Sexism and Comic Books

Janet Van Dyne was never a scientist - she was a socialite and later a fashion designer. However, she did serve one of the longest and most successful terms as Chairperson of the Avengers in the 80's/90's.

Storm also served as leader of the X-Men for years, and Sue Richards was/is largely considered the most powerful member of the Fantastic Four.

As for female scientists, the only one I can think of off the top of my head is the X-Men's ally Moira McTaggert. Certainly none of the "most brilliant" minds in the Marvel Universe are ever depicted as women. That list usually consists of Reed Richards, Hank Pym, Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, and maybe Charles Xavier and Hank McCoy.

I can't speak to the history of women in DC comics because I haven't read them as long, or extensively, as I have Marvel.

I certainly think mainstream comics are still sexist to a degree because the majority of comic book writers and artists are men, as well as the majority of comic book readers. However, read something by Amanda Conner, or Terry Moore, or Joss Whedon, and tell me they don't write strong female characters.

At the risk of overanalyzing it, I often feel with comics in general that male heroes are someone I am supposed to look through, and female someone I am supposed to look at. However, it's a very complicated issue, because all titles at all times do not exhibit the same attributes. It's even debatable which characters are truly considered by the authors to be "female." To pick names, Jean Grey, Storm, and Wolfsbane have all been treated very differently from each other in their 1980s-and-on portrayals.

A sexy costume is not in and of itself indicative of sexism to me. However, I question whether male heroes are actually drawn to attract female readers. I get the impression they are drawn for a mostly male audience to project themselves onto in a "this could be you" daydream sort of fashion. They are hyper-masculine, attractive, but not overtly sexual, and especially not threatening to the reader. Most of them are "misunderstood" in some way.

The female characters in turn seem more distant, NPCs with opaque motives. They are usually not misunderstood at all; what you see is what you get unless they are evil and actively trying to seduce. For the heroines, often the male characters seem concerned about letting her down in some way. She in contrast rarely seems to worry about this. At worst, she is in the position of having to pick between two guys. She may decide she's "had enough" of the guy, but most of this seems to be communicated by the male ("I'm hurting so bad because I failed in some way and she left me/died/got hurt") rather than from the females perspective.

For a contrast with comic books, I look at series like True Blood, Twilight, and other "chosen girl seduces a series of beautiful male monster" themed stories. The men there also have super powers, but they are written in a way that is explicitly threatening. They are only held at bay by obsession for the lead female. This trend in stories isn't new of course. It's basically the theme of every gothic romance written over the past 200 years, and probably longer than that.

So is all of this "sexism"? I really don't know. The term is kind of loaded. There are definitely differences in portrayals. I'm just not sure its present in ever work, all of the time. I think that there are individual works, and possibly some industry trends as a whole that reflect the tendency, and that writers and authors should constantly think about what it is they are creating. But overall I think it's a very complicated picture.

Hope i'm not heading off topic here but since we are talking about sexism and comic books and this is also related to CoX... why don't we have the Gigantic body type for women? This is not a dig at the devs but when there's one option for boys and one option for girls, doesn't sexism come into it a little bit? It's very hard to make a female character anything but luscious, boob slider down to 0, waist slider all the way up, hip slider all the way down and they still have an hour glass figure.

Surely diversity is the key?

Sexism DOES exist in comics today. But then, sexism exists in just about every entertainment medium; to women and men (though a smaller amount to men, of course).

I think the reason it may appear more pronounced in comics is because of it's very nature. Actresses do many things to make themselves look like the supposed ideal, but they're still only human. With comics (and animation) that roadblock doesn't exist, so female characters can be stylized to the artist's content.

I really don't see comics as any worse than movies. Maybe the ratios are smaller, but only because the comic business is smaller than the movie business. After all, in most movies the protagonists are attractive people with only the secondary characters being "permitted" to be less than stellar looking. But in comics, the secondary characters in one book are often the primary characters in another book, resulting in a universe of fashion models.

Also, on the topic of Golden Age comics, remember that the ones we have access to are probably only a fraction of what was actually put out. And further, the stuff that rose above the rest would be what was preserved more. The result being that we get more of a "premium look" at Golden Age comics more so than the Silver Age.

I really don't think sexism is that big a problem in modern comics. Sure, it's always important to work toward improvement, but I think we're getting along pretty good. After all, look at Runaways which featured Gert; a bespeckled, pudgy girl who wore rather frumpy clothes. And she was the AWESOMEST character EVER!!


There were rumors that they killed her off, but those are obviously wrong.

Yup. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Couldn't be wronger.

Total BS.

To be honest I'm slightly skeptical of the refrigerators site. In part because of the list here, which purports to list female characters mistreated in the eyes of the author: http://www.unheardtaunts.com/wir/women.html

Now, I haven't read an X comic in at least 10 years, so it's possible things have transpired with the characters since I last picked one up. However, among the characters the author says represent the theme of injuring/maiming/killing/depowering females are Psylocke, Rogue, Storm, Wolfsbane and Wonder Woman. That seems like card stacking to me in a way that is somewhat counterproductive if the goal is to find meatier roles for women in a genre where characters are constantly subjected to melodramic tortures.

For example, Storm is listed because she has been "depowered, repowered, periodically crazy to one degree or another," which is a description that would befit any character in comic books who ever existed, including icon-tier heroes like Superman and Captain America. The only exceptions would be characters who get no play time at all, which is truly the worst curse for any of them.

Wolfsbane makes the list because she was "locked in wolf form for a while, needs major therapy." What this misses, IMO, is that locking this character out of human form also means she escaped sexualization. In fact, while Wolfsbane has often been treated as a tempestuous 16 year old girl, the nature of the characterization has tended to avoid casting her in a sexual light, and the "troubled mind" side links her with the portrayal male superheroes and their "angst is me" attitudes in general.

Invisible Woman is listed for having had a miscarriage. I don't really know what to make of that because I never saw how it was presented. Rogue meanwhile is just "generally messed up."

I don't deny that portrayal of females in comics skews out of their favor. However I think that criticisms of that status need to provide specifics on what could be done to correct that, and examples provided of where it has been done. I consider myself quasi-liberal on such issues but I also think that it is very easy to complain without offering meaningful solutions, particularly for people who aren't writers or artists.

A response from Christy Marx posted on the site hits many of the same points: http://www.unheardtaunts.com/wir/c-cmarx.html

Just remember 8 out of 10 victims are men, but the 2 women victims will always be on the cover.

I took up Fantasy Art class in School and one of the things we cover is how Heroes are Design, Women got to look Sexy but Strong and men got to look buff and Strong like Greek Statues. You never going to see a fat or a plane looking Hero, they always going to look Muscular and hawt.

I'm going to stick to comic imagery rather than delve into old storylines and silver age bat/writer/superdickery.

Why does the idealised female figure regularly used in comics (and likely originating as far back as ancient Greece and classical sculpture) get called sexist? Comic book characters being generally stylised and usually "larger than life", is such a portrayal of a female figure wrong? Is it not more a matter of the interpretation rather than the image itself that is "sexist" or applies such a label?
I've seen arguments in previous threads that the female character model in this game is "sexist" because it is not realistic. Is that a fair accusation? Is it obliged to be realistic simply so avoid offending real women who do not look like that? If so is the post-processing of female models in fashion magazines and the like sexist for protraying the unachievable?

Is "Sexist" being misapplied due to false expectation such as, "I can never look like that, it is therefore over-idealised and must be sexist"?

Personally I can't help thinking that in many cases of claimed sexism in comic book protrayal of the female form it is being misapplied, often due to the claimant's own insecurity or in an attempt to garner some measure of exposure and notoriety.

The term may be overused but there are definite cases where it's a valid complaint. A couple of litmus tests that I've heard over the years are if female characters are drawn with breasts larger than their heads or if the artist uses porn magazines as references for when he's drawing women.