One Woman in the Justice League
Just one woman, maybe two, in a team or group of men.
Also watch Jimmy Kimmel's "Muscle Man' superhero skit - "I'm the girly one"
The Avengers:
In Marvel Comics:
"Labeled "Earth's Mightiest Heroes," the original Avengers consisted of Iron Man, Ant-Man, Hulk, Thor and the Wasp. Captain America was discovered trapped in ice in The Avengers issue #4, and joined the group after they revived him."
5 / 6 original members are male. Only one is female.
Modern films (MCU):
The original 6 Avengers were Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, and Black Widow.
Again, 5 / 6 original members are male. Only one is female.
Justice League
In DC comics:
"The Justice League originally consisted of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and Aquaman"
6 / 7 original members are male. Only one is female.
In modern films (DCEU):
The members were/are Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Cyborg. (+ introducing Martian Manhunter (in Zack Snyder's Justice League director's cut))
5 / 6 main members in both versions of the Justice League film are male, with appearances by a 7th member in the director's cut who is also male. Only one member is female.
The Umbrella Academy (comics and show)
7 members:
- Luther (Number One / Spaceboy)
- Diego (Number Two / The Kraken)
- Allison (Number Three / The Rumor)
- Klaus (Number Four / The Séance)
- Five (Number Five / The Boy)
- Ben (Number Six / The Horror)
- Vanya (Number Seven / The White Violin) Later becomes known as Viktor and nonbinary in the television adaptation after Elliot Page's transition but that's not really relevant to this.
Here, 5 / 7 original members are male. Only two are female. Only slightly better than the other more famous superhero teams, and they had to add another member (compared to Avengers' 6 members) to improve the ratio (maybe executives still demanded to have 5 males).
Now let's look at some sitcoms and other stories.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
4 males, and 1 female slightly less prominent character who is abused constantly. The show claims to be politically aware and satirical but gets away with a lot of misogynistic comedy, tbh, that I'm willing to bet a lot of people are finding funny for the wrong reasons.
Community:
Jeff, Britta, Abed, Troy, Annie, Pierce, Shirley. This one is a little better, 3/7 are female. Notice it's always more males though, they never let it become more than 50% female, or else then it's a "chick flick" or a "female team up" or "gender flipped" story. And of course the main character, and the leading few characters, are almost always male or mostly male.
Stranger Things:
Main original group of kids consisted of: Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas, and El (Eleven). 1 original female member, who is comparable to an alien and even plays the role of E.T. in direct homage. When they added Max, I saw people complaining that although they liked her, there should be only one female member. 🤦
Why is it 'iconic' to have only one female in a group of males? Does that just mean it's the tradition, the way it's always been? Can't we change that? Is it so that all the men can have a chance with the one girl, or so the males can always dominate the discussion with their use of force and manliness? Or so that whenever the team saves the day, it's mostly a bunch of men doing it, but with 'a little help' from a female/a few females (at most), too!
It's so fucked up and disgusting to me I've realised. And men don't seem to care. I'm a male and this is really disturbing to me now that I've woken up to it. How do women feel about this? Am I overreacting?
It's because they're used to male perspective being the default focal lense for all media they consume. Male gaze is more about perspective than it is about aesthetics, something that has seemingly failed to translate into current online discourse.
In essence, all media in a genre they deem belongs to them must see them as their primary audience and must reinforce the perspective they feel is theirs. It's a kind of patriarchal social egocentrism. Women can exist in those pieces of media, but they have to be defined in relation to a male perspective. This can be a male character within the same work, or it can even be the audience itself by presuming the audience is male.
It's been so pervasive throughout media over the years that they think of this as being "just how media is". When media deviates in really any way that media becomes the aberration of the norm. It can be as simple as one of the female characters having a side plot about her that doesn't involve any of the men, or a female character who isn't sexually appealing to what the current male psyche desires. The media in question becomes inherently an act of political activism. A transgression.
It's notable that media from genres deemed not "belonging to the male perspective" is not judged the same way. Men do not become outraged at chick flicks or romcoms or romance novels. They don't become outraged at drama TV shows made for women about women. Because those things are socially permitted to exist outside of men's perspectives. It's usually seen as unique when a man enjoys media that has a female perspective. It's assumed that he won't. This essentially means that female perspectives in genres they do see as belonging to them comes across as an explicit attack on them. They avoid the female perspective as much as possible, they denigrate it and demean/belittle it constantly. They do not want to be forced to see the female perspective and will actively resist it.
There's lots of examples that go beyond this. Lots of media over the past hundred years has broken the rules and been lauded instead of denigrated. But we live in a time where an organized effort exists specifically to promote patriarchal thinking among men and those efforts mean that more scrutiny is being applied to this than ever before. There are entire content engines driving constantly to produce as much patriarchal outrage content as possible, all the time. And it works.
These problems existed long, long before the modern far-right movement started. It's partly why it works so well. This male egotism in media existed before, and less resistance to it also used to exist. That change in social atmosphere means that men can be manipulated into further and further misogynistic beliefs. All it takes is dogwhistles and a loud, angry, entitled male gamer, and you can radicalize thousands of people into misogyny. And they will repeat that cycle with more or less any boy or man they know.
To make a long story short, anxiety about their perspective not being the default in their favorite genres of media presents a great opportunity to turn young men into fascists. The far right has capitalized on this, and that's why you see so much outrage about it online. It's also likely that algorithms have picked up on you being male and will probably show you more of this exact type of outrage content.
I'm sorry you've written so much here I want to underscore and shout to the heavens, yet there is so much and I fear I won't do it justice. Fascism is on the rise, and young men-- just as last time--are carrying it forward. Misogyny has become an assumed character trait in huge swaths of men, to the point you see insane arguments online about how men 'have it harder' than the gender held in captivity less than a lifetime ago. It wasn't until the 1960's in Vancouver, BC that women could get a loan without a man co-signing (and it was a credit union, not even a large bank.) I grew up and lived as a male, white, for over 40 years, and right now is on par, if not worse in many cases, than it was in the 90's. Men now rail at the idea they can't always be 'the default.' That the reason for these pronoun-forward changes is because it's always been man-first, from not even bothering to test drugs on women to 'room temperature' being what a bunch of middle aged white men, such as myself, find comfortable. To men being the vast majority of main characters, to the goddamn Bechdel test being oh-so-relevant.
So I wanted to add a quote about just how long this has existed, and the sheer length of fight women have had just to exist unchained. I have not gone through the fight you have, yet I hope you'll allow me at your side.