Girl Superheroes for Girls

DC Superhero Girls (or possibly Super Hero Girls) is a new web animation series, book series, and any other type of merchandising they can possibly squeeze out of it. The setting is a school for superheroes, which doesn't seem that fussy about the "hero" part, since they seem to have let in several villains too. Basically it's attempting to do Monster High, only for superhero comic characters, and judging by the costume designs, skewing a little younger.

I've seen some criticism that, since the school is co-ed, they should have made it more inclusive by calling it Superhero Kids or something else less gender-specific. But you know what? No. They shouldn't. On the one hand it's a superhero show for girls, which is a big thing in itself in an age where Black Widow is ignored in Avengers merchandising and female-led superhero movies are decidedly at the back of the queue.

But beyond that, if the series had a non-gender-specific title everyone would have assumed it was for boys, and that the majority of the characters would be male. Because that's what non-gender-specific means in our society. Men and boys have been pandered to for so long at the expense of women and girls that if you have a group that has an equal number of male and female characters it is considered female-biased, simply because the vast majority of "non-gender-specific" shows feature a primary cast that is four guys and one girl, or three guys and two girls. Even where the female character is nominally the protagonist, the supporting cast is predominantly male. So yes, the only way of having a show that isn't male dominated is by making it a specifically female show. And I am fine with that.

And, oh look. Who's that in the background...?

Race against Time

The comedian Louis C.K. does a great routine about white privilege, part of which talks about time travel.

He says:

I could get in a time machine and go to any time and it will be fucking awesome when I get there. That is exclusively a white privilege. Black people can't fuck with time machines. A black guy in a time machine and it's like, "Hey, nothing before 1980. I don't want to go."

Which may be funny, but is not strictly accurate.

Sure, Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries would be problematic, to say the least, and America up to the 1960s (or later), but while a black person earlier than that in Europe might be considered exotic because of their rarity, they would not be actively discriminated against. There are records of black people living in England that go back many centuries before the slave trade without evidence of discrimination.

And then again, if we assume the white person with a time machine is an English speaker, there are plenty of times and places where he would be unwelcome, liable to be pressed into slavery (it's never been just for black people), or shot on sight for being English.

Women, on the other hand, are stuffed. Doesn't matter what race they are, without some man to support them, they'd be considered property most times and places prior to the twentieth century.

Feminist language

Language defines our world in so many unconscious ways. The words we use to describe things say a lot about how we view the world. More, the associations we have for a word are important, even if we don't see any connection. So when people say that when they use "gay" as an insult it has nothing to do with their attitudes toward homosexuals, they are wrong.

How can I say that? Consider the trouble caused by the usage of the word "niggardly", which has no racial connotations at all, and yet people who have used it have been given reprimands, been sued, or even lost their jobs for using a word that sounds similar to an unacceptable word. In fact it's now pretty much disappeared from the language altogether.

In the early days of feminism there was an effort to add some gender balance to language by changing words that had "man" in them to something a bit more gender-neutral. Some did take; for example "chairman" is now often "chair-person", or the slightly sillier (to my mind) "chair". Many did not. What I've noticed lately is something of a feminist revenge, where rather than attempting to "fix" the established language and persuade other people (particularly men) to use it, women have just started making up new male-specific words that often describe aspects of the female experience (eg. mansplain, man flu) which somehow hadn't been covered before.

And what's even more amusing, to me at least, is the rise of male-specific words to describe things that are traditionally more female associated, and why it's not in any way effeminate or un-manly for a guy to be associated with them (eg. man purse). Possibly used sarcastically, but your mileage may vary.

Not to be confused with words where someone has taken an offensive female-specific word and applied it to a man (eg man-slut). Equality of offensiveness is still just offensive.

A stroll through Urban dictionary has pages of this stuff, including many hilarious examples I've never heard of before, but am now noting down and looking for opportunities to insert them into conversation.

A metric f*ckload of deck chairs

In Detective Comics #673 Batman imagines a case for Stephanie's costume in the Batcave. It may not even be real, but it does suggest that deep down Bats thinks she deserves one, and in a wider context acknowledges the same fact, despite Dan Didio's rather poor editorial joke about her not getting one: this presumably being a hint about the current rash of appearances by Spoiler in several Bat-titles.

This was an entirely arbitary goal set by girl-wonder when it was first formed. Only an idiot would assume that this means the battle is over. But it gives the guys at g-w a reason to celebrate.

It's in the name

The Legion of Superheroes has always had something of a reputation for sexual equality, and now with the publication of the Legion Showcase collection we get the opportunity to see their earliest appearances, and a somewhat different picture emerges. Basically, unless you were Saturn Girl, the preferred trait for a female legionnaire seems to be the ability to fade into the background and keep quiet.

When the Legion first appeared, the name was really a bit of a stretch. Only Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad were in any way identified or got speaking parts, with a few backs of heads to suggest the Legion had more than three members. In most subsequent appearances a couple of new members would be introduced, although they never got to do much, until the Legion finally got their own series in Adventure #300.

This comic introduces two new female members, even if they don't appear in the story: Triplicate Girl is on the cover and a statue of Shrinking Violet is shown among other Legionnaire statues on the first page(1).

Shrinking Violet's first actual appearance is Adventure #301 where she appears in two panels, filling out group shots. She continues to stand at the back and say nothing for some time, except #305, where she gets to speak briefly. I can only guess this was because Star Boy was out sick and Lightning Lad was dead that day so she had to fill in, as she doesn't get to speak again until #310, where, for the first time in ten issues, she gets to use her powers. And then dies.

This being the Silver Age, she, and everyone else who dies is fit and healthy again by the end of the story. Over the next 20 issues Violet gets to use her powers twice more, to little effect, and it's not until #324 that she gets any individual attention, falling for Duplicate Boy, who conveniently leaves at the end of the story.

Phantom Girl gets it even worse. She is the first female legionaire introduced (2), appearing briefly in #290 for one panel (3). In #301 we find she is off on a distant planet on a vital door opening mission, which keeps her absent until #313. In fact she's not even listed as a legionaire, absent or otherwise, for twelve issues. She then vanishes again until #316, where she finally gets to speak, and even takes an active role in the story. She's next seen in #319 filling out the crowd scenes, and succumbs to a weapon that only affects her because she's not the star of the story.

Thereafter she appears semi-regularly, filling out the cast and occasionally getting to participate in the plot, but a lot of the time the writer hardly seems to notice she's there, which means that the contrived ending to Adventure #325 could have been avoided if he'd only remembered the power she'd demonstrated two issues earlier.

And then there's the names: Phantom Girl - A girl with a power to make herself so inconsequential that she's entirely forgotten for years at a time, and Shrinking Violet - the shy one with the power to make herself so small that nobody even notices she's present. I bet if Camouflage Girl (the girl with the ability to blend entirely into the background) had applied for membership they would have snapped her up because she would have fitted right in.


Notes.

1) Why the team have statues of themselves is not explained.
2) other than Saturn Girl.
3) two if you count the splash page, which is the same image