Subverting the emotional woman and stoic man trope

Subversion is not just a way to introduce literary variety. It is actually subversive. It overturns the established order. So you have to ask yourself, why does the established order exist, and what would be the motive for subverting it?

The stoic male is an established literary trope because it is an established societal phenomena. Through most of human existence, food has been scarce, threats many, lives short, and infant (and maternal) mortality high. Women would spend most of their adult lives either pregnant of caring for small children (more than half of whom would die). Getting enough to eat was a full time job that required hunting, gathering, and other strenuous activities that are hard to do when pregnant or nursing. And women and children were vulnerable to predators and raiders from other tribes.

Women needed the protection of men, and society, up until the 19th century, was conceived of as consisting of families (rather than individuals as it is today) and the role of the male was to provide and protect the female and their offspring. Women and children were literally described as being "under the protection" of a father or husband or perhaps some other family member or tribal leader. When a father gives away his daughter at her wedding, the meaning of the gesture is that she is passing from his protection to that of her husband. When a ship sank, women and children got into the lifeboats first because it was the job of the men to protect them.

Evolution says that those traits that favor reproduction are passed on. The men who were the best protectors and providers got to have more babies, and so their traits were passed on to their sons. Showing that you are a good protector and provider is obviously important for attracting a mate, and a stoic demeanor is useful both for showing this, and for actually doing it.

But, starting in the 19th century and going on till today, we invented the police, office jobs, antibiotics, and Uber eats. Soon women were living to their 80s, almost all their children were surviving, and they could provide for them themselves and enjoy the protection of the police. They did not need an individual male to provide and protect.

Before these inventions, managing a family and a household was a complex full-time lifetime job, involving just as many skilled crafts as those of the men who worked the fields. After them, it was not, and women naturally sought a very different role in society. And here we are, trying to figure out how the characteristics developed by thousands of years of evolution are going to work in a world where the forces that shaped them have been almost entirely removed by our inventions.

So, our inventions have subverted the old male/female dynamic, but our emotions and our psychology have not caught up. Our current literature reflects that subversion and explores its implications, sometimes honestly and dispassionately, and sometimes with an agenda. This often includes projecting currently evolving gender roles backwards and forwards in time.

How does that affect a post-apocalyptic story? Well, an apocalypse is likely to deprive us of police, antibiotics, office jobs, and Uber eats, so it would put us back to a pre-19th century state of affairs in which logic would suggest that gender roles would return to those of that era.

But whether that is what readers of today will want to read is not so certain. It seems entirely possible that you reversed traditional male and female roles because that subversion of the old order is so prevalent in literature today that it is closer to being a default than a subversion anymore.

So there is an argument for going either way.

But beneath this, there is a deeper issue, on which you may or may not have, or want to express an opinion. That is the argument about whether societies, and people's roles within them, are shaped by the environment (presence or absence of police, office jobs, antibiotics, and Uber eats) or are purely social constructs made up by the dominant group to suit themselves. By taking one position or the other on male/female roles in a post apocalyptic society, you would implicitly be taking a position on this highly contentious question.

If you have a position, go for it. If not, at least be aware of the pitfalls that surround whichever choice you make.

posted about 5 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

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tl;dr- Frame-challenging in that I don't think you're actually subverting the trope. While your male characters don't sound like paragons of masculinity, they're not especially subversive either. Your female characters aren't subversive at all; they're textbook neurotic, which is entirely consistent with standard tropes. Given this lack of subversion, I don't think you really have a problem.

NOTE: This answer is on the subject of stereotypes and stereotypical thinking. Obviously, stereotypes and tropes aren't robust scientific models, nor are they prescriptions for how people should act. Obviously real people can be far more complex, and there's no reason anyone should feel obligated to conform to a stereotype.

Stoics strive to be at-peace with the world. Intellectually, their thoughts are based in correspondence to nature. Stoics don't tend to engage in social thinking; for example, you can insult them or praise them – it's meaningless either way.

So the stoic-men/neurotic-women trope is kinda like:

1. Men act independently based on their own internal direction. They do what they need to do achieve their goals; what others think, whether good or bad, doesn't matter.

   • Men are typically dominated by one strong, overriding emotional disposition; their other emotions tend to be short-lived since their overriding emotional disposition will ultimately squash all other emotions.

   • Men tend to be less inclined to focus on social dynamics, but when they do, they're more direct. Men are often direct because they don't want to get dragged into a prolonged social engagement that'll require long-term maintenance; they just want to achieve whatever goal they're after, then exit the social frame.

2. Women act dependently with a heavy focus on social dynamics. They'll act in response to others' desires, and they're obsessed with how others view them.

   • A woman's own agency may come from strong internal emotions, but they'll heavily manage the expression of those internal emotions according to social pressures.

   • Women tend to be far more inclined to focus on social dynamics, and when they do, their methods are often more indirect. Since women are comfortable living in a social frame, they can engage in elaborate, long-term social campaigns. And since women tend to anticipate participating in future social campaigns as well, they're concerned with maintaining a strong social standing that'll help ensure their future success.

Then for your story:

1. The girls and women in the story, Eris, Marina, and Ezrith, display very little emotion--Eris represses her emotions so that they only come on rarely and in intense waves, Marina only shows emotional vulnerability to those she trusts, and Ezrith's fears and love for others only manifest in controlling behavior and frustration directed at her family and friends.

   These female characters sound neurotic, which definitely plays into common stereotypes. That they're suppressing their emotions for social reasons is again playing into that women-act-dependently trope, where they're altering their behavior due to perceived social pressure.

2. However, the boys and men, Leo, Alexander, and Caspian, are very much in touch with their emotions--Leo, although gruff, communicates most everything he feels to his loved ones, Alexander is a humorous and empathetic man who constantly watches out for others, and Caspian is a patient and levelheaded dreamer who is unafraid to display affection and his own happiness, sadness, and anger.

   You know how when an author writes a character very different from themself, the result can feel a bit off? Sorta like the author started from something very different, then applied a bunch of stereotypes? These characters sound kinda female, but morphed to fit male stereotypes. As such, they're not particularly masculine-sounding, but they don't sound all that subversive, either.

Overall, all of your characters sound like they're built from a stereotypically female starting point. The female characters are then morphed by neurotic tenancies, which really just makes them even more stereotypically female. The male characters are morphed by outwardly displaying the emotions that they have, which actually makes them more masculine than they'd have been if you didn't morph them.

In short, you may want to give some consideration to understanding the masculine perspective to better inform writing masculine characters, but trope-subversion doesn't seem like an issue here.

posted about 5 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Nat‭

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There's more you can do with a trope than play it straight or subvert it. You can play with it in various ways: invert it (which you did), parody it, lampshade it, exploit it, and much much more. And you can avert it - that is, the trope just isn't present in your story at all. There are countless tropes you are averting in your writing, because there are just countless tropes, many of which aren't relevant to your story at all.

Whether you choose to engage with a trope, and how you choose to engage with it is up to you, as @MarkBaker explains. I can't thing of a trope that's a "holy cow" that should never be engaged. You can play with any trope you like. However, your goal is to tell a story. Tropes, and whatever you choose to do with them, are tools. They're the means, not the end. Don't let them get in the way of telling the story you want to tell.

As for the implications of playing with this particular trope, look at how it plays out, examine what it means, then decide whether you like this or want to change it. For example, you might see that the message that comes out is "balance is needed", or "each approach has it's time and place". If that's a message you like, go ahead. If you don't like what comes out from the way you chose to use a trope, change it.

posted about 5 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Galastel‭

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