WIR? (Spoilers)

Anyone who's dealt professionally with writers would say that if the argument were reduced to two options, it would be "The writer is sloppy" vs. "The writer is careful". I myself have no patience with binary choices, whether from Structuralists or Internet surveys. At this point, I will now leave it to the CoH writers to speak for themselves.

Yup. Bad things happen to everyone in comics.

I don't know. Gail's point seemed to be be more bad things happen to females in comics, by the percentages, than to male characters.

The linked site goes to disprove it.

Looking over that list...

Spider-Man lost his wife, marriage, girlfriends, uncle, an eye, and all to what?

Jason Todd killed, beaten to death, to further Batman and to make matters worse, it was due to a publicity stunt that even now they say was cheated.

Batman had his back broken and been killed for nothing more than a ratings gimmick.

Same with Superman.

Wolverine's been killed over and over again.

Speedball got turned into Penance.

GiantMan depowered over and over again.

Daredevil killed, lost loved ones.

Cyclops killed, lost his son, lost his wife, lost his girlfriend, turned into a avatar of Apoc.

Gambit blinded, powers lost, turned into a horseman, lost many girlfriends ect

And no, not all of them where great stories, some of them were actually garbage. Made worse by the fact that you know some of it will be undone.

I think the link shows it's not that itragedy happens more to the percentage of women in comics, it's that it goes to the mindset of a lot of people. As previously posted by another poster (paraphrased as I'm not going to go find the quote) "Violence against men = meh, Violence against women = WTF?! Grrrr! This makes me sick!"

Which just leads you to the other side of same coin.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

"Miss" Liberty of Atlas Park is fine. It was her mom, "Ms." Liberty who died, although she is long since retired and is more or less a non-entity in the game.

That was not Gail's point.

Her point was (if I may do my own bit of interpreting and paraphrasing):

1: In general, girls don't like superhero comics.
2: This is partly because there are not a lot of prominent, admirable girl superheroes.
3: The girl superheroes that are around tend to die in particularly gruesome or unheroic ways.
4: Go to 1: above.

Now there may indeed be a gender disproportiate amount of fridging going on, but that may say less about the bias of the writers and more about the fact that there are fewer girl superheroes to begin with, which loops right back into 1, again.

In any case, a list of heroes that have been fridged is anecdotal at best.

If you were going to do a statistical analysis, you'd have to compile data on every superhero comic that was produced between say, Jan 1 2010 and Jan 1 2011 by a given company, say DC, and analyze those.

A bit of accompanying data that might be interesting is how many female superheroes existed in said company at said time versus the number of males.

What we have in that post is one person's definition of just exactly how he defines a term in use. Do I think it's a good definition? I do, actually. Of course, as mentioned, I don't read into it what you do.

The whole point I am making is that he had to make such a definitive declaration because everyone else had varying takes on the what the same term meant. You have what you think it means. I don't agree with it.

Fundamentally, this is about attribution. People see this pattern whereby WiR Syndrome in particular is an easy trope to apply to a lot of comics, and perhaps in this case, to the SSA. What comes next is attribution: does this trope apply because the writers are revealing sexist tendencies (overt or subconscious)? Does it apply because the writers are bad, and only bad writers would use the trope? Or is the trope itself a more general symptom of other factors that reveal gender bias (which is not necessarily the same thing as sexism).

The differences in opinion about what WiR mean, fundamentally, come down to what each of us decides is the most likely correct attribution, which frankly is quite likely to have limited basis in logic, whatever position we each happen to take. This is an emotional topic, and human beings are not built to ignore the emotional meta-tags they attach to knowledge and memory when digging around in our minds in order to build logical relationships between new and past information. Anyone who tries to claim that we can decide how to interpret this trope's overall applicability or its presence in any given story base solely on factual information is simply ignorant of human nature or covering for an agenda they don't want to admit.

Your experiences and views on other people and their motives lead you to decide that this trope is evidence of systemic sexism in comic works, evidence of sexism in individual works, and/or both. You can point to the examples, the patterns they form, and all that, but they are evidence you interpret, not formal proof.

Your interpretation is different from mine. My experiences and biases lead to interpretations that tell me that other factors are at play. Patterns can reveal either a cause or a symptom, and I see a symptom and not a cause. MiR and sexism may be correlated, but causation is not universally shown.

There's an air of passive-aggressive intellectual superiority in the way that you post that serves only to harden me against your position. Your arguments suggest the self-evidence of your position, drawn so clearly from the musing of those writers/bloggers/posters from whom you draw your position, while I see it as subjective interpretation all 'round. This is not a topic for which absolute objective rightness can be declared. Only opinion, as you so literally (and crassly) illustrated.

And yet 3 shows true for male superheroes as well. So it's clear "fridging" is not the reason girls don't like comics. Debunked. Unless you want to claim that only male characters are allowed to have bad things happen to them.

From what I've read (and I could be remembering this wrong), female lead titles tend to not sell as well.

So some of the problems may just be that females arent picking them up enough to begin with, even if they are marketing them after the female audience.

I think this goes back to the "comics are for little boys" thinking though.

Even on the awesome titles I never understood why not enough people got into (of course, what I think is awesome can be completely different than others)...Spider-Girl, Super Girl...two of my favorite comics.

Then there was the female heavy Gen-13, which I blame it's lack of success more on the creators basically abandoning the title. And sadly I think this is what keeps any comic now a days from getting anywhere.

Female audience starts to get into a comic...writer is fired or quits to move onto other projects.

Manga works better in this way, in that when the writer gets tired of it, they just end it. But then, I like comics because I know they wont end (theoretically anyways).

No one to my understanding is saying that fridging is the only reason that girls don't like comics.

No one to my understanding is saying that make characters don't suffer vile fates in comics.

What I am saying is that (to make up a statistic) for every 100 guys that like comics, there are 10 girls:

Looking just at the JLA as an example, the guys have several role models, styles, and icons to look at and build a connection to: Superman, Batman, Green Lantern (who is sometimes black), the Flash, the Atom, even Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter (who sometimes pretends to be black).

Girls have Wonder Woman.

Sure you can expand the roster by tossing in Black Canary and others, but then you still end up with 4x as many guy heroes.

So if you fridge half of the guys, there are still plenty of unfridged heroes for the guys to cater to. If you fridge Wonder Woman, you are now out of female heroes, and theoretically out of potential female readers.

Naturally, this is a big exaggeration, but I think it illustrates the point.

If anything, IMHO, it means that there should be more female superheroes created in the first place.

In the Surviving 8, we have 5 males, 2 females, and 1 robot. So far, I think all of them have crawled out of a fridge at some point. Except Numina, who dwells in the fridge permanently, I suppose .

Someone else is lined up to get the permafridge. If it is one of the males, that leaves 4 left. If it is one of the females, that leaves 1 left.

I'm not sure we want to be concerned about having fewer role models for robots yet.

Unfortunately, as stated earlier, female superheroes don't sell as well. (Although, I'm a bit curious as to the real reason why. Surely the more hormonal male readers like to look at boobs?) So it seems unlikely that more female heroes are unlikely to be created when that's just not where the money is.

In the end, I think BrandX hit the real nail on the head when she said "comics are for little boys" concerning what people actually think of them, regardless of gender or lack of it.

Comic books about individual heroines don't sell well historically. That doesn't mean you should not create more female superheroes. Maybe more ensemble books with multiple strong female characters is the answer.

The whole thing doesn't make sense to me.

Comic book businessmen should be attempting to increase their sales demographics, which should include, oh, the female half of the planet.

The mantra is 'girls don't like comic books' but girls love manga, which are comic books. And I don't just mean slice of life and romance, I also mean manga with an action/violence aspect, which includes a lot of stuff by CLAMP (Card Captor Sakura and Sailor Moon). Rumiko Takahashi (Inuyasha and Ranma 1/2) and many more.

Girls like these because of many things, like differences in the art style or storytelling, but another reason is likely that there is a lot to choose from.

Naturally, a LOT of characters get fridged in manga. But for every one that falls, there are more to attach to.

Just to add to this, I notice few people are concerned that boys aren't reading enough Teen Paranormal Romance. (That is a real category a co-worker of mine recently spotted at a Barnes and Noble).

There are genres that are primarily successful with female consumers. I'm often surprised how rarely these genres are compared to the superhero/comics genre as a distaff counterpart in terms of dorkiness. Is there really a big difference between wanting to save people with your super powers, and wanting to save people who have super powers? IMO, not really. And (spoiler alert, kind of) the women in TPR tend to either have or wind up with supernatural powers of their own--powers that are not at all unlike the abilities of a super-heroine.

Basically, I'm not sure if we're cutting off at the right threshold when talking about "the superhero genre." In terms of capes and tights and all that maybe men specifically dominate that particular aesthetic, but IMO when all of the pieces are lain on the table, women have their own extremely popular wing of geekdom, even if it is not recognized as such.

True, but that isn't what this particular thread is about.

The whole concept of WiR only has what little relevence it has in reference to Western superhero comic books, which seem to be in a self-perpetuating spiral when it comes to having popular female heroes.

That's the thing. He keeps posting quotes as evidence, but not all of those quotes unambiguously support his position. Some of those quotes, as I read them, actually tend to counter his position.

It's as Venture said: when you accuse writers in this day and age of sexism, you're not going to get an entirely honest response. The writer responses posted in this thread range from sheepish apologies to apologetic excuses ("it was peer pressure") to apology-tinged alternate explanations ("It's just bad writing."). You could take the generally sympathetic tone of those responses as evidence that the writers agree with the feminist-slanted premise of WiR, or you could take it as evidence that the writers don't want to touch the issue with a ten foot pole.

Personally, I think the only thing that's clear about the whole issue is that you can track a trend that resembles whatever definition of WiR you care to use. What isn't clear is what the trend means. More importantly, I think, it also isn't clear what purpose the misogyny charge serves even if we stipulate that the charge is accurate in the general case. What may be a fair argument with respect to a general trend cannot be fairly applied to individual examples, or else you end up with every writer, regardless of his/her history, questioning his every move on the basis that some self-styled critic will label one of his storylines "problematic," or "egregious."

I emphasize those two words because they have been used repeatedly, and they have moralistic overtones. Likewise, when TG balks at Venture for calling this discussion an exercise in feminism, his rebuttal carries an accusatory note: "Does Gail Simone count as a feminist just because she's a woman?" The answer, of course, is no; Gail Simone and many of the WiRers in this thread are, however, engaged in a feminist exercise. You don't have to quote renowned feminists to frame a discussion in feminist terms, just as you needn't quote famous chauvanists to demonstrate misogyny.

And that's the crux of the matter: for all of the appeals to authority in this thread, both affirmative appeals and appeals of negation ("we're not discussing feminism because we didn't cite X, Y, and Z!"), the whole discussion lives or dies not by authoritative confirmation or denial, but by a subjective reading of what is implied (or not), rather than of what is explicit.

In any case, the comic book industry has always been aimed at boys. Trying to read misogyny into comic storylines is a little like trying to parse a beer commercial for sexist stereotypes. You may find what you're looking for, but you're gonna look like a parody of academic pedantry for delving so deeply into a subject so shallow. If you want to assert that comics are misogynist, better simply to point at the bewbz and be done with it.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Hey! Don't be a misobinist!

But more seriously, I agree that the binary choice might be unfair. However, that is what your criteria #2 comes down to. It essentially asks: "If something, other than what happened, had happened, had it happened in another (more heroic) way?" To repeat myself, there is no way to know. So you are, in effect, left to decide for yourself. Do you think/hope/want that the writers would fall for #2? Or don't you? It's an assumption either way. So yeah, as a completely subjective criteria it's pretty useless.


PS. As others have mentioned, being stuffed in a fridge isn't necessarily a bad thing. It could save your life if you ever find yourself on a nuclear test site!

Flip that. Miss Liberty died. Ms. Liberty is the trainer in Atlas.

I have to say, this prompts me to mention that I found it amusing to have Gen-13 mentioned as an example of a comic with lots of female leads in reference to lack of female role models in comics. I suppose the characters as written may have been OK as role models, as I honestly have only vague recollections of anyone's character in Gen-13. (I was much more into Stormwatch and early Authority.) But I distinctly remember the art. No matter how their characters were depicted in the writing of the stories, they sure weren't depicted visually as what I would think of as a female role model. Well, unless you think female role models should all look like very rather athletic Victoria's Secret models, poses and all (but with more bad-*** outfits). It's not like I think a female role model has to be unattractive or something, but there's no way that art wasn't fan service for the boys.

Technically in real life, Indy should have been vaporised.

Which comes first though? Do girls not like superhero comics because there are not a lot of prominent, admirable girl superheroes? Or are there not a lot of prominent admirable girl superheroes because, girls, in general don't like superhero comics?

I think that's a really dangerous path to start down on, and it's not something unique to comic books either. Basically, you have the question: "Genre X appeals more to men than women. How do we change X to appeal more to women?"

Which completely ignores the fact that 1) Changing X to appeal to women might destroy what makes it appeal to men (with the subtext that anything that appeal to men is bad/wrong and we should feel guilty about not appreciating more feminine influences) and 2) There are also genres that appeal more to women than to men, yet no one seems bothered about changing those (presumably because what appeals to women isn't bad/wrong).

I mean, statistically, more women than men knit. How do we change knitting to appeal more to men? Answer: Please don't try.

It's a false dichotomy, fortunately, because you don't have to change, say, The Punisher to appeal more to girls.

All I am asking for is that for every Katma Tui/Green Lantern or Stephanie Brown/Robin that you fridge, please make a couple new cool heroines for those fans to follow.

Now if you also have the budget and publisher support to experiment with creating 12 new comics starring superheroines, you have my permission.

Right now, though, it's all about the web. Writers who want to create cool new female characters can create away without having to deal with the editorial mandates endemic to a large corporation like DC or Marvel. Arguably, their output can reach more people that way, too.

It's not so much a 'false dichotomy' (I had to look that up ) as it is an unfortunate market trend in the name of misunderstood equality.

I'm a guy. I feel threatened/alienated when, say, D&D 'cleans up' to appeal to a broader audience. If I wanted to belong to a "broad audience" I'd be into cars or soccer or something. Not roleplaying games. Markets don't have to change to 'expand', but they do. As a fan of a current implementation, changes designed to appeal to other people are worrisome because we're afraid to lose what we liked about the implementation in the first place (Dominators, I'm looking at you!).

That's why I react to calls for "comic books should appeal more to girls". I don't think 'comic books' should be 'forced' to 'appeal to girls'. If girls, in general, don't like existing comic books, then by all means, write new comic books that appeal more to girls. I'm sure there's a market for that (and I'm also sure it already exist. I distinctly remember my sisters reading Wendy Magazine when they were kids).

In the end, different things appeal to different people. And that's fine.

(Also, I kinda forgot what point I was trying to make. But I think I was working up to a Tzeentch joke.)