Ah, summertime, and the living is easy! For you, it may well be a good deal colder, but I hope you enjoyed your own celebrations, secular or religious, and managed to steal yourself some peace and joy from the hectic stresses of the holiday period. For me, it’s a time for food, family, arguments over whether ‘qis’ is an acceptable Scrabble play, and other classic pursuits of the season.
I’ve also come down with a bad case of Holiday Brain, where one’s mind, devoid of its usual stimulus, lazes and settles into considering no thought more complex than whether one should have a glass of chardonnay, or one of riesling.* If you are also afflicted with this crippling condition, I hope that the 19th Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans might provide a sovereign specific.
Games.
The January edition of women’s gaming magazine Cerise is out and, as ever, is jam-packed with items of interest. My favourite is Richard Pilbeam’s article Choosing Innovation Over Imitation, where he examines the sexist tropes perpetuated in the RPG Maker community:
This generally appalling handling of female characters would be understandable, if no less annoying, were these professional products with money and careers riding on their success; game developers are often pressured into playing it safe and recycling a formula which allegedly been successful in the past. But we’re dealing with amateur productions where the success or failure of the product is quite literally immaterial, yet the creators remain so heavily influenced by the commercial games they play that their approach is often even more conservative than the mainstream commercial industry itself.
Speaking of perpetuating sexist tropes in games, BomberGirl of Girl In The Machine writes A Strictly Female Affliction, which examines that tired old trope of rape as convenient backstory for female characters in the context of a game based on a Harlan Ellison short story:
However, what makes me uncomfortable about the inclusion of rape in a woman’s backstory is that it’s such a go-to motivation for fleshing out female characters. She’s weak because she was raped; she wants revenge because she was raped; etc., etc. We see it so often (admittedly more in written fiction and comics rather than video games) that it’s become cliche.
Mighty Ponygirl reviews BioShock as an end result of objectivism, paying special attention to the philosophy’s disdain for the disenfranchised, and the game’s much-discussed ‘moral choice’ over whether one should kill or rescue the little girls who are being used as incubators for a power source:
There are some interesting analogies you could draw from the Little Sisters. After all, we have problems already with people who want to use women solely for incubation as it is in this world outside of the videogame. I don’t know that BioShock is trying to make some statement about abortionthe removal of Adam could either kill or save the little girl so there’s no clear platform on the matter. But there is a very clear point that what’s happened to these little girls is very wrong, and that it’s wrong to treat a human being as just another resource; no matter what the end result isafter all, Adam is ‘life,’ but it is life that is only possible through the enslavement of another’s body, and that there will be consequences to such an action.
On the topic of real world little girls, Bonnie’s Heroine Sheik writes about the appalling sexism of Ubisoft’s line of ‘games for girls’, but takes a deeper look at the Imagine Babyz game:
Lots of children ‘play mother’ to their dolls, their friends, etc. That in and of itself is nothing new. What’s interesting is to see the role played in a structured, game format with preset gameplay rewards. Rock the cradle well, gain points. Forget to feed your charges, lose them. Oddly enough, what we’re being reminded of here is that motherhood itselflike genderis a role to be played, not an inherent state. For such a sexist game, it’s a strangely feminist message.
In the same vein, Sara M. Grimes connects the Ubisoft games to a more academic analysis of the way adults seek to direct the play of girls towards ‘useful’ (and traditionally feminine) pursuits, and the strategies of resistance girls sometimes adopt in response:
Although dolls are often seen as obvious ‘vehicle[s] of feminine socialization,’ recent ethnographic research, as well as historical analysis of memoirs, diaries and oral histories, reveal a long-standing tradition of gender role subversion and rejection of adult authority within girls’ doll play (Formanek-Brunell, 1998; Gussin Paley, 2004). This emerging research reveals the familiar, but academically neglected, practices of brutal doll torture, doll-body modification, doll bashing and doll funerals.
On a lighter note, Robyn Can’t Jump reviews Mass Effect, and is impressed with its portrayal of female characters, human and alien:
The great variety of characters in the game, including lots of women who do and say lots of different kinds of things, and lots of people of color. I raised my eyebrows at a couple of costuming decisions for some female characters, and I felt that it was unrealistic to have (apparent) female sex workers but no male ones on a planet that’s the center of everything important for many species of aliens, but overall I was exceedingly happy with the representation of women in the game.
Comics.
The Ormes Society has branched out to a livejournal community, Torchbearers, where links on race and comics/manga may be posted and read. Add it to your list!
Absolutely essential reading is the And We Shall March series on the Golliwog appearing in Alan Moore’s The Black Dossier. A brief snippet from her coda to the series:
Thematically in the League so far, all indications are Moore cares and has thought a lot about sex and gender. His approach to the story so far lends evidence to an argument that he cares and has thought a lot about the sexual liberation of heterosexual white people, particularly white women of a certain level of economic comfort.
It’s a lot of reading, but that’s because there’s an awful lot to say.
Cath Elliot of the Guardian‘s blog Comment Is Free responds to a recent report from Britain’s Department for Children, Schools and Families:
I trawled through the new guidance from the Department for Children, Schools and Families about how to improve educational outcomes for boys, desperately searching for the bit where it says: ‘All boys must be allowed to bring replica guns into the classroom or they will grow up to be serious educational underachievers,’ but I couldn’t find it anywhere. However, one sentence that did leap out at me in the report was:
‘Images and ideas gleaned from the media are common starting points in boys’ play and may involve characters with special powers or weapons.’
Sorry? In what year was this report written?
Lisa Fortuner at Just Past The Horizon writes of the DCU’s gender-swapped Earth-11, as revealed in Countdown, and is disappointed that in a world where, for every other character, only gender has changed, Wonderman is a boorish, warmongering jackass:
Every other Justice League member does just as well as the opposite gender, except for Wonder Woman. The point seems to be that Wonder Woman’s peaceable character traits are incapable of manifesting in a man. The refined level-headed conscientious warrior who always tries the diplomatic route when the option presents itself is a blunt, hairy brute with a simple gender change. … The understanding woman who worked hard to regain the trust of the world after she’d lost it becomes a bitter man who brings an army to attack when that trust is lost — a bitter man who betrays his friend’s reputation where the female version would not. The defining characteristics of Diana, her confidence, her wisdom and her loyalty are not inherent to the character, they’re a side-effect of estrogen and a uterus. Traded in for male parts those characteristics disappear and all that’s left is pride and a thirst for vengeance.
Seeking Avalon discusses ShadowLine’s competition to create your own superheroine, wherein the winner will write three issues drawn by artist Franchesco:
Have you looked at Franchesco’s art? I saw in his gallery a picture of a proud, gritty, Moon Knight. But all his images of female characters are the kind of things that immediately turn me off investigating a comic; overly large breasts, odd body compositions and unnecessary crotch shots. And Franchesco, because he will be defining the character’s look (with input from the writer) will own 50% of the creation. There went any idea, any thought, any possible urge I had of entering the contest.
Brigid Keely discusses the sexism of this portrayal of one comic strip mother in Get Back In The Kitchen:
In a world where women do all the cooking/baking/caretaking, Jeremy is apparently completely unable to do a basic baking task. Instead, this almost-adult manchild turns to his mommy to cook him something sweet, he asks his mommy to do work that he will be graded on, because he is apparently unable to do it himself. And mommy? Seems very willing to give up her time and her sleep to sweep in to his rescue, teaching him that his poorly planned and uncommunicated needs are more important than hers are.
Fortunately, there are comic strips that address gender stereotypes instead of meekly conforming to them. If you haven’t already, check out Something Positive’s take on Women in Refrigerators.
Books.
Holidays are definitely a time for curling up with a good book, and appropriately, we’ve got some great sff books links this carnival! Let’s begin with a lament for the decline of the feminist bookstore in the USA by Tacithydra:
In 1993 there were 124 feminist bookstores in the United States. Now only 12 remain. They provided access to feminist books, but more importantly, they offered physical safe spaces and gathering points for like-minded people. Political action groups, support groups, and book clubs flourished in these stores in ways that would be impossible in the modern-day Borders or Barnes and Noble.
Now one of the last remaining independent feminist bookstores in the U.S., and the only one in Texas, is in trouble.
Podblack Cat is concerned by the decline of the feminist science hero (such as that of Carl Sagan’s Contact) in A Girl Called Ellie:
I know that many people who enjoy Contact boldly proclaim Ellie as a role model for any woman considering the sciences. But I also know that I don’t find this novel easy to locate on the shelves anymore. … I worry about the potential death of ‘Ellie’s’ as a sympathetic and iconic figure in fiction. The dearth of science heroines in the same mold.
The Hathor Legacy’s Melpomene ponders Laurell K Hamilton’s mestiza vampire-killer Anita Blake and her troubling implications on issues of ethnicity in her review of The Laughing Corpse:
A curvy trail of rationales leads Anita to the door of Dominga, the ‘grandmother of voodoo,’ a woman who’s feared all over because of her magickal skills. She’s also incredibly evil, and will do anything for money, including some really unscrupulous things involving human sacrifice. She’s everything Anita’s not… including totally Mexican. Anita describes her as ‘the Mexican grandmother of [her] nightmares’ (265), and Anita’s differences from her (Anita’s Christianity, her inability to speak Spanish, and her scruples) are all emphasized as crucial signifiers demarcating the line between a particular type of ‘Latin darkness’ and the deracinated, supernatural cowboy identity Anita performs as the Executioner of the undead.
On a brighter note, Miss Print has a ‘mildly feminist’ review of YA fantasy novel Ella Enchanted:
There are several reasons that I love this novel and recommend it to everyone. The first is that it’s an imaginative retelling of Cinderella which makes the story exciting for readers familiar with the original version without making it too abtruse for readers who have never heard of Cinderella. Also, the book is full of great role models for girls. All of the female characters are strong, self-aware womenthings seen far too rarely in the fairy tale genre.
Femsfaward is a livejournal community for reviews of sci-fi and fantasy fiction by women, with an eye towards well-deserved awards:
This is a place to mention works you’ve read that were published this year by female authors, so that we can all throw in our thoughts in the comments. Thus we will be able to find the best stuff and nominate it for various SF awards, or just enjoy the heck out of it.
And Ben Payne provides a tongue-in-cheek guide to why aspiring writers might want to put more women in their stories:
Check out this example. In sentence one we have one of the ‘foe pars’ of writing: the ‘As you know Bob’.
‘Nice work on that device, Mark,’ said Karlos to his colleague. ‘Thanks Karlos,’ said Mark. ‘I used physics and chemistry and made quantum variables of the connector ribbon.’
Don’t be bamboozled by the science!! Now you’ll notice that Mark is explaining something to his colleague that his colleague should already know!! Incongruous!!
But if we introduce a woman to this scenario, all of a sudden the ‘infodumper’ is less intrusive. Because the woman probably wouldn’t understand what Mark was talking about!!
TV and Film.
The Hathor Legacy’s Scarlett is impressed by the competence of Battlestar Galactica sort-of villain Admiral Kane in Kane is Able:
Yes, Kane was a tyrant. Yes, in some regard, she fitted the stereotype of female leaders being either incompetent or, in this case, heartless. But they also took the time to show the heart she might have had, in different circumstances. They took the time to show us her achievements as a military leader. They took the time to show us her bravery and courage.
Less positive is the news that BBC writers deliberately sought to make black, female Doctor Who Companion Martha second-best to white, female Companion Rose (don’t forget to read the comments!):
Davies is a touch defensive when he explains that Martha was always going to be second best to Rose. ‘That’s how we played it, rather than fight it. It would have been an awful moment if the doctor had said. ‘Oh, you are like a new Rose to me.’
I personally like to play a game called Imagine If Will Smith Was In It, which is where one thinks of a movie, and then imagines Will Smith in it, whereupon the movie is instantly improved. I Am Legend is a movie with nearly the maximum possible level of Will Smith. It is also, according to Feminist SF: The Blog, an excellent example of post-apocalypse done right, including its take on gender:
As far as gender goes, the two main women in this film didn’t get to do as many cool things as Smith’s character. They largely served as maternal figures, but it didn’t seem especially out of place in the film because Neville as much love for his daughter and dog. I did like that fellow survivor Anna never became a romantic partner for Neville, too. She had her own reasons for being in the film.
My own review of Disney’s Enchanted was a row of ascii hearts and smiley faces, but Dana Stevens of Slate.com has a much more in-depth analysis, focusing on one of the more troubling aspects of the movie’s feel-good fantasy:
But there was something that depressed me about Enchanted, a grim reality that occasionally peeped through the whimsy like New York City glimpsed from the animated fields of Andalasia. This sinking feeling had little to do with what could be seen as the movie’s retrograde affirmation of true love and happy endings—after all, if you’re going to start complaining about marriage as a plot resolution device, you have to throw out every comedy from Shakespeare on down. No, that intermittent sense of yuckiness sprang from the movie’s solemn celebration of a ritual even more sacred than holy matrimony: shopping.
Finally, two vastly exciting recent announcements that cross media lines!
YA Fantasy author Tamora Pierce and Julie Holderman have announced that they will work towards the establishment of a Teen & Kids Fantasy & Science Fiction Convention:
[w]e decided it would be a grand thing if we could pull together the talent and funding to organize a convention for the fans and creators of teen and kid fantasy and science fiction.
The organizers are looking for volunteers and supporters, but even if you can’t help right now, the livejournal community is certainly worth watching for anyone with an interest in the field or the eventual con!
And if that wasn’t enough New Year excitement, January also brings the launch of io9.com, a wonderful concoction of links, musings and manifestos exploring the bizarre future we’re living in and the one just around the corner. It’s perfect for all those who are ‘strung out on science fiction’.
Edited by cyberfeminist extraordinaire Annalee Newitz, with the assistance of a keen and smart bunch of others, io9.com has over 700 backdated entries more than enough to completely cure your Holiday Brain. Given the talent behind the site, it’s not unexpected that many entries have feminist content and/or reflect feminist concerns: I went prowling through the archives and am barely able to restrain myself to recommending a mere two gems: Children: A Sinister Threat To The Future (which explores the personal choice of environmentalist women not having babies, and the hilarious, horrified response of the conservative press) and World of Warcraft’s Strange Rules About Cybersex, which ‘[j]ust goes to show that you can move to a new cyber-world packed with an international population of millions, and still be SOL if you want to find a decent tranny bar. ’

• – –
  And that’s it from me! Be sure to check the Carnival homepage for the date of the next Carnival, and consider signing up to host yourself. And if you’d like to say anything about this Carnival, here is the place!
• – –
• Both, obviously.

Huzzah, summer is here!
I’m just about to return to the loving embrace of my family and friends in New Zealand for a month. Sadly, my access to the internets and comic book stores will both be somewhat limited during that period*. I shall doubtless be around from time to time, and I have a couple of interviews lined up, but my loose weekly schedule will become a little looser.
Right now, some housekeeping.
One:
I have shamefully neglected to mention that Girl-Wonder.org has a new comic: The Tower, by Saki Miyamoto and Brendon Bennetts.
The Tower is a wonderful wordless comic about a fairytale princess who refuses to accept the restrictive ‘safety’ her father imposes. Instead, she approaches the world outside the titular tower with joy, courage, and a willingness to improvise in the face of dragons, bee swarms, tree monsters, thunderstorms, and true love.
Saki’s art is beautiful, with characters’ expressions and actions depicted so clearly that no words are needed, and Brendon’s story is an extraordinary tale, delightfully twisty, and with some of the best pacing I’ve ever seen in comic form. Best of all, the whole thing is completed! There’s none of that awful waiting for the next page that you sometimes get with other great longform webcomics, with the even worse horror that maybe the creators will get bored and stop.
You can’t read this comic as I did: sitting in a cafe in Kyoto’s Pontocho district while rain pattered on the roof, turning the pages in a plastic binder with fingers that trembled with delight, and every now and then looking up at the creators and gasping ‘You guys! You guys! You have to submit this to Girl-Wonder. You GUYS!’. But you can read the first six chapters right now, and the other four are coming in whole chapters, one chapter per week.
I like it extremely. Recommended to all humans.
Two:
I am delighted that I’ve been given the opportunity to host the next Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Festival here at GRC. The festival will appear here on January 5th. Please get your submissions and links to me by January 3rd, via email or use this submission form.
The most recent festival was truly excellent. Hosted by Anna, it contained so much awesome commentary and linkage that it had to be divided into three parts: Women, Gaming and You; These Things We Love And How We Interact With Them; and Reviews, Reactions, and Recommended Further Reading. Also recommended to all humans.
And that about does it for now. May you have happy holidays, whether they be unnaturally cold and wintry, or in the entirely appropriate glorious sunshine!

Dolls and So Forth Week: A Coda! Check out the Thunderbolts preview at CBR.
tboltsbp001_int-8.jpg
Oh, that is a beautiful swipe at the ‘tasteful’ pandering of the Mary Jane statuette.
Well-played, Christos Gage and Brian Denham!

And now for more fun adventures with Dolls and So Forth Week at GRC, which I really might just have well called ‘Look! No One Wears Pants.’
An argument often leveled at anyone who protests against the sexual objectification that finds expression in statues where women don’t wear pants for no good reason whatsoever, whereas their male counterparts are fully-panted, is: ‘Whatever! So she’s presenting at the viewer! You know what’s really bad? Figures in JAPAN!’
In JAPAN the breasts thrust outward at more perilous angles, the legs bend ever so more coltishly, the expression conveys either hapless shame or a desire to be instantaneously mounted, and of course, the pantlessness is even more pronounced! Why are you wasting all your precious and finite caring on AMERICAN figures you cultural imperialist when in JAPAN everything is so much worse?
Having visited the Action Figure Museum in Nagahama, I can say that there is some truth to the assertion that some Japanese action figures display truly revolting levels of casual misogyny. I wasn’t in there for ten minutes before I developed the urge to fold my arms over my chest and hunch past the viewers enthusiastically gazing at the tiny facsimiles of enormous-breasted fourteen-year-old girls in tiny scraps of black leather.
Of course, not every Japanese figure is like that something the ‘but-it’s-worse-in-JAPAN’ commentator sometimes appears to conveniently forget any more than every American figure is like the infamous Mary Jane comiquette. There were plenty of female figures that were cute, or tough, or sexy without being objectified in Nagahama; but the collected effect of so many pointed nipples and so much lovingly detailed cameltoe made my stomach roil.
So I’m willing to concede that in Japan, things might be worse. What I fail to see is why that should have any effect on my criticism of American figures. The possibly greater vileness of Japanese figures doesn’t mean I’m obliged to give comparatively -less-digusting-but-still-gross American ones a pass. Gosh, I’m not even American, and I write this whole darn column about American comics every week.
I am perfectly willing and able to criticize the cultural products of any nation whenever I find those products endorsing degrading sexual objectification of the female body.
And I see it way too fucking often.

Apparently, we need some ground rules.
Perceive this.
If you think that there is no such thing as sexism, you are either stupid or ignorant. If you are aware that there is, and it is a-okay with you, then I hope you die in a ditch. You are a pus-filled sore on the ass of humanity.
If you are aware that sexism exists and that it is also, like, kinda bad, but assert that there is no sexism in comics, then stick around. You are wrong, and I intend to demonstrate how, but I reserve judgement on your inherent value as a human being.
Note that this is not a column about hating skimpy costumes in comics, but a column about the varied and sickeningly common instances of misogynistic tropes in superhero comics, superhero comics fandom, and the industry of superhero comics. The initial post on the blog was meant as manifesto/introduction instead of the thing and the whole of the thing, and thus did not go into great detail about specific injustices. I randomly selected five examples of misogyny in comics as illustration:
1) Stephanie Brown’s sexualised torture.
2) Her lack of a memorial case.
3) That the default costume for women is to show as much tits and ass as possible.
4) That Greg Land uses porn stills to depict a teenage superheroine.
5) That Land’s female faces are well-nigh identical
Oh, and I called Frank Miller a weasel-fucker*, but didn’t get specific as to why. Don’t worry, I will.
This didn’t prevent people from assuming that a) my only problem is the costumes and b) assuring me that men are just as objectified as women, costumes-wise, to which I respond with A. Hunt’s excellent article, Talking Points. (I disagree with the article’s conclusions, since I believe that in this nutbag cultural paradigm objectification of women is automatically easier to read than objectifying men, and thus “equal” objectification will still be biased in favour of the male gaze.)
The costumes, while frequently painful, are not the everything. Rest assured, misogyny-haters! Actual detailed and specific rage is a-coming. I have plenty to work with.
But before that, the following:
I am profusely irritated that such clarification is necessary, but I shall point out that this isn’t Feminism 101. Nor is it a place to whine about how feminists want to take over the world / they’ve already taken over the world / men are raped TOO! / you can’t get a date.
This is a place for pointing out sexism in comics with white-hot rage and acid-tongued venom. I am not required to explain feminist principles, theory, or aims to you, much less endeavour to wearily soothe your ego while I explain that I don’t hate men. I am not obliged to do your homework for you.
But for you, noble detester of sexism-but-not-in-comics-because-comics-aren’t-sexist, I have some pointers for where that homework might begin! You don’t have to do it. There will be no pop quiz. However, going up against feminist academics with the intent of proving how wrong they are without some basic groundwork in feminist theory is much like a hacker battle with Oracle when you are armed with an abacus and your hazy recollection of tenth-grade mathematics. You are destined to fail.
For men, especially, I recommend that you look into and think seriously about the concept of male privilege.
The patriarchy (or patriarchies) is not a conspiracy. It doesn’t have to be. It is an insidious creator of and creation of culture and the ideal of male domination is so deeply embedded in the collective consciousness of humanity that it is occasionally difficult to recognise its slimy appendages.
And for men, this recognition is substantially more difficult, because of male privilege.
Please read this article.
Okay, now take a look at the Male Privilege Checklist. Here are later amendments to and discussion of that Checklist by the author.
If you are a guy, you have male privilege. If you are white, you have white privilege. If you are straight, you have straight privilege. The same goes for being able-bodied, able-minded, and non-elderly. It’s not your fault. However, as a presumably decent person, it is up to you to acknowledge that it exists, and mitigate, insofar as is possible, the effects such privilege has on both your view of the world and your discourse.
Feminists of every stripe have encountered many arguments which are centred not in logic, but in male privilege (women can and do also endorse male privilege). Many female feminists are sadly familiar with even well-intentioned men patronisingly telling them how best to advance their cause from their privileged position.
In particular, regardless of your gender, you are advised to avoid the following arguments:
1) Don’t be so angry!
Don’t be an idiot. Rage is an entirely appropriate reaction to injustice. Being angry about something doesn’t invalidate one’s argument.
2) You should be doing something more important for feminism than criticising comics.
a) Criticising a manifestation of sexism in any media is a contribution to feminism.
b) Why assume I’m not?
3) You feminists-
Feminism is not the Borg. There are, in fact, feminisms, and a great number of feminists with whom I strongly disagree on many points. I do not speak for all women, all feminists, or all feminist superhero comics fans. It says that down at the bottom of the blog and always has, but it apparently bears repeating.
The following links offer illumination on these topics, and are mostly also damn good reads. Much thanks to Ragnell for her assistance in link-gathering:
Anger:
Heo Cwaeth In Defense of Bitterness
Mickle Masquerade
Privilege:
Andrea Rubenstein Think Women Have Achieved Equality? Think Again.
earlbecke Political Correctness and Privilege
Defining Feminism(s):
Ilyka Damen Help Me Out What About Actual Feminists?
The Happy Feminist Feminism 101 What Is Feminism?
Andrea Rubenstein Feminism Is About Choice
Misogyny in Language:
earlbecke On The Use of Language
Objectification:
earlbecke But Don’t You Like To Be Objectified Sometimes?
Mickle Monday Rant
This Is Important:
Andrea Rubenstein De-Bunking the Myth of Frivolity
Comics Specific:
Ragnell I’m Not Cleaning That Out (Discussion of Women In Refrigerators)
Ragnell Where’s My Adolescent Power Fantasy?
Kalinara Not All Female Comic Readers Like Sandman
Kalinara Women, Comics, Biases and Ramblings (Rebuttal of the “You should be doing something more important!” argument.)
Kalinara Men *Never* Sacrifice the Sluts: The Virgin/Whore Dichotomy in Comics
Dan Jacobson Refrigerator Culture and Privilege (Most male comic book fans aren’t assholes, but that’s not the point.)
heykidzcomix They Said It Could Not Be Done(Parody of those ridiculous and demeaning “How to Get Your Girlfriend To Read Comics” articles.)
Aaaaand we’re officially done with the feminist primer. From now on, ignorance is not an excuse.

• This is a metaphor, wherein I liken weasel-fucking (an unpleasant activity) to Frank Miller (an unpleasant person). I know nothing of Miller’s sex life, and would rather eat my own eyelids than learn.
  —
  Comment on this post.

To continue Dolls and So Forth week at GRC, I ask you to inspect the following selection of DC Direct action figures, Series 3 of the Green Lantern sets:

Sing along, folks!
One of these figures is not like the others
At one of these figures I look askance
One of these figures is a female villain
One of these figures is anti-pants o/~
I have previously remarked on Star Sapphire’s Nakedest Costume Ever and how inappropriate it is in view of her history as the metaphorical representative of a female-only alien race deeply concerned with injustices against women and who occasionally enter outright misandrism. Yes, she hates men so much that she dresses like the stereotypical Western pop culture representation of the most debased feminine object of masculine sexual desire and colour-codes herself as immature/babyish/feminine/soft*! Wow, what a bitch.
Anyway, it’s always icky when female characters are constructed to pander to the male gaze, and particularly so when they also represent an entire race of pseudo-feminist women, but tonight I’d like to draw your attention to the main source of my BOO. The above, as mentioned, is Series 3.
Here is Series 1 (Ganthet & Guardian, Black Hand, Kilowog, Hal Jordan, Parallax: better views of each figure here.):

And here is Series 2 (Manhunter Robot, Guy Gardner, Sinestro, Salaak, Shark):

I find it curious that all the other action figures are male, of varying body types and species (though no John Stewart, BAH), all bar one of them fully-clothed. The sole female figure is conventionally Western-style sexy and wearing a showgirl outfit.
How representative.
BOO, DC Direct, BOO!

It’s Dolls and So Forth week at GRC, folks, because the DC February solicits are out and I spent half an hour this morning going ‘YAY! BOO! YAY! BOO!’ at the action figures and busts.
As I’ve mentioned before, I like running around World of Warcraft and hitting bears with an axe, although lately I’ve been ignoring the whole axe thing and just punching the bears in the face. It is a rush! No wonder the Punisher likes it so much. (WARNING: silhouetted ultra-violence).
To my general delight, Wildstorm is releasing a World of Warcraft comic. At first glance it is all terribly exciting: story and script by Walter Simonson; art by Ludo Lullabi and Sandra Hope; covers by Jim Lee. That’s a definite ‘YAY!’, right?
Oh, so close! It would have been, but unfortunately, there are two things that make me go ‘BOO!’
One: There are five Horde (bad guy, more or less) races. Four of them are ugly or downright repulsive by conventional Western beauty standards. One of them is very, very pretty. Guess which race is represented by the sole female character named in the solicits?
Two: The main characters have DC Direct action figures. This is hers:
valeerahasnopants.jpg
Oh look! She isn’t wearing pants!
Valeera Sanguinar is apparently a rogue, a class of sneaky bastards who stab bears in the back. Their talents lie in being invisible until they shiv the bear, but after that point the bear is usually displeased. Rogues aren’t hardcore healthwise, so they really need the additional armour bonuses that come from wearing as many pieces of clothing as possible to protect them from their target’s ursine fury. Like, say, pants.
The lack of wisdom inherent in a pantless policy is borne out by the statue itself, which lovingly displays what appears to be a scar on her bare ass:
valeerascar.jpg
Of course, the practicality of pants-as-protection is totally outweighed by the aesthetic imperative for Valeera to be sexy, sexy danger. I am delighted by the raised weapon and the determined expression; I am driven into despair by the low bodice and thong; and I am wearily furious about, once again, the disproportionate sexual objectification of female vs. male characters*.
See what I mean? YAY. BOO.

In a recent Newsarama interview, Brian Michael Bendis nobly stood up for his right to denigrate fish-men in the face of heavy protest:
By the way, I’d like to point out to people who follow Newsarama in the fight scene with the Skrull, Namor begins it fully clothed, and, by the time it’s over, his shirt is ripped open, and more of his naked body can be seen. I know that this will cause a letter-writing campaign of my obvious disdain for fish-men, and my desire to see fish-men injured and demeaned even though my dad was a fish-man and I know many fish-men still.
Well, damn straight! I myself am distraught about the abuse constantly meted out to fish-men.
Think about it! Fish-men do more labour for less pay than any other section of salt-water society; they are frequently scorned for attempting to enter public life rather than staying confined to the domestic sphere of their watery homes; and a category of film emphasizing their sexual submission and objectification is a multi-billion dollar industry. Fish-men are heavily underrepresented in provincial, national or world governing bodies despite the fact that they make up 52% of the population. In certain deep-sea trenches, fish-men are forbidden to vote, drive, wear certain clothes, take birth control, or leave the house without a dolphin-man relative. Perhaps most gruesomely, according to best estimates, a truly horrifying one in three fish-men in the most technologically advanced parts of the ocean have been physically or sexually assaulted by their own partners.
Oh, wait!
That would be women. Fish-men, despite being totally imaginary, are doing a lot better.
Bendis, of course, is really referring to the much-discussed Tigra scene in New Avengers #35, where a thug comes into Tigra’s house, beats the crap out of her while she shrieks helplessly and her blouse opens to expose her bra-covered breasts, threatens to kill her mother and tapes the whole thing to show his criminal henchmen, which they greet with truly heinous joy.
Bendis got quite some flak over this from people who objected to the violence against another female comics character and to the disturbing doubled view of the beaten female body functioning as a source of visual pleasure, explicitly for the fictional criminals watching on tape, implicitly for the comic’s reader. Some objected to the perceived sexualisation of her open blouse and the capture on film, which evokes the spectre of snuff films.
Bendis, in another interview with Newsarama dedicated to this issue, said:
But to the larger point there’s a lot of misogyny in comics, and a lot of misogyny in all media. Even female empowerment is sexualized in this country, and that’s not good. I completely agree with all of that. You’ve got to be careful in how you show it, but I just don’t think this scene fell under any of that. Most people seem to get it.
And that’s okay. It’s good that he acknowledges misogyny exists, in comics, and in reality. But you can’t claim One True Non-Sexist Reading for your own text, Bendis. That’s not how reading works.
I personally found Tigra’s screams, figured as presumably high-pitched ‘Aieees!’, to be demeaning to warrior women and I’m disgusted she didn’t fight back. I can’t recall Bendis ever writing a male superhero who shrieked when beaten and never got a single blow in. But while the taping disturbed the fuck out of me, I can accept that it was meant to horrify, not titilate. I didn’t read the comic as endorsing or celebrating (sexualized) violence against women, in comics or in reality.
But a lot of people did, and their readings of the text, backed by a surrounding culture of real-world violence against women, are also valid.
I’m disgusted by Bendis’ later reaction to criticism, partly because it’s offensive to mock and dismiss people with genuine concerns, but mostly because it’s really stupid. Given the reference to the Tigra scene, what he was actually saying with his snarky fish-man diatribe was:
[I]n the fight scene with the Hood, Tigra begins it fully clothed, and, by the time it’s over, her shirt is ripped open, and more of her naked body can be seen. I know that this will cause a letter-writing campaign of my obvious disdain for women, and my desire to see women injured and demeaned even though my mother was a woman and I know many women still.
For fuck’s sake, having a mother who is a woman is not your get-out-of-misogyny-free card. Astonishingly, the category of ‘people whose mothers were women’ is incredibly wide. It includes philanthropists, soldiers, pre-schoolers, bus-drivers, homemakers, serial murderers, novelists, and misogynistic assholes.
Whether you know and love women is totally irrelevant. What we’re talking about is a comic which many people read as sexist. The people objecting to the work are genuinely offended. Mocking them, rather than responding to the criticism (or, hey, crazy thought shutting the fuck up and listening), compounds the offence. And the ‘But I have a mother!’ gambit is ridiculous.
But all that pales in comparison to the real problem. Dear readers, WHEN will someone finally think of the fish-men?

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All my stories about attending Auckland’s Armageddon convention seem to begin with ‘So THERE I WAS…’
So THERE I WAS, utterly delighted that Gail Simone was signing my Misfit T-shirt. So THERE I WAS, purchasing the original art of this page from Nicola Scott*.
So THERE I WAS, discussing shoe acquisition with Amanda Conner.
So THERE I WAS, eating Japanese food with the comics guests.
foods
Proof! Jimmy Palmiotti, myself, and Bruce Timm, who is doing something odd with edamame.
I suspect that dinner and conversation with the guests (and their significant others and wonderful handler) is not something that usually happens at a con; at least not without prior arrangement and the outlay of considerable expense. Somehow, I got lucky. However, to your possible dismay, I have decided that those conversations were off the record. Besides, I had drink taken some of it down the front of my dress and couldn’t swear to the accuracy of any report.
On the record, however, I can report the following from the panels:

• Jimmy Palmiotti is perfectly au fait with your downloading Painkiller Jane and is horrified by the price of pamphlets in the Antipodes. So are we, Jimmy. So are we.
• Much of the background in the big fight of the Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special was Amanda Conner’s idea, including my favourite part of the whole issue Lois Lane and her brass knuckles.
• The Terra miniseries will be out in the spring for northern hemisphere folks and autumn for southern hemisphere dwellers. We can look forward to some interaction with other DCU teen heroes.
• Nicola Scott is aware that people were upset about Barda’s missing chest-piece. She pointed out that the rest of the Birds on that mission were covered up, and that Barda’s Apokaliptian heritage means that she doesn’t really have to sweat bullets. She did listen to fan criticism, however, and restored the chest piece for the Siberian mission. After all, it gets cold out there.
• Gail Simone doesn’t want to remove the sexy from comics (and nor does she sweat skin-exposing costumes). Sexuality, she says, is part of humanity. What she does want is a wider variety of female characters, diverse and realistic, and different expressions of what ‘sexy’ is on the page.
• Onyx won’t be appearing in Wonder Woman in the near future. However, Nicola revealed that she has drawn her in one hitherto-unseen Birds of Prey panel ‘One panel. That’s all I’m saying right now.’
  I had intended to take notes during, but my laptop was occupied copying Painkiller Jane from the CD kindly lent me. I did scribble some notes after the panels, but my apologies to anyone I may have misrepresented.
  I returned from Armageddon and dived headfirst into writing a dissertation chapter, which has the effect of turning my mind into finest grade mush when attempting to consider anything else. But never fear! I’m back, well-rested and with plenty to rage about.
  So! Here I am!
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• Made by the thoroughly crafty Rachel Edidin, who is probably capable of anything she puts her hand to.
  ** It is perfectly all right if you hate me for this. I would hate me too.