Male Roles Vs. Female Roles in Fiction: Discussion/Analysis/Troperwank

Claremont too. That man had some kinky comics.

Claremont's writing of the X women has a lot of dodgy or outright awful aspects that really don't hold up today. His fetishizing of Storm, the sexist implications of the Phoenix Saga, his having Kitty use the N word.

Edited by windleopard on Jun 17th 2019 at 9:17:39 AM

Ah, trying to equate the n-word with the in-universe 'mutie' slur I see. Well, that was ill-judged...

In hindsight, so was the Mutant Minority metaphor.

Even the X movied were smart enough to avoid that idiocy.

I've said it before, trying to put Fantastic Racism on the same level as actual real life racism just doesn't work.

Yeah, let's not retread THIS particular ground.

Very well then. I have some ground I'd like to retread that is more on topic anyway.

A while back I talked about how femme fatale villains in superhero comics tend to go from sexual manipulators to more hands-on action girls as they gravitate to the heroic side.

Well, a recent blog post about the character of Talia al Ghul (mother of Damian Wayne and the other Batman love interest that is a villain) got me thinking about something that has never quite made sense to me.

See Talia is Ra's daughter and is supposed to be a loyal assassin of his but you wouldn't tell this by her appearances. When she's not being used by Ra's to play with Bruce's feelings, she's often a damsel in distress. Her fighting abilities are either non-existent or shown as inferior when she does throw down. The recent and most egregious of this was in Tom King's Batman Rebirth run where she lost a fight to Catwoman. Now Selina is no slouch in combat but I wouldn't put her as one of the best fighters in the DCU. And despite King going out of his way to include dialogue about how Talia was trained to fight since she was a child (keep in mind the only other Bat characters who can say this are Cass Cain and Damian Wayne), she still loses. This woman is centuries old, has been training for battle all her life and she loses to a woman who, as far as I can remember, has only shown skill with a whip as a weapon.

Oh and remember how I brought DC's issues when it comes to Asian women two pages back? You may notice that Talia's skin is darker in that image than she tends to be drawn as◊. So on top of Talia being depicted as an inferior fighter to Selina, we've also got the racist implications of the brown woman being a jealous harpy. I mean for crying out loud, Talia's first appearance in King's run had her getting up from what appeared to be an orgy.

And that's not even getting into how, ever since Morrison wrote her, Talia has been depicted as being obsessed with a strong mate who will give her powerful offspring (yeah there were people actually defending this as being more feminist than Talia's previous characterization when Morrison did this).

Edited by windleopard on Jun 17th 2019 at 10:07:20 AM

Selina is definitely and consistently more skilled in that run than she normally is. Taking down three speedsters (people faster than Superman) at once was the most egregious.

Talia is a mess of issues though. Not just how they emphasize her arab heritage when she's bad, and color her much paler when she's good. Not just that she's been retconned to be a rapist, a jealous harpy, and a full blown terrorist (when she used to resist her father much more often).

But there's also an aspect of biphobia in it all. When she first appears in this Batman run, it's laying in bed with a bunch of men and women. Meanwhile, Selina, who is also canonically bisexual, never has her bisexuality acknowledged in this series. So it comes across as using bisexuality to show someone being more morally dubious, while the woman who only shows attraction to men is "better".

In fairness to that, they were under Poison Ivy's control and she wouldn't be able to best take advantage of their powers.

[quoteblock]]Talia is a mess of issues though. Not just how they emphasize her arab heritage when she's bad, and color her much paler when she's good. Not just that she's been retconned to be a rapist, a jealous harpy, and a full blown terrorist (when she used to resist her father much more often).[[/quoteblock]]

The League of Assassins as a whole is pretty much a mess of Orientalist tropes. They're basically DC's equivalent to the Hand and I do not mean that as a compliment. I don't even think they've stated what country Ra's originates from.

Also this little gem:

As for this

Yeah, I mean, did Talia even have anything that showed her as being attracted to women prior to this run?

Edited by windleopard on Jun 17th 2019 at 10:32:19 AM

In Talia's case the bisexuality aspect is definitely them treating her as The Vamp but I think the Catwoman example is more about fanservice and patting themselves on the back for progress they can't commit to.

The Fantastic Racism is actually why I think mutants benefit from a shared universe like the comics more than an isolated one like the films.

"BUT THEIR SUPERPOWERS THO" is a counterargument that really falls apart when there are other superpowers. The argument surrounding whether or not Cyclops's murder-eyes are inherently dangerous to the public is a complicated one, but it swiftly stops being complicated when you can go, "Okay, you think Cyclops is dangerous. But Captain Marvel is fine? Explain that shit."

The existence of other supers who are not on the receiving end of the same kind of hate and bigotry that mutants receive keeps the conversation fixed on the fact that they're an underprivileged minority group. It pulls the spotlight away from Cyclops's murder-eyes. Why is it okay for Carol Danvers to shoot laser beams but it's not okay for Scott Summers to do it? The answer is "Because he's a mutant", and that's irrationally stupid and awful in exactly the same way that real-world bigotry is irrationally stupid and awful.

The X-metaphor is fine. It just needs to exist in a world with publicly accepted superpowers for it to really click.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jun 17th 2019 at 11:49:20 AM

I assume the logic for some would be that super powers as a result of a lab accident and sudden mutation isn't the same. Probably not helped by the fear of ending up like the Neanderthals getting replaced by another species.

If that is right or wrong is a different matter entirely.

Honestly, given the destructive potential of mutants, I have be always be a bit sympathetic to Anti Mutant measures.

Sure, but that deals with one problem by creating another.

Why are Mutants bad and Superheroes (not sure what the specific term for Marvel powered people is) are fine? It doesn't make any sense.

And before anyone says anything, yes bigotry is irrational but that doesn't mean it lacks a reason. American has been a white supremacist state for most of its existence, we defined whiteness based on what was useful and on physical appearance. Same with other kinds of bigotry, there was always a method to it. Discriminating against one group of powered people but being fine with the other doesn't make any sense and clearly lacks that kind of internal 'logic'.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jun 17th 2019 at 11:01:41 AM

The Irish weren't white until it was decided that they were.

There's never been an internal logic. The distinction has always been completely arbitrary.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jun 17th 2019 at 12:05:03 PM

The Irish were catholic tho, there is a long, looooong history of Anti-Irish bigotry.

Racism against Blacks? Europeans had to find a way to justify slavery and deshumanization was necessary.

Racism against Native Americans?

North America: Wanted to steal their lands, so Euros has to deshumanizate them using first religious bigotry and then genetic (by the era)-science.

South America: Spaniards wanted to keep them subjugated, ergo they create a complex hierarchy with Spaniards from Spain at the top, doing ocassional intermarriages to legitimize Spanish rule via Native The Quisling

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jun 17th 2019 at 1:08:49 PM

I mentioned use.

That doesn't make discriminating against mutants but not superheroes any less tonally inconsistent and illogical.

If people are afraid of powered people then they should be afraid of them all, there's no reason for them to treat non-mutants differently.

It doesn't make sense, and bigotry not making sense doesn't make things better. There are different kinds of discrimination with their own twisted senses of logic, discrimination against people with powers has no reason to have a double standard.

Exactly, they all had clear reasons for the discrimination.

Bad reasons obviously but the motivation was clear. The same is not true of arbitrarily treating different groups of powered people differently.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jun 17th 2019 at 11:08:55 AM

Racism as we know it (especially with the Genetic Phenotype stuff, see: Asian, Black, Native American, Indian, White) is very recent.

Like, Russia was considered asian at the start of the 20th century despite their...uh..."best efforts" to erase their non-European aspects (Oh, the bloody history of Russian minorities...).

However, this had a reason. "White identity" was formed as some sort of unity between European-descendents and thus, all the stereotypes about other phenotypes were born, slowly and gradually.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Jun 17th 2019 at 1:18:16 PM

Bigotry is tonally inconsistent and illogical.

Ask every black male ever shot to death for holding something vaguely shaped like a gun in public why white men open-carrying rifles and making threatening comments about protesters are totally acceptable in society's eyes.

If people are afraid of people having guns, then they should be afraid of them all. But they're not. They're only afraid of black people having guns or gun-shaped objects. Just like the way they're only afraid of mutants shooting lasers from their eyes, but are fine with non-mutants having laser eyes. Discrimination, by its very nature, is a double standard.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jun 17th 2019 at 2:54:04 AM

Just a thing here: I thing Kitty saying the N world wasnt so bad since the idea was "if you use a slur then people will use one against you", granted is risky but kinda consistent in a way, now what happen later(I think the black men kinnap her or something like that) was stupid as hell.

Racism is ilogical not not so much, is a mix of ansiaties and reafirmation of once place, is not just "he is diferent ergo he is bad" is more "he can displace me so I neeed to reafirm myself over him" racism is weird because is very complicate logic to jusfify basic urges.

Edited by unknowing on Jun 17th 2019 at 5:26:37 AM

Didn't Civil War make it clear that bigots hated superheroes too?

Spiderman was pretty disliked overall. The Thing and Hulk are usually treated like monsters.

I feel like the giant driving force regarding mutants would logically be the fear of humanity being replaced by them and the fact that mutant powers seem less controllable.

Using the cyclops example many versions the glasses break or come off and lots of unexpected damage from a powerful eyebeam.

Though I think that's due to Jameson making him a Hero with Bad Publicity more than anything (at least regarding Spider-man centric stories), though Spidey's case and one other has me wonder if prejudice against a single person counts as Bigotry, but that's a topic for another thread.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jun 17th 2019 at 3:23:10 AM

I would have assumed imposters did more damage than a single newspaper company does regarding the reputation of Spiderman. That and damage caused by an old nemesis taking over his body for a period of time damaging his personal and hero reputation.

Spider-man was disliked specifically because JJJ whipped up public opinion against him.

And the MC Universe is in general distrustful of supers, even the Avengers and the FF falls foul of public opinion when their turn comes.

But prejudice against mutants is basically based around them getting powers because they're born with it rather than gain it a more creative way.

And I strongly disagree with the notion that bigotry is arbritary or without any reasoning behind it. The reasoning might be as simple and boneheaded as "me like in-group, me no like out-group", but that is a reason. That's not actually arbritary. But there's usually a far deeper and historical reason for why something actually - like with with the Irish, to use a previous example, you have an example of the English conquering the Irish in the first place, and them being Catholic and not speaking English, and that solidified in-group/out-group dynamic survived to the New World, where the Irish contined being Catholic, whereas the majority English/Protestant population continued to see the Irish as the sub-human race that needed their guidance - and that goes for the rest of the people Europeans conquered.

A LOT of modern day racism is based in apologia for colonialism. How do you justify conquering a bunch of land and displacing the local population and making them second-class citizens in their own homelands? Come up with a rationale they're all really just savages who haven't managed to develop to your technological level because white people have better genes, and that white people should in fact conquer more lands inhabited by not-white people and put them down if they resist because this is for their own good / the white people deserve it more.

The problem with mutants is that yes, you can make that in-group/out-group distinction, but how do people know every superhero isn't a mutie? Why are they especially aggressive they presume are "natural" rather than the ones that "unnaturally" have powers? Is there some historical event that especially fermented anti-mutant feeling? I mean, Islamaphobia in the US in the last two decades can be attributed to a very large degree to 9/11. What fermented anti-mutant hate exactly? Humans and mutants are at each other's throats the moment they seem to be aware of each other. The logic is a bit flimsy IMO.