so. female characters,

i'd seen a post roasting someone for saying "i just don't connect to female characters as often as male" and had a couple thoughts—because yeah, i'll be so real, historically i, too, connect more to the male characters than the female ones, and i won't pretend it couldn't Possibly be latent sexism At All—

it's not as if i aim to excuse that and not challenge it; more so that i do think, with this mindset specifically, it can kinda be jumping the shark to see that and respond with "oh so you're a woman-hating pathetic piece of shit."

by all means, carry that anger towards misogyny and sexism—but like, if you'll pardon me Two minutes to unpack a bit of Why that Happens,

a lot of american children's cartoons—is groups entirely of boys with one girl, who then is always written to be 'the girl one'; doesn't want to get dirty, break a nail, does her hair and likes fashion, wants a boyfriend, over and over again.

in anime, which was something i watched a lot as a teenager--women are relegated to 'the less strong ones', the ones who die, get in the way, be annoying or damsel in distresses, or get slotted into objectifying fanservice.

a few things:

- these shows and media themselves are sexist, portraying sexism as the norm to young, impressionable kids, and thus teaching them to be sexist.

- with the western cartoon cookie-cutter 'the girl one' portrayal, anyone afab—from cis to nonbinary to trans masc—who doesn't want or find these common portrayals of femininity relatable or appealing feels alienated if not insulted, and divorces themselves from these cookie-cutter characters entirely for better or worse.

- with anime--being so sexual towards its female characters of all ages--this definitely can lay some groundwork for that "im not like other girls!" mindset, but one that isn't so simple to defeat as learning "being girly and cutesy isn't bad and weak and annoying actually".

to say nothing of the building blocks of america's culture being puritanical, stifling christianity and it's shaming of women, let alone of them having sex--it's one thing to have to unlearn that sex, too, isn't inherently evil, that being a 'slut' doesn't make you a bad person--

but that's also not what the anime portrayals of upskirts and seconds-long boob-bouncing animations are trying to teach or say.

it's a whole nother facet that this 'im not like other girls' mindset creates a whole other complicated type of self-hating misogyny; that you don't want to 'be like other girls', that you don't want to relate to the character you're seeing on the screen--because ultimately, you do not want to be subject to the involuntary, seemingly-mandatory sexualization women and girls and afab people are slathered with their entire lives, in media and in the flesh.

now, don't get me wrong—it's still sexist to write off women characterse entirely, never challenge your views on how they're written, etc etc, but from my perspective—actually i would have loved some better written women and girl characters growing up to actually see myself in and attach to. i'm sure a lot of afab people would have;

instead, they always felt like expectations being constantly demonstrated at me of how i'm "supposed" to be without my ever agreeing to perform them; being trans masc probably compounded this personally, lmfao

there's female characters i do adore—ulala (space channel 5), bayonetta (bayonetta), aerith and tifa (ff7) to name a couple—characters that notably are either the actual hero that everyone depends, have their own agency, have complex characters about them. this isn't to turn my nose up and say "i only like good female characters"—because i feel like it's worth looking at female characters that haven't been given the depth or time and love they deserve and do that; give them headcanons, backstories, aus the actual writers and canon would never do—but that it sure is easier to do all of that when the female characters aren't just recycled "the girl one" tropes. none of these characters, for as traditionally feminine as they all appear in the ways they have long hair, wear skirts or dresses or like fashion and flowers or whatever—have that be a common insult hurled at them from male counterparts, have it be something that gets in the way of their performance (unless you're bayonetta and someone ruining your dress is a cheeky excuse to rip them in half. ugh. icon), or have it be a reason they're weak.

growing up loving sonic the hedgehog—i still remember getting assigned to play amy in any games of pretend during recess with other kids; quite literally getting told i can't run to keep up with everyone or join in on play fights because amy was the slow and weak one because she's "just the girl". thank fucking god the franchise has done ANYTHING at all with her character since—that's far from true anymore, but as a quick tangent, it is bonkers to watch people argue about how "they don't know how to write amy anymore, why can't she crush on sonic AND be a girlboss" as if that's sexist—when her entire character was defined by sexist tropes to begin with,

i digress.

none of that even covers a more insidious way fandom itself, not just source material or media, contributes to sexism;

there are so many times i find myself hesitant to like a female character because i know she's the exact archetype—in character design, usually, but not always—that either are written and portrayed certain ways to be male-gaze-centric, or that—even if they're not—fandom spaces will giddily all but rip apart into sexualizing as a default, which immediately puts me off! there's something roundabout about it; i know i damn well enjoy boobs, i enjoy nsfw art—but women, real or not, are so endlessly subjected to being made objects of desire and nothing more—i don't want to enjoy a woman character if it means contributing to rampant amounts of art sexualizing her to high heaven and back.

himiko toga (mha) is an example of a written archetype—if not also a design one; the quirky scary yandere girl that is soooo obsessed with you, also wearing a school girl outfit and has to get naked all the time. i'm not here to argue about what a travesty mha's writing is—but i know damn well so many people like her for the potential her character had; on paper, there's something there—but in the source material, it actively pisses me off to watch her not because she's "just some annoying female character", but exclusively because i know the average cis male consumer is losing their gourd horny just seeing her face. because i know that's how she's drawn on purpose, because i know that's what the showrunners and the author wanted!

on the other hand, paige (deadlock) is an example of a character design totally innocuous; no problems here, right? except the same could be said about velma (scooby doo); a plain bookworm nerd girl character who the internet then took as all but a challenge, and got turned into the subject of bimbofication art for the better part of a decade circa mid-2010s onward. at that point, that's not the source material's fault—they didn't do anything to portray those characters in that light! the fandom, however, acting like it's funny to treat sexualizing women character designs that aren't already over-sexualized, as rare as they already are—casually engaging in more misogyny itself—that shit pisses me off.

hex maniac (pokemon) is so arguably drawn to look like a younger girl—even barring that, she doesn't have a visible figure. what's the norm, making up most of her fanart however? visible huge boobs contorting her clothes. it's not even in exclusively nsfw art; people just DRAW her like that NORMALLY, ALL THE TIME!!

another tangent; you know what else is sexism not talked enough about in fandom? buying boobie figures or playing anime girl gachas. that's for another day however.

i digress again.

all this is to say—from my perspective, no, i do not connect more with male characters than female characters because "ahh women are so boring or annoying or mary sue or" something so—obviously misogynistic or sexist. yes, absolutely, i concur that i and anyone who feels this way challenge why they don't attach to female characters as often—and to seek out media that does portray women well, because it does exist! however, it's too generalizing to slot every instance of this mindset into "ohh you're obiously a sexist pig"—and don't get me wrong, again! there's people out there like that, afab or cis or trans or otherwise--but while it's easy to write anyone who might feel this way off(and probably feels nice and virtuous to do so!) it's just not the whole truth, either.