This post is in response to a question asked here:

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-NYapGagiRKXkibx6bHvcaBbV36Q-?cq=1&p=3#comments

Specifically, the following: “also, to play devil's advocate, can you imagine a comic that would justify these claims of anti-feminism? say you were hired to create an anti-feminist comic. what might it look like?”

To answer that, let me back up a few years first. Years ago after the rape of Sue Dibny and other events in Identity Crisis, someone posted at the GLA* this:

> You don't think that the way Sue Dibny died was hateful of women.
> You don't think the way Dinah and Zee have been abused is hateful of
> women. You don't think the way Atom's ex died was hateful of
> women. What do you want me to show you? We approach this issue
> with two different sets of standards. There's nothing left to show
> you that you haven't seen. I don't know what else you could be
> shown that you would call misogynistic. He's already burnt one
> pregnant woman to a crisp -- what act would Brad Meltzer need to
> write before you would call that particular writing misogynistic?

I responded by writing:

“What act? The hero performing any of the above acts instead of the villain. Or even a neutral stance of the heroes to the acts. Or making it seem that Sue deserved to raped and killed. Or treating the misogynist sympathetically. Any one of those things would have done it, but not one came close to happening. In fact, the exact opposite happened. For the work to be misogynous, it should champion the hatred of women, not make misogynists look like insanely grotesque creeps as this story did to Dr. Light, with his tongue dangling out, his eyes wide, and saliva drooling down his face. For the story to be misogynous, we should empathize with the character performing the misogynist acts; we shouldn't be rooting for him to have his face kicked in. Was there even one person who thought, ‘Man, they really treated Dr. Light too roughly. I mean, Sue had it coming.’ Anyone think that? Because if the story was misogynous, someone should have.”

And I hold to that. If Ralph had raped Sue to teach her a lesson, if Sue came to love her attacker, if the JLA did nothing but roll their eyes at Sue’s hysterics because she could have just enjoyed it if she’s wanted to, etc., those things would have been anti-feminist.

But getting away from rape, let me say that I already believe there is an anti-feminist theme running in comics, and I’ve spouted out about it before, and I see now Joe Quesada over at Marvel is aware of the problem too (http://www.newsarama.com/NewJoeFridays/NewJoeFridays41.html ), that there aren’t many female super genius types in comics. While I could name all sorts of genius guys who invent all sorts of stuff to become heroes, among the ranks of women, there are very, very few. Oracle is nice, but she’s not the kind of inventive genius that we see in the Atom, Mr. Fantastic, Iron Man, Mr. Terrific, etc. There’s Natasha Irons, but she seems like more of a hand-me-down hero than her own thing despite the attempts to make her a genius in her own right. So my hypothetical anti-feminism comic would keep that tend going.

Further, I’d expand on that theme and have women portrayed in less intellectual and more servile jobs across the board. Oracle would be a little more than a glorified switchboard operator. The She-Hulk would be a legal secretary and Manhunter, a paralegal. The Wasp would design clothes, but the company would be run by Hank.

I’d keep the trend in comics where the “best there is at _______” is a guy. The smartest person, the best at wielding magic, the strongest, the fastest, best swimmer, most dangerous villain, the best fighter, the most powerful telepath, etc., they’d all be guys, just like the pretty much are now. (Is Lady Shiva the exception to this trend?) And when confronted with men with similar abilities, the women would defer and even make pronouncements of their inferiority.

I’d keep women out of leadership roles or if they got in those roles, I’d show them as failures for being too flighty, too emotional, or too weak. Or just plain dumb! Black Canary would panic as leader of the JLA and call Ollie all the time, asking his advice, while Wonder Woman acted as the secretary/cookie baker of the JLA again.

Women wouldn’t have their own adventures so much as they’d be sidekicks. There’s still some of this going on, but now characters that had been sidekicks are heroic on their own, e.g. Hawkgirl, Oracle, and the Wasp. I’d reverse that self-sufficient trend.

I’d demean the women’s powers so that they couldn’t realistically be heroes on their own. Then they are in groups, instead of making them extremely powerful members like the Invisible Woman, Storm, Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl, M, etc., I’d be sure they were mainly in supportive roles, tending to the injured, vaguely predicting the future, fainting when using their powers, or needing to get behind their male cohorts to keep from being hurt.

Perhaps ironically, I’d not have female villains. I’d present women as being too naturally nice to be villainous … except that I’d make sure that the girlfriends/wives were frequently sexually duplicitous. I’d be sure that their apparent romantic/sexual urges were actually ploys to deceive or manipulate the men. The message would be that good girls are nice and don’t have sexual urges and when they do look or act sexual, it is because they are trying to get something from men, not because they are themselves sexual beings.

Perhaps the thing that would appear most ironic to other feminists is that I wouldn’t show women in sexy poses or skimpy outfits. I’d follow the lead of sexism in societies and know that the more women are covered up, the more sexist the society tends to be. Even a casual look across the globe and through time shows a connection between making men feel bad about looking at women sexually and the oppression of women. Personally, I think this comes about because of the ego defense mechanism called projection. Because men with good self-images won’t tend to think of themselves as evil, if you tell them that looking at women sexually is evil (i.e. sinful or misogynistic), because they can’t stop thinking of women sexually, they will blame someone other than themselves for the supposedly evil/misogynistic thoughts they can’t stop themselves from having. The obvious people to blame are the people “causing” the lust, namely women. Women will be blamed for lust and therefore wrapped in layers of fabric, kept out of the workplace, etc. Sure, the blame would be misplaced and unnecessary, but that’s what would happen. To foster real misogyny, the trick isn’t to eliminate lust, but to cultivate fear, resentment, and anger toward women by frustrating straight male desire and labeling sexual desire as the problem.

Putting women in modest outfits (the more modest the better) will tell men that even in their pulp fantasy material, their sexual desires must be denied. That will lead to frustration and shame, and those will lead to anger. While some guys might become self-loathing, most of them will blame women -- as we can see in erotophobic societies.

It will also perpetuate the myth that women don’t want to have sex. If women aren’t acting as if they like sex even in fantasy material that is created mainly for straight guys, surely, women can’t be wanting sex in real life either, right? Once we establish this myth in the minds of straight guys, we are left with this question:

Who is more likely to rape, the guy who believes that generally women want to have sex, but they’d like to choose their partners, or the guy who believes that women do not want to have sex so they must be tricked, drugged, or threatened into having sex?

Personally, I believe that there are many factors that have reduced the amount of rape in the US over the last 30 or so years to just 20% of what it was. And one of those factors is the prevalence of erotic material that makes men believe that women want to have sex and enjoy having sex. Why would a guy think he needs to become a rapist if he thinks he can get laid by asking? Isn’t the guy who thinks women don’t want to have sex the guy more likely to resort to desperate measures to get sex? I know that when I was having rape fantasies it was when I was a young guy who didn’t know how common men who wanted to have sex with me were. After I found out that guys would screw around with me if I just asked or allowed them to ask me, I stopped having the fantasies where I tricked, drugged, or threatened sexy guys into sleeping with me. If I’d had porn while growing up, I might have come to that realization earlier or never had those anxious fantasies to start with. I don’t think it is a mistake that researchers found that the criminals who had seen the least erotic in their youths were the rapists.

So yeah, unlike the media that seems to accompany real advances in the rights and power of women, my comic will cut out the sexy stuff. And with that said, I’d like to present to my feminist readers what I guess is the opposite question of the one that began this post:

How can erotic fantasies for straight male readers be worked into comics, which is a pulp fantasy medium consumed mainly by straight, adult males, without them being called anti-feminist? Sexual titillation gets worked into the pulp fantasy media of every other adult group, so how can it be worked into the comics read predominantly by straight guys without some people who think they are feminists decrying the works as sexist, insulting, misogynistic, or rape-inspiring?

* To see the whole discussion on the rape of Sue Dibny of which the above quotes were a part, go here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GLA/message/77971