement age is lower, despite living far longer than men statistically, even holidays like March 8th were considered national holidays, while no one even knows about the existence of November 19th. Among other things (like women not being forced to serve in an army, for example), with no alternatives for men as a group to balance it out, let alone any sensible equality. We can clearly see a preferential treatment of women as a group, simply because they’re women. So, how is this patriarchy? Women are allowed to rule and lead as well, pursue any profession (except for maybe a few obscure physically hazardous ones that usually prohibit women, yet again, for their protection due to it being too physical etc.) and just because there isn’t a lot of them doing it, doesn’t mean that they can’t, BUT the main beneficiary of the system in the end are women as a group. That looks like matriarchy to me. Women rule simply by being women and by having the societal norms and laws tilted significantly in their favor. Just because there isn’t a billionaire woman sitting at the top, “manspreading” and giving orders to society, doesn’t mean that it’s a not a matriarchy. If anything, patriarchy would be something like this: women being forced to lead and make all practical decisions, army would consist of women only, and men would leisurely stay back, protected and somewhat revered, and consulted on certain topics for their input. In this case, even though women are burdened with all the hard roles in society, men are still receiving the benefits of their work and looked up to for being men (just like women often being romanticized as gentle fairies, treasures to be protected etc. in our reality).

Finer points of my own argument may be up for a debate, but I strongly disagree with the whole "men are discriminated because misogyny and patriarchy" stance.

As for your second paragraph: when it comes to misandry, most of the things can be argued when it comes to interpretation, yes, but the same is true for misogyny.


Indeed. When so-called feminists and similar activists complain about “why are there not enough female characters in media?!”, they of course mean female characters with power and importance, not “anime mob soldiers or villains”. Those will all be men, of course, that those female characters will be killing by the dozens. I’ve also seen people applying incredible mental gymnastics: saying that it’s misogyny not to have more generic female soldiers/goons/enemies etc., but when asked why none of the “generic enemies for the slaughter” are female, they’d describe such thoughts as misogyny too! lol Apparently, it’d solidify discrimination and violence against women if such characters are added, but it’s okay to do the same with male characters :/ double standards at their best. Also reminds a bit of when US would replace generic female characters in Japanese games with men or transwomen, for censorship reasons, because apparently beating the shit out of men and transwomen is okay, but not women lol


People always seem to find a way lol all those manipulations are really tiring to deal with >_< (not claiming that logopolis is manipulating or anything - just in general), especially when you’re trying to get to the bottom of the issue and discuss it from different perspectives, not “win” an argument, and other people are focused on proving that “everything is misogyny and you must agree, no alternatives”. That’s why I kind of gave up on arguing when it comes to these kinds of topics and prefer to just observe from a distance, rather than getting involved in the discussion myself (but couldn’t help myself this time and posted, A LOT lol).

Oh, this discussion randomly reminded me of when back in the day someone accused you of "cosplaying as a woman" or something like that lol that was one of the funniest nonsensical things I’ve seen on MAL xD I just imagined you here with your evil plans, masquerading as a woman, waiting for years to execute your Order 66 lol I don't remember what the topic was about exactly, but I think it had discussions similar to these, so I guess that's why I got reminded of that hilarious accusation.

Best example I can think of is from https://myanimelist.net/anime/53393/Tengoku_Daimakyou
Otherwise only got some half-assed examples like:

https://myanimelist.net/anime/50392/Mato_Seihei_no_Slave
https://myanimelist.net/anime/37105/Grand_Blue
https://myanimelist.net/anime/268/Golden_Boy

Every anime is a bit misandrist if you look hard enough. Especially because most times in media you're being both misandry and misoginy. It's hard to work with female stereotypes without the absolute worst kind of male stereotype as well.

Oh yeah I completely forgot about that. you're right!

I knew I must have been missing at least one example.



I feel like this one isn't that bad. Despite the power dynamic of the world being clearly female dominant, and the main character being a literal slave, It felt more like all those things existed for the sake of pure horny.

Like given the situation, the characters only boss the MC around in ways that would be considered "hot" or "erotic".

And is it really fair to call it sexist towards men, when it's doing it to give (some of) them a boner?

@TRC_Randy Ooo i forgot about that one

I get the concept of Oooku being a "what if the roles were reversed?", but it's portrayel of the subject definitely comes off as misandric (at least up to where i watched)

Funny how i've also watched lots of retro anime and have yet to come across one that is as crude with it's allusions of misogyny as Oooku is with misandry

This is not so much a misandry, but your good old patriarchal, traditionalist attitude towards gender roles. Something we have already forgotten, living in a more matriarchal Western society with all its confusion regarding gender roles. Not least because Japanese "waifu culture" is overemphasizes these things, and gender inequality in the Japanese entertainment industry forces people to push female content into male media due to the misconception that male media is the default media, while while women's media is supposedly just a separate market.

I noticed this especially strongly about 5 or 6 years ago, when I noticed that quite a few of my interlocutors did not perceive Shonen Jump as a magazine for the male demographic, but as a kind of manga magazine by default, perceiving its female audience as the female audience of the industry in general. Therefore, in their eyes, the perception of Shonen Jump as a magazine for teenage boys supposedly denied women the right to read manga for them. As a result, we have attempts to feminize male media such as the recent female updates in Gundam and Pokemon with all the pros and cons that entails, while female media is almost devoid of this due to the prejudice that female media is a separate segregated market and is therefore as if outside the industry. Which is obviously not true, given the existence of otome isekai and the completely mainstream shoujo yuri.

In general, while I advocate for the widest possible variety of works, I think a lot could be avoided if shoujo and josei received the greater and deserved attention instead of marinating as a "separate market" while shonen and seinen was gradually diluted due to attempts to turn it into a forced gender-neutral anime "for everyone". Of course, having said that, I'm also against turning anime for the male demographic into a "boys' club", but that's another matter.

@RobertBobert Is there even such a thing as male media, or just everything is dumped there that's gender neutral on account of not being specifically made for women?

Just saying, but trauma does not justify the behaviour of a person openly being misandrist and talking shit about men in general. The world isn't made to pamper them and other unrelated people are not responsible for dealing with bs just because they have some trauma.


Yeah this is a perfect example, and it's even funny because i'd like these people to do better than shinji when they were a 14 year old child.

I don't know if the fact that I have heard the term misogyny so many times over the years but had to google misandry says more about me being a fucking idiot, or more about the bias in online discourse lol

I honestly can't think of one.

To be perfectly honest I genuinely can't think of a single super sexist character in anime. There probably is some, but I for one can't think of one.


It's actually funny, cause Ironically the parts of the world that complain and advocate the most about sexism or racism in the rest of the world, are the ones that do it the most themselves. Like I can think of plenty of sexist things in western media.

Well now you've got my curiousity :3 do tell

@DigiCat The first one that came to mind instantly is velma, which wasn't just sexist, it was honestly a hate letter to the fans of the show, fans of animation, every political part, humans, aliens, probably some animals and a dog named tim that happened to accidently see it.

I had never seen a show that pissed off pretty much anyone and everyone.



Another one that comes to mind is barbie, but honestly that one wasn't that bad. it definitely had a pretty big bias, but It would be ignorant to say it straight up was against men.

But that bias along with it beating the audience with the message was my only real issue with the movie.