I’ve been doing a series of posts about superheroes and gender. In the most recent I talked about superdickery. Superdickery here refers to the way super-heroes tend to stand in for the uber-patriarch, both as benign law-giver and as evil ogre-father. In the post, I talked especially about how Marvel’s innovation was to shift more explicitly towards the idea of superhero as nightmare ogre-father (the Hulk! the Thing!) Ultimately, though, the ogre-father is still the father; Marvel comics are still about dreams of empowerment, rather than about denigrating or undermining those visions of absolute mastery.
Okay. So…if superheroing is all about superdickery, what happens when you have a female superhero? As the title up there says, can Wonder Woman be a superdick? And, if so, how, if at all, is that dickishness different when it’s attached to a woman?
There have been a couple of gestures at making Wonder Woman dickish. As I mentioned last post, Kate Beaton’s butch WW can be seen as dickish to some extent. And Greg Rucka’s WW in the Hiketeia might be considered superdickish in some sense too.
Overall, though, male writers have seemed distinctly uncomfortable with having Wonder Woman act as a superdick. I’m going to talk about some specific examples in a minute. First though, I want to discuss briefly why the superdickery meme is so hard (as it were) to apply to female characters.
In general, the whole point of the superdick is that you have some non-powered weakling (Bruce Banner, Clark Kent, whoever), and then the superhero acts as empowerment fantasy. Bruce Banner can’t lay down the law — but Hulk can smash. Peter Parker can’t replace Unlce Ben — but Spider-Man can! Bruce Wayne cant’ fight evil in his undies — but Batman will. Etc.
On the one hand, this is a pretty simple formulation. On the other hand, though, it is, I think, plugged into some fairly profound dynamics around male identity. As I discussed in this post, this post, and this post, male identity is built around a central incoherence. This incoherence can be seen as biologically Oedipal (with Freud), or as cultural (with Eve Sedgwick.) Either way, the point is that a male is both identified with patriarchal power (the father) and distanced from that power (the child.) To be identified with patriarchal power is to turn one’s back on femininity, and in some sense on humanity — so that the uberpatriarch is both a monster and, in some sense, unmasculine, since he rejects women (what gender is the Thing under those briefs, exactly?) But, on the other hand, to be a sniveling child outside of patriarchal power is to be feminized.
In short, the engine behind the super-hero split identity is the anxiety of maleness. Peter/Spider-Man is constantly vacillating between two people because neither one is stable. Peter is under pressure to take up the rod of superdickery and become a real man; Spider-Man is under pressure to cast aside the rod of superdickery and pay attention to the girls already so he can become a real man.
Women aren’t implicated in this psychodrama. Female identity isn’t incoherent — or at least, it’s not incoherent in the same way. A commenter on a recent article of mine at Reason put the point succinctly:
girls can think ninjas are cool without any blowback. Any man who likes sparkly emo vampires is probably sorting through some issues.
That’s exactly the point; a girl who likes ninjas doesn’t have her femininity called into question (on the contrary, butch women are often considered especially hot, as I argue here. Men who like romance, on the other hand, open themselves up (as it were) to the charge of not being sufficiently masculine.
So that means women have it easy compared to poor, conflicted men, right? Well, not exactly. It’s true that female identity is in some sense more stable…but there’s a certain amount of coercion which goes into enforcing that stability. Men are always defined by their lack of the phallus, always anxiously scurrying after the unattainable superdick…or dropping it like a hot potato and scurrying away when they get it. Women, on the other hand, aren’t supposed to have the superdick in the first place, so they’re just kind of supposed to sit there and be. Basically, for women, the ideal is more coherent, which means that individual slip ups (watching ninja movies) aren’t necessarily always as important. However, overall, a more coherent ideal can actually be more limiting. Always striving and failing is tiresome, but probably preferable overall to being stuck in prison.
Which brings us back to Wonder Woman.
That’s from Denny O’Neil and Mike Sekowsy’s first issue on WW from 1968. And, as you can see, the creators seem to be of the opinion that WW is a freak. And why is she a freak? Not because she’s actually a monster like the Thing, but simply because she’s got “muscles” and is a woman. And, not coincidentally, in the following issues of their run on the series, O’Neill and Sekowsky actually depowered WW, turning her into a civilian spy — still a crime fighter, but one who wouldn’t necessarily scare the (male) kiddies.
O’Neill and Sekowsky are more blatant than most, but they’re hardly alone in their discomfort with the super-powered WW. Throughout “The Greatest Wonder Woman Stories Ever Told,” there’s a constant, insistent effort to evade the image of Wonder Woman as superdick — to domesticate her, if you will. In Robert Kanigher’s “Top Secret,” Steve Trevor engages in an elaborate plot to get Wonder Woman to marry him. His scheme fails…but it forces WW to create her Diana Prince identity in which (of course) she serves under Steve in the military. In this story, then, Wonder Woman isn’t Diana’s empowerment fantasy; rather, Diana is *Steve’s* empowerment fantasy. WW does get the better of Steve, but only by doing what he wants. She bows to his superdickery and relinquishes her own.
Similarly, in Robert Kanigher’s revealingly titled “Be Wonder Woman…and Die!” the emotional focus of the story is on a terminally ill young actress who impersonates Wonder Woman and then expires beautifully. It’s pretty clearly a Mary Sue story in some sense — a WW fan appears, is lauded by her idol, and then shuffles off the mortal coil to great acclaim. But you do have to wonder — if this is a Mary Sue, whose Mary Sue is it? Who exactly is getting off on a depowered and dead WW clone? Could it be the male writer,by chance?
One final example; Wonder Woman #230, from 1977. (Todd Munson very kindly gave me this issue when I visited his class at Randolph-Macon a few weeks back. ) This issue is by Marty Pasko, and it’s set in the 1940s to tie in with the then-current TV series. It’s also obsessed with doubling. The villain is the Cheetah, who suffers from multiple-personality disorder; normally she’s an everyday socialite (Priscilla Rich), but when she sees Wonder Woman she has a psychotic episode and turns into a supervillain. In this sotry, Priscilla accidentally encounters WW and has her transformation triggered. As the Cheetah she then manages to discover WW’s secret identity, and makes plans to use the information to kill her. However, Cheetah turns back to Priscilla before she can take action. Priscilla then contacts Diana Prince…and hypnotizes her into forgetting she’s Wonder Woman, figuring that if Wonder Woman disappears, Priscilla herself will never change into the Cheetah again.
So along the way here there are several suggestive incidents.
— Early in the issue, Steve Trevor is gushing on and on about Wonder Woman. Diana Prince is clearly quite pissed about this; she’s jealous of her alter ego. Thus, there’s a definite implication that Diana *wants* to get rid of WW, just as Priscilla wants to get rid of the Cheetah.
— There’s an erotic tension between the female antagonists. Priscilla’s repressed emotions are released whenever she sees Wonder Woman; it’s not hard to read a lesbian subtext into that. Moreover, the hypnotic encounter between Priscilla and Diana is framed as seduction; Priscilla even comments (lasciviously?) on how “naive” Diana is.
In breaking the mirror here, Priscilla is banishing both Wonder Woman and the Cheetah. Where agonized male-male tensions tend to lead to heroes hitting villains and hyperbolic violence, the female-female encounter/seduction does the reverse. It doesn’t redouble anxieties around female identity; it eliminates them. Priscilla is ushering Diana back into femininity. (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in the last panel Diana’s face seems definitely softer and less butch than it does towards the top of the page.)
Priscilla can be seen, in other words, as patrolling the boundaries of femininity. This is actually a fairly common dynamic, I think; women are often harsher on (small) infractions against femininity than men are. My wife pointed out that Patti Smith in the 70s once commented that there’s nothing more disgusting than seeing some woman’s breast hanging over a guitar. The quote is interesting too, because, like this encounter, there’s definitely some not quite dealt with eroticism there; Smith is perceiving female guitarists as sexual beings; there’s a same-sex frisson. I haven’t quite worked this through, but it seems like there’s a parallel here with Eve Sedgwick’s ideas about male homosociality. That is, men form homosocial bonds (and repress explicit homosexual ones) as a way of cementing patriarchal power. Women might be seen as forming homosocial bonds (and repressing explicit homosexual ones) as a way of policing or reaffirming femininity — which again essentially has the effect of cementing patriarchal power. That seems like a good description of what Priscilla is doing here, certainly — she seduces/explains the error of her ways to Diana in order to prevent Diana from becoming a superdick, and so leading Priscilla herself into superdickery.
On the one hand this ends up being a false consciousness argument (women reinforcing the patriarchal order out of a mistaken fear of their own power/acceptance of their natural role.) On the other hand, it might also be seen as a not unrational risk assessment. Priscilla is worried that Wonder Woman’s escape from femininity will bring reprisals against Priscilla herself (she’ll become the cheetah, get herself in trouble, and end up being punished.) Similarly, Patti Smith, as a female rockstar, could be seen as covering her own ass — too many female rockstars might cause trouble.
I don’t know; not sure that that’s all thought through as well as I might like. But I think there is definitely a sense in which bonds between women are used to patrol femininity just as bonds between men are used to patrol masculinity. And the obsessively doubled relationship between Priscilla/Cheetah and Diana/Wonder Woman seems to get at that.
Though at the same time, of course, there’s a tradition of feminist sisterhood which is about confronting or challenging patriarchy. It’s interesting in that regard how, even though this is set in the 40s when the Marston /Peter stories took place, there are just a lot less women here than in Marston’s writing. The only woman who’s around is Priscilla, which is obviously an antagonistic relationship….
— Because WW has disappeared, Steve has to take her spot in a video. (The director comments “I’d rather shoot a war hero than some broad in a silly get-up anyway!”) The Cheetah has booby-trapped the camera, though. Priscilla doesn’t want to kill anyone…so she figures she has to remind Diana of who she was. She leads Diana off to the side (which looks again very much like femme/butch seduction)
and this time the female/female encounter brings WW and the Cheetah both back.
Because we see this entirely from Priscilla’s perspective, though, this comes across more as sad necessity than triumphant victory. The return of female superpowers may be necessary, but it’s not ideal or normal. And, moreover, it really does result in bad news for Priscilla; she gets beaten up, captured, and sent off to Paradise Island for reeducation (where presumably she’ll be reintegrated back into femininity.)
—Soon after WW reappears we get this panel:
The reappearance of WW seems to humorously undermine Steve’s maleness. When a woman wields the superdick, men are less male. Not only can’t Steve take WW’s place, but even in wanting to he becomes ridiculous; less of a man.
— The comic ends with WW back in Diana Prince identity, talking to Steve. Steve is worrying about the possibility of WW disappearing again — and Diana suggests that if WW does disappear Steve should spend more time looking for her. There’s certainly a hint here that Diana would like WW to go away— she wants Steve to recognize, or respond, to Diana instead. Like Priscilla, Diana seems to in part want to lose her super-powers and her super-identity.
This isn’t that unusual a trope — as I mentioned in the last post, Spider-Man often wants to lost his powers, as does Bruce Banner, and so forth. The difference here is, perhaps, that when Diana is just Diana, there’s no indication that she wants to be anything else. She doesn’t wish she had her powers back, or think about WW. Instead, Priscilla has to remind her who she was. When Peter Parker, or whoever, is depowered, his identity remains incoherent; he still wants the superdick. But for Diana, the only tension is when she’s Wonder Woman. A feminized Diana, sans superdick, is perfectly happy — just as, presumably, a Priscilla without the Cheetah would be perfectly happy. There isn’t the attraction/repulsion for patriarchal authority that you tend to feel in male super-hero narratives. Instead, the energy of the story seems to push pretty firmly towards just turning superfemales into ordinary women and being done with it. Of course, it can’t end up there because, you know, Wonder Woman’s name is on the cover of the comic, and you need more stories with her. But that isn’t Marty Pasko’s fault. He didn’t create the character.
And next time we’ll talk about the guy who did create the character and how he felt about superdickery. Hopefully we’ll get to that next week.
In the meantime…this is actually part of a long series of posts on latter-day Wonder Woman iterations. You can read the whole series here.
Do you think the discomfort with WW as superdick is peculiar to male writers? Maybe that's an impossible question to answer, given that 99% of WW writers were/are male.
But the current one isn't. I'm curious as to whether there are similar undercurrents in Gail Simone's run. I haven't been buying it, but from what I've seen online Simone isn't trying to de-power WW or emphasize her femininity.
I believe the correct term is "Wonderdickery".
Yeah, I think it's fair to suggest that it has to do with the fact that the writers are male. I don't think Simone does it. I don't think Perez or Jimenez or Ruckas exactly did it either, though their solution was problematic, I'd argue. And I think Marston also doesn't do it for interesting reasons. That's all kind of what the next post is about, if I ever get to it; this one near killed me…..
"That's exactly the point; a girl who likes ninjas doesn't have her femininity called into question (on the contrary, butch women are often considered specially hot, as I argue here. Men who like romance, on the other hand, open themselves up (as it were) to the charge of not being sufficiently masculine. "
That might depend on whether you recognize a difference between "hotness" and femininity.
I think you contradict this statement yourself in the essay , when you write :
"Priscilla can be seen, in other words, as patrolling the boundaries of femininity. This is actually a fairly common dynamic, I think; women are often harsher on (small) infractions against femininity than men are."
But back back to your original idea, that its ok for girls to like ninjas. DO you really think women/girls face no blowback for liking to play with G.I. Joe Toys over Barbie toys?
I'm a man myself, but I certainyl have anecdotal evidence that says otherwise. Perhaps its less so today? You aren't writing about modern comics, though.
Honestly, I only skimmed the prison lesbian essay you linked to, but if you are arguing that a lesbian woman is totally feminine despite being butch, I think your barking up the wrong tree.
She might be "hot", but a lesbian is going to be, by definition, less than feminine. Show us butch heterosexual women in long term heterosexual relationships if you want to make your point.
Of course, there's a difference between literature and real life. But:
Certainly, with characters like Xena, I would think the butch character is ultimately hot but unavailable to men. Also the one from Conan the barbarian, who won't sleep with a guy unless he defeats her in battle? (whatever her name was?)
Jokes along this line are found in Futurama, with Leela saying in an episode, while on a date
"Most guys are put off by the fact that I can kill them with a flick of my wrist."
Leela can't ever find a guy who likes her besides Fry, who's a dufus. The feminine Amy taunts Leela over her looks.
Seems to me that there might be a reading in that Wonder Woman story that she can only be with Steve if she loses her butchness. A butch girl might be "hot" but can only be enjoyed from afar, like a heterosexual man might enjoy watching two lesbians have sex, but doesn't expect to be able to join them.
Buffy's boyfriend Angel, may have the hots for her, but can't sleep with her. Buffy's doing a man's job, and that means, while she may be hot, she's off limits to men.
Greg Rucka, I think, loves to play into this sort of thing.
Rucka's Batwoman being a lesbian is interesting in that context. If a man is queer for liking Emo Vampires, perhaps Batwoman is queer for liking fist fights?
Rucka is actually so repetitive that its rather funny. Apparently he just launched a comic called Stumptown about a private eye lesbian.
In Queen and Country his butch spy is tortured and almost raped on a mission, and doesn't want to be touched by men afterwards.
He probably did the same sort of stuff in his other books. I know his Wolverine run had a tough as nails FBI agent agent woman who is in some sort of rape camp at one point.
Maddy, that clearly should have been the title of the post. Duh.
Pallas; as I think I say in the essay, I don't necessarily think I have this all worked out yet (if ever.)
I think women can face less blowback around various issues. Women can wear pants these days without much trouble, for example; men wearing dresses, not so much. Women can hold hands with their female friends; men again not so much. Women can in certain cases experiment with same sex fooling around without being labeled as gay; men not so much. And women can be very tough and kick ass and still be seen as sexual — or even as more sexual. (The point in the women in prison movie is that being butch actually makes the character more sexual and more appealing to men in certain ways.)
On the other hand, compared to men, I think women watch each other more closely for certain kind of cues about feminine behavior (clothes, as just the most obvious example).
"And women can be very tough and kick ass and still be seen as sexual — or even as more sexual."
I guess my thought is, for a heterosexual female, that's a questionable role model for acceptable female behavior.
She can be a:
1) Old fashioned woman
2) tough single woman
3) tough lesbian
4) Sexually traumatized tough woman
5) Sexually traumatized tough lesbian woman
6) Temporarily tough woman who drops the toughness when she snags a boyfriend.
Would a heterosexual woman really walk away from a movie about butch lesbians and think "Wow, it's ok for me to be butch?" if she wants a healthy relationship with a man?
My theory is that, in many stories, female heroes cannot be both tough and with a man. The two situations are at odds.
That's definitely true in Buffy…which is one of the reasons that that shows status as unimpeachable feminist slice of wonderfulness could maybe stand to be questioned a bit. It's not always true in oter media though. Black Canary is something of a counter-example, to stay just with comics. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt get along better after Jolie's true toughness is revealed in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. In the G.I. Joe movie (hardly at the forefront of anything) the two very physically dangerous female leads both land men. And so forth.
Now, admittedly, the women in the G.I. Joe movie aren't especially butch outside of being able to kick ass. But, still, they are able to kick ass, and no one questions their sexiness, nor does the narrative suggest that men aren't attracted to them. The truth is, there are just a lot of female action hero sorts in movies and so forth now that there weren't even twenty or thirty years ago when these comics were made. I think that actually reflects changes in how women are viewed, and perhaps even influences them some as well.
Or look at it this way. It wasn't that long ago that you could have a comedy (Mr. Mom, right?) about how funny it was for a man to do childcare and other womanly activities. A movie about a woman taking karate lessons and kicking ass wouldn't be a comedy these days (though it once might have been) — it would just be another standard action movie.
I mean, again, does that mean that sexism has ended and men are worse off than women? No, it doesn't. But it does indicate that things aren't quite as simple as "butch women are frowned upon."
"butch women are frowned upon."
It depends upon how butch. There's Hollywood butch, and then there's BUTCH. I would say that women are free to bend gender expectations provided they still conform to the most essential: be pretty. Women who really are butch are still marginalized by the mainstream.
Yeah, I think that's reasonable. Though acceptable levels of butchness have moved somewhat as well. Short hair, being buff, preferring to dress in pants — all of those would have been much more of an issue a generation or so ago, is my impression. Though, obviously, the current standards can still be restrictive and unpleasant if you run afoul of them.
Mr. Mom is, in fact, a long time ago. Mrs. Doubtfire less so.
Aha. I knew it was one of those. Is Mrs. Doubtfire the one with Robin Williams?
In general, men crossdressing remains endlessly funny; women much less so.
I was thinking a bit more about this. One of the interesting things about women being butch is that the effect seems to be sometime not so much that they are censured as that they can just stop reading as women. That's sort of what happens to Ariel Schrag in Likewise; she starts reading as a man to the people around her (which she finds fairly traumatic.) It seems less likely that that could happen going the other way (though Julia Serano talks about one day after having her hormone treatments and so forth reach a point where people did just start reading her as female, so perhaps it's less uncommon than I'm thinking it is.)
"One of the interesting things about women being butch is that the effect seems to be sometime not so much that they are censured as that they can just stop reading as women."
Yeah, I think that's right. They either start reading as men or become a third gender.
I think what can also happen is that strong women in fantasy can become proxy's for the male viewers. (Maybe this happens in horror flicks as well, or those rape revenge flicks you wrote about before?) That's why its tough to give them boyfriends, since it would be homoerotic. This might be less of an issue with a team story like G.I. Joe, where you aren't necessarily supposed to relate to just one character to the same extent.
There's certainly some anime aimed at men with a woman main character who goes up against an evil patriarchal figure. (I'm think My Hime, Fate Stay/Night. There's an anime about a cross dressing girl called Revolutionary Girl Utena that fits that mold, except its marketed to women, though the main auteur was male)
Although the woman is certainly supposed to be sexy, in the fights against the villain I think she becomes a proxy for men who feel castrated by patriarchy.
Its also ok for the female character to be vulnerable in a way that's not ok with guys, so male viewers can relate to the woman's vulnerability while enjoy the traditionally male action stuff and quest for strength.
Buffy fits this pattern initially at least, in the first season where, alone and vulnerable, she has to fight the head vampire guy. I think its easier for a woman to have a male arch enemy than a man to have a female arch enemy.
In the same sense, I think, from what I've read, Cerebus is a very sentimental male character, but Dave Sim doesn't seem to think men are or should be sentimental. By making the character androgynous, he could likely process his sentimental side and enjoy his tough side, without breaking any gender expectations. If the character wasn't an ardvark, it wouldn't be possible.
As an aside, I kind of have a hard time viewing Wonder Woman as female. I think her origin, brought to life from a statue- is very unfortunate. I don't know that a statue of a woman is meaningfully a woman. I know that's not quite the context of the original story, since she was brought to life pre puberty, but I don't really see why she couldn't have been a regular female princess. She seems like a very confused character in many ways.
Have you read Carol Clover's "Men, Women, and Chainsaws"? She mentions many of the points you do. It's a great book; if you're interested in this you might check it out.
I think WW's origin is quite beautiful in the original Marston version. It's about Hippolyta being able to have a child by a miracle; it's touching and weird and, to me, kind of profound. I talk about it here, which might have been before you started reading….
I probably read excerpts of "Men, women, and chainsaws" at some point, so its probably buzzing at the back of my mind. I wrote a paper on 70s horror movies in college at some point and did some readings on slasher films.
"think WW's origin is quite beautiful in the original Marston version. It's about Hippolyta being able to have a child by a miracle; it's touching and weird and, to me, kind of profound. I talk about it here, which might have been before you started reading…."
Yeah, I read your post on it. The original story might be ok, but when I originally heard about it, it sounded like the ultimate woman on a pedestal thing, it just brings to mind to me the image of an adult woman sculpted to life, so impossibly beautiful, virginal, iconic, etc. Almost like a robot girl. A statue would be literally on a pedestal.
As a story about mother and daughter it might work, but I don't know about it as an origin story for a member of the justice league… but maybe that's just my bias, and Superman is similarly removed from regular maleness.
What's weird, Gail Simone's first arc, which I believe you reviewed here, is the exact opposite of the issues you posted. The Alkyone character, who is bald and a lesbian, cast suspicion onto the birth of any child on Themyscira while wishing for one of her own.The most feminine trait of all is seen as divisive to the homosocial bonds.
Even though that brings up a question I've long had about why exactly no one else on the island can have a child. It's figuratively just a stork giving you a baby.
So, this hatred for Diana leads to the recent issue's climax where Alkyone proclaims Diana's "true father", a monster, is going to face her. So in Alkyone's mind, Diana having a "father" and the so-called normal idea of procreation/family for heterosexuals is the problem and not her own lesbian desire of attachment to Hippolyta is ruining the homosocial bonds of the island.
Hey WV. Yeah, I'd sort of forgotten that Simone had the lesbian be the bad guy. It sort of fits with the Sedgwick thing, though; the fear in Sedgwick is that actual male homosocial attraction would endanger patriarchy, so you need to repress it and route it through control of women, basically. So in this case, female-female desire needs to be repressed and expressed through excessive interest in patrolling femininity…actual, expressed lesbian desire is seen as destabilizing. (And in (some) feminist theory lesbian desire is also sometimes seen as destabilizing the patriarchy, though that's viewed as a good thing.)
You can an alternate story in that comic I talked about above where Priscilla and Diana fall in love and, holding hands together, go kick the crap out of Steve and the misogynist cameraman…
When WW is hypnotized or forced to give up her powers she perseveres to get them back.
'Heavy is the head that wears the crown.' And we learn something about a character who refuses to give up that responsibility.
Really enjoy the WW series.
Thanks! I've kind of let it lapse, but will hopefully be back to it soon (at our new address over at tcj.com.)