Friday, September 15, 2006

Unscrewing the Inscrutable

In which I make a liar of myself by underestimating my own perspicacity

Over at the Absorbascon, Scipio has been throwing a few digs at feminst comic bloggers lately. After a recent comment where he says:

bloggers who shall remain nameless have made DC self-conscious about the use of prostitution, rape, and similar sexual story elements


I responded, doubting the influence that a few bloggers would have on the editorial policy of a major comic publisher, but it seems I underestimated my own powers.

In an interview at Avengers Forever, Molly Lazer says:

After my column in the Marvel Heroes Hotspot was published, an internet blogger pointed out that, of the characters I listed as examples of strong female heroes, the majority of them had been sexually assaulted at some point. I thought about it for about two minutes before I realized that, of my list of four characters, three of them had been assaulted in one way or another. We can point to the damage inflicted on male heroes, as a counterexample, but I can't think of many male super heroes who have been raped or attacked in the way that female heroes so often are. Storylines like that happen less often these days, possibly because more people are aware of the women in refrigerators phenomenon, but they haven't completely disappeared. Comics reflect the world in which we live, and when you consider the amount of violence towards women that has gone on in the medium's history, that's a scary thought. Still, I think we're on the right path towards remedying this situation and making the comics medium one that treats males and females equally.



That was me.

I did that.

I made someone at Marvel think.



But only for two minutes.

9 comments:

Jon the Intergalactic Gladiator said...

It's a good start.

Seriously, does a woman's body really have to be stuffed into a refrigerator to give her boyfriend incentive to go fight the bad guy? But you've been saying this for quite a while already.

Anonymous said...

Awesome! o.ov

Anonymous said...

That's really awesome.

When you post blog entries and get a comment or two, or sometimes none at all, you can start to get the feeling that you are just raging into the darkness without anyone else hearing you. It's great to see that this isn't always the case.

Congrats.

SallyP said...

Well, congratulations. A little bit here, and a little bit there and sometimes it actually does make a difference. Got to be a nice feeling.

Anonymous said...

For two minutes? Yes, but lets take it two minutes at a time. Congrats!

Disintegrating Clone said...

Keep on doing it. You're in the right.

R.Nav said...

To quote Twisted Mego Theatre:

*SMISH* "DOOM takes his victories where DOOM can get them!"

Seriously. Two minutes. That's two minutes more than before. Hopefully next time it'll be four, then sixteen, then 64..

Anonymous said...

bloggers who shall remain nameless have made DC self-conscious about the use of prostitution, rape, and similar sexual story elements

....wait... that's supposed to be a bad thing?

--lj furikku

little light said...

Nicely friggin' done.
Maybe we can get them to shape up. I forget how quickly the things we say online get around; hell, I left a blog comment once that was on Wikipedia less than a week later as part of an entry on DC's Great Ten. What if they start listening?