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.

hmmmm immediately thought of a few non-asshole manly characters but they are all from novels written by mormons

Interesting. Who did you have in mind? I have a bunch of other non-asshole manly characters in mind, but they're mostly from novels written by women.

What about most superheroes like batman spiderman superman

was thinking of those too actually although batman arguably an asshole and spiderman arguably not so "manly" but superman yeah … though maybe it's complicated. like if somebody needs to stand up to authority or make a trade-off, isn't that more ?

I should clarify that my position is not that there are no non-asshole manly characters, or even that such are particularly rare, but that there is some need that people are fulfilling by identifying with asshole male characters (some of whom aren't even that manly).