Power without self-control tears a girl to pieces. – Wonder Woman, in Sensation Comics #19 (July 1943)
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you may have already noticed that I like comic books. I don’t mean romance comics or Archie comic either; oh, no! I love superhero comics, horror comics and science fiction comics of the Silver (late ‘50s-early ‘60s) and Bronze (‘70s) Ages. And though I haven’t purchased a new comic since 1980, I still enjoy adding old ones to my collection or buying reprint editions to fill in the gaps. I sometimes reread old issues, I enjoy superhero movies and TV shows, and I think the recent trend for people to become real-life superheroes is just about the coolest thing I’ve heard in years.
My affection for the genre began with two male relatives; the first was my cousin Jeff, who as I’ve mentioned before taught me to read. Since he was only three years older than I he can probably be forgiven for quickly tiring of teaching me from “baby books” and switching to comics instead; one of the earliest ones I remember was a Superman annual full of these crazy Silver-Age “red kryptonite” stories (for those unfamiliar with the mythos, this substance does not weaken Superman as green kryptonite does but instead has weird and unpredictable effects such as giving him amnesia or taking away his powers). The other influence was my mother’s younger brother, who died of leukemia in his late teens just a few months after I was born; he was made my godfather (a purely sentimental gesture, since he was already terminal at the time) and when I was old enough to understand I was given a few of his things, including his comic books. Hence my affection for the old sci-fi comics such as Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space which made up the bulk of his collection. And it was in the pages of the latter that I discovered one of my first heroines, Alanna of Ranagar.
Alanna was the beautiful daughter of Sardath, the most brilliant scientist of the city-state of Ranagar on the planet Rann, which orbited Alpha Centauri. Sardath invented the “zeta beam”, a means of teleportation by which Adam Strange (a heroic young archeologist from Earth) travelled periodically to Rann, where he fought weird menaces with his intelligence, his courage and the invaluable help of Alanna, with whom he had fallen in love. She had inherited her father’s formidable mind and was a scientist and adventurer in her own right, and Adam relied upon her wits and skills nearly as much as he relied upon his own. I was absolutely fascinated with the stories and wanted more than anything to grow up to be as beautiful and smart as Alanna, who (like John Carter’s Dejah Thoris, Sherlock Holmes’ Irene Adler and practically every woman in the works of Robert Heinlein) helped me to develop the mindset which later caused me to reject the false neofeminist duality of “a woman can be valued for beauty or brains but not both”.
Nor was Alanna the only such heroine I discovered in comics; another was Shayera Hol, better known as Hawkgirl, who fought villains alongside her husband Hawkman as the first married couple in comics (that I ever heard of, anyway). Like Alanna, Shayera was beautiful, intelligent, brave, and dedicated to helping her husband rather than trying to outdo him. Like Adam and Alanna, the Hawks showed me that the power of a well-matched man-woman team was hard to beat. The two ladies also shared something else in common; they both appeared in titles edited by the late, great Julius Schwartz, father of the Silver Age of comics and a former literary agent for such luminaries as Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, and H. P. Lovecraft. Schwartz loved strong women and was a supporter of women’s rights at least since the 1940s; most of the ladies (whether heroine, love-interest or villainess) who appeared in the titles he helmed were interesting, well-developed characters who stood out in sharp relief against the flat, stereotyped females who appeared in most other comics of the time (such as the rightfully-mocked Silver Age version of Superman’s girl friend Lois Lane, whose life was entirely dominated by schemes to trick the Man of Steel into proposing to her). When I started selecting my own comics around my eighth birthday, I came to love another such heroine: Wonder Woman, whose adventures were overseen by Schwartz as of the July 1974 issue.
Wonder Woman was originally created by William Moulton Marston, the psychologist who invented the polygraph; he had previously written a book encouraging 1930s housewives to use their sexuality to help their husbands break bad habits such as drinking and gambling. Marston was a kind of male archeofeminist; in 1942 he wrote:
Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world. There isn’t love enough in the male organism to run this planet peacefully. Woman’s body contains twice as many love generating organs and endocrine mechanisms as the male. What woman lacks is the dominance or self assertive power to put over and enforce her love desires. I have given Wonder Woman this dominant force but have kept her loving, tender, maternal and feminine in every other way.
As I discovered many years later to my delight, early Wonder Woman comics were chock-full of bondage and bisexuality; unfortunately, this type of content was quickly suppressed after her creator’s death in 1947, and the character began a long, sad descent until by the mid-‘60s she was nothing more than a joke. In the late ‘60s she was even de-powered and turned into an Emma Peel clone, and this sorry state of affairs might have persisted had not Gloria Steinem featured her on the cover of the very first issue of Ms. Magazine (July, 1972) and lamented her downfall in an editorial within. DC Comics took notice; her powers were immediately returned without explanation and for a year (six issues) her title featured reprints with new artwork. Finally Schwartz, who was well-known for his own super-power of reviving failing titles (he had previously rescued Batman in 1964 and Superman in 1971), was recruited to fix the mess and managed to put the Amazon Princess back on track from the very first issue he edited. Luckily for me, the Schwartz Wonder Woman was really my first in-depth experience with the character; I previously knew her only from a single early ‘60s issue of my mother’s and her appearance in the Super Friends cartoon show.
Though comics of that time could never have featured prostitutes (except for one late ‘70s story I recall in which Batman got some information from a pretty streetwalker named Maria), I have no doubt that these heroines helped me along my path by teaching me from a very early age that women could be strong without being bellicose, beautiful without being fragile and intelligent without being bossy; that standing up for what’s right isn’t always easy; that it’s a good thing to be who you are even if some others don’t like it; and that a beautiful figure is nothing to be ashamed of.
Elektra was a prostitute.
I never read much Marvel, and wasn’t she post-1980? I know Frank Miller even made the Catwoman a prostitute, but again that was long after I stopped collecting.
Yes, post 1980, plus Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff is a prostitute as well.
Funny about that last sentence; I got into a huge fight on Twitter with someone who said women that look like comic heroines hypersexualize women and it’s wrong. She said that more heroines should look like real women look. But some women *do* look like you, that’s the thing.
I can’t stand women who criticize fictional characters for not looking like or being like “real” women, as though “real” women all came out of the same dumpy, insecure mold. Heinlein heroines are criticized by feminists in the same way, despite the fact that A) they were mostly patterned on his wife Virginia; and B) there are a number of real women, like me, who are so Heinleinesque that men remark on it.
That kind of attitude is not only pure bullshit, it’s demeaning to other women. Second-wave feminists and neofeminists have their own version of the Madonna/whore duality, with themselves cast in the “Madonna” roles and self-confident, sexual women in the “whore” role; it’s one of the things third-wave feminists strongly disagree with them on. Women like the one you argued with, who deny other women’s reality, are no different from men who put women’s sexuality on trial in rape cases; how would they feel if we said they weren’t “real” women because they were fat, ugly and unfeminine? But they have no problem with the inverse.
And even ignoring all that, do they honestly believe that male superheroes look like most men? Superheroes are idealized, not average, but normal men aren’t such useless twits that they sit around whining that illustrations (or dolls) affect their self-confidence.
These are very powerful statements, spoken by someone who is extremely comfortable and indeed grateful for her feminine sexuality. I wish I could’ve had you on my side during the argument.
Because I’m always guilty by reason of mansanity.
If you get what I’m sayin’.
If you’ve still got her address, send her the direct link to that comment: http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/heroines/#comment-7661
I WAS HOPIN’ YOU’D OKAY THAT!
🙂
Oh, poor poor me! I don’t have abs like Superman. I feel soooo inadequate. I think I might have to eat less brownies and do a bunch of situps so that…
Waitaminit. I could just bitch and moan about how unrealistic Supes is instead. I mean sure, he flies and sees through walls and is bulletproof but come on, real life men don’t have a physique like that! Men shouldn’t be drawn that way!!!
Yeah, that’s much easier.
A good read. I’ll be properly re-reading rather than just admiring the artwork in the Adam Strange reprints I have when I find them now.
Have you seen the 2009 Wonder Woman animated feature at all? My then 9 year old niece loved it (as did her grandfather). Hon. mention to Wonder Woman in Justice League Unlimited Season 2 also.
I actually loathe good girl art in comics – I want my heroines to be drawn realistically, same as the men. Frank Miller’s Elektra in the pages of Daredevil #168 to #181 blew me away. The sequel, Elektra Lives, resolved her story very well.
Greetings from Bonny Scotland!
Maggie, to me, you’re pretty much a heroine with superhuman powers. Captain America (!) and Wonder Woman were my comic icons.
Wow, thank you! I literally don’t know what else to say, except…thank you! 🙂
Wonder Woman made you a whore?
Geez. What would Marvel Comics say.
😀
Now, Gorbachev, what I said was she helped to give me the courage to follow my own path; it’s not quite the same thing.
Besides, as Scorch pointed out, Marvel had its share of whore-heroines (whoroines?) as well. 😉
Granted. Not quite the same.
So how do you account for my outrageously slutty ex-ex-ex-ex (very ex) GF? By 38, she’s been with, as she admitted, an uncountable number of men. When we dated when I was 24, the number was countable on one hand. Now, she literally has no memory of how many it is. She jokes that it might be more than some whores. One year, she worked through much of the male population of NYC. She wasn’t sure when she went to parties if she’d slept with any of the men she met. Or most of them. Call it her Crazy 30’s.
Maybe she read other comics?
“An uncountable number of men.”
So she just went on a sex spree, hmmm….?
She was single for 10 years; she worked as a lifeguard, a lifeguard trainer, then a gym co-ordinator, a fitness trainer, and now runs a consulting business for the fitness and training sector. She’s reasonably hot (even at 38), and was surrounded by hot guys and alcohol and fun for a decade and a half.
Not married, of course. She complains that guys never want to hang around long enough to have a LTR with her. I wonder why.
But she joked that she kept concurrent lovers for years, interspersed with literally uncountable one-night-stands for about a decade. She says that she found abs and a bad attitude more or less impossible to resist. I don’t know numbers, but she loved traveling to conferences; she’d target the hot guys and basically spend a week fucking.
One year she says she slept with at least 70 men; possibly more.
You wouldn’t guess it to look at her. But she’s very picky. The men must be hot, be a bit of a bad boy, and have options. Virtually all of the men she’s been with have been married or with other women.
Think about that.
She doesn’t do this now. Most shockingly, she’s been stunned by the limiting of her options as she’s getting older. At 28, she could have the hottest guy in the room and string him along. She bought into the “Hot chicks always rule” philosophy. Now, as a 38-year-old, she’s facing a future where she needs to actively sell her goods to get attention (and she’s goo at that) – but no men are interested in anything long-term.
Sold a feminist fantasy, now aging and alone. When her declining sex appeal diminishes, she’ll find herself alone and unable to procure the men *she wants* for casual sex.
I’ve had this talk with her. She’s poo-pooed me. Called me a misogynist. Whatever.
I told her I was dating women 10 years younger than me, and I even dated a whore (well, that wasn’t as straightforward as it sounds); but that even in that case, she was 12 years younger than me (22), far more attractive than I was and a profoundly interesting person. So I wasn’t judging her sluttitude.
I pointed out that actual whores were likely more honest about it and at least had some hard cash to show for it (a couple of apartments in a big city in my ex-thingy’s case). And that if they were whores, what was she?
She took huge offense at this. But she eventually had to admit that she was a huge slut and whatever. But she took umbrage at the idea that this was a bad thing.
While I’m no pure white cake myself, ahem, to put it mildly – I’m a guy. It’s no social loss for a guy to fuck around a lot. In fact, it generally makes him more attractive to women (they may be grossed out by it, but they want a man other women want – put it down to hardwiring).
But all men in every society have to overcome social stigmas when women are slutty to have relationships with them. It’s a remarkable guy who can get over this. I dated a woman who worked in the sex industry for half a year, though not an enthusiastic supporter of her job, and I wouldn’t have dated her if she wasn’t incredibly cool generally– but I never really got over the social stigma, myself.
And I like sluts.
But she still wouldn’t give it a second.
Hmmm, lots of interesting things there.
Of course it’s misogyny or misandry whenever people have to face what Maggie has called “The Tyranny of Nature.” She doesn’t get what a lot of hot women don’t get, men love pussy, not them.
Also, many hot(at least American) women don’t get that everybody gets a turn…if they are to look at a man and turn their nose up at him, one day men will do the same to them. That’s normally about the time they’re screaming about how “unfair” it all is. But it was certainly fair when they were the center of attention.
Also, she seems to think it fine to go after men or make herself available to men that are already in relationships, not understand the Karma that she’s building by disrespecting their wives & girlfriends like that.
Men are mostly attracted to women in their prime; for the average woman, that’s about 16-36. As good as she’s going to look without help is normally there(obviously with exceptions). And as Maggie has brilliantly helped me to understand, nature demands that it be the way to continue the species, which made total sense once it saw it from that perspective.
Of course women have the freedom to be sluts, but for some reason, some women think that they can be sluts without consequences…that’s not even true for men, it’s just that the consequences aren’t the same.
Lastly, I hear you on that social stigma thing; I feel the same way, it’s difficult for many men to date long term someone that everybody has had. Or even *could* have. I chalk it up to the double standard about female sexuality.
Many people will admit that female sexuality has extreme value, especially when they use it to further their own goals…often these same people are loathe to admit that anything that can be valued can also be undervalued, overvalued, or devalued.
Whores know that, and try not to price themselves out of the market, unless they develop what Maggie has called Platinum Pussy Syndrome. Sluts however often seem to think that there is no cost at all either way to their behavior, and life just does not work that way.
Women who tart around are dangerous: In a state of nature, men can’t know if the kid is theirs.
Men who dog it around, so long as they don’t divide their resources, prove their sexual worth: a loser who doesn’t get laid isn’t valuable.
These two differences are biological. It’s because one has a womb, and one does not. That goes beyond “male” and “female” – it’s game theory. Basic natural selection predicts that the one with a womb and the one without would evolve this way.
That’s biology.
Denying it is absurd.
Couldn’t agree more.
Dear thehumanscorch, “not understand the Karma that she’s building by disrespecting their wives & girlfriends like that”. What in the world’s wrong with you??!! Why aren’t you with it??!! Get with that WONDERFUL world system of who cares who I lie to or hurt? It’s all about what I want when I want it and ###*** anyone else. I want my “rewards” (eyeroll…gag) for doing this and I’ll lie/cheat/hide, etc., whatever it takes to get it. I’m REALLY NOT hurting anyone, am I? What they don’t know won’t hurt them! ###*** them! It’s probably their fault COMPLETELY anyway I’m doing this. (Eyeroll…gag…again). Anyway, I’m using sarcasm here to make a point (if you hadn’t figured it out by now)…I commend you for GIVING A DAMN about this issue. THANK YOU, seriously! I also want to point out that not all women who are wild like the 1 Gorbachev is talking about have these standards. Are there “wild women” (as I call them) who lie, hide, etc., and could care less who they hurt? YES. I learned this 1st hand from my own “wildness”. There’s also 1’s like me who HATE with all they are the lying, hiding, etc. Before anyone says, she thinks she’s so pure, NO! There were a few times I was with married men who didn’t have arrangements. There was 1 I saw twice who (ironically) wanted what I did which was something ongoing (sex only). I turned him down and broke off contact and am very thankful he was great about this. The standard I started out with was NO married men even IF they had an arrangement and no one who wasn’t legally married who didn’t have an arrangement. If they lied about anything, then that was on THEM, but if I found out they were lying I’d break off contact. It still makes me feel literally sick thinking about the few times I compromised my own rules. I haven’t done it again and never will. Again, THANK YOU for taking this stand in this way too cynical, mercenary, SELFISH world system that even if people don’t know they’re being cheated on, lied to, etc., it’s still a horrible, wrong thing. What they don’t know won’t hurt them is a cop-out and also plain arrogant. I’ve learned from reading true crime books the devastation that can come from this stuff. Also from just following any local news. People that don’t want arrangements should never be made fun of along with anyone who waits until marriage to have sex, etc. I’m so tired of these people getting ###*** for their choices, as much as I am tired of it for the “wild women” AND “wild men”. Thanks for listening.
I was NEVER under the illusion that the men and few women I saw during my wildness loved me. I didn’t WANT THEM TO. I already had a relationship when I started to see others. I wanted to have both in my life (relationship plus sex only friends). I get so tired of the ###*** that “all women have sex to find love”. NO. Not all of them do and I’m 1 that proves that. I did things the way I did to AVOID THE RISK of love. I’m very thankful no one I saw ever tried to interfere with Sailor B and I. Unfortunately, 1 woman he saw did try to split us up. But, as horrible as it was, we worked through that and resolved it. It’s my hope she’s not tried that again with any other couple as it can be a dangerous thing (literally). Anyway, there ARE women who have sex without love or trying for love. Yes, we’re rare (I learned this in counseling), but WE COUNT like EVERY person does. Thanks for listening.
Please know that it was NO “social loss” for me during my “wild years”. I know 1 big reason for this: because I hid it from nearly everyone. My goal was always to be open about it at some point in time once I did the work I needed to do to not let the ###*** from some in society bother me or stop me. I did that work and have lately started to be open about it. This blog has helped greatly with that. The truth is I’ve been with a fraction of the # of people you’re saying your ex has. But, I thought we “sluts” (eyeroll) are with everyone, anyone, anytime? HHHMMM…sorry, not all of them are! I’m proof of that (see my post to the humanscorch). To talk about this specifically is another of the many reasons I started posting here: to show there’s “wild women” who do have some rules, etc., on who they’ll see, etc. Your “women who tart around are dangerous”: REALLY? RIGHT! I was sure “dangerous” in this area…eyeroll. Something that breaks this FAIR blanket statement: I was fanatic about birth control during my wildness. I’ve never been pregnant and that was how I wanted it. GASP! But, that wasn’t dangerous, that doesn’t fit with me being wild…HHMM…I started on birth control pills before I became wild on purpose. Even though I was an active alcoholic during most of those years, I NOT ONCE missed taking my pills. I’m proud of that. 1 reason I was so careful about birth control is I hate illegitimacy for at least a few reasons plus the thought of having a child and not knowing who the father was was something I never wanted any part of and never will. Sounds dangerous to me! There was also that I knew to have a child while being an active alcoholic would be abusive and I wouldn’t have any part of that either. I have gotten some ###*** for coming out about my arrangement, etc., but I expected it, but it’s not affected me hugely. I’m able to still work, have a relationship, etc., the same things I was doing when I was wild…HHHMMM.
I certainly am glad you never missed your BC. However, our brains evolved in a world that didn’t have contraceptives, at least not very good ones. So even though a woman today can “tart about” without much danger, the hard-wired reaction is to consider it dangerous.
Of course, we have an adaptive intelligence, and are not limited to instinct alone. This is why social and technological evolution can proceed so much faster than biological evolution. Bees can only invent a better hive if they have the right genetic mutation take hold; humans can think up a better skyscraper, no genetic variation required. So even though we are hard-wired to consider YOU dangerous, we can get past that, just as we can get past the aversion to pain and practice decorative scarification.
Odd that neofeminists should say a woman can be valued for beauty or brains but not both, seeing that as a rule they have neither. Any beauty they might have through their genes they quickly destroy with bad temper and self-hatred. Such intelligence as they might claim they lose through dogmatism, delusion, and derangement.
How they must LOATHE women who are beautiful or intelligent, much less BOTH.
More specifically, I meant that neofeminists claim that for a man or “society” to value a woman for her looks automatically precludes her being valued for brains. Since just about any intelligent and beautiful woman will tell you that this isn’t remotely true, I can only conclude that neofeminists believe it because they’ve never experienced it.
Here’s a news story that may interest you and your readers –
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/offbeat/9456129/triple-sex-treat-for-sydney/
Sorry, I don’t know how to make a proper link thingy.
It’s just a short note in a newspaper about building Australias largest brothel in Sydney. People are so laid back about it here it doesn’t even rate as front page news. If only the rest of the world was like that.
u’ll like this, mags:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/my-friend-the-john-on-chester-browns-graphic-memoir/article2021715/
Several people have mentioned that book to me, so I reckon I should add it to my Amazon wishlist for future review!
One aside, though; if I accomplish ONE THING socially (as opposed to decriminalization, which is an effort of many people) with this blog, I want it to be that our friends STOP using the word “john” for clients. That’s a now-pejorative term used almost exclusively by cops and the media, and never by any working girl I’ve ever met. It’s almost as bad as the people who say they support decriminalization because it would help us all escape the STDs, drugs and pimps which “everybody knows” we all suffer from. 🙁
What would another word for ‘john’ be?
On another note, you bring up an important issue: STD’s. You must’ve done a lot of book-reading on this. Did it ever scare you, the possibility of gaining an STD? Obviously condoms protect again so many of them, but what about herpes? Can’t that be contracted just by touch or saliva? Apparently a ginormous percentage of the population has herpes.
I have never, ever heard a real working girl refer to a client as a “john”; I honestly don’t know if that term originated among streetwalkers around the turn of the last century or if it first appeared among cops, but no escort I’ve ever met uses it. I’ve heard client, customer, patron, hobbyist, gent, gentleman and a few others, but never “john”.
Thank you, Maggie. Wonderful column. I am particularly happy that you mentioned Shayera Hol. I am a HUGE fan of the Golden Age of DC comics and in particular, Hawkman and Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman. Granted, Shayera and Katar were the Silver Age versions of those characters, but the revamp has always left intact one thing…those two characters were a team in every sense of the word.
I guess I’m just a big softie, but I always loved the idea of one very happle unbreakable couple. It is nice to see, even in a world of giant mind contolling starfish from space and psychopathic clowns.
I first encountered the Hawks as a team in The Atom and Hawkman #39, which I got in a “grab bag” at a fund-raising event at my school about five years or six years after it was published. Despite the fact that she isn’t on the cover, Shayera actually saves the day in the story. Later I became familiar with their Silver Age exploits in one of the several reprint comics DC published at that time, which was also my source for a number of Adam Strange stories. 🙂
On something of a tangent; has somebody introduced you to the writing of Lois McMaster Bujold? Her female characters tend to be strong, intelligent, and textured.
(Book pusher here.)
I’m afraid I don’t read novels very often any more; I’m so busy that I find it difficult to keep the plot details in mind over the weeks it may take to finish. Since I started stripping in ’97, my fiction reading has been almost exclusively short stories (though I did manage to find time for Zelazny’s first five Amber novels a couple of years ago).
About Electra and Black Widow:
I don’t know anything about these characters, except that Electra had a movie which is said to have been bad. So I have to ask question of those more knowledgeable than myself.
What sort of prostitutes were they? Were they independent escorts, leading a life freely chosen? Were they pimped, drug-addled victims? Were they trafficked slaves? Were they desperate, miserable women who hated every client, but did what they had to to avoid starvation? Evil, greedy, man-hating bitches? Something else entirely?
That a hooker could be a superhero shows some change in public thought, but what kind of hooker?
Elektra’s life of prostitution was always displayed as self-directed, dirty, and part of her self-loathing combined with a need to survive once she quit the group that trained her to be an assassin, The Hand.
She initially wanted to avenge her father’s death, but then got caught up in the killing, and then realized that she’d become the same thing that killed her dad; she tried to break free, but couldn’t. At least for a while.
Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, used sex more as her job for the Russian government, so I guess that would qualify her more as an escort. Natasha has zero regrets, and I think has slept with most of the Avenger men by this point.
Thanks. It occurs to me than escorting would be a pretty good cover for a super. You spend a dozen hours or so each week earning a living, and you have the rest of your time free to battle rogue cyborgs and the like.
Exactly. 🙂
I just discovered your web site a few days ago. I’ve been reading backwards from the present since then.
I had no idea you were a comic-book fan, too. My already high opinion of you has now shot up even higher!
Why, thank you, Platypus! 😉