GeniesLoki

You know the phenomenon of male characters who you absolutely should not identify because they're awful people who nevertheless a lot of men identify with? e.g. James Bond, Rick (of Rick and Morty), Rorschach. I think I figured out why this is and oh no.

These characters are expressing unhealthily unrestrained versions of common male traits which we have collectively largely decided are just Intrinsically Bad but that are actually reasonable and positive things when appropriately tempered and restrained.

e.g. a certain degree of harshness is actually pretty great if well handled. See e.g. https://twitter.com/GeniesLoki/status/1323888911467352070 … for discussions of positive cruelty. Or, some arrogance is Good Actually - it encourages you to excel and to try things outside your reach and thereby learn from them.

All of these traits are things which you can take to excess and the characters I have in mind absolutely do. If you're indiscriminately and unrestrainedly harsh, you're just an asshole. If you take arrogance too far, you're a *narcissistic* asshole.

But the problem is that because we decided that these things are bad, you don't really have much of an option for expressing them in their healthy form. The best you can really manage is "morally permissible in small doses", or a kind of problematic fave.

If, on the other hand, you're a massive jerk who doesn't give a fuck about what anybody thinks, you have the option to express these traits as much as you like because you're *already* an asshole.

And if you're a man who has some or all of these traits - even if it's entirely reasonable doses - and are looking for representation... these terrible characters are kinda the only place you have to look, because the healthier versions are not represented on screen anywhere.

Unfortunately this makes the problem worse, because you end up with a kind of dichotomy where either: 1) Men go "That seems great, I'm going to be a jerk now." 2) Men recoil from these characters, further alienating themselves from their own desired nature and gender.