“People read for what they want to read, I guess, rather than reading what was written.”

Truer words…

I really can’t fairly call Rucka misogynistic, but I find the way he writes female characters really off-putting. Irregardless, that was a good statement there.

Lots of people. Many times when something horrible or tragic happens to someone who is a minority, there is often someone around to say, “Oh, they only did that because he/she is a woman/black/gay/_fill in the blank_” It’s a skewed sense of equality.

Not saying it explicitly does not mean it’s not there when people constantly complain when something happens to a character who is female/gay/etc. The desired effect of that rudderless complaining is these characters should be spared harm and treated with kid gloves.

Wow, that is the straw-iest straw man I have seen in ages. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone argue that bad things shouldn’t happen to female or minority characters… more that we ought to see how those bad things affect those characters. And that we should see them as people whom bad things are happening to, not just ciphers for the white male hero to emote over.

No one says explicitly that nothing bad is allowed to happen to female/gay/black/etcetera characters.

And yet, anytime something bad DOES happen to one of those characters, there’s people shrieking that it’s BECAUSE they’re part of that group and complaining about homophobia or whatever.

And in the end, that pretty much comes down to the same thing.

I think Rucka said this really well. I agree with him.

No, it is not a good argument, and it IS a straw man.

No one has called for no “bad things” to happen to “minority” characters (though how females are a minority in real life doesn’t make much sense).

But how many gay male superheroes are there with any real visibility? How many female superheroines have their own books, let alone multiple ones, as Spider-Man or Batman does?

There are gazillions more white, male superheroes than there are female or gay male superheroes out there (and the ratios are skewed a LOT more than they are in RL), so it’s much costlier to lose any of those characters to death or maiming.

Finally “bad things?” Define the term. If by it you mean “getting swatted around by the Supervillain-of-the-week, that’s one thing, but if you mean being raped, killed, tortured, that’s something else.

Or don’t you see the difference?

No worries, Nate!

I’m actually 100% fine with Greg’s statement in any case, I just disagree with the premise.

Gail

There are problems.

First, is whenever a “minority group” calls someone or something out in comics, they say something along the lines of, “What happened to Sasha is misogynistic!” or, “Killing Black Goliath is racist.” Then, Rucka or Millar or whoever think, “Wait a second, I’m pretty sure I don’t beat women/lynch people!”

Both sides have different definitions of these terms, and so no one ever sees eye to eye. I have a strong feeling that the poster that Greg Rucka was referring to doesn’t think of sexism & misogyny as just hating women, but as being ignorant (read: not knowing) of what constitutes unfair/insensitive treatment.

No one logical would say that characters like Sasha shouldn’t be tortured, especially when someone like Boomer is. But it IS plainly a bad treatment of the character to have her so devastatingly weak, unable to leave on her own feet, and then forced to work with the man who sanctioned her torture while everyone tells her to stay in line. Greg Rucka does not hate women, but he can construct poor scenarios sometimes.

I agree with the above posters who hate the straw man argument of, “These guys just don’t want bad things to happen to minority characters!” This is untrue of most of us. This is just how some people portray our point when they don’t want to work on their own character flaws. They don’t want to think of themselves as having some subconscious, light sexist/racist ideas as a result of the institutionalized sexism & racism in the mass media they were raised in. The basic train of thought is, “I do not think women are below me, therefore, I am never sexist! These people are wrong and I am a good person.” You’re not sexist, but you can still have these internalized sexist ideas.

Look. I have no problem with Greg, or even what he said. I don’t for a moment think Greg is a sexist, a woman-hater, or anything of that nature. I was delighted and honored to write the introduction to one of his Queen And Country Tpbs BECAUSE I love the way he wrote the female characters in that book.

I’ll certainly add that there are extremists in every readship sub-group, like the people who sent death threats to Ron Marz over the Hal Jordan thing.

I just believe it’s important not to paint the larger group’s concerns by the misperceptions and accusations of an addled few. That’s all.

We both work in an industry where SOMEONE is going to imply evil motivations to darn near all but the safest of story choices, and I’m no stranger to that unpleasant scenario, myself.

Obviously, I’ve spoken about this for a long time, it’s something I’m passionate about, we’re not all going to agree, I hardly see that as any big deal.

Best wishes,

Gail

Is it really THAT difficult to separate out the teeny crazed few from a civil group with what they feel are honest concerns?

I am baffled by that.

Gail

Greg is dead right. Gail, Im sorry but you are dead wrong. First of all you dont ever seem to distinguish between when a female character is the focus of a story and when she appears as a plot point. For example you list Barbara Gordons treatment in “the killing joke” as an example becasue she was used as a plot point in order to torture Jim and Batman, while failing to see that it wasnt her story. When character A is the main prtagonist, all other characters experiences will only serve to further his/her journey. Furthermore while you complain about the dearth of female characters and as a result the porportionally greater level of brutality per character, you fail to take into account that the relative lacxk of female characters is due to the structure of the fanbase. To put it simply, men have an easier time indetifying wiht men, and as men are the largest bloc of fans, market froces will dicatate and greater numebr of male characters. On a pound for pund basis, women are not anymore brutalised than men, its just seems so becasue there are less of them. Finally while have yet to see anyone argue that nothing bad should ever happen to women or other mionorities, as others have pointed out, any isntance in which a woman is victimised, or shown as less competant than a man, or is saved by a man, or even gets brutalised and saves themselves, the blogosphere explodes with protest. When every instance is protested, one can be forgiven for beleiving those protesting want any and all instances of such to stop.

Bottom line bad things will hapepn to both superheros and superheroines, superheroines beiung physically weaker than their male counterparts (with obviuos exceptions), are more likely to be victimised, being female rape will be one of the most used victimisations, as its soemthing women in these types of positions deal with. Theres a reason female POW’s have it worse than men, theres a reason Women caught in riots have it worse. Theres a reason the nurses captured by the japnese were victimised in a different way than male soldiers. This is reality, protesting it seems ludicrous.

Rational mad man,

>>Gail, Im sorry but you are dead wrong.> First of all you dont ever seem to distinguish between when a female character is the focus of a story and when she appears as a plot point.>When character A is the main prtagonist, all other characters experiences will only serve to further his/her journey.>To put it simply, men have an easier time indetifying wiht men,> This is reality, protesting it seems ludicrous.

It looks like you messed up when using the brackets to quote.

Rational mad man:
[i] Gail, Im sorry but you are dead wrong. [/i]
No, you are not paying attention.
[i]First of all you dont ever seem to distinguish between when a female character is the focus of a story and when she appears as a plot point. For example you list Barbara Gordons treatment in “the killing joke” as an example becasue she was used as a plot point in order to torture Jim and Batman, while failing to see that it wasnt her story. When character A is the main prtagonist, all other characters experiences will only serve to further his/her journey. [/i]
Actually, Gail is proceeding from a blind, insane adherence to the principles of good writing. The way it works, in an extremely tight medium like comics, unless a character is a background crowd person making exclamations, or a one- or two-liner announcing a phone call or a visitor, each and every character who appears in the story does further the main character’s story, but that character must do so springing from a real background and motivation of her/his own. For one thing, particularly in the Marvel and DC `verses, that character might well turn up somewhere else, and if the writer handles that character differently from her/his first appearance, the on-top-of-it fans will let the writer know. For another, to have a character that works any other way is called “bad writing.” Barbara most certainly was a real character; it doesn’t matter that the story was not her.
The fact that some people do use characters as you point out, as plot points, is exactly what is meant by the entire Women in Refrigerators phenomenon. These women [u]aren’t[/u] real characters; they are there only to stir the hero into a depression/rage that will propel him through the next 1/6/x issues of his books. A child or animal would serve as well—mix `em, match `em, swap `em out, except probably more people would scream over children or animals. The fact that WiR are trophy heads (sometimes literally) is not only sexist; it is [u]bad writing[/u]. Characters deserve to be treated like people. As game pieces that are brutalized with only the goal of getting the hero rolling in mind, they are mindlessly written. They confuse readers who are not discerning and who will cheer the violence that sends a female hero on the hero’s journey to becoming something better with the same mindless joy that they cheer the latest WiR being slung around and bashed to bits for your comix enjoyment.
Yes. There are times when a female hero must undergo violence to endure, transcend, and become someone better. But when every other female on the landscape is getting bashed to pieces for entertainment and as a lazy writing device, it becomes hard to tell the difference.
[i]Furthermore while you complain about the dearth of female characters and as a result the porportionally greater level of brutality per character,[/i]
You leave me breathless with admiration over the idea that we should have more brutality per character because there are fewer of those characters. It sounds very like—yes, I have it. It sounds very like the idea that it’s all right if we suffer more on earth because we will reap resultant rewards in heaven. It has the weight of tradition behind it.
Except I’m not a Victorian woman. I’m a modern woman, and I know a wagonload of manure when it drives by. This is the era of [u][b][i]equality[/u][/i][/b]. Hadn’t you heard?
[i] To put it simply, men have an easier time indetifying wiht men, [/i]
You’re claiming men have no imagination?
[i]and as men are the largest bloc of fans, market froces will dicatate and greater numebr of male characters. On a pound for pund basis, women are not anymore brutalised than men, its just seems so becasue there are less of them.[/i]
Oh. And please spare me your tossed-into-a-blender-and-pureed-to-an-indistinguishable-slush “statistics” comparing men and women in comics. I’ve seen them in a number of other locations and I am . . . underimpressed. Statistics are so easily manipulated it isn’t funny.
[i] When every instance is protested, one can be forgiven for beleiving those protesting want any and all instances of such to stop.[/i]
When one understands what another one reads only what he wants to read and disregards the rest, yes.
[i]Bottom line bad things will hapepn to both superheros and superheroines, superheroines beiung physically weaker than their male counterparts (with obviuos exceptions), are more likely to be victimised, [/i]
Particularly when too many writers (I am not talking Greg Rucka here, who seems to be particularly conscientious about when he applies this solution) use it as a way to deepen the character when they can’t be bothered to think up something different.
[i]This is reality, protesting it seems ludicrous. [/i]
And allowing it to exist, not protesting its continual use, in reality and as an idiot default in a medium about [u][b]heroes[/u][/b], is cowardice.

Tamora Pierce

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