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So. Sex.

Sex and comics.

Sex and women and comics.

Bear with me if this is disorganized and disjointed; it's been festering for a while now. I'd say I've been nurturing this particular rage egg for months.

And really, it's only tangentially about the actual content in said comics. Mostly what you'll find here is my reaction to reactions to comics, and my reactions to reactions to reactions about comics, rather than my actual reactions to comics. I feel like I should stamp a "warning: way too meta" all over this. And perhaps tattoo "Thou Shall Not Read Fanboards" across the back of my hands.

Radical Statement the First

A whore is someone who has sex for money. I know, I know: this runs contrary to what one might think when reading various and sundry fanboards, but it's true: if you're not getting paid for getting laid, it's just not prostitution. Sorry, boys.

Here's a short list of things that are not the same as prostitution:

• Sex for the sake of sex
• Sex with an ex
• Sex with a friend of an ex
• Sympathy sex, giving or getting
• Sex outside the bounds of matrimony or a committed relationship
• Sex inside the bounds of matrimony or a committed relationship, but with a partner other than one you the fan view as the "right" partner
• Pretty much all forms of sexual activity that don't involve an exchange of currency

It's just... enough already. We get it. I get it. There's a double standard in place, firmly so, and there's an expectation that Nice Girls Don't Do That Sort of Thing, and Real Men Do. I get that. I am well aware that in the minds of many, in order to be an admirable heroine, you must, like Caesar's wife, be above reproach. But the fact of the matter is, like it or not, women are sexual beings, and having a female character choose to engage in consensual recreational sexual activity, regardless of her motivations, should not be grounds for accusations of character ruination or reason to start flinging the word whore about willy nilly like so much shit in a monkey cage.

Which brings me to:

Radical Statement the Second

Agency matters.

Back in Radical Statement the First, please note the words "consensual recreational sexual activity." Remember them. There will be a quiz later.

"But wait!" you may be thinking to yourself. "You're on the record as having issues with objectification! Aren't these sexy sex-having female characters exactly what you're complaining about?"

And if you are thinking that to yourself, you missed the exit to the point about a hundred miles back.

Being a feminist, wanting to see better female representation in comics, and being uncomfortable with objectification is not the same as wanting to desexualize everything.

I like sex, I like sexy things. I'm human, with quirks and desires and all that other crap that comes with the territory. Not everything I like is going to be nice, or fluffy, or close your eyes and think of England. Sometimes, my mind's downright filthy, and that's just okie-dokie.

Dinah teasing Babs about cybersex with Ted remains one of the most amusing things I've read in a mainstream comic. It was funny, it was in character, and it showed me female characters with control over their own sexuality, rather than female characters being written and drawn just for the sake of titillating the on and off-panel males.

Break apart the word objectification, the fine art of turning something into an object. An object has no agency, no voice, no say in what it does or what is done to it. In small doses, you might get me to agree that a little objectification never hurt anybody, but we're not talking small doses. Have you seen Wizard Magazine? Greg Land's cover "art"? ASBAR? All the usual suspects in the Sexist Tropes Parade? I've gone over this before. See also: "...it makes sexism seem such a normal part of things that you stop noticing it."

Take away the agency, turn the woman into nothing more than an object, and it makes it seem normal to see women's sexuality as belonging to anyone but herself. Or to see it as a weapon to twist and use against her.

If I had a dime for every time I've seen a (female) writer's writing dismissed or mocked because of statements she's made about what she finds appealing, I'd have one hell of a heavy change purse.

If I had one for every time I've seen fanboys dismiss or mock fangirl concern for reasons much the same, the damn change purse would be nigh unliftable.

Hell, if I were to start a Comics Fandom Drinking Game, those two items would be right up there with "Take a drink when a female character takes sexual initiative and the fanboards shout out 'WHORE!'" and "If they start in on how the character's being ruined, make that two drinks."

(Please note that this drinking game would never happen. I'd be pissed to the gills within minutes every Wednesday, and my liver, well, she'd be just be pissed.)

It'd be one thing if I saw the same thing happening just as often when talking about male characters or creators or fans, if we were all being judged by the same standards, regardless of gender, but the bitch of it is, I don't, and we're not.

I'm not like Caesar's ideal wife. And I shouldn't have to be, just to be taken seriously.]]> http://www.girl-wonder.org/takebacktheknight/index.php?entry=entry060907-125401
So apologies for missing the month of August. I swear, my publishing schedule is more erratic than Planetary or Powers.

In relation to the last column, I would like to point out that the Halloween costume edition of the One Step Ahead baby catalogue (the one with Superman on the cover and cheesy copy about your superhero child) does not appear to have a single girl superhero costume. They do, however, offer Flash, Batman, and Superman.

Hmph. Good thing the kid's going as a vampire rabbit this year, isn't it?

In relation to bad things happening to good people, if you hadn't heard, Lea Hernandez's house burnt down last night. There's a donation button on the front page, if you're able to help out.

This edition of TBTK is brought to you by the letter C, for communication, the letter L, for love, and the letter F, for flaws.

Because, over the last few months of reading and lurking around the web, it's come to my attention that, often, when you point out the F word about a source, people with a great deal of L word for the source will get up in arms, leading to a serious breakdown in the C word, and the spewing of a great many unpleasant words, some of them starting with F, L, or C. (See: the responses to Girls Read Comics! when it debuted.)

And I get that. I really do. I am not unsympathetic to the visceral urge to defend the thing you adore. Lord knows, I do it enough with various and sundry objects of my affection.

But here's the thing: pointing out that, say, the treatment of women in Mike Grell's run on Green Arrow is rife with sexist tropes, or that many of Alan Moore's mid-to-late 80s works appear to have a strong vein of misogyny (which, for the record, I think is more misanthropy in the case of Moore, and if you buy me a drink, I'll earnestly bend your ear to that effect), is not to say that loving Longbow Hunters or Killing Joke makes you, the reader and lover of those texts, a sexist pig dog who will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes. It's not saying, man, no one with any taste would like a work like that, and how dare you enjoy such dreck?

It's not even saying that it's not art.

All it is saying is that, in some aspects, the text is flawed. That the emperor, rather than being unclad entirely, has a run in his hose.

Texts are neither created nor read in a vacuum. Each writer, each artist, each reader has experiences and influences that inform the creation and/or interpretation of the text. And for every beautiful insight into the human condition that provides, it also provides a certain amount of baggage. Which, you know, is pretty much part and parcel of said human condition.

The things that I love, the things that you love, these things are, by virtue of their very existence, flawed.

But if we ignore the flaws, simply because we love them, or because, well, everything's flawed, we do ourselves a disservice. If we don't notice the flaws, and question them especially in something that's otherwise excellent, the text goes on to influence something else, which influences something else, and it, in turn, another something else, and the same damned flaw keeps getting passed along. Sometimes, I'd even venture to say often, we don't even recognized them as flaws, because they're such a part of our landscape.

"Isn't the emperor's outfit just stunning today?" we gush, loving the play of velvet and satin.

"Yes, well," says a small child, a concerned look upon its face. "Except for that run in the stocking."

"Run? What run?" we say, looking at the emperor's legs. "But those hose looks just the same as always!"

"That one there, beneath the left knee," says the child, who should know, being only about knee high and therefore at eye level to the small flaw in the sartorial splendor.

Then the emperor looks, and lo and behold, there's a run, one that cheapens the look of the whole outfit. Being a wise emperor, for the next outing, the hose are replaced with a fresh pair sans run, the outfit is salvaged, and everything's right with the world, all because the child pointed out that something was wrong.

Not because the child thought we were stupid for thinking, hey, great outfit, but because from where the child was standing, it was hard to see anything but the flaw.]]> http://www.girl-wonder.org/takebacktheknight/index.php?entry=entry060710-054712
When I was a girl, I owned many, many pairs of them.

Well, perhaps just the one many, but still. I owned them, wore them, and loved them.

In my Underoos, I was Diana Prince, with my lasso of truth and invisible plane. Or, more often, given my personality (which really hasn't changed a whole lot over the course of 30+ years, though I do hope I take myself slightly less seriously than I did as a child), I was Jessica Drew, tragically misunderstood dark angel of the night, gliding on my webbing and fighting evil. (My Spider-Woman fixation may explain a lot more about me than I'd like to admit.) For a lark, I could be Batgirl, pow, bang, and zapping to victory.

It is safe to say that my imaginative play was often focused on spandex heroines, and I wasn't the only one. On the playground at my average American elementary school, we played Electra Woman and Dyna Girl as often as we played house.

Today's Underoos aren't like the ones I remember. Oh, the boy's section is--full as it is with Hulk, Spiderman, Batman, and whichever hero has a movie coming out in the near future.

Girls? Girls get Powerpuff Girls and Care Bears.

Now, I have nothing against Powerpuff Girls, but there's a serious lack of Super in the selection.

In the world outside of Underoos, there's one superheroine still marketed to little girls, easily found in your local Target or K-Mart, in PJs and teeshirts and shoes.

The problem is, it's Supergirl.

This shouldn't, in a logical and rational world, be a bad thing. After all, she's Supergirl! Superman's cousin! The other last survivor of Krypton! She fights for truth and justice and blah blah blah...

In an outfit that Bai Ling or Paris Hilton would think twice about wearing outside the house.

In this case, yes, it is about the costume.

I'll admit that I've enjoyed the most recent Supergirl run--the adventures of a superpowered half-dressed nymphet made for fairly entertaining reading, in a pulpish sort of way--but you know, sometimes I like things that are not good for me, like Eminem and tequila shooters.

I will note, I don't expect to find (and don't) Mr. Mathers or Sauza Hornitos aggressively marketed to the under 12 set.

I feel like someone's trying to have his cake and eat it too with Supergirl, and that bugs. I want to share my love of superheroes with my daughter, but not like this. So I buy iron-on Batsymbols and Wonder Woman emblems for her shirts instead.

And continue to miss the glory days of equal opportunity Underoos.]]> http://www.girl-wonder.org/takebacktheknight/index.php?entry=entry060615-094442
Well, for starters, it makes sexism seem such a normal part of things that you stop noticing it.

Hell, take a look at the comments to the first entry of Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed) and see what a steady diet of stale and sexist does to a person.

I mean, seriously, people? Just be glad you're not taking away our right to vote? Exsqueeze me? Baking powder? Dude, thanks ever so for the anecdata. You've just made my point for me.

I know a lot of female fans of superhero comics. And, yes, we're a smaller percentage of the readership than males, but we're far from being just a handful of freaks with axes to grind. We're a sizable minority who, on occasion, find our eyes rolling and our heads spinning when female characters are reduced to the woman in peril for the hero to rescue, or the woman to die tragically for the sake of his freaking emo manpain.

And yes, we twitch uncomfortably when violence against female characters is sexualized in the sort of over-the-top fashion as Stephanie Brown's torture in War Games.

If you didn't twitch at that, do me a favor and ask yourself why. Why didn't it make you uncomfortable to see a teenaged girl's brutal torture drawn like it was from S&M Outtakes Quarterly? Why is it okay that this is considered normal?

For one minute, just one, put yourself in the shoes of your mother, your sister, your girlfriend, your wife, your daughter, and go back and re-read some of the things we've been complaining about through her eyes.

Then maybe, just maybe, you'll start to get where it is we're coming from.]]> http://www.girl-wonder.org/takebacktheknight/index.php?entry=entry060606-164859
Bluntly, I was expecting them to make a royal mess of things. I mean, a baby? When was the last time baby-related things in comics didn't make me twitchy? Probably sometime when Sandman was still running. And this whole having a child of my own thing hasn't made this stuff any better.

When you're a parent, you really notice when they get the details wrong.

Wally and Linda brought home the miracle twins near the end of the Flash run, and I was twitching as the panels showed those newborns eating cereal. Newborns? On SOLIDS? Are you out of your ever-loving minds?

Forgive me, Father, for I can be a judgmental jerkface.

I had a ridiculously negative reaction to the parenting practices of the fictional West family, let me tell you. You'd have thought Wally and Linda were suddenly Kevin and Britney.

And yes, it did make me feel very, very silly. And it left me very, very wary of baby storylines in comics.

Which brings me back to Catwoman and my epic bout of avoidance.

Eventually, after running out of other things to read (as well as excuses) I gave in, but not before building the whole thing up into a huge, horrible trainwreck in my mind.

First pages... standard non-ideal hospital birthing position. Hmm. Well, it's not ideal, but it is fairly standard.

I kept reading.

Whoa. Her figure... it's...

Realistic! It's the post-partum jelly belly!

I was feeling better and better about the storyline.

Late night feeding session... not a bottle in sight... loose and comfortable clothing...

Hey! Breastfeeding! In a mainstream comic! I'm about to use the word realistic again!

At this point, I think I proposed marriage to the creative team.

So a cautious thumbs-up for this, and kudos to them for what they've managed so far. At no point have I wanted to spork my own eyes out to end the pain, and I've been pleased with the realism and humor with which they've been dealing with Selina as she negotiates the tricky balance between her old self and new.

Keep up the good work, guys! This working mother salutes you.

ETA: just in time for this particular entry, Polite Dissent has a nice round up of pregnancy in comics through the ages.]]> http://www.girl-wonder.org/takebacktheknight/index.php?entry=entry060605-130904
And, well, that's certainly a valid response.

Heck, I think I phrased my space request to girl-wonder.org in almost those exact terms, but with a, "Yeah, yeah, I know..." prepending it.

So who am I, and why, exactly, do I think anyone needs to hear what it is I have to say?

I'm a lover of comics, especially superhero comics.

I'm a woman.

I'm a mother of a daughter, and I worry constantly about the messages popular culture sends to young girls.

I believe my dollar is as good as anyone else's, and that when stories are written with the audience in mind, the word "audience" should refer to more than men in their late teens and early twenties.

I believe you can tell a good and classic story without resorting to cliches about women in peril and the men who rescue them. Or without eliminating the women entirely.

I believe girls can (usually) rescue themselves.

I believe that a certain amount of cheesecake has its place, but that it's certainly possible to take it way too far, and that I never need to see anyone's camel toe staring at me from the cover.

I believe comics can do better.

I believe in getting that message out.

I welcome you to follow along as I read, rant, and, if I'm really lucky (and the uncancellation of Manhunter falls under the lucky category--if you're not reading it, give it a try), rave about comics.

Together, I believe we really can take back the Knight.

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