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Wonder Woman Gets a Woman's Point-of-View
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Jan 06, 2008 12:21 AM
from the just-a-bit-overdue dept.
from the just-a-bit-overdue dept.
theodp writes "Traditionally, comics have been by, for and about men. But more and more women are breaking into the traditional boys' club. Beginning with Wonder Woman #14, the superhero's tale is being told by Gail Simone. It's a break from nearly 66 years of being written for the most part by men. '[Her work as a blogger] led to a writing job for the all-female comic 'Birds of Prey' for DC--which became a short-lived, live-action TV series--and in turn won her the "Wonder Woman" job. Simone says she sees a change since she wrote her refrigerator rant 10 years ago. 'At that time, the trend was towards grim stories where female characters were killed,' she says. 'We only had a handful of female characters to look up to. Today we're not seeing those stories so much.'"
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What about the woman last year? (Score:5, Informative)
What about Marsden's Bondage Themes? (Score:5, Interesting)
Marsden was also a bit of a pervert. His wife and their live-in slave... er... maid, lived in more-or-less open polygamy. They were his bondage slaves, and were apparently quite happy to be so. This theme, of feminine happiness through obedience and subservience, is repeated frequently through Wonder Woman. Not only did Wonder Woman frequently get tied up with her own magic lasso, but pretty much all the Amazon girls loved being bound, spanked, or otherwise disciplined by their superiors.
While you may disagree with Marsden's symbolism, any retelling of Wonder Woman that leaves out the bondage isn't really doing the subject very much justice. Wonderwoman need not end up stuffed in a refrigerator, but she does need to be frequently paddled to keep the story moving.
Re:What about MARSTON's Bondage Themes? (Score:2, Informative)
Heh (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, gee, I guess you illustrate perfectly why women didn't really take her as a role model.
Work as a blogger? (Score:5, Informative)
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Gail Simone didn't "get" anything because of her blog, she earned her way as a good writer that got noticed and continues to do so. The path she took just happened to start with a blog. What are you
Excuse me? (Score:3, Interesting)
Read the rant. Completely disagree. FYI I don't have hairy pits or legs.
Doesn't every character/hero of consequence go through some life-defining moment. She writes as is every female goes off to a grimson end or a tragic moment but uh hello...there's life....there's character building...there's a good friggin story.
Look at the list and it blatantly leaves out key figures in the comic universes. Examples:
Superman died
Batman was paralyzed only to come back and take out the sorry sack of shit who replaced him
Robin died
Spawn was a crusader who was reborn in hell...how more tragic is fighting for what you believe to be a noble cause and hello you go straight to hell
Wolverine was used, abused, lost his memory and then ended up working for the X-men
Sorry...but a personal pet peeve is a feminist fight without a true argument. Sorry to say but women were allowed the same fates as men. I personally love when the woman is a villain. At least we're acknowledged as a threat. A good story always involves a sad or grimsom moment for the lead character. Thankfully women have been subjected to same fates of men in the comic world.
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When a writer wants to kill off a character for shock value, to give a character "depth" by putting them through something traumatic, or just to change the direction of the plot from where a previous writer was taking it, female characters tend to be the most convenient targets.
Odd. Care to name examples?
There'll be a little bit of a slant towards women being victims, because so often the lead of a comic is a man, and you can't kill off the lead and keep your book going strong. And since most comic heroes have a love interest, and aren't gay, you have your slant towards women being victims.
Maybe it's just because I read Marvel instead of DC or Image. I gotta love a company that puts all heroes through crap equally.
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How about the incidents which started the Identity Crisis in DC? Those would be the (revealed as a past event) rape of the Elongated Man's wife, Sue Dibny, and then later her murder? Oh, and the ultimate culprit of it was Jean Loring, the ex-wife of the Atom.
Superman dies during the at
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You can say whatever you want about the TINY, TINY percentage of females in comics who have died over the years, but Jason Todd was VOTED TO DIE BY THE FANS, and nobody gave it a thought, because men are supposed to die.
The percentage of men in comics who are killed, maimed, depowered, and disfigured DWARFS the female characters both in percentage and number.
Hell, the ORIGINAL Superman was beaten to death. His wife just passed away naturally. Chalk up old Lois to the list, I
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Here's anecdotal evidence - Uncle Ben dies and stays dead for most universes (in comic books there's always going to be one universe where a major character doesn't die or die permanently).
If you really want to do a proper study you'll have to do stuff like take a decent sized random sample of comic books, then list down the characters, how many issues they appeared in, whether they were male or female (or both or one then the other etc
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It lead to the production of well-intentioned media products that depicted "strong women" in a way that was completely divorced from people's day-to-day experiences of actual gender relations. In practice, both men and women collaboratively - and often enthusiastically - produce a world in which men both threaten and protect women, in which women are identified with roles as either nurt
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1. She didn't make that point. All she gave was a list of female characters to whom bad things happen--we have no idea of their relative popularity, nor whether or not they were ever conveniently temporarily revived. We don't even have a simila
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When Batman's back was broken, it lead to him coming back stronger and hel
Ms. Magazine and WW Celebrate 35th Anniversary (Score:2)
Simone on Wonder Woman? News from April, 2007. (Score:2, Informative)
P.O.V. (Score:3, Insightful)
this makes as much sense (Score:3, Insightful)
"your tits are huge, let's shag"
yeah, that's going to sell romance novels
impossible proportioned female superheroes exist to satisfy the id of prepubescent boys. there is no female pov to these characters that has any meaning. they are stereotypical characters meant to satisfy male views about solving problems by fighting. women have their own fantasy fiction with impossible male characters meant to satisfy female views about the glory of courtship with a great guy
why mess with these shallow fantasies? nothing is improved, the value of the characters are just negated for their intended audiences
Mark Millar sums it up pretty well (Score:2)
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If you'd turn away from your thrice daily dose of 'liberal outrage', and crawl out of your parent's basement, you'd realize that the 'Nazi Socialist PC ball buster' only really exists in the minds of men who are insecure about their own masculinity. Others who continue propagate such trash, do so as they believe that some reward could be gained (ratings, votes, book sales, and other forms of income in particular).
Re:uh oh (Score:5, Insightful)
But while I wouldn't call you a "Nazi Socialist PC ball buster", look what you did here: "men who are insecure about their own masculinity."
I don't disagree that it's possible to be feminist without being a feminazi, and you may even be right that the feminazi is a myth. But I've seen women propagate and participate in that myth.
When attacking others for their intolerance or prejudice, it helps to not be showing your own prejudice in the same breath. (Not even going to start with the "crawl out of your parent's basement" comment.)
Parent
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Oh, please.. quit this crap.
Feminists always come with arguments on how women are the default victims and stuff, and assume that women have no issues whatsoever.
When feminists speak, there's always a logical explanation for a woman's actions. But a man's actions always fit in the rape-
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No, they do exist. (Score:4, Interesting)
But wait, she's not the caricature the far-right draws of the militant feminist. She was just a jerk. Women can be jerks as easily as men.
A few years ago I was talking to a Women's Studies professor at Florida State and I related this story. I also mentioned how angry I had been at the time, still was, to be lumped in with rapists just because I opened a door for someone who had a double armload of books. This professor listened, considered her words very carefully, and then said clearly I needed to take her introductory Women's Studies course so that I could understand the jerk's "context". I said I didn't really care about her context, it was a stupid comparison to make, and the hate directed at me was entirely undeserved and uncivilized. "Yes, but that's the point, you see," she explained to me patiently. "You've never opened your eyes and thought about what sort of life experiences could make her react in such a way, or the actions you did which provoked this response. You only care about your own male-oriented view and undercutting the validity of her life experience." (I am not quoting her exactly, but I am quoting her pretty darn close. It's been a few years, but the outrageousness of the dialog has made it stick in my memory very clearly.)
She went on for about another ten minutes before I had enough and stormed away.
The woman in 1993 was just a jerk. The Florida State Women's Studies prof who defended her and not once expressed a sentiment of "yes, she was a jerk"? She was the right-wing caricature of a feminazi.
Fortunately, people like her seem to be rare. At least, I've never found one outside of a Women's Studies department. (And I've met one Women's Studies prof since then who characterized the Florida State prof as "what a bitch!", which did my heart no end of good.)
Parent
Re:No, they do exist. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think context is the perfect explanation for both of these people. Women do live in a different larger context than men, and aren't as free to have the context redefined from moment to moment. I guess that's the line of thinking anyway. Your friend from 1993 should have reacted to the context of "it would have been difficult to get through this door with a double armload of books," but instead reacted to "men treat women like they're helpless." Domineering though? I'm gonna go with no. Like with most jerk behavior, it comes from insecurity. The women's studies professor has spent too much time in her head meditating on this to realize that it's not a valid way to assign blame. You personally aren't responsible for any of the way 1993 was treated in her past. She had no call to treat you that way, but women in the abstract do have some claims against men in the abstract. The freedom from a larger context in which people make assumptions about you is surely a characteristic of a (social) majority. I can relate to this because may parents are from India and I'm nonwhite. It used to be that in every group of people I was the standin for all Indians. Meaning when I met someone new they asked me if I knew their doctor or if I worshipped a cow. They weren't talking to me, they were talking to the generic case of "Indian person." Being forced to always be the ambassador from India and explain Hinduism and caste gets old very fast. It still happens now, and with people I've known for years. They see me and immediately start talking about their new Indian neighbor or colleague or brother-in-law. Or they hear that I'm vegetarian and start talking at length about their favorite meat foods from India. Whoops I'm venting sorry. I don't go off on these people but I sure feel like it sometimes, as you can see. Does that make me a jerk? I don't know.
Once when I was in high school I was working at a mall store and someone came in and angrily demanded to know whether I spoke English. I had read about discrimination before but never had it applied directly to my face. Until then I had never thought about it happening to me. Since then it's been very hard for me not to consider whether I'm being treated differently because of race. For white people I'm sure this almost never enters their thinking because by and large there are no assumptions about behaviors and competencies (and deficiencies more to the point) based on whiteness. I couldn't say for sure since I've never been white. For white people I think it most often comes from having an ethnic name, but really I don't know.
So I think that's what women's studies professor 1 meant by context, but she should have known that you can't dismiss people's experiences when trying to make them see other people's experiences. College professors aren't always teachers inside.
Maybe next time check and see what the books are first :)
Parent
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To sum up (Score:2)
where's the tenderness? (Score:3, Interesting)
Still, no compassion for this girl you scared, and it's fairly clear that you scared her. Yes, it's likely she might have acted different if some girl ran up. However, just imagine a shy girl, first semester (maybe) in a large University , away from home, maybe just out of the 'date rape discussion' they force on every freshmen, walking back to her dorm, minding her own business. Random guy comes up and without any introduction get into her personal space. Then she gives a quick not even half though exp
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Still, no compassion for this girl you scared, and it's fairly clear that you scared her.
It isn't clear to me. To me, she only sounds enraged. And opening a door for someone cannot be considered a hostile act.
And I know girls like that as well. They consider every kind of help from a guy chauvinistic and overbearing.
What you should have done was announce yourself, saying perhaps 'let me get that for you'.
Or he should have been a self-centered bastard and left her to struggle with the door herself.
That girl, to put it mildly, overreacted. Should enough girls overreact like that, you'll find that men will have stopped holding the doors to women altogether.
Oh, BTW. I haven't at
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If you associate opening a door with being raped then that's not the fault of the door-opener. The wallet example is a good one. If you pick up someone's wallet (or other important/valuable item) and hand it to them, you would surely be justifiably offended if they y
Re:No, they do exist. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I believe it does prove that she was a "Feminist Ball Buster". She was hostile and showed aggression towards a man for no real reason so to speak, and then insulted him BECAUSE he was a man. That seems rather feminist to me, and I think it was pretty obvious that she was, indeed "busting his balls". I'm glad we agree on that
"Furthermore, a conversation where you presented yourself as a victim, didn't go over so well:"
Same thing here. She was taking a "feminist" position here. Maybe she wasn't "busting his balls" per se, but that was feminist jibba-jabba if I've ever heard it.
The problem with many (not all, many) feminists is that they really don't give a damn about empowering women (which I'm all for BTW). They've got their own agenda that has to do with taking power away from the "rich white man" and then using it to "get even" with him for all the bad things that he's done. On the one hand, that might not be such a bad idea, but on the other hand swapping one abusive "master" for an abusive "mastress" isn't really what I'd call progress, and it certainly isn't in the spirit of equality. At least what I would call equality.
Granted, the aforementioned professor wasn't THAT extreme in her beliefs, but she was on the other side of the same page because what she was basically saying is that the "book girl" deserved some special type of consideration because her genitals are on the inside. Special treatment and equality are usually mutually exclusive.
If any man said that men should bet treated differently just because his genitals are on the outside of his body, most people would say that he was a chauvinistic jerk. Why should it be any different for women?
Parent
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But you don't see me going on some page-long diatribe trying desperately to prove they exist, and furthermore, explaining their motivations.
Yes folks, news flash - bizarre extremes of humanity exist. Typically in very small numbers. It's when you hop up on your soapbox trying to act personally offended about it that people start to wonder about your motivations.
The point of this su
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From the PP:
"The woman in 1993 was just a jerk. The Florida State Women's Studies prof who defended her and not once expressed a sentiment of 'yes, she was a jerk'? She was the
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I will sit down and listen to an old-school equity feminist like Summers any time. I have no patience for the new school of gender feminism.
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Sorry, you are wrong. Some women take pride being just that, and they announce it loudly. You really should look around a little bit more.
Also, stop propagating the 'basement' stereo type, it only make you look stupid and petty.
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Sorry, you are wrong. Some women take pride being just that, and they announce it loudly. You really should look around a little bit more.
Not one of the three posts I've responded to even indicated that the OP was an ass. Instead you'all seem to insist that they do exist, and actually you are right, they do, it's a big world and not enough people are on lithium. Claiming that some random loser on the internet lives in his parent's basement is far more likely on target, and nowhere near the insult that was given. One is far more likely to find a right wing nut job than a militant feminist, and I believe that I've done angered a whole nes
Boilerplate (Score:2)
You would be more convincing if you left out at least the most tired of Nazi-Socialist-PC-ball-busting clichés.
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No, they'll read anything if there is fighting involved and nothing that threatens their sexual self-image.
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In other words... (Score:2)
That is, there are more men writing comics because there are more boys reading comics?
I mean, not that I mind it -- I do feel that soap opera emo trash doesn't help anyone, and I am a guy, after all. But I wonder, is there something about the medium itself that would prevent soap opera emo trash from succeeding?
Actually, you illustrate another point (Score:2)
So, yes, if Jack Nicholson describes women as the men's stereotype of women, including the illogical and unaccountable part, other men will find it a perfect portrayal of women.
It's not even something new. In medieval Japan the justi
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*cough* Sandman *cough*
Right, but "boys" aren't reading the comics. When was the last time you saw a comics shop with kids in it outnumbering the adults?
No, I think you're onto the right thing for the wrong reason. Comics lend themselves well to short, action stories and simple parables because of the nature of the medium. 22 short pages. Very little text. Lots of artwork. And a history of only being able to tell the most blan
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Re:Fine by you... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://daveslongbox.blogspot.com/2005/09/boob-war-climax-everybody-loves-power.html [blogspot.com]
Ever notice how every strong female on Heroes is either killed off, raped or suffers an attempted sexual assault? Except the motor mimic girl, but the show went on hiatus mid beatdown.
With any luck (Score:2)
Jackass.
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*goes to grab his latest Wizard to check price on an original, mint, 1st edition M:TG Black Lotus*