http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreGenericWomenAreSpecial

So that's what female vegetables look like! I'll have to remember that next time I'm at the grocery store.

Sarah Morayati, author of the , author of the Interactive Fiction work Broken Legs, in an interview discussing gender in fiction "If a smash hit has mostly male characters, nobody raises an eyebrow, but if it has mostly female characters, it's a Great Big Anomaly worth several trees' worth of shocked speculation."

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In media, male is the default, "normal" form of humanity, while female is a special subcategory reserved just for women. This meta-trope is Older Than Feudalism and is found not only in fiction, but is ingrained into many human societies and cultures. The technical term for this is "androcentrism ".

Take the English language, for example. The terms "Man" and "Mankind" are often used to represent humanity in general, whereas "Woman" and "Womankind" only ever refer to humans of the female gender. Many job titles, such as fireman and mailman, assume maleness, even though there are female firefighters and mail carriers. People often specify that someone is a "female doctor" or "female author", but generally don't say "male doctor" because that is already assumed.note There is an interesting twist in the etymology of "man" and "woman". Originally, "man" only meant "human in general". There were more specific words, namely "were"/"wereman" (= "were" + "man") for "male human" (now only survives in "werewolf" ("man-wolf")) and "wife"/"woman" (= "wife" + "man") meant "female human". Eventually, "man" completely displaced "were"/"wereman" and came to mean "male human" also, while "woman" became dominant in the exclusive sense of "female human", and "wife" retained only the stricter sense of "female spouse". Grammatically speaking, back when English still had the concept of gender, "man" was grammatically masculine despite its supposed gender neutrality, which led to the absurd fact that "woman" was consequently also grammatically masculine. Not that grammatical gender makes any sense anyway, since the word "wife" and its relatives in other Germanic languages were neuter for some reason. The same situation happened for the Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, etc.) where the Latin word "homo" ("human", masculine) also replaced the word "vir" ("male human"). Also note that "female" has nothing etymological to do with "male", and its spells that way probably because of patriarchy and the "world of men" mentality. If the gender of a person is unknown, it is argued that the traditional proper pronoun to use is "he" (e.g. "Everybody take out his pencil")  though "singular they" goes back to Geoffrey Chaucer but remains controversial even today, reflecting this trope. Certain languages like French and Spanish take this concept even further, having two words for "They"; a masculine and feminine form, but if there is a mixed group of men and women the masculine is the default. In fact, this is correct even for a group of any number of women, and one single man.

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Grammatically speaking, in languages featuring gender, masculinity generally prevails and is the default. Adjectives and past participles, as well as nouns for humans, are overwhelmingly masculine by default; feminine equivalents are always derivative, with specific suffixes. For example, in French, a female hunter is "chasseuresse" or "chasseuse", with the feminine suffixes "-esse" and "-euse" attached to the masculine form "chasseur"; in German, you add "-in", so a (male) chancellor is "Kanzler" and a female one is "Kanzlerin"; in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, you swap "-o" for "-a", or stick "-a" to the masculine forms. The use of feminine words is pretty much always exclusive, in that a person or group of people have to be known explicitly as all-female only for the words to be usable; if there is even a hint of ambiguity, like say a theoretical group of "1000 women and 1 man", languages will default to masculine words, be it pronouns or nouns. Feminine-by-default nouns are generally reserved for higher, more abstract concepts such as "humanity", "manliness", "affliction", etc. rather than anything to do with concrete biological sex. The only notable exceptions are animals: many words for animals are feminine by default, and they refer to a species as a whole (which results in expressions such as the grammatically feminine French phrase "une girafe mâle" ("a male giraffe")), and to a lesser extent, specifically the female animals of that species (e.g. French "une chèvre" ("a (female) goat"); still, masculine derivatives are extremely rare (e.g. French "un girafeau" ("a baby giraffe")), and the males tend to have their own words instead (e.g. French "un bouc" ("a male goat").

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The trope can be observed in many different elements of society and culture. "Unisex" fashion tends to be built around men's fashion; jeans and shirts are worn by both sexes, but dresses and skirts are exclusive to women in most of the Western world (with the famous exception of the kilt). T-shirts are typically sold in two cuts, women's and mens, but men's T-shirts are sometimes sold as "unisex tees." Many health clubs have women's gyms, but never men's gyms, since men are considered the default group and just use the main gym. Most androgynous names (like Jordan or Taylor) started out as men's names. The restroom sign for a man is a featureless stick figure, but the sign for a woman is a stick figure in a dress. (One could imagine an alternate universe where women are represented as a featureless stick figure, and men are represented with a cowboy hat.) In the eyes of society, male is default, and women are basically men plus or minus something else.

This phenomenon carries Unfortunate Implications for both male and female characters when used in fiction. The main problem for male characters is that maleness is not special in the way femaleness is, and is often undervalued to the point of being disposable; men's actions are less likely to be judged based on their gender, which gives them more freedom to act, but the consequences for their actions are likely to be magnified. The implication for female characters is that femaleness is special in a way that maleness isn't or, to put it more bluntly, being male is "normal", while being female is "abnormal", which can either mean superior to men or inferior.

This leads to The Smurfette Principle, in which a character's femaleness is the most important and interesting thing about her, often to exclusion of all else. It also tends to result in works failing The Bechdel Test, because if there's a potential character who doesn't have to be any particular gender, the role will probably be filled by a male character by default. It may or may not be the result of Gender Rarity Value.

Likely exacerbated by the fact that Most Writers Are Male.

Probably the parent to Men Act, Women Are and Men Are Strong, Women Are Pretty. See High-HeelFace Turn for when being a woman becomes a Chekhov's Gun for a HeelFace Turn. Compare Men Are the Expendable Gender.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

Dragon Ball Z Cell technically has no gender, and is only referenced in the English manga as an "it". In the anime, however, Cell has a male voice actor and is only called a "he". However, this can be explained by the fact that, with the exception of Piccolo, all of his known genetic donors are male. Piccolo and the other Namekians, a One-Gender Race who reproduce asexually, but are only referred to as male.

A justified example from Attack on Titan. The "Female Titan" (in Japanese 女型の巨人, literally "Female-Type Giant"), controlled by Annie Leonhart , is given her name simply due to having a female physique, and she remains the only one to do so, because it is revealed later that whether a titan is controlled by a conscious human or not and whether that human is male or female, most of the time the shell titan has a male physique with no genitals (known female characters who control male-looking titans include Dina Fritz ("Smiling Titan", unconsiously), Ymir ("Jaw Titan", consciously), Pieck ("Cart Titan", consciously), and Will Tybur's younger sister ("War Hammer Titan", consciously).

, is given her name simply due to having a female physique, and she Made In Abyss has an interesting example in Nanachi, a character who most readers/viewers assumed to be female, until Word of God declared their gender as "unknown." Nanachi has no obvious gendered characteristics, but they do have a unique appearance—they're a Beast Man in a world where every other creature is either human or a horrifying monster. This, along with fluffy animals being vaguely feminine, makes Nanachi "special," and presumed female. However, the French translation makes Nanachi male, so there's some cultural difference of opinion on this.

Comic Books

Transformers: In The Transformers, all the Transformers were considered genderless, but were referred to with masculine pronouns... until one story in which the Autobots created Arcee, who is considered female and is described with feminine pronouns. Arcee was actually created, in story, as female to respond to the sexism that people saw in the perception of the Autobots as male. The same writer (Simon Furman) returned for the IDW-published new continuity, he again set all cybertronians as genderless but using male pronouns. When he introduced Arcee, it was presented as an experiment by Jhiaxus to introduce gender into the formerly genderless species. This ended up having loads of Unfortunate Implications as it both made being female "abnormal" and the fact that Arcee went insane (rather understandably, considering the experiment amounted to a forced sex-change operation) had plenty of potential sexist/transphobic implications. This would end up getting getting fixed (depending on who you ask) in later issues where Cybertronians from Camiens are introduced as naturally occurring female Transformers while Arcee was retconned into being Transgender and having volunteered for Jhiaxus's experiment and her insanity was due to him deciding that it would be fun to torture her afterword.

Wonder Woman (1942): The reversal of this concept is toyed with during Marston's run. Diana assumes characters are female until their gender identity is revealed, and goes with female pronouns for the gender-ambiguous Hypnota, most characters are female with only two somewhat regularly recurring male characters (Steve Trevor, Phillip Darnell) and there are multiple societies made up entirely of women.

Films — Live-Action

Surrounding the female subject of an Item Number with indistinguishable, uniformly dressed and coifed men was done in Marilyn Monroe's Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend (homaged by Madonna's Material Girl).

Literature

In Going Postal, one of the golems gets named Gladys and given a gingham dress so that Miss Maccalariat will approve it cleaning the ladies' privies (prior to which, neither Gladys nor anyone else minded what "she" wore). In Making Money Moist compares Gladys to the generic "male" golems, and then has to remind himself that they aren't male, any more than Gladys is really female. Something similar happens to Rincewind in Interesting Times. After his Luggage (a sentient trunk on legs) starts following a more 'feminine' model (its toes are painted, etc) around, he is first bewildered at the general idea, then realizes that he's never had a proper reason for thinking of his Luggage as male. "True, it had a homicidal nature, but so had a lot of the women Rincewind had met." A similar point can be made with Discworld dwarfs. All dwarfs look like short, male Vikings. Male dwarfs in human society are content to look like short, male Vikings (except Casanunda, but he's a special case), while many female dwarfs are starting to adopt a "feminine" look along the lines of human society. (Dwarfish, like Inuktitut, has no gender-specific pronouns, but their non-specific ones are generally translated as "he", "him", etc.) As a twist, the Dwarf femininity issue is presented as cultural rather than sexist. It is simply considered un-Dwarfish and none seem to have a problem interacting with women of other races. A few dwarfs obliquely refer to the fact that dwarvish culture can look odd to humans, and they have no expectation that another culture to follow their rules... unlike humans.

In the Honor Harrington series, the convention is for individuals to use their own gender as a generic pronoun, unless there is some indication otherwise. Many characters still, however default to "men".

Inverted in Second Stage Lensmen with the "persons" of Lyrane II. They are all biologically female (but do not use the term "female"), and use "it" and "its" instead of "she" and "her". Meanwhile, the males (ratio of 1:100) are not considered persons, are implied to have zero intelligence, and are allowed to exist only for the continuation of the species via procreation. Until Kimball Kinnison shows up, the "persons" routinely kill any male humanoids who find their way to the planet and are not wearing thought shields. They are completely baffled by Illona Potter, because they cannot conceive of a female who is not a "person".

Inverted in the Imperial Radch universe: the Radchaai don't have a societal or linguistic concept of gender, so the narration uses "she" and "her" pronouns universally as a Translation Convention. In-universe, Radchaai are known for referring to people as female unless told not to, and Breq struggles with gendered languages because she doesn't really understand how to identify someone as male on sight. Out-of-universe, it did originally default to a gender-neutral "he", but that just meant it read like any other sci-fi, so Ann Leckie changed it.

The Gethenians from The Left Hand of Darkness are genderless most of the time and assume one gender or the other randomly when they enter a mating cycle, but they're still always referred to as "men."

The Azadians from The Player of Games have a third gender called apexes that are neither men nor women, but still get referred to by the male pronoun. This is noted as part of the Translation Convention, though - since the apexes are the dominant gender on their world, they are given the pronoun of the dominant gender on whatever world the story gets translated to.

Live-Action TV

In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Metamorphosis", Spock modifies their Universal Translator to communicate with an Energy Being that has been maintaining the life and health of a man marooned on its planet. The device gives the Energy Being a female voice, which Kirk and Spock find worthy of note. (Perhaps the translator has a "gender neutral mode", but going by this exchange, it seems more likely that the crew would have considered a male voice "genderless"). Kirk: Feminine. No doubt about it, Spock. Spock: Yes. The matter of gender could change the entire situation. Kirk: I'm way ahead of you. Spock: Then it is not a zookeeper. Kirk: No. A lover. note (No, the marooned man's orientation had not been established as straight — other than that being statistically the overwhelmingly likely option, even before you take the assumptions of a 1960s TV series into account.) No. A lover.

Jerry Seinfeld finds this out the hard way. When he notices that his girlfriend enjoys being naked in his apartment, he tries to be naked too, but the girlfriend finds it disgusting. Later, he and George are told this by Elaine: Elaine: Walking around naked? Ahh... that is not a good look for a man. George: Why not? It's a good look for a woman. Elaine: Well, the female body is a work of art. The male body is utilitarian. It's for gettin' around-like a jeep.

Quite often in late-60s-to-mid-80s Doctor Who, where, due to the sexist blind spots of the time, characters were only women when there was a good reason for them to be, even if this stretched credibility. For just one example, Leela in "The Face of Evil" was conceptualised as coming from a society where sexism wasn't an issue and her status as a brave warrior was not contested, but we have to take her word for it since she's the only woman we meet on her entire planet. One notable aversion of the trope, simply due to her origins, is Bettan from "Genesis of the Daleks". Terry Nation refused the producers' requests to add a female character to the story (since companion Sarah-Jane Smith was the only one in his script), so they simply switched the gender of one of his male characters and changed nothing else, leaving the story with an otherwise-generic Thal soldier that happens to be a woman.



Tabletop Games

Inversion: Some of The World of Darkness sourcebooks use female pronouns to refer to hypothetical characters of unspecified gender.

Inversion: Another example is the third edition of Exalted in which all charm descriptions use female pronouns for the player character.

Dungeons & Dragons has done the above too, as well as other methods of avoiding bias like alternating "he" and "she" (in one infamous instance for the same character) or basing it upon the Iconic that best represents the situation.

One strategy in various games from the 1990s on was to refer to the Game Master as female and to the players as male in the examples.

The Hasbro game "Guess Who?" invoked this trope when a six year old girl asked why the characters were disproportionately male .

. Magic: The Gathering tends to use gender-neutral terms for occupations, even if a female-specific version could be applied. Benalish Hero depicts a woman, for instance, but isn't called "Benalish Heroine." Also, a creature could be depicted as either male or female in the art as long as it's not a specific storyline character. There are two major exceptions to these rules: enchantresses, which are grandfathered (grandmothered?) in from the early days and angels, which are always female (with one or two very early exceptions). Even the rules text defaulted to "he or she" for a long time, until they decided to let nonbinary people in on the fun and shifted to using the singular "they", much to the annoyance of strange people on the internet. This can lead to translation shenanigans, especially with terms that are genderless in English, but not in another language. For example, in French, the card elvish champion was first translated as championne elfe (a resolutely feminine term) because the illustration featured an elvish woman. When the card reappeared in a later edition, the new illustration was that of a man, but the French translation had to stick with the feminine word. There must be an entire gender study argument to be had on whether this is more inappropriate than having champion elfe be illustrated with a woman.

In-universe example in The Dark Eye, male dwarves outnumber females by 4:1, note Males are born more often and mostly as twins or quadruplets, while females are only born as single children as a result, this trope is played straight in their cultures.

Video Games

Gen IV in Pokémon introduced aesthetic gender differences on members of the same species. In most cases, the "regular" design (i.e., the one that had been used in previous generations) went for males and the females got something different (One notable exception would be Xatu). Although the gender differences are quite realistic and reflect gender differences in animals in real life (for example, female Bug Pokemon tend to have wider thoraxes than the males), some Pokémon have a clearly "human feminine" traits like female Wobbuffet using lipstick.

Pokémon GO originally had no genders except for the Nidoran family, just like Gen I... but it used the modern 3D models, which have gender differences. They were not used consistently, and sometimes the gender of a model would change for no apparent reason; for a while, you could evolve a Pikachu and it would apparently transform from male to female. When genders were (officially) added, the trope was played straight—all previously-captured mons with gender differences became male, and only new spawns of those species could be female.

Pac-Man is an example of this trope. The original male Pac-Man character is a plain circle who doesn't even have eyes, while Ms. Pac-Man has a bow, a mole, lipstick, and eyelashes.

At some point during its unending development, Ancient Domains of Mystery added female versions of various humanoid monsters. So now you have "goblins" and "female goblins" — male goblins are still just "goblins". In a temporary example, when the version with actual graphics came out, the creatures were first given only male graphics, and separate graphics for the female versions came later. Some heavily covered, armoured or mutated humanoids didn't get separate female graphics, which is actually an aversion of the trope, because it means you are not to assume every basically genderless humanoid model is male.

The Legend of Spyro is another example. There are only male characters except for Cynder, who first appears as a villainess in "A New Beggining". You don't get to see any other female dragons (or female characters in general) besides her, as if she is the only female in the world. You do get to see a little of Sparx's mother, but since she appears too little in the first game, she doesn't count. There are no female cheetahs in Hunter's village or female moles in Warfang in Dawn of the Dragon, making this trope even more true.

Web Animation

In RWBY, warriors who fight Grimm are called Huntsmen if male, and Huntresses if female. "Huntsmen" is also the gender-neutral term.

Webcomics

In Shortpacked! everyone refers to Ultra-Car, a talking car, as "he". It's not until U.C. gets a human body that we learn she identifies as female, and when people are surprised she points out that cars don't have sexes.

Some of the Image Macro "Advice Animals" characters have been given Tertiary Sexual Characteristics, for memes dealing with female-specific issues. (For example, a Socially-Awkward penguin about period mishaps.) Others (such as Foul Bachelor Frog and Scumbag Steve) have an actual Distaff Counterpart.

In Kill Six Billion Demons angels have No Biological Sex and are theoretically beyond mortal concepts such as gender, but in practice a lot of them call each other "brother" and present much closer to male, while White Chain becoming "a little feminine" is treated as human contamination and results in banishment.

Web Videos

Western Animation

In Nickelodeon's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012), April discovers she has a rare gift when she is able to "communicate" with a psychic mutant monkey. This gift intrigues Splinter and he offers to train her as a as a Kunoichi, who were traditionally trained with different skillsets than male ninja.

This is played with Young Justice. There's a perfectly good strategic reason for Nightwing to send an all-female squad for the day's mission (they are dealing with Queen Bee whose powers bend men note to be precise, "most men and some women" Batgirl: Oh, really? And would you have felt the need to justify an all-male squad for a given mission?

Wonder Girl, Bumblebee, and Miss Martian all glare at him.

Nightwing: Th-there's no... good answer for that, is there? So... Nightwing out.

Inverted in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode Brotherhooves Social where Rainbow Dash declares "Don't think me and Scootaloo are gonna take it easy on you just 'cause you're a stallion!" to Big Macintosh, more or less confirming gender stereotypes are flipped in Equestria.

Real Life