Swaping Gender Roles?

[Puppisama]

Gender roles? what's that? Joking. I find more interesting stories about characters that don't fit in any gender role, for example, a strong warrior woman that's afraid of roaches or a sensible man that's also a boxing star. Also, the thing is not fitting a character in a role but how interesting or how the character develops through the story what makes the character memorable, how much the people feels related to him/her.

[69Michi]

While I'm fine with swapping gender role, I'm not okay with this:

while always needing to be saved because he can't protect himself

No matter what gender the person is. LMFAO Beside characteristics are just characteristic, a guy who is sensitive and a crybaby shouldn't be classified as "swapping gender role", it's like you are saying those characteristic are only for females. Traditionally people might be okay with thinking like that, but with the world right now, it might sound a bit offending. You shouldn't think too much. Just make the character the way they are and don't label their characteristic with a gender.

Personally I like a headstrong female characters because I dislike helpless damsel in distress with every fiber in my body. Same thing would make me drop your story if you have a guy with those damsel in distress characteristic.

[spadesart]

i usually try to stay away from gender roles but there is a character in my comic SPIRE coming up in chapter 3 that kind of fits a swapped gender role? He's part of a birdlike species and since he's a Peacock he's always dolled up and vapid and petty like a stereotypical popular cheerleader character


he became a fan favorite on my art blog like immediately

i don't really like the whole "cant protect themself and always needing to be saved" and sensitivity kinda thing being a gender role deal though. its kind of a hit or miss thing with this subject

[Caelestie]

or even better have a men in dress and that it isn't a joke! or have a woman in guy clothes and not make a plot line about feminizing her! I would love to see more of that! but yeah switching isn't a problem at all! just don't make the trait super negative or positive! be real or as real as you can be in your world!

[NickRowler]

I'm fine with swapping gender roles, however my issue is when people say ALL females should be headstrong while feminine and passive females are labelled as "wrong" or "evil". The both can coexist without it seeming like they have to be against each other.

Also, the world ain't B/W, some people fall in between. I have a character who is a feminine male who is very submissive and likes being lovey-dovey however. his favorite hobby is construction work and he is also very protective of his girlfriend.

[J.Z.Castillo]

... so guys are supposed to be manly and not cry and girls are just there to be rescued? That's boring and insulting, even flipping their roles. That makes the least interesting characters, anyway. Not saying that those traits are boring or invalid, but when characters are written that way because of their "gender" that's when it becomes lazy writing.

So no, how about just writing an interesting character?

[Juicebox]

I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to offend anyone, I was having a hard time trying to think of the typical male/female characters, and I should have worded it better. I'll try to fix it. Again, I'm really sorry.

[shazzbaa]

It's not the specific traits you listed, it's the idea of looking at this as "flipping gender roles" that kinda doesn't sit well with me -- like, helpless sensitive guy and headstrong hero lady are fine characters in and of themselves! But coming at this with the idea of those being specific gender roles might result in things feeling kinda icky.

Like.... if you have a story and one character is thrust into a situation where he's out of his depth and the main character has to try to help him because she has the skills to do so, that's a tried and true basic story with characters who could definitely be fleshed out to feel like real people.
But if you look at that and say "ah, the guy is in the Traditionally Female Role so he is sensitive and can't save himself, the girl is the Traditionally Male Role so she is headstrong and saves the day," that starts feeling like.... you're looking at these characters as genders and not as real people? Like, you're not maybe not Perpetrating The Same Stereotypes* or whatever, but those characters are exactly as flat as the Damsel in Distress and Headstrong Hero, maybe even flatter since they're defined by that "switch" moreso than who they are and what they want as people.

And I think if any attention is called to it at all in the story, like "HAHA WOW THIS TIME THE GUY IS THE DAMSEL IN DISTRESS!!" -- or if it's just played for laughs -- that can get way more gross than the basic trope, because heck, a princess can need to be rescued without huge implications, but any kind of "WHOA HOW WACKY FOR A MAN TO BE IN THIS POSITION" implies that for a man to need help and a woman to help him is weird and silly and unexpected.

*Note: Except that it kinda IS perpetrating those same stereotypes, in a way. Associating emotional sensitivity with helplessness feeds into that stereotype -- if a man having "feminine" qualities immediately takes away any power he could have in the story, you're still leaning on the same old idea that emotional sensitivity = weakness, or femininity = weakness. I don't think it's bad to create a guy character and decide "I'd like for him to be very sensitive and feminine." I have one of those myself! But to suggest "sensitive, feminine people are damsels in distress who are too helpless to contribute" feels kinda icky to me regardless of what gender they are.

[Thesleepypencil]

I find there is a difference of swapping gender roles and having characters who just REMOVE themselves from the gender roles

Usually when one swaps gender roles there is still a portrayal that the roles that were traditionally feminine are lesser than those that are traditionally masculine. The woman warriors are more important than the men farmers or that the blacksmith is more important than the seamstress.

swapping gender roles can lead to some good out comes (ie. Growing up i only read tamora pierce books because the woman were the warriors and those stories affected me as a person, or thats stupid rule that real men don't cry). It is the begining of breaking down gender barriers.

But creating characters without emphasis on the roles and more about their passions and traits is something that should be aimed for.

So reversing gender roles is both good and bad.
Not focusing or using gender roles unless using it as a barrier the character overcomes is better

[demthorshie]

I never really felt the need to emphasize gender roles with my comics. I kind of just wrote what I thought would fit in the story at any given time. I personally don't think that great strides need to be made in order to swap the gender roles of the characters, it's kind of ridiculous to do if you're only doing it to prove a point. If the female lead just so happens to rescue the male lead in the story or vice versa, it just is what it is in my opinion. :]

[AnnaLandin]

It's not a guarantee of a good story or character, but it can be an interesting point to make, I suppose. If it's going to be the main focus of the story, though, you're probably going to want to do something more with it than just reverse them and go "Look!".

I've done something like this with two of my secondary characters - one of them is a small, slim woman who is confrontational, honest, and rarely thinks before she speaks; all traits that are more often found in stereotypical male characters. The other is a very tall, very big man who is physically imposing, but whose personality tends towards being soft and caring and worrying a lot.

It's not the focus of the story, and I don't really arrange my scenes to focus on it - it's just kind of there. Kazue mouths off and says things that might spark fights, Dateh is worried about things, and tries to mediate in potential conflicts to defuse them, etc. However, Kazue has moments of worry and caring, and Dateh never becomes the male version of a damsel in distress - he's very capable. He's just softer than she is.

I also have a pretty big cast of main and secondary characters, and so there's plenty of space for women who exhibit all kinds of personalities - from Kazue's headstrong, confrontative style, all the way to polite and fragile - and the same with men. It's worth investing time in making your characters people rather than a collection of stereotypical traits. Give them a reason to do what they do, give them something they strive for, give them something to fear, etc. And don't be afraid to make them selfish, or quick to anger, or someone who holds grudges, or someone who gets easily caught up in things, etc. Nobody's perfect!

[69Michi]

Don't worry, I understand what you mean! I know that stereo-typically speaking, that is how people think of male and female. While I'm okay with people pointing finger and say that because I can careless, a lot of people don't, so I just poked you as a reminder haha

[jennula]

Even though my comic takes place in a world where women are more in positions of power, I'd just like to say:

(I'm all for making kick-ass women and soft guys though, it's a good thing to challenge gender norms!)

[indagold]

Idk if this counts I got a character in one of my comics that's a butch who wears makeup, house keeps and kicks ass.


I guess she's like a hybrid/subversion lol

[Kayke]

I think the idea of these kinds of gender roles are pretty out dated at this point. Like in the 80s and 90s this was a trend, of subverting the perceived gender roles and at that time it was actually a really good thing, since it normalized for people that men could be sensitive and raise kids and that women could fight monsters... but now when this trope is done (straight or subverted) it ends up feeling kind of kitsch. Especially now that a lot of people are being more experimental with gender expression.

I'd say just create characters, not stereotypes. Don't think "what is a girl character like" think "what is THIS character like" and you won't have a gender roles issue. Like if you think about... let's say Star from Star vs the Forces of Evil or Mable from Gravity Falls or Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time. These are all girl characters who can fight and problem solve just as well as the male characters in the show, but it isn't played as a trope... that's just who they are! And Ron Stoppable from Kim Possible isn't shown as being girly for not being as talented as Kim when it comes to fighting and spy stuff.

Because character traits aren't gendered. We all share the same traits to different degrees.

[Rabbit]

This topic was like made for me to comment on, wow XD
I love messing with gender roles in all of my series, and I do it even with side characters; but I do certainly agree with the people commenting above saying that just switching the gender roles around doesn't give a good moral.
For example, in my current webcomic, there's a bit of gender-role reversal in the sense that the 'prince' has a crippling fear of duels and the 'princess' fights duels in place of him because of that.
And I don't want to give away spoilers, but as the series goes on the emphases won't be on one character protecting another, but on the both of them working together as a team, helping each other with their strengths and weaknesses to become stronger together.
The comic I'm making after this one (which I'm already planning XO) is going to have even more focus on this, because the beginning of that story starts with a female character literally being given a bodyguard position to protect a male character - but once again, the moral is still to work together as a team, not have one be strong and one be useless XD
I think a GREAT thing to look at with this topic is the episode Sworn to the Sword, of Steven Universe. Even if you don't watch SU, the moral of 'working together instead of protecting' in the end is great. That episode actually took part of it's inspiration from an anime that inspires a lot of Steven Universe, called Revolutionary Girl Utena, but as that amazing show took an entire season to get that moral across slowly, this episode of SU condenses it and makes it more relate-able.
This is a clip I found on Youtube that basically starts right before the pinnacle 'duel' in that episode of SU, so check it out if you want to see a great example of not just switching gender roles, but throwing them out the window: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ3lsYbHUp0
Of course, though, gender roles exist in other ways that just 'knight protecting the princess'. There's also gender roles in relationships - the more masculine one in a relationship is one who initiates tie-signs when in public (putting their arm around the others shoulders, for example), is the one who is more assertive in sexual situations, etc.
Those types of gender roles are fun to mess with too, like having the female taking the role as the more 'masculine' one on the relationship, or having her have problems with the relationship that males usually have (oddly enough, a great example of this is the character Penny from the comedy The Big Bang Theory. Esp. in recent episodes, since her marriage to the character Leanard, she's usually the one taking the more masculine role in the relationship) (this is a good article that talks about relationship gender roles in sitcoms, BTW: http://the-artifice.com/relationship-gender-roles-in-sitcoms-for-better-or-for-worse/)
Lastly, there's gender-roles even in small things that people usually don't notice, like for instance dancing.
As someone who loves dance, esp. ballet, I usually incorporate it into any series I'm writing. And since the couples in my series often times have pretty much nonexistent gender roles, it's a lot of fun to mess around with the dances to keep them from being too gendered one way or another. You can mess around with this by having the entire dance almost completely non-gendered on both sides, or you can keep switching it around by having both characters do dance moves for both genders.
Something a lot of people seem to think is that if you do stuff like this then your female characters will come off as seeming too 'masculine' and your male characters 'girly', but that's just the kind of stereotypes you've got to smash.
Nothing about how you dance, how you interact with your partner, or how you would fight, defines what gender you are.
For reference on the dancing thing, I was reading this post on tumblr earlier about the gender roles in a dance in SU - the couple in question wasn't a romantic couple, but the changed dancing gender roles were still fun: http://aspiring-procrastinator.tumblr.com/post/147676963718/just-watch-me-hachiko-i-just-want-to-talk-real

[spooktacularprize]

My favorite types of characters are the ones that could be filled in with any gender; I guess I've been put off by cartoons and such that show girl characters specifically with no personality other than "girl." (Do you guys know what I'm talking about x'D) Not really subverting gender roles, but I love cartoony shenans, uconventional-looking female characters, and the like. Giving roles to characters that don't usually have those roles is interesting to me, and I don't think it has to be in the more cliched "gives them the 'opposite' role," if you know what I mean.

I mean on that note many of the characters in my comic are trans (not really a spoiler, just haven't gotten around to telling it in a natural way in the comic yet) ;w;

[Zanreo]

My favorite types of characters are the ones that could be filled in with any gender; I guess I've been put off by cartoons and such that show girl characters specifically with no personality other than "girl.

YEEEEES this. When the main cast has a variety of male characters and then one token female character whose whole personality is "the girl"... stop that.
I just really write my characters as "this would be an interesting character", regardless of their gender. Which sometimes end up subverting roles I guess, as a case of not caring if something would be "appropiate" for a girl or a boy. I just want good interesting characters regardless of gender (but in particular I'd like to see more interesting female characters, some authors just doesn't seem to know how to write women/girls)

[indagold]

You guys gotta chill... I don't think they were they intending for a discourse in gender roles, I think they were just asking what if they were reversed/changed.

[martharpearson]

If the roles were reversed at having a guy being the damsel in distress and the girl being the knight in shining armor. The idea might be believable if you have the guy do more than just be some lady who always gets in trouble. Even if the genders were reversed, the way you approach any character no matter the role is still the same.

The guy or girl who always needs to be saved because he or she can't defend himself needs to have a reason to be truly helpless and I'm not talking damsel in distress just because quality. I'm talking crippling addiction, such as not resisting a certain kind of bait, any kind of phobia such as dirt, or germs. Make this guy a neat freak or something.

The girl or guy who is headstrong and saves/cares for everyone needs to have a good reason to be that way. A Mom cares for her kids and can be just as headstrong and stubborn if the daughters boyfriend motored up onto the front lawn smoking something illegal while sporting tattoos and gang insignia. While the magical girl can also turn stubborn and bear like if the evil villain she fights on a daily basis happens to date her best friend and happens to actually be an extremely good boyfriend with all the redeeming qualities like a Disney Princess.

If we are going to push boundaries. We don't need them to be our characters defining trait. The roles someone is trying to push is probably showing that there's an actual person beneath the Gender swap, not an argument waiting to be flattened across a billboard.