This week, let’s have a look at some misandry!
Courtesy my favourite helper-monkey, I got hold of Connor Hawke: Dragon’s Blood #1. (In case you didn’t get the memo, Chuck Dixon’s secret subtitle is Connor Hawke: Not Gay.)
The first issue is mostly set-up and introduction archery contest! Ancient Chinese tale of dragon killed by an archer! Gee, wonder if it could be true! but it’s competent stuff. I enjoyed it very much until my stomach moved uneasily at the last pages, which featured Lady Shado.
Lady Shado is a skilled archer/mercenary/occasional assasin who embodies the Japanese spirit of the bow. In other words, she is exactly the sort of character for whom I fall head over heels, forever won over by her effortless kickassery.
So why do I hate Lady Shado?
Because she’s a GODDAMN RAPIST. We discovered this during a very special issue of Green Arrow where she talks about the paternity of her child to Black Canary (who apparently sleeps in a teddy. Uh-huh.)
Click here for the disturbing revelation!
That’s right. When Oliver Queen was wounded, sick with fever, and so delirious he thought he was making love to another woman, Lady Shado had sex with him (and conceived). Was he capable of consent? Did he consent? Clearly not to sex with her, the GODDAMN RAPIST.
The weirdest thing is that no one pays this much attention. Dinah, instead of beating the crap out of Shado, reluctantly accepts her help in rescuing Ollie from his then dire straits. Later, in Quiver, she includes this incident in a flashback collage as one of Ollie’s long list of infidelities. Ollie is indeed the least faithful man in the DCU but including his rape is repulsive. Jesus, Dinah. Victim-blaming much?
Even self-acknowledged expert Doctor Light, who now prefers to be called Doctor Rapist McRapity Rape, fails to pick it. Proof:
Shows what you know, Doctor Asshole!
So the rape of Sue Dibny warrants a mass mindwipe. The rape of Ollie Queen warrants… not a lot, really.
This ties in, of course, to horrifying misconceptions about sexual relationships between men and women. One of the nastiest misandrist tropes is that men exist in a state of perpetual horniness. They just can’t help it!
That’s why it’s up to women to say no and indicate they really mean no. That’s why men stare at breasts instead of faces and wolf-whistle. They are totally overcome by their surging masculine mojo. God, those poor guys.
And that’s why they cannot be raped by women, especially women they would otherwise find attractive. It doesn’t matter if they’re delirious with fever and unable to give consent, they still want sex with hot Asian bad girls.
Whether Ollie would have consented if he’d been in his right mind is another issue entirely. The fact is that he didn’t, and because of the cock-eyed DCU approach to men raping women (harrowing!) vs women raping men (never happens!), no one in that world seems to notice.
And that’s how we get to this, the world’s most disturbing cover:
Connor Hawke: Kissing Daddy’s Rapist.
