Noted out this entry because I think it needs repairing or removal.
Janet Van Dyne, aka The Wasp, took advantage of a severe case of schizophrenia that her long-time crime-fighting partner Hank Pym underwent (an accidental chemical gassing leading to the creation of the split personality "Yellowjacket") to trick him into a marriage he wasn't really ready for, and never gave a thought about getting him the psychiatric help he clearly needed. Hank goes through several misfortunes leading up to a drug-induced mental breakdown,(this one now being his fourth!) and hits Jan in a fit of rage (which wasn't even intentional; he was flailing around in a mad fit and accidentally backhanded her). Guess who was divorced, branded a wife-beater, and still blames himself for something that was beyond his control at the time, and who was thought of by all, in-universe and out, as an entirely innocent victim of abuse? This misconception is so widespread that speaking the truth of what actually happened can lead to accusations of victim blaming.
This...is not at all what actually happened. What actually happened:
Avengers #55 introduces Yellowjacket, seemingly a new character claiming to have killed Hank Pym. He proceeds to strangle Janet, kidnap her, force a kiss on her as she tries to fight him off, but at the end of it she declares she's going to marry him.
Following issue #56, we find out that Yellowjacket was Hank Pym, who had a 'chemical induced schizophrenic episode', and Janet figured it out during the kiss. Per Hank's own description of things, he wanted to marry Janet but was too obsessed with his work, and Yellowjacket was born from his desire to not hold himself back in such matters. Janet didn't manipulate a confused Hank into marriage, she merely said yes to a clearly unstable Hank. That's not a healthy decision, but its not a malicious or abusive one. Her behaviour is less 'abusive harpy takes advantage of a poor mentally unwell man' and more 'young woman ignores blatant red flags'.
Before this, following this leading up to the slap, which happens 150 issues later, Hank repeatedly belittles and bullies Janet. Some of this is Values Dissonance as it wouldn't be seen as out of place for a husband to verbally abuse their wife, but the sheer extent of it goes even beyond the norm. It makes the idea that she was responsible for getting him psychiatric help difficult to accept because if she tried, he'd have refused, and given the times, whatever psychiatric help available wouldn't have been enough.
The slap was not 'unintentional', at least not explicitly so. Jim Shooter has claimed since then that it was, in order to backtrack the controversy, but the artist and others involved have disputed this claim. Even still, accident or not, Hank shows zero remorse for it at the time; its only later, when Janet saves his life from his own mess, he reflects on what he did.
There's a lot of Hank fans who like giving him Draco in Leather Pants treatment and Janet getting Ron the Death Eater treatment to compensate, that seems in-part motivated by people going to the extreme to counter the fact Hank's redemption arc is often ignored to give him RTDE treatment too. But to be frank, I'm not confident many of them have actually read those issues, because it takes some severe creative reinterpretation to ignore the scenes of Hank strangling Janet and forcing a kiss on her while twisting things to present marriage as being her idea.
Not to mention, it requires both not actually understanding how mental illness works and how it affected Hank, but also to not understand how abusive relationships actually work and what behaviour actually constitutes being abusive. Point being, Janet's behaviour was definitely that of a victim, not an abuser.
And the suggestion that it was her fault for not doing something to get Hank help? Yeah no, that is definitely victim-blaming. Its not anyone's responsibility to make sure people take care of their mental well-being but their own.
Noted out this entry because I think it needs repairing or removal.
This...is not at all what actually happened. What actually happened:
There's a lot of Hank fans who like giving him Draco in Leather Pants treatment and Janet getting Ron the Death Eater treatment to compensate, that seems in-part motivated by people going to the extreme to counter the fact Hank's redemption arc is often ignored to give him RTDE treatment too. But to be frank, I'm not confident many of them have actually read those issues, because it takes some severe creative reinterpretation to ignore the scenes of Hank strangling Janet and forcing a kiss on her while twisting things to present marriage as being her idea.
Not to mention, it requires both not actually understanding how mental illness works and how it affected Hank, but also to not understand how abusive relationships actually work and what behaviour actually constitutes being abusive. Point being, Janet's behaviour was definitely that of a victim, not an abuser.
And the suggestion that it was her fault for not doing something to get Hank help? Yeah no, that is definitely victim-blaming. Its not anyone's responsibility to make sure people take care of their mental well-being but their own.