This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Narvi: ...what? Somebody needs to look at the statistics here. If the majority of your characters are male, then of course more men are going to die than women.
Gattsuru: Occasionally you see it in shows where men don't outnumber women massively, or where the disparity in deaths overrides the disparity in gender. Of course, since a local population can recover with only one guy and a lotta women much faster than with an equal amount of both genders or one women and a lot of men, there might be some evolutionary advantages to this behavior.
Peteman: I'm thinking of contrasting thsi trope with Women In Refrigerators
The Fedora Pirate: I'm with Narvi, actually, if only for the reason I'm having trouble thinking of any shows (with a high enough level of violence for non-lingering death) that has proportionate gender diversity. If we want to change this to Men Die Brutally it would make more sense but the fact remains, violent/action shows have more men so it's statistically obvious more men are going to die.
fleb: Geez, doesn't this page give flashbacks to that creepy kinda misogynist Unknown Troper in YKTTW from before The Great Crash for anybody else?
ninjacrat: My brain say 'Men Are The Default Gender' would be more precise. My gut says kill it with fire.
The Fedora Pirate: I'm not sure I'd say it's misogynist, especially if it exists, I'm just not sure it does. There's very few examples, some of which can be more easily explained by the commonality of men in such scenarios opposed to women, and there's an aversion. Given how few examples there are I'm not sure this is a trope so much as a coincidence brought on by Men Are The Default Gender, it would certainly cover the mook example. Then again, a few of them are genuine examples (I think, they all come from shows/books/etc. I'm not familiar with ... So Yeah).
Deleted the nonexamples. Really, this only should be covering events where someone was going to die, but the men specifically put themselves in harms way to protect the women, even when it made no logical sense (like Y the last man), purely because of their protective double standard.
Mercury In Retrograde: I think this trope can apply even in situations where men outnumber women and this is why. Often these shows have a high ranking or ultra-skilled female character in the same general field as the hordes of men who are being killed. For example, a female high ranking military officer in a show where all the privates are male. Logically in order for there to be a high ranking or highly skilled female officer, there would be a proportionately larger amount of female privates. And yet, where are they? And why aren't they getting killed along with the male privates? Another example is a highly skilled female martial artist, again logically there would be a proportionate number of less skilled female mooks, and yet all the mooks are male!
(random passer-by): Did anyone else read this and think that this idea may have its roots in phenomena discussed in the field of evolutionary psychology
? In a smallish neolithic hunter-gatherer tribe, men are expendable in ways women are not. Their numbers will be built back up in the subsequent generation even if half of them die. If a significant number of the women die, there may not be a subsequent generation.
Note here that this is an attempt to describe and explain the way things are, not an argument for or against anything.
MecuryInRetrograde: The problem with the neolithic 'men are expendable' theory is that there is more to fathering then depositing sperm. Humans are a high parental investment species, which implies that all family members in a tribe are vital to the survival of children, not just the mother. Loosing half of a child's support system-fathers, grandfathers, uncles-would likely result in the death of said child or at least leave him/her far less fit to pass on his/her genes to the next generation.
Also, there are numerous present-day and past societies that treat women as far more expendable then our own.
- (random passer-by): Evolutionary psychology views small tribal groups almost as competing single-cell organisms, though. It's not a case of A is good and B is bad, it's A is bad but B is almost instantaneous genetic and cultural suicide, and when two tribes go to war over the last water hole during a drought, well, one strategy will tend to result in more descendants in the next generation. Culture is software, and not all the original copies need to survive for it to be passed on. If 70% of the males die in the water hole war, the single most significant consequence will be that survivors will practice polygamy for a generation. As for other cultures regarding women as relatively expendable, could you provide some examples? Thanks.
MercuryInRetrograde: A few years ago in the news from the middle east there was a situation where imams(the religious police) forced girls back into a burning building because they weren't appropriately attired. This resulted in the deaths of said girls. In some middle eastern societies, women have to obey a strict standard of behavior on pain of death. I would say that suggests those societies view female lives as expendable. In India, girls receive less food and less healthcare then boys. Again suggesting they consider girls to be expendable in relation to boys. Though out history—and even currently outside of western nations—female infanticide outnumbers male. Again suggesting females are more expendable when compared to men.
I might add that in terms of evolutionary fitness—simple population numbers—many of these cultures that practice some form of female expendability—honor killings, bride burnings, resource priority to males, female infanticide—are doing considerably better then our own, horrifying as that may be.
The situation is far, far more complex then simplistic evopsych just-so stories would have it seem.
