Dirk Deppey’s response to Lisa Fortuner’s column has gotten a fair bit of attention recently.
Girl-Wonder.org’s President Karen Healey responds to Deppey’s column:
Since the male Robin III (Jason Todd) died and was remembered, and the female Robin IV (Stephanie Brown) died and was not, and the infliction of the wounds that lead to her death were furthermore depicted in a manner reminiscent of torture porn, the maintainer of Project Girl Wonder – which does not constitute the whole of Girl-Wonder.org, nor ever has – regards the lack of memorial as gender discrimination.
Gender discrimination is certainly a feminist concern. Mr Deppey may disagree as to whether discrimination took place here, but if one accepts the basic premises of Project Girl Wonder’s objection – as its creator does - then one may certainly view it as a feminist cause.
Scott the Mad Thinker agrees with Deppey somewhat but rethinks Girl-Wonder as a whole:
I’ll have to admit that I didn’t realize that Girl Wonder was doing so much to promote female involvement in comics, and that I thought of it interchangeably with Project Girl Wonder. Maybe Dirk was making the same – perhaps understandable — error. I suspect that Dirk has formed a lot of his opinions about some of the people who call themselves comic book feminists based on their male-bashing posts that they mistakenly believe are feminist posts — like some of Ms. Healey’s, ironically – that he finds at When Fangirls Attack, where I think we see more “attack,” and less of sites that are diligently plugging away at promoting women in comics.
While Blogger Hippokrene wonders what’s the big deal:
Four days ago, I poked my head into the WFGA link farm and learned the Shocking!News! that Dirk Deppey didn’t like the “Girl-Wonder.org crowd.” From the reaction of the feminist comic blogophere, I assume it’s a slow news day. Some random mouth-breather drops the right keywords in his rant causing otherwise intelligent people suffer from mental prolapse and offer responses and rebuttals aplenty. Not in the comment section of Dirky’s blog - that would be too easy. Instead, for the last four days, I get to dig through fifty blogs reporting the Shocking!News! that someone doesn’t like the “Girl-Wonder.org crowd,” because there aren’t hundreds of blogs in which dullards complain about uppity women-folk. I can almost hear Dirk’s sweaty panting as he jerks off to the attention Irritated Feminist Blogger #283 gives to his steaming pile of opinion.
So what do you think?
February 10th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Hippokreme has serious problems.
“…or the last four days, I get to dig through fifty blogs…”
No, you didn’t. When you realized what the subject was, you could have moved on to the next blog.
“…I can almost hear Dirk’s sweaty panting as he jerks off to the attention…”
I don’t know Dirk, but I don’t get the impression that he is an attention whore. You, however…
February 10th, 2008 at 3:28 am
Yeah…the biggest irony is the blogger blogging on all the needless attention that the bloggers are giving another blogger for what he wrote on his blog.
THE CIRCLE OF LIFE!!!!
I’m glad that they feel that discussing the “mouth breather’s” possible masturbatory fantasies being realized is a way of advancing the discussion or letting the needless coverage of his opinion die down. Because…you know…it should be effective.
February 10th, 2008 at 8:17 am
This whole discussion is absolutly idiotic. I seldom read the continuity Batman and never the satellite titles because they don´t interest me, and I didn´t even knew there was a Stephanie Brown who was Robin for a day or whatever. So I canm´t say if she was important or just one of those ideas that doesn´t work.
But the notion that writers of a comic are obligated to mention killed off characters if they were female on a regular basis because if they don´t they do a “gender-recrimination” is truly ridiculous.
Didn´t they kill off Big Barda in Countdown? Where should her memorial be? In Superman´s fortress? Or doesn´t she count?
And people like Hippokrene are giving the “cause” a bad name.
February 10th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Stupid, Stupid, Stupid fans. Fools you all
February 10th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Oh women!
February 10th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Wasn’t Jason the second Robin, not the third? And wasn’t there an entire issue about how he was pissed because he didn’t get a memorial by the Titans?
February 10th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
I like how with these Variations on a Theme post, we’ll usually end up with the first two entries being fairly well known bloggers, and then the third, most inflammatory quote is inevitable preceded by “and here’s something from some idiot’s livejournal” using some horrible internet handle instead of their real name.
February 10th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Highspeed, yep, he is the second Robin, and he was pissed that he didn’t get a Titans memorial, he beat the crap out of Tim during that issue too.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:13 am
During the whole Stephanie Brown/Robin III memorial debate, the one point that hasn’t been made is that Jason Todd died in the line of duty as Robin II while Stephanie Brown was stripped of the Robin cosume and died as The Spoiler and not officially at part of the Batman crew/family.
Ditto with Jason Todd/Robin II as a Titan, he died while not participating in Titan activities. Organizations such as the fire dept., police and military make that distinction all of the time.
BTW, did Hawk and Dove get a Titans memorial?
February 11th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Oh darn, I *meant* Robin II. There’s even a site called Even-Numbered Robins!
the one point that hasn’t been made is that Jason Todd died in the line of duty as Robin II while Stephanie Brown was stripped of the Robin cosume and died as The Spoiler and not officially at part of the Batman crew/family.
Actually that point has been frequently made, and the response runs as such: Jason ran away to find his mother and took a Robin costume with him. He was acting against Batman’s orders at the time he died. If Stephanie had taken a Robin costume with her when she was fired and worn it while she enacted the War Games programme, would that have worked for you?