The Trick of “Overcompensating”

Posted on December 15, 2014 by Cathy G. Johnson

Trigger-Warnings: Discussion of domestic violence and abuse, mention of incest and child sexual abuse.
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On December 7, 2014, Mike Dawson published a comic titled “Overcompensating” on The Nib. In it, Dawson creates a character, which, for the purposes of this article, will be called The Narrator. The Narrator tells us he has a “bad breakup” with his partner. The Narrator tells us many times he is a man, male, white, and American. He describes how society has framed his demographic as the protagonist, and because of this he feels entitled. We see images of muscular movie stars. The Narrator seeks revenge against his ex-partner, and has a fight with her new love interest.

The beginning image is the waist of a man holding a gun, and the last image is that same waist without a gun. We can surmise there is a penis in those pants. The comic suggests his masculinity, gun = penis, was at stake throughout this scenario. It also claims to critique this belief.

This comic is about retaliation when The Narrator, a man, feels wronged. It is about controlling his ex-partner, a woman. Yet we never see her. This comic is inherently about women, yet it’s as if women do not exist in this world. The Narrator frames this about himself and his masculinity.

The Narrator wants this comic to be about him and his inadequacies, rather than the woman he is perpetuating violence against.

This is a story about an abusive man.

Breaking up with an abuser can be very hard to do. In fact, leaving a nonabusive partner is generally easier, contrary to what many people believe. Few abusers readily allow themselves to be left. When they feel a partner starting to get stronger, beginning to think for herself more, slipping out from under domination, abusers move to their endgame. Some of their more common maneuvers include:

Threatening or assaulting anyone you try to start a new relationship with, or anyone who is helping you.

Stalking you.

This quotation is taken from Lundy Bancroft’s book, Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. Published 2003 by Berkley Books, New York. Bancroft has spent over twenty years specializing in domestic abuse and the abusive behavior of men.

In the 1890s Freud wrote a paper titled “The Aetiology of Hysteria.” Due to the large amount of his female patients revealing childhood incest victimization to him, Freud concluded that child sexual abuse was one of the major causes of emotional disturbances in adult women.

His colleagues criticized this paper. No one could believe that men of excellent reputations, as his female clients were daughters of well-to-do families, could be perpetrators of incest.

Freud recanted his conclusions, thus proposing the Oedipus complex, explained by Bancroft:

According to this theory any young girl actually desires sexual contact with her father, because she wants to compete with her mother to be the most special person in his life. Freud used this construct to conclude that the episodes of incestuous abuse his clients had revealed to him had never taken place; they were simply fantasies of events the women had wished for when they were children and that the women had come to believe were real. This construct started a hundred-year history in the mental health field of blaming victims for the abuse perpetuated on them and outright discrediting of women’s and children’s reports of mistreatment by men.

Once abuse was denied in this way, the stage was set for some psychologists to take the view that any violent or sexually exploitative behaviors that couldn’t be denied – because they were simply too obvious – could be considered mutually caused. Psychological literature is thus full of descriptions of young children who “seduce” adults into sexual encounters and of women whose “provocative” behavior causes men to become violent or sexually assaultive toward them.

There is a long history built into psychology that maintains the elimination of survivors from narratives of abuse.

As Dawson’s Narrator expounds in this comic critiquing male privilege, he ignores the existence of people who are not men. There is no vantage point for a woman or non-binary person to enter this narrative, because they do not exist to him, as with many narratives on abuse since the dawn of the Oedipus complex. He is focusing on himself, his masculinity, and his anger.

In this comic, The Narrator is very angry. “Overcompensating” has no other emotion in it than anger. But anger does not make a man abusive. Bancroft explains:

When people conclude that anger causes abuse, they are confusing cause and effect. [My client] was not abusive because he was angry; he was angry because he was abusive. Abusers carry attitudes that produce fury. It would be futile to teach [my client anger management skills], because his thinking process will soon get him enraged again.

Although our feelings can influence how we act, our choices of how to behave are ultimately determined by our attitudes and our habits.

Abusive men aren’t abusive because of anger; anger is developed because they are abusive. Abusers carry entitled attitudes that make them angry. This entitlement is key to Dawson’s character, and the comic attempts to explain this entitlement through film tropes.

The Narrator fantasizes himself as the hero of his movie. He is big, muscular, in control. However, in the reality of this comic strip, The Narrator is scrawny. The fight he has with his ex-partner’s new love interest is a joke. Contrary to the images of gun toting strong movie stars, the fight scene is drawn in a style that portrays The Narrator and the man he is fighting as childlike.

What does this comic’s climactic fight scene do? Does The Narrator believe he is being self-deprecating? This comic is titled “Overcompensating.” But that’s misguided. The Narrator depicting himself as scrawny is not a self-deprecating joke. It perpetuates the myth that only muscular men can be dangerous. But, as Bancroft says, abusers can be of any demographic, size and shape, and can be just as harmful physically and emotionally. In this comic, Dawson claims that men who do not look like a film star feel the need to “overcompensate.” But Bancroft explains:

My abusive clients sometimes become aware of these ways which society has shaped their values and, sticking closely to their long-standing abusive habits, seize this insight as a new excuse. Instead of saying “I was drunk” or “I was abused as a child,” they rise to a new level of sophistication in escaping responsibility, declaring, “I did it because I learned entitled expectations and the devaluing of females.” I respond by telling the client that he is putting old wine in a new bottle. “The number-one lesson you seem to have learned,” I say, “is how to make excuses for abusing women. And I see that you’re still practicing it.” Abusive men do need to learn about social influences, but not in a way that gives them yet another means of letting themselves off the hook.

Anger is not a reason for abuse. Being socialized a man is not a reason for abuse. The only reason abuse happens is because a person is abusive.

The Narrator is a man who admittedly seeks control over a woman. Is this the only incident of abusive action by The Narrator? We’re never told. But what leads a man to stalking his ex-partner? The feeling of ownership, entitlement, the right to her. This didn’t spring up overnight.

An abuser’s core problem is that he has a distorted sense of right and wrong. This comic presents to its audience this distortion under the guise of self-criticism. The story of self-criticism is seductive, sympathetic. Bancroft explains why abusers create these stories:

You may wonder why, if abusive men feel justified in their actions, they distort their stories so much when seeking support. First, an abuser doesn’t want to have to explain his worst behaviors – his outright cruelty, for example, or his violence – to people who might find those acts distasteful… Second, he may carry some guilt or shame about his worst acts, as most abusers do; his desire to escape those feelings is part of why he looks for validation from other people, which relieves any nagging self-doubt.

Through self-centering The Narrator seeks validation for his actions. But to delve further into Bancroft and specifically why this comic is about The Narrator’s masculinity:

The abuser’s dehumanizing view of his partner as a personal possession can grow even uglier as a relationship draws to a close. I sometimes find it extraordinarily difficult to get a client to remember at this point that his partner is a human being with rights and feelings rather than an offending object to destroy. At worst, his efforts to reestablish his ownership may include following her and monitoring her movements, scaring people who try to assist her, threatening men she is interested in dating, kidnapping the children, and physically attacking her or the people close to her. For abused women separation is a time of particularity high risk of homicide or attempted homicide, which can sometimes involve murderous assaults on her new boyfriend, her children, or on other people she cares about.

To repeat:

I sometimes find it extraordinarily difficult to get a client to remember at this point that his partner is a human being with rights and feelings rather than an offending object to destroy.

This comic is only about The Narrator’s masculinity because he has forgotten his partner is a human being. He has minimized her humanity in this event of his life. She exists as a ghost of his past, but The Narrator still keeps tabs on her to the present day, as said at the end of the comic:

Decades later, that couple is still together. They got married, they have kids. How much time do they spend today concerning themselves with questions of my masculinity? How fortunate is it for all of us the answer is likely, none at all?

The Narrator ends this comic by applauding his ex-partner and her husband for not currently concerning themselves with his masculinity. This again casts the point of view completely on The Narrator and his needs. Of course The Narrator’s emotional needs would never cross their minds! At the time, they were focusing on protecting themselves against a violent stalking man. If they do currently think of him, it wouldn’t be to ponder his masculinity; they would be processing this distressing event. This was a moment of extreme violence in their lives.

The danger within this comic is the creation of excuses for abusive behavior. The Narrator never outwardly admits he was abusive. He gives us statistics on domestic violence, but he never once owns his actions as wrong or violent towards his ex-partner. He gives us events and excuses for them. We are meant to read into the story that his actions were possibly abusive, while at the same time casting doubt upon that assumption. This story is a distortion meant to create empathy, a story developed in his point of view and his point of view alone.

“Overcompensating” develops the point-of-view of an abusive man, asking its audience to empathize with its Narrator under the guise of a critique on masculinity. It’s misguided in its critical approach, effectively eliminating a woman’s humanity. We do not get to know if this is a true case of abuse. And even if he were to tell us, The Narrator would not be the proper source to diagnose a problem. Only his partner can tell us if this is a case of abuse. But we do not even get to see her face.

Sherlock and the Women

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Alex Buchet

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.

The above must be one of the niftiest opening sentences in pop literature. It begins the first Holmes short story, ‘A Scandal in Bohemia,’ which appeared in the June 1891 edition of The Strand, promising readers a fitting sequel to the two Holmes novels. “A Scandal in Bohemia” continues, in the voice of Holmes’ friend Dr Watson:

I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler.

Aha! So the temptress is named.

All emotions, and that one in particular, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer — excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion such as his.

The reader is invited to share such lofty anti-emotional rationalism, but the invitation, we sense, is ironic.

And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

At this point we could write the rest of the story with ease, couldn’t we? A tale of how this flinty, sentiment-hating, frozen character was brought to emotional life, awakened by the warmth of a passionate woman…

Well, no.

But before we continue, let’s look at the place of women in the adventures of Holmes, and in the life and mind of the great detective’s creator, Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930).

A.C.Doyle

Feminists might well snort with exasperation at the depiction of the average woman in the Holmes canon of stories. Most are victims, frail vessels in need of succor and rescue; even the rare crooks among them tend to be under the domination of a strong-willed male villain (cf. ‘The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet’).

And yet, and yet…

Doyle’s attitude to women was typical of a middle-class British man born and raised in Victorian times: one of patriarchal and patronising chivalry. Women were to be protected and provided for, but men were the leaders, almost surrogate parents.

This view, however, was tempered by Doyle’s admiration for strong women. The source of this can be inferred from the case of his own parents. While his father, Charles, was an alcoholic depressive and possible schizophrenic who effectively dropped out of the household and remained a burden on his family, Doyle’s mother, Mary, was the proverbial tower of strength. She provided for the family and despite poverty managed to send Doyle to study medecine at Edinburgh University.

So Doyle was conflicted about women. He opposed suffrage for them, but made exceptions for tax-paying property owners and unmarried professionals. He championed the cause of woman doctors and solicitors. He militated for a reform of the Divorce Laws, which were at the time cruelly stacked against women. A lapsed Catholic himself, he was angrily opposed to young Catholic women being buried in convents.

And if we look at the stories again, we find they show more than a few figures of strong women: the determined American runaway bride, Hatty Doran, in ‘The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor’; the chillingly lethal villainess Maria Gibson in ‘The Problem of Thor Bridge’; or even the quiet Mary Sutherland in ‘A Case of Identity’ who, though she has a comfortable private income, insists on working for a living as a typist.

And then there is Irene Adler.

Back to the story (beware spoilers):

A visitor arrives at Holmes’ rooms, introducing himself as Count Von Kramm, an agent for a wealthy client. Holmes quickly deduces his true identity:

“If your Majesty would condescend to state your case,”
he remarked, “I should be better able to advise you.”

The man sprang from his chair and paced up and down the room in uncontrollable agitation. Then, with a gesture of desperation, he tore the mask from his face and hurled it upon the ground. “You are right,” he cried; “I am the King. Why should I attempt to conceal it?”

“Why, indeed?” murmured Holmes. “Your Majesty had not spoken before I was aware that I was addressing Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, and hereditary King of Bohemia.”

The King is engaged to a young Scandinavian princess. However, five years before he’d had a liaison with an American opera singer, Irene Adler, who has since then retired to London. Fearful that should the family of his fiancée learn of this the marriage would be called off, he had sought to regain letters and a photograph of Adler and himself together. The King’s agents have tried to recover the photograph through sometimes forceful means, burglary, stealing her luggage, and waylaying her. An offer to pay for the photograph and letters was also refused. With Adler threatening to send them to his future in-laws, which Von Ormstein presumes is to prevent him marrying, he makes the incognito visit to Holmes to request his help in locating and obtaining the photograph.

The next morning, Holmes goes out to Adler’s house, disguised as an out-of-work groom. He learns that Adler has a gentleman friend, the lawyer Godfrey Norton, who calls at least once a day. On this particular day, Norton comes to visit Adler, and soon afterwards the two go to a church. Holmes follows, and finds himself dragged into the church to be a witness to Norton and Adler’s wedding.

Holmes changes into another disguise as an old clergyman; he and Watson go once more to Adler’s house.

When Adler’s coach pulls up, a fight breaks out between men (hired by Holmes) on the street over who gets to help her down. Holmes rushes into the fight to “protect” her, and is seemingly struck and injured. Adler takes him into her sitting room, where Holmes motions for her to have the window opened. Watson tosses in a smoke bomb and shouts “FIRE!”

Adler rushes to get her most precious possession at the cry of “fire”—the photograph of herself and the King. It was kept in a recess behind a sliding panel. He explains all this to Watson in the street before being bid good-night by a familiar-sounding youth.

Illustration by Sidney Paget

We had reached Baker-street, and had stopped at the door. He was searching his pockets for the key, when someone passing said:—

“Good-night, Mister Sherlock Holmes.”

There were several people on the pavement at the time, but the greeting appeared to come from a slim youth in an ulster who had hurried by.

“I’ve heard that voice before,” said Holmes, staring down the dimly lit street. “Now, I wonder who the deuce that could have been.”<

When Holmes, Watson, and the King arrive the next morning at Adler’s house, her elderly maidservant informs them that she has hastily departed for the Charing Cross railway station. Holmes quickly goes to the photograph’s hiding spot, finding a photo of Irene Adler in an evening dress and a letter dated midnight and addressed to him:

“My Dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes,

—You really did it very well. You took me in completely. Until after the alarm of fire, I had not a suspicion. But then, when I found how I had betrayed myself, I began to think. I had been warned against you months ago. I had been told that, if the King employed an agent, it would certainly be you. And your address had been given me. Yet, with all this, you made me reveal what you wanted to know. Even after I became suspicious, I found it hard to think evil of such a dear, kind old clergyman. But, you know, I have been trained as an actress myself. Male costume is nothing new to me. I often take advantage of the freedom which it gives. I sent John, the coachman, to watch you, ran up stairs, got into my walking clothes, as I call them, and came down just as you departed.

“Well, I followed you to your door, and so made sure that I was really an object of interest to the celebrated Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Then I, rather imprudently, wished you good night, and started for the Temple to see my husband.

“We both thought the best resource was flight, when pursued by so formidable an antagonist; so you will find the nest empty when you call to-morrow. As to the photograph, your client may rest in peace. I love and am loved by a better man than he. The King may do what he will without hindrance from one whom he has cruelly wronged. I keep it only to safeguard myself, and to preserve a weapon which will always secure me from any steps which he might take in the future. I leave a photograph which he might care to possess; and I remain, dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes, very truly yours,

“Irene Norton, née Adler.”

The King practically swoons with admiration.

“What a woman—oh, what a woman!” cried the King of Bohemia, when we had all three read this epistle. “Did I not tell you how quick and resolute she was? Would she not have made an admirable queen? Is it not a pity that she was not on my level?”

“From what I have seen of the lady, she seems, indeed, to be on a very different level to your Majesty,” said Holmes, coldly. “I am sorry that I have not been able to bring your Majesty’s business to a more successful conclusion.”

“On the contrary, my dear sir,” cried the King. “Nothing could be more successful. I know that her word is inviolate. The photograph is now as safe as if it were in the fire.”

“I am glad to hear your Majesty say so.”

“I am immensely indebted to you. Pray tell me in what way I can reward you. This ring—.” He slipped an emerald snake ring from his finger, and held it out upon the palm of his hand.

“Your Majesty has something which I should value even more highly,” said Holmes.

“You have but to name it.”

“This photograph!”

The King stared at him in amazement.

“Irene’s photograph!” he cried. “Certainly, if you wish it.”

“I thank your Majesty. Then there is no more to be done in the matter. I have the honour to wish you a very good morning.” He bowed, and, turning away without observing the hand which the King had stretched out to him, he set off in my company for his chambers.

(One enjoys Holmes’ barely concealed contempt for the King. Indeed, throughout the tales Holmes is singularly unimpressed by titles. Consider how quickly he swats down a fat-headed aristocratic twit in ‘The Noble Bachelor’:

“Good-day, Lord St. Simon,” said Holmes, rising and bowing. “Pray take the basket-chair. This is my friend and colleague, Dr. Watson. Draw up a little to the fire, and we will talk this matter over.”

“A most painful matter to me, as you can most readily imagine, Mr. Holmes. I have been cut to the quick. I understand that you have already managed several delicate cases of this sort sir, though I presume that they were hardly from the same class of society.”

“No, I am descending.”

“I beg pardon.”

“My last client of the sort was a king.”

“Oh, really! I had no idea. And which king?”

“The King of Scandinavia.”

Snap! This disdain reflects that of Doyle, who grew up a Catholic outsider and was a self-made man; when offered a knighthood, the author only, reluctantly, accepted because of his mother’s insistence.)

So we come to the real understanding of Holmes’ admiration of Irene Adler. It has indeed nothing to do with emotion. Holmes feels the high regard a chess master feels for one who has bested him at the game; he acknowledges an intelligence at least equal to his, if not greater. From a narrative point of view, the turnabout at story’s end was a great surprise to the reader expecting a scheming hussy to get her just deserts from the great detective.

Nonetheless, one can discern in Irene Adler a type of woman who, at the end of the 19th century, was a source equally of admiration and of unease. Stars of the opera — Prima Donnas — and of the theatre, such as the legendarily wealthy and independent Sarah Bernhardt or her rival Eleanor Duse, held society enthralled even as they scorned its strictures, openly taking serial lovers. It was also the time of such famed courtesans as Cora Pearl and La Belle Otero. Irene Adler embodied these “adventuresses”, as they were called, and we can understand Dr Watson’s stuffy disapproval of her — ”the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.” (Note the “late”– Adler must be punished, if only offstage, with death.)

Taken even further, this dismay at free and sexually powerful women brought about the flowering of the image of the femme fatale, a deadly seductress all too ready to entice and vanquish men — consider the painting The Vampire by Munch, or Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé — originally written for Bernhardt, and published in 1893, the same year as ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ was. (Doyle knew and much admired Wilde.)

Yet, as noted, Doyle admired strong women like those who were then entering the masculine fortresses of the professions. In sum, ‘Scandal’ reflects the attitudes of an intelligent but conflicted man of his times.

(In the modern-day update of Holmes, the TV series Sherlock, the sexuality of Irene Adler is unfortunately much heightened, with shocking scenes of nudity. I apologise to the reader for the image of deplorable filth below, and assure you that I only post it with the greatest reluctance in order to illustrate the current age’s depravity.)

Brazen actress Lara Pulvar as Irene Adler in ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’.

The full text of ‘A Scandal in Bohemia can be found here.

‘Scandal’ isn’t the only case in the Holmesian canon to find a woman besting him intellectually. Consider ‘The Adventure of the Yellow Face’. (More spoilers ahead.)

Mr Grant Munro, of Norbury, consults Holmes on his wife Effie’s strange behavior. She surprises him with a request for a hundred pounds; she seems to keep visiting a mysterious nearby cottage, at the window of which Munro spies a grotesque face of a ghastly yellow hue. Despite his entreaties and her promises he cannot keep Effie away from the cottage, nor will she explain the mystery. At wit’s end he has come up to London to consult Holmes, who interprets the story thus:

“The facts, as I read them, are something like this: This woman was married in America. Her husband developed some hateful qualities; or shall we say that he contracted some loathsome disease, and became a leper or an imbecile? She flies from him at last, returns to England, changes her name, and starts her life, as she thinks, afresh. She has been married three years, and believes that her position is quite secure, having shown her husband the death certificate of some man whose name she has assumed, when suddenly her whereabouts is discovered by her first husband; or, we may suppose, by some unscrupulous woman who has attached herself to the invalid. They write to the wife, and threaten to come and expose her. She asks for a hundred pounds, and endeavours to buy them off. They come in spite of it, and when the husband mentions casually to the wife that there are new-comers in the cottage, she knows in some way that they are her pursuers.[…]”

Homes, Watson and Munro go down to Norbury, where they bully their way into the cottage, and find Effie in the company of a dwarfish figure with a hideous yellow face:

An instant later the mystery was explained. Holmes, with a laugh, passed his hand behind the child’s ear, a mask peeled off from her countenance, and there was a little coal black negress, with all her white teeth flashing in amusement at our amazed faces.

Effie produces a locket, and shows them the portrait inside of a light-skinned African-American:

“That is John Hebron, of Atlanta,” said the lady, “and a nobler man never walked the earth. I cut myself off from my race in order to wed him, but never once while he lived did I for an instant regret it. It was our misfortune that our only child took after his people rather than mine. It is often so in such matches, and little Lucy is darker far than ever her father was. But dark or fair, she is my own dear little girlie, and her mother’s pet.[…] And now to-night you at last know all, and I ask you what is to become of us, my child and me?” She clasped her hands and waited for an answer.

Art by Sidney Paget

It was a long two minutes before Grant Munro broke the silence, and when his answer came it was one of which I love to think. He lifted the little child, kissed her, and then, still carrying her, he held his other hand out to his wife and turned towards the door.
“We can talk it over more comfortably at home,” said he. “I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.”

A sweet conclusion indeed; one that shows the mighty detective’s intellect once more outsmarted by a woman, as Holmes himself ruefully ackowledges in the tale’s final lines:

“Watson,” said he, “if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper ‘Norbury’ in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.”

The full text of ‘The Yellow Face’ can be found here.

The attitude towards a racially mixed marriage was astonishingly progressive for 1893. Doyle was an anti-racist, the result of a voyage he made to West Africa in 1881 as ship’s doctor on the steamer Mayumba. At first he evinced the depressingly normal Imperialist bigotry of the age against “savages”. But the more he came in contact with the local natives, and with the riff-raff whites who lorded over them, the more he was convinced that the British and other colonisers should leave the Africans alone. Doyle also struck a friendship that seems to have definitely turned his views on race: for three days the Mayumba carried as a passenger the American Consul to Liberia, a Black man named Highland Garnet. Garnet had been born into slavery in 1815. He was a militant abolitionist, an author and educator and public servant of great culture. Those three days of conversations were a revelation to Doyle, and shaped his views of race for a long time.

Not, alas, for all his life. Like many people, Doyle seems to have become more reactionary with old age. ‘The Yellow Face’ dates from 1893; ‘The Adventure of the Three Gables’ from 1927, and how great the fall from the first to the second. It features a repugnant caricature of a Black thug…

The door had flown open and a huge negro had burst into the room. He would have been a comic figure if he had not been terrific, for he was dressed in a very loud gray check suit with a flowing salmon-coloured tie. His broad face and flattened nose were thrust forward, as his sullen dark eyes, with a smouldering gleam of malice in them, turned from one of us to the other.

…who speaks in blackface:

“Which of you gen’l’men is Masser Holmes?” he asked.

…makes brutish threats:

He swung a huge knotted lump of a fist under my friend’s nose. Holmes examined it closely with an air of great interest.

“Were you born so?” he asked. “Or did it come by degrees?”

Holmes wastes no time insulting the insolent darkie in the vilest terms:

“I’ve wanted to meet you for some time,” said Holmes. “I won’t ask you to sit down, for I don’t like the smell of you, but aren’t you Steve Dixie, the bruiser?”

“That’s my name, Masser Holmes, and you’ll get put through it for sure if you give me any lip.”

“It is certainly the last thing you need,” said Holmes, staring at our visitor’s hideous mouth. “

Holmes easily browbeats Dixie into cringing submission.

“So help me the Lord! Masser Holmes –”

“That’s enough. Get out of it. I’ll pick you up when I want you.”

“Good-mornin’, Masser Holmes. I hope there ain’t no hard feelin’s about this ‘ere visit?”

When Dixie scurries out, Holmes enjoys a good racist chuckle with Watson.

“I am glad you were not forced to break his woolly head, Watson. I observed your manoeuvres with the poker. But he is really rather a harmless fellow, a great muscular, foolish, blustering baby, and easily cowed, as you have seen.[…]”

The full text of ‘The Adventure of the Three Gables’ can be found here. I don’t recommend it; even apart from the naked bigotry, it is a weak story.

In order not to end this article on a sour note, let us return to ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ and its last lines:

And that was how a great scandal threatened to affect the kingdom of Bohemia, and how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman’s wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable title of the woman.

Men, Women, and Virgins

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Noah Berlatsky

Much of the discussion around the recent murders at Santa Barbara has centered around the fact that the killer, Elliot Rodger, was a virgin, and wrote a manifesto in which he linked his rage and violence to the fact that he had not had sex. Some media outlets have labeled him as the “virgin killer”, and others have talked about how virginity weighs on men.

As somebody who was a virgin into my late 20s, I agree that virginity can be painful for men. But I think it’s important to realize that it doesn’t just weigh on men. The idea that men, in particular, are diminished when they are virgins, or that men, in particular, are sad and lonely in their teen years, risks falling into Rodger’s warped view of the world, in which women are only important, or only thought of, in relation to male desires — as sexual objects who satisfy men or make men miserable, but don’t have any desires or problems themselves.

The truth is, there are many women, just like there are many men, who are virgins into their late teens and beyond. One of them was my friend, Megan (a pseudonym). She and I talked last week about virginity, gender, and miosygny.

Noah: So, I guess I thought I’d start by asking you why you don’t like the term “virgin”?

Megan: It’s just horribly binaristic. Women are this and men are that, women’s bodies do this and men’s bodies do that. What does “virgin” MEAN, anyway? One who has never had vaginal sex? That’s the common definition. But there are plenty of situations in which a person could be sexually active, sexually FULFILLED even, without vaginal sex being involved.

Basically, I feel like I “lost my virginity” 5 years before I started having vaginal sex.

At about 13-14 years old, I reacted to my first understanding of misogyny, and what it does, and how I didn’t do a fucking thing to deserve it, by thinking that I could slip the noose if I just distanced myself from femininity, as far as I possibly could. I think a lot of girls do that. Some women keep doing it their whole lives. I just tried as hard as I could not to be perceived as female. I remember something that happened when I was about 16–I made a comment about a guy, somebody I thought was cute, and a male friend of mine who was a couple years older was just horrified at the idea that I actually had a sexuality. So I guess I did a pretty good job going full tomboy. The end result was, I didn’t fuck anybody as a teenager, or in college. I went on a couple of dates. I let a guy see my tits once. He didn’t really like me that much.

Then, when I was 22, I went to get my first pap smear, and found out that I had a hymen that was basically made out of Teflon, and would have to be removed surgically, under general anesthesia, if I ever wanted to have vaginal sex.

So it was just as well I’d always been uncomfortable with my femininity and clueless about how to interest guys sexually.

I went ahead and had the surgery, when I was 22, but then–this sounds so stupid–it took me five whole years to actually figure out how vaginal sex worked. How to get it in, you know? I just had no experimentation period whatsoever before that point. I could never even wear a tampon.

So, the way I feel about it is, I stopped being a virgin when I was 22, pre-surgery, and had an orgasm for the first time with somebody else in the room. That’s basically my working definition of virginity. But if that’s the definition, then virgin birth is actually really common.

I mean, obviously we need words to explain our sexual history to each other. But I think “I have no sexual experience” or “I’ve done X but not Y” are perfectly good replacements for “I’m a virgin.”

Noah: Talking about how you feel that the term “virgin” doesn’t fit your experience reminds me of my own struggles with terminology around being a virgin. Specifically, through college, and into my 20s, I would wonder, somewhat idly, if I really counted as heterosexual, or if the term fit. I wasn’t having sex with anyone, it didn’t feel like I was every going to have sex with anyone, did I count as heterosexual? Obviously you look back and say, well that’s ridiculous, but I think it gets at the way that labels, and narratives about how identity works or what you should be can produce lots of anxieties in lots of different ways when you don’t fit into the mold the way you’re supposed to.

I was curious about that too, from your perspective. I’ve talked a bit in my pieces about this about how a lot of anxiety around being a virgin, for me, was less some sort of physical or emotional need per se and more about feeling like I just wasn’t doing things right, like I wasn’t being a man correctly. And I suspect that’s why it’s hard for guys to acknowledge often in these conversations that female virgins even exist. or that girls can’t have sex anytime they want, automatically. Failing to have sex in the right way seems like it’s so tied up with not being a man in the right way, so then, girls don’t have to be men, so how could they have a problem here?

I guess I’m curious what pressures you felt in terms of having sex. It seems sort of complicated, since you were saying that at least for a while you were actively trying to not be a girl by not being sexual, or by being a tomboy. Was there some point where that stopped and you felt like you weren’t performing femininity correctly? Or were you anxious or depressed about not having sex until your twenties?

Megan: Oh God, yeah, so anxious and depressed!

The whole thing about being a tomboy was that maybe it helped me avoid the gaze of some sexual predators in high school–I know they were there, they preyed on my friends–but I was still (mostly) heterosexual, and I wanted male attention, and femininity was all guys seemed to look at. I was invisible, for better or worse.

But I wasn’t completely invisible. There were a couple of guys who did look at me. They weren’t the guys I wanted. I think that’s the case with almost everybody, even the UCSB shooter–there’s probably someone in the world who’ll fuck you. You might not see them, for whatever reason. They might not be up to your standards. You might have completely unrealistic standards, like most misogynists do.

The unrealistic standards that the PUAHate crowd think women hold men to are nothing in comparison to the stringency of their own fantasy standards for women.

It occurs to me that the PUAHate crowd are projecting their own hatred of femininity onto women, by assuming that hypermasculinity is the only thing women desire. They have no idea what women want. How could they know? They can’t even hear us when we talk.

I never wanted an alpha male. I never wanted money or a nice car or great big biceps. I like smart guys who wear glasses and care about art and can make me laugh.

Noah: Ha! I don’t think that’s especially unusual.

I think for me at least it wasn’t just about the wrong standards. There was a woman or two maybe who was interested in me who I wasn’t interested in, but there were also a number of women who were interested, who I thought were attractive and would have been happy to date.

But I just couldn’t figure out the cues. Like, not with great frequency or anything, but a few times, a woman would ask me out, and we’d go out, and we’d have a good time…and that would be the end of it more or less because I was too shy to try to kiss them when I didn’t have any idea what I was doing. You sort of talk about this a little, but at some point the actual physical mechanics, and not knowing how they work, becomes this huge barrier. Which I think has a lot to do with the expectation (self-expectation as much as anything) that you’re supposed to know what you’re doing, and the fear that you don’t and will somehow make a fool of yourself if you give it a try and it doesn’t work.

So was there something of a double bind for you? You felt that if you were feminine, you’d end up getting stalked and treated as a sexual object only, but when you presented as a tomboy you became asexual and unwanted?

Megan: The double bind is a good phrase… I feel like that’s the essential state of being female within patriarchy, you’re always in a double bind.

Noah: Julia Serano in Excluded talks about double binds as the basic way that all prejudice works; you get marked as other, and then no matter what you do, you’re wrong because you’re marked. If you have sex you’re a slut, if you don’t have sex you’re broken or wrong.

I think for men it’s not really a double bind; more a measure against an impossible standard, where you always fail to one extent or another. Less about losing whatever you choose, and more anxiety about hierarchy.

Megan: I think women get a little more leeway in the “knowing what you’re doing” area… We’re allowed, culturally, to let men take the lead, sexually. But that was a moot point when I was invisible.

I don’t know if this is relevant to anything… The first experience I had with a guy who did look at me went pretty badly wrong. It didn’t amount to sexual assault, but he just kept touching me in ways I didn’t want. Even when I bluntly told him I didn’t want them. I wound up fending him off with a chair. He left me alone after that. This was when I was about 15.

He presented as a male feminist. Sometimes he wore skirts. He was Different From The Other Guys. Except not where it really mattered.

Noah: Christ. I think it’s really relevant to a discussion of virginity to think about the fact that for a not insignificant number of women especially, a first sexual experience is of some form of sexual assault. That can happen to guys too, but it seems much less frequent. I could be wrong, but my sense is that guys who are virgins can feel completely desexed and unsexual in a way that doesn’t tend to happen to women in the same way. But the flip side of that of course is that women are never quite desexualized in that way because they’re always objectified and seen as fair game for sexual violence.

I don’t know. Does that ring true to you?

Megan: I think there may be women who feel that way, desexed and unsexual, because they can’t get laid… But I may not be understanding you correctly.

I remember having a vague desire during my tomboy phase to have breast reduction surgery, not just because being a D-cup interfered with the way I presented, visually, or because of male reactions to my breasts, but because they didn’t feel appropriate to the state of my soul, in some way. I felt like I was meant to be an A-cup.

I also remember having a feeling that I was going to rot, curdle, go wrong inside, if I stayed a virgin. I wrote bad teenage poems about it.

Noah: The breast reduction surgery for the state of your soul kind of fits with what I was saying, maybe, though I probably went too far in talking about internal states — I’m sure as you say women can feel desexed too. I think it’s true though that femininity is seen as inherently sexual, so it makes sense that people’s reactions to being desexed, or feelings about being desexed, would be affected by their relationship to gender. Which sounds like what you’re talking about; feeling desexed and so wanting to be less stereotypically feminine physically as well.

Megan: Yeah, I guess you could look at that as an indication that the female body is always coded as sexual. Therefore, if I felt desexed, I needed to change my body. Did you ever feel a disconnect between the state of your body and the state of your sexuality?

Noah: That’s a good question. I think the answer is basically “no.” I wasn’t having any sex, and I felt like my body was awkward and hopeless and undesirable, so everything was as it should be, in that sense.

There was this one instance where there was a party (I never went to parties; this one was unavoidable for logistical reasons I won’t go into) and our very drunk female swim team assistant coach looked up at me and said, “you have really nice legs, Noah!” I was completely at a loss; being a sexual object was more or less utterly at variance with my self-image, so I just sort of ignored her. I don’t think she’d ever spoken a full sentence to me before, and I didn’t put myself in a position where she could later.

I’d imagine that that sort of drive by sexual objectification happens to women more frequently, and often in ways that are considerably less pleasant. Not that it was unpleasant; it was just odd, for me. Lord knows what I would have done if anyone ever actually tried to hit on me.

Megan: Oh man, yeah, I’m just thinking about that scene with the genders reversed. I think a lot of women would find a way to flee the scene as soon as possible if a male acquaintance they weren’t interested in suddenly complimented their legs while very drunk.

Noah: Right; she was older too; in her early 20s and I was a sophomore I think.

Megan: It might be useful contextual information for this whole thing that I grew up in a fairly liberated, feminist household. My father never made me feel less-than because I was a girl, not even once. I had a pretty crappy relationship with my mother but she was openly feminist and did manage to inculcate me with a lot of her values. When I was about 12 I even read through her copy of Our Bodies, Our Selves when she wasn’t around. I had plenty of information; I just never knew why the heck I couldn’t insert a tampon.

If nothing else, it illustrates that even openly feminist parents have a really hard time preventing internalized misogyny from developing in their daughters

Noah: In their sons too, I’d imagine.

I was wondering if you were at all affected by the idea of female virginity as valuable? There is some cultural weight there, and it seems like it could provide some sort of counterbalance to the feelings of worthlessness you talk about, but it doesn’t sound like it did?

Meagan: Re: female virginity and value: I never really felt that. I think, being raised feminist, I associated those ideas with the repressive olden days when my whole worth and function was as a vessel for some man’s heirs. It seemed pre-suffrage, pre-modern and I felt like I was beyond that. I definitely didn’t feel like there was any special allure or cachet in my being a virgin at 22.

Noah: What do you think about discussions of virginity related to the shooting?

Megan: I haven’t read very many. What I have read has been partly focused on male nerd culture. The thing about that culture is that a lot of people within it absolutely refuse to understand that there is such a thing as female nerd culture: “There are no girl gamers.” “Girls don’t read comic books.” They can’t imagine a woman who’s had experiences similar to theirs–rejection, persecution, humiliation. They can’t imagine empathizing with a woman. But every single one of my teen girl friends had a deep internalized sense of rejection, which they got from teen boys. Teen boys are vicious to the girls they don’t want.

That’s not exactly an answer to your question, sorry.

Noah: No; I think it’s an answer! You’re saying that virginity can be linked to male nerd culture in a way that excludes women, or that suggests that women can’t experience pain or sadness. So erasing female virginity becomes a way to erase women’s humanity.

What about Amanda Waller?

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Julian Chambliss

Figure 1:Suicide Squad from the CW’s Arrow

The superhero has emerged as the trending symbol of our mediated world. Musings over Marvel’s and DC Comics’ relative successes adapting characters to the big and small screen opens the door to some interesting moments of cultural contemplation. As Peter Coogan suggests in a recent essay entitled, “The Hero Defines the Genre, the Genre Define the Hero,” the link between the superhero and the genre are not incidental.[1] The selfless nature of the superhero and its genre reflect pro-social values Americans feared threaten by a rising urban industrial order. Changing the superhero then, echoes wider fears of disruption stemming from the loss of tradition. In this framework, the superhero becomes a measure of communal stability in some minds. As the superhero evolves enough to maintain its relevance, these characters offer context for cherished values placed in a modern world. As these characters are recreated for film and television audiences, they provide a window on the pace and scope of our collective evolution.

Over the last two seasons, the CW’s Arrow has emerged as an effective vehicle for adapting DC Comics characters to a broad audience. Like the Marvel Cinematic Universe before it, the creative minds behind Arrow built their world by mixing decades of comic book adventure. Free to pick and choose, they adapted with an eye toward creating easy entry for new consumers and maintaining the loyalty of established fans. The recent appearance of Amanda “The Wall” Waller, on Arrow highlights the fact the current comic book culture is filled with questions linked to identity and gender. In deciding to adapt this character, the producers have entered into that dialogue. Taking their cue from the 2011 reboot called the New 52, Arrow’s Amanda Waller is a marker of larger identity concerns.

Figure 2: Suicide Squad #1 (2011)

The New 52 restarted DC comic publications from the beginning. Complaints about this reboot have focused on missed opportunities. Critics point to uneven characterization, failed opportunity linked to diversity and the reorientation towards new (hopefully younger) readers by abandoning continuity. These complaints are understandable, but perhaps unfair. In 1985, the company revamped the publication line with its Crisis on Infinite Earths mini series. Often lauded by fans, it was greeted with complaints as well. History has proven that story a milestone. With this in mind, we may see “The New 52” lauded for the push toward genre variety and the integration of formerly sacrosanct characters from Vertigo, the publisher’s mature reader line, back into the mainstream comic universe. Whatever history’s judgment, the immediate media spotlight has and will likely continue to question the depiction of female characters.

Concerns about gender and representation in comics are not new. However, in the context of the 2011 reboot, the re-imagined overtly sexualized look and actions of female characters such as Starfire and Catwoman triggered protest. Adding to these concerns, products, drawn from comic book source material, reflect a dynamic of gender objectification long cited by critics. In particular, the outcry over the failure to produce a Wonder Woman film and criticism about Rocksteady Studios’ depiction of Harley Quinn and Catwoman in its Arkham game franchise has troubled fans.[2]

Arguably the transformation of Amanda Waller is a crucial part of this dialogue. Introduced in 1986, the comic book Amanda Waller is an African-American middle-aged woman with a heavy build working as a government bureaucrat. She is a unique example of a black female authority figure in mainstream superhero comics. Her serious demeanor and steely determination managing a government-sanctioned task force called the Suicide Squad made her a fan favorite. Effective and dedicated, Waller commands the respect of villains and heroes alike. Animated television and film appearances have further embellished Waller’s status among fandom.

Figure 3: Suicide Squad Vol. 1. #10 (1988)

In revamping the publication line, DC editors made decisions designed to make character more accessible to a broader (less expert) reading public. Clark Kent/Superman is no longer married to Lois Lane (quasi-damsel in distress). Instead, he is dating Wonder Woman/Diana Prince, creating the ultimate “power” couple (Couldn’t help myself). Abandoning the Superman /Lois Lane relationship highlighted an edict that marriage is prohibited in this new status quo. This stance was perhaps made more frustrating because it was only fully articulated in the midst of a public furor over the editor’s decision to derail the same-sex marriage of Batwoman (Kathy Kane), the publisher’s most prominent lesbian character. The tumult surrounding that decision and the continued concern over female character placement and representation prompts me to ask, “What about Amanda Waller?”

Waller transition in the New 52 has received comparably minor protest. Arguably, while heroes and villains deserve the main scrutiny on a comic page, Waller’s transformation has a greater impact because of her unique status as a woman of color in a position of authority. The lack of concern about Amanda Waller’s presentation highlights gender and race intersectionality.[3] Articulated by black feminist intellectuals such as Frances M. Beal and Alice Walker, the interlocking nature of gender and racial bias creates overlapping barriers linked to race and sexism for women of color.[4]

Arguably, Amanda Waller has been affected by gender and racial expectations since her introduction. The original characterization could be seen as leveraging the nineteenth century mammy stereotype to great effect. Waller was a sexless maternal figure who valued her superior’s goals, but showed disdain for the team that acted as her quasi-family. Unconscious and unspoken, Waller’s placement as a “strong” and “principled” bureaucrat loyally working for the government confirmed some assumptions. Yet, with depictions of African-American women in the 1970s caught between a normalizing figure such as Diahann Carroll’s single mother professional in Julia (1968-1973) and Blaxploitation inspired icons such as Pam Grier’s tough vigilante Coffey (1973) Waller’s debut in the 1980s struck a more balanced note in a social and political landscape shaped by warring conservative and liberal views of African-American life and culture.

Neither objectified nor objectionable, there has been a consistency to creator’s attachment to Waller as a supporting character. Always in the background, always working for the “greater” good, her experience compounds the critical assessment that minority characters in comics are only allowed to function within a limited assimilative framework. Now, younger and more traditionally beautiful, Waller does not have the same gravitas. Waller’s function remains the same, but her appearance now creates a radically different context to understand her. Like other female characters in the New 52, her physical beauty brings her more in line with male expectations, but in her case those expectations have an added layer of racial exoticism. Now seductive as well as powerful, the new Amanda Waller hovers between a “predatory” Jezebel and a “malicious” Sapphire stereotype. At once desirable (Jezebel) and cruel (Sapphire), the new Amanda Waller carries the full weight of gendered racial expectations in a manner that does little to differentiate and everything to limit her character. The fact that this Waller has made the jump to Arrow reinforces the transformation in the pop culture landscape. Still, Amanda Waller’s transformation is a marker of a conversation we are not having gender and diversity in comics.

[1] Robin S Rosenberg and Peter M. Coogan, What Is a Superhero? (Oxford University Press, 2013).

[2] It worth noting the recent Arkham Knight (http://www.ign.com/videos/2014/03/04/batman-arkham-knight-father-to-son-announcement-trailer) game trailer featured a redesigned Harley Quinn that is arguably less problematic.

[3] “Race/Gender/Class ‘Intersectionality’,” accessed March 16, 2014, http://www.uccnrs.ucsb.edu/intersectionality.

[4]Frances Beal, interview by Loretta Ross, video recording, March 18, 2005, Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection, tape 2.

Julian Chambliss is Associate Professor History at Rollins College and co-editor of Ages of Heroes, Eras of Men: Superheroes and the American Experience.

The Kids Are Mediocre, Albeit Not Utterly Without Charm

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Noah Berlatsky

Earlier this week I wrote a post at the Atlantic where I talked about the game Desktop Dungeons and how its creators had discovered that, in order not to be sexist, they had to work really hard at it. The intention to be non-racist/non-sexist isn’t enough, because the default tropes used to imagine fantasy game settings and characters are racist and sexist. It takes imagination and effort to overcome that.

So Kieron Gillen and James McKelvie definitely deserve credit for the extent to which Young Avengers pushes back against decades of accumulated superhero whiteness and sexism. The team includes a gay couple (Wiccan and Hulkling), and a Hispanic child of a lesbian couple (Miss America),along with two other white guys (Marvel Boy and Kid Loki) and a white Hawkeye).

Perhaps more importantly than their numbers, the marginal characters aren’t treated as marginal or other or weird…and the decision not to treat them as marginal or other or weird is nicely linked to the supehero milieu. Hulkling is a green-skinned shapeshifter from another planet; Miss. America is a brown-skinned superhuman from another dimension. Hawkeye is sleeping with the alien Kree Marvel Boy, Wiccan is sleeping with the alien Skrull Hulkling. Amidst all the intricate incoherence of the Marvel multiverse (which Gillen and McKelvie gleefully toss about without much explanation for novices), a non-White superhero as the strongest member of the group or a gay romance as part of the proceedings hardly seems worth mentioning (except, in the later case, as a vehicle for the requisite quotient of intra-team melodrama.)

So Gillen and McKevie set the worthy goal of not being sexist, racist assholes, and they followed through with intelligence and some subtlety. Thus, the comic is good. QED.

Alas, would that it were so. Not being racist and sexist is hard work, but there are other bits of making a worthwhile piece of art too, and as regards them Young Avengers is less successful. In particular, the artist Jamie McKelvie is, even in the context of crappy mainstream super-hero art, not really any good. His figure drawing is clumsy and haphazard; his poses are stiff when they’re not default; his faces are not particularly distinguishable. But where he is really abysmal is in his layouts, which are consistently confusing and cluttered. Especially in his fight sequences, it’s often almost impossible to figure out what’s happening — and there’s no visual panache (as in say Bill Sienkiewitz) to justify the incoherence. A Chris Ware inspired page is almost laughably incompetent, with tiny figures boucning around in an ugly floorplan that manages to be at one and the same time bulbous, blocky, and boring, the whole thing ringed by uninspired mainstream action sequences, the color scheme of which contrasts garishly with the wannabe-Ware floorplan pastels. Descriptions of the action are set off in a kind of map legend and keyed to numbers because diagrams are what the latest hip comics artists are doing and McKelvie would like to be up to date and hip with all his heart. It’s sort of sweet, if you cover your eyes and don’t look.

Gillen is more competent than that; his dialogue is fun and snappy and pop-culture-aware in a way that seems, if not precisely true to teens, at least true to the sorts of things teens might read. When Kid Loki asks Ms. America why her former super-team broke up and she says, “Musical differences,” I snickered. Same when Hawkeye comments that she knew there was some world threatening catastrophe because Wiccan wasn’t answering his texts every 30 seconds. It’s not genius or anything, but it’s cute. If I can appreciate Taylor Swift, there’s no reason I can’t appreciate this too.

There’s some perhaps interesting thematic material as well, if you squint. We first meet Hulking when he’s shape-shifting in imitation of Spider-Man, hunting down bad-guys as Marvel’s most popular superhero. Later, Wiccan summons Hulking’s dead mother from another dimension…only it turns out to be a shape-shifting soul-eating demon. The other Young Avengers’ parents also end up coming back from the dead as evil glop. You could see the comic then, perhaps, as being about children turning themselves into their parents — or about the way that it’s not just parents who make their kids, but kids who make their parents. The evil parents and the clueless parents (adults can’t see the evil demon mommies) could be a version of the hippie “parents just don’t understand/anyone over 30 can’t be trusted” meme. But you could also see the bad/clueless parents as constructs or dreams — as make-believe parent kids want to/need to create in order to make their own lives. That’s underlined by the fact that the evil parents are the reason for the team coming and staying together; the threat is what makes the book diegetically possible.

Gillen doesn’t ultimately do all that much with this material though. There isn’t, for example, any real anxiety around the evil parents per se — dead moms and dads come back from the dead, but their kids don’t seem much traumatized, or even disturbed. They just trundle on through the by-the-numbers superhero battles, the only real emotional tension being the frustration caused by the fact that, based on McKelvie’s drawings, you can’t actually follow those superhero battles at all.

To some degree that’s fine; it’s a competent empty-headed superhero adventure with crappy art, and it doesn’t make much pretense to being anything else. But, inevitably, the mediocrity of the execution has implications for the treatment of gender/sexuality/race as well. McKelvie, for example, tends to draw the usual slim/hot female characters — he certainly doesn’t feel anything like Desktop Dungeons’ commitment to imagining women who don’t look they walked out of Cosmo. The full-length, blank-faced, hip-cocked, wait-let-me-stuff-this-cleavage-in-somehow Scarlet Witch is an especial low-point.

In a similar vein, Gillen’s insistently shallow writing makes it hard for him to do much with his diverse cast other than have them there. As I said, part of the joy of the comic is that difference is simply treated as normal, so that green skin isn’t much different from brown skin. But while that’s refreshing, it also can feel like a cop out. Is Miss. America really even a Hispanic character, for example, when she’s an advanced human from another dimension who has never experienced prejudice? G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel deliberately explores what it would mean for a Muslim girl to gain superpowers in terms of her perception of herself and others perceptions of her. Such subtlety is utterly beyond Young Avengers.

So, basically, making art that isn’t mired in stereotypes is hard. And making art that’s good is hard. And those two things put together are even harder, not least because, to some not insignificant degree, you can’t do one without the other.

How Do Hypersexualized Superheroine Transformations Work?

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Roy T. Cook

Fact: Women are problematically objectified in mainstream superhero comics.

This much is undeniable. And, to be blunt, inexcusable. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth thinking about exactly how this objectification works (with an eye towards systematic attempts at educating readers about, and hopefully eliminating, the problematic aspects of such objectification, if nothing else).

Some might argue (and many misguided souls have tried) that males are also objectified in comics, insofar as overly exaggerated, hypersexualized depictions are as much the norm for male superheroes as they are for females. This is true, but it misses an important point: unrealistic depictions of male anatomy and garb in superhero comics plays a very different role than analogous distortions of female anatomy and clothing.

I am not going to try to sort out the differences between how males and females are depicted in comics here (it is sometime said that the difference is that superheroes are drawn the way that adolescent readers of comics want to be, and that superheroines are drawn the way that adolescent readers of comics want their girlfriends to be – this seems like a stab in the right direction, but it is both too simplistic and ignores the fact that the readership of superhero comics is much wider than the basement-dwelling, maladjusted adolescent males that the explanation seems to rely on). What I am going to do is highlight an interesting sub-phenomenon – superheroines whose hypersexualization is linked to their very real (albeit fictional) power as superheroines.

Here is one natural thought about hypersexualized depictions in general, and of superheroines in particular: Such emphasis on, and exaggeration of, secondary sexual characteristics such as breast size and waist-to-hip ratio serves to rob female characters of power. In emphasizing the superheroine’s role as a potential, and exaggeratedly desirable, partner for the male characters in the narrative (and, indirectly, for the reader), the superheroine in question is reduced to an object to be possessed, rather than a subject with her own autonomous agency and efficacy. As a result, the superheroine – super-powered or not – is rendered relatively powerless and hence relatively unthreatening to the male-dominated (both the characters and their fans) world of mainstream superhero comics.

Now, this is, to be honest, a bit too quick. After all, the objectifying sexualization of female characters in comics can serve to emphasize a superheroine’s sexual power (although this strategy is most often applied to villainesses, since female sexual power is conventionally troped as threatening and hence evil). But sexual power – especially female sexual power – is typically treated as somehow deviant compared to the kinds of physical, economic, political, and social power typically associated with, and monopolized by, males. So the analysis of devaluing and/or rendering harmless via hypersexualization still applies.

There is no doubt that the far-too-common depictions of superheroines as super-endowed, scantily clad supermodels whose primary role is to be saved by, avenged by, or romanced by their superhero compatriots has played exactly this role in the past. But there are a handful of female characters whose depictions throw a complicating monkey-wrench into the mix. I have in mind those characters whose transformations into their superpowered forms also involve physical transformations from more realistic (relatively speaking) depictions to the sort of unrealistic, hypersexualized forms at issue here. Prominent examples include the She-Hulk and the Red She-Hulk (whose transformations from human form to ‘hulked-out’ form also involve dramatic alterations to relative breast size, waist-to-hip ratio, etc.) Mary Marvel (whose transformation upon uttering “Shazam” involves morphing from a teenage girl to a mature woman), Looker (whose acquisition of superpowers also involved substantial ‘positive’ changes in her physical appearance), Titania, the Bulleteer, any female Marvel character who has interacted with any version of the Venom symbiote, etc. etc.

In all these cases, the acquisition of superpowers is explicitly associated with a change in appearance, from (again, relatively speaking) roughly realistic anatomy and habits of dress to explicitly sexualized, overly exaggerated forms (and, in many of these cases, there is also a marked increase in confidence and authority). As a result, it is hard to square these cases with the analysis just given of hypersexualization as a means to strip female comic book characters of power, since in these cases exaggerated anatomy and revealing clothing are explicitly associated with the acquisition of power.

As a result, we are left wanting an analysis of how, exactly, hypersexualized depiction of these characters works (especially with regard to the sorts of power these characters are depicted as having, and actually have, within the fictional narratives in question). Is it possible that these female characters somehow destabilize the status quo with regard to depictions of females, and thus represent some sort of subversive interrogation of gender roles and power in comics (intentional or not)? Are they just as worrisome as more ‘traditional’ hypersexualized depictions of female superheroes, regardless of whether they complicate our understanding of the relation between sexual objectification and power? Is this merely just a strange little quirk, unimportant in comparison to the more straightforward, and sadly extremely common, objectification found in mainstream superhero comics?

So how do hypersexualized superhero transformations work?

Virtual Justice on a Virtual Frontier

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Chris Gavaler

Emily Bazelon likes superheroes. Her New York Times Magazine article “The Online Avengers” chronicles the adventures of Anonymous hackers who use their powers to combat cyber-bullying. Bazelon says Anons tend to think in “polarized terms,” viewing their cases as “parables with an innocent victim, evil perpetrators and ineffectual (or corrupt) law enforcement,” all staples of the superhero genre. But Bazelon enjoys some of those polarized terms too, describing how her aliased Avengers “team up” or “join forces” to expose “wrongdoers.” She draw one activist in origin story rhetoric: “He vowed that day he would do something about Rehtaeh Parsons’s death.”In Bazelon’s defense, the rhetorical infection seems to originate with the Anons she interviews. “We wanted to strike fear into their hearts,” declares one Batman wannabe. They even wear Guy Fawkes masks from Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta.

But it’s the wrong metaphor. These aren’t caped crusaders patrolling the mean streets of Gotham. The streets are Facebook and Tumblr. The superpowers are laptop-based. Many of the crimes—posting a video on YouTube or a message on Twitter—take place in the no man’s land of the world wide web. The bad guys can live anywhere on earth, but they elude justice by exploiting a virtual frontier.

What we have here is a Western.

Owen Wister largely invented the genre when he published The Virginian in 1902. His bad guys disappear into the mountain sanctuaries of Wyoming: “He that took another man’s possessions, or he that took another man’s life, could always run here if the law or popular justice were too hot at his heels. Steep ranges and forests walled him in from the world on all four sides, almost without a break; and every entrance lay through intricate solitudes.”

When journalist Amanda Hess dialed 911 after receiving death and rape threats via Twitter, the Palm Spring cop who arrived at her door dismissed them because the “guy could be sitting in a basement in Nebraska for all we know.” The bad guy was safe in the intricate solitudes of his IP address. Hess documents her experience, and dozens like it, in her recent Pacific Standard essay “Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet.” When Caroline Criado-Perez received similar threats after petitioning the British government to include women on its currency, she retweeted them until the international attention forced police to respond. They said it was Twitter’s problem. Twitter said threatened users should contact local authorities.

Wister’s Wyoming faces the same failure of law enforcement. Because “the law has been letting our cattle-thieves go,” a former judge declares: “We are in a very bad way, and we are trying to make that way a little better until civilization can reach us. At present we lie beyond its pale. The courts . . . into whose hands we have put the law, are not dealing the law. They are withered hands, or rather they are imitation hands made for show, with no life in them, no grip. They cannot hold a cattle-thief.”

But Bazelon’s Avengers are skilled at tracking cattle-thieves’ user IDs through walled websites and forests of social media. When four teens in Texas tweeted gang rape threats at a twelve-year-old in New Zealand, the team of Anons unmasked their Twitter handles and forwarded evidence to the boys’ highs school administrators. The Virginian’s punches are “sledge-hammer blows of justice.”OpAntiBully settles for screenshots.

When Rehtaeh Parsons’s mother received evidence of her daughter’s rape, she turned it over to OpJustice4Rehtaeh, an Anonymous group she originally distrusted as nameless vigilantes. But, she told Bazelon, “if pressure from this group is what it takes, let them do what they do.”

Wister’s judge reasons similarly: “And so when your ordinary citizen sees this, and sees that he has placed justice in a dead hand, he must take justice back into his own hands where it was once at the beginning of all things. Call this primitive, if you will. But so far from being a DEFIANCE of the law, it is an ASSERTION of it—the fundamental assertion of self governing men, upon whom our whole social fabric is based.”

Local authorities tend to disagree. When badgered into reopening a rape case by OpMaryville and Justice4Daisy, the sheriff of Maryville, Missouri complained: “They all need to get jobs and quit living with their parents.” Parsons’s alleged rapists—or at least the two who posted the YouTube video of the crime—are now facing child pornography charges, though a police spokesman warned that OpJustice4Rehtaeh could come under investigation too.

Meanwhile, Cattle-thieves have their own advocates. Hess reports that the Electronic Frontier Foundation—a free speech and privacy rights group—lobbied against the Violence Against Women Act because an amendment to the act updated phone harassment to include any electronic communication. When Hess started receiving threatening voicemails on her own cell phone and police still refused to make a report, she took the law out of their withered hands. She tracked the guy’s IP address, filed a civil protection order, hired a private investigator to serve court papers, and got a judge to approve a restraining order that included everything from Twitter to hot air balloon messaging.

Which is to say Hess is no vigilante.

When the Virginian catches horse-thieves, he lynches them. That means Wister and his judge have to spend a lot of their frontier rhetoric differentiating this private but supposedly law-and-orderly form of capital punishment from the “semi-barbarous” lynching and burning of “Southern negroes in public.” Apparently the swift hanging of “our criminals” puts no “hideous disgrace upon the United State.”The judge doesn’t quibble over the definition of a “criminal” though, since the term denotes someone who has been legally tried and convicted, a luxury Wister’s frontiersmen forgo.

The Virginian ends his adventures when his once-skeptical love interest accepts his system of retribution and marries him. By the end of Bazelon’s article, her lead Avenger has lost his girlfriend of nine years—she complained he never turned off his laptop at night. Hess mentions a boyfriend but would rather write about the “Frontier of Female Sexuality” and “the gun-toting, boob-grabbing douchebags who are subsidizing your online porn habit.” She’d also like to see internet harassment prosecuted as a Civil Rights issue, a wonderfully civilized aspiration far beyond the pale of the current U.S. legal system.

In the meantime we’re left with faceless superhero wannabes trying to make our virtual frontier better until civilization can reach us.

The Hooded Utilitarian

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