: Re: Is the "hero guy saves girl" trope misogynistic? (Question about my hacker (hacking??) novel.) Just an FYI, I am a woman. Edward is a cyber spy and works with an organization named Vox Populi

@LarsenBagley300

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In general, if you can swap out a woman for a precious object and the story remains mostly unchanged, you should attempt a rewrite. The most important thing here is to give the character her own agency, try to avoid the trap of the "strong female character" where she has no significant flaws, and make damn sure she isn't just used to create "manpain".

S. L. Huang explains "manpain" very well in this blog post.

There's a fan term called “manpain” that fascinates me. It refers to the phenomenon of a media property that excessively and self-centeredly focuses on a male character's angst after tragic events happen to the people around him.

I would also advise that you make sure there's a good reason the kidnappers take his sister instead of him, instead of the usual ransom/sexist/"we're gonna hurt him by hurting his sister!" (again, manpain) reasoning. Perhaps a mix-up, or--since this is the digital world and the kidnappers may not necessarily know the real-life identity of their target--the kidnappers thought Lily was the infamous "hax0rb4be".

Good luck!

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