Anyone who uses the term "sexism" straight is an "anti-elitist" (aka lazy spurious fuckwad) with political ambitions (ie won't admit it).

Before we begin, let's get two items straight :

A loser is one who doesn't manage to. It doesn't matter what, just as long as it's something, and someone somewhere doesn't manage to, that's it, you've got yourself a loser. End of fucking discussion!
• An idiot is one who doesn't get it. It doesn't matter what it is, just as long as it's something, and someone somewhere doesn't get it, that's it, you've got yourself an idiot. That's all it takes!

"Political corectness", in its post-1967ⁱ formulation as well as in its slightly more rabid contemporary forms, be those "identity politics" or "nth wave feminism" or "antifascism" or "LGBT-whatever", be they hashtagged blm or metoo or anything else, the whole collected pile of it is nothing more nor anything else besides a loose confederation of losers and idiots trying to get militant. That's all it is, a bunch of losers and idiots who figure it's much better to "organize", meaning whine until someone else comes along and smashes whatever it was they couldn't manage and didn't get.

This is because losers and idiots take their limitations seriously, and are dedicatedly myopic. From their limited point of view, the cheapest solution to the (universally human) problem of limits is if someone else came along and removed the standard every time some standard somewhere permits them to perceive their own limit. For instance : a five year old who's not tall enough to reach the doorknob whines until an adult drops whatever it was the adult was doing, comes over, opens the door (then presumably also closes it and gets back to their work).

Whatever it was the adult was doing is worth fifty five year olds, because none of them can ever do anything useful (sure, there's a putative present value of future potential, but this is a putative, not a factual) ; but from the five year old's (narrowly construed) point of view it was certainly cheaper to whine than to exert itself.

Then that five year old grows to be twenty-five or forty-five and... well ? Nothing substantial changed, why should blacks work their ass off so the natural perception of being black equals poor&stupid is changed, exactly the way it was built ? What, they should work to undo the damage their loser idiot forefathers did to heir skin color as a brand, while white people get to wallow in the bounties accumulated by their non-loser non-idiot forefathers temporarily overwhelming and silencing all the ever-abundant white idiots and losers ?! That'd be racism!!!!

So equipped, lettuce quote (from a nowhere that used to be a somewhere, before the losers & idiots ganged up on it) :

Certain ideals are expected to be embodied by male and female characters for them to be seen as attractive to the opposite sex. Sexy female characters are physically desirable; sexy male characters are strong and proactive. This is a consequence of Men Act, Women Are as applied to sex appeal: A woman's attractiveness is mostly due to her passive physical attributes, while a man's attractiveness is mostly a result of his behavior.

For female characters, passivity does not detract from their attractiveness. In extreme cases, female characters who are very active will be seen as undesirableⁱⁱ, or that they can only love a man stronger than themselves. Furthermore, a physically unattractive woman will always be unattractive regardless of how proactive she is. Male characters are viewed as less attractive if they are passive. In fact a dynamic evil man is more likely to be viewed as attractive than a decent but weak man. A physically unattractive man's dynamic qualities can also make him more attractive.

Some male characters who are physically attractive -- particularly in a "Pretty Boy" kind of way -- will be seen as weak, less than a man, or suspected of being gay. This holds doubly true if they spend time cultivating their attractiveness.

In summary, physical attractiveness only ever adds to a woman's sex appeal while being active may or may not detract. Whereas for men being proactive only ever adds to a man's sex appeal while being physically attractive may or may not add to his desirability.

These differing standards lead to the genders being held to equally damagingⁱⁱⁱ but different standards of attractiveness and have numerous Unfortunate Implications.

For women the implication is that your actions are irrelevant to your attractiveness to the opposite sex. As long as you're beautiful, even if you're 105 lbs of useless deadweight or a complete and utter bitch you're still desirable. And if you're not born beautiful enough, no matter what you do, Failure Is the Only Option for you.

The unfortunate implications for men are that men are shallow and only after one thing, thus they don't care if a woman is a dynamic, active character, and that women have no worth beyond their looks. Also, male characters will end up pulling more than their own weight, emotionally and physically, in works where this trope is in effect.

And, just like the beauty ideal puts incredible pressure on women to be beautiful, the strength ideal puts incredible pressure on men to judge themselves against an impossible standard^iv of stoicism, willpower and physical strength. These pressures have not received as much press or attention on their effects on men and boys, partially due to the idea that men aren't as emotionally fragile as women, that things that affect women are worse than things that affect men. This in turn enforces another Double Standard: That women must be defended from the evil media, while men should be able to just shrug it off.

If your takeaway from that was that "standards bad, mmkay"... congrats, the losers win and the idiots get what they wanted!

1. Keks, where did you think it started? "We don't wanna do anything, or understand anything, we just wanna sit an' wank" aka "Summer of Love". Yeah, right, that's it.

   Shame on you for "having been there". [↩]

2. This is a drastic misread of what's actually happening, but a misread well aligned with the raging erection of the anonymous author's confirmation bias. [↩]
3. Ask "damaging to what" and the answer's subconsciously ready (even if you flatter yourself with isolation from the sociosoup) : "their self-esteem". Because that's what matters, right ? [↩]
4. What exactly is so "impossible" about it ? Besides, of course, it being the only possible standard that makes life possible in the first place ?

   Oh, right, it's impossible for... the socialist state to co-exist with it ? O noes, why didn't you say so to begin with! Fascism all teh way, huh. [↩]