83 thoughts on “On Second Thought, I Really Don’t Like Wonder Woman, Part 2”

1. I’ll try to comment more later maybe…but I think one difficulty you run into with the femme fatale as avatar of equality is that the femme fatale’s power is not usually represented as equivalent to male power. For instance, in Basic Instinct, the most iconic scene is that shot up Sharon Stone’s crotch. It’s a specifically female manipulation of sexuality and of to-be-looked-at-ness; she does have power, but it’s the power of using male desire and the male gaze, not the power of appropriating male desire and the male gaze (whereas, I’d argue, in Marston, Steve is quite often presented as sexualized and as fodder for a female gaze…the difference being that when it’s a man, you don’t like it, whereas when it’s a woman, you seem to believe it’s empowering…?)

   The castrating lesbian character in Basic Instinct also ends up paired off with the leading man, right? It’s difficult for me to see why that is or is supposed to be especially subversive…though Paglia also thinks the Rolling Stones are dangerous, so maybe if that’s your benchmark….

   I think slasher’s do interesting things with gender roles. Clover’s hesitant about embracing them as feminist, though, not because of androgyny per se, but because they do seem to be mostly aimed at men, and because, in regards to that, they seem to be about specifically male fantasies. That is, the final girl in a slasher is a girl not because the filmmakers care about women, but because the point is vulnerability, and women represent vulnerability better than men do. The lack of an explicitly feminist politics, or of any interest in the plight of women as women, tends to make women mere symbolic chits in male psychodrama.

   I Spit on Your Grave, and rape revenge in general, *do* have actual feminist politics, or at least a deliberate parody/homage to such…though they have some problems as well….

2. And furthermore!

   That scene where they’re all looking up Stone’s crotch is an almost parodically perfect example of Laura Mulvey’s discussion of fetishism in narrative cinema; the narrative frozen in contemplation of women’s lack. The point is that women in such moments become symbols of male castration and/or/and therefore symbolic of the phallus. They don’t wield the phallus; they *are* the phallus. Again, the point is that it’s about the male gaze and the male psyche; Basic Instinct is determined *not* to put you in Stone’s perspective, because to do that would mean ruining the mystery — which is diegetically about who is the murderer, but is symbolically about “what is woman?”

   Basically, you like all of these films because they embrace the logic of the phallus. They’re all about power, and all specifically link power to the phallus (whether by ice picks or patriarchal societies or (in slashers) who wields the machete.) You’re insisting that the phallus is the real, and therefore only those narratives that worship the phallus are valid. To you, feminism ends up meaning that women can occupy the same position as men in relation to the phallus, not that a different relation to the phallus might be imagined.

   The problem with this is that phallocentrism is phallocentrism. If the phallus is your ideal, it’s possible in some instances to grant certain “special” women status as honorary men. But to do that those “special” women need to stop being women — the final girl has to (notoriously) have no particular sexual desires, for example; Sharon Stone (in the last scene of the film) has to hyperbolically disavow the possibility of having kids.

   It’s not that all women have to have romance, or that all women have to have kids. But many, many women do in fact have kids, and many, many women do in fact have desires. Men don’t have to give up the phallus when they have sexual desire (on the contrary) or even when they have kids. If the standard is the phallus, then women have to be better men than men in order to grasp it…which ends up meaning that most women, most of the time, in a phallic economy, are going to be unequal.

   Marston and Peter are pretty committed to trying to figure out a different kind of power, where women will not be unequal. That’s why they’re feminist. Your examples, on the other hand, mostly seem committed to a world in which the occasional powerful female justifies men’s relationship to power and to the phallus. I just don’t see that as especially feminist.

3. Thanks for writing this Charles, it’s good to have a dissenting viewpoint.

   I’m actually reading my way through the Game of Thrones series now, and you’ve given me some things to think about.

4. None of the women described here, none of the archetypes if you will, can acquire power without sacrificing their sexual agency.

   They all operate in a reality, where sex is something men want and women possess, a treasured resource that women can trade for other societal ‘goods’. Power comes from understanding the value of that resource and either using it ‘smartly’ (the femme fatalle, the Queen) or being adamant about ‘not wasting’ it (the Final Girl). Any woman who has a desire to have sex is inherently weak (a man expressing his desire through a sexual act might be coded as either strong or weak, but a woman having sex not as a means to an end but for sex’s sake is weak) or stupid or even deviant.

   This view on sex is patriarchic by nature, and while a woman (real or fictional) using it for her benefit might indeed end up with a lot of power, from a feminist point of view this is more of a ‘lemons to lemonade’ thing, a way to survive in a repressive environment while reinforcing the very ideology that feminism seeks to overthrow: the belief that the only way a woman can have power is through men.

   The Greek society, mentioned in a previous discussion was actually uber-patriarchic as it stripped women of having power-by-proxy, proclaiming other men as more suitable objects of desire for men.

5. Nicely put, Jaelinque.

6. Charles, I believe I’ve caught you in a contradiction.

   In paragraph 6 you say:

   “Wonder Woman is the dominating will. When she’s bound, it’s always wrong. The reader is to identify with her regaining control, making others submit. Similarly, Wonder Woman does a lot of hitting, but is rarely hit herself. (I count only once: Giganta nails her with a club. [p. 44])”

   Maybe I missed something about volume(s) you read but I recall the Marston WW getting hit quite a lot, though of course she dishes out more than she takes. There may be periods where she’s sandbagged less than others, but one could say that of Batman or any long-lived hero.

   The contradiction appears in paragraph 5:

   “Although Wonder Woman regularly uses dominating tactics (the lasso, fisticuffs) they’re always reactive (the villain strikes first). Like Billy Jack, she wants to love, not fight, but she’ll kick your ass if you force her.”

   I find it really hard to reconcile a “dominating will” who waits until the other guy strikes. That too would seem not to line up well with your “fascism” charge. I’ll agree that a reluctant hero is inevitably going to kick ass. But that doesn’t eliminate the connotative difference between the reluctant hero and the quasi-hero who’s ready to go Lobo on anyone with the least provocation.

7. I think Charles may be right that WW gets hit less than some other heroes, possibly. She is well nigh invulnerable anyway, though Marston will occasionally have her knocked out when someone delivers an especially hard blow to the base of her skull.

8. Hey Noah, in case someone hasn’t brought this to your attention, there’s a lengthy mention of Marston over at the Comics Journal site. The section about him begins…

   ——————————–
   There was one fascinating moment where comics and New Criticism collided fairly directly—an unlikely exchange in the pages of The American Scholar between William Moulton Marston, a psychiatrist and the creator of Wonder Woman, and Cleanth Brooks, one of the young stars of the New Criticism…
   ———————————-
   Much more at http://www.tcj.com/the-comic-book-scare-and-the-new-criticism/

9. Ha! No, hadn’t seen that. I’ve read the American Scholar article, but hadn’t realized Brooks had a response. Thanks for the link!

10. Jaelinque,

    I agree with Noah, that’s nicely put. Here’s the crux of your argument, it seems:

    “from a feminist point of view this is more of a ‘lemons to lemonade’ thing, a way to survive in a repressive environment while reinforcing the very ideology that feminism seeks to overthrow: the belief that the only way a woman can have power is through men.”

    You could just as easily reverse this and say the only power men have is through women. I’d widen it to say the only power anyone can have is through men and women (this is, I believe, Martin’s view). In the history of civilization, where has there ever been an example of a hierarchical organization that doesn’t have a dominant/aggressive/whatever’s stereotypically “masculine” figure at the head? I’m not disagreeing that this tends to be men, or that sexism has limited women’s access, but I am suggesting that it won’t, nor has it, change much about the way things operate when there’s a woman in charge. There’s this typically feminist assumption that power and order are synonymous with patriarchy, but why do all of our examples of female leadership look a whole lot like their male counterparts? Because they’re acting like men, or because they’re acting like people who are capable of achieving power? I guess if you can find me a female CEO of a major corporation who isn’t any more “phallic” than Bill Gates — who really adds a quite different “woman’s touch” — in the way she runs things, then maybe I could start to agree with the assumption of synonymy. Otherwise, what do we have as feminine alternatives: maybe communism or anarchism? But plenty of men seem to have been involved in those. I mean, most of the theorists have been men, right?

    Noah,

    The difference between Basic Instinct’s feminist view and Marston’s is that the former is parodying the way things are, whereas the latter dreams of substituting a utopia — and that utopia is even more dominating and controlling than the patriarchy it wants to replace.

    As for Catherine getting paired off with the man, that’s hardly Hollywood’s classic patriarchal coupling. Nick is completely destroyed and dominated at that point by her. It’s either a pathetic mercy fuck, or she’s simply using him as an organic dildo — hence the last shot of the ice pick. If we want to reduce all of this to simple identification with the main character: do you really feel like that’s the person you want to be? I can safely say no. I can’t see how the film is saying otherwise. Rather than the classic film noir resolution (where the femme fatale is punished for destroying the man), the scene has more in common with Lynch’s Lost Highway, where Bill Pullman, coming out of his dissociative fugue as Balthazar Getty, finally “overcomes” his impotency and “possesses” Patricia Arquette in the golden bathed sex scene of the last act. She whispers, “you’ll never have me,” and disappears. He’s then shown to collapse into male hysteria. (Also, I bring this up because it runs contrary to Clover’s point that the Final Girl is a safe stand-in for men because we aren’t allowed/don’t want to identify with hysteria on the screen. Another counter-example would be Leland from Twin Peaks.)

    Slashers are horror films. Horror films tend to be aimed at horror fans. And they tend to be male. Plus, horror films tend to be made by men. Yet, the slashers frequently feature female protagonists. I’m going to hazard a guess that the majority of fans of the overtly feminist In My Own Skin is likely male, too. One thing I do know is that it was aimed at the horror market (which, again, is predominantly male). According to Gerard Jones, the readership of Marston’s Wonder Woman was 90% male. It was and is a male-dominated genre. Does that affect your view that it’s feminist? It’s a rather weak reason for rejecting the slasher as feminist. (I think Clover tends to be wary because of reductive assumptions about identification that are inherent in prominent psychoanalytic takes on the genre. She does manage to pull away to some degree, but not completely.)

    To rid Catherine of her mystery would destroy much of what’s great about the character. This isn’t reducible to psychoanalytic sexism (which Mulvey paradoxically accepts), but to what I always call the Wolverine problem: filling in details often destroys iconic characters.

    “You’re insisting that the phallus is the real, and therefore only those narratives that worship the phallus are valid.”

    I think my reply to Jaelinque addresses this, but to make it clear as possible: I’m saying that power is the real, and that women will worship it in the same way as men if that’s what they’re out to get. The phallus doesn’t really have anything to do with it, except as a metaphor that’s probably outlived its usefulness.

    Gene,

    I can see how my discussion of fisticuffs would retroactively trigger a related interpretation of “strikes first.” In hindsight, I’d change the wording. What I meant, which should resolve the apparent contradiction, is that the villain has to perform some criminal act before WW uses violence. Remember, Billy Jack only uses physical violence after some hippie girl gets brutalized by a biker gang or whomever. It’s usually not an assault on BJ himself that leads to the violent reaction. However, we fans don’t go to see BJ with flowers in his hair, playing bongos in the dirt, but to see him kick ass. It’s the violence that ultimately sells whatever peacenik message that’s ostensibly the point of his movies.

    Similarly, WW’s dominating will can remain passive (on the surface) so long as everyone shares it. When someone violates the (Amazonian) dominant order, she uses force to contain the transgression. Is a dominant will operating under the ideologically determined image of waiting “until the other guy strikes” all that difficult to reconcile when we live in a country with fundamentalist Christians? Redefine another’s freedom as your transgression, and then strike “reactively.” “Why does everyone keep treading on our rights with their abortions, gay marriages, and evolution?” That’s the M.O. of the ACLJ.

    Richard,

    Thanks.

11. Noah,

    Thank you!

    Charles,

    Not quite.

    While I indeed ended up talking about power, the point was more about sexuality.

    If we dial down from the concepts of ‘sadistic’ and ‘masochistic’ and look at ‘objectification of women’ in a much more primitive way, in its heart it is among other things about a simple notion: men are subjects of sexual desire, and women are objects of it.

    Women may want power, marriage, children, money, etc. What they can’t and shouldn’t want is sex. Sex is something a woman ‘has’ and can ‘give’ – ‘wanting’ is ‘wasting’, rape is ‘robbery’. A woman’s sexuality is not a part of her, it’s her possession.

    This idea is ingrained in Western patriarchic culture and is either taken by narratives as unequivocal truth or proven/reinforced by ‘rewarding’ female characters who confine by it and ‘punishing’ those who don’t. This is how you survive, this is how you succeed.
    People do indeed gain power through one another, and maybe someone did indeed state, that ‘power and order are synonymous with patriarchy’ but that surely wasn’t me. When it comes to thinking about humanity and authority, I’m pretty much universally cynical in a Hobbesian way. Although, being Russian, I may have some anecdotal evidence to use in discussing ideological and rhetorical relation of patriarchy to different forms of authoritarism, but that would be beside the point.
    What is not beside the point is that all the three ‘archetypes’ of women in your article acquire power through phallocentric means, and not in a highly metaphorical, but in a much more direct ‘what stirs the phallus’ way. Their power comes from a quality that in a heterosexist culture is gender-specific: being desirable to men, possessing ‘sex’. There is nothing universal about it.
    Such sex-positive feminist ideas as accepting yourself, a woman, as a subject of sexual desire, exploring your sexuality on your own terms, understanding what you want as a sexual being, regaining sexual agency, are incompatible with this ‘feminine’ way of gaining power on both ideological and practical level: the very existence of women who don’t treat ‘sex’ as their precious resource lowers the ‘market value’ of those who do , thus limiting their potential access to power.
    I am not saying that a feminist character (or a person) can’t use sexuality to gain power, however it starts being highly questionable when you take characters whose power comes entirely from using their resource of sexual desirability in a smart way and compare them to a character, who while being often visually sexualized for the reader’s pleasure compared to other superheriones has been from the very beginning and stays even now one of the least diegetically empowered specifically through their sexual desirability to men.

    Furthermore, one might argue that Marston, using an all-too-obvious association of dominance and submission with being sexual subject and object (and sexual desire understood as a desire to dominate), designed his utopia as a lesbian-inclined free-for-all, where anyone should accept sexually being both an object and a subject, gender be damned. Women learning to be subjects, men learning to be objects, with the second presumed to be much more difficult a feat than the first. This, of course, both doesn’t address authoritarian and will-destroying aspects of such a utopia and is a bit of a tangent.

12. —————————–
    Jaelinque says:

    None of the women described here, none of the archetypes if you will, can acquire power without sacrificing their sexual agency.

    They all operate in a reality, where sex is something men want and women possess, a treasured resource that women can trade for other societal ‘goods’. Power comes from understanding the value of that resource and either using it ‘smartly’ (the femme fatalle, the Queen) or being adamant about ‘not wasting’ it (the Final Girl)…
    —————————-

    Or, in the “not wasting it” camp, Queen Elizabeth I, the “Virgin Queen”…

    —————————-
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    …Thanks for the link!
    —————————–

    You’re welcome! (Echo-chamber voice:) “For I am…the Linkmeister!”

    ——————————
    Charles Reece says:

    …In the history of civilization, where has there ever been an example of a hierarchical organization that doesn’t have a dominant/aggressive/whatever’s stereotypically “masculine” figure at the head? I’m not disagreeing that this tends to be men, or that sexism has limited women’s access, but I am suggesting that it won’t, nor has it, change much about the way things operate when there’s a woman in charge. There’s this typically feminist assumption that power and order are synonymous with patriarchy, but why do all of our examples of female leadership look a whole lot like their male counterparts? Because they’re acting like men, or because they’re acting like people who are capable of achieving power?
    ——————————-

    Incisive! What is there so “female” about the leadership styles of Margaret Thatcher (who, like Ronnie Reagan, tried to cut spending on government-provided school meals for low-income kids), Indira Gandhi, or the aforementioned first Queen Elizabeth? All had no trouble employing the “iron fist” when it came to it, playing manipulative power games…

    Feminism seeing the “patriarchy” as the root of all evil, the FORCE THAT RUNS THE WORLD, with men all belonging to this “boys’ club” of mutual assistance, men in power paternally helping out other males, is utter nonsense.

    Having been thrown away like garbage by a father and a stepfather — who, as feminism maintains, should have been mentoring and passing on the mantle of power to their male children, all of the benefits that maleness supposedly automatically grants — makes this “patriarchy” hooey particularly irritating. It’s like a black man hearing Donald Trump saying:

    “A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market. I think sometimes a black may think they don’t have an advantage or this and that…. I’ve said on one occasion, even about myself, if I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage. ”
    http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Trump

    http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/l542/Mike_59_Hunter/rich-homeless.jpg

    Yeah, men as a group tend to earn more than women, yet their lives are clearly considered more disposable — from “women and children first!” on sinking ships to the military being loath to send women into combat, because women coming home in body bags is far more upsetting to society than men doing so — and they form the vast majority of criminals and prison inmates, mental patients, suicides.

    Man, that Patriarchy sure keeps on keepin’ women down:

    —————————–
    TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2010
    Census Bureau Reports Nearly 6 in 10 Advanced Degree Holders Age 25-29 Are Women

    The U.S. Census Bureau reported today more women than men are expected to occupy professions such as doctors, lawyers and college professors as they represent approximately 58 percent of young adults, age 25 to 29, who hold an advanced degree. In addition, among all adults 25 and older, more women than men had high school diplomas and bachelor’s degrees.

    The tabulations, Educational Attainment in the United States: 2009, showed that among people in the 25-29 age group, 9 percent of women and 6 percent of men held either a master’s, professional (such as law or medical) or doctoral degree. This holds true for white, black and Hispanic women. Among Asian men and women of this age group, there was no statistical difference.

    The data also demonstrate the extent to which having such a degree pays off: average earnings in 2008 totaled $83,144 for those with an advanced degree, compared with $58,613 for those with a bachelor’s degree only. People whose highest level of attainment was a high school diploma had average earnings of $31,283…
    —————————–
    http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/education/cb10-55.html

    Even in the Third World and “traditional” societies, where women are hideously exploited and trod upon, it’s not like men have it all good; most are just less badly exploited; are but one step up on the levels of victimization.

    A Joe Sacco comics-reporting story, set in India — http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/may/19/joe-sacco-kushinagar/ — shows how impoverished “Untouchable” women and men both are ripped off and exploited by the rich and those in position of power. Yes, the exploiters are all male, but wealthy and powerful women in India are every bit as capable of bleeding dry unfortunates as men are.

    Indeed, in the horrific case of “bride burning” in India and Pakistan, men’s mothers may encourage them to murder their new wife, that they may get to keep her dowry and then remarry, getting another woman’s dowry. How inspiring “Sisterhood” in action is!

    (See http://articles.cnn.com/1996-08-18/world/9608_18_bride.burn_1_dowry-hindu-attitudes?_s=PM:WORLD , http://www.examiner.com/article/bride-burning-india-pakistan-and-bangladesh-is-acceptable-murder , http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/3071963.stm .)

13. Mike, where do you get this crap? Feminism doesn’t say that fathers will raise children. It points out that the opposite is the case!

    I can’t read that whole thing, but I wish you’d some day actually read some feminism rather than just spouting nonsense. You could start with this article, which explains why patriarchy is lousy for men too.

14. Charles, I think Jones’ numbers are kind of full of shit. Where does he get the 90% figure? There’s anecdotally a lot of women who read those comics, and I”m pretty sure nobody did surveys back then of readership…? I don’t know; it sounds really suspicious to me (though I’ll definitely have to look it up and see where he’s getting his figures.)

    More generally…why do you assume that men wouldn’t want to identify with a castrated subject? Lots of men enjoy mascohism; Clover’s whole point about the slasher genre is that it’s masochistic, not sadistic, and that the final girl is there as an object of identification because women are more vulnerable, and so the masochism works better.

    The thing is, masochism can be misogynist if there’s no feminist commitment. In the case of Basic Instinct, you’re pretty much always seeing things from the guys point of view; you’re the man staring at the awesome/terrifying cunt (literally in the case of basic instinct.) The woman’s sexual desire or autonomy isn’t even really contemplated as an issue; she’s barely even a person. She’s just a wank fantasy. It’s Stone who’s the blow up doll in the last scene; Douglas and the film audience gets off on being humiliated…and on the implied transgression of that humiliation, which upends the phallus in the interest of someone else grabbing hold of the phallus. Again, in the slasher films, the evil uberdaddy thing is killed by someone else who uses power and violence and thereby replaces the evil uberdaddy thing (Friday the 13th IV is the most obvious text here — and it’s significant that the final girl there is a little boy, yes? It’s not about women at all; it’s just somebody who doesn’t have the phallus…though the little boy can get the phallus, and then be the terrorizer, as that film makes clear.)

    The difference with Marston, Jaelinque, is that *both* dominance and submission are seen as normal sexual expressions, and *both* are seen as normal for both men and women. Further, they both keep flipping over into each other; being submissive makes you stronger and therefore dominant which makes you weaker and therefore submissive and….on and on. Marston doesn’t see submission as being a sexual object; on the contrary, he sees submission as being a sexual subject who becomes an object who becomes a subject, and so on. That’s why the phallus isn’t really an important symbol for him; the sign of power is the magic lasso, which isn’t phallic, but yannic. Charles would probably say, well, it doesn’t matter what the symbol is or isn’t…but you get a very different narrative if you’re tying someone up than if you’re slamming an ice-pick through their eye.

15. Noah, I completely agree
    Marston paints a picture where ability and readiness, object-ness and subject-ness need to co-exist, intertwine and interchange in a person to harmonize both the individual and the world. What makes this idea feminist or at the very least egalitarian (depending on which definition of ‘feminism’ you agree with) is that it is a ‘person’ not ‘man’ or ‘woman’.

16. Yes…and also I think what makes it feminist is that Marston is just really explicitly ideologically committed to feminism. That is, he thinks women need to be given more opportunities (in sports, in factory work) that they are as smart and competent (or smarter and more competent) than men…etc.

    I kind of think that ideological commitment is really important. I actually agree with Charles that Basic Instinct and/or masochism *can* be part of challenging gender roles in some ways. But if you don’t have some sort of conscious commitment to women’s equality and/or feminism, then it ends up being just about male psychodrama and playing around with hiding the phallus in order to make the phallus more powerful, it seems to me. The exploitation films that are most daring about challenging male power are the ones that actually set out to challenge male power in a feminist context — which would be women in prison films and rape/revenge films, for the most part. Not that those examples are always feminist or anything, but they tend to be aware of and in dialogue with feminism, and so tend to at least be able to entertain the possibility of female subjectivity. Which I really don’t think Basic Instinct does.

17. Okay, found that Gerard Jones reference. He refers to a company survey, but that’s as far as the reference goes. He doesn’t say how the survey was conducted, or even what year it’s from. He says there were many more female readers of superman, but he doesn’t provide figures for that.

    The other corroborating evidence he gives is that the ads in WW were more for boys than girls. I thought I’d check WW 16 and see if that panned out. Here’s what I got:

    — one ad for wheaties showing both a male and female big game hunter

    — one ad for a weather forecaster; the figures in the forecaster are a girl and a boy and an adult woman

    — another ad for wheaties, this one featuring tom Jones, dean of track and field coaches, and lots of male track and field players

    —an ad for a leather belt and a leather billfold (“genuine texas beauty specials!”)

    —an ad teaching car and truck repair

    And what the hell; here’s issue 28

    —an ad for Kodak, with both boys and girls pictured
    —an ad for bicycles, with both boys and girls riding them
    — a page with ads for guns, watches, wagons, record players. the record players and watches appeal to “boys-girls-ladies
    —an ad for a flashlight featuring boys
    — an ad for billfolds
    — an ad about learning radios,
    — a gun ad featuring “american boys bill of rights”

    Sooo…I don’t know. It seems to tilt male overall, but not outrageously — especially considering that Wonder Woman encourages girls to think of themselves as adventurers and cowboys and athletes (and presumably auto repairers and radio operators as well.)

    I’d also wonder how much of this was an issue of what advertisers DC had relationships with. If their audience across the line was more male than female, it seems like that might be the case for WW as well, even if her audience was somewhat different. I mean, did advertisers buy ads by individual comics? Or did they buy ads to be placed across the run? Does anyone know?

    Soooo…I’m not superconvinced by Jones’ figures, or by his circumstantial evidence. I do know that Marston self-consciously addressed *both* girls and boys in his writing, for what that’s worth.

18. Charles said:

    “When someone violates the (Amazonian) dominant order, she uses force to contain the transgression.”

    But the violations are always force-based themselves. None of the villains in WONDER WOMAN are trying to undermine the Amazons’ “dominant order” after the fashion of the foes of the ACLJ.

    “why does everyone keep treading on our rights with their abortions, gay marriages, and evolution?” That’s the M.O. of the ACLJ.”

    Charles, I’m aware of no political system, extinct or current, that responds to force-based attacks in any manner but with retaliatory force. If you want to assert that all societies are fundamentally fascist, then I guess you can make that case, but then it doesn’t apply any more to the imaginary society of the Amazons than to any other imaginary society– none of which are really essentially comparable to real societies anyway.

    This is of course only the tip of an iceberg of disagreements, but it’s the only one for which I have time right now.

19. OK, one more quick one. Charles said:

    “Slashers are horror films. Horror films tend to be aimed at horror fans. And they tend to be male.”

    I think that’s questionable, given the number of female horror-bloggers on the web. I think a lot more female fans like horror-cinema than action-cinema.

    But I don’t know where one would go to get precise stats.

20. Dang it, I just had to look SOMETHING up. This blogpost mentions a Kansas U survey from 2000 but has no link thereto.

    http://dayofwoman.blogspot.com/2009/06/paradox-of-female-horror-fan.html

21. Jaelinque,

    First, a point from your previous post that I failed to address: Catherine retains complete control over her sexuality in Basic Instinct, so isn’t one who acquires power by sacrificing sexual agency. Cersei is punished for her sexuality (I don’t want to give away too much for those who haven’t read the books), but Martin is very careful to portray it as tragedy. The reader doesn’t identify with her persecutors. I don’t think these 2 types are the same as the Final Girl, which Clover does identify with a loss of sexual agency. She’s the Virgin, while the murdered girls were sexually active. I sense a similar point here:

    I am not saying that a feminist character (or a person) can’t use sexuality to gain power, however it starts being highly questionable when you take characters whose power comes entirely from using their resource of sexual desirability in a smart way and compare them to a character, who while being often visually sexualized for the reader’s pleasure compared to other superheriones has been from the very beginning and stays even now one of the least diegetically empowered specifically through their sexual desirability to men.

    Unless I’m missing the juicier bits of Wonder Woman, she’s closest to the Final Girl in terms of sexuality. WW doesn’t seem to participate in sex, or have any real sexual desires, and the prominent male in her life is basically neutered (the male slasher is androgynous due to, among other things, his strong identification with his mother). Hell, she wasn’t even born from a messy sex act, but from clay. She’s about as much of a sexual being as Jesus, in other words. Thus, WW is the kind of character you pointed out as troubling in your first post, the one who gives up her sexual agency for power. That power, along traditional gender lines, is masculine identification. According to Clover, the lack of sexuality in the Final Girl is what makes her more readily identifiable for the male viewer. This is, according to her, a problem that keeps the character from being properly feminist.

    I’m getting a sense of damned if she does, damned if she don’t here. I certainly didn’t mean to suggest the only good feminist characters are like Catherine or Cersei. But what I like about them, contrary to the Final Girl or Wonder Woman, is that they retain their sexuality while still being powerful women. Yes, they’re desirable to men (and women, actually), but I don’t see that as an inherent problem for the human condition. Part of sexuality is, after all, being desirable to someone. Basic Instinct is an erotic thriller, so, of course, much of the power involved is going to be sexual. For my part, I think the Final Girl, Catherine and Cersei — sexualized or not — all allow for strong pro-feminist readings, but with complications. WW does, too, but I don’t see the character as being any more feminist — particularly not for the reason that she isn’t as sexually desirable to men.

22. Noah,

    I think you’re probably right to be skeptical of that number. But the point still stands that WW was targeted at the superhero market, which was mostly boys. … unless Jones and common assumptions are way off.

    Gene,

    Try as I might, I can’t make heads or tails out of your response. I agree that WW’s villains aren’t the same as the ACLJ’s. If they’re going to say much of anything about the real world, supervillains tend to be symbolic.

    As for horror viewership: I have to admit that this isn’t the most scintillating topic for me, but I’ve never heard anything that contradicts it being predominantly male. In a 2004 article (“The Appeal of Horror and Suspense” in Stephen Prince’s The Horror Film), Mary Beth Oliver and Meghan Sanders review some of the statistical gender differences: males tend to enjoy horror more than females, both in terms of individual films and as a genre; males tend to be less disturbed; when graphic scenes of violence are cut from films, female enjoyment increases; relevant to the Final Girl, women tend to emotionally identify with her trauma, whereas men tend to focus on retributive justice; etc.. As they say, these gender differences in reported reactions aren’t widely disputed in the literature. (They do make the obligatory point that the technique of self-report is inherently problematic.) Men tend to enjoy horror more than women. From a brief web search, gender is a predictor of horror film attendance, to wit, this, unto wit.

23. ————————-
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    Mike, where do you get this crap? Feminism doesn’t say that fathers will raise children. It points out that the opposite is the case!
    ————————-

    Noah, where do you get that crap? I didn’t say that fathers would raise children. Being overwhelmingly “shitwork” — changing diapers, wiping runny noses, bathing, dressing, toilet-training, feeding, trying to get little Billy to stop pulling the cat’s tail or tracking mud into the house — that glorious honor predictable ends up in the mother’s lap.

    What I said was that fathers, “as feminism maintains, should have been mentoring and passing on the mantle of power to their male children, all of the benefits that maleness supposedly automatically grants…”

    Do you think a king, corporate CEO, or elder Bush does any significant work in actually raising their children? No, but they sure as hell make sure they go to the “right schools,” teach them the proper arrogance and entitlement, “connections,” how to be conniving and domineering.

    Where feminism goes wrong in this instance is assuming that this is a universal rule, where actually it’s a rare exception, virtually limited to the ruling class. What about the countless male children who received ego-crushingly negative messages from their fathers, such as rejection, indifference, or abuse? In what way does that further the goal of the “Patriarchy”?

    —————————-
    I can’t read that whole thing, but…
    —————————-

    Of course not! Why let details and complexities in my post get in the way of ready-made assumptions and knee-jerk reactions?

    —————————–
    I wish you’d some day actually read some feminism rather than just spouting nonsense.
    —————————–

    I have many times in previous posts mentioned all the feminism I actually have read, starting with “The Female Eunuch” when it was first published in 1970; many years of “Ms.” magazine; have regularly quoted from Susan Faludi’s “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.”

    But, since I don’t automatically fall to my knees in obeisance whenever some feminist makes an absurd argument (even if the basic premise of the movement is utterly sound and morally right), therefore I’m some outrageously reactionary chauvinist.

    ——————————-
    You could start with this article, which explains why patriarchy is lousy for men too.
    ——————————-

    (Sarcasm alert) What an amazing surprise! “Patriarchy is lousy for men too”??

    I guess you couldn’t be bothered to read where I wrote in that same post how men’s “lives are clearly considered more disposable — from ‘women and children first!’ on sinking ships to the military being loath to send women into combat, because women coming home in body bags is far more upsetting to society than men doing so — and they form the vast majority of criminals and prison inmates, mental patients, suicides.” And made the same argument in many other HU threads.

    I’ve read Herb Goldberg’s 1976 “The Hazards of Being Male: Surviving the Myth of Masculine Privilege” back when it first came out in paperback:

    ——————————–
    Before John Gray and Robert Bly; before Warren Farrell, Robert Glover and Leonard Sax, there was Herb Goldberg whose classic work, “The Hazards of Being Male” was originally written as the male response to feminism’s claim that oppression was for women-only.

    In fact, this book by Herb Goldberg first became popular among female readers, who would often give the book to their male partners. Betty Friedan, the ‘Mother of feminism,’ who shared the stage with Dr. Goldberg in a 1979 program entitled “Men and Women; The Stresses of Transition,” stated, “Every word Herb Goldberg says about the man-woman thing has been so on target that we have not had to waste any time on silly arguments.” …
    ———————————-
    More, at http://www.amazon.com/Hazards-Being-Male-Surviving-Masculine/dp/0451163893

    …And was part of the ill-fated Men’s Movement, not only mocked by the Establishment as wusses wanting to get in touch with their “feminine side,” but by feminists ridiculing the very idea that instead of men all being part of the women-crushing Power Structure, men could be oppressed too, its victims as well.

    Switching gears here…

    ———————————–
    The other corroborating evidence [Gerard Jones] gives is that the ads in WW were more for boys than girls. I thought I’d check WW 16 and see if that panned out. Here’s what I got…
    ———————————-

    From my long-ago (though not in the Marston/Peters WW’s era; I’m not that old!) widespread comic-book reading days, I recall it was the rule that the identical “package” of ads was spread through a publisher’s whole line of comics. That advertising wouldn’t be “customized” for some titles. (By all means, someone correct me if I’m wrong…)

24. Feminism doesn’t maintain anything of the sort. Patriarchy doesn’t work that way in modern capitalist societies (or maybe ever.)

    And Robert Bly…sheesh.

    Thanks for the notes about the advertising.

25. “Unless I’m missing the juicier bits of Wonder Woman”

    Uh…yes. You are.

    They’re for kids, so they don’t show any explicit sex acts…and they’re not very naturalistic, so motivations are fairly displaced. But Marston has said that the lasso is basically a metaphor for sexual attraction, and the bondage games are also definitely supposed to be sexual (I can’t believe I have to explain that). Wonder Woman tied up or tying others up is absolutely suffused with eroticism…and since she’s an enthusiastic participant in those activities, saying that they’re not about her desire seems to miss the boat. She has serious flirtations with Steve and Etta and lots of other folks (including her mother), as both dom and sub. You can easily see the comic, not as a “this is how society should be”, but as an extended masquerade/BDSM sex game, in which everybody, hero and villain, is having a grand old sexual time. Saying that she’s not sexual, or not expressing sexual desire, seems to be a fairly extreme and willful misreading.

    The fact that you’re not able to see WW’s sexuality, or the entire comics intense sexuality, seems to me to suggest that you can only acknowledge sexuality or sexual agency when it’s in the context of phallocentrism and the male gaze. If it’s ice picks and cunt shots, it’s sex. If it’s lassos and mutual rescuing (to paraphrase Wertham, who knew damn well what was going on), it’s asexual. Again, the insistence that women’s sexuality can only happen in the context of the penis and the male gaze is not especially feminist.

    Also, and again…Steve is sometimes neutered and sometimes the hero. He gets to dom and sub just like everybody else.

26. Oh, and yes, there’s definitely a large male readership for WW. But Marston says explicitly that he wanted to teach both girls and *boys* about the power of femininity, and about the importance of strong women. So a male audience doesn’t really obviate the feminism in this case. On the contrary, one of the interesting things about WW is the way that it’s so consciously directed at both boys and girls…and tends to encourage them both to identify with and to desire women.

27. Well, according to John Carpenter, the Final Girl sort of loses her virginity when she stabs the killer, too. Yes, I get the whole penis=knife, lasso=vagina thing. On another reading, though, these are substitutes for the real thing, which are manifestations of a repressed sexuality. As tools of the Amazonian government, the bracelets, lasso and girdle are ways of socially controlling private sexual desires. The Amazons don’t even have to give birth as far as I can tell.

    Also, don’t forget that Marston saw the bondage as substitute violence, too.

    As for Steve, does he regularly tie up Diana and vice versa? From what I’ve seen, it’s mostly a bad thing when’s she’s bound and a good thing when she escapes. She’s always the one who’s supposed to be in control of the binding. Again, this is domination being sold as submission.

28. I do agree that you can read it all as a sex game.

29. Noah…look, I know you’re a kink collector. Much to my cost.

    The entire ethos of Marston’s “Wonder Woman” is false and repulsive. I don’t understand your frenzied defense of the undefensible.

    Perhaps you can enlighten me? Though I remain very, very dubious.

    It’s an odd situation when Mike Hunter is far more rational than Noah Berlatsky.

    (No insult intended, Mike.)

30. Alex…I”ve written tens of thousands of words about Marston/Peter at this point. You could read my book I guess? But really, if I haven’t convinced you at this point it’s probably not going to happen.

    Charles…so you would prefer that comics for eight year olds include explicit depictions of penetrative sex? Or what?

    The comic with the paradise island deer masquerade/chase/eating seems pretty thoroughly explicit to me. The final girl replaces sex with violence; ww doesn’t replace bondage with violence. Marston believes bondage is the main thing, the normal thing. It’s not a replacement for anything; it’s the rock bottom normal emotion.

    You’re the one who keeps saying that Freud is discredited, right? Seeing WW as repressed sexuality is just laughable, I think. Nothing’s repressed. The bondage and the foot fetishes and the dominance and the submission and the lesbianism…how much more obvious do you want it to be?

    The Amazon relationship with birth is unclear in interesting ways. There’s a pretty solid case to be made that parthenogenesis is part of a feminist worldview…that is, that there needs to be a radical restructuring of birth if there’s going to be a feminist world. There’s actually a good bit of historical evidence that that’s the case, and feminist theorists like Shulamith Firestone have argued for it as well.

    Steve doesn’t usually tie up Diana or vice versa; they’re on the same side and all. But…I think your reading is much, much too straightforward if you assume that tying WW up isn’t supposed to be fun, or that your identification with Evilless is somehow reading against Marston’s intentions. Similarly, there are lots of instances in which men tie people up, and those are again not necessarily coded as bad in Marston’s view…in part because bad and good, dominance and submission keep switching places with each other for him. Readers of both genders are encouraged to get off on both the dominance and the submission, with both dominator and submitter figured as both male and female.

    You’ve got a very binary take on it — it must be dominance *or* submission — which I don’t think is very attuned to where Marston is coming from. He’s fascinated with binaries, but only as a prelude to paradox (and not to press a point…but binary thinking is not necessarily all that divorced from patriarchy in many formulations….)

    You’re absolutely right that Marston is into social control of sexual desire. I think your error is in believing that something like Basic Instinct is *not* absolutely involved in the social control of sexual desire. If I’m reading you right, you seem to want sexual desire to be a challenge to power in itself; a subversive, unruly, unchained force. I think that’s kind of naive romantic nonsense myself…though I can see why if you believed that you’d have problems with Marston’s world.

31. Regarding Amazon relationship with birth: one could easily argue that destroying or at the very least weakening the link between sex and childbirth is essential for the sexual emancipation of both sexes, but especially for sexual emancipation of biological women. While sex is indeed a way to create life (although, it is worth mentioning that the link between sex and pregnancy wasn’t always obvious to humans), most people simply do not want to create life every time they want to have sex, and fear of unwanted pregnancy has always been a powerful self-restriction on acting upon one’s sexual desire. The way in which sexual mores had changed after the invention of reliable contraception is telling.

32. Charles,

    Catherine is no more in control over her sexuality than a Final Girl. While diegetically they both are free to make their own choices, for the character to gain power or retain the power she already has those choices have to be consistent with an overall denial of pleasure inherent in sex in and by itself. All of Catherine’s sexual choices are targeted towards her getting power. Which brings us to Cersei who, as you said yourself, gains power through adjusting her sexual choices and turning her sexuality into a tool first and anything else second.

    All of these women exist in a context of both more or less patriarchic society (diegetically) and narrative that is at the very least strongly shaped by patriarchic society and ideas, and as such the ways of gaining power available to them are severely limited (which you’ve pointed out yourself while talking about Cersei). Therefore, a conscious pursuit of power is a manifestation of their agency, but Structure is determinant of the sexual choices they make in that pursuit.

    I will not elaborate of the sexuality of Wonder Woman, as Noah had already said almost everything I could in that regard. I will however add a semi-random thought regarding separation of birth from ‘messy sexual act’: the possibility of pregnancy and, subsequently, maternity leave are things that put a woman at a disadvantage in the eyes of a potential employer (I live in a charming place where things like that often are directly spoken of in the course of a job interview). So, while highly questionable, it is quite obvious how a person preaching, among other things, workplace equality could have seen a ‘birth without birth’ as a fantastic step towards it.

    Being desirable is indeed part of one’s sexuality. However, it is a) definitely not the whole of it, and b) the part of sexuality that has been historically proscribed to be a whole of women’s sexuality. A women being desired aligns perfectly with the patriarchic worldview (or at least the kind of patriarchic worldview that is specific to Western culture of the last two millennial). Retaining desirability isn’t anti-feminist, but it isn’t feminist either. Retaining desirability without retaining or gaining desire is basically staying true to the patriarchic view on women’s sexuality.

33. ———————-
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    Feminism doesn’t maintain anything of the sort. Patriarchy doesn’t work that way in modern capitalist societies (or maybe ever.)
    ———————–

    Of what sort? And, in which way does Patriarchy not work? In other words, which part of my comments are you dismissing?

    ————————-
    And Robert Bly…sheesh.
    ————————-

    Did you ever read any Bly, or just take the cue of what to think about him from feminists?

    And, did I even endorse him? Nope, the name was simply mentioned in an Amazon.com listing of authors whose work came after Herb Goldberg’s “The Hazards of Being Male.”

    —————————
    AB says:

    Noah…The entire ethos of Marston’s “Wonder Woman” is false and repulsive. I don’t understand your frenzied defense of the undefensible.

    Perhaps you can enlighten me? Though I remain very, very dubious.

    It’s an odd situation when Mike Hunter is far more rational than Noah Berlatsky.

    (No insult intended, Mike.)
    —————————-

    No offense taken! I wouldn’t’ve enjoyed the TCJ messageboard so if I’d been the thin-skinned type.

    In fairness to Noah — if I understand both what you find “false and repulsive” and what he’s arguing — I don’t think he’s seriously endorsing Marston’s rather *unique* approach to feminism as The Way We Ought To Do Things.

    Rather (if I understand right) Noah is maintaining that, for all its peculiarities, Marston’s B&D way to a sexually-egalitarian paradise is a defensibly feminist approach.

    —————————-
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    …There’s a pretty solid case to be made that parthenogenesis is part of a feminist worldview…that is, that there needs to be a radical restructuring of birth if there’s going to be a feminist world. There’s actually a good bit of historical evidence that that’s the case, and feminist theorists like Shulamith Firestone have argued for it as well.
    —————————-

    Heavens! This makes Marston look sensibly down-to-earth in comparison. Could feminist theorists disappear any farther up their own fundaments?

    —————————-
    Parthenogenesis is a form of asexual reproduction where growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization. In plants, parthenogenesis means development of an embryo from an unfertilized egg cell, and is a component process of apomixis.

    …Parthenogenesis occurs naturally in many plants, some invertebrate animal species (including nematodes, water fleas, some scorpions, aphids, some bees, some Phasmida, and parasitic wasps) and a few vertebrates (such as some fish, amphibians, reptiles, and very rarely birds. This type of reproduction has been induced artificially in a few species including fish and amphibians.
    ——————————
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis

    Why not go the next step, and argue that in order to get away from all that nasty sexism and those inconvenient biological urges impelling feministically-counterproductive behavior such as hetero mating and breeding, we should abandon the flesh altogether, and exist as disembodied intelligences floating about the aether?

    I guess I’m just “outing” myself as an awful sexist by mocking the asinine absurdity of all this. Never mind that what truly is the biggest factor in keeping women down is not having to depend on icky sperm in order to reproduce, but getting pregnant and stuck with the vast majority of the “shitwork” in raising the precious lil’ sprouts.

    Why do you think the Ruling Class is always ferociously resisting that women should have control over their reproduction? Maintaining, as one Pope put it during a visit to South America, that “women should have all the children that God sends them,” driving family-planning activists in that continent to despair? ( http://www.salon.com/2012/03/23/the_popes_controversial_visit/ )

    I’ve posted tons of info and links on how this actually happens in the real world, while “feminist theorists” are busy arguing for “a radical restructuring of birth.”

    ——————————–
    Jaelinque says:

    …I will however add a semi-random thought regarding separation of birth from ‘messy sexual act’: the possibility of pregnancy and, subsequently, maternity leave are things that put a woman at a disadvantage in the eyes of a potential employer (I live in a charming place where things like that often are directly spoken of in the course of a job interview). So, while highly questionable, it is quite obvious how a person preaching, among other things, workplace equality could have seen a ‘birth without birth’ as a fantastic step towards it.
    ———————————–

    True, the brief period of “maternity leave” is an irritating inconvenience to productivity and money-minded employers. But giving birth and recovering from the physical trauma are but a small aspect of the decades-long burden that is motherhood. Mothers end up constantly taking days off from work, having to leave work early, etc. (somehow the fathers can’t manage to do this) ’cause the kid is sick, has trouble at school, etc. (I recall one co-worker who averaged a day a week off from work ’cause of her kid.)

    ———————————–
    Recent social science suggests that motherhood is the strongest trigger for gender discrimination in today’s workplace. If you give people identical resumes, one a mother and the other not, the mother is 79% less likely to be hired, 100% less likely to be promoted, offered an average of $11,000 less in salary, and held to higher performance and punctuality standards…
    ————————————
    http://www.nextnewdeal.net/bloomberg-case-open-season-discriminate-against-mothers

    —————————————
    Some good news: for the first time ever, women under 30 are out-earning males. Here’s the bad news: all these women don’t have kids.
    —————————————-
    http://www.life360.com/blog/discrimination-against-mothers/

    So, rather than there needing to be “a radical restructuring of birth if there’s going to be a feminist world” through the biological absurdity of parthenogenesis, what there needs to be is the far more simple and attainable goal of fathers taking equal responsibility for the burden of raising children.

    Ah, but “feminist theorists” don’t even want for men to have any involvement in women getting pregnant. I guess men (unlikely as they already are to take on any but the most perfunctory role in rearing kids they helped bring into being) should be expected to volunteer to help care for “partho babies”…

34. Mike,

    Regarding ‘maternity leave’ and ‘motherhood as a whole’ as factors in workplace discrimination: this might be a local thing, I guess. Our maternity leaves are not short though.

35. I’ve read Robert Bly.

    Patriarchy doesn’t work by fathers teaching or initiating sons consciously into modes of power. That’s a model for kingship, maybe, but nobody thinks that’s the way things function now. Privilege is more diffuse.

    And actually feminist theorists often do want men involved in child rearing. Herman’s book Father-Daughter Incest argues on the basis of her clinical work that child rape is in large part the result of rigid gender roles (most incest victims she talked to came from families with traditional patriarchal structures), and argues that we need men to be more involved in child-rearing and women to have more economic power, as just one for instance.

    Also, there actually *has* been a radical restructuring of birth — not through parthenogensis, but through birth control. As Jaelinque says, that’s been vital for the women’s equality movement in many ways. Parthenogenesis for Marston is a metaphor, if you can believe it. He doesn’t actually believe that’s going to work. (And his lover Olive Byrne was a relative of Margaret Sanger; Marston certainly knew about, and almost certainly knew the importance of, birth control.)

    The trick, here, Mike, is for you to start citing which feminists you mean when you spout this nonsense. What feminist theorists don’t want men to be involved in child care? I’ve never seen anyone say that. If you have someone particular in mind, say so. Otherwise it looks suspiciously like you’re just making shit up to confirm your own beliefs.

    And even if you find someone, it might help your case if you were able to distinguish that just because some feminists say something, doesn’t mean that’s what all feminists think. Shulamith Firestone is great, but she’s a radical. A lot of feminists disagree with her adamently. Judith Butler for example doesn’t think that gender is material or rooted in biology at all. Julia Serano thinks it’s a mix of culture and biology. Some feminists think the emphasis on motherhood in this culture are disempowering. Others think that motherhood is denigrated. Other people think other things. I mean, you’d never say, “all comics everywhere are adolescent empowerment fantasies!” But you’re happy to speak about feminism as if it’s all one thing, and then to denigrate it on that basis. I wish you’d cut it out.

36. Just remembered this; the first time WW gets her lasso, the first thing she does with it is playfully capture another Amazon and order her to stand on her head. It’s playful and mischievous…and it’s definitely about sexual desire and agency as well. Moreover, it’s treated as playful and mischievous; she’s not punished for it at all.

    I think that shows pretty clearly that for Marston, Women can be, and are supposed to be, sexual agents and express their sexual desires in active, dominant ways that don’t depend on either the phallus or on manipulating their appeal to conform to the male gaze. Which is just a really unusual place to be coming from for any wildly successful cultural narrative, especially one from the 1940s and written by a man.

37. Charles,
    First, on the horror thing– while it may be true that men buy more horror books/see more films than women, that’s far from indicating that the genre is dominantly aimed at men, or that it’s phallocratic, etc. I don’t think that horror, which has many inter-generic variations, is anywhere nearly as ‘gendered’ as action is “for men” or romance is “for women.” I could also point to the proliferation, for about the last ten years or so, of the so-called “paranormal romance” paperback genre, which mixes horror and romance for a predominantly female audience. My main point is that it’s risky to assume a male spectator in horror, at least in comparison with action-adventure.

    You say that you’re trying to describe the villains in the Marston universe as “symbolic” of the case you’re advancing, but I’m saying that your approach is one of “sentence first, evidence afterward.” You say:

    “We have nothing to fear from the Amazonian matriarchy, because it’s as submissive as we’re supposed to be. They only use psychic domination on caricatural villains. This is your basic superhero moral gobbledygook, only encoded as feminist.”

    Here you’re attempting to conflate Marston’s society with fascism because it makes people “submissive.” *Maybe* you could make some sort of case for this if Wonder Woman ran around lassoing witches and gypsies and assorted minorities to stick into her love-camp. But my point about “force-based attacks” is that what WW’s villains “symbolize” is much more straightforward and allegorical than you’ll allow. Evilless, Mars and all the rest ARE fascism as Marston understood it, and Marston extends his critique of force-based power, in an implicit manner, even to the American military by showing the ethical necessity of female representation within the military (the “Dr. Psycho” stories, principally).

    Put simply, the only way you can sell your point that Amazon society is fascist is by ignoring the diegetic reality of the villains as incarnations of fascism.

38. “Evilless, Mars and all the rest ARE fascism as Marston understood it”

    Well… I think that that may be a bit simplistic as well…and ignores the extent to which I think Marston really likes his villainesses, and sees them as points of identification as well.

39. ———————————
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    …it might help your case if you were able to distinguish that just because some feminists say something, doesn’t mean that’s what all feminists think. Shulamith Firestone is great, but she’s a radical. A lot of feminists disagree with her adamently.
    ———————————-

    I’m sure there also are folks who consider themselves Christian who think, say, that the Virgin Birth is nonsense.

    Yet, awareness that within any movement there can exist a variety of viewpoints doesn’t cancel out that there are certain basic tenets that are damn near universally agreed upon within it. (Like, “Capitalism is bad! among the spectrum of Communists.)

    Alas, when you say that…

    ——————————–
    There’s a pretty solid case to be made that parthenogenesis is part of a feminist worldview…that is, that there needs to be a radical restructuring of birth if there’s going to be a feminist world. There’s actually a good bit of historical evidence that that’s the case, and feminist theorists like Shulamith Firestone have argued for it as well.
    ———————————-

    You pronounce that absurd idea to be a historically-established, vital part of feminism which also happens to be supported by radicals like Ms. Firestone. Not some weirdo concept only held by some extremists.

    Sheesh, I’d hate for some right-winger who truly is an enemy of Women’s Rights to get hold of that assertion. “You know what’s the ideal for those crazy FemiNazis? They want to breed without sex, like amoebas do!”

    ———————————-
    I mean, you’d never say, “all comics everywhere are adolescent empowerment fantasies!” But you’re happy to speak about feminism as if it’s all one thing, and then to denigrate it on that basis. I wish you’d cut it out.
    ———————————–

    Point taken; I’ll be more specific and say radical feminists when criticizing. The problem is that, as in Christianity, where the Pope, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell are the ones who by far get heard the most, the sensible, down-to-earth feminists don’t get quoted much.

    I could understand anti-feminists wanting to emphasize the fringe extremists; yet here at HU we don’t hear much from “sensible, down-to-earth feminists” either. Why, Andrea Dworkin is the one probably most often cited. Though I guess “equal rights under the law” and “equal pay for equal work” isn’t interestingly thought-provoking enough.

    ———————————–
    …the first time WW gets her lasso, the first thing she does with it is playfully capture another Amazon and order her to stand on her head. It’s playful and mischievous…and it’s definitely about sexual desire and agency as well.

    I think that shows pretty clearly that for Marston, Women can be, and are supposed to be, sexual agents and express their sexual desires in active, dominant ways that don’t depend on either the phallus or on manipulating their appeal to conform to the male gaze. Which is just a really unusual place to be coming from for any wildly successful cultural narrative, especially one from the 1940s and written by a man.
    ———————————–

    Not so obviously “sexual” to me, but then this was a comic aimed at kids.

    Still, though, your argument in the second paragraph has the ring of truth to it. And yes, it would take “non-standard” sexuality such as WW’s bondage games to avoid those pitfalls mentioned…

    Unfortunately, I’ve read how books and magazines (such as “On Our Backs”) espousing “non-vanilla” lesbianism haven’t exactly received a warm welcome in feminist bookstores, with pressure from some customers to ban them outright, or being shelved in “Controversial” sections. So I can’t exactly see mainstream feminists embracing Marston’s way to female empowerment and sexual equality…

    ————————————
    Marston really likes his villainesses, and sees them as points of identification as well.
    ———————————–

    Even if they’re not the *ideal*, they’re still lively and colorful figures of female power, just the “does not play well with others” variety.

40. Mike, On Our Backs and sex-positive feminism in general has been way, way more accepted than Dworkin for the last twenty years at least. This is what I mean when I say that you really need to try to be more aware that you don’t necessarily know what you’re talking about when you talk about this stuff. The feminist texts you said you’d read were 40 years old and more. There’s just a lot that’s changed since then. Really, everybody hates Andrea Dworkin. Susie Bright is where it’s at now.

    I think you’re maybe not following what I’m saying about the parthenogenesis. Marston is creating a utopia, not necessarily a literal plan for action (he doesn’t think that there are going to be space kangaroos in the perfect world, I’m pretty sure.) The parthenogenesis functions in the story as a way to give women complete power over birth. It shows that as a good thing…which is part of a feminist worldview in that it’s showing women’s control over birth (or birth control) as a good thing which can empower women and make the world a better place. And like I said, this has been proven true in a lot of ways; birth control really has radically restructured birth, and that’s been an important part of women’s changing status.

    Shulamith Firestone is radical, and I think she does think that artificial birth is the only way ultimately to undo gender oppression. But that doesn’t mean that she thinks that parthenogenesis is actually going to occur. Rather, it’s a sign of how entrenched and difficult she believes gender oppression is, and the distance our society would have to go in order to cast it off. Again, I believe she saw birth control as central to women’s liberation in a lot of ways — not as sufficient, but as a step in the right direction.

    You can certainly disagree with her if you’d like (most feminists do, I think; she’s not a central figure for most current feminists), but I don’t think it’s crazy to argue that women’s second-class status is historically linked to their material situation as child-bearers, nor to suggest that sex role divisions are very entrenched and very difficult to throw off.

    There’s no reason why you should have read Firestone, and it’s certainly legit to express skepticism/ask for clarification. But instead you went off on how radical feminists believe this and radical feminists believe that and how this just completely discredits feminists — again, without really having any idea what you’re talking about. And this is something you tend to do whenever feminism comes up. I’m just asking if maybe the next time you’re gearing up to do that, you might take a breath.

41. Noah,

    I’d rather kids be taught by Verhoeven and Martin than Marston.

    I don’t think all psychoanalytically derived insights have been discredited. As a causal explanation, it’s bullshit, though. This matters, not when someone is giving an interpretation of a film or book, but when someone is arguing about what’s actually going on in the subject’s mind while engaging the work (e.g., patterns of identification). Anyway, one can acknowledge sexual repression without agreeing that an old greek myth is really the way it always happens.

    “Steve doesn’t usually tie up Diana or vice versa; they’re on the same side and all.” We’re not likely to come to an agreement on this. To me, you’re tacitly acknowledging what I said: bondage is promoted as a tool to control transgressors, not really pleasure for friends or law-abiding Amazons. I think it’s pretty clear who’s supposed to be in control here. However, I agree that the reader is supposed to find it pleasurable to see WW tied up. You can have a fascistic fantasy which is supposed to be pleasurable (to those who share the fantasy), while also not agreeing that it’s positive model for society. It’s the latter part that I object to in Marston’s WW.

    I’m arguing that everything isn’t reducible to gender, but I’m being binary? mmhmm. “But binary thinking is not necessarily all that divorced from patriarchy in many formulations.” I can’t imagine a more rigidly dichotomous reasoning style than the gaze theorists. So, in a way, you’re right that such thinking isn’t divorced from patriarchy.

    Gene,

    I don’t know where it was that I was supposed to be assuming a male spectator, but I’m well aware that women watch and/or love horror (I quote from some of them in my essay).

    And get this straight: the only characters talking about freedom in WW#28 are the villains. That’s right, Marston only has villains caring about freedom. If he sees them as fascists (which I doubt that he does), then that would be a pretty clear cut case of Newspeak. The book is totalitarian and authoritarian. It views mind control as good and individuality as bad. As I already said, it doesn’t matter to me if someone calls it fascistic. Others will get picky, as they already did, and say masculinity is a necessary feature, so it can’t be, by definition. Whatever, I don’t have much tolerance for semantic games, as you should know by now.

    Jaelinque,

    “it is worth mentioning that the link between sex and pregnancy wasn’t always obvious to humans”

    That doesn’t sound right at all. Humans are so distant from the biological impulse that they forgot what sex is for? Even if it were purely trial and error, absolute tabula rasa, it would hardly take very much time to discover that fighting wasn’t producing offspring, nor was fucking rocks and trees, or other species. If a lab rat can learn in such a manner, then surely so could our ancestors.

    That’s enough for now …

42. Charles,

    Whether humans can ‘forget what sex is for’ is actually an interesting question. Interesting discussion in fact, so interesting that it had been had by numerous anthropologists throughout the last century. The main question was basically this: ‘ here we seem to have some tribal societies, which don’t seem to understand the connection between sex and pregnancy, did they newer have that knowledge or did they forget/repress it, and if it’s the second one, why?’

    Here is a 1937 article on the subject, defining the sides of a debate (and, of course, siding with one of them): http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1937.39.1.02a00370/pdf. See also works of Bronis?aw Malinowski concerning Trobriand Islanders and subsequent critique by Bertrand Pulman, ‘The Meaning of Paternity and the Virgin Birth Debate’ by Carol Delaney (Sep., 1986),
    ‘Belief Systems about Virgin Birth: Structure and Mutual Comparability’ by André van Dokkum (1996), etc. (the last two articles may be found online, but I’m not quite sure they got there in a law-abiding way, so I’d rather not link).

    In any case, there is a distinct difference between instinct-based ‘figuring out’ of lab rats and conscious human knowledge.

    As for humans ‘knowing’ about the connection between sex and procreation, it indeed is more of a debated theory, but a really entertaining one at that.
    The possibility of ignorance is explained thus: humans are one of the rare species, whose females have concealed ovulation, and our sexual activity isn’t confined to the estrus phase of the female estrous cycle. In other words, while there are some subtle differences in sexual signaling (and, subsequently, behavior) during ovulation, human desire to engage in heterosexual intercourse isn’t dependent on whether such an act can result in conception (which brings us to a separate much-discussed question of what exactly is sex for, what is it’s function in human society). As such, sexual activity might not lead to pregnancy for a significant length of time (infertility treatment guidelines generally say that a woman who has had less than at least six months of contraceptive-free sexual activity is not considered for treatment). So, when sexual activity is unrestricted the connection isn’t all that obvious. After all, if sex caused pregnancy, wouldn’t it cause it every time? The “sometimes” type of causation isn’t an easy one to grasp and accept after all.

43. I think it’s probably enough for me too, Charles. Thanks for a fun discussion!

44. Tons to comment about, so little time!

    —————————–
    Noah Berlatsky says:

    Mike, On Our Backs and sex-positive feminism in general has been way, way more accepted than Dworkin for the last twenty years at least.
    —————————–

    That’s good to hear! Come to think of it, it was well over twenty years ago (how the time flies! Seems like only yesterday) that I was a steady customer at the late, lamented “Rubyfruit Books” here in Tallahassee, and somewhere read that stuff about how “books and magazines…espousing ‘non-vanilla’ lesbianism haven’t exactly received a warm welcome in feminist bookstores.” (As I recall, Rubyfruit was more tolerant in that regard.)

    But, do Susy Bright and “sex-positive feminism in general” also speak up for the delights of “top/bottom,” domination-themed sexuality which “On Our Backs” favored?

    —————————–
    I think you’re maybe not following what I’m saying about the parthenogenesis. Marston is creating a utopia, not necessarily a literal plan for action (he doesn’t think that there are going to be space kangaroos in the perfect world, I’m pretty sure.)
    —————————–

    Re parthenogenesis, I’m not looking askance at its version on WW; you brought up the term as something some real-life feminists say is necessary. In your words:

    ——————————
    There’s a pretty solid case to be made that parthenogenesis is part of a feminist worldview…that is, that there needs to be a radical restructuring of birth if there’s going to be a feminist world. There’s actually a good bit of historical evidence that that’s the case, and feminist theorists like Shulamith Firestone have argued for it as well.
    ——————————

    …And that’s why I find it dubious.

    ——————————-
    Really, everybody hates Andrea Dworkin.
    ——————————-

    Then why is it at HU that when she’s brought up, with some caveats, it’s generally in praise of her giving insights into such-and-such?

    ——————————–
    …I don’t think it’s crazy to argue that women’s second-class status is historically linked to their material situation as child-bearers…
    ——————————

    Heavens! Haven’t I been regularly doing just that? (To which you then respond that all of society should change so that women can have all the kids they want without any inconveniences to their lives or careers.)

    —————————–
    …nor to suggest that sex role divisions are very entrenched and very difficult to throw off.
    ——————————

    Indeed so! To which I might add, that human biological nature is likewise hard to dispense with; so that parthenogenesis isn’t likely to be a “game changer.”

    ——————————-
    …instead you went off on how radical feminists believe this and radical feminists believe that and how this just completely discredits feminists.
    ——————————-

    If I’m supposedly saying how “this just completely discredits feminists,” how come I actually did say the movement’s basic goals are utterly sensible and morally correct?

    What my concern is, that when wackos are so publicized, extremist views such as Firestone’s said to be powerfully important to feminism, it sure tars the whole movement as Looney-Tunes in the public eye.

45. Mike, Dworkin is mentioned positively on HU because I like her! Same with Firestone. But that really is a minority position, in feminism and everywhere else. In general, Firestone is mostly forgotten and Dworkin is mostly reviled, is my sense of things.

    And yes, BDSM has lots of proponents among sex-positive feminists. It’s still somewhat controversial, is my sense, and there are still feminists who are uncomfortable with it, but there are also many who argue vociferously that there’s no contradiction between sexual kink and feminist commitments.

46. Noah,

    I think we both agree that any utopia would include space kangaroos.

    Also, came across this article about female drug lords. Exercise of power through violence is not unique to men. An all women society is no guarantee of peace.

    http://gizmodo.com/5913969/female-drug-cartels-prove-women-can-be-just-as-good-at-mass-murder-as-men?tag=drugs

47. Hardly had to do a google search. We’ve got Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton, after all.

48. I didn’t have to do a reality search. I’ve got the evil Cirinist empire in Cerebus.

49. Charles said:

    “And get this straight: the only characters talking about freedom in WW#28 are the villains.”

    I didn’t get the memo that said that Wonder Woman #28 was so representative that it cancelled out everything the series says about villains elsewhere.

    I’ll agree to an extent with Noah that Marston wants his villains to be entertaining. If they were too much like real life, they wouldn’t fit the tone of the feature. But I don’t see how anybody can look at, say, the stories featuring Mars and his troupe of yes-men (Duke of Deception et al) as anything but a mythic personification of then-current fascism. And I’ll reiterate that if you don’t accurately describe the forces against which the heroine is reacting, then you haven’t said anything at all about her supposed “Newspeak.”

    “I don’t have much tolerance for semantic games, as you should know by now.”

    Oh, Kettle! Thou art black!

50. I think there’s significantly less ambiguity with the male villains, for the most part. Mars is actually shown as inspiring Hitler, and as actively enthusiastic about Nazis conquering the world.

    I think Evilless in 28 is supposed to be a point of identification, not because he’s eschewing realism (like I said, he’s happy to have truly evil villains, like Pluto in WW 16) but because he finds bad women exciting and attractive for some of the same reasons Charles does (and Sharon does in her piece.) Those reasons being both fetishistic and feminist, as are most things in Marston.

51. So Marston’s male villains are clearly evil fascists. That only reinforces my argument.

52. Jaelinque,

    “All of Catherine’s sexual choices are targeted towards her getting power.”

    But she’s a sadist, so that’s what turns her on. That’s not the same as the Final Girl at all. I see the film as making fun of typical patriarchal cinema at every turn, so of course it’s set in a patriarchy. That seems to me Verhoeven’s point (not sure about Eszerthas, though) and it fits into the way he generally does genre: delivering the goods, while reflexively making you feel dubious about it.

53. “delivering the goods, while reflexively making you feel dubious about it.”

    Or, less generously, making shallow gestures towards self-consciousness in order to retail the same stereotypes.

    You’ve made me want to check out Basic Instinct again though. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.

54. I don’t actually disagree with that interpretation, Noah. I’m not sure you can separate the critique from the simple enjoyment of what’s being critiqued. It’s just that I like the tension. Sort of like anti-war war films, you know?

55. (Well, I might disagree that they’re “shallow” gestures, but you get my point.)

56. Charles,

    That’s a valid interpretation. However, I’m not entirely sure it isn’t a cop-out.
    I am always at least a bit suspicious of narratives that represent ideologically suspect things done to or by a character as empowering and as demonstration of agency by reason of ‘because this is exactly what they want’. The line between Agency and Structure is blurred even when we are talking about real people, and characters are not real people as they have no other will that the will of their creator(s).

57. ————————-
    Jaelinque says:

    I am always at least a bit suspicious of narratives that represent ideologically suspect things done to or by a character as empowering and as demonstration of agency by reason of ‘because this is exactly what they want’.
    ————————–

    Yes, there’s a lot of “have your cake and eat it too” stuff out there; the supposedly “liberated, empowered” female heroine who dresses like a blatant sex object.

    “But that’s good, you see? She’s taken control over her own sexuality,” say the defenders. Humph! A sexuality which just happens to cater to drooling males…

    —————————
    The line between Agency and Structure is blurred even when we are talking about real people, and characters are not real people as they have no other will that the will of their creator(s).
    —————————

    Characters in the hands of mediocre creators are but mere puppets, predictably playing their parts, with no nuance or unexpected facets.

    However, any halfway decent fiction writer has moments when characters take on a life of their own, a degree of autonomy. (Hardly a little-known phenomenon.) The mark of a quality creator is that they are open to such felicitous, unplanned events. One nonreligious author told of how she had a minor character, a preacher in the Old West, planned to be an idiotic figure, regularly mocked. Yet she was surprised than in one scene where there was a raging nighttime thunderstorm, lightning exploding about the group, her little preacher prayed, was comforted, and slept soundly.

    Why, even control-freak Stanley Kubrick encouraged improvisations during the “intensive rehearsal” periods prior to filming. From which came memorable scenes such as Alex the Droog’s “Singin’ in the rain” and Dr, Strangelove’s “Mein Fuehrer, I can walk!”

    I don’t recall “Basic Instinct” all that well, having only seen it once in a censored TV broadcast. Yet surely (aside from Charles’ on-target comment how Verhoeven “…deliver[s] the goods, while…making you feel dubious about it”) there’s also the factor of Sharon Stone’s performance. I don’t recall it at all, but does not any actor worth their salt add nuances, shadings to which screenwriters and directors may not have intended?

    As an extreme example, Tennessee Williams regretted how the good looks, charisma, and tragic depths Marlon Brando gave Stanley Kowalski made what he’d planned as a repellent villain come across as a somewhat sympathetic figure…

58. Stone’s not a great actress, I don’t think. And…she actually expressed some reservations about the film afterwards, especially about the shot of her crotch.

59. “Maybe Wonder Woman will inspire some little girl to shatter dictatorship’s glass ceiling when she grows up. That would be real progress.”

    Take this more seriously than you did. Think about it hard. It would be a good thing.

    Marston’s views aren’t so far off from Plato’s — enlightened despotism being the best form of government. And I haven’t heard a lot of blanket condemnations of Plato.

    This view has been held by many people for most of history, and is actually still a highly defensible point of view. Is it a philosophy you disagree with? Sure. But take it seriously rather than caricaturing it as “fascism”, which is a different and stupider philosophy.

    The strongest (and I believe essentially successful) attack on the concept of “enlightened despotism” is basically that there’s no way of making sure your despot is enlightened. Even if you have one, they may stop being enlightened, or die, or quit. This is a real argument, and Marston *makes this argument*, and WW is consistently pro-democracy precisely to avoid *unenlightened* despots.

    Simply wittering about freedom isn’t actually an argument against enlightened despotism: anyone can tell that freedom is not inherently desirable simply by the way in which freedom gives us the “freedom” to make other people’s lives worse, right up to and including destroying the ecosystem and killing us all with pollution.

    Marston believed in an orderly, organized society.
    http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=23548
    The thing is, there is actually a strong case for it. And it’s not a fascist case.

    In some sense American culture has always gone way too far in the “do whatever you like” direction. Corporate executives claim the “right” to dump pollution in the rivers and the air and the ocean, because why should they obey arbitrary orders from authority, and they don’t think the pollution is really dangerous, right? Going back 200 years, Americans thought, why shouldn’t we settle on this land, just because there are some Natives here who say they own it and would like us to follow their laws and customs?

    Submission to just and kind authority is actually a good idea. It can be taken too far. Maybe Marston did take it too far. But he was arguing against a current in our culture which goes way, way too far the other direction — which encourages rebelling against authority for the hell of it, nothing more.

    I think you fell into the reaction which most Americans did, because of your libertarian biases. An awful lot of superheroes are “rebels”, “rogues”, operating “outside the law”, etc. Wonder Women is fundmentally *not*. She fights unjust, cruel authority on behalf of just, decent authority.

    She actually asks for permission to leave Paradise Island… and then does so only because the Amercian government seems worthy of respect, something which she should treat as an authority. She wears their flag when she arrives *as a sign that she is accepting their authority*.

    Yes, this is the most hierarchial, authoritarian hero you’ve ever read. It’s s different myth than you’re used to. It doesn’t make it fascist and it doesn’t make it wrong. It’s the myth of Judge Wapner on The People’s Court, if you will — is that a fascist TV show in your opinion as well? Think about it seriously.

60. The People’s Court comparison is not facile. The people who walk into that are weak people who have come into some sort of conflict, which they settle by *submitting* to a *just, caring* authority figure.

61. “WW is consistently pro-democracy precisely to avoid *unenlightened* despots.”

    Paradise Island is not a democracy! And Isn’t her ultimate goal to bring the wisdom of her homeland to the world of men (namely, the Enlightenment-based culture of the US)? That’s hardly a democratic message. You cite a famous anti-democrat, Plato, and claim Marston’s views aren’t all that far off. Again, why assume WW’s message is one of democracy? I don’t see it. In fact, I think it’s pretty clearly not the book’s ultimate ideological mission. Again, here’s Maston’s view of selfhood and freedom (see part 1):

    The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound. … Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society.

    I’m in agreement with old Enlightenment types like Rousseau who suggest that freedom, consciousness, etc. don’t lead to happiness. You want to find absolute happiness, look to the creatures who are less intellectually autonomous. Marston desires a return to our blissful days in the primordial soup, or maybe when we hunted other furry creatures with our hands in the pre-linguistic days. We’re not ever going to return to that sense of eternal presence unless we get a “loving” invasion of the body snatchers or the application of the magic lasso.

    And WW is just like other vigilante superheroes. If they’re fascist, so is she. They all fight on the “authority of justice,” but that’s hardly regulated by any legal system. No one appointed her as a defender of America. However, if one simply takes this as a wish fulfillment fantasy without drawing realworld morality from it, then I don’t see much harm. It’s people who would take it seriously that are potentially scary. So, I say to readers take the story less seriously than I did, not more.

62. “And WW is just like other vigilante superheroes.”

    Somewhat different, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t like her less.

63. Well, I enjoy the Azzarello version. But what I meant was that she’s no different in the use of power/force/violence to solve the problem at hand and in the way she assumes her position as our defender based on the threat of her power/force/violence. She’s different (and of interest to me, at least) by illustrating the difference between patriarchy and all the evils it supposedly was the root cause of. WW demonstrates a matriarchy is just as bad, if not worse (in fact, in WW’s case, it is worse, unless you prize mindless happiness as the ultimate goal of humanity).

64. Happiness and peace…which is rather different from patriarchy. It seems like you should pick a criticism? Either she’s just the same as patriarchy, or else she’s bad because she promotes values (like happiness and peace) which are unpatriarchal. The truth is, oftentimes you seem to dislike WW precisely because she’s not patriarchal enough.

65. Why are happiness and peace anti-patriarchal? Neither is mutually exclusive with a patriarchal system unless you simply define the terms as such. Likewise, if mindless happiness or peace are inherently matriarchal, then WW isn’t patriarchal, by (your) definition. But I don’t see the threat of violence as inherently patriarchal. That’s where we differ. You’re simply choosing all the connotations to fit your already determined preference for matriarchal totalitarianism over a patriarchy that at least promotes some freedom of thought, whereas I’d rather have the current state of affairs if mind-control is our only other option. Skinner seemed to have a preference for the kind of administrative control that Marston promoted, but it doesn’t seem you’d want to call them both feminist authoritarians. I really don’t care what gender controls the reins. Intellectuals shouldn’t promote the dissolution of autonomy. It only make things worse for women and men. It is evil.

66. Peace is generally seen as matriarchal; you tend to dislike it because you think it’s unrealistic. You feel patriarchy is more realistic and therefore better.

    Gendered characteristics are arbitrary, of course. But they’re not simply random. Women are associated with peace. You can argue that that’s a bad thing. But you can’t really argue that it’s the same as patriarchy (and if patriarchy is meaningless or has no content, then what’s the point of saying WW is patriarchal?)

    Intellectuals shouldn’t promote war or violence either, you wouldn’t think. The somewhat desperate fear that an increase in peace will cause a decrease in autonomy, and the ability to see the evil of reduced autonomy, but not of violence, seems again like what you’re objecting to is too little patriarchy, not too much (as patriarchy is usually defined.)

    I don’t necessarily agree with all of Marston’s vision. But in the context of the 30s, or today, I tend to see the assertion that women and peace and love are valuable as more positive than not.

67. What kind of peace are you talking about? Patriarchal Japan seems more peaceful than the US does. At least, there’s a lower rate of violent crime. And peace is generally considered matriarchal by radical feminists maybe. As best I can tell, we have two warring conceptions of peace here, not an anti-peace versus pro-peace side (you’d make a great evangelical pro-lifer). “Patriarchal” peace between 2 people is when both respect each other’s autonomy, but will become violent when one person decides to encroach on the other’s autonomy. Then there’s the “matriarchal” sort of peace where one person either bends the knee without a struggle and allows the other person to dominate totally, or the latter individual violently subjugates the will of the former if he or she decides to claim any autonomy. Both of these types of peace lead to a situation where there’s no physical violence, but I think the peace in the second situation isn’t much worth a damn. And I think it tars womanhood to associate it with the latter, but you evidently don’t.

68. Okay; so now you’re admitting that in fact the problem is that Wonder Woman offends your patriarchal values, rather than than WW is simply repeating patriarchy. So since we both agree on the main point (which is that you like patriarchy and don’t like WW because it’s not sufficiently patriarchal), I don’t really need to argue about the details (except perhaps to say that hating values traditionally associated with femininity is not the only way to be feminist.)

69. I’m denying that the values I prize are inherently patriarchal. Defining selfhood as masculine is a bad thing for women and, to me, actually anti-feminist (at least, the kind of feminism I prefer). And let’s not forget it was yet another man making such a connection. So I don’t “like patriarchy” when I say we should respect the individual. You’re just playing with definitions. I disagree with your whole ideological filter that equates violence with patriarchy (cf. the example of Japan where more patriarchy should result in more violence, but it doesn’t; or cf. WW where the violent erasure of another’s will is somehow supposed to be an example of how peaceful a matriarchy is).

70. Right; you’re saying your values of strength and autonomy are universal values, and that women’s traditional experiences that push against those are degraded and evil. You want empowerment feminism. Which again is not really messing with my sense of your investment in patriarchy.

    Japan’s pretty complicated. Anne Allison talks about the way in which some aspects of Japanese culture are very mother focused. You can actually draw very explicit parallels between how she sees Japanese family organization and Marston’s theories. So…using Japan as the more patriarchal, less peaceful doesn’t necessarily do the work you intend it to there, I don’t think.

71. This is certainly an interesting development: support for the autonomy of women and opposition to the traditional limitation of women to certain roles is what you see as patriarchal and you oppose autonomy of women as a universal value. This is your idea of feminism? Okay. Furthermore, Japan is your idea of a matriarchal culture. I know, it’s complex … unlike Western patriarchy. Come on, Noah.

72. Have you read Anne Allison? If not, why assume that your position is obviously correct?

    Also…Japan is peaceful largely because they were incredibly militaristic up to several decades ago, and then lost a major war. It’s not exactly clear that that should be interpreted as, “patriarchy = non-militaristic.” If you’ve outsourced your giant bombs to the power that defeated you, is that really a renunciation of militarism exactly?

    I didn’t say I oppose autonomy. But empowerment feminism isn’t the only kind of feminism. Lots of feminists have criticized patriarchy’s emphasis on competition and individualism, and its mistrust of love and connection as weakness. Your welcome to reject that tradition, of course. But you seem astonished that it exists. That doesn’t make it seem like you have much idea what you’re talking about when you try to define patriarchy.

73. If you’d like a reading list, you could start with Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas, Irigaray’s The Sex Which Is Not One; possibly Nel Nodding’s writings (she’s into evpsych, so maybe you’d like that.)

    You don’t necessarily get to define feminism the way you think it should be, and then claim that folks who disagree with you aren’t feminist. I certainly wouldn’t say that Sheryl Standberg (who is the big name empowerment feminist at the moment) is not feminist. Just that hers doesn’t have to be the only project.

    Oh…but I would say that Standberg is comfortable with patriarchy. She doesn’t want to change patriarchal systems; she just wants women integrated into them. Which is a feminist goal of long pedigree, but isn’t anti-patriarchal.

74. No, I haven’t read her, Jeet … I mean, Noah. She’s the final word on Japanese patriarchy, proof that it’s not actually true, I guess. I always thought it was pretty uncontroversial that it was a patriarchal society, but rather than argue your faith, I’ll ask for clarification. Just to be clear: it’s her claim that the reason Japan has less violence is because it’s focused on the mother, like, say Mexico? Or is it her view that the reason there’s less subjective violence there because they outsource their bombing others to foreign nations? If the latter, or if that’s your view, why is that an argument against a form of patriarchal peace? And if the former, how did being focused on the mother not affect the imperialistic ambition before the Western patriarchal domination of the now peaceful Japanese society? That is, why did the peaceful matriarchy only surface after all the patriarchal violence? And how is that not an argument that a matriarchy (granting that’s what Japan is) rests on violence just like patriarchy to achieve its subjective peace?

    And, yeah, I’m aware that some feminists reject individualism and self-autonomy. So do non-feminists. So did fascists. That’s what I’m opposed to. But I do agree, since you seem to have forgotten, that there’s nothing contradictory about being a feminist and a totalitarian-inclined thinker. There are, btw, feminists who believe in individualism while being opposed to a competitive-based organization of society (those 2 ideas aren’t necessarily linked). They’re anarcho-feminists. I’m not the one here with an interest in limiting feminism to a particular radical branch. To me, it’s not mutually exclusive with any political system you might care to name.

75. And maybe the Wiki entry is full of shit, but there were supposed to be feminists in Japan who felt that their culture was male-dominated, even after WW2.

76. She’s not the final word on Japanese patriarchy. But why assume that she’s obviously irrelevant if you haven’t looked at her? You don’t need to have read everything, but it’s hard to take you seriously if you just dismiss things you know nothing about.

    Of course Japan is very patriarchal in lots of ways. I didn’t say it wasn’t. I said that just waving the country about as if it proves all your points isn’t necessarily convincing, and I pointed to a source that suggested that’s the case. And then you freaked out. That’s not my fault, man.

    I’m not making an argument about matriarchies resting on peace, actually. Nor am I making an argument for limiting feminism to one group or another. The argument started, I believe, when you claimed that your problem with Marston was that his vision was patriarchal. I said that, in fact, your problem appeared to be that he wasn’t patriarchal enough. That appears to still be the case, and, in fact, as far as I can tell, you’ve completely abandoned your initial claim, in favor of getting more and more angry at me because you’ve been forced to agree with me.

    I don’t necessarily think that patriarchy is the source of all evil; lots of feminists don’t. I think Japan’s relationship to patriarchy and peace — and the general question of whether peace imposed by arms is really peace, or the way to a just society — are really complicated. Would a Nazi-controlled world be peaceful after they’d exterminated all the minorities? Is our society peaceful because we put lots of people in prison? Those are serious questions. I don’t actually necessarily have answers. It’s not clear to me why you feel you’re scoring points off me by insisting more and more loudly that you’ve refuted points I haven’t made.

    Anyway; Allison’s arguments are specifically about how Japanese families were organized in the 1990s. She says that men were almost completely absent from home because they worked all the time, so women ended up being the sole authority in the home. She links this to Japanese psychological theories arguing that Japanese development was different from Western development (no Oedipal conflict with the father is the main point.) Her discussion of Japanese education mothers, who push their children through school using love as a lever, has a lot of similarities with Marston’s discussion of love leaders, which grounds his vision for Wonder Woman.

    I don’t think that makes Japan un-patriarchal, but it doesn’t exactly refute the connection between matriarchy, peaceful coercion, and love. Peaceful coercion is arguably not precisely peace, of course.

77. Oh; the point about outsourcing the bombing is mine; Allison doesn’t talk about that.

    Steven Pinker in Better Angels of Our Nature argues that violence decreases as state power increases, which could be an argument for violence decreasing with more (or at least more effective) patriarchy. He also argues that growing influence of women in politics and society tends to reduce violence, though. (He doesn’t really grapple with the fact that many early societies were more egalitarian as regards to gender than post-agrarian societies are, I don’t think.)

78. I’m not sure where you get that I said Marston’s view is patriarchal. That’s news to me. You said peace is un-patriarchal. I cited Japan as a peaceful patriarchal example. Then, you cited Allison as a supposed counter-argument (and as you now describe her views on the mother’s role, it seems irrelevant to my claim that Japan is patriarchal — mothers do exist in patriarchies, after all, and have a role to play). I don’t know of a peace that doesn’t involve violence somewhere in it’s development. Ultimately, my view here is that violence isn’t inherently patriarchal. It is, as you say, complicated. Likewise, peace. So, if you’re not claiming that peace and violence are inherently gendered, then we’re not disagreeing, regardless of whatever we were supposed to be arguing about above.

79. “it doesn’t exactly refute the connection between matriarchy, peaceful coercion, and love.”

    Again, I ask, why didn’t this matter to all the outward aggression before WW2? If you’re only limiting the analysis to the 90s and afterwards, then it’s not much of an argument at all about why the patriarchy of Japan can both lead to violence and peace. My suggestion would be that the more parsimonious explanation here is that patriarchy and violence aren’t equivalent.

80. Hey, I think I’m done. We’ve had this back and forth before; probably will again…but I need to get some work done!

81. I don’t think patriarchy and violence are necessarily equivalent. I do think that violence has tended to be tied closely to ideas about masculinity and patriarchy, both in terms of how it’s seen and how it’s propagated, and that there has been a lot of feminist criticism of violence from the perspective of traditionally female experiences, especially of motherhood. Barbara Elshtain’s book Women and War is I think the classic text discussing this — though Elshtain also talks about how motherhood is used in support of war as well.

82. And you said this to start off the conversation:

    “And WW is just like other vigilante superheroes. If they’re fascist, so is she.”

    But in fact most of your arguments are to the effect that she is not just like them; she’s less patriarchal and so, in your view, more fascist (rather than equally fascist.) Which is a defensible position (I say something along those lines in my book, actually), but different than saying she’s exactly the same.

    You’re suggestion that peace always has violence behind it could just as easily be flipped to say violence always has peace behind it. You’re just reluctant to give peace any theoretical weight.

83. I thought for a minute that I could say, “I win,” but you kept going.

    That appears to still be the case, and, in fact, as far as I can tell, you’ve completely abandoned your initial claim, in favor of getting more and more angry at me because you’ve been forced to agree with me.

    You created my supposed position (that Marston was being patriarchal), which I denied having (my view is that his matriarchy is just as bad as any patriarchy — gender is irrelevant to heinous social features like authoritarian personalities), but you still insist on my having it, only to add that I’ve abandoned it while substituting anger. This is all bullshit going on in your head, man. I’m really baffled about all your psychoanalyzing, since I’m not the least bit angry or bothered by this discussion. I might be energized at times, but that’s about it. I just won’t bother to respond at all if I consider the respondent too idiotic to bother with. I’m pretty tolerant of internet nincompoops, so, I guess I’m saying that you’re not being too idiotic. (That’s me just goofing on you if it’s not clear.) My view on your tactic is that for a person who eschews expertise, you tend to appeal to authority a whole bunch. I’m fine with references if they’re relevant, but it seems pretty clear here that you’re just throwing shit at the wall. Your use of Allison only demonstrated that mothers play a role in organizing a patriarchal society, that such societies are complex. But I didn’t deny motherhood under patriarchies, nor am I the one who reduces societal ill to patriarchy. What I argued against was your suggestion that patriarchy and peace are mutually exclusive. Peace and femininity shouldn’t be taken as synonyms, etc. Lots of handwaving, but are you now agreeing that peace and patriarchy aren’t mutually exclusive? Who knows. All I’m hearing is that patriarchy is complex (at least when it comes to Japan, never in the States). I, of course, never suggested otherwise.

    I don’t view feminist fascism (authoritarianism, totalitarianism, or whatever) as any more potentially fascist as its patriarchal brethren. My view, over and over, is that I think it’s been a long-standing mistake to assume various aspects of human culture, thinking, metaphysics, etc. as inherently gendered (very radical position in the 18th century). As women (rightly) get more opportunities at power, it hasn’t and won’t make a goddamn bit of difference towards making anything more moral or decent or peaceful — not because they’re acting like men (that’s old-fashioned sort of essentializing that many radical feminists share with old-schooled chauvinists), but because it’s the structure of positions of power (managers would act pretty much the same in gynocentric capitalism with the exception that it would likely become an old girl’s club). Equality doesn’t necessitate progress across the board. The totalitarianism that’s suggested by WW, for example, isn’t all that different from the peace suggested by a Nazi final solution. If the latter is masculine and former is feminine, I don’t care. It’s irrelevant to me. But, to answer your question, they are both a form of peace. Peace and morality aren’t inherently attached to each other.

    I’m not sure what would be meant by violence always has peace behind it: we go to war because we’re peaceful? We need police force because of our peaceful nature? That’s silly.

    If any of this remains confusing, I’d suggest stop substituting gender stereotypes for all the terms in the discussion. When I say violence, I don’t mean “male” (that would be you). When I say peace, I don’t mean “female” (that would be you). If I attack pacifism, I’m not saying a damn thing about women (unless they’re pacifists, of course). It seems almost all the quicksand around here is just based on ideological language games. I don’t expect this to get through, but such is my general approach.

    Finally, maybe you missed it, but I clarified what I meant by saying WW is “just like other vigilante superheroes”: “what I meant was that she’s no different in the use of power/force/violence to solve the problem at hand and in the way she assumes her position as our defender based on the threat of her power/force/violence.” If that’s still not clear, overpowering another’s autonomy can be done with the force of fists or a mindwashing girdle. Both are ultimately about using power to oppress another. And it’s a vigilante doing it in Batman and Wonder Woman.

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