Women, Adversity, and Comics : How Far is Too Far?

[Mecegirl]

I get the feeling you might be a fair bit younger than me, so I'm gonna try and not go all balls-out-vocal on you. So please bear with me (like Yogi).

I feel what you'd be driving at is basically peer-pressure or responsibility getting ascribed to folks themselves, for girls probably or at least seemingly more brutally than for boys - which would amount to being a reality, painfully or harshly so.

But trust me that peer-pressure or any responsibility will get loaded onto folks, be it boys or girls, albeit differently. And with the balance often not hanging in favor of girls, or only really darling perfecty ones - although that in itself would also be relative.
Girls shouldn't get raped. Boys both as girls should get laid, not too fast and not too late, but exactly right, "just like everybody else".

Or in other words: people should only overcome their problems more rather than "causing them" - which is a complete double standard but people will expect other people including themselves to be up to par, instead of having problems no-one should be to have.

Got into debt? Your own damn fault ultimately.
Got the wrong friends? Your own damn fault ultimately.
From a scummy part of town? Than any proper folks may be having their eye on you.
Got a drinking/gambling/whatever problem? Nobody has that when they put their mind to it.
Sex a problem? Going out a problem? Living life a problem? Not for nobody if they put their mind to it.

It won't be bad to try and make the world better. But that'll be on quite a different level than any fiction seeming awefully grim potentially. Because life or reality can be to seem awefully grim potentially. So stories will be about such potentially. Kiddie stories or either growed uppity ones. For girls or either boys. Grim or violent stories aren't merely for glorifying violence. Not in movies not in books and not in comics, generally speaking.

Comics or pop culture isn't advocating rape nor is it propagating to molest or harass or objectify women, but more rather it aims to reflect society and its problems, usually in much an exagerrated way, to popular demand. There might be onesidedness but comics can or would actually amount to being pretty diverse, beyond only popular quick-buck flimsiness.
In this way pop culture would be a lot like life itself: diverse and a lot of perspectives and backgrounds and agegroups and levels of sophistication going on.

I'd say.

What are you even going on about?

[the4thpip]

You'd think people will have sussed that Ennis really, really fucking hates superheroes.

Then why is his Hitman/Superman such a love letter to Superman?

[PsychoGoatee]

Is it men or women drawing them, though?

Just for the record, naturally women do also draw very sexy female characters. Any artist can draw anything. As for why comics have a larger male audience, well, these kind of fist fighting action stories just typically have a larger male audience. I don't think how the characters are drawn is the key thing there. Manga has a lot more romance and other genres and has a larger female audience. Not sure what my point is, just sayin'.

[the4thpip]

I disliked the Batgirl book but to my knowledge the book generally stayed in the 30-40 range on the sales charts. Is that not well above cancellation numbers? I'm included to believe those that guess that Gail and the editorial had creative differences.

Gail tweeted about some editors not being very helpful a few days ago... Guessing she was letting off steam. She also said she had the worst week, ever.

[Michael P]

Again, you say that characters don't matter, all that is important is that the god-writer tells a story you like

Not even close to what I said.

[Kees_L]

What are you even going on about?

I used my best English, so either read the post or have it your way.

[Mecegirl]

I used my best English, so either read the post or have it your way.

I will have it my way then.

[Kees_L]

I will have it my way then.

Whatever's your fancy, Mece.

Bet it's gonna be swell, 'cause that's mainly how I read.

[marvell2100]

You'd read or watch something where someone is shot and the hero makes a funny wee gag, or people are killed in a funny way, or there's a scene where the hero is tortured by a nasty bad guy but escapes and kills all the bad guys?

We make light of murder, torture and violence all the time, and American culture especially diminishes the impact of violence by making it a game, and this is the point Alan Moore made some years ago in that it's not a case that people don't take rape seriously (which is now certainly the case by how overused it is in superhero comics) but it's that violence and murder have been so diminished as well.

Sure there's alot of violence on TV. If you want to draw a line in the sand, that's fine. I draw mine at rape.

[dupont2005]

Just for the record, naturally women do also draw very sexy female characters. Any artist can draw anything. As for why comics have a larger male audience, well, these kind of fist fighting action stories just typically have a larger male audience. I don't think how the characters are drawn is the key thing there. Manga has a lot more romance and other genres and has a larger female audience. Not sure what my point is, just sayin'.

It's the dominant genre, obviously. Manga has less of a dominant genre, less of a dominant demographic.

[Tish-the-Scorpion]

Just for the record, naturally women do also draw very sexy female characters.

this is very true, i do it, alot of females i knew who were artists also do it. you'd probably be surprised at how much stuff that's perceived as sexist, misogynistic is actually written or drawn by women. for instance if people saw a Medea movie out of context they would have sworn it was racist cooning (debatably it still can be even with black creators), but that was made by Tyler Perry a black man. i think people's tolerance levels and moral code is very relative even among females. actually if you read alot of slash fic they definitely would count as being disgustingly misandrist, and filled with sexual objectification, and sometimes even misogyny. and most of those are written by young adult females, and female teens. in some cases i have seen them skew older. this is especially prevalent on places like Live Journal, and Tumblr. while i do think men are also part of the blame i do think women participate as well. in fact the reason why there probably isn't a balance is mostly due to a glass ceiling, not because female writers are "above it all".

[jessecuster3]

And then there are penguins!






This is dedicated to that paragon of women, Bipolar Danger Girl.

[Moose100]

http://link.huffingtonpost.com/4f9c1...cG8LwfNZJAc78a

[king mob]

To try to make a discussion about why rape is considered a more sensitive topic than violence about western culture and not gender makes little sense to me. Nations that are less stable than the west do have more violence. They also have more rape. Guess which portion of the population has to deal with the rape? It's the same no matter where you go.

Yes, it's mainly women though the problem is the reporting of rape, and the punishments given to rapists so a country like Sweden has a statically high amount of rapes compared with somewhere like here in the UK, but it has a better treatment of potential rape victims, and it has harsher punishments of convicted rapists, so people can go forward and report rape knowing that it's going to lead somewhere rather than end up being dismissed or ignored which is why so many cases of women being raped are not reported, and why male rape is still virtually a taboo subject in most western countries.

Rape is treated like a "special" category not because it is has to do with sex, and westerners are prudes, but because it is so overwhelmingly targeted towards a specific group of people.

No it's not as simple as that and I've described reasons in the above.

The "gritty realism" that takes over certain corners of the superhero genre does not interest me at all. But I can not say that I have not seen it in other genres. It seems to be a big thing in speculative fiction in genre now days.

The whole gritty realism bollocks is bloody everywhere because it's a lazy way to try to pass things off as 'deep' or 'complex', which isn't to say it hasn't got it's place but it's become far too dominant.

I have had many conversations with members of the superhero comic book reading audience. Some of them are just fine with situations like that being in their comics. Usually it is small but vocal groups that speak out against such things.

The outcry against the Dibney rape was enormous & turned a mass of people away from DC and it's still something hugely controversial. By no stretch of the imagination was it a small group of people speaking out.

I don't think you understand what I am saying. When the Colorado shooting happened no one in the that theater was in any more danger than anyone else. It was random senseless violence, and whenever such violence occurs everybody is at risk.

You're missing out the multiple other reasons such shootings happen, and even in the US where these things happen far too often, you still don't stand a huge chance of being caught in such an incident. I'm sure one of our American posters can find the exact stats for violent crime in the US but you seem to be making a few logical errors here.

But if a man decides to walk to a convince store at night, he will be advised to watch out for muggers, if a woman decides to walk to a convince store at night, she will be advised to watch out for both muggers and rapists. If a man passes out drunk at a party he might get sharpie drawings on his face. If a woman passes out drunk at a party she might get raped.

I can reel off examples of when men were also raped in such incidences which isn't to downplay the plight of women but rather try to show you that your context and focus is far too marrow.

For conversations about violence against woman? Yes. Look up conversations about the new Laura Croft game for instance. For this thread I would say no. (Arvandor's question on the first page was cutting it pretty close. ) But if this thread were in another section of the board...yeah.

So not in this context or conversation though has it?

No, it happens everywhere. It is always women who have to moderate their behavior to avoid situations where they may be raped/sexually assaulted.That can range from encouraging women to carry mace, to advising that they do not walk alone late at night, or to policing/criticizing how much skin a woman shows in public.

For an extreme example that can not be applied to America, look up how woman only train cars are being used as a way to stop train molestation.

Ok, the fact is both men and women face different types of threat and men are always going to be more likely to be the victims of violent crime, but you're making an important issue into Guardian level identity politics which is that we should be trying to reduce violent crime, and sometimes that does mean advising people not to go in certain places in the dark when they're pissed, though the 'she wuz askin for it guz' defence doesn't wash anymore, though it may still in the US.

[Jabare]

In all honesty not much has changed. DC just came under some more scrutiny because of the new 52 promotions.

Catwoman's costume has been like that for a while but the art was clearly over sexualized in her comic. Whether you attribute that to the artist, the writer the editor, or any combination of the three I'm not sure.

StarFire is really sexualized, and because they've stripped away her past and any meaningful story all you see is the sexualization. She's been sexualized in the past, but over the years I'd argue she has grown as a character in the comics and in other media (Teen Titans cartoon). So the way she was portrayed in RHATO understandably shocked some readers new and old.

Making Barbara Batgirl again was a business decision, I'm not sure it was a good one though.

I don't see a big problem with Amanda Waller.

For Voodoo it was really only in issue 1 and it wasn't really fanservice but done for the narrative. Overall I thought it was a good book


For Marvel I'm not really seeing a big change. No push for heroine solos. We see some new and old females on a few new teams, changing up the team organizations. This isn't new we have seen this in the past on the Avengers and X-men and other teams (Lady Liberators anyone).

Captain/Ms. Marvel got a new costume. Powergirl got a new costume. I think they'd look good in live action but the designs are kind of boring. Still its an attempt to show less skin which some would like.

Although people were up in arms when DC tried to change Wonder Womans look. I actually liked the pants, and the pants and jacket look before that and found some people to be a little hypocritical on condemning other heroines outfits but wanting to keep Wonder Woman's the same.


in the end you've got to ask yourself "what does the fanbase want" and how vocal the fans should be in their demands. You'll probably get several different opinions. And Marvel and DC will have to decide which direction to go in. Ultimately, I think changes will be slow going since its typically the same demographic running Marvel and DC.


I'd say the state of independent comics has greatly improved in terms of representation and equality


As for the notion only women are sexualized I strongly disagree. Men are sexualized to only in different ways. Usually its the barrel chested overly muscled herculean hero or action icon. Instead of the scantily clad heroine. They are clearly different, but both still often utilized. Sex still sells to a degree and until it stops selling your still going to see it in media to an extent.


As for recent videogames. I think its just a trend of games becoming darker and edgier and less censored.

I know in some foreign countries you don't really have these hangups about nudity, sexuality and sexualization. I'm not sure if it stems from religious beliefs or not, but that is the world we live in