Do men break up for normal reasons?

[Karen El]

Don't you think dismissing the creative skills of 50% of the population to be overgeneralizing a little?

[zemo]

Don't you think dismissing the creative skills of 50% of the population to be overgeneralizing a little?

Oh no no no, I didn't say that, that would be stupid. I said that women are fewer in the areas I am interested in, and I have yet to encounter a living female author I really like (such as Agatha Christie). I am open-minded, though I will admit that at this point there might be a certain degree of observer bias involved. As an aside, I do like Planet Karen. I even got one of your strips downloaded because I thought the panel layout was brilliant. was one about a leaking roof, I believe. I follow a lot of webcomics with female creators. Just not books. And in tv shows, I mostly don't know.

As for why I don't like sex in my stories. Oversaturation. If I want to see sex, I'll just have to switch a few tv channels to see a woman performing felatio on a hot dog in order to sell a car insurance. I'm just sick of it.

Mind, this thread got derailed hard. I'd really like to know if there are some people that know of instances where a man ends a relationship with a woman for sane and non-douchey reasons...and not because of the woman trying to kill him, or such.

[Morrison_Lad]

Well, Angel and Buffy had to break up to save humanity. There's that.

[Dreg]

Women in sitcoms have boring reasons for breaking up with men, because they're usually guest stars rather than main characters and are therefor under no onus to be entertaining, colorful, or grow as people.

[ConnorHawke]

Women in sitcoms have boring reasons for breaking up with men, because they're usually guest stars rather than main characters and are therefor under no onus to be entertaining, colorful, or grow as people.

That's not really accurate.

There are countless women in sitcoms who are the either the main character/s or who carry the show as much as a male character (like with Friends, Mad About You, Will & Grace).

[Dreg]

That's not really accurate.

There are countless women in sitcoms who are the either the main character/s or who carry the show as much as a male character (like with Friends, Mad About You, Will & Grace).

In Mad About You, there was no dating because the main character was married, and in the instances you mention, there are usually much more colorful reasons for a break-up than "it's not working out," etc. Look at Seinfeld; Elaine's a main character and has had a wide range of bizarre reasons for breaking up with a man. In most cases when there's a generic reason for a woman breaking up with a man, I find it's because it's coming from a fairly generic character.

[Mark4myself]

In Mad About You, there was no dating because the main character was married, and in the instances you mention, there are usually much more colorful reasons for a break-up than "it's not working out," etc. Look at Seinfeld; Elaine's a main character and has had a wide range of bizarre reasons for breaking up with a man. In most cases when there's a generic reason for a woman breaking up with a man, I find it's because it's coming from a fairly generic character.

Seinfeld is a horrible example though since all the characters were so shallow they broke up with people for the most ridiculous reasons. It was part of the humor.

I find myself irritated at times with the shallowness of men represented in film and on TV. More often than not we are portrayed as being superficial and prone to cut off a relationship for a convenient inane reason. Women meanwhile are the opposite extreme being overly emotional and their relationships end due to disconnect. Men are superficial and women are overly emotional. This is "reality" as reflected back to us.

The truth is I know several women who have ended relationships for flimsy reasons and men who slowly realized despite their best efforts their partner and them were drifting too far apart. I also know men who are very superficial and broke off relationships for idiotic reasons while other female friends saw relationships devolve as they grew in different directions from their partner. So what we are given as portrayals of how the sexes operate are mere stereotypes catered to the extremes. Male writers think they know how women think and female writers think they know how men think. Some do but more often than not they simply don't. What we end up with are caricatures of each gender playing to the extremes in order to garner the biggest response amongst the audience.

[Karen El]

As for why I don't like sex in my stories. Oversaturation. If I want to see sex, I'll just have to switch a few tv channels to see a woman performing felatio on a hot dog in order to sell a car insurance. I'm just sick of it.

I'm with you on the sex thing. Sex is rarely well written, and the majority is hetero anyway, which bores me. And most lezzie sex seems to be written for guys, but at least it makes me laugh.

[stealthwise]

A good portion of the writing crew on Mad Men is female as well.

And the writing staff and directors of ...Married with Children was largely female at one point too, ironically.

[Morrison_Lad]

And the writing staff and directors of ...Married with Children was largely female at one point too, ironically.

I don't think that's ironic, at all. As someone who remembers the birth of the show vividly (along with the controversy), and still watches episodes now and then in the early morning on TBS, let's face it: Al was the ridiculous idiot of the show. The people who protested the show didn't seem to understand that things like "NO MA'AM" were showing how Neanderthal the men were, not how bad women were. Etc.

What I do find ironic, after all these years, is that the show was at its heart a very warm show about a family that, no matter what they said and what happened, stood up for each other at the end of the day. They just did it in the most vile, insulting manner.