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San Francisco, 2:15 PM
Fri Nov 27
19 posts in the last 24 hours
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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
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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
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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