[LES] The "strong female character" debate is innately misogynistic and, quite frankly, extremely exhausting.

Ngl, this post is made entirely out of spite because my comment saying the same thing was viciously downvoted. Perhaps the same will happen here, but I'm going to make all our days worse before that happens (I already know the comments are going to be a cesspool).

If you're willing to hear me out, I'll explain my reasoning by asking this: when was the last time you've heard a character being a "strong male character" (in a critical or praising way)? Not "OP character" or "boring character." Strong male characters.

You don't hear that because people still believe (whether unconsciously or consciously) that female characters have a default state of, well, not being strong. The closest analogue I can think of is the "toxic vs. positive masculinity" debate, but that's not really the same thing.

When male characters are strong and uninteresting, let's take Sung Jin-Woo as an example, people can quite easily dismiss it as being ok because the story's "not trying to go above and beyond" or similar excuses. On the other hand, you make a female character strong, and all of a sudden it's a political statement with said character being a boring Mary Sue. In this case, let's take Captain Marvel as an example; she's not even that bad of a character yet has somehow ended up as the poster boy for these discussions.

When I made this comment earlier, a lot of the responses were dancing around the word 'misogyny' for one reason or another, and some "arguments" included: "...the role of being a man... is to be strong. Thus, strong male characters are the baseline." & "People see fictional female characters as representation of real women, not the case with men..." This is literally the "it's not the fall that kills you/it's the drunk crashers you need to worry about" memes but taken seriously.

With all that said, I hope you enjoyed my angry ramblings (or at least hating on them) because I don't got a whole lot more to add.