# Straight men: Can you think of a female protagonist you identified with? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 28, 2012, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262 "2012-04-28T20:01:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2012, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/61 "2012-04-29T22:31:15Z")
I played the first two Mass Effect games with the player character, Commander Shepard, as a man, and I’m playing Mass Effect 3 as a woman. I identify _much_ more with FemShep - mostly because, while the actor voicing the male version is quite good, Jennifer Hale just blows him out of the water. ---
**Author:** ![drm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e57/32.png) [@drm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drm)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2012, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/62 "2012-04-29T23:01:15Z")
> [@carlotta](#): > > you implied you were having sex when you were not? Well yes but that’s not the sole reason. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/63 "2012-04-30T00:16:38Z")
I don’t know whether this is a particularly important distinction, but I note that a number of the female characters named in this thread (e.g. Hermione Granger and Willow Rosenberg) are not the protagonists of their stories. They are \*important \*characters, but not the main character. > [@Quartz](#): > > Indeed, I’d go further and suggest that if the reader or viewer (of whichever gender) is unable to identify with the protagonists (of whichever gender), then there’s an issue with the story or performance. I could easily believe that the problem is not so much that men have a hard time identifying with female protagonists in general as that men have a hard time identifying with the type of female protagonists that commonly show up in Hollywood movies. Heck, I’m a woman and there are plenty of movies where the female lead is a character with whom I not only do not identify, but who doesn’t even remind me of any women I know. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/64 "2012-04-30T01:00:10Z")
> [@](#): > > I don’t know whether this is a particularly important distinction, but I note that a number of the female characters named in this thread (e.g. Hermione Granger and Willow Rosenberg) are not the protagonists of their stories. They are important characters, but not the main character. I considered that, but if anything it should be easier to identify with the protagonist than with other characters, so being able to identify with secondary characters should, if anything, be an even stronger argument. Another example I just remembered: My mom was an elementary school teacher, and always tried to keep her classroom well-stocked with books her students would read. The most popular books she had, among both genders, were the Addy books from the American Girl series, specifically because her students were able to identify with her. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/65 "2012-04-30T01:20:21Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > Same here. I identify just as much with Honor Harrington as I do with Horatio Hornblower, **except for very brief passages when she’s doing something that only a woman would do**. > > The only exception I can think of was a Heinlein book I read many years ago, IIRC “I Will Fear No Evil,” where a man’s brain was put into a woman’s body. That creeped me out. And here we have what Streep was talking about. Movies are full of women doing things only a woman would do, and they’re women that most men don’t identify with. All the action heroines, prepubescent girls, and other nonsexual roles cited here are not challenging in that aspect. This is an important reason why teen slasher movies attract adolescent boys, why the last one standing is usually a girl, and why that girl never has sex. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/66 "2012-04-30T02:31:32Z")
Well, of course men don’t identify with women _while they’re doing things only women do_. And I imagine that women don’t identify with men while they’re doing things only men do, either. The point is that the existence of those scenes don’t stop the audience from identifying with the protagonist at other times. Which, really, is almost all the time, for most characters. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/67 "2012-04-30T04:29:27Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I considered that, but if anything it should be easier to identify with the protagonist than with other characters, so being able to identify with secondary characters should, if anything, be an even stronger argument. I am not convinced this is the case. Since there is by definition less about a secondary character’s thoughts/feelings/behavior in the story than there is about the main character’s, a female secondary character might come across as more gender-neutral than if the same character were written as the lead. For instance, in the _Harry Potter_ series we learn a bit about Hermione’s love life, but since the story is from Harry’s perspective there aren’t any passages where Hermione is thinking about guys she likes. There _are_ passages about Harry and his feelings towards Cho and later Ginny. I’m sure not \*all \*male readers would have been put off a _Hermione Granger_ series by reading equivalent passages about a teen girl’s budding interest in boys, but I think it’s plausible that _some_ would have been. But it may very well be that the Doper men who’ve named Hermione and Willow as characters they identified with would feel just the same if these were the lead characters in their respective stories. The issue may actually be that there just aren’t many movies or TV shows with smart, geeky girls as the main characters. (There’s more variety when it comes to books.) So if that’s the type of female character one most easily identifies with, they’re mostly going to be found in supporting roles rather than as the protagonists. ---
**Author:** ![Equipoise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/equipoise/32/151_2.png) [@Equipoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Equipoise)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/68 "2012-04-30T05:21:12Z")
Interesting thread. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > That reminds me of a comment my mother made about some movie where the plot was (IIRC, I never saw it myself) about a bunch of men pretending to admire a woman just so they could reveal their true feelings later and make her miserable; “That’s not men acting like _men_! That’s men acting like _nasty high school girls!_” I wonder if that was [In The Company of Men](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119361/). > [@](#): > > Two business executives–one an avowed misogynist, the other recently emotionally wounded by his love interest–set out to exact revenge on the female gender by seeking out the most innocent, uncorrupted girl they can find and ruining her life. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/69 "2012-04-30T05:25:55Z")
> [@Equipoise](#): > > Interesting thread. > > I wonder if that was [In The Company of Men](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119361/). I think that’s it! I kept trying to recall the title but the closest I got was [The Company of Wolves](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Company_of_Wolves), which is…slightly different. ---
**Author:** ![wheresmymind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/91b2a8/32.png) [@wheresmymind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wheresmymind)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/70 "2012-04-30T07:33:32Z")
I can think of plenty. Ripley springs to mind, as does Lisbeth Salander (even though I’m not half as badass as either). The little girl in True Grit (the recent remake), Wendy from Wendy and Lucy, Turanga Leela, Red Fraggle, Big Bird (I don’t know if Big Bird has an official gender, but as a child I thought BB was a “she”). I could go on all day. I don’t think a female character has to act particularly masculine to have men identify with her. Take Juno. A teenage girl who gets pregnant and has a baby. It doesn’t get much more female than that, but I had no trouble relating to her. Of course I never have and never will accidentally get pregnant, but I _have_ had scares where I thought my girlfriend might be pregnant, and the broader challenges she goes through; being “different,” facing social stigmatization, having to make big, important decisions before you think you’re ready (or want to), etc. are familiar to everyone who remembers what it was like to be a teenager. ---
**Author:** ![Trepa\_Mayfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Trepa\_Mayfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trepa_Mayfield)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 7:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/71 "2012-04-30T07:41:32Z")
> [@OtakuLoki](#): > > ISTM that your comments in this thread can be interpreted in one of two ways - and I’m not sure which I find more appalling. > > First, there’s the implication that all characters are _male_ until they’ve been proven, with some stereotypical female gendered behavior to be proven to some standard to be female. > > The other possibility is that you’re claiming that stereotypical gender roles trump the character’s gender - unless additional gendered behavior is added to the character to make the character align with your idea of what a _real_ female character should be like. I can’t help thinking of the number of Soviet snipers from WWII who were women, and wonder if you’ve got the chutzpah to tell them that they need to prove to you that they’re really women, and not simply men with vaginas. > > I really don’t know which idea you were trying to express - but I reject both of them. I find them annoying, since they’re common enough that I see people in entertainment trying to pander to such ideas. I think what Inner Stickler was trying to say–correct me if I’m wrong–is that there are certain characters, particularly in video games, that are not characters at all but simply blank slates. Characters like Samus or Chell or Link don’t have any sort of personality at all, at least in their first few incarnations. They don’t do anything except for what the player does, so to call one of them “female” just because the last shot of the game is a still picture of a woman seems silly. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/72 "2012-04-30T11:00:28Z")
I haven’t played all the way through Portal, but Chell is portrayed as female. Yeah, she could have been male just as easily, but she’s a female. And I think that she was deliberately portrayed as female, because otherwise, most people (including women) would assume that the active character is male or at best neuter. Think about it, if you never saw Chell, would you assume that an athletic gun toting character was male or female? Link, on the other hand…he’s Going To Rescue A Princess, at least in Zelda, Zelda II, and A Link to the Past (I didn’t buy the newer Nintendo consoles). Would male gamers accept having a female avatar who is going to rescue a prince? I don’t think so. Hell, my husband was interested in playing Parasite Eve, until he found out that the player could not choose a male avatar instead of Aya. I don’t know how many games I’ve played that don’t offer a female avatar. Very few offer only female avatars without any male options. [The Smurfette Principle](http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thedudette/nostalgia-chick/16616-the-smurfette-principle) addresses this, though it takes over 10 minutes to do so. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/73 "2012-04-30T12:19:54Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > Link, on the other hand…he’s Going To Rescue A Princess, at least in Zelda, Zelda II, and A Link to the Past (I didn’t buy the newer Nintendo consoles). Would male gamers accept having a female avatar who is going to rescue a prince? I don’t think so. For me, it would depend on how much emphasis there is on it being a prince (I’ve never played a Zelda game unless you count Super Smash Bros. so I don’t know how it’s treated there). I’ve got no problem with playing a heroine on a quest to rescue some VIP but it would probably irk me if the plot decide that OMG, they’re totally in love! ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/74 "2012-04-30T12:34:12Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > Hell, my husband was interested in playing Parasite Eve, until he found out that the player could not choose a male avatar instead of Aya. That’s funny; I _prefer_ playing female avatars over male ones. ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/75 "2012-04-30T13:53:35Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > That’s funny; I _prefer_ playing female avatars over male ones. So does my husband, although he claims that’s solely because if he’s going to be watching someone’s ass bouncing around on his screen while playing, it may as well be a girl one. I think he’s only partly joking. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/76 "2012-04-30T14:12:28Z")
> [@Lasciel](#): > > So does my husband, although he claims that’s solely because if he’s going to be watching someone’s ass bouncing around on his screen while playing, it may as well be a girl one. I think he’s only partly joking. > > :smack: Well, that’s certainly a point. However, I’ve other reasons too. For one, I tend to go for the avatars different from myself; if there’s a white guy, then he’ll be my _last_ pick, not the first. I’ll go for the women, the nonhumans and the robots first. Also female avatars are generally smaller and slimmer, and in some games that matters as far as visibility goes. ---
**Author:** ![Myrnalene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@Myrnalene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Myrnalene)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/77 "2012-04-30T14:45:13Z")
> [@Trepa\_Mayfield](#): > > I think what Inner Stickler was trying to say–correct me if I’m wrong–is that there are certain characters, particularly in video games, that are not characters at all but simply blank slates. Characters like Samus or Chell or Link don’t have any sort of personality at all, at least in their first few incarnations. They don’t do anything except for what the player does, so to call one of them “female” just because the last shot of the game is a still picture of a woman seems silly. Ok, but to say that they are not “female” unless proved otherwise because “male” is the _default_ is sexist. Half the world is made up of women. I haven’t played Portal, but I did a little googling about Chell: > [@](#): > > Chell first appears in Portal, where she is taking part in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center’s test under supervision by GLaDOS. GLaDOS tries to kill her as Chell then tries to escape the Enrichment Center, attempting to kill GLaDOS in the process…GamesRadar’s Joe McNeilly called Chell an example of Portal deconstructing first-person shooter archetypes, noting that she was **neither in third-person nor sexualized unlike most female characters in first-person shooters. GamesRadar called Chell the antidote to the half-naked woman cliché, praising her for not being sexualized and being fully clothed, commenting, “The hero of Portal just happens to be a normal-looking and normal-dressing woman, like 50% of the world’s population.”** Honestly, she sound like exactly the sort of female character that that it would be nice to see more of in action games - a person in challenging circumstances who just _happens_ to be a woman. In what way would her gender need to be made “relevant” before she is recognized as a woman and not a man in drag? I was (sort of) joking about baking cakes and crying, but honestly, what does she need to do? I assume that if she _were_ sexualized, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and no one would say she doesn’t count as a female protagonist. I’ve been trying to think of a charitable way to read a man deciding which woman characters are “female” enough for him to allow them to be admitted as women and not men with vaginas, and which are not. I just can’t. ---
**Author:** ![Trepa\_Mayfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Trepa\_Mayfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trepa_Mayfield)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/78 "2012-04-30T14:50:24Z")
> [@Myrnalene](#): > > I’ve been trying to think of a charitable way to read a man deciding which woman characters are “female” enough for him to allow them to be admitted as women and not men with vaginas, and which are not. I just can’t. I can’t say I agree with Inner Stickler’s argument either. The problem with video game protagonists, though, as a class, is that they are in this weird sort of ghostly half-state: on the one hand, the game wants to flesh them out so that they’ll be part of a good story; on the other hand, it wants the protagonist to be as blank as possible so the player will always identify with it. It’s not near so clear-cut as with other media, where a character is a character, and you the viewer don’t have anything to do with what they do. ---
**Author:** ![Myrnalene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@Myrnalene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Myrnalene)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/79 "2012-04-30T15:06:24Z")
Sure, I get that. In a lot of ways they are stand-in characters with no real persona. If presented with a completely neutral human figure, most of us will assume it is a man because that’s the way our brains have been taught to work. That’s sort of a problem, but not the one I am taking issue with here. What I have a problem with is when a character has been designed as and stated to be a woman, and some (dude) comes along and says, “…naw. She’s not a _real_ woman, she doesn’t do anything womanly”. No one would make the same argument for male characters no matter how one-dimensionally they were depicted. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2012, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262/80 "2012-04-30T15:15:37Z")
I was going to mention Amelie in _Amelie_ as a female character I identified with. Chell in Portal is an odd case, as she has very little personality even for a video game protagonist; most games these days will have cut scenes in which the characters will talk to each other & set up the plot for the next bit of shooting, but Portal doesn’t even have that. And you only really see your character incidentally. I don’t think it’s quite possible to play through the first game without seeing your character at all, but I could easily imagine someone not noticing that she was female. (In the second game, the evil AI taunts you/Chell with gendered insults concerning your/her weight and appearance; I’m not sure whether that’s better or worse). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-men-can-you-think-of-a-female-protagonist-you-identified-with/620262.md?page=5)