Designated Sidekick

1. Disagreements.
We’re not a hivemind, feminism isn’t the borg, and a few people who I admire as bloggers disagree with Diana’s alternative uniform, and don’t like it. They don’t hate me because I like it, they have their views, and we’re able to coexist in an internet without needing to tell the other they’re wrong (or should die or whatever). This is a good thing.

2. Justice League Internet
Having a crew around the wired world, being linked off various places by people I don’t know and have never met online. That’s cool.

3. The number of times people have said something like “Go read Designated Sidekick, she’s got something interesting to say…” and the follow ups that say “DS is actually male”.

This needs a little explaining - I’m very comfortable in my gender identity, even if the world just doesn’t always put the right metatags on me. I’ve written under female pseudonym, written as a neutral identity through double blind peer review, I’ve posted here, and I’ve been called Miss or Ma’am more times than I can explain (especially when I’ve haven’t shaved).

So to be assumed female, presumed female, or, as actually happened - to have been presumed to be female and someone else entirely by a friend who knows me in real life, it’s an amazing thing. I’m happy.

Especially when a recent e-mail to the G-W crew used a collective female term, and a certain founding G-W member waited to see if I noticed I was being presumed female. (I noticed. This time)

4. Karen Healy.
I’m just going to do the OMG!FANBOY FLAIL! here, because I get to be on the same crew as Karen Healy. OMG! FLAIL! (Don’t ask for coherent here)

Okay, whilst I am painfully (with the emphasis on ouch) aware of her hips/waist size, check out the costume.

Mind you, for hip shoulder ratio issues, BaneAtom Smasher (well spotted by Dwight Williams) has problems (is the blue one Dove?)

Even Hawk makes Wonder Woman look less unrealistic

That said, the bad news is the majority of Wonder Woman’s appearance in the JLU figure series is that hot pants and corset outfit. But, for what it’s worth, I like the costume shown here. It fits alongside the costumes of the others, and it looks like you’d be able to take down bad guys without having to readjust your top every few punches.

I've been avoiding making comment about How To Make Money Like A Porn Star! since the book was sent to Karen, and she dealt with it in her blog

It's taken until last night's rant to really dig up what's disturbed me about that comic, about the fact that Marionette over at Dance of the Puppets has the ongoing post series Rape of the Month, that Heroes has a rape/assualt/presumed assault on a character.

In the case of Money like a porn star book, somebody out there thought that I, by virtue of my gender, would want to read about rape as a wacky ha-ha hijinx story.

Somebody thought that they could commercially exploit the assumption that men are protorapists waiting for the optimum opportunity to act

That's a bullet with my gender on it.

I strongly doubt (and am willing to be corrected) that these stories of female rape are written for women. I know there will be case by case differences. There always are case by case differences. Some of them will be done for reasons that are valid for a given parameter of valid.

But the fact that somebody, somewhere, thinks there is a commercially profitable market for treating men as protorapists who fantasise about committing violent power crimes against women.

That hurts. That hurts a lot.

I don't want this. I don't want to be told that rape is funny because it's really not. I don't want to be told by Harper Collins, Australian Publisher of the Year (2005) that hey, violent abusive criminal behaviour is profitable wackiness.

Because I know marketing, market segmentation, and the fact that books are printed on the basis of expectations of profit, Harper Collins sees a commercially viable market for transforming acts of violent power crime into profit. I know I'm not the direct target market. That they didn't send the review copy to me, and say "hey Steve, we think you'll like this one". But goddamn you to hell Harper Collins, you still produced, sanctioned and authorised this work because you think men want to read rape stories as comedy.

I don't want to be thought of like this. I'd like to be thought of as human, as decent, and as something other than what I feel like right now. Because frankly, if this shit is written for me, my gender, my peers and the younger than me guys out there? We're viewed as such contemptable creatures, it's depressing as hell.

I have a question for the writers of comic books and the writers of Heroes

You remember that the characters are fictional, right? Made up? Works of fantasy? That they don’t exist as real people? That they pose no threat to you, your manhood/womenhood, your credibility or pride or anything else?

Or are you so far lost into the fantasy worlds where they’re the powerful one and you’re not, that you have to resort to power crimes of having the character raped, mutilated, tortured or killed just to reassert yourself and your control? Do you have to play malevolent god just to feel comfortable with your own life?

Or more bluntly, what the fuck is your problem people? Can we stop victim of powercrime storylines as the default motive for women crimefighters? Can we stop saying by proxy it’s okay to violently degrade another person because they’ll turn into vigilantes sworn to do good to others?

Seeing yet another rape storyline in a super hero context is enough. If you’re writing this shit because you think I want to see it because I’m male, then I’m telling you.

No.

Stop.

Fucking respect those words for once. They mean what they say.

No more rape storylines because you’re too talentless to write anything else. No more default character origins of overcame rape to become supervigilante. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of it being in the medium that’s allegedly for my gender, and the medium that I grew up with as kid.

I hope these damn stories only keep recurring because you’re talentless hacks who trace stories as frequently as you trace art. That you’re producing the same “rape as motive” storylines because you lack the metaphoric and actual balls to be creative and move away from the damn cliche.

Because frankly, the alternative means you shouldn’t be trusted as custodians of storylines you claimed are intended for children and young adults.

You either need creativity or deep therapy. Either way, right now, you need to just stop.

“And while girls were being encouraged to question traditional notions of femininity, a tendency for boys to misbehave at school was perceived as “normal” male behaviour.” Canberra Times

That’s why I write Designated Sidekick. Because “Normal Male Behaviour” is a sexist cliche that needs to be broken down and beaten to a bloodied pulp when and where opportunity presents itself.

Preset societal roles for women were and are consciously rejected, and the battle to break those down continues minute by minute. Along the way, it’s time for the males who want to cast off the roles that society say are “normal male behaviours” to step up, speak out and undermine that status quo.

Otherwise, we’re letting our side down here fellas, and if we won’t put the yards in, who the hell will?