Manpain

Manpain, (alternative/original spelling "man pain"In the JPF&T-Journal of Popular Film and Television essay "Your Sister in St. Scully - An Electronic Community of Female Fans of The X-Files" by Sarah R. Wakefield, mentions that "The Abbey" uses the term "man pain" for "the trauma of being a male", but doesn't credit a specific member for coining the term. Published online: 02 Apr 2010.) sometimes also referred to as Mangst (from "Male angst"Mangst on tvtropes.com), is a term used by fans, particularly slash fans, encompassing a set of narrative devices that span literature, film and television. When a main character in a story (always male, generally white) is written with a particular kind of psychologically painful history that causes him to behave in specific ways, he is often said to have manpain. 
From Man Pain: Fact or Fiction?, a short X-Files essay by AdrianneFF in September 1999: 
Unfortunately, manpain sometimes goes hand in hand with harming women characters, or downplaying their suffering to concentrate on the main male protagonist's suffering, as highlighted in Urban Dictionary's definition:
==History==
mimesere from the X-Files fandom is anecdotally credited with either being the originator or a very early adopter of the term.From a by sinensiss: I think mimesere might get the credit for first use of "manpain". Her LJ is the first place I saw it, anyway, years ago. Published November 16, 2009, accessed November 13, 2022.). This adoption and popularization may have come through frequent conversations between mimesere and Jennifer_Oksana. Before its widespread adoption by slash fans, it was used by members of the OBSSE Mailing List to refer to Mulder for typical manpain behavior and because of a script note by Chris Carter that refers directly to "the pain of being a man".Baronessie: > Um...what's man painSomething CC talks about. From the Two Father's script: [snipped] It is a picture of nothing in particular that somehow says almost all there is to say about certain men of consequence. About the pain of being a man and the state of political savagery in which they must by necessity dwell. to alt.tv.x-files, October 24, 1999. Archived November 14, 2022.X-Phile Laura Witte used to offer some of these script differences on her The X-Files In-Jokes List, but was by FOX lawyers in April 2002 - 4 weeks before the last episode of the original series was aired.
This is one of the earliest still accessible uses of the term on the internet.
In 2009, mimesere memorably described manpain from the character's point of view as being, "I'm a dude, this is my pain, this is the REASON FOR ALL MY DOUCHITUDE, BEHOLD MY EPICNESS AND DESPAIR," adding, "sometimes it leads to sitting in the dark, brooding.", posted November 16, 2009 (Accessed 13 November 2022)
==Characteristics==
Some of the characteristics of manpain are generally held by fans to be:
* It's marked by excess. The tragedies of the character's history are extreme: his reaction to them is melodramatic: his pain is tacitly or explicitly acknowledged by the story and/or other characters to be worse than anyone else's.
* It is self-centered and inner-directed; events, especially traumatic events, in the narrative are typically viewed through the lens of how they emotionally impact the bearer of the manpain, who is often a figure of isolation.
* The character's painful history is frequently (although not universally) created by exploiting the death/suffering/loss of a woman, or children, or both. These women and children are often not characterized as having any importance in the narrative other than as plot devices to create manpain.
:(describing Mel Gibson's films):
* The manpain serves a dual function. It is an easy way for a creator to shorthand a male character as vulnerable, and therefore sympathetic. In addition, it is used to excuse a range of behaviors and actions that would otherwise be read as unsympathetically selfish, anti-social or violent.
==Fan Response to Manpain==
Fans' response to, and tolerance for, this kind of characterizations varies widely from character to character and fan to fan. The quality of the writing in the source material makes a difference to fan response. If the source is a ZV show or film, the skill of the actor can have a big impact on the fannish perception of his pain. Characters with manpain often inspire the full range of fannish response, from devotion to derision. Slash fans, who are a majority female, can be fairly sensitive to what they perceive as cynical exploitation by canon creator and assumptions about female audience response to male characters' suffering. 
All that said, it is undeniable that many of the characters who are most widely regarded as having manpain are also widely explored by fan creators, particularly in writing slash fanfiction. blacksquirrel notes about this phenomenon:
===Discussion===
==Meta Fanworks Exploring Manpain==
*Thingswithwings' vid, The Price , posted June 16, 2011 and her follow-up meta post some thoughts on manpain. um. many thoughts on manpain, actually... (login-locked) dated June 16, 2011, summarized by her as "Mr. Billowy Coat King of Pain" is an exposé on the manpain phenomenon, and culminates in a sequence of shots of characters crying a single perfect tear, with post-process tear-sparkle added on. The vid links to a meta post (login-locked) on the subject which attracted a great deal of conversation in the comments and in other posts.I want music videos for the shows that are only in my head. (login-locked), posted by recessional on June 16, 2011 (....I write too many men in various states of trauma, pain, loss, grief and responsibility to be anything but ambivalent about thingswithwings new manpain vid....I'm nowhere near as sure that by writing about men in pain, I won't wind up being dismissed as brainwashed by popular culture and [various negatives associated with writers of manpain here], and part of that is the slipperiness of the definition evidenced in the very vid itself and the deliberate inclusion of things that, while not actually being manpain, happen to look like it from one perspective or another. So I'm ambivalent. Not violently opposed or going "NO! IT'S WRONG AND EVIL AND THINGS ARE NEVER LIKE THAT!" Just . . . ambivalent. Mixed feelings."), posted by cesperanza on June 17. 2011; ("The Price is the missing link between Lum and Sisabet's Women's Work and Sisabet and Sweetestdrain's On the Prowl")
* graphics by tiarnanabhfainni, highlighting the women characters in Supernatural that were used to further Sam and Dean's manpain
* , a parody poster for a fake show satirizing slash fandom's taste in canon material. Created by sophistry on 28 March 2012. Followup comments by raphaellaskies, ceilingtheo, and olderthannetfic, including "#You say white cock and manpain like those are BAD things!"
==Additional Reading==
* - Kroki Refur's satirical essay on manpain featuring smiling images San and Dean Winchester. "Motor vehicles also causes them deep Psychic Pain, due to the similarities between the word “car” and the word “doom”..." and "Dean tends to get angsty around law-enforcement officials, who remind him of his father (who is dead from car-crash related Man Pain).." (August 2007)
*, by lotesse ("My problem with mainpain - and it is a problem, don't get me wrong - is that it actually minimizes the amount of pain available. ) for " lilliputian meta on manpain.") (June 16, 2011)
* by cupidsbow (July 28, 2013)
* by Lee Paige O'Brien (August 15, 2016)
* on terribleminds.com (Jul 10, 2016)
* by Sarah R. Wakefield, published online in Journal of Popular Film and Television 02 Apr 2010.
==Notes==
==References==
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