The boys and it how it handles male assault and emasculation as a joke
After watching the boys, especially season 4 and season 5, something that has always stuck out to me is just how much the show makes the emasculation, humiliation, or straight up assault of its male characters into a joke. Ranging from the Tek Knight episode, to how it portrays MM, to S5 episode 1 where it literally portrays The Worm as a fat male without a dick for jokes.
What rlly throws me off is how the story treats the suffering, humiliation, or abuse of male characters- they do it in a way that intentionally emasculates them to try and portray them in a way that feels like the show makes you want to see them as lesser. The Worm is a good example as the show literally makes a nerdy male character, who is pushed around and made the butt of a Joke for being an NFSW writer, a fat nerdy male, and annoying to the girls all as a soft or justification for him to be forced into risking his life for Butcher’s plan. And the after that it goes as far as portraying him without a dick as a form of comedy.
It’s insane to me honestly thinking that a man’s lack of genitalia becomes a joke at his expense especially if you look at it the other way around. Not to mention he’s just genuinely portrayed as a disgusting caricature for being a nerdy out of shape guy- even though from the reverse it would spark outrage.
Hughie’s sexual assault was either played for laughs or him getting victim blamed by starlight,MM getting slapped around with a dick was literally played for jokes- yet for female characters their assault, stress, humiliation, seems to be taken incredibly seriously, especially by its producer.
I’m not sure how to word this but it honestly highlights a big issue in the boys but also a Hollywood/issue with a lot of modern left and feminism I’ve noticed as a trans man. Which is that in the struggle to more tastefully and respectfully handle female struggles and issues, and address SA, so much of the time male issues are overlooked or men are often straight up demonized- even by fellow men. Like a reverse of what you’d see back in the day when women would victim blame or shame other women.
It constantly feels like girls are being put in a pedestal or given value just for femininity whilst guys are being put down for essentially not being appealing, directly useful, or being seen as needing to have some redeeming quality just to warrant the respect of a basic human. In media and irl I see the need for a man to have some sort of skill, talent, or redeeming quality just for their issues or struggles to be recognized. It feels disgusting to see shows like Becky’s or so much of modern media and a lot of the left punching down on guys, especially outright body shaming people for stuff they can’t control like genialitia. It’s sad seeing alot of young guys grow up with that as the norm too.
I’m tired and I yapped a lot, but I just feel there’s smthing to be looked into when it comes to a rich guy like Kripke talking about wanting to Portray starlight’s assault as tastefully as possible then portraying Hughie’s assault and male character’s SA as a joke. Or just a lot of the out of touch virtue signaling that would portray a guy getting raped in a kinky way and then put a rich kid’s event like Coachella as smthing a facist government would share down in the same breath. It all feels very disingenuous