The Geek Husband What Rules, and myself had a conversation about my last post here. I was seething about the stupid sexist crap in the LA Times' "Girls' Guide to Comicon" and he pointed out, that it wasn't aimed at me or any of my friends, but at more normal girls, trying to bring them in. My response was: "Why? So they can treat them like crap, too?"
But I'm not bitter.
And yes, I think that's what's really bugging the crap out of me about all of this. Every time one of the "Big Two" (Marvel and DC, for the uninitiated) starts talking about doing something to be more friendly for women, they don't mean, quit being a bunch of sexist jerks, stuffing women in refrigerators* or making all the female characters look like poorly designed blow up dolls with porn face. What they mean is they'll do a separate imprint full of "girly girl" stuff, and then when it tanks a year later because they didn't actually support it, and that's NOT what female comic fans want, they get to go, "See! We gave women comics and they didn't want them!"
Ok, listen up, pal, what we want is to not be assaulted with images that reinforce the societal mandate that women are first and foremost decorative and sexual, where values of sexual equal available to any wandering dick that happens by. We want female superheroes with different body types, skin tones and facial expressions. We want African American or African superheroines to look African American or African, or Japanese superheroines to look Japanese, or Korean to look Korean... You get the idea. We want there to be a middle ground between SUPER SUPER ZOMG SEXY HOTNESS and too old to fuck.
And when we bitch about it, all we get is a chorus of "You don't get comics!" "You're just jealous you don't look like that!" "You hate comics!" "It's just fantasy!" **
See, you guys can't even treat the girls you already have in the hobby with anything resembling respect, so why the hell are you trolling for normal girls?
*Women in refrigerators refers to a specific incident in superhero comics, go here for an explanation,
**You know, when Wolverine's sporting a trouser-snake that makes John Holmes feel insecure, then we'll talk "it's just fantasy."
Mickey Schulz is a guest author for the California NOW blog; her opinions are not necessarily those of California NOW. Copyright Mickey Schulz, with permission granted to California NOW for use on this site.
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