News Flash: straight men love lesbians. We love them in movies, television, magazines, games … pretty much any medium you can name. But comics fandom is in a league of its own. The Japanese have an entire genre dedicated to girls who love girls. In the U.S., Jaime Hernandez built an enviable career by writing about lesbians, and he’s hardly the only male creator to find success through Sapphic appreciation. Lesbian (and female bi-sexual) characters may not be necessary to win accolades and commercial success, but they’ve never hurt a writer’s chances.
Before someone accuses me of being glib, I’ll acknowledge that Locas is indeed more thoughtful than lesbian porn. I won’t elaborate on the merits of Locas, as I’m sure the other roundtable contributors will discuss it in detail. Suffice to say, it’s about much more than sex. And Hernandez obviously cares about Maggie and Hopey for reasons besides prurience. But the prurience is always there, lurking in the background.
There are plenty of theories explaining why straight men love lesbians, but I suspect much of the appeal has to do with voyeurism. Lesbianism is a rejection of the male presence. Stories about lesbians allow men to gaze upon a “hidden” world of women, and by gazing upon it they shape it to their desires. The pleasure comes not simply from observing women, but from observing women in an environment that excludes men. This phenomenon is obvious in mainstream lesbian porn (that is, porn created for men), because the physical attributes of the women and the manner of the sex are intended for a straight male audience. However, voyeuristic pleasure does not require explicit sex. The appeal is not simply in the women being attractive, but that they are attracted to each other, and that attraction both reflects and enhances straight male desire.
For a writer, there are additional pleasures in creation and control. In Locas, Hernandez created an universe centered on women. The women fuck and fight and do crazy things, often in the absence of any man, yet Hernandez controls everything: their personalities, histories, clothing, bodies. Maggie and Hopey are shaped by Hernandez, and they embody his desires and fantasies. Their mutual attraction is his attraction, whether to each of them or to the two of them together.
On a related note, the limited number of male characters in Locas has occasionally been treated as a failing in Hernandez’s writing. But that complaint misses the point. The lack of male characters is not a bug, but a feature. A more frequent presence of men would alter the nature of the story, because it could no longer be a world primarily of women. Stories about men with women have their own appeal, of course, but that appeal is fundamentally different from the voyeuristic appeal of lesbianism.
Is it impossible for a straight man to write about lesbians in a completely non-exploitative manner? Maybe, but that doesn’t mean the outcome would be superior art. As I suggested above, even an exploitative work can have artistic merit (and there are treatments of lesbianism far more exploitative than Locas). And LGBT readers are often the most enthusiastic fans of lesbian stories by male creators (see Jaime Hernandez, Terry Moore, Joss Whedon, etc., etc.), at least when those creators treat their characters with a modicum of respect.
But I’m left wondering how Locas would be different if it had been written by a lesbian. And how would the identity of the creator affect the critical reaction in the tiny world of comics? Would a lesbian creator be given the same acclaim for Locas as Hernandez, or would she be pigeon-holed as an LGBT creator writing for a queer market? Do male comic readers give a damn about lesbians when they’re created by lesbians?
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The index to the Locas Roundtable is here.
“Maggie and Hopey are shaped by Hernandez, and they embody his desires and fantasies.”
Is this more true of Maggie and Hopey vis-a-vis Hernandez than it is any characters vis-a-vis any character’s creator? I’m not really sure why it would be.
That seems like a reasonable question. Gilbert’s fetishistic investment in his stories is pretty obvious. It’s a lot harder to see in Jaime’s work. Is there a sequence or story you were thinking of in particular that seems exploitive, Richard?
This article doesn’t account for the specificity of sex and love in LOCAS: yes, Maggie and Hopey have been in love with/had sex with one another. But both have also been depicted in sexual and romantic relations with men. The quick aside allowing for “(female bi-sexual)” as a category to address this seems insufficient. LOCAS is a queer narrative, with all of the resistance to narrow definitions of gay or lesbian identity that the concept of queerness emphasized. The sexuality in the series seems as fluid as the ethnic identities (Esperanza Glass = Hopey) or in fact even the names (Margarita, Maggie, Maggot, Perla, etc.) of the characters.
The fluidity in both the ethnicity and sexuality is certainly interesting. Maybe Richard finds the pin-up art exploitive? The feeling that most of the lesbians (and women) are so attractive. Jaime has certainly parodied this himself in his cover for Real Girl #5.
I think there’s maybe something to talk about with the punk rock ethos and the use of bisexuality. That is, rather than seeing the narrative as embodying marginality (which I think is what Corey is pointing towards) you could see it as picking up certain tropes of marginality for the frisson of excitement/coolness/what have you that they impart. You end up in an irresolvable authenticity spiral at that point, which is always one of the dangers of any art for which authenticity is as important as it is for Jaime.
Alison Bechdel’s been quite successful, so it’s not like there aren’t any examples of successful comics by lesbian creators….
Many of Jaime’s characters are bisexual, a flexible orientation that a lot of straights and gays deny the existence of. Perhaps he directs his work, not primarily to the male audience that most other comics are done for, but to a female audience. And, many men can’t conceive that some women might want to have lives that do not revolve around men, that do not depend on men being around to observe them.
Yeah…I just don’t find that very convincing, James. As Richard says, men tend to enjoy narratives where women interact with women in the absence of men. And I am certain down to my socks that Jaime’s audience is more male than female — though I’d also guess that his readership is more evenly divided than is the case for most other western male comics creators.
With respect to that last thing, I would be interested in knowing which Western comics are read mainly by women. Archies? Powerpuff Girls? And specifically women and not young girls?
It seems unlikely that the creators of a comic book with the word “love” in the title ever expected that it would be read by mainly men.
Suat, I don’t know that there’s decent demographic data out there.
I know superhero comics skew overwhelmingly male (possibly as much as 90% male from the statistics I’ve been able to find.) I think anything sold primarily through comics stores is going to skew that way as well. Books that are more geared towards the bookstore market seem likely to be more balanced — I would think that Fun Home and Persepolis and Ariel Schrag and even Maus would be relatively balanced gender-wise in terms of readership. And possibly Bone? Maybe Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes too…?
I don’t know; maybe I’m wrong, but it just seems like, as Derik said in his piece, L&R really comes out of superhero comics in its distribution and storytelling conventions. And that world is soooo male that I think it has to have an effect on female readership, even though, as James says, I think Jaime does tell stories that seem like they could appeal to women as easily as men. Obviously as Deb shows there are women who love his comics.
I think Hernandez is pretty frank about his attraction to his characters, particularly Maggie. He enjoys drawing her and sometimes posing her.
Those poses, at least graded on the comic book curve, not are “exploitative.” He’s drawing a pretty lady, not reducing a lady to her sexuality.
I know Richard basically acknowledges this, and I appreciate that. I’m just wondering if the implication of this piece is that it’s impossible for a straight man to write an acceptable work. If it focuses on men, it fails the Bechdel Test; if it has men and women but they’re all straight it contributes to queer invisibility; if it depicts lesbians it is inherently prurient. Guess you’re screwed!
I recognize that this is hyperbole…but honestly, it seems that Hernandez is being dinged here just for engaging in the conversation. I think it’s a mistake to promulgate sweeping rules about what kind of people are allowed to tell what kind of stories. (I get that Richard is not advocating such a rule, but only contemplating it.)
The final question also bugs me a little. The “pigeonholing” thing — isn’t that an accusation, really, that readers and critics, mostly straight men, are only comfortable with someone who is like them? And doesn’t that sort of whitewash the fact that most critics are also, you know, white but clearly haven’t pigeonholed Hernandez as a “Hispanic” creator working for a niche market? Just seems like the wrong set of people to accuse of having some kind of latent bias.
(“Prurience,” by the way, is “inordinate interest in matters of sex.” I think Locas basically displays ordinate interest in matters of sex.)
“And doesn’t that sort of whitewash the fact that most critics are also, you know, white but clearly haven’t pigeonholed Hernandez as a “Hispanic” creator working for a niche market? Just seems like the wrong set of people to accuse of having some kind of latent bias.”
I don’t really see that. Biases can work in various ways; the fact that alternative comics has enthusiastically embraced the Hernandez Brothers shouldn’t be a get-out-of-being-called-on-shit in any and every instance.
But I take your point in general. I think the issue of what Jaime is doing with the bisexuality in his comics is an interesting one and worth talking about. I think Richard would have had to focus more closely on what Jaime is doing specifically though to really make a case one way or the other.
I wasn’t seeking to deny the existence of bisexuality (as some do) but I also wasn’t positing it as the best term for identifying Jaime’s characters either: whether intuitively or not, he seems to have found a way to dramatize exactly the resistance to the stability of gay, lesbian, and even bisexual that queer theory and queer activism sought.
John’s claim that Jaime draws Maggie as a “pretty lady” (one can only imagine Hopey’s reaction to that term!) seems fair enough, but neglects one of the most radical things Jaime ever did: he let Maggie gain (and never lose) weight, he let her face sag, and he carefully provided her body with the marks of cellulite. (There’s a nice video of him on YouTube noting that when protests arose around his treatment of Maggie’s body, he knew he was doing something right.)
The myth of sorts (how to prove this?) is that at a time when the comics audience was almost entirely male, LOVE AND ROCKETS attracted a significant and devoted female readership. At least some evidence is in the women artists clearly inspired by Jaime, such as Colleen Coover. It seems odd that so far Alison Bechdel has been invoked as “the” successful lesbian cartoonist, but that her impassioned introduction to Todd Hignite’s book THE ART OF JAIME HERNANDEZ hasn’t been noted. (For what it’s worth, she sees Maggie and Hopey as bisexual, not lesbian.) In any case, it’s sad and telling that commentary here remains, apparently, all male.
I was aware of the Bechdel essay, though I haven’t read it.
Comments on HU threads tends to skew male. It’s just what it is when you’re in a Western comics space, unfortunately. I do make an effort to get women contributors to the blog, and hopefully that helps some…but no doubt I could do better in this, as in many things.
Not that this is anything but anecdotal evidence, but I actually tried to get more female participants for the roundtable…but most of the women I asked were either indifferent to Jaime’s work or actively disliked it, and so didn’t want to contribute. (Deb and Jenny Gonzalez-Blitz, who is writing a piece next week, were welcome exceptions obviously!)
Noah:
“Biases can work in various ways; the fact that alternative comics has enthusiastically embraced the Hernandez Brothers shouldn’t be a get-out-of-being-called-on-shit in any and every instance.”
I absolutely agree. I don’t want it to be a get-out-of-being-called-on-shit card in ANY instance, actually. But the specific “shit” in question isn’t actual, factual shit that happened — it’s sheer speculation — maybe if Jaime were a lesbian people would ghettoize his work. That’s a counterfactual — and its premised on an assumption of intolerance of the other that doesn’t seem to be at play here.
Geez, you guys took me by surprise. I didn’t expect so many comments on Saturday.
To answer Noah’s question way up there, I think Love and Rockets has a more lezploitation during the early years as opposed to the more recent books. The scene that pops to mind is when Hopey and Maggie “jig,” not long after Hopey had hooked up with her ex-girlfriend. It’s not particularly graphic, but it does have a certain “secret sexy lives of lesbians” feel to it (unfortunately I don’t have a scanner, and I can’t find that issue online). There are a couple other scenes with Maggie and Hopey in bed together that struck me as eroticized.
And in response to another question, I don’t think male fantasies of lesbians automatically ruins a book. I suspect lesbian readers often respond positively to those erotic elements as well (isn’t there a sizable lesbian fandom for yuri manga?). It’s more a question of where the writer goes from there.
And I’m absolutely against rules about which demographic gets to write about what. I dunno … I don’t want to deny Jaime Hernandez the opportunity to write Locas, but I guess I’d be interested to see how Locas would have turned out if the American comics scene wasn’t so male-dominated.
“isn’t there a sizable lesbian fandom for yuri manga?”
There definitely is, as Erica could tell you. Though I think (from what Erica’s said) there’s also some tension around what lesbian readers want from the books and what straight male readers want….
I think the link of L & R to superhero comics is a bit misleading insofar as it really exists at all. Yes, L & R was serialized and pulls from those conventions…but lost of nonsuperhero things are serialized (including soap operas, which skew female). L & R was sold in comics shops, obviously, but not ALL comics shops, certainly. Many/most comic shops were purely of the DC/Marvel (+Image eventually) variety… and the readers of that stuff weren’t banging down doors to read L & R. Often alt comics stuff was stuffed in some obscure corner of the comic shops and were tracked down and purchased by a completely different readership which was, at times, actively opposed to the mainstream superhero stuff.
So…I agree that probably the majority of L & R’s readership was male, but anecdotal evidence does suggest that it did have a sizable female readership as well.
To suggest that the gender politics of L & R somehow dovetail easily with that of superhero comics seems incorrect to me.
I agree that there is a “lezsploitation” element to Jaime’s work, but I also think it transcends that element and has genuinely interesting things to say about queer sexualities.
“To suggest that the gender politics of L & R somehow dovetail easily with that of superhero comics seems incorrect to me. ”
I didn’t mean to suggest that, anyway; I don’t think the gender politics do dovetail. But I think the consistency of delivery and format had to result, as you say, in a consistency of audience, at least to some degree.
@Noah:
You end up in an irresolvable authenticity spiral at that point, which is always one of the dangers of any art for which authenticity is as important as it is for Jaime.
Authenticity?
I believe this comment is the key to many of your remarks, Noah, about Love & Rockets in particular and the culture of alternative comics in general. You consistently resist “authenticity” moves, and consistently react against such moves by reading fan reaction back into the work itself, always to its detriment. Rather than historicizing, and allowing for the emergence of different kinds of representation and testimony over the course of L&R, you tend to react strongly against latter-day claims, and to find the work, inevitably, wanting in terms of those claims. This steers perilously close to accusing the works of a kind of inauthenticity or, more to the point, desperation. It’s at that juncture that you usually resort to language about programmed or mechanistic content. And it’s at that point that I usually find the comics I’ve read wholly unrecognizable in your descriptions.
As your own essay about “Browntown” shows, you are a determinedly uncharitable reader of these comics.
On a related note, the limited number of male characters in Locas has occasionally been treated as a failing in Hernandez’s writing. But that complaint misses the point. The lack of male characters is not a bug, but a feature.
For the record, I think Ray D. and Doyle are great male characters in “Locas,” complicated, conflicted, interesting, prone to fucking up, and yet rather likable. I gladly read and reread the stories focusing on them. “Locas” has come a very long way from the sexy girl-centered utopia it was at the outset.
To answer Noah’s question way up there, I think Love and Rockets has a more lezploitation during the early years as opposed to the more recent books
Depends. I don’t know about vol. 4, but “The Education of Hopey Glass” had lots of “lezploitation.”
It seems unlikely that the creators of a comic book with the word “love” in the title ever expected that it would be read by mainly men.
With hindsight that might be a given. But taking in account how utterly dismal the scene was thirty years ago maybe they had no real idea what the audience was going to be. Remember, we’re talking about back then.
…but neglects one of the most radical things Jaime ever did: he let Maggie gain (and never lose) weight,..
It is commendable that Jaime did that but was it radical? Maybe in comparison to the other comics on the stands. Given his style, he still drew her pretty.
But…I don’t even dislike Browntown that much necessarily. It’s decent program fiction; not great, but could be worse.
And how exactly am I supposed to be “charitable”? I’m supposed to be into it despite myself or what?
I hadn’t even really identified authenticity as a key issue for Jaime until Caro pointed it out in her essay, honestly. I do think it’s pretty central. You’re not even really saying it’s not central, are you? I’m kind of not sure what you *are* saying. Am I not allowed to talk about fan reaction? My essay was basically all about historicization as a trope in Jaime’s work, so it’s not really clear how your accusation of “no historicization” works in that context.
I mean, if you’re telling me that Jaime is important for historical reasons, I don’t deny that, but if you’re telling me “because he’s important for historical reasons you should like him,” I don’t really get that. I don’t like James Fennimore Cooper either, you know?
I think if you want to nail me, you’d do better to focus on a closer reading of my essay rather than sort of generating a series of more or less generalized accusations? If there’s something specific I’ve said about Jaime that you disagree with, I’d be interested to hear what it is, but it’s just not really true that I dislike him for the same reasons I dislike, say, Gilbert (whose politics I think are simplistic and who is not at all on top of his fetish impulses…but who does more interesting things with structure….)
Noah: “I mean, if you’re telling me that Jaime is important for historical reasons, I don’t deny that, but if you’re telling me “because he’s important for historical reasons you should like him,””
I think Charles is just saying that the different periods of Jaime’s work should be seen within their historical context (the author’s concerns and real world experience at the time; the publication background). Not as an excuse for bad art mind you. It could give some insight as to why things are the way they are, and make readings like the following seem less “charitable”:
Noah: “That is, rather than seeing the narrative as embodying marginality…you could see it as picking up certain tropes of marginality for the frisson of excitement/coolness/what have you that they impart. ”
That’s my guess. Hopefully Charles will drop by to clarify.
Nah, the girls have to be bisexual so that the male readers know they can have a chance. Makes it easier to have self-insert fantasies, and one of the strongest male het porn tropes(IME) is acquiring ladies who like other ladies. Having that doesn’t tip into or out of lezploitation per se.
Course, the other option is to have the bisexual turn evil and get her lesbian lover killed (or, in a man, his gay lover), but that doesn’t seem to be this kind of story. (See, Buffy’s Willow and Tara, Faster Pussycat Kill Kill, etc.) I’d call that a separate subset of tropes, though.
Actually, it’s pretty clear that Hopey is not bi-, but lesbian. She sleeps with a guy or two, if memory serves, but she’s clearly slumming (or very drunk, or both).
Maggie’s the more ambiguous case.
Hmm…fair enough Suat. Though I wasn’t actually saying that that uncharitable reading was “my” reading; it was more a devil’s advocate reading. I think there’s some marginality for its own sake in Jaime, but I wouldn’t say it’s the only thing operating, or that it’s even all that insistent or irritating. In general, I think his handling of lesbianism is pretty respectful overall.
Hey Vom. I’m not sure the girls have to be canonically bisexual for male readers to have their jollies. For example, yuri is very popular with guys, but the girls in those manga are usually only interested in other girls, right? Straight men can fetishize lesbianism even when there is no chance that they’ll get either of the ladies.
This doesn’t have anything to do with Jaime’s work, but I just had to say that the line “Lesbianism is a rejection of the male presence” from the third paragraph of this article is offensive. It could have said “From a male perspective, lesbianism can be interpreted as a rejection of the male presence.” That, while overly simplistic, would at least have been true enough not to be offensive while also not getting so technical as to lose relevance to the point of the article. But as it is, the line is a blatant falsehood with heterosexist and misogynistic implications. Being gay isn’t about rejecting the opposite sex. It’s about falling for the same sex. And when claiming that gay women’s relationships are a rejection of men, it stands to reason that lesbian love and attraction are contingent on the existence of men and wouldn’t occur independent of male influence. It’s immensely belittling. And while I know that it wasn’t meant this way in the article, the fact of the matter is that this kind of logic often serves as ammo for anti-gay harassment and abuse. Some straight people (men and women alike) feel entitled to casually ask a gay woman if she likes women because a man raped or otherwise hurt her in the past. In terrifying extremes, a straight man may decide to use “corrective rape” against a gay woman to “prove” to her that she actually likes sex with men. Besides, has anyone here ever run across any non-clinical writing that describes gay male relationships as “a rejection of the female presence?” I sure as hell doubt it. A line like that would have been a gaffe anywhere, let alone in an article that seeks to dissect the finer points of lezploitation. It’s disappointing that none of the previous commenters pointed it out.
I think no one mentioned it because it’s pretty clear in context that he’s talking about male perspectives on lesbianism there, not on some sort of essential lesbianism.
I’m a straight man who desire write stories that involve Lesbians and Bisexual women. Regardless of sexual orientation I’m someone who prefer to write female character because for some reason I tend to relate to them more.
There will be occasional male Homo eroticism in my writing too. I tend to prefer having all my character have a fluid sexuality.
I very much want my depiction of Lesbian affection to liked by real Lesbians. And that is something I try to keep in mind as I write.
Asking questions are really pleasant thing if you are not understanding something totally,
however this piece of writing presents nice understanding even.