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| - A sub-trope of the Double Standard. In media, female characters start with automatic audience sympathy because women are seen as moral, innocent, beautiful or simply because they have sexual value. Male characters are less likely to be seen that way and must earn audience sympathy by acting appropriately manly and heroic, which, more often then not, involves saving the Damsel in Distress. The consequences of this are complicated, but in summary: Examples of Men Are the Expendable Gender include:
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| abstract
| - A sub-trope of the Double Standard. In media, female characters start with automatic audience sympathy because women are seen as moral, innocent, beautiful or simply because they have sexual value. Male characters are less likely to be seen that way and must earn audience sympathy by acting appropriately manly and heroic, which, more often then not, involves saving the Damsel in Distress. Conversely, if a man is unable to take care of himself or others he forfeits audience sympathy. Women, on the other hand, do not lose audience sympathy--or at least not as much--for being helpless, incompetent or abandoning men to their fates in order to save themselves. Strangely, this can still hold true if the woman in question has already been established as a Badass. See Chickification. The consequences of this are complicated, but in summary:
* If the story requires random anonymous characters to die just to move the plot forward, they'll be male. If the plot requires a tragic death that motivates the protagonists or shows how evil the villains are, the victim will be female. Similarly if the story demands random mooks get a beat down by a character to up the sense of danger or just show off how awesome the protagonist is, they will be male.
* Female characters can lose audience sympathy, but they have to work harder. Female villains are more likely to be redeemed and also less likely to be taken seriously in their villainy.
* Male characters get more explicit and brutal deaths. If a man and a woman are killed in equally brutal ways, the woman's death is treated as worse.
* Villains who target female characters are portrayed as more evil than villains who target male characters.
* Sympathetic male characters are expected to put themselves at risk to protect female characters. Female characters do not lose audience sympathy for going along with this. Needless to say, this is not Truth in Television, at least morally. However, as the page quote shows, this view is not generally shared by the culture or media at large, making this an Undead Horse Trope. It should be noted that sometimes this is due to the Smurfette Principle. If there's only one woman in a cast with dozens of men, chances are the men will die first. Examples of Men Are the Expendable Gender include:
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)