Fiction, gender, women's pain, and MAN PAIN.
"This one time I hit a girl with my car. It was the most traumatic experience of my life and she kept trying to make it about her leg. As if my pain meant nothing."
So, I've been thinking about Man Pain, what exactly IS it, its awesome power to make me hate a character like I never thought possible, how narratives view women's pain vs. men's pain, and do women have the same kind of pain? And I have thoughts. :)
Man pain is often the fastest way to turn me off of something, but I don't think I quite realized *exactly* what man pain was until I had to watch a performance of Sophocles' "Elektra," and while watching, I thought to myself, "Oh, wow, Elektra has a lot of man pain." Elektra, of course, is a girl, which made me realize that Man Pain isn't just...pain or suffering that men undergo, but a very SPECIFIC type of pain, which is a lot more common to see in men than in women. It occurs to me that not ALL men's pain is Man Pain, which I consider to be a very specific type of fictional pain that is privileged over other sufferings/tragedies. Possibly, it's easier to notice and define when it shows up in women (for people who don't generally notice Man Pain)? Because fiction hasn't desensitized us to it by giving it to us over and over. More importantly, narratives are aware of it more when it shows up in women and it's not treated like Universal Pain.
Elektra's biggest conflict is along the lines of Hamlet's: her mother killed her father and took a lover, while declaring herself to be the queen of the kingdom, and she claims that Klytemnestra mistreats her and is evil. People familiar with the backstory, of course, know that Klytemnestra killed her husband for very, very good reasons (like the fact that he literally sacrificed their daughter to the gods in order to win a war), but Elektra refuses to see her mother's side of the story at all, choosing to be loyal to the father she's never known and has idolized in her mind. During the story, any version of it, Klytemnestra also has major conflict in terms of dealing with her children hating her when she did it all for them to begin with, has to deal with a kingdom not used to having a woman in charge, and has to deal with the conflict between the loyalties she owes to different people. When Klytemnestra attempts to explain this to Elektra, her response is to completely stop listening once Klytemnestra admits to having killed Agamemnon because all Elektra can see is her own pain and suffering. Which, yeah: MAN PAIN.
So what is man pain? It's this tunnel-vision, narrow-minded view of one's own pain that completely overlooks and ignores how others suffer or might even suffer *more* because of the same tragedies. Elektra's entire conflict is about hating her mother, and all she can see is her own suffering, a lot of which is based on things she perceives to be true and based on having omitted important parts of the story. And her mother? Klytemnestra has actual conflict, actual suffering, and actual issues all of which surpass Elektra's, but she can't see that because she's so focused on her own issues.
Fictional men do this. Often. More importantly, narrative pov does this by choosing to focus on men's suffering (at the expense of others'), which always makes me go, "Hmm, but what about the women?" And it's not always the women who get overlooked in this kind of storytelling, but even lesser POV characters. One good example is all the movies where a white person helps people of color make some civil right achievement, and the focus is often on how HARD it is for the white people to go against their own to help these people out, ignoring the MUCH GREATER suffering of people who have never *had* the privilege of that choice.
A more specific example of man pain is given to us on Buffy in the above-quoted immortal words of Cordelia Chase: "This one time I hit a girl with my car. It was the most traumatic experience of my life and she kept trying to make it about HER leg. As if my pain meant nothing." <3
It's...easier to provide examples with women? Because we're supposed to find what Cordelia is saying funny, and OMG, it does make me love her harder. But the narrative is also poking fun at her. Likewise, Sophocles' "Elektra" gives Klytemnestra a very clear narrative voice that, if you're paying attention and familiar with the background story, makes you question the things Elektra is saying, makes you question her sanity for having made so big a deal out of something that shouldn't have affected her this much. As I said before, fiction is more aware of this when it does this with women.
Now, fiction does this with men ALL THE FREAKING TIME. But it's not poking fun at them, and it's certainly not wanting you to question their right to suffer the most and make everyone's issues all about themselves. Because it's all justified. Because all our narratives are male-centric. Because man pain, in fact, is UNIVERSAL PAIN. And women's pain is always...gendered, and often portrayed as excessive bitching/whining. And because fiction does it so much with men without seeing issues with it, it's sometimes harder to point out, but the problem becomes easier to spot once compared to how fiction and fandom treat women in similar situations.
And not surprisingly, fandom does this, privileges men's suffering over the women's. There was a discussion of Jean's constant Phoenix issues recently, and someone chose to talk about how hard it was on Scott, and how much he had suffered. Because the pain he has to suffer when his wife is constantly being possessed by a god-like entity is somehow more important than the constant and consistent identity issues and loss-of-self issues and the constant dying and resurrections and all the readjusting that comes with that that Jean has had to suffer for a decade? But somehow, the fact that poor Jean has to go through all of this...justifies Scott cheating on her! How dare their life together be more about HER pain than his? He shouldn't have to stand for that! Oh, fandom.
When "Merlin" first aired, I had plans to watch it, if only because my life-long Arthurian OTP of Morgaine/Arthur is vaguely canon, but from everything I have read, it's all about Man Pain, in terms of the focus on the dominant religion/group and completely disregarding the very justified reasons the Lady of the Lake has for her vendetta against Uther. And while there have been a lot of complaints about how all the women are evil...I sort of love evil women, so that alone might not have been an issue for me? But evil women that the narrative feels the need to punish while valuing the Man Pain of their oppressors? Um, no. A world of no. See, Sinbad does the Evil Sorceress thing so very well with Rumina, and she never gets punished for being evil, so she just...makes me happy instead of inspiring rage.
The major reason that Adama *never* appealed to me from the get-go, and despite the fact that I loved Roslin like I love Emma Frost, and given my tendency to ship my OTCs with EVERYONE, I never, ever liked Roslin/Adama for even a single second, was that Adama had some of the most epic (and epically HATEFUL) Man Pain in the recent years on TV. Boomer turning evil and trying to possibly doom the entire human race? All. About. Adama. I mean, seriously. His pain? More important than the possible extinction of the human race. It's *more* important for him to get his revenge than it is for humanity to survive. And people *love* this character. Certain people turning out to be Cylons? No one cares about how this affects humanity! And there's just no reason at all to worry about Tigh's own identity crisis in this. It's all about how much pain it causes ADAMA. And how he's suffered betrayal YET AGAIN. And Kara having a breakdown? Also about how she's betraying him! Who cares about what she's going through? Not Adama! Aside from the character choices that emphasize his man pain, the narrative does this, too. One major example is how the narrative sees Roslin's suffering all in the light of how it affects ADAMA in the last season. And this was the final straw. I...actually can't decide if I hate Adama more or Tyrol. But it's a tough call.
But fandom apparently loves Man Pain because look at its love affair with Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. It's hard to think of a character I dislike more for narrative reasons in Jossverse? (I hate Spike, Xander, and Topher all more, but for metanarrative reasons.) Where to start with his Man Pain? It likely started with his first appearance and the events of Buffy season three, but somehow, the fact that poor Faith was going through epic issues was all about how *he* had failed as a Watcher. Because somehow, the personal guilt of having failed at his job was more epic and important than the personal suffering of going through a mental breakdown, alienation, and loss of purpose/destiny/self/friends that Faith was going through. (I don't think the narrative thinks it's more important at this point, but Wesley certainly does. Thus, narrative hatred and not metanarrative hatred.) And then there was the epic Man Pain arc he got after Connor was taken to another dimension. Because losing his friends and purpose for reasons that were *entirely* based in his own issues and stupidity was more painful/important than Angel losing his child and going through epic betrayal all because of Wesley. And then the narrative was totally okay with Wesley torturing Justine because his MAN PAIN justified torturing women. Just like how his earlier Man Pain justified completely betraying Faith's and everyone else's trust. And not only did the writers think that all of this drama and suffering made Wesley more interesting than he had ever been before, but the fandom was happily all over it.
And the worse part is that I actually get why my friends who love Wesley love him? I don't agree with it at all, but I can understand how metanarratives have conditioned them to value this narrative? And conditioned me to understand this? But I get into at least three arguments a month with someone saying, "I just can't understand how you can love Emma Frost/Faith/Kara Thrace/etc." Because heaven forbid that narratives ever focus on women's suffering. And I feel that a major criticism of Kara Thrace as a character (besides people slutshaming her and seeing her sexuality as a reason to not like her) is that she has too much suffering and the narrative focuses too much on her angst. But seriously, people, does she really have more suffering than Adama? DOES ANYONE? But when Achilles gets a whole epic about his suffering, it's literary canon, but Kara, who has pretty much the *exact same issues,* gets painted as a bitchy drama-vampire by BSG fans regularly. Sometimes, even by the narrative itself! Because we're not *used* to seeing this much narrative focus on a woman with issues, but that's a huge reason I love her? Her issues are literally epic, and actually *don't* fall under Man Pain suffering. The narrative does have a tendency to focus on her issues more than others', sometimes, but rarely more than it values the issues of men within the narrative? So I can understand why you might prefer the relatively angst-free Laura Roslin to Kara Thrace, but I'll *never* understand why Tyrol or Adama is more interesting than Kara.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong here because I've repressed much of season 4.5 of BSG, but Kara's suffering in it is very...isolated and not seen as affecting things on a larger scale in terms of, at least, affecting people around her? When she's suffering, the narrative pretty much leaves her alone, and I sort of hate everyone for not being there for her, but the icing on the cake? The scene where Adama is breaking down over his BFF Tigh's betrayal and pulling everyone into his MAN PAIN. Because his suffering of his own issues with Cylons affecting how he views his STILL LOYAL BFF is so much more important than Kara losing her sense of self and the love of her life (don't argue ;) all in the same week. And I'm sure we see a lot of this with Athena and Helo, where the narrative is so much more concerned with his personal pain of being married to a Cylon than the much greater conflict Athena probably has to deal with, what with actually *being* the outsider.
On the other hand, I do sort of appreciate that within the narrative, no one really questions the validity of Kara's suffering? Because as mentioned before, when women suffer, the narrative often questions it. I think Buffy occasionally had Man Pain, which is pretty much given with a protagonist like her (most notably during the Faith arc.), but Buffy also got called out on it by people within the narrative. And fandom never got over Buffy's 'selfish-ness' and the most common criticism of Buffy has always been that she was too selfish/self-focused mostly coming from the fact that she complained about the suckage in her life. How, exactly? Buffy is pretty much the only epic hero or heroine I can think of who knowingly sacrificed the love of her life to save the world? During the TV era when Max Evans and John Critchton were both willing to sell out their planet/the entire Universe to save theirs. Also, pretty much everyone on Buffy has more Man Pain than Buffy, but Buffy's is unnatural because she's a GIRL, I suppose? Sigh. Nothing makes me love Buffy like fandom's constant hatred of her for being oh-so-selfish.
So fandom likes to complain about how it doesn't like women because they just don't get the narrative arcs/narrative focus that men do and OMG, their arcs are so gendered, but when women *do* get the arcs that fandom associates with MEN? They then get criticized for having too much focus, being too selfish, too bitchy, too aggressive, too PRESENT, INFLUENTIAL, and for driving the narrative arcs with their suffering/issues because only men are supposed to do that, duh.
So, really, fandom, WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE FOR YOU TO LIKE WOMEN? When they don't get enough focus, you don't like them because they're too much in the background, when they do get the focus, you complain about how they're getting too much focus. When they're in 'traditionally feminine' arcs, they're too weak and gendered, but when they're in more action oriented arcs, they're trying to be like men, and shouldn't they be more womanly? When they're bitches, you just don't like their morals, but how many of you shun the male characters for their lack of morals? When they're too nice, they're doormats and Mary Sues.
(and, sigh, I know I have had a problem with the last one in the past. I know that I find it harder to like women who are too stuck in the male gaze and a portrait of what patriarchy wants women to be like (Fred from Angel, as well as many of Joss' characters of that type, is a good example of this, where while I liked her in theory, the execution of her arcs often left me cold.) And often, the good girls have to grow on me as opposed to my instantly falling for the morally ambiguous fictional women, but...I consider this a flaw in my own narrative approach, and I DO constantly work at improving it by defending/writing about the characters I'm indifferent to so I can see what makes them interesting.) And I feel that the first step is admitting the problem? Because there isn't even a single one of us who hasn't been conditioned to respond in an offensive way to some narrative. But most people who don't like women would rather blame it on the type of characters they are (read: ALL TYPES) than admit that they have internalized misogyny/misogyny issues, that they've been conditioned to respond this way, and that there's a problem on THEIR end. But when you manage to find a problem with every single female character, or even every single female character of a certain type, and ESPECIALLY when you would like that same character if she were a man, hi, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.)
But more than that, our narratives have a problem? Because I'm so tired of having to watch John Proctor sacrifice himself and be a hero when I'm actually wondering about how much of an asshole he must've been to have inspired Abigail's epic, epic vendetta and how his poor wife is going to have to look after three children alone in a time when women didn't HAVE career options because he would rather be a hero and die than be a decent human being and actually take care of his family.
But "The Crucible" doesn't want to give me that story, because the Man Pain is more important. And I still have issues from high school when my teacher insisted I write a paper about John Proctor's Man Pain because she didn't want to read about how Abigail had good reasons for her vendetta against him. I mean, guys, this asshole was cheating on his wife with a very young girl who worked for them (and thus was his employee!), and somehow he gets to be the hero of the narrative and the poor girl he slept with, ruined, and dumped is going to be the villain? And his wife who has very good reasons to hate him is going to SUPPORT him, but his suffering is the greatest! Because fiction doesn't care about women. And it certainly doesn't care about their suffering unless they're actually dead, and even then, the pain is all about how much the MEN suffer because of their deaths.
I've never seen the last season of "Angel" and never really plan to. Before "Angel" got to that point, they had already gotten rid of all the interesting female characters, and the only way I was going to watch the show was if Lilah Morgan or Gwen Raiden were fairly recurring. But they replaced Lilah before the new season started, and when they were asked about bringing back Gwen Raiden, the writers said that Gwen would upstage Angel with the focus on her narrative arc, so they could not bring her back. But somehow, Spike wasn't going to upstage Angel by having the exact same issues/dilemma/superpowers?! And it occurs to me that Spike is ALLOWED to upstage Angel (why not, he upstaged Buffy on her own show), because of his Man Pain. But having Gwen would shift the focus away from the Man Pain and only men are allowed to make their issues that central to the narrative.
A few weeks ago, I had the misfortune to watch "Charlie Bartlett," which involved a rich, disturbed kid becoming a self-appointed psychiatrist for fellow students. He has a history of delinquent behavior, which has his single mother having to move him from school to school while running a company and the household. The mother is portrayed as being flaky and on tranquilizers, and the climax of the movie comes when he admits to a girl that he's always felt the need to be an adult because his mother apparently isn't one. And he feels the need to act out in school because he has to be an adult at home and take care of his mother. Which, just wow. Your mother is on freaking TRANQUILIZERS very likely because of YOUR delinquent behavior, and just shut the fuck up about your MAN PAIN. Also, hi, you're making it worse. Which is not to say that he doesn't have valid issues, but we constantly get this story in fiction of the absentee father that's idolized and the mother who actually stayed being vilified, often from the POV of the male child, and there's just no conception of this dynamic from her POV.
And then there was the critically acclaimed "500 Days of Summer," which consisted of nothing but a guy's Man Pain-ish POV on his relationship with a flighty girl, and we never get her POV, just his dressing her up in his patriarchal meta-narratives. The problem is that no one questions this when coming from men. And do you know how many of our metanarratives are made up of just this sort of problematic stuff? I'm sure there are countless examples of this, and the fact that I can think of at least a dozen more just off the top of my head despite the fact that I avoid fiction with a very male-centric focus? Um, yeah.
Lastly, I leave you with this, a definition of Man Pain:
Man Pain.
(n).
1). an all-encompassing, egocentric suffering that disallows focus on anything else but the pain.
2). tunnel vision focus on one's own pain and disregard/lack of understanding for the suffering of others. Most often experienced by fictional men.
We see this in two forms:
a). Narrative form: Wherein the hero is focused on his pain and ways to alleviate or wallow in it, often at the expense of the suffering of others. This comes from the character's own issues and is likely to make you hate the character if you're not prone to liking Man Pain.
b). Metanarrative form: Wherein the writers decide that the suffering/pain of the Male hero is a lot more important than the suffering of others, which is ignored/pushed back by the narrative. This will make you hate the writers, while still possibly liking the character.
ETA: It seems from the comments that some people are attributing the term "manpain" to me. This is not the case. It's a fandom term that already exists and is used to refer to a specific type of character arc involving brooding male heroes with lots of angst and suffering - often over a refrigerated woman - that many fans find appealing. This is just my personal/critical definition of the term and the outlining of the metanarrative forces behind the phenomenon. :)
So, I've been thinking about Man Pain, what exactly IS it, its awesome power to make me hate a character like I never thought possible, how narratives view women's pain vs. men's pain, and do women have the same kind of pain? And I have thoughts. :)
Man pain is often the fastest way to turn me off of something, but I don't think I quite realized *exactly* what man pain was until I had to watch a performance of Sophocles' "Elektra," and while watching, I thought to myself, "Oh, wow, Elektra has a lot of man pain." Elektra, of course, is a girl, which made me realize that Man Pain isn't just...pain or suffering that men undergo, but a very SPECIFIC type of pain, which is a lot more common to see in men than in women. It occurs to me that not ALL men's pain is Man Pain, which I consider to be a very specific type of fictional pain that is privileged over other sufferings/tragedies. Possibly, it's easier to notice and define when it shows up in women (for people who don't generally notice Man Pain)? Because fiction hasn't desensitized us to it by giving it to us over and over. More importantly, narratives are aware of it more when it shows up in women and it's not treated like Universal Pain.
Elektra's biggest conflict is along the lines of Hamlet's: her mother killed her father and took a lover, while declaring herself to be the queen of the kingdom, and she claims that Klytemnestra mistreats her and is evil. People familiar with the backstory, of course, know that Klytemnestra killed her husband for very, very good reasons (like the fact that he literally sacrificed their daughter to the gods in order to win a war), but Elektra refuses to see her mother's side of the story at all, choosing to be loyal to the father she's never known and has idolized in her mind. During the story, any version of it, Klytemnestra also has major conflict in terms of dealing with her children hating her when she did it all for them to begin with, has to deal with a kingdom not used to having a woman in charge, and has to deal with the conflict between the loyalties she owes to different people. When Klytemnestra attempts to explain this to Elektra, her response is to completely stop listening once Klytemnestra admits to having killed Agamemnon because all Elektra can see is her own pain and suffering. Which, yeah: MAN PAIN.
So what is man pain? It's this tunnel-vision, narrow-minded view of one's own pain that completely overlooks and ignores how others suffer or might even suffer *more* because of the same tragedies. Elektra's entire conflict is about hating her mother, and all she can see is her own suffering, a lot of which is based on things she perceives to be true and based on having omitted important parts of the story. And her mother? Klytemnestra has actual conflict, actual suffering, and actual issues all of which surpass Elektra's, but she can't see that because she's so focused on her own issues.
Fictional men do this. Often. More importantly, narrative pov does this by choosing to focus on men's suffering (at the expense of others'), which always makes me go, "Hmm, but what about the women?" And it's not always the women who get overlooked in this kind of storytelling, but even lesser POV characters. One good example is all the movies where a white person helps people of color make some civil right achievement, and the focus is often on how HARD it is for the white people to go against their own to help these people out, ignoring the MUCH GREATER suffering of people who have never *had* the privilege of that choice.
A more specific example of man pain is given to us on Buffy in the above-quoted immortal words of Cordelia Chase: "This one time I hit a girl with my car. It was the most traumatic experience of my life and she kept trying to make it about HER leg. As if my pain meant nothing." <3
It's...easier to provide examples with women? Because we're supposed to find what Cordelia is saying funny, and OMG, it does make me love her harder. But the narrative is also poking fun at her. Likewise, Sophocles' "Elektra" gives Klytemnestra a very clear narrative voice that, if you're paying attention and familiar with the background story, makes you question the things Elektra is saying, makes you question her sanity for having made so big a deal out of something that shouldn't have affected her this much. As I said before, fiction is more aware of this when it does this with women.
Now, fiction does this with men ALL THE FREAKING TIME. But it's not poking fun at them, and it's certainly not wanting you to question their right to suffer the most and make everyone's issues all about themselves. Because it's all justified. Because all our narratives are male-centric. Because man pain, in fact, is UNIVERSAL PAIN. And women's pain is always...gendered, and often portrayed as excessive bitching/whining. And because fiction does it so much with men without seeing issues with it, it's sometimes harder to point out, but the problem becomes easier to spot once compared to how fiction and fandom treat women in similar situations.
And not surprisingly, fandom does this, privileges men's suffering over the women's. There was a discussion of Jean's constant Phoenix issues recently, and someone chose to talk about how hard it was on Scott, and how much he had suffered. Because the pain he has to suffer when his wife is constantly being possessed by a god-like entity is somehow more important than the constant and consistent identity issues and loss-of-self issues and the constant dying and resurrections and all the readjusting that comes with that that Jean has had to suffer for a decade? But somehow, the fact that poor Jean has to go through all of this...justifies Scott cheating on her! How dare their life together be more about HER pain than his? He shouldn't have to stand for that! Oh, fandom.
When "Merlin" first aired, I had plans to watch it, if only because my life-long Arthurian OTP of Morgaine/Arthur is vaguely canon, but from everything I have read, it's all about Man Pain, in terms of the focus on the dominant religion/group and completely disregarding the very justified reasons the Lady of the Lake has for her vendetta against Uther. And while there have been a lot of complaints about how all the women are evil...I sort of love evil women, so that alone might not have been an issue for me? But evil women that the narrative feels the need to punish while valuing the Man Pain of their oppressors? Um, no. A world of no. See, Sinbad does the Evil Sorceress thing so very well with Rumina, and she never gets punished for being evil, so she just...makes me happy instead of inspiring rage.
The major reason that Adama *never* appealed to me from the get-go, and despite the fact that I loved Roslin like I love Emma Frost, and given my tendency to ship my OTCs with EVERYONE, I never, ever liked Roslin/Adama for even a single second, was that Adama had some of the most epic (and epically HATEFUL) Man Pain in the recent years on TV. Boomer turning evil and trying to possibly doom the entire human race? All. About. Adama. I mean, seriously. His pain? More important than the possible extinction of the human race. It's *more* important for him to get his revenge than it is for humanity to survive. And people *love* this character. Certain people turning out to be Cylons? No one cares about how this affects humanity! And there's just no reason at all to worry about Tigh's own identity crisis in this. It's all about how much pain it causes ADAMA. And how he's suffered betrayal YET AGAIN. And Kara having a breakdown? Also about how she's betraying him! Who cares about what she's going through? Not Adama! Aside from the character choices that emphasize his man pain, the narrative does this, too. One major example is how the narrative sees Roslin's suffering all in the light of how it affects ADAMA in the last season. And this was the final straw. I...actually can't decide if I hate Adama more or Tyrol. But it's a tough call.
But fandom apparently loves Man Pain because look at its love affair with Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. It's hard to think of a character I dislike more for narrative reasons in Jossverse? (I hate Spike, Xander, and Topher all more, but for metanarrative reasons.) Where to start with his Man Pain? It likely started with his first appearance and the events of Buffy season three, but somehow, the fact that poor Faith was going through epic issues was all about how *he* had failed as a Watcher. Because somehow, the personal guilt of having failed at his job was more epic and important than the personal suffering of going through a mental breakdown, alienation, and loss of purpose/destiny/self/friends that Faith was going through. (I don't think the narrative thinks it's more important at this point, but Wesley certainly does. Thus, narrative hatred and not metanarrative hatred.) And then there was the epic Man Pain arc he got after Connor was taken to another dimension. Because losing his friends and purpose for reasons that were *entirely* based in his own issues and stupidity was more painful/important than Angel losing his child and going through epic betrayal all because of Wesley. And then the narrative was totally okay with Wesley torturing Justine because his MAN PAIN justified torturing women. Just like how his earlier Man Pain justified completely betraying Faith's and everyone else's trust. And not only did the writers think that all of this drama and suffering made Wesley more interesting than he had ever been before, but the fandom was happily all over it.
And the worse part is that I actually get why my friends who love Wesley love him? I don't agree with it at all, but I can understand how metanarratives have conditioned them to value this narrative? And conditioned me to understand this? But I get into at least three arguments a month with someone saying, "I just can't understand how you can love Emma Frost/Faith/Kara Thrace/etc." Because heaven forbid that narratives ever focus on women's suffering. And I feel that a major criticism of Kara Thrace as a character (besides people slutshaming her and seeing her sexuality as a reason to not like her) is that she has too much suffering and the narrative focuses too much on her angst. But seriously, people, does she really have more suffering than Adama? DOES ANYONE? But when Achilles gets a whole epic about his suffering, it's literary canon, but Kara, who has pretty much the *exact same issues,* gets painted as a bitchy drama-vampire by BSG fans regularly. Sometimes, even by the narrative itself! Because we're not *used* to seeing this much narrative focus on a woman with issues, but that's a huge reason I love her? Her issues are literally epic, and actually *don't* fall under Man Pain suffering. The narrative does have a tendency to focus on her issues more than others', sometimes, but rarely more than it values the issues of men within the narrative? So I can understand why you might prefer the relatively angst-free Laura Roslin to Kara Thrace, but I'll *never* understand why Tyrol or Adama is more interesting than Kara.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong here because I've repressed much of season 4.5 of BSG, but Kara's suffering in it is very...isolated and not seen as affecting things on a larger scale in terms of, at least, affecting people around her? When she's suffering, the narrative pretty much leaves her alone, and I sort of hate everyone for not being there for her, but the icing on the cake? The scene where Adama is breaking down over his BFF Tigh's betrayal and pulling everyone into his MAN PAIN. Because his suffering of his own issues with Cylons affecting how he views his STILL LOYAL BFF is so much more important than Kara losing her sense of self and the love of her life (don't argue ;) all in the same week. And I'm sure we see a lot of this with Athena and Helo, where the narrative is so much more concerned with his personal pain of being married to a Cylon than the much greater conflict Athena probably has to deal with, what with actually *being* the outsider.
On the other hand, I do sort of appreciate that within the narrative, no one really questions the validity of Kara's suffering? Because as mentioned before, when women suffer, the narrative often questions it. I think Buffy occasionally had Man Pain, which is pretty much given with a protagonist like her (most notably during the Faith arc.), but Buffy also got called out on it by people within the narrative. And fandom never got over Buffy's 'selfish-ness' and the most common criticism of Buffy has always been that she was too selfish/self-focused mostly coming from the fact that she complained about the suckage in her life. How, exactly? Buffy is pretty much the only epic hero or heroine I can think of who knowingly sacrificed the love of her life to save the world? During the TV era when Max Evans and John Critchton were both willing to sell out their planet/the entire Universe to save theirs. Also, pretty much everyone on Buffy has more Man Pain than Buffy, but Buffy's is unnatural because she's a GIRL, I suppose? Sigh. Nothing makes me love Buffy like fandom's constant hatred of her for being oh-so-selfish.
So fandom likes to complain about how it doesn't like women because they just don't get the narrative arcs/narrative focus that men do and OMG, their arcs are so gendered, but when women *do* get the arcs that fandom associates with MEN? They then get criticized for having too much focus, being too selfish, too bitchy, too aggressive, too PRESENT, INFLUENTIAL, and for driving the narrative arcs with their suffering/issues because only men are supposed to do that, duh.
So, really, fandom, WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE FOR YOU TO LIKE WOMEN? When they don't get enough focus, you don't like them because they're too much in the background, when they do get the focus, you complain about how they're getting too much focus. When they're in 'traditionally feminine' arcs, they're too weak and gendered, but when they're in more action oriented arcs, they're trying to be like men, and shouldn't they be more womanly? When they're bitches, you just don't like their morals, but how many of you shun the male characters for their lack of morals? When they're too nice, they're doormats and Mary Sues.
(and, sigh, I know I have had a problem with the last one in the past. I know that I find it harder to like women who are too stuck in the male gaze and a portrait of what patriarchy wants women to be like (Fred from Angel, as well as many of Joss' characters of that type, is a good example of this, where while I liked her in theory, the execution of her arcs often left me cold.) And often, the good girls have to grow on me as opposed to my instantly falling for the morally ambiguous fictional women, but...I consider this a flaw in my own narrative approach, and I DO constantly work at improving it by defending/writing about the characters I'm indifferent to so I can see what makes them interesting.) And I feel that the first step is admitting the problem? Because there isn't even a single one of us who hasn't been conditioned to respond in an offensive way to some narrative. But most people who don't like women would rather blame it on the type of characters they are (read: ALL TYPES) than admit that they have internalized misogyny/misogyny issues, that they've been conditioned to respond this way, and that there's a problem on THEIR end. But when you manage to find a problem with every single female character, or even every single female character of a certain type, and ESPECIALLY when you would like that same character if she were a man, hi, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.)
But more than that, our narratives have a problem? Because I'm so tired of having to watch John Proctor sacrifice himself and be a hero when I'm actually wondering about how much of an asshole he must've been to have inspired Abigail's epic, epic vendetta and how his poor wife is going to have to look after three children alone in a time when women didn't HAVE career options because he would rather be a hero and die than be a decent human being and actually take care of his family.
But "The Crucible" doesn't want to give me that story, because the Man Pain is more important. And I still have issues from high school when my teacher insisted I write a paper about John Proctor's Man Pain because she didn't want to read about how Abigail had good reasons for her vendetta against him. I mean, guys, this asshole was cheating on his wife with a very young girl who worked for them (and thus was his employee!), and somehow he gets to be the hero of the narrative and the poor girl he slept with, ruined, and dumped is going to be the villain? And his wife who has very good reasons to hate him is going to SUPPORT him, but his suffering is the greatest! Because fiction doesn't care about women. And it certainly doesn't care about their suffering unless they're actually dead, and even then, the pain is all about how much the MEN suffer because of their deaths.
I've never seen the last season of "Angel" and never really plan to. Before "Angel" got to that point, they had already gotten rid of all the interesting female characters, and the only way I was going to watch the show was if Lilah Morgan or Gwen Raiden were fairly recurring. But they replaced Lilah before the new season started, and when they were asked about bringing back Gwen Raiden, the writers said that Gwen would upstage Angel with the focus on her narrative arc, so they could not bring her back. But somehow, Spike wasn't going to upstage Angel by having the exact same issues/dilemma/superpowers?! And it occurs to me that Spike is ALLOWED to upstage Angel (why not, he upstaged Buffy on her own show), because of his Man Pain. But having Gwen would shift the focus away from the Man Pain and only men are allowed to make their issues that central to the narrative.
A few weeks ago, I had the misfortune to watch "Charlie Bartlett," which involved a rich, disturbed kid becoming a self-appointed psychiatrist for fellow students. He has a history of delinquent behavior, which has his single mother having to move him from school to school while running a company and the household. The mother is portrayed as being flaky and on tranquilizers, and the climax of the movie comes when he admits to a girl that he's always felt the need to be an adult because his mother apparently isn't one. And he feels the need to act out in school because he has to be an adult at home and take care of his mother. Which, just wow. Your mother is on freaking TRANQUILIZERS very likely because of YOUR delinquent behavior, and just shut the fuck up about your MAN PAIN. Also, hi, you're making it worse. Which is not to say that he doesn't have valid issues, but we constantly get this story in fiction of the absentee father that's idolized and the mother who actually stayed being vilified, often from the POV of the male child, and there's just no conception of this dynamic from her POV.
And then there was the critically acclaimed "500 Days of Summer," which consisted of nothing but a guy's Man Pain-ish POV on his relationship with a flighty girl, and we never get her POV, just his dressing her up in his patriarchal meta-narratives. The problem is that no one questions this when coming from men. And do you know how many of our metanarratives are made up of just this sort of problematic stuff? I'm sure there are countless examples of this, and the fact that I can think of at least a dozen more just off the top of my head despite the fact that I avoid fiction with a very male-centric focus? Um, yeah.
Lastly, I leave you with this, a definition of Man Pain:
Man Pain.
(n).
1). an all-encompassing, egocentric suffering that disallows focus on anything else but the pain.
2). tunnel vision focus on one's own pain and disregard/lack of understanding for the suffering of others. Most often experienced by fictional men.
We see this in two forms:
a). Narrative form: Wherein the hero is focused on his pain and ways to alleviate or wallow in it, often at the expense of the suffering of others. This comes from the character's own issues and is likely to make you hate the character if you're not prone to liking Man Pain.
b). Metanarrative form: Wherein the writers decide that the suffering/pain of the Male hero is a lot more important than the suffering of others, which is ignored/pushed back by the narrative. This will make you hate the writers, while still possibly liking the character.
ETA: It seems from the comments that some people are attributing the term "manpain" to me. This is not the case. It's a fandom term that already exists and is used to refer to a specific type of character arc involving brooding male heroes with lots of angst and suffering - often over a refrigerated woman - that many fans find appealing. This is just my personal/critical definition of the term and the outlining of the metanarrative forces behind the phenomenon. :)