Misogyny, or “You’re Not a Real Nerd!”

Last year, I happened to see the Avengers. It immediately became my favorite movie, and I became interested in finding out more about the source material, especially about my favorite character, the Black Widow, or Natasha Romanoff. It was overwhelming to look at the material, since the Avengers have been around for decades. To make my quest easier, I decided to look for volumes on female superheroes, figuring there wouldn’t be quite as much material there.

I have been pleasantly surprised with what I’ve found. Marvel and DC both have multiple volumes on interesting characters such as X-23, Mystique, Batgirl, and Powergirl. The selection for the Black Widow is limited to three books representing three short series featuring the Black Widow. I fell in love with Marjorie Liu’s In the Name of the Rose, which was beautifully written, with excellent art. So far, I’ve read Batwoman, Batgirl, Captain Marvel, and Spider-woman. I’ve enjoyed all the volumes, and can’t seem to stop ordering more books to explore more female characters.

The female characters are no longer all posed in ridiculous positions, while wearing a bikini into battle. The costumes still have some issues (see Powergirl’s boob window), but I was relieved by the art in what I bought. The point was not sexual objectification of the female character; it was to make a good story.

I’m glad that the comic book world has made its comics slightly more female-friendly, though I don’t doubt there are examples of sexual objectification in other current comic books. And I haven’t noticed all that many women writing or drawing comics. I’m encouraged by writers such as Majorie Liu and Kelly Sue Deconnick, but I am discouraged by the backlash against comic book series featuring female teams, such as Fearless Defenders and the upcoming all women X-Men series.

Developing a Healthier Model of Desire

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently talking about and thinking about women’s magazines, but I recently picked up GQ, a men’s magazine. I was curious to know what men’s magazines discuss, since I’ve never bothered to read one.

The cover should have been sufficient warning that I was not going to like what I found inside. Beyonce is posed on the cover, in a crop top and leopard print underwear. Clearly, GQ is appealing to the straight male sexuality. Most of the content reminds me of  Elle; there are features on fashion, movies, books, and music, and a lot of the ads are for the same designers. The majors differences are the presence of sports content and the spread on the sexiest women of the millennium. It’s the latter that I want to discuss.

I want to be very clear when I say this: I do not dislike this spread because it’s about men expressing their sexual desires for women. There’s nothing wrong with finding women sexually appealing. I don’t think it’s disrespectful to find women’s bodies attractive. But GQ‘s spread on these women really highlights for me how unhealthy the model for expressing sexual desire for women is.

It’s hard to pick out what I dislike most, but I’ll start with how GQ immediately brings in the fetishization of the woman of color. On the first page, they pick out the “hot Chinese chick” of 2000, Zhang Ziyi. In the next pages, they pick out the hot Indian chick and the hot Sri Lankan chick. They also throw in a hot Italian chick, but I still feel the spread contributes to the problem of exoticizing/fetishizing women of color. Not to mention the word “chick” still ruffles my feathers.

That B-word

Please note that I use a number of words in this entry that may be upsetting. Proceed with caution.

Generally, I’m against censorship. I don’t think there’s anything offensive about words like “fuck,” and I don’t think most curse words are somehow harmful to children. Once I was old enough to understand that curse words were only for adults, my mom said “fuck” all the time. I never repeated it.

I noticed that WordPress censored the title of a recent post on the Freshly Pressed page. The original title had the word “bitch” in it; the censored version replaced “bitch” with “complain.” I wouldn’t have clicked on the link had WordPress kept the original title. I don’t have a problem with most curse words, but I do have a problem with “bitch,” because it’s a gendered insult that enforces sexist ideas.

It’s one of the words that’s allowed on television, even though it’s a bad word. You can also say “ass” (but not “asshole”) and “damn” (but not “goddamn”). It seems fairly arbitrary to me, but I’m not going to try to understand the censors’ logic. Women are called bitches; men are called bitches for acting weak or unmanly. People bitch about this and bitch about that. Some task is a bitch.