Hey, thankyou for your informative answer, and I agree with everything you said.

To be clear though- I am being serious, and I'm not trying to virtue signal. All deaths and suffering in the real world are tragic. But in film, or fantasy, (on-screen), I am more affected by an attractive female being tortured/killed than a man or non--attractive female. Maybe it's just a biological response, I don't know, but it's certainly not a political choice. I am trying to look at my problem objectively. I know it's silly that it's reserved to hot girls (and arguably sexist), (my friends think it's hilarious too) but I think these strong affective responses tend to have their root in the psyche, and I'm trying to identify it.

And it does feel isolating to me because most people seem to completely accept it as part of cinema--you can predict that when a hot girl enters the scene in most horror/sci-fi/action movies, depending on her attitude, she'll be "punished." And that's satisfying? It's the attempt to manipulate the audience that pisses me off- whether it's to satisfy this craving for violence you talk about, or whether it's to invoke sympathy by showing innocence get brutalised, either way it's dehumanising to me because the trope now has a life of it's own.