Stay In The Kitchen / Video Games

• Face from Battle Fantasia has this attitude toward Princess Olivia. Even though she's actually quite capable of taking care of herself, he insists that women should stay as far away from fighting as possible.
• Possible unintentional use in Dead or Alive 4. In his pre-fight cinematic, Ryu Hyabusa finds Kasumi about to face her evil clone Alpha 152. He does a "Stand back, I'll handle this!" and moves forward to protect her. Made unintentionally hilarious by how difficult the boss is. Presumably, Kasumi is just offscreen facepalming. Depending on the character you're playing. As Ryu, he says it's because it's his duty. As Kasumi, she has to do it, as it's her clone.
• Dot's Home: When Dot time travels back to 1959, when her Grandma Mavis and Grandpa Karl were first buying what would become her home, Murphy's grandfather tells Mavis think about all the delicious meals she could cook in the kitchen, while he has a "man-to-man" talk with Karl about the housing deal in the living room. Mavis stands up to it, telling Murphy I that her husband's business is her business too, and Murphy I relents and allows her to listen to the deal as well.
• Shows up in various places during Dragon Age, though rarely focused on.
  • Sten from Dragon Age: Origins has a very comprehensive list of the professions of women (priests, shopkeepers, farmers, administrators), as the qunari believe these are the jobs meant for them — choice has no factor in it. This also applies to men (laborers, soldiers, officers), hinting that the Qunari believe men to be stronger but less intelligent or charismatic. If you're using a female Player Character, he says that either she isn't a woman or isn't a warrior. The former seems more likely to him.
    Sten: I don't understand. You look like a woman.
  • In Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening you encounter a male Qunari named Armas who has rejected the Qun by choosing to make his living as a merchant. He outright calls the Qun a lie if you ask him about his unorthodox career choice.
  • In Dragon Age II we learn that female Qunari can serve in combat roles, with the major distinction apparently being that while they can have jobs involving fighting, they are not soldiers or warriors; the Ben-Hassrath, an organization in the Qunari priest caste, are similar to the Templars, though rather than direct might they seem to prefer highly directed force, non-violent or otherwise. This ranges from assassination of or spying on a political enemy, to kidnapping and re-educating important figures or vashoth; those who have left the Qun. Qunari society is divided into three castes. The Antaam handles military and labor, and are always male. The matriarchy handles administration and infrastructure, and are always female. The priests are responsible for education and enforcing the qun, and can be either sex because the wisdom of the Qun speaks to everyone. Tallis is a prime example. She is a female elf sold into slavery and then taken by the Qunari, who converted and trained her as an agent of the Ben-Hassrath. Her role, as reflected in her name/rank ("tallis" means "to solve" in Qunari) is to hunt down escaped Saarebas (Qunari mages, literally "dangerous thing"). Female priests may or may not have roles that require them to fight, but they are not soldiers or warriors.
  • Arl Howe's rant towards a human noble Grey Warden late in the game is extra-dismissive if said heavily armed warrior or rogue who slaughtered her way through his guards is a woman, laughing at her acting like a man. Outside of the Qunari, female soldiers are extremely common, so this is just more of him being a jerk than an accepted attitude, or possibly just trying to piss her off given his many female guards and soldiers.
  • After Morrigan lists the skills she can (reluctantly) provide to the party in battle, Alistair immediately asks her if she can cook. Her irritable response makes it clear that she interpreted the question as this trope, but he quickly assures her that he only asked because his cooking will kill them, and given the assumption that a Warden of either can't cook either, it's a fair concern.
  • In Dragon Age: Inquisition, Cassandra can question Iron Bull on the Qunari's stance of women fighters in party banter. He explains that a Qunari who desires a role normally associated with the opposite sex, such as a woman who wants to fight, and displays a level of proficiency for that role that is normally expected of the opposite sex, is functionally treated as transgender and become a member of the desired role (note that his own second in command is a female to male transgender warrior). Such people are known as Aqun-Athok. After all, your role in society is more important to the Qun than your gender. He's also implied to be doing some mental gymnastics to justify the female warriors on the team; when they're armed and armored, they're male, when they're not they're female. Cassandra, in particular, is bewildered by this attitude. This also sheds light on Sten's claim that a female warden is not female. All three player characters, if female, display a proficiency for fighting that would have them declared Aqun-Athok. He does make it clear he's oversimplifying to translate a complicated concept that falls outside his field of expertise; the only time he actually uses the term is when he's explaining that trans men like his second who live as men all the time are considered men.
• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest IV: Alena's dad seems to have this attitude at the start of her chapter. Of course, Alena's the strongest physical fighter in the game, so...
  • Justified in Dragon Quest V, your wife forces herself on your travel while she's carrying your unborn babies up until you reach the castle of Gotha, where she ends up collapsing and has to stay there. Unfortunately, you won't get her to fight with you again anytime soon. Then again, you can invoke it by putting her in the castle along with Madchan for the rest of the time she rejoins.
• Intended to be averted in Dwarf Fortress, female dwarves are equally good at fighting. Unfortunately, they're also very fecund, and their Dwarven Baby Shields don't last long in combat — when Mama Bear goes mad with grief, quality steel weaponry and high combat skills make her killing spree all the messier.
• In Fable III, several of the gnome insults towards a female Hero are along these lines. It's a joy to shoot them after that. In a more literal example, if you marry your childhood friend/lover of either gender, they can always be found in your home's kitchen.
• Fallout: New Vegas: Caesar's Legion is notorious for many atrocities like slavery and crucifixions, but they are also noted as being raging misogynists. Many within the Legion consider the role of women to be limited to bearing sons to add to the Legion's army, willing or otherwise.
• Final Fantasy:
  • In Final Fantasy IV, Cecil insists that Rosa and Rydia stay behind while he and the others board the Lunar Whale to face the Big Bad on the moon. The two girls protest and then decide to sneak aboard anyway. Cecil's reasoning? He didn't want to put Rosa and Rydia in danger, which sort of goes against the fact that A) the girls have proven many times that they are more than capable of looking out for themselves, B) Cecil's group would be dead without their dedicated healer and spellcaster, and C) Cecil didn't seem to have a problem with either of them tagging along for most of the game, including their last trip to the moon.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Cloud spends most of Disc 1 falling into these speeches, though Aerith unfailingly objects. If Aerith hadn't gone with Cloud, she couldn't have saved the World at the very end of the game, and then everybody would have died.
      Cloud: You gotta be kidding. Why do you want to put yourself in danger again?
      Aerith: I'm used to it.
      Cloud: Used to it!? ...Well, don't know... getting help from a girl...
      Aerith: A girl!! What do you mean by that!? You expect me to just sit by and listen, after hearing you say something like that!? [to Elmyra] Mom! I'm taking Cloud to Sector 7. I'll be back in a while.
    • Strangely, he never talks to Tifa like this. Although it could have something to do with the fact that Tifa has a black belt in martial arts, is a licensed outdoor survival guide, AND a key member of a high-profile eco-terrorist group, whereas Aerith sold flowers and didn't seem to have any real fighting experience. Also, Tifa punches tanks with her fist. And at one point while he's lecturing Aerith, she even calls him out about his double-standard between her and Tifa — "So it's alright for Tifa to be in danger?", to which he weakly responds, "No, I don't want Tifa in...". Tifa, who made Cloud promise to protect her if she was ever in trouble and has fixated upon this idea, seems to want to be protected more than Aerith, who makes Cloud her bodyguard but otherwise acts autonomously (at one point even telling Cloud "Don't tell me to go home.")
    • In Final Fantasy VII Remake, however, there is at least one scene in which Cloud talks to Tifa this way, although it's presumably less about Tifa's own safety and more about Cloud needing someone to look after Aerith for her safety since she has less proper battle experience than either Cloud or Tifa.
      [after more monsters pop up out of the sewers]
      Tifa: Looks like they're hungry for more.
      Aerith: We're not delicious! Not even a little bit!
      Cloud: [to Aerith] Get going!
      Tifa: [to Aerith] Now!
      Aerith: Okay. [runs away]
      [after Cloud and Tifa defeat a few of the monsters]
      Cloud: [to Tifa] You too!
      Tifa: But there's too many of them!
      Cloud: Not for me.
      Tifa: Hurry! [runs away to look after Aerith]
  • In Final Fantasy XII it is revealed that the Viera invert this trope. According to the lore, male Viera are few in number, thus they are not allowed to fight or pretty much do anything and are nothing more than breeders. A similar case happens with the Male Mithra in Final Fantasy XI. Final Fantasy XIV also followed the same trend with the Miqo'te, another cat race, until there was demand from fans to include playable male versions.
  • Final Fantasy XIV:
    • In the Heavensward Weaver quests, Glenda is a widowed Ishgardian noblewoman who demands that her tomboyish daughter Averil stay at home and take up the maidenly task of weaving. Averil is frustrated with this and studies conjury so she may one day join her lover on the battlefield and heal people's wounds as a conjurer.
    • Gender-inverted with Dazkar tribe of Xaela. It's traditional for Dazkar men to care of the house and cook while the women head out to hunt. The men leave their homes so infrequently that they rarely meet anyone from outside of their tribe.
  • One scene in Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia has Steiner attempt to lecture Lenna on how irresponsible it is for her to fight in battles and consort with brigands, although this is based more on her position as royalty than her gender. Garnet, who is watching this, accurately deduces that Steiner is delivering a backhanded lecture to her rather than Lenna (especially since Lenna's "brigand" is her own sister, who is also technically a princess).
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones:
    • Around Chapter 10 (Eirika's path), if you rescue Innes the Archer with his Pegasus Knight sister Tana, Innes almost immediately tells her to "stop playing soldier and go home". This is explained later in their supports as being a part of Innes' Big Brother Instinct: he thinks Tana is too innocent and inexperienced (and she has just finished her Peg Knight training), therefore he wants to spare her from the horrors of war but handles it so bad that Tana resents him. Innes' attitude is similar to Lady of War Eirika, and slightly towards White Mage L'Arachel, especially in their support conversations — he refuses to let a woman guard him even when injured or exhausted. Nobody reacts well to this attitude — Innes is often portrayed as overly arrogant or narrow-minded.
    • This doesn't come up as much in his supports with the Pegasus Knight Vanessa, whom he often praises for her skill and her maturity. As much, Innes says that she was Just a Kid when they met, but she's grown up into a great knight and suggests that they are unstoppable as a team. This might have something to do with Vanessa's lifelong status as a Pegasus Knight in his charge - Pegasus Knights are always female (because Pegasi don't trust men enough to fly on them) and are expected to guard his entire family.
  • In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, the Mia/Largo supports involve Large Ham Largo mentioning this to Genki Girl Mia, Hilarity Ensues. This trope is apparently why Mia is so obsessed with her swordplay.
  • And in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, Beowolf has a conversation with Raquesis where he fakes this attitude toward her before offering to help her train. Later, Seliph tried to dissuade his cleric friend Lana (or Mana) to stay in Tilnanogue while and he and his merry friend (which includes Larcei (or Radney), an Action Girl) go on the battlefield, because "Nuns and warfare DO NOT MIX". He's quickly talked out of it, and he apologizes. Amusingly, this sort of shows up in his later conversation with his lover. In most cases, he admits that he's afraid of losing her, which is why he wants her to stay back. Larcei (or Radney) is once again the sole exception, with Seliph only asking if something's bothering her.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Felix tells his Childhood Friend Ingrid to give up on being a knight and find a husband. This seems to be motivated in part by a desire to not see Ingrid get hurt and a disdain for the idea of chivalry inspired by the death of Felix's older brother Glenn (Ingrid's fiancé, whom she still admires).
• The female Gender Role Doll advertised in Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned enforces this among other gender-specific tropes.
• Guild Wars 2:
  • In the previous game Charr appeared to be a One-Gender Race. The sequel explains that the theocratic Flame Legion which ruled them during that time believed female Charr were suitable only for domestic purposes. When the other Legions rebelled against the Flame, females were quick to seize the opportunity to fight.
  • The Sons of Svanir ban all females from joining their cult and many imply it is because they are too weak. The actual reason is that Svanir, their spiritual ancestor, was killed by the Norn woman Jora which they view as a disgrace.
• Halo:
  • Averted in the UNSC, where females can serve as Marines and Spartans alike. The series takes place in the 26th century, and societal views have clearly changed a great deal from today. Plus the whole business with the species-threatening war against technologically superior genocidal aliens strong enough to physically rip a man apart, necessitating every able body available to buy time and stem the tide of invasion.
  • Played straight with the Elites and Brutes; the women of both species do not serve in the military. That said, Elite females are trained to fight, as they're expected to be able to defend their homes from invading armies, and media like Halo 5: Guardians have shown that more progressive Elite factions like the Swords of Sanghelios are starting to allow women to serve in the military.
• Jak X: Combat Racing has Samos telling his daughter Keira that "a woman's place is in the garage fixing cars!" This is in response to her wanting to get out into the Vehicular Combat action and is partially justified as he doesn't want to lose his little girl. Regardless, he's lucky he didn't say that while Ashelin was within earshot.
• Kingdom Hearts: Sora does this with Kairi, claiming that coming with him to the final world was "too dangerous" and that she "would kinda be in his way".
  • Thankfully in Kingdom Hearts II Kairi gets to participate in the final world and fight the Heartless with a keyblade given to her by Riku. Justified in the first game in that Kairi was unarmed, had no combat experience, and no way of defending herself. At worst, the scene was misplaced, as it would have fit better in regards to going to End of the World than Hollow Bastion (where all the other unarmed, lacking in combat experience Princesses of Heart are just fine hanging out at). By the second game, Kairi has a year to become more athletic... plus access to a weapon of her own. Sora also regularly tells armed men to leave the battlefield, a notable (and particularly funny) example being Shang in Land of Dragons.
  • This does get awkward in the Port Royal stage. Though Sora does tell Will to leave early on, it's rather strange that he would tell Elizabeth to do the same later in the stage when she actually played an active role in combat in the portion of the movie the game is covering. He also doesn't brush off Will.
  • Despite the ending of the last numbered title, in the secret ending for Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Kairi has to stay behind while Sora and Riku leave again for the Mark of Mastery exam, which seems fine until you remember that in the main story, the similarly novice Keyblade wielder Ventus was able to attend his friends' exam as a spectator, so it's bizarre that Kairi can't do the same for her's. At least there's still the justification that someone has to stay behind and keep the island safe.
• The whole point of the first 2 games of Lost in Blue:
  • In the first game, Upon meeting the female lead, the male lead steps on her glasses, thus confining her to a cave and making her responsible for cooking, cleaning, and handicrafts. She also can't do anything outside the cave by herself.
  • In Lost in Blue 2, the female lead might succumb to Artificial Stupidity and starve to death no matter how much food and water you leave for her.
• In Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, Maxim pulls this several times on Tia and Selan. The first few times, the girls tell him where to shove it. The results are different — Selan never needs help, being a mighty general and extremely talented. Tia, however, needs a fair amount of rescuing, but the plot makes sure to note that this is because she's a shopkeeper with no real desire to fight except to keep close to Maxim. When Maxim marries at the end of the first act of the game, Tia returns to her shop as she has no more reason to fight. In the run-up to what everyone believes will be the Final Battle, Maxim actually tells the girls why he wants them out of the fight: they're the only ones who can coordinate an urgent evacuation effort. It works. Then, after Maxim and Selan marry and have a child, it's time to fight again. Maxim tries this, but Selan won't have it.
• Angelic Buster gets a watered-down one in MapleStory. While she does lesser missions Kaiser essentially tells her this when he is going to do a dangerous task.
• Mass Effect:
  • A somewhat darker variant in Mass Effect 2, where a batarian hiring mercenaries tells female Shepard to go to the stripper quarters. This is one of the rare times the main character's gender is mentioned in the plot (aside from the romance arcs), as the rest of the time, the experience of being a female soldier is never discussed despite female soldiers in the real world still being a minority.
  • The krogan segregate their females and leave them to child-raising, though this is actually a result of their severe population loss requiring them to keep women and children protected to ensure survival of the species. It's suggested in the past that krogan females were not originally restricted in this way (references are repeatedly made to the female warlord Shiagur, a powerful krogan matriarch whose death caused her male followers to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge) until after the deployment of the genophage made females capable of viable pregnancies such a rarity. Wrex mentions a strategy at one point which involves using sterile females as disposable decoys in battle to prevent the fertile ones from being found. When the other characters object to this, Wrex hastily adds that it was the females who came up with the plan. The Krogan clan in the fourth game that has largely overcome the genophage averts this trope.
  • The series presents a unique version of this with the salarians. As they are amphibious haplo-diploid egg layers, females are created by fertilizing eggs. Social customs restrict only a fraction of these to be fertilized, creating a race that is roughly 90% male. Females thus hold all political power and rarely leave their homeworld, while males fill all other positions of power in salarian society (such as military and academics). A case where women are relegated to a single role...but that role is the one that determines how everything works. The games also mention that women of the race are highly respected.
• In the Mega Man (Classic) series, Rock's female counterpart Roll is occasionally depicted this way - but not in the games themselves. In the original game series, she was built as a household robot and unlike Rock, never upgraded into a combat robot. In other alternate universes of the game series, she often plays a supportive role in combat, as Mega Man is usually better equipped for most combat scenarios he encounters, but she does tend to accompany him in some way and is never rebuffed for it.
• Mount & Blade:
  • Matheld, a female character, makes it clear that if she is treated like some sort of housewife on the battlefield, she will break the character's neck. She gets along well with the team's warrior poet though. Being a former Viking helps too.
  • King Harlaus denied Lady Isolla's claim to the throne of Swadia entirely because she was a woman. It's unknown how much of this comes down to Harlaus being a selfish, sexist asshole and how much comes down to Deliberate Values Dissonance.
• In Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2, Rock Lee expresses the viewpoint that women should be protected from battle. Late into the game, Naruto starts getting letters from Lee, and you decide what sort of response for Naruto to send back. This becomes problematic, as one of the letters has Lee ask Naruto what he thinks of women on the battlefield and the possible responses are that female fighters can hold their own or that women should leave the fighting to men. If you choose the former, Lee will get angry at Naruto and end their correspondence, temporarily locking the player out of the ability to recruit him. There were no in-game hints to Lee's stance prior to that letter, and the game had displayed plenty of capable females on the front lines by that point.
• In One Piece: Unlimited Adventure, shortly before the final battle, Sanji tells Nami and Robin to stay back. Nami, however, insists that she and Robin are strong, too, and Robin notes that "it would be impossible to travel with such super-human people otherwise."
• Ward in The Orion Conspiracy is explicitly stated to be sexist, so he would obviously feel this way toward women.
• Junpei in Persona 3 Portable's female path is offended and irritated that in a group of three girls^note Akihiko's recovering from an injury when Junpei joins, and while Ikutsuki is in charge, he can't accompany the party into Tartarus he's not the one in charge, though Mitsuru shuts him down hard before he can keep complaining about it. When he snaps at the female protagonist after the Lovers battle, Yukari asks him if he's still bitter about having a girl in charge of the group. His attitude is mostly a product of Junpei being a particularly immature teenage boy who has self-image problems and desperately wants to be special; he grows out of it over the course of his Social Link and has matured noticeably by the end of the game.
• Quest for Glory: Elsa von Spielburg receives this treatment a lot. When she manages to learn sword fighting by watching the castle guard training, the swordsmaster refuses to formally train her because she is a girl. When the hero finally reaches her, she (now the Brigand Leader thanks to being Brainwashed and Crazy) is so skilled she can kill him in one blow... and right after being rescued, her asshole of a brother tries to keep her from being a warrior. By the time QFG5 begins, she has already proven herself a hero in her own right and spends most of the game in second or first place in the Rites of Rulership. And yet, everyone still thinks she's incapable of fighting (despite being the best fighter in the series), is incapable of ruling a kingdom (despite running a massively successful bandit gang), and should just leave the contest to the men (despite two dying very quickly, one being a Frankenstein's Monster, and the last in it for other reasons).
• Red Dead series:
  • Red Dead Redemption has the animated short "Beaumont the Burly", which, having been produced before the story takes place (1911), warns the audience about the dangers of women's suffrage.
  • In Red Dead Redemption 2, you can see live shows in the Hub City of Saint Denis. There are two female solo acts, a snake dancer and a fire dancer. If you chose to antagonize them, the normally progressive for 1899 Arthur (meaning he's likely being a Troll) can say "You should be making someone supper!"
• In Romancing SaGa, Lord Rupolph of Isthmus Keep has two children: Diana and Albert. Diana is repeatedly stated to be the better fighter, consistently besting her little brother in training and serving as a soldier, yet her father treats her strength as lamentable and begs her to act more ladylike. Despite his misgivings, however, it's implied that Prince Neidhart chose her as his bride because she's capable of taking care of herself. She also manages to survive the inevitable fall of the keep, unlike her parents.
• In Star Ocean: The Last Hope, Edge does this to Reimi and Lymle when they land on 50's Earth, telling them to stay on the ship while the men go explore. The ship gets raided, Reimi is kidnapped (Lymle escapes), and thus follows a rescue quest to get her back. What did he learn from this? To keep her with him so it's easier to protect her, naturally.
• One chapter in Trauma Center has an intruder running around in the hospital, putting the staff on high alert. Tyler insists that the women stay in the nurse's office to be safe while the men hunt down the intruder. Cybil quickly reminds him that she used to be a cop, thus she can take care of herself. Likewise, Angie replies that she practiced Aikido.
• Valkyria Chronicles pulls a Rule-Abiding Rebel version of this trope. Alicia gives up her Action Girl schtick by way of marriage and motherhood; she does get to run a bakery like she always wanted, but despite being so sweet it might shut down your pancreas the impact that has on the ending is purely cosmetic, since it still has Welkin coming home from work to find his wife cooking and looking after their little girl. Gallia in general zig-zags on this; while it appears women can't join the enlisted services, the country practices universal conscription, and sure enough, about half of any given militia squad is female.
• Valkyria Chronicles 4:
  • A subversion: Riley thinks that Claude is pulling this when he orders her not to fight in one level, but he turns out to have a perfectly sensible reason: Their transport was crippled, and in addition to being a grenadier she was also a skilled mechanic, so the best way she could help the unit at that time was to help fix the engines so they could escape rather than fighting. She concedes the point, sits out that level, but returns to the list of playable characters in the following level when that justification no longer applies.
  • A Hot Springs Episode reveals that this is general attitude of the Empire.
  • Averted by the Federation, which simply puts its male and female cadets through exactly the same training. If you pass, you can serve, and Gender Is No Object. The same even applies for specialization such as Ranger squads.
• In Wolfenstein: The New Order due to the Nazi policy of "Kinder, Küche, Kirche" ( "Children, Kitchen, and Church") women are expected to stay home and bear the next generation of Nazis. However Frau Engel, one of the main villains, somehow went from being the head of the League of German Girls to become a high-ranking officer in the German Army.
  • One of the letters B.J. can collect is a personal ad written by a Space Marine. The ad says that any woman interested in abandoning her career goals and willing to have up to twelve children should contact him.
• Ostentatiously averted in Xenoblade Chronicles 1. When Sharla joins the party, Reyn tells her to stay back from battle. Sharla assumes he's taking this attitude and informs him she has field experience as a medic, and it's promptly revealed Reyn was genuinely concerned for her safety, having mistaken her for an untrained civilian. As soon as she says she has training, he's thrilled to have her in the field, since monsters beat up on him so much. It's actually an Establishing Character Moment for Reyn, clarifying that his Dumb Muscle tendencies only extend to being Book Dumb, and he's actually quite personable and intuitive beyond that.
• Xenogears plays this trope straight on numerous occasions.
  • Right at the start of the game, Alice is getting married because the women of her village are expected to. Then she dies and the point becomes moot.
  • More notably, Fei is constantly demanding that Elly, a trained military officer, quit the military and not fight because it's unbecoming of women. Most notably, after he tries to force her to stay behind with such forceful language that she runs off crying, they make love and she's okay with it. She even gives a speech on why this is laudable and necessary behavior when another woman objects to being treated like this:
    Elly: Men like someone to watch the home when they are fighting. They can't fight if they don't have the peace of mind that they will have somewhere to return to.