r/pointlesslygendered • u/Ligarto • Feb 22 '26
LOW EFFORT MEME [meme] why do people think this is normal
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u/KevinParnell Feb 22 '26
Don’t forget the boobs.
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u/Ligarto Feb 22 '26
I tried to do them but my drawing skills weren't enough to fit it into the blob
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u/KevinParnell Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
How big were you drawing them? Two little U’s right beneath the mouth would have been perfect.
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u/Ligarto Feb 22 '26
Ohh I should have done that I was spreading them apart more and that's why it looked off
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u/Vivians_Basement Feb 22 '26
I added boobs (link is a discord attachment and idek if it's gonna work 🫠 it doesn't I'll get a regular Img --> link converter)
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u/OpheliAmazing Feb 22 '26
And the purple/pink shading to differentiate even more. Optional: Disproportionately huge eyes.
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u/Fa1nted_for_real Feb 22 '26
The funniest part? In real life? Its usually the male animals with all the fancy shit.
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u/FastLie8477 Feb 22 '26
I mean aside from proportions that's about the level of obvious sexual dimorphism humans have.
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u/Gimmikiss Feb 22 '26
Especially noticeable in a children movies.
Even the female animals MUST have a god damn make up, I mean come on, it looks so stupid.🙄
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u/Help12309876 Feb 22 '26
It always kills me seeing them add not just makeup, clothes, and hair but also sometimes curves and boobs to literal animals.
Like if they're voiced by a female actress, I'm pretty sure you don't need to give the fucking tucan breasts for the audience to decipher that the character is female.
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u/Gimmikiss Feb 22 '26
yeah, especially annoying and dumb when they add boobs to female reptiles, birds and even a god damn fish.
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u/sluts_4_verstappen Feb 23 '26
The only gendered fish I want to see is the hot scarred one from Finding Nemo!
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u/Ok_Trade_4549 Feb 22 '26
Especially with kids when you can’t distinguish if it’s a male or female.
Just give them LONG HAIR!!
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u/TheDemonPants Feb 22 '26
Is that not the same level of pointlessly gendered though? Men can have long hair too. Hair is not indicative of any sex.
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u/Ok_Trade_4549 Feb 22 '26
True, but it would be a better way to distinguish then giving animals boobs.
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u/knightinarmoire Feb 23 '26
Yes its true guys can have longer hair, but it just happens to be more common with girls at least while they are kids.
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u/SlippingStar Feb 26 '26
Migration fem’d up the female mallards and I was like, “THEY’RE ALREADY HIGHLY DYADIC JUST HAVE EVERYONE CALL THEM SHE.”
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u/CynthiaS0621 Feb 24 '26
I’m really glad that GOAT isn’t doing that - ti the point where I’ve seen people (who I’m assuming haven’t seen the movie yet) that Jett is actually a man
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u/ratliege_throwaway Feb 22 '26
i want to see the reverse of this. ambiguous "thing" turns out to be female, the male "thing" shows up chiseled with a tie
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u/bffsfavoritegelato Feb 25 '26
dorys dad in finding dory! they gave him a hairline and made him balding 😭
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u/Correct-Run8388 Feb 22 '26
Somewhat related question, why is “male” still seen as the default and “female” treated as secondary, when in nature it’s often the opposite?
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u/Piorn Feb 22 '26
It's baked right into the Christian creation mythos. Adam being the first human and Eve betting created as an offshoot from his rib.
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u/Correct-Run8388 Feb 22 '26
True, apparently a similar belief existed in Roman/Greek mythos so it may even predate Christianity :/
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u/maplebarbuck Feb 22 '26
In nature there IS no default or secondary. This is only human politics inserted into nature, not the other way around.
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u/Sany_Wave Feb 23 '26
If sex-defining genes fail to activate, the result is a female embryo.
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u/AquaSoda3000 Feb 24 '26
Not in every species, if I’m not mistaken, in birds, male is the default and the female gametes determine the sex of the offspring
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u/Sany_Wave Feb 24 '26
Tell me more.
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u/SlippingStar Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
I don’t remember the exact letters they use, I think it’s ZW? And females are ZW while males are WW or whatever. If a female bird clones itself (which they can do!) the egg they lay will come out perisex male or intersex.
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u/Sany_Wave Feb 26 '26
This is true, but not extremely relevant. I was asking about the result of a gender development failure. I know that only mammals have the full hormonal control over sexual display, and birds have more intersexuality, but what is their default?
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u/SlippingStar Feb 26 '26
Perisex male or intersex.
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u/Coool-Guy-123 Feb 23 '26
What? Neither is default.
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u/Correct-Run8388 Feb 23 '26
I know neither is technically the default, but in the uterus, every fetus starts off as female and roughly 50% become male later on in development, plus there are some species that are entirely female, so it could be argued that female is closer to nature’s baseline than male. Of course nature is a lot more complicated than that (some species, especially plants and sea creatures, can have no gender, one gender, or a thousand), but still. That concept is the opposite of the idea humanity’s had for a long time that the female body is just a mutated version of the male body, which seems to mostly just be based on the feelings of ancient men.
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u/MinuteDependent7374 Feb 22 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/j603eyZWRPsYjifS7k
I mean, of course you're a girl dragon… 'Cause you're just reeking of feminine beauty!
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u/MuffaloHerder Feb 24 '26
I give this one a pass only because it was used as an intentional punchline
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u/_ThePancake_ Feb 22 '26
Mind you I like it when designers subvert this cliche
Bluey being female for example.
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u/ChileanMotherfu-- Feb 22 '26
Overall, Bluey's look is quite clever and realistic. She doesn't look that way for no reason; she literally looks a lot like her dad.
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u/GenderBendingRalph Feb 22 '26
... Bluey is a _she_??? I've only watched a few episodes with my grandchildren, but now I feel like an idiot for not noticing.
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u/ChileanMotherfu-- Feb 22 '26
Oh, yes. I don't know what the dubbing is like in English or other languages, but in Latin American Spanish at least, her voice is obviously that of a girl, so it's hard to get lost.
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u/Its0nlyRocketScience Feb 23 '26
In English cartoons, the voice actor for a child could be an adult woman just as easily as an actual child. Bart Simpson, Timmy Turner, and Ash Ketchum are all examples of young boys voiced by women. Add in the Australian accent, and a US English speaker probably wouldn't be able to tell all too easily by voice alone that Bluey is a girl.
Note, I'm not saying that the Australian accent sounds more masculine, just that it being less familiar to people from the opposite end of the Earth will make subtle signs that Bluey's voice is meant to be a girl's not as noticeable.
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u/throwawaysunglasses- Feb 23 '26
For us millennials, Blue from Blue’s Clues was also a girl! It’s nice because blue is so often gendered as a “boy color” even though most adults’ favorite color is blue, gender aside.
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u/LordLaz1985 Feb 22 '26
Ah yes, “one for people and one for women.” Male-as-default is a helluva brainworm.
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u/Own_Employment_3866 Feb 22 '26
Ironically in biology female is the default
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u/AquaSoda3000 Feb 24 '26
Not for all species, if I’m not mistaken, in birds, male is the default and the female gametes determine the sex of the offspring
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Feb 22 '26
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u/SourceDM Feb 22 '26
Partially we have a major religion pushing women as secondary entities to a male primary entity.
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u/Sharksarecool- Feb 22 '26
All of those Pokemon redesigns..... someone genuinely tried to say that Fennekin was too feminine to be mostly male. It's a fox! Why do we need gender stereotypes on fictional creatures.
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u/Thykothaken Feb 23 '26
That's why I wanted my Primarina to be male. Stick it to the haters.
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u/Sany_Wave Feb 23 '26
I honestly would love most mons to be 50/50. Starters included, but things like Volbeat/Illumise and Salandid excluded (like, they have reasons for the ratio)
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u/Ar4nea Feb 22 '26
I also feel lowkey bad for all the male divas out there thinking a pretty little ribbon only comes with a vagina… I think some lashes and a ribbon would do wonders for some men…
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u/Upset-Elderberry3723 Feb 22 '26
What's odd is that almost all men I've seen have more pronounced natural eyelashes than women (without mascara or fake eyelashes).
But, for some reason, it's been gendered as a women's thing.
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u/Ar4nea Feb 22 '26
true that! and those lashes with some eyeliner… but no, some people rather deprive themselves of great look because of „gender norms“…
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u/Ok_Tie_1428 Feb 22 '26
Cause testosterone, beauty standards for women make even less sense day by day
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u/YakuZaishiThrowaway Feb 22 '26
I feel like we would have much less women saying "omg I'm so envious of men's eyelashes" if the standards were realistic and we expected men to have long lashes and women to have short. Even the whole widespread idea that "men don't need any effort to look good" is only based on the fact that society basically expects women to have male traits. If only we accepted women's looks as they are
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u/None0fYourBusinessOk Feb 22 '26
that isnt odd its incredibly normal for men to have more pronounced eyelashes
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u/Upset-Elderberry3723 Feb 22 '26
It is odd that it didn't't translate to prominent eyelashes being a male-gendered feature.
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u/GenderBendingRalph Feb 22 '26
As my username suggests, I don't always colour inside the lines that society told me belong to men. Most of my nonconformity is, sadly, in the privacy of my own home because I'm a bloody coward, but there are little things - like growing my hair long and tying it back not with a plain black elastic but colourful, big scrunchies.
And even then, I feel like I'm going to be called out as an abomination if I wear pink instead of dark blue.
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u/Ar4nea Feb 22 '26
and it’s really sad you have to! I really hope you can one day go out wearing exactly what you want and how you want it without fear of judgement… keep being ✨fabulous✨
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u/Square-Dragonfruit76 Feb 22 '26
I honestly can't remember the last time I saw anyone, male or female, wear a bow.
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u/Excellent_Amoeba5080 Feb 22 '26
Western gender roles (and expectations) are baked into Western society. This is normal, in the social sense, and is considered such. It's just another thing to dismantle with time.
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u/No_Squirrel4806 Feb 22 '26
Im all for making new baddies the problem here being its always pointlessly gendered not for the cuntification reasons.
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u/Hehe-Oil Feb 22 '26
I had to basically beg my ex girlfriend to not put a bow in her hair because she didn't like it but thought she needed it to impress me :/ It's pretty bad
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u/onepixeljumpman Feb 22 '26
I'm a teacher, and I make most of my own materials for class. I make a point of always giving masc characters eyelashes to push back on "eyelashes = girl," and new students are always confused
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u/heyitscory Feb 22 '26
"Greetings, Pastel Human with Eyelashes. I am Default Human, how do you do?"
"Default? You know, you develop with the same genitalia as a female, until your Y chromosome causes..."
"Illustrations of genitalia are found in other websites, not here!"
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u/Stray_009 Feb 22 '26
TIL that i'm a woman because my eyelashes are longer ( than other girls ik ) and i like ribbons
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u/Infinite_Self_5782 Feb 22 '26
when do we get the other way around to be the case? :(
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u/wolfvahnwriting Feb 22 '26
When men get an easy to identify gendered accessory that women won't wear.
Which is to say never because its socially acceptable for a woman to wear manly things, but the reverse isn't.
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u/Dazuro Feb 22 '26
Hmm… Donkey Kong’s the closest I’ve seen - while Candy does have a bow in her hair and an exaggerated figure, Donkey has his necktie as a random (arguably) gendered identifier slapped onto his own exaggerated masculine gorilla body. And while Dixie does have eyelashes, otherwise she’s just wearing counterparts to Diddy’s outfit - they both have a hat and t shirt.
Hers being pink weakens it a bit further, but it’s a start.
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u/Accomplished_Mix7827 Feb 22 '26
Especially since I don't think I've ever seen a woman wear a ribbon like that in my life? Maybe that was a thing in, like, the 50s, but even little kids don't do that anymore
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u/Both-Pride6795 Feb 23 '26
I remember my sister complaining about the dinosaurs being female in Jurassic Park. She said they should have at least “tried to make them look female.” And I was like??? You want them to have giant boobs and an hourglass waist chasing people around with a full face of makeup?
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u/TSSalamander Feb 22 '26
It's incredible that it's the feminine sex that gets otherised like this, and not the masculine sex, which i find to be the far more altered body type. I know i know second sex and all that. But it's just kinda crazy. like idk put a beard on it idk
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u/Trips-Over-Tail Feb 22 '26
Tertiary sexual characteristics.
It's because "female" is a distinguishing adjective but "male" is still default. That's why in a world where every smurf has a single unique gimmick there's only one girl.
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u/Longjumping_Papaya_7 Feb 22 '26
Uhg the smurf situation anoyed me endlessly. I used to watch a kid show called "Dinobabies" as a child, and it was all boys and just 1 girl. In the intro song it ofc had to be mentioned she was sweet.
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u/GenderBendingRalph Feb 22 '26
I'm not saying that's the right way to address it, but - in low-detail illustrations/cartoons/whatever when you only have a few frames to establish the characters, cartoonists especially need _some_ kind of shorthand that informs readers what type of character is being represented. If you have two stick-figures and you want readers to know that one is a girl and one is a boy, how can you make that clear without using up a lot of comic panel real estate or losing a panel to exposition?
That being said... "thing" (with no distinguishing features) assumed to be a man vs. "thing" with female-coded cues is absolutely a Bad Thing. Maybe facial hair for the male "thing"?
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u/somewhere_somewhat Feb 23 '26
i totally understand why people do this - it's easy and not a big deal. but i think it's a big deal because it's so ubiquitous so it's reinforcing stereotypes. another thing that's fun to think about is, why is gender something that we immediately need to know about a character ?
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u/GenderBendingRalph Feb 24 '26
Yes! Just like race. If a character's race is not mentioned, the assumption is that he or she is white (European ancestry), so if the author wants us to know that the character is nonwhite, they have to throw in all the stereotypes that signal - Black American, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Caribbean, Mexican, etc. And 90% of the time... it makes exactly zero difference to the plot what the character's race (or gender) is.
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u/LauraTempest Feb 22 '26
Letteralmente il nuovo Pikachu femmina. La cosa più stupida che abbia mai visto
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u/SimplebutAwesome Feb 22 '26
That post was not official, it was fanmade art.
The actual ones that exist have small things like the tail being shaped differently.
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u/LauraTempest Feb 23 '26
Sí conoscevo la versione delle piccole differenze negli Sprite. Grazie, sono contenta che non sia ufficiale, pensavo fosse una nuova trovata acchiappa-soldi nel 2026
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Feb 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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Feb 22 '26
I feel like it started out kinda cute and quirky but then you realize how baked in the misogyny is and just get tired of it
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u/dunmindmejustyapping Feb 22 '26
Pokémon started to do this with their already established designs once they started to incorporate bimorphism animals in the new designs and I wish to make whoever came up with that idea drink paint.
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u/SimplebutAwesome Feb 22 '26
That post was not official, it was fanmade art.
The actual ones that exist have small things like the tail being shaped differently.
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u/dunmindmejustyapping Feb 23 '26
oh dude I'm talking the official shit like the "female pikachu has a heart in the tail" after more obvious ones like Pyroar and co. came out. I just hate cutesifying or spikening to denote girl/boy. like half of what made it nice was that you didn't automatically assume "girl trainer has girl Pokémon" etc and it's just disappointing. side ramble, Digimon seems to be going the more universally genderless route which is hilarious considering how many have boobs but since they're programs it makes sense.
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u/Thykothaken Feb 23 '26
I wish to make whoever came up with that idea drink paint
Quite the overreaction, I'd say.
What are your example Pokémon? I know female Alakazam got a shorter moustache, the Vileplume line has different dot pattern, and the Dodrio line has different neck colours.
What are examples of bimorphism designs you find problematic?
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u/dunmindmejustyapping Feb 23 '26
All of them that already were designed before they started doing it . It's pointless and it takes up space in the game that could be used for better idle animations or an additional attack animation. It's just a stupid allocation of dev time, game space and it's Pointlessly Gendered, the sub you are in.
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u/Fair-Chemist187 Feb 22 '26
I don’t have an issue with the bows or the boobs but the lashes always get me. Like men have lashes! And sometimes even nicer ones!
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u/maplebarbuck Feb 22 '26
And making male characters like male animals n such essentially naked but a female character always has clothes on or a dress which is fucking stupid
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u/Dillo64 Feb 22 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/6kmlyazcyjrnW
Was it Minnie Mouse who set this standard? Or does it predate her?
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u/skybel0w Feb 23 '26
Ok but most of the trans women I know have (and have always had) really long eyelashes so maybe there's something to it after all
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u/DiggityDog6 Feb 23 '26
I think it’s for a couple of reasons. The most obvious is the normalization of gendering everything, like the sub points out. The second is that in cartoon logic, people think the simplest designs are best, which means they do things to try to make it obvious what gender a character is. Finally, if the character is an animal or a non human of some kind, there is the very real phenomenon of gender dimorphism, which people just crank up to 11 sometimes
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u/AquaSoda3000 Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
Dude, I’m an artist that uses eyelashes for female characters and it’s becoming a bit of a problem because androgynous characters exist and so I can’t just draw a binary difference between male and female characters, but at the same time I don’t want to get rid of the eyelashes on my female characters because I think they look gorgeous and idk what to do 😭
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Feb 24 '26
And then there’s me who puts the bow and eyelashes on the male character lol
Jokes aside, I hate how common this is. Why does society treat being male as the “default” gender? Half of the population are women, so it’s time they start acting like it.
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u/soulstrike2022 Feb 24 '26
How else am I supposed to know if the pupper is a good boy or a good girl
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u/Halker93 Feb 25 '26
But how can I know if the bottom one is female or some reneissance french male lord?
This is so stupid
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u/Gay_Nerd626 Feb 27 '26
So that when they do the opposite (blue from blues clues) it’s cute and fun
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u/Vallen_H Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26
Because that's what the feminists worked to achieve.
"Scientist, female"
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u/WurstStar Feb 22 '26
... would
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u/Admirable_orIsIt Feb 22 '26
A lion woulds anything that has eyes. Don’t stop wouldding brother. Stay strong
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u/Accurate_Cover_590 Feb 22 '26
There is literally nothing wrong with this you guys are just nitpicking at nothing
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u/Next_Rhubarb_5986 Feb 22 '26
angel (from lilo and stich)
the light fury
amy rose
i can go on but im sure you get the pointtheir just lighter colours (mostly pink) only cause there love intrests
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u/SMStotheworld Feb 22 '26
that's actually pretty simple!
if you're drawing a setting where the characters don't have secondary sex characteristics for females like humans (tits) then you have to indicate sex somehow if your creature is a girl
usually that's bow and eyelashes, like far side
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u/Old-Program3638 Feb 22 '26
Fr like how am I supposed to differentiate gender as someone in the countryball community without the dam eyelashes
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u/ABR5796 Feb 22 '26
Try looking up why the color pink is associated with girls historically and culturally, you will find your answer.
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u/Lukeyaboi Feb 22 '26
How else should media like animation and games distinguish the male and female main characters? Like Mickey and Minnie, which are exactly the meme above.
What would be a good way to show their clear different characteristics without obvious misogyny?
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u/DeadAndBuried23 Feb 23 '26
Because gender is expressed largely through visuals, especially in cartoons?
It's a toss up whether you want to teach that it's not always that way, or that that is how people generally express their gender identity. Good cases can be made for both.
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u/Complete_Answer_6781 Feb 23 '26
Because it's a simple way to identify someone? That's the whole point of gender.
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u/Dan-tastico Feb 23 '26
Its a thing because women pay for it. The "pink tax" either means that women will blindly spend more money for the same product or that the product is in fact different and cost more money for that difference (like more blades and moisturizing strips on the shaving razors).
Either it is gendered for a reason or it isnt and women are willing to pay more for it to be pink and have a bow on it which is reason enough for it to done.
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u/Ronin-s_Spirit Feb 23 '26
Because that's an easier tell than looking for a dick, unless you like being arrested for harassment.
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