And people are forgetting probably the most egregious example, in Superman Returns, when our hero gave Lois what was essentially some kind of Kryptonian roofie.
@tande04:
1) Superman Returns is supposed to take place soon after Superman II. Singer's conceit was that III and IV never happened.
2) Where do you think Superkid came from?
Ok, the seriousness of this subject aside, what's up with the third image of Batman & Robin? I mean it looks like 'ol Bats is packing a strip of bat-condoms in his utility belt...
I hate to break it to all of you but the definition of rape is a man taking forcible carnal knowledge of woman, so technically a man cannot be raped, he can be sexually assaulted but never raped.
@swordfish2eva1: the actual definition is as follows; forcing of somebody into sex: the crime of using force somebody to have sexual intercourse with somebody. men can be raped, and i feel that someone who has would be very hurt by your comment.
All three male examples were essentially date raped and sadly date rape is still made into a gray area for a lot of people. I've had more then one friend sleep with someone while under the influence, admit to not remembering the act or really wanting to participate and still claim they were not raped.
The heroines alluded to were all violently raped. The definition of the crime perpetrated is very clear and agreed upon.
So I'd argue this is more a symptom of our cultural disassociation with "date" rape then a specific gender quibble.
What's really sad is that the most violent non-lethal act comic book writers will allow to be committed against a male hero is disfigurement or crippling, where as heroines are fair game for violent sexual assault. If they're gonna take the women there then by golly they better be willing to take then men there or they better stop using rape as a plot device.
What everyone here is missing is that the Batman case is a retcon. In the original Son of the Demon story that Talia is referring to, Batman is very willing, going so far as to marry Talia and upon learning of her pregnancy becomes so protective he risks his own well-being to the point where Talia tells him she miscarried to keep him from killing himself. This is a lie, which opens up a lot of issues, but Talia is not a good guy anyway. So either Bats is retroactively withdrawing consent several years after the fact, or he's playing tough and messing with Talia's head to cover for the emotional sucker-punch she just delivered. Or, metatextually, Grant Morrison just raped Batman.
On the larger issue, I think a lot of it is a response to how we as a culture treat rape victims. It's a horrible act, but there are categorically worse things that can happen to you. I wonder how much post-rape trauma is based off how one sees their place in society now. There's got to be a reason why women seem to internalize the act much deeper than men do. I'd wager that not many men are raped by force, but rather some omission of consent, so there's that component. But mostly there just isn't the culture of victimization around men, so they just ... get over it, for lack of a better phrase.
@onetruejp: I'm sorry, but there's not much middle ground here: You're dead wrong. In fact, my gut reaction is to frankly think almost nothing of you for even suggesting to marginalize the issue even somewhat, but I'll try to stay civil.
But if you really think that worse things that can happen, you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. Watch some grapple a few minutes with the idea of carrying a child of the guy who violated you and quite possibly upsetting your entire life--putting 20+ years of your life on hold and devoting everything else or killing an unborn child (I say this as someone who is 'pro-choice'--it's still a hard decision), which by the way, stays with you, and than talk to me about worse things.
...No, you know what? Screw civil. If you think that's not a big deal, fuck you.
@Evdor: Look, I'm trying to discuss this rationally and impassionately. Nowhere did I say it's "not a big deal." Quite the opposite, thanks. Murder is worse than rape, I'm going to say it. Because no matter how bad rape fucks you up, you still have a chance to come to terms with it and live a reasonably normal life. Death completely and absolutely prevents you from doing anything else, ever. You clearly agree or you wouldn't be here to post this comment. Even within the field of things considered rape there's degrees. Obviously when the issue is personal, it can be hard to think around it. I'm not trying to minimize anyone's pain. But you don't know anything about me - my gender or life experience. You seem to assume I haven't had to confront these issues first-hand.
@onetruejp: Murder being worse than rape does not somehow make Rape the kind of thing you can shrug and go 'Worse things can happen, it's really society that makes it worse.' It's like suffering a stroke that paralyzes half your body and saying 'oh well, at least it's not terminal cancer.' Yes, it's worth, but it by no means trivializes what you endure, even slightly.
If I came across as passionate, it's because I have experince dealing with people who's lives have been royally screwed up--and guess what, societal outlook was probably the least of their problems. You're damn right I"m going to get pissed off by the very implication that the trauma is somehow related to a cultural vicitmization or some idea that the trauma is over-stated. I apologize if that bugs you, but past that I don't care. There's a time for rationality and there's a time when dismissing a horrible act as 'it could be worse' invokes ire. If you don't actually feel how you come across (a massive shoulder shrug) than my ire isn't directed at you, not entirely.
You want the more rational debate? Fine. I strongly disagree with you. Society does not play as large a part as violation, a feeling of powerlessness, and possibly having your life altered in harrowing, long-term ways.
And frankly, if you have experience dealing with this on a personal level, I'd expect you to be more sensitive of the matter than 'Society makes a bigger deal than it needs to! Worse shit can happen.' Sorry if the fact such a sentiment pisses me off upsets you.
Actually, if someone getting pissed off at such an impilcation somehow annoys you, I'm really not. The sentiment sounds a little too close to Rapist apologism, bluntly.
@Evdor: No, look. you have this all wrong. I'm nowhere close to attempting apologia here. If nothing else, I think a dry, logical discussion of these things ultimately helps us understand and treat rape victims better. Rape, I think, is a complex and terrible thing that happens to people. And I think it's important to understand WHY it's so bad, that makes people think it's worse than murder or disfigurement. This isn't a goddamn counseling session. We can discuss deeper issues here, I think, without having emotion get into it. Realize the post is talking about comic characters, one of which wasn't actually raped.
And yeah, I think that societal norms have a lot to do with it. Someone kills another and we can spend endless hours debating why and how and maybe that's because there's no victim to be around to speak out. But you assert that rape has some special province where we just have to assume that it's the worst thing ever and there's no room for discussion as to why or how we can mitigate the damage it does. AND IT IS TERRIBLE. But people having been surviving it and moving on for centuries, and we're even stronger today.
You seem to hold the position that any exploration or statement of difference of event somehow trivializes the victim. This is (A) dehumanizing and (B) pretty childish. Obviously I'm not speaking now as I would to someone who had just been brutalized. We have room now to explore why. Why do you consider rape worse than being tortured? Worse than murder?
The one salient point I think you've made, that wasn't couched in reactionary invective is about the social aspect. We don't treat people who have been "merely" beaten up or brutalized in quite the same way we treat rape victims. Or even murder victims. Through every level of the aftermath, from reporting the crime to following up, to discussing it with close friends, it's much easier to say "Well, I got the shit kicked out of me" than to say "I was raped" at some point, and I find this distinction strange. There's definitely a social component to understanding and resolving, personally, this destructive component of one's life, once it occurs. Especially since the topic at hand is dealing with the perceived difference between male and female rape victims (and even that word carries so much baggage I'm hesitant to use it), I think it's very important to explore the mechanisms of victimization and abuse that create this agony. Disregarding any of it is like a physician choosing to prescribe holistic treatments for cancer because chemotherapy is too toxic.
@onetruejp: I don't think you can logically say that murder is worse than rape. First of all, the circumstances of murder are wide ranging and can involve a very painful and time consuming act where the victim can beg to be put out of their misery or a very quick act that the victim may never see coming, such as a bullet to the head resulting in instant and a near painless death. Some murders are pretty horrific, others, at least the victim didn't suffer much.
Rape, on the other hand, the victim ALWAYS has to live with as long as it wasn't followed by murder. A victim of rape will never forget what was done to her (or him), and the act is never quick. Have you ever known a rape victim? Perhaps one that was knocked out by a man hitting her on the head with a telephone in her dorm room and being repeatedly anally and vaginally raped until morning? A girl who had to drop out of college her freshman year and move back home because she is now so mentally broken she can't function by herself? A girl who has repeatedly broken down to the point of attempting suicide se she can't forget what was done to her?
No? You don't know a victim? I didn't think so. Rapists should be never be forgiven, never be allowed back into society.
So, I know that I might be crucified for saying this, but the double-standard is there for a reason. Often, what would be horrific when a man is the rapist and a woman is the victim will be viewed much less negatively, and sometimes even positively, by the victim when the rapist is a woman and the victim is a man. It is really going to vary from victim to victim. To me, the biggest violation would be the one that happened to both Batman and Green Arrow. I think that many men would be far more devastated by being forced into fatherhood than by the actual rape.
@Go Like Hell Machine: Well...a quick search of the internet finds several reputable statements that men are less likely than women to identify themselves as raped. I absolutely do not intend to trivialize the feelings of those who do, of course.
That seems like an iffy way out, though, as a man might internalize feelings of guilt over the situation because he doesn't consider his rapist to be at fault for a situation. I will stand by the idea that forced fatherhood is even worse.
Comics, like the rest of pop culture, reflect what happens in the greater society. There is a double standard about sexual assault on men in general. If a male teacher has sex with a female student it's an outrage. If a female teacher has sex with a male student it's often seen as a coming of age for the young man. When a woman is raped she's a victim. If a man is raped he's a sissy. If a man is raped by another man he's a fag. When a man is sent to prison we make jokes about prison rapes and prison brides. If society saw all rape as wrong regardless of the sex of the victim, pop culture would reflect that.
@Bill-Lee: the problem isn't that "society" doesn't see all rape as wrong. The problem is that an alarming number of men do not see engaging in sexual activity with a women without her consent as uniformly and unequivocally wrong. Until that changes, colour me unsurprised that men do not recognize themselves as potential rape victims.
The thing that bothers me is that Marvel has no issue with publishing a comic with a potential rape (saying they only made out is a cop out) but the idea of a divorced peter parker is unacceptable, because divorced people can't be heroes.
I think you're not hanging out in the right fandom circles if you feel these things were ignored and did not promote outrage.
Most women I know who read comics ARE outraged by these three examples and point them out repeatedly as situations that show that the comic book industry is a little out of touch when it comes to sexual assault. The industry itself doesn't address the issue, no. Your point stands magnificently there.
But that fandom is not upset or outraged about it? Maybe not as a whole, but my corner of fandom certainly is. Most women I know refused to continue reading Nightwing after he was raped by Tarantula. These situations where the men are raped by women are held up as unjust and uncalled for and mishandled just as often as when the genders are switched.
What you're dismissing here is that rape is, explicitly, a power crime - the rapist derives sexual arousal *from* dominating and humiliating their victim, not by the sexual act itself. And castration, chemical or otherwise, does nothing to halt that particular urge.
At best, the physical lack of ability to achieve sexual arousal simply results in violent assault, and at worst changes nothing about the pathology at all.
Such a thing would never, could never, happen with a male rapist and a female victim. Imagine a man crowing about the fact that he raped a woman, it felt good, and he enjoyed it, and then being treated as a hero later in the story. Never happen.
@aspiringexpatriate: So true. I can never get over how much people love the Comedian, and hate on the Slik Spectre (I).
This also makes me wonder about Alan Moore's writings--what with the Killing Joke and this storyline, I straight up can't stand the role he gives women in those two comics.
@aspiringexpatriate: I was about to comment with this, but you beat me to it. (Spoilers follow) I couldn't stand that storyline, and I hated that Silk Spectre (I) fell in love with him. It is triggering, to say the least.
@Smeagol92055: But characters place part of the blame on Silk Spectre, and Silk Spectre (II) is portrayed as irrational and hysterical when she finds out the truth--which she should be, but it's played as happening because she is a hysterical female, not because of a traumatic event. While the novel is clear in depicting Comedian as a horrible human being, the fact that he is a rapist is downplayed. Fans celebrate his character.
@ameliabearhart: I'm glad you commented about Alan Moore's writings. I've read four of his works--League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Swamp Thing, Killing Joke and Watchmen--and in each case at least one woman is raped or sexually molested. I can only wonder: What the hell is this guy's problem with women?
@Holly_: What fans celebrate about him is a complete lack of restraint. The rape is merely one facet of that lack; the rest - killing women & kids in wartime, etc - is just as cheered. Hopefully this same characteristic in a real person would be considered nauseating, but since there are people who worship real killers, it's doubtful.
People in general admire and covet power, and Comedian's ability to act outside social norms and get away with it indicates power.
@Butts_McCracken: @templepriest: I wish I had understood that last year when I got all obsessed with Watchmen. I don't understand why he's gotten so much glory when there are amazing writers like Brian K. Vaughn out there, whose writing is so much more compelling and less disturbing (in that he doesn't make characters like the Comedian), and whose female characters are totally awesome. I understand that the writers are very different, but I cbelieve that Brian K. Vaughn's writing is more progressive and realistic (in terms of his dialogue and characterization) and that his writing might just be determinant of the future of comic books.
@bookwench: No, Alan Moore actually has a big problem portraying women as either strong or confident. Generally the women are outgrowths of the men, portrayed as sassy but fundamentally helpless to change anything in the movements around them.
I mean, look at Sally Jupiter in Watchmen. She's a second-rate character always attached to a man, and in her moment of decisive glory, she picks up a gun (the ultimate humiliation of any fist/foot super-hero) and tries to shoot Veidt, who, since he is the perfection of man, catches the bullet.
Or Eve in V for Vendetta, who's ultimate "education" was simply that she basically became V - a man?
@Pope John Peeps II:
And not to forget that part of Eve's education process was a good round of torture - "Learned her good!"
I might be making an unfair generalization, but I have known a few folks that are into Magick and they seem to have a deep trust and need for Hierarchies. Hierarchies of power, hierarchies of Knowledge, ability, or class. An occasional acceptance of an inherent hierarchy of gender might seem perfectly acceptable to such a mind.
I can take or leave Vaughn, but I find that he often uses his characters as mouthpieces for his views. Case in point: one character in Ex Machina says something about the ban on smoking, and the Mayor goes off on this harangue about the "Disneyification" of NYC. I mean, we get it, Brian: you want to smoke where you want. Just don't try to smoke around me.
@Pope John Peeps II:
Seriously? Moore can't portray women as strong or confident? DId you read Promethea? (Or actually read Lost Girls, for that matter, not just look at the pictures)?
The Comedian is actually a much more realistic portrayal of the "badass antihero" character than most *because* of the rape. It's pretty well established that The Comedian fought crime because he liked to beat people up, and he was good at it. Whereas other "antiheroes" are violent but draw the line at being sexist/misogynist. (Marv from Sin City indiscriminately beats the hell out of guys, but he's chivalrous with the ladies, unlike pretty much every real life brawler I know). Note : I AM NOT SAYING THAT THERE SHOULD BE MORE MISOGYNY IN COMICS. I'm simply saying that Moore is being condemned for creating what I think are psychologically realistic characters.
@ameliabearhart:
You realize that Moore wrote both those stories over 20 years ago, right? And that he's written a hell of a lot of stuff since, not all of which is hostile towards women?
Heck, even before that Moore created Halo Jones. He's a complex man, not some jerk who gets off on seeing women humiliated.
Is it just because it is the comics medium that there is outrage on rape done by a villain? Many people still see comics as targeted only to children and not teens and adults, at least many people I know.
I have read a few books with explicit sex and rape and I was ok with it as it was part of the story of fictional characters.
This also poses a question. Why is it ok for a villain to be villainous in every other respect (murder, torcher, mass destruction, manipulation) but rape is a no-no?
Is it just because we get emotionally invested in these characters over a number of years? I can read a novel that has graphic descriptions of sex, violence, racism and baby corpses hanging from hooks on chains and it will only take me two or three days and not be emotionally scared or really all that upset. Shocked, yes but I am ok with it in the context of the novel with bad people doing bad things.
@Janglesatwest: I think there are two aspects to it - one, it is not so much that the rape occurs, but in how it is dealt with. Two, I think that 99% of people would acknowledge that murder and torture are wrong, but sexual assault is a much grayer area; many people don't even believe that a man can be raped by a woman, and many others see nothing wrong with walking up to a woman and grabbing her ass. While these are sexual assaults, many people don't see it that way, hence the controversy.
@RavenNemain: wait what? the two examples you mentioned leave some people feeling ambiguous, or claiming that those aren't examples of sexual assault? that seems crazy.
@adaorardor: I agree, and yet it still happens. It is especially disturbing when it shows up in discussions with high school classes - if a lot of kids think this way, they must get picking it up from somewhere.
@Janglesatwest: The problem with rape is, I think, the incredible complication and confusion that is inherant in the act and its effects. This grey area means that while murder, torture, mass desctruction, and manipulation are easily cited and known to be evil acts, rape is a lot more confusing to point out and a means of much more confusing truama and damage.
Most of all, I think it is the idea that it can be confused with and about sex. If someone is tortured--like, say, waterboarded, then it is understood that being tortured in this way is bad. But if someone is raped, the actual act (sex, penetration, etc.) is one that people do all the time, (even though it is a violating perversion of that act).
Also, murder can be simple--a simple shot of a bullet. But rape is much more complicated and disturbing, especially since another person is directly being violated. And murder, torture, mass desctruction, and manipulation can be seen through the lens of the villian's motivations (i.e., world domination, quest for immortality, destruction of a superhero, etc.) But why would a villian rape? To directly damage and ruin someone's psychological well-being, to truamatize them so they...what? Are too disturbed and down trodden to go after them? Are totally confused? The villian's motivations therefore become so much more damning, confusing, and frightening.
09/20/09
09/20/09
Don't remember anything close to that in Superman Returns.
Are you thinking of Superman II?
09/23/09
1) Superman Returns is supposed to take place soon after Superman II. Singer's conceit was that III and IV never happened.
2) Where do you think Superkid came from?
09/20/09
09/20/09
09/20/09
09/20/09
09/19/09
The heroines alluded to were all violently raped. The definition of the crime perpetrated is very clear and agreed upon.
So I'd argue this is more a symptom of our cultural disassociation with "date" rape then a specific gender quibble.
What's really sad is that the most violent non-lethal act comic book writers will allow to be committed against a male hero is disfigurement or crippling, where as heroines are fair game for violent sexual assault. If they're gonna take the women there then by golly they better be willing to take then men there or they better stop using rape as a plot device.
09/20/09
I dunno, what Bane did to Batman was pretty serious.
09/19/09
09/19/09
On the larger issue, I think a lot of it is a response to how we as a culture treat rape victims. It's a horrible act, but there are categorically worse things that can happen to you. I wonder how much post-rape trauma is based off how one sees their place in society now. There's got to be a reason why women seem to internalize the act much deeper than men do. I'd wager that not many men are raped by force, but rather some omission of consent, so there's that component. But mostly there just isn't the culture of victimization around men, so they just ... get over it, for lack of a better phrase.
09/19/09
But if you really think that worse things that can happen, you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. Watch some grapple a few minutes with the idea of carrying a child of the guy who violated you and quite possibly upsetting your entire life--putting 20+ years of your life on hold and devoting everything else or killing an unborn child (I say this as someone who is 'pro-choice'--it's still a hard decision), which by the way, stays with you, and than talk to me about worse things.
...No, you know what? Screw civil. If you think that's not a big deal, fuck you.
09/19/09
09/19/09
If I came across as passionate, it's because I have experince dealing with people who's lives have been royally screwed up--and guess what, societal outlook was probably the least of their problems. You're damn right I"m going to get pissed off by the very implication that the trauma is somehow related to a cultural vicitmization or some idea that the trauma is over-stated. I apologize if that bugs you, but past that I don't care. There's a time for rationality and there's a time when dismissing a horrible act as 'it could be worse' invokes ire. If you don't actually feel how you come across (a massive shoulder shrug) than my ire isn't directed at you, not entirely.
You want the more rational debate? Fine. I strongly disagree with you. Society does not play as large a part as violation, a feeling of powerlessness, and possibly having your life altered in harrowing, long-term ways.
And frankly, if you have experience dealing with this on a personal level, I'd expect you to be more sensitive of the matter than 'Society makes a bigger deal than it needs to! Worse shit can happen.' Sorry if the fact such a sentiment pisses me off upsets you.
Actually, if someone getting pissed off at such an impilcation somehow annoys you, I'm really not. The sentiment sounds a little too close to Rapist apologism, bluntly.
09/20/09
And yeah, I think that societal norms have a lot to do with it. Someone kills another and we can spend endless hours debating why and how and maybe that's because there's no victim to be around to speak out. But you assert that rape has some special province where we just have to assume that it's the worst thing ever and there's no room for discussion as to why or how we can mitigate the damage it does. AND IT IS TERRIBLE. But people having been surviving it and moving on for centuries, and we're even stronger today.
You seem to hold the position that any exploration or statement of difference of event somehow trivializes the victim. This is (A) dehumanizing and (B) pretty childish. Obviously I'm not speaking now as I would to someone who had just been brutalized. We have room now to explore why. Why do you consider rape worse than being tortured? Worse than murder?
The one salient point I think you've made, that wasn't couched in reactionary invective is about the social aspect. We don't treat people who have been "merely" beaten up or brutalized in quite the same way we treat rape victims. Or even murder victims. Through every level of the aftermath, from reporting the crime to following up, to discussing it with close friends, it's much easier to say "Well, I got the shit kicked out of me" than to say "I was raped" at some point, and I find this distinction strange. There's definitely a social component to understanding and resolving, personally, this destructive component of one's life, once it occurs. Especially since the topic at hand is dealing with the perceived difference between male and female rape victims (and even that word carries so much baggage I'm hesitant to use it), I think it's very important to explore the mechanisms of victimization and abuse that create this agony. Disregarding any of it is like a physician choosing to prescribe holistic treatments for cancer because chemotherapy is too toxic.
09/20/09
Rape, on the other hand, the victim ALWAYS has to live with as long as it wasn't followed by murder. A victim of rape will never forget what was done to her (or him), and the act is never quick. Have you ever known a rape victim? Perhaps one that was knocked out by a man hitting her on the head with a telephone in her dorm room and being repeatedly anally and vaginally raped until morning? A girl who had to drop out of college her freshman year and move back home because she is now so mentally broken she can't function by herself? A girl who has repeatedly broken down to the point of attempting suicide se she can't forget what was done to her?
No? You don't know a victim? I didn't think so. Rapists should be never be forgiven, never be allowed back into society.
09/19/09
09/19/09
09/19/09
That seems like an iffy way out, though, as a man might internalize feelings of guilt over the situation because he doesn't consider his rapist to be at fault for a situation. I will stand by the idea that forced fatherhood is even worse.
09/19/09
09/19/09
09/19/09
09/19/09
Most women I know who read comics ARE outraged by these three examples and point them out repeatedly as situations that show that the comic book industry is a little out of touch when it comes to sexual assault. The industry itself doesn't address the issue, no. Your point stands magnificently there.
But that fandom is not upset or outraged about it? Maybe not as a whole, but my corner of fandom certainly is. Most women I know refused to continue reading Nightwing after he was raped by Tarantula. These situations where the men are raped by women are held up as unjust and uncalled for and mishandled just as often as when the genders are switched.
09/19/09
At best, the physical lack of ability to achieve sexual arousal simply results in violent assault, and at worst changes nothing about the pathology at all.
09/19/09
09/19/09
The Comedian.
Just saying.
09/19/09
This also makes me wonder about Alan Moore's writings--what with the Killing Joke and this storyline, I straight up can't stand the role he gives women in those two comics.
09/19/09
09/19/09
@Smeagol92055: But characters place part of the blame on Silk Spectre, and Silk Spectre (II) is portrayed as irrational and hysterical when she finds out the truth--which she should be, but it's played as happening because she is a hysterical female, not because of a traumatic event. While the novel is clear in depicting Comedian as a horrible human being, the fact that he is a rapist is downplayed. Fans celebrate his character.
09/19/09
09/19/09
People in general admire and covet power, and Comedian's ability to act outside social norms and get away with it indicates power.
09/19/09
09/19/09
In my own personal DC universe, Barbara Gordon is still a Congresswoman, and can still walk.
09/19/09
09/19/09
I mean, look at Sally Jupiter in Watchmen. She's a second-rate character always attached to a man, and in her moment of decisive glory, she picks up a gun (the ultimate humiliation of any fist/foot super-hero) and tries to shoot Veidt, who, since he is the perfection of man, catches the bullet.
Or Eve in V for Vendetta, who's ultimate "education" was simply that she basically became V - a man?
09/19/09
And not to forget that part of Eve's education process was a good round of torture - "Learned her good!"
I might be making an unfair generalization, but I have known a few folks that are into Magick and they seem to have a deep trust and need for Hierarchies. Hierarchies of power, hierarchies of Knowledge, ability, or class. An occasional acceptance of an inherent hierarchy of gender might seem perfectly acceptable to such a mind.
09/20/09
09/20/09
I can take or leave Vaughn, but I find that he often uses his characters as mouthpieces for his views. Case in point: one character in Ex Machina says something about the ban on smoking, and the Mayor goes off on this harangue about the "Disneyification" of NYC. I mean, we get it, Brian: you want to smoke where you want. Just don't try to smoke around me.
09/20/09
Seriously? Moore can't portray women as strong or confident? DId you read Promethea? (Or actually read Lost Girls, for that matter, not just look at the pictures)?
The Comedian is actually a much more realistic portrayal of the "badass antihero" character than most *because* of the rape. It's pretty well established that The Comedian fought crime because he liked to beat people up, and he was good at it. Whereas other "antiheroes" are violent but draw the line at being sexist/misogynist. (Marv from Sin City indiscriminately beats the hell out of guys, but he's chivalrous with the ladies, unlike pretty much every real life brawler I know). Note : I AM NOT SAYING THAT THERE SHOULD BE MORE MISOGYNY IN COMICS. I'm simply saying that Moore is being condemned for creating what I think are psychologically realistic characters.
09/20/09
You realize that Moore wrote both those stories over 20 years ago, right? And that he's written a hell of a lot of stuff since, not all of which is hostile towards women?
Heck, even before that Moore created Halo Jones. He's a complex man, not some jerk who gets off on seeing women humiliated.
09/19/09
I have read a few books with explicit sex and rape and I was ok with it as it was part of the story of fictional characters.
This also poses a question. Why is it ok for a villain to be villainous in every other respect (murder, torcher, mass destruction, manipulation) but rape is a no-no?
Is it just because we get emotionally invested in these characters over a number of years? I can read a novel that has graphic descriptions of sex, violence, racism and baby corpses hanging from hooks on chains and it will only take me two or three days and not be emotionally scared or really all that upset. Shocked, yes but I am ok with it in the context of the novel with bad people doing bad things.
09/19/09
09/19/09
09/19/09
09/19/09
Most of all, I think it is the idea that it can be confused with and about sex. If someone is tortured--like, say, waterboarded, then it is understood that being tortured in this way is bad. But if someone is raped, the actual act (sex, penetration, etc.) is one that people do all the time, (even though it is a violating perversion of that act).
Also, murder can be simple--a simple shot of a bullet. But rape is much more complicated and disturbing, especially since another person is directly being violated. And murder, torture, mass desctruction, and manipulation can be seen through the lens of the villian's motivations (i.e., world domination, quest for immortality, destruction of a superhero, etc.) But why would a villian rape? To directly damage and ruin someone's psychological well-being, to truamatize them so they...what? Are too disturbed and down trodden to go after them? Are totally confused? The villian's motivations therefore become so much more damning, confusing, and frightening.
09/19/09