What Makes a Strong Male Character?

Everybody seems to ask the reverse, there are endless discussions out there.
The other day though, I was thinking, while I was writing. What makes for a strong male character, in the same sense that would make for a strong female character?
By that I mean, people argue that a character who is strong but that strength has no bearing on their gender aren't 'strong female characters'
So traits does a MALE character need to be a strong MALE character?

 

Strong is very subjective. So I doubt you are going to find traits of any person across the board that will unanimously be considered strong.

 

I'm curious about what each individual thinks. Getting lots of opinions is, as far as I'm concerned, a good thing when you're trying to form your own opinion

 

why do distinctions have to be made on gender or sex? a strong character is a strong character.
I was talking about Gail Simone earlier, she's known in the comicbook business for being one of the best (the best imo) writers for female characters because of the way she portrays them. Having read some of her work, she doesn't emphasize the feminism, she doesn't draw attention to any gender-defining characteristics. Some are there when they make sense to be there sure, but they're almost never part of the narrative (at least what I've read, can't speak for everything). What I'm saying is, just write a good character. Those things don't need to be (shouldn't be) tied with gender.

 

That's the thing. The general argument I hear is that there are strong characters, and strong female characters. But I've NEVER seen anybody talk about strong male characters. So I was curious about that

 

A strong male character needs only two things: Lots of muscles and a cool name, Armstrong, Jim Steele, or Earl.

 

Maybe by strong female characters they mean characters that embody whatever qualities are deemed appropriate by whatever time period or whatever popular movement? Imo a strong character isn't pushing an agenda. Gail Simone's characters are awesome because they're not doing that. They're just well-written characters who are female.

 

It's been the recent movement of having high profile female characters, people have endless debates about stuff like Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite, Katniss in the Hunger Games. They argue f they're strong characters, but then add a secondary modifier of 'strong female character' and make the argument 'their strength isn't dependent on their gender, therefore they aren't strong female characters'

 

I think a lot of the talk about 'strong female characters' come from the fact that so many stories are about damsels and princesses needing a male character to come rescue them from dragons and wicked witches. Girls read these stories and have this mindset that they have to be rescued from whatever. Now with characters like Black Widow, Korra, Lady Sif, and Katniss [among others] are showing girls that they don't necessarily need men to protect them and whathaveyou.

I mean, I grew up with the Disney Princesses. And I can remember daydreaming about a handsome Prince of my own to rescue me from my boring life and whisk me away to a castle. [I think most girls have this fantasy at least once. ] And at a certain age, I started reading comics. And yes, a lot of the times, the male character has to rescue the female character. But every so often, there'd be one that could fend for herself and it was mind blowing. I wanted to be these characters. [ Though most of my experience with The Mighty Thor was Loki. Shhhh. ]

To me it does not matter the gender of a character. So long as they have depth and dimension. How do they react in any situation? Do they have their weaknesses? Do they have some crippling fear? [ Maybe they fear leading soldiers in battle because what if those soldiers died. They'd be responsible then. ] Maybe something happened in their past that has developed them to what they are in the present. [ Civil war, loss of a sibling, near death experience.] Do they have any vices? [Women, men, spirits, criminal record, gambling.]

 

I've frequently found it interesting how we end up with bias in our narrative templates (for lack of a better term) in terms of gender, race, social status, etc. And how trying to escape that gets perceived (myself included). I've often looked at female roles and wondered if it would change anything if they were male, but I don't often ask the reverse.

I don't often deal with the "strong" question because I feel like it is to broad (strong will, strong body, strong musical talent? It could be almost anything) and it misses the point of representation if we are simply trying to craft a new mold to fit female characters into.

What I would look at more is how active the character is in the given situation (background representation isn't exactly a win). Past that I don't think aspiring towards any character design makes much sense.

 

I'm just going to say it clearly that, as a woman and as a person of color, representation matters. To be honest, to say that we "need" or to ask "where are the men" is sort of like the myth of "reverse-racism." It should matter who that person is in terms of identity (race, gender, orientation), because, if well-written, their identity shapes and molds the traits that make them strong in the first place. I think the statistics out there speak for themselves that the overall leading representation of identity are straight, white males.

Now, on to what we now know of "strong" female characters. Certainly, the realization that we need some ladies (with actual speaking roles and parts) has come to fruition with the badassery of Elsa and Anna from Frozen, Black Widow from The Avengers, Katniss from The Hunger Games, Olivia Pope from Scandal, etc. For people to continue calling them strong though, as opposed to really any other synonym in the freakin' Thesaurus is demeaning. They are and should be labeled more than just "strong."

So yeah, to put it into perspective, the reason why we don't associate "strong" as a trait to male characters is because they are already treated better and therefore, labeled differently in that manner. They are this, they are that. And yet, main female characters lately, at least in the general media, are only called "strong."

 

A big dong

 

Testicular fortitude

 

I figured I'd get a response somewhat like this. Interesting info to look at.

For all the talks about having these dated expectations for women in media, there's not really any similar progress working in reverse, and there's very little drive for it.
As tongue in cheek as the responses were, it's not particularly far from the average of truth.
Personally, I'm of the belief that what skull joke said earlier is the case, strong characters are just strong characters, and they don't need to make use of some sort of gender element to make it so
But that's why I find all this stuff interesting. There's a HUGE push for something I was hoping someone would be to explain to me, because to me it seems like a paradox.
The idea that a character to adheres to stereotypical is sexist, but a strong female character can't have masculine traits, and must be strong based on feminine traits, but feminine traits are stereotypes. It seems like an impossible end goal.
But I find it interesting that not many people seem to be looking at the reverse sexual angle to this. Is there a desire here? Do people want to see men go beyond the fundamentals of strength, big dicks, bangin' chicks, being tough, that sort of thing? Societally, we seem to be set up in a way that makes even the thought of this unlikely. Whereas feminism ultimately worked towards the notion of rejecting stereotypes of inherent weakness, or lacking, doing the same with masculine traits would ultimately be to reject what are deeply ingrained to be inherently positive traits, of strength and testosterone and whatnot. Who would reject that, or support the rejection of that? It seems like whereas women are being presented more and more with the power of opportunity, men will at large be relegated to simplicity
Though who knows, maybe in the future there will some sort of movement that calls for equality in complexity, but so often it seems more like men as a species accept simplicity as an easy crutch.
I dunno
got a headache
shouldn't have written this with a headache

 

I think it depends on how the traits are being expressed within the character. People are not just full of only stereotypically masculine/stereotypically feminine traits, every individual is somewhere on a spectrum of them. You're not gonna walk outside and see all women acting solely passive/nurturing/dependent, and you're just as much unlikely to see all men acting aggressive/self-confident/independent. That's where the distinction is; male & female characters can have their gender's stereotypical traits, but it cannot dominate & dictate who they are and how they'll be forever. They have to grow and change* and learn along the way.

Since you also agreed with Below, I do realize this is also what you probably think on the matter as well. To answer the question on why the paradox exists, it largely depends on how they phrased it. Like you've said before, it's difficult to tell tone over the web and a lot of people on the Internet have a tendency of writing their post and immediately posting it, then elaborating later on after they get questions/backlash/whatever.

I'm not sure what you meant here & don't wanna say something and it ending up "yea plums that's what I meant in the post," lol.

 

Honestly wish you HAD said something and managed to better express that mess of a post. I'm still recovering from the worst sickness I've had in years, so I feel like all of my points are only being half expressed.
But I THINK I know what I'm going for now... bear with me

Right, so are you familiar with the black coffee test? Basically the idea that it's hard to know what a person wants, because they don't know what they want. When people are asked what kind of coffee they like, a lot of people say they like their coffee black, because they think it makes them seem more sophisticated + other reasons.
I feel like this is the same thing, where people are stacking together a all these different ideals for a 'good character' that SOUND great, but sabotage things in the process. Like when a person asks for a strong female character who isn't a female stereotype, but isn't just a male character reskinned to be female. You're ultimately asking that a strong female character be neitehr male, nor female, yet still be very interesting. It's a whole bunch of different standards that SOUND great, but in practice is all but impossible to execute.
And that's really where I was coming from with this topic from the start. I was thinking about how nobody seems to approach writing a male character with the question "what makes for a strong MALE character?" and yet this is a constant debate right now. I decided to ask KHv and see what happened, either I'd get some interesting insight on what actually makes for strong male characters, or it'd confirm my suspicions that people chasing after this mythic strong female character are basically looking for the holy grail, a thing that they'll never actually find, and even if they do it'll be a lot less exciting than it seemed, like in Indiana Jones

 

WHY IS ALL THE GOOD STUFF IN SPAM?!

I'm going to have to go with what Laurence_Fox said earlier. In my opinion, a "strong" character is simply a character that has depth. People prefer reading about characters that they can relate to so characters, regardless of sex, should have a wide range of traits, masculine or feminine, to make them less of a cardboard cutout of their gender's archetype and more like the people who read their stories who usually aren't 100% masculine or feminine in terms of personality. This mix of traits is variable though. There's nothing wrong with a female character who is more stereotypically feminine than masculine. Just as there's nothing wrong with the male that's more stereotypically masculine than feminine. But there are various mixes of how masculine or feminine somebody can be and they shouldn't ignored.

I really don't like the use of the word "strong". I feel like it'd just be better to say "well-written" because that's what people actually want.

 

To answer this question, let us take a look at the distaff counterpart.

From my personal understanding, "strong female character" is very much terminology for an individual female who is either competent, inherently dynamic, and/or self-assured at some point in the journey, or in a more general case, just written well in such a way that they can be simultaneously dynamic and possess qualities that make them highly realistic, especially in terms of variations of female characters across the boards of media. What does this mean? It is very much a response to this depiction of females which has persisted throughout Western media for ages in the past:

It does not necessarily mean that every strong female character has to be overly physically powerful or tough-as-nails macho to be considered "strong" per se (which in itself is a very limited consideration of what makes someone strong). It just seems to mean, to myself, that media, in response to the past, is to diversify its depiction of the female sex as a whole. To make women seem less like plot objects and more realistic characters, most especially that can do things for themselves in a manner of empowerment, which is lovely. Although it is arguably changing now, the past has been more appreciative and accepting of a greater variety of spear-counterpart depictions over their female versions, and even in these recent years have there been many debates about these questions of shifting and changing ideas on how women are perceived in media. Lookin' at you, gaming.

Of course, when taking a look at media depictions, it is better to look at the state of a medium as a whole rather than individual works, which obviously would have varying qualities of depictions between themselves. Similar to understanding the difference between biological microevolution and ecological macroevolution.

Onto your question, the idea of a "strong male character" arguably does exist in a different manner of a greater variety of male characters accepted throughout the mainstream media. It is true, many of them in the North American media are often burly white men, but alongside those we see folks like ... Gordon Freeman I suppose. Or in television, The Cosby Show, and Homer Simpson. Odd examples, yes, but they represent a particular group of folks so to speak, and in doing so add to a pool of variety. The idea of a strong male character in this sense is less due to the same sort of empowerment (unless you count testicular fortitude macho as this) as the signal of a strong female character represents (which in itself is due to the unique social circumstances faced by these particular characters).

At the same time, it very much makes sense for folks to consider characters as themselves strong, regardless of sex, or gender, or sexuality, or whichever. This is quite ideal indeed. Understandably as well, as was said numerous times in the thread, it also brings another spoonful of subjectivity towards what is considered a strong character. If strong is considered by the definition of written well and realistic, then I am sure many people would be happy with that, but there are also different perceptions on realism and how things would fit in regards to one's direct micro-media work as well.

What is more, people have different ideas on what can be considered strong in the first place. OP states that an instance of a female character being strong but this having no bearing on their gender are not true "strong female characters". I personally disagree myself as well, as the fundamental qualities of what we consider stereotypically masculine and stereotypically feminine are not and should not be explicitly restricted to any particular sex, but it is understandable in the sense that histories of media have undermined a few certain specific qualities considered "feminine", whether in behaviour or in other senses. This itself has changed as the times changed. To note, everything here is generally taken from a Western history standpoint because most of us live in present-day societies historically tied to them and it would take too much post space to explain 5000 years of matrilinear Huron history.

To condense everything, the idea of "strong characters" as a whole contains overtones of social change in regards to the distaff side because of the unique social position that is being thankfully changed around women. Strong male characters equivalents I can think of, in the closest sense, are also those that go against certain norms of media presentation that exist with them, similar to how strong female characters move against traditional norms of female depiction with the above definition. The difference is that a "strong male character" in the sense of a directly comparative term to a "strong female character" is a different creature altogether under historical social circumstances.

But under the circumstance of directly comparing characters as a whole, regardless of sex, a strong character in general simply appears to be written well in the context of their work of media. The term itself possesses many delicate nuances.

Please take everything with a grain of salt. I am no authority on this, and I am recovering from my third nap of the day, so everything reads very heavy-handedly at times and highly disorganized. Best of luck.
I am also highly biased towards depicting various different women in my writing as well.

 

This actually reminds me of an interesting video series I watch, one of the episodes went on a side tangent about the relatability of furry characters, or as we used to call them, Disney characters. Basically the theory being that by removing defining aspects of race and sex, but keeping the fundamentals about humans that we find acceptable, you create a character that can appeal to a much broader range of characters. Where a person might not feel that they can aspire to be like a character that appears to be different from them in a way we easily recognize, the same character WITHOUT any defining human social setups, like skin colour or overt physical gender identification, people can more easily put themselves in the character's shoes, since focus is taken away from their appearance, and redirected at their actions and personality.

I feel bad that I'm not going to have as long of a reply to this but:

First of all I want to make it clear that I'm talking about a theoretical amalgamation of many arguments I've heard over the years, as I've said elsewhere in the topic my view is that a strong character is a strong character and that's the end of it, what I was more steering for was an explanation of what a so called strong gendered character might entail. Either I was missing something, or the people I'd debated with, overheard, or otherwise encountered were searching for a creature of double standards that couldn't exist.

And that's where the other thing you mentioned that I want to talk about comes in. You say that the strong character movement is a reaction to the feminist movement, basically the desire to see strong female characters at all, after so long not having much representation, if any. Correct? As such, there is no male counterpart to the notion because there is no corresponding stifling of the presence of male characters in media. I mean, I suppose there's an argument to be made for subcategories of men, but that's another can of worms entirely.
But going by this, it seems to me like pursuing this 'strong female character' will be destructive. I think the demand is dangerously high for something that, if followed, will more than likely simply hamper the actually writers/whatever else media creators, and end up making nobody happy.