Wonder Woman Gets a Woman's Point-of-View 210
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.'"
Re:uh oh (Score:2, Insightful)
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.)
Re:There's a reason for it. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No, they do exist. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Excuse me? (Score:2, Insightful)
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 attack by Doomsday, but he ends up coming back. Hippolyta (Wonder Woman's mother) dies during the fight with Imperiex and stays dead. Batman gets his back broken by Bane in the Knightfall arc but ends up getting better. Barbara Gordon is partially paralyzed by the Joker in Batman: The Killing Joke and never regains the use of her legs (well, okay, for like two issues in Birds of Prey she does).
Do you need more examples?
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?
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
Heh (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, gee, I guess you illustrate perfectly why women didn't really take her as a role model.
Re:Astounding ! (Score:3, Insightful)
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 yelled 'Thief!' snatched it from your hands and ran away. You would be even more offended if they incorporated some prejudiced slur into their justification for calling you a thief - be it a reference to your gender, race or something else. Whatever experiences that person has had, they are still a jerk, or at least perhaps paranoid to the point of illness, if they associate a helpful action with malicious intent.
Re:There's a reason for it. (Score:3, Insightful)
*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 bland of stories due to the legacy of the Comics Code.
I do, in fact, see women reading comics - but those comics are manga stories which are usually published in large compilations that can go on for thousands of pages. In the "manga style", you can tell a long story with subtlety, spend pages exploring a single emotion or moment. But guess what, guys read it too.
There are traditional, non-manga comics which can look at these themes, and I'll pass up "Superman" every time to get to them. But those are rare and hard to pick out amongst the TONS of comic book titles.
I mean, if I'm looking for a long, epic story exploring complex themes, I'll rent a 3 hour movie. Or get a TV series on DVD.
Re:Excuse me? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 similar list of dead and mangled male characters to compare it to. Considering how large the comics industry is, and for how many decades it's been popular, I don't think her list is a very big at all.
2. I didn't even realize it at first, but a lot of them apparently aren't even superheroes. OF COURSE bad shit happens to the superhero's (or supervillian's) girlfriend--bad things happening to innocent bystanders is a primary motivation for good *and* bad guys everywhere. That most superheroes (and supervillians) are male is a given--therefore, it shouldn't be surprising if most innocent-bystanders-just-waiting-to-be-killed-or-maimed-for-plot-advancement are female.
3. A lot of the non-fatal stuff she mentions (and less than half of the characters mentioned actually die) appears to be completely temporary in nature, like person X losing her powers (when I know for a fact that they regain them later on.) This is... simply absurd. I'm only a VERY casual comic fan, but I've read entire-series summaries and they typically go like this: Superman fights XYZ, loses his powers, gains powers again, gets turned into a weird green blob, gets turns back again, gets his ass kicked, makes a comeback and kicks his own ass, etc.
In short, temporary negative shit happens to every single superhero ever conceived... period. If Batman wasn't humiliated and brutalized from time to time, he wouldn't be Batman. If Superman didn't lose his powers occasionally, he'd grow tiresome (weeeeeell, he's tiresome anyway, but that's beside the point.) Shit happens, superheroes deal with it, THAT'S THE FUCKING POINT. I mean look at this crap:
* Scarlet Witch (children 'die'/vanish/are lost because they are figments of her imagination)
I know very very very little about the Scarlet Witch. As I recall, she's from the X-Men universe and she has the power to alter reality at will. I don't even know if she's a good guy or bad guy or switch hitter, but anyway--what's described there sounds like a very powerful bit of character development. Villian or hero, that sounds interesting... but according to the writer, it's just another way to degrade women. She even put "figments of her imagination" in italics, for emphasis, as if it was almost too horrible to be believed.
* Wolfsbane (locked in werewolf form for awhile, needs major therapy)
I know nothing of the character. Sounds like it's the typical "couldn't control own powers" plot line that pretty much every single goddamned superhero has had to deal with.
* Diamond Lil (kidnapped, experimented on by own government, developed benign breast tumor)
In short, this looks like a very lame, cherry-picked list without any male list to compare it to.
OMG, Bruce Wayne had to watch his parents die WHEN HE WAS A KID! And he acted kinda crazy and macho in the Dark Knight Returns! And Superman has turned evil and lost his powers and died and god knows what else. And all kinds of bad crap happens to Spiderman! Right there, those are the top 3 superheroes in the world... so that's proof that the comics industry HATES men!!!!
Idiot.
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 :)
Re:typical (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Excuse me? (Score:3, Insightful)
When Batman's back was broken, it lead to him coming back stronger and help define his character more. When Black Canary was beaten to a pulp in the Longbow Hunters, it lead not to her coming back even stronger and helping to further define her character, but to Green Arrow coming in and killing the perpetrators, thus showing more about his character. If Black Canary had come back from the beating like Batman did, we wouldn't be talking about it. But instead of using it to further her character, it happened to further the male character.
When writers never (or extremely rarely) take a male friend and kill them to anger the male character. They always use a female as the designated victim. The injury to the women are used not to push forward their own story, they are used solely to enhance the males in the story and give them a reason to do something.
Re:What about Marsden's Bondage Themes? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Excuse me? (Score:2, Insightful)
Men get to go back to their former status quo after getting screwed. Women generally don't. WiR specifically refers to women getting screwed over or killed to advance NOT their own development, but instead the development of a male character to whom they are attached. If a male character (such as Wolverine) gets screwed, it's usually to advance his own character, not someone else's.
It's not a hard and fast rule, of course, but a general observation. There are plenty of counterpoints -- it's not like the boys don't get killed. The key thing is that it's hard for women to enjoy comics when the female characters are getting raped and murdered. It's just not fun to read about.
http://www.unheardtaunts.com/wir/ [unheardtaunts.com]
Re:No, they do exist. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.