Why Strong Female Characters are Bad for Women.

2011-04-17T05:52:07+00:00

Sarah Connor is definitely a classic. What made her and Ripley awesome though was that they were both fiercely independent but also very human. Both got involved romantically yet fought and stood with the best of them. They were strong because they overcame actual human challenges. Not just "fighting misogyny and lots of martial arts skill"

That's depth, and ultimately what really matters. You can't just make some impossibly perfect female character and expect her to resonate.

Consider Captain Janeway... they constantly tried to portray (and even blatantly refer to) her as "commanding yet feminine" as some kind of futuristic ideal of womanly perfection... yet... she was always just annoying. Then you had seven of nine, who (tatas aside) I found along with the hologram doctor - by far the most engaging of the characters. Looks-wise I'm not really into blondes, and actually didn't like the outfits they put her in.. but she was both "borg-powerful", incredibly smart, yet also vulnerable. The part with her trying time and time again to figure out how to relate to people by using the holodeck was a brilliant portrayal of certain difficulties that the "I'm strong.. but soft.." shallow-depth of the captain could never reach.

Same with "the Bride", yeah she was super-awesome killing machine. Yeah they tried to give her a soft side, but that part only really worked in the very last part of the movie, with Bill.

You can't have a strong female character without her being human and vulnerable. Without that you've got a paper cutout. In the attempts to make a character impossible-to-be-misogynistic towards, they remove everything that makes them feel like a human... and don't even get me started on "Sucker Punch"

2011-04-17T15:01:36+00:00

River from Senerity. Powerful and flawed.

End3r · 2011-04-16T16:08:29+00:00

I actually like this post, thanks. When I was a kid, Ripley and Sarah Connor were my heroes. They still are, but Deadpool kinda took over as my roll model somewhere along the line... though, I was actually told by several people that I reminded them of Sarah Connor

Title	Why Strong Female Characters are Bad for Women.
Author	thetrollking
Upvotes	5
Comments	5
Date	April 16, 2011 2:55 PM UTC (15 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/grh40/why_strong_female_characters_are_bad_for_women/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/why-strong-female-characters-are-bad-for-women.1040891 https://theredarchive.com/post/1040891

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