Supergirl: Maid of Might » misogyny

How not to respond to criticisms of race and gender

Michelle — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 17:48:09 +0000

June 5, 2010: DC Nation panel at Heroes Con 2010

Ian Settler, DC Senior Story Editor

A serious topic came up about how characters who are minorities who happened to be legacy characters like Ryan Choi are killed off so their caucasian counterparts can return and how they feel like they are being cheated or sidelined out of their roles. Sattler took a more serious tone. “It’s so hard for me to be on the other side because it’s not our intention. There is a reason behind it all. We don’t see it that way and strive very hard to have a diverse DCU. I mean, we have green, pink, and blue characters. We have the Great Ten out there and I have counter statistics, but I won’t get into that. It’s not how we perceived it. We get the same thing about how we treat our female characters.”

Not kidding. He really mocked real people of colour by talking not about them but about non-existent green, pink, and blue people!!!!

And then cited the horrifically offensive Chinese superhero team “The Great Ten” to add insult to injury. Oh, and some hypothetical “counter statistics” that he “won’t get into”.

There is so much wrong going on here. You must read Brown Betty’s breakdown in DC Comics: eliminating non-buyer’s remorse:

But I am also boggling at using The Great Ten in their defence. Technically, it could be worse. He could have pointed out Egg Fu, but The Great Ten is not so great either. Here are some quotes by Morrison and Bedard, on one of the Great Ten, Mother of Champions: These quotes from this Newsarama article, emphasis mine:

“Mother of Champions is a rather hair-raising concept,” Bedard explained. “She can give birth to, as Grant Morrison put it, ‘a 25-strong litter of genetically-identical supermen, each with a lifespan of one week.”

The racism inherent in a Chinese character whose power is her terrifying fertility should be apparent, but litter makes me so mad I can’t even. Sows have litters. Dogs have litters. Women have BABIES, you unbelievable piece of shit.

And also Odditycollector’s post What the shit is this on my computer screen? which has some awesome comments over on livejournal and dreamwidth.

Vejiicakes:
Incidentally, I like how the spokesman used his dismissive Invoking Strangely Colored People tactic as a segue to wave off any of the icky shrill feminists in the audience/readerbase as well. “So this one thing you guys complain about? Nope. Just no. Also this other thing, that’s a no too. You’re wrong.”

Odditycollector:
Yeah… I’m still not sure how to read that. Is it “And as analogy, our comics are full of gender! Just for instance, look at all the men! Thus the feminists who complain about lack of gender inclusion are *dumb*!”

Or is it “You know who else whines about stuff? FEMINISTS. You people complaining about the CoC situation don’t want to be like FEMINISTS, do you?”

Review: Power Girl #2

Michelle — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 03:13:11 +0000

I didn’t like this issue, so my review will be brief. The story is…distasteful. Way too much torturing and repeated restraint of Power Girl, combined with some other unpleasant scenes that make me want to never see the Ultra-Humanite ever again. There’s also this weird scene between four Starr employees who are trapped inside their building. Three men, one woman. The woman wants to take some action, to use their professional knowledge and equipment at hand to help. She’s the only one of them with a child, and therefore a personal stake in getting to the outside world. This immediately marks her as gendered. Two of the three guys go on and on about how wrong she is, how they should just sit tight and wait to be rescued. (One of them is dumb enough to bring up FEMA of all things as an expert on what to do in such situations. She rightly responds, “FEMA? Are you kidding?” Don’t talk to a black woman about FEMA, dude.) They’re just so irritatingly reasonable and understanding, that she ends up looking ‘emotional’ and wrong in contrast. Yet she’s just voicing what you expect those characters to be doing at that point: using their skills to try to take control of their situation. If Donna were a man saying the same thing, no one would be trying to shut her down: it would seem ridiculous. One guy actually criticizes her for “always think[ing] [she] can solve everything” Stupid woman, only male scientists have that right. I hope we see Donna taking charge of the group next issue. Karen Starr should fire those guys’ asses when she gets back; they clearly have no initiative and no place in her company.

The final page of the comic is just. Ugh. Wasn’t there less triggering imagery to show the temporary defeat of a superhero in order for her to come back triumphant in the next issue? That Power Girl is near-indestructible and (usually) impervious to pain is not some kind of license to then ignore her very real pain and suffering and fear. Just because Power Girl’s awesome and will triumph no matter what Ultra-Humanite does to her, doesn’t magically make it okay to exploit female suffering.

These first two issues feel like the writers are trying to show Power Girl being punished for something, and I have no idea what it could be.

DC has released a preview of Power Girl #2.

DC talks to Women

Michelle — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 00:25:58 +0000

Eddie Berganza, editor of Supergirl/JLA/Teen Titans/etc, is asking women to read Supergirl in this month’s DC Nation. I’m shocked. I really am. DC as a company cares very little for its female readers. They don’t acknowledge us as a viable market, and they certainly don’t respect our opinions. That’s been made abundantly clear over the years; it’s been corroborated by employees who’ve spoken out about the institutional sexism that permeates the company (Occasional Superheroine is an eye-opener). But now DC is asking women specifically to read Supergirl because, what, sales are so bad that even women are better than nothing?

Truthfully, I would not have paid much attention to Berganza’s column if so many people weren’t talking about it online. I didn’t even know about it until yesterday because I didn’t buy any comics this month. I just…don’t want to. And the first line of the column is not encouraging:

Women. Who needs them?

Well, actually… I do.

Let me explain.

Ouch. This poor attempt at humor marks the tone of the rest of the column, and serves to remind women that Berganza is writing within a male dominated culture where woman-bashing is enjoyed without reservation. He’s making an effort to reach out to us, but he can’t do so without making sure his male readers know he’s still “on their side”. Humor is a tricky thing, but one thing is true: men use it frequently to silence women. Eddie should keep that in mind the next time he’s tempted to make a “clever” play on misogynistic witticisms.

Upon reading this editorial, with its insulting-to-our-intelligence and just plain wrong ideas on what women want from comics (Power Boy is supposed to be a winking critique on the way DC sexually degrades women? Are they serious?) I find myself thinking about something Mely of Coffee and Ink said recently about the hostile attitude comicbook companies have towards women (in the context of the devaluation of anything associated with women or girls)

the thing is, when someone insults my taste or my intelligence or my entertainment, when someone dismisses something I like as commercial or trashy or dumb or unworthy of attention, when someone announces that my interest in manga is only important as a stepping stone to the holy grails of alt comics or the pockets of DC and Marvel–strangely, this does not make me rethink my tastes. It does not make me grateful for the approval of knowledgeable men or the attention of large corporations. It disgusts me that certain demographics are simultaneously exalted and denigrated–particularly kids; particularly young girls; because everybody wants their attention and no one respects it. It makes me marvel that sexism is such a strong force that it is actually overriding market capitalism–because I want to give companies my money for manga, I want them to produce more books targeted at women and at teenage girls, I really do, but DC, oh, it’s astonishing, DC, you’ve got a gem like Emma and an underrated sweetheart like Land of the Blindfolded and prime melodrama like The Young Magician and you print them on toilet paper and throw them out to die; you decide to launch a line of comics for girls and you find a lineup of almost all male creators and call the damn thing Minx–Minx, I ask you, what’s the last time you heard the word “minx” outside a romance novel? That’s really the kind of name that conveys deep respect for your audience.

(emphasis mine)

I’m trying to figure out where this change of heart came from.

Is it because sales on Supergirl have dropped 37.5% over a year, and some of the DC PTB suddenly got the idea that hey, maybe it’s WOMEN who should be buying this book? If so – where did they get that idea? If they can’t even sell this book to their traditional market of fanboys who will argue against anything remotely feminist until they’re blue in the face, what could possibly make them think women would be a better target audience? They can’t possibly understand what a shift in thinking that would require.

Is it possible that someone at DC stumbled upon What I Want From Kara Zor-El and showed it to their boss, who realized that aggressively alienating women and girls (nevermind male readers with taste – I’m not sure DC believes they exist either) is NOT the way to sell Supergirl? Doesn’t it seem odd that all of a sudden, after trying for so many years to sell Supergirl to anyone BUT women or heaven forbid girls, they’re doing an about-face and trying to appeal to the audience they’ve most alienated and showed the least respect? Yeah, I’m cynical. They’ve made it clear from day one that this particular Supergirl is not for women, and especially not girls. She’s intended to be a male fantasy. No, that’s not fair to men. She’s a patriarchal male fantasy. And as much as Berganza et al may sincerely want to appeal to women and respect them, I don’t have faith that they can pull it off. Not based on this editorial (which I could pick apart, line by line, for its unthinking, privileged, sexist assumptions). Not based on their track record. Not based on the type of people who work there and most importantly, the type of culture they work in. A culture like that can and will make a sexist out of anyone – including women.

DC needs someone, anyone, to buy this book. It’s allegedly about a teenage girl, so they’ve had a brainwave and think that maybe women can be coaxed into trying the book with a few promises and yet another creative change. Otherwise it’s business as usual for female characters in the rest of their books. DC as a company does not believe that they have a problem. Not really. They just need to tweak the ghetto books, the ones that their favorite male readers won’t buy in large enough numbers because they won’t support a female lead. DC picked the wrong character to try to appeal to the superheroine-in-peril porn fetishists: that sort of thing can fester underground, online, but try doing it in public and you’ll piss off everyone else who associates Supergirl with heroism.

DC as a company wants women readers only when no one better will come. They’re still steeped in misogyny and cluelessness about their audience, whoever they’re supposed to be. The truth is DC doesn’t really want to write to the audience that’s there. They want to write to the audience they wish existed: fanboys who don’t much understand or care for women, and, in their most optimistic dreams, women who are just fine with their subordinate position as the sex class.

Well DC, you’re trying. I’ll give you that. I won’t be buying the issues but I’ll wait to see what other people say about the results of your efforts, and if I feel safe to buy Supergirl again, I’ll pick up the next trade paperback. That’s more than you deserve at this point.

(This post was a lot angrier when I first wrote it, and possibly more interesting, but I know that at least one person from DC is following this discussion and that made me snip a few sentences. And paragraphs.)

Berganza’s letter has sparked a flurry of insightful, nuanced – and flaming mad – conversations that I hope everyone will check out.

[linked at When Fangirls Attack!]