Re: NEWSWEEK article on Gail Simone

On Fri, 11 Jan 2008 06:28:23 +0000 (UTC), arromdee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(Ken Arromdee) wrote:

In article <0dd5e1e1-9fa3-45f4-b37b-f0a30d359ce9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
<badthingus@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The big centerpiece of WIR is a huge list of female characters who are
mostly mistreated just like male characters, except the male characters
aren't on the list, because they're, well, male. In several cases the same
thing happened to the male characters at the same time and the female
character still gets put on the list.
The difference being the men suffer as heroes; the women suffer as
victims. Green Arrow gets to die a hero. Black Canary gets raped
into sterility, a loss of powers, her will to be a hero broken and
winds up just managing a plant store.

The actual list doesn't support your claim. For instance, the list lists
Huntress I, who died at the same time as, and from the same cause as, the
Earth-2 Robin. The same goes for Dawn Allen and Don Allen. Candy Southern
was killed, but the list forgets that Angel's father was killed years before in
an equally pointless way for similar reasons. Captain Marvel II died, ceding
her name to a male hero, but then a male hero died and ceded his name to her
in the first place.

Moreover, most of the rest of the examples are not "suffering as victims" any
more than male heroes who have the same things happen to them. Plenty of
male characters get depowered, turn evil, etc., it's just that they're
not there to pad out the list.

And the list is padded out in so many different ways, each responsible for
just one or two examples:
-- any woman listed as having lost a child (hint: the child's father lost a
child too; unless the mother is Queen Hippolyta, losing a child inherently
affects both sexes equally)
-- listing "turned mindless but got better" (which is another way of saying
"the character's fine at the end of the story, so I'll describe the problems
the character's having in the middle")
-- Storm being "periodically crazy" (ditto)
-- Not to mention the catch-22 of putting characters who got temporarily hurt
in the list, but also putting characters who got temporarily powered *up*
in the list on the grounds that the end of the temporary status counts as
a depowering
-- listing Zatanna as having her powers "severely limited" when that was
because having someone who can do anything by speaking it is absurdly
powerful and hard to write for. I could just as well write "Superman:
powers severely limited by John Byrne"
-- counting attempts to be socially conscious by depcting problems that
happen to women, as women in refrigerators (it's hard to prove these, but
Diamond Lil's breast tumor sounds suspiciously like this, considering how
much consciousness-raising the media does about breast cancer. Many of
the HIV examples are probably this too.)
-- counting Courtney Ross when the character was dead because she was
replaced by an equally prominent lookalike who is also female
-- counting examples that happen because of company-wide retcons (Laurel
Kent revealed to be a robot)
-- counting clearly temporary comic book deaths of villains (Come on, Jocasta's
going to be deactivated almost every single story she's in)
-- very lame refrigerators: Psylocke being mind-swapped, anyone being a
clone
-- listing characters whose initial concept can be somehow interpreted as
being in a refrigerator, like Rogue for being "messed up". Does the Hulk
go in the list for being messed up?
-- listing things that were stupid ideas shown by one writer for a short
period of time and ignored by later writers (Power Girl's vulnerability to
natural substances)
-- listing Marlo Chandler as a prostitute (that was something the writer
wanted to include, but Marvel wouldn't let him)
-- listing Mystek, when the character died because Christopher Priest wanted
her to be a creator-owned character and wrote her in before getting proper
approval

The list is utter nonsense, but accusations of sexism will always find an
audience.

Also, Black Canary wasn't raped. The reason that a beating prevented her
from having children is that it's a plot device, not that the writer
realistically tried to figure out what kind of injury could cause that.

I agree with most of what you say above...but I'm going to have to
disagree about Black Canary being raped...I don't care what was said
in interviews much later...any intelligent person who read that story
would get the impression she was raped...they just never came right
out and said it...and then they backed down after the fact.
.