Irrational Idiocy

[jmatonak]

In case you were having trouble turning up one on your own (shyeah), I've discovered an idiot on the internet.



For some crazy reason, many feminist comic book fans have a problem with female comics characters existing solely to be eye candy. Something about how there's plenty of room for male power fantasies and none at all for female power fantasies puts them on edge, somehow. So occasionally they voice a complaint. When they do, many other fans come back with a common retort- "why are you trying to take all the sexy fun out of our comical books?"

Cheryl Lynn, posting as Digital Femme, pointed out that many of the fans seen as evil harpy prudes really don't have that agenda at all in a post titled "Preserve the Sexy":

http://digitalfemme.com/journal/index.php?itemid=448

And in response, the internet at large gets this:



http://rationalmadman.blogspot.com/2007/08/we-can-keep-sexy-oh-thanks-you-massa-we.html

For someone who calls himself "rational", this fella is really bad at it.

What we get is a festival of entitlement, incoherence and hysteria, wrapped around a straw-woman argument. I especially like the part where men buying what they want is simply them voting with their dollars, whereas women asking for more palatable fare to spend money on are somehow dictating to this man what he must and mustn't read. And that's not even the funniest part.

Damsels in distress can be sexy? Sure. Submissiveness can be a turn-on? Absolutely. But, see, what you're describing are your tastes in pornography, "Rational Madman", and what the rest of us are trying to talk about is mainstream entertainment. You see, many people, when they buy a Wonder Woman comic, aren't looking for porn. The publisher insists it isn't trying to sell porn. And yet, here you are.

If you get a cheap thrill from reading the adventures of Hero Girl, that's great. That's your right as a reader and particularly as an on-line fan. That's also a pleasant byproduct of the work, not its reason for being. If you don't derive sexual satisfaction from the image of a female super-hero being a super-hero, that is absolutely fine. You actually aren't supposed to. What you appear to be doing is complaining that superhero comic books as posited by Digital Femme aren't porny enough for you. Which opens a perfect opportunity for this hackneyed response: go write your own damn porn. It's what the internet is for.

Comments

[jmatonak.livejournal.com]

I bet he isn't. :)