Active and Passive Male Characters

[Tyrantino]

I think I approached it almost like a PUA (that did not exist back then as far as I know) not in the sense that I was trying to rack up numbers but in the sense that I wanted to be good at making women I liked feel good, so I took a lot of pride in paying attention to the signals women sent and figuring out what they might like me to do next. Of course there must have been a selection effect because women who didn't appreciate a guy who took the initiative so much probably sent me signals to get lost, but I didn't have too much trouble finding women who appreciated a guy putting himself out there. One woman called it "leadership" which I thought was interesting; I'm not 100% on board with that but I understand what she meant. Like leading a woman in a dance.

I think that most women like men who make them feel good. It's so easy to understand, and still so difficult for many men to internalise...

Perhaps it is because the cases where women love to be abused are much more salient, but I have the feeling that this cliché actually represents a minority (although it's overrepresented in the literature).

 

[MillieDynamite]

Passive men can actively participate as long as they aren't expected to be the aggressor. I don't see a way to rape someone passively.

 

[WeShallUnclench]

To be real for a moment here, I would suspect the broad allure of passive pov characters, for all genders, is that there is zero responsibility. As @MillieDynamite said, you can't rape someone if you're not actually doing anything! You can't hurt others or embarrass yourself. You can't wonder whether or not you're doing it wrong or gonna get rejected, if you're not the one who's making the big decisions! Most people are a bit subby, around the edges.

But conversely, the most "sexy" characters for most readers in any story are those who DO take responsibility, fearlessly or overcoming their fear. Who DO make the effort and are willing to fight an uphill battle to win other people over. So much so that in fiction, even rapists, borderline rapists or at the very least very pushy characters can be sexy.

Of course the real connaisseur/euse insists that the sexy character must not just be assertive but also seductive, aka impress with their superior consent-generating skills. "Basically, Dance for me, and then I'll do Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down "
Note that on the flipside this is about the least sexy thing for most people who identify most with the designated "burden of action" character in the equation. (The latter on Lit tends to be the unicorn woman.)

To get REALLY real, there is the meta level that the author is ultimately the puppeteer playing all characters. So if you ask that the sexy character must be seductive, you are functionally asking the author to be seductive.
So what's easiest to write is stories à la "person 1 is very horny and person 2 goes along with it". Which again, for moral logistics purposes is easiest to write if you have active (cis) female vs passive (cis) male. Of course some authors may take the leap and just write the male as a rapist for the same convenience, disregarding the moral aspects. Let's not get into how some draw exactly the wrong conclusions from this when it comes to women's opinions about rape in the real world ("they secretly want it, look at the stories they write and read!").

To end on a more constructive note, the fact that even writing noncon/dubcon is an option shows that the bar is relatively low.
As a crutch, a shift in perspective of what you find "sexy" could help. The most "primitive" impulse for a writer is to say, "would I enjoy this, if this happened to me?" and build the story around that. Instead, one could focus on finding pleasure in empathy for audience and characters - "wouldn't it be sexy if that sexy character had something happen to her that she loves?".
As a crutch, you could thus write the male character defined (almost) entirely by his external actions - again, the bar is low - the way you write a tornado or a forest fire, no need to invest too much of yourself into him. And then leave all of the humanization, the internality, the experience to the (female) characters you are actually interested in. Heck, you don't even have to write a passive female character for this to work, on the contrary. This is an opportunity to write more interesting and fleshed-out active female characters as well.
If you find your biggest challenge when writing an active male character is the subliminal anxiety of rejection, remind yourself that you don't have to give a crap about that asshole. So what if he exists on the razor edge of making a fool of himself and being the worst person in the world? Ultimately he's just a tool to generate pleasure and excitement in people and characters you actually care about. You can reverse-engineer from there.

 

[WeShallUnclench]

Feels vaguely on topic:

 

[Unblemished]

It has been a while, but I thought I'd share this gem of wisdom:

Discussing this general subject on another site, someone called it the 3-clit rule.

If you only read stories that contain the word "clitoris", or some variation, at least three times (more obviously if it's a long story/ novel), then you filter out almost all Horny Pixie Dream Girl x Passive Boring Boycharacter (even when it's only F/M stories).

I haven't tested it yet, though.

Nah, it isn't 1970 anymore. Even the most generic and inconsiderate Male Protagonist can look up a diagram of the clit on Wikipedia these days. Most of the target audience of a cliche manic-pixie story would at least like to think they'd be a considerate lover, so their fantasy stand-ins generally perform appropriately.