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Strong Female Characters Are Just Toxic Men - a writer's perspective

antifeminist3

May 27, 2026

173 upvotes

/r/MensRights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNiUyosJGgI

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Title	Strong Female Characters Are Just Toxic Men - a writer's perspective
Author	antifeminist3
Upvotes	173
Comments	18
Date	May 27, 2026 10:02 PM UTC (1 month ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1tpk5zg/strong_female_characters_are_just_toxic_men_a/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/strong-female-characters-are-just-toxic-men-a.1581429 https://theredarchive.com/post/1581429

Comments

[–]Rdo889 94 points95 points96 points 1 month ago (4 children) | Copy Link

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[–]shautha 2 points3 points4 points 1 month ago (2 children) | Copy Link

I die inside whenever someone brings up Aloy as an example of the "strong and independent women" trope. There are plenty of examples of this stupidity, frequently in marvel movies, but Aloy is NOT one of them, and in fact I think Aloy is actually a very good example of the struggle many men face of having to ignore their problems and struggles because everyone expects them to be unbreakable, and they end up placing this expectations upon themselves and simply bottle up any problem and ignore their own health.

Aloy has a huge responsibility on her shoulders since she's literally the only one that can actually save the world because she's a clone of Elizabeth Sobeck and so is the only one that can open doors or interact with devices that require Elisabeth genes. Over the course of the first game she become a legend and everyone has high expectations of her, expectations she also puts on herself. And in the process any problem or struggle she has needs to be bottled up and saved for later because she can't afford any weakness.

For all her childhood and adolescency she only had Rost to talk to, and she watched him fucking die and never really got to mourn him as she discovered the attack was to kill her in particular, so she needed to keep going. And over time she found out more and more and realized she was the only one that could save the world from extinction, and she feels like she HAS to and continues to push her emotions and struggles aside. And when it gets to the sequel this is expanded even further, most people know about her and she quickly becomes a legend in the forbidden west and everyone expects a lot from her. She risks her life every single day, gets into fight with machines built to kill her in particular, gets involved in a civil war out of pure bad luck and timing, and simply can't catch a fucking break because everyone, including herself, has too many expectations of her and she feels like she can't disappoint.

This is something many men face. Obviously not the "the world will end and I'm the only one that can save it" part, but men are expected to keep their emotions in check and be a unbreakable pillar of confidence and solve everyone's problems, both from society in general but also from family members and friends. They're expected to never cry and never show weakness since people rely on their stoicism for their own confidence, and some men end up adopting this problematic mentality even to their own detriment, just like Aloy does

[–]Factual_Statistician 0 points1 point2 points 1 month ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Definitelynotabot777 0 points1 point2 points 1 month ago (0 children) | Copy Link