Gays In Refrigerators Too

[bellatrys]

So Perry Moore put his list up, and it comes with some pretty damning stats at the end, too.

Now, serious and longtime comics fans will know all this already, but for the casual and younger fan, it might come as a bit of a revelation that during the Silver Age it was actually prohibited by the comics industry rating system (much as with the Hays

Comments

[fledgist]

I find the 'gay=swishy' meme particularly annoying. It's terrible stereotyping.

Oh, yeah

[deiseach]

And the lesbian = butch. If you're not falling out of the top of your costume whilst tottering around on stilettos in fishnets, you're a frigid castrating bitch who only wants to destroy men and seduce the pretty fluffy girlies.

How they deal with Wonder Woman being an Amazon, I don't know. Yes, I do. Make 'jokes' about doing a twenty-page rape spread.

Gosh, guys, how I laughed!

Re: Oh, yeah

[fledgist]

Yes, that's just as annoying.

The rape thing, though, is criminal.

Re: Oh, yeah

[the_leewit]

I've often wondered (pardon the term) why Wonder Woman is not gay--- stupid Black Canary fanfics aside, the idea of Paradise Island being a utopian colony of gay women appeals to me an awful lot. It's the sort of thing that my housemates and I used to sit around bullshitting about in college.

Maybe it's the stereotype thing--- what lesbian in her right mind would fight crime in a flashy not-much while wearing three-inch heels after getting implants the size of her head?

Of course, I know very few straight or bi women who would go for that, either, so, um.

Re: Oh, yeah

[david_wisdom]

As bellatrys said, for the longest time it was the CCA. Today ... well, during his run Greg Rucka said the character made more sense as bisexual, but Diana's one of DC's Big Three. A major superhero with an alt sexuality? Perish the thought!

Not that there's any exclusionary motivation behind that, and you're a horrible person for thinking so.

Whether it was part of the character's original conception - well, it was the Forties, but there's an awful lot of various subtext in William Marston's early Wonder Woman stories, so it wouldn't surprise me. Particularly when his own personal life is taken into account.

well, people *have* wondered about her favorite expression

[bellatrys]

from the old days - "Suffering Sappho!" I suspect there was less worry about WW and her girl pals than about Batman and Robin because, well, women were more often thought of as asexual back when.

Re: Oh, yeah

[nimbrethil]

Kicker is, there was always a LOT of lesbian erotica in the older Wonder Woman--granted it was ALLLL about male fantasies, but still, it was there. And there is at least one lesbian couple in Themyscira--or at least there was a few years back. I don't know that the relationship was ever all that "graphic," but it certainly was not ambiguous, either. That the two women were lovers was plain. I do recall a number of readers complaining about it, including use of the argument about morality, as if funny books are where ANYONE would ever think to look for moral teaching.

But Wonder Woman was never a dick

[fledgist]

Actually it was more gender nonspecific BDSM, and there was one golden age WW comic on scans_daily where a rampant Gor style male dominationist was routinely tied up and forced to bow to the amazons to cure him. Golden Age WW is fucking awesome, even if Bondage Doesn't Work Like That! >_<

Not to mention that you can't NOT like golden age WW's little chubby freind who, rather than being a nitwit who existed to get in to trouble who WW could rescue or who's rape/murder/fridgerization WW could Avenge! but was not only routinely competent and helped WW despite not having powers of any kind, but would often be called fat by the evil doers, to which she'd usually reply with a blase "Meh, wot evr" a few panels before fucking the evil doers up in some way.

Especially as it'll be until the 80's with DTWOF before you get more positive fat female character who aren't constantly suffering from body shame as the central defining aspect of their personality.