Sorting People Like Laundry

This week's topic, Madonnas and Whores, arises from the notion of duality - something is either A or X, but never both. You met Duality in the Star Wars saga - you know, "Use the Force, Luke"? The hero is cautioned to stay on the side of the Light. His mentor warned him in low, dire tones to avoid the path to the Dark side. In this same vein, women are either madonnas (pure and therefore good) or they're whores (impure and therefore bad).

Human kind does have the disturbing tendancy to want to sort everything in their lives, including other people, like you'd sort laundry - darks here. Whites there. Does it engender a sense of safety? Lizard brain can rest assured that everything in the surrounding environment has been catalogued and none of the categories matched 'lion waiting in grass'?  The problem is that while you're busy sorting light versus dark, what are you supposed to do with the white teeshirt with the bright imprint? Or that light gray sweatshirt? Where do those go? Whites? Darks? Oh, crap. Do you need a third pile labeled 'shades of I-don't-know'?

The laundry metaphor is silly. The point is that while the human brain likes simple either/or classifications, humans as individuals utterly defy the labels the rest of us would like to attach. Point to someone or something pure evil. No, not even the devil. If you believe that particular mythology, Lucifer WAS good until pride and jealousy took hold and he was cast out of heaven. That's not pure evil if some modicum of good went into the original mold, right? Pure evil would never have been lightened by the slightest touch of good. Pure good would never have been tainted by the faintest touch of evil. Yet even humankind's ideals of good and evil aren't pure - they're shades of gray.

The yin and yang illustrates the concept pretty well - good cannot be good without a seed of evil at its core, nor can evil be evil without the awareness of good in its makeup. This is about choice. Choosing to do good when you know evil makes the good better. Why yes, the human psyche is twisted. So, madonnas and whores are labels interchangeable with good and evil. The labels just allow someone a facile way of not having to face the realities and complexities of interacting with living, breathing human beings. The labels shortchange both the people to whom they are applied and the person applying them.

Comic Book Women: Bend and Snap

by Allison Pang

Given the controversy of the recent DC reboot of several comics in the last few weeks, I thought this week's topic was rather apropos.

As discussed earlier, there's a rather interesting perspective of the male gaze that occurs in much of the content we consume - the virginal woman that only puts out for her man, and who must remained wrapped away from all other eyes, for example...or the woman of no value who's only there to to service whoever desires her, and then discarded to the wayside as being "unclean."

We see this in literature and tv, movies and commercials. We see it in video games (chain-mail bikinis, anyone?) and comics books.

And admittedly, part of the charm of superheroes is the costumes. Sometimes they're hot. Sometimes they're ridiculous (male or female). Like anything else, sometimes comics are more about the eyecandy than they are about the plot. And sometimes vice versa. If you're really lucky, you hit on one with both.

But the fact remains there is a huge discrepancy in the way that women are portrayed in comics vs the men. I'm not even talking about the skin-tight costumes - both genders tend to have them - and most sport bodies of physical impossibility - that's a stylization that tends to come with the territory. You accept that when you read them. (Though most women know that if their bewbs are larger than their heads, they're probably NOT doing leaps off of rooftops. A large rack hurts your back, if nothing else. Remember how those bad-ass Amazons of legend used to cut off a breast in order to be able to draw their bows better? There's a reason for that - tits get in the *way*)

And sure - superheroes have ginormous muscles and codpieces. But really - I sorta feel like if you're going to have chicks with melons bolted on their chests, we really ought to have a hero named Tripod the Ballbarian if we're going to be fair.

However, even given that, there's a distinct ick factor in the way women characters are displayed. Sure, a lot of them have super powers or what have you, but having them doesn't really level the playing field at all. Regardless of what these women characters do or don't do...they're all required to be sexy. If this were the 1950's, I'd get it to a certain degree. Comics were for "boys." Girls in comics were there to be cheesecake or to be rescued.

But it's 2011. And we should be well beyond this line of thinking.

Even non-heroes are subject to it. Check out Mary Jane in this recent edition of Spider-man. I don't object to what she's wearing, or what she's doing...but what's the reasoning in the way she's sitting?

Who the hell sits like that?

Try it. Comfy?

Not really. (As well as probably physically impossible). So very Madonna/Whore. Mary Jane, the good girl, sitting and waiting for her hero. And drinking coffee. And thrusting out her chest like the little whore she is. (Tongue-in-cheek there.)

There was actually a fabulous run on tumblr several weeks ago dealing with this, where many artists popped in and did their own interpretation, redrawing her in more human proportions (and more casual posing).

The big news from last week is the DC reboot, however - dealing with both Catwoman and Starfire. Both have always been sexy and sexualized in comics. After all, who would Catwoman be without that smexy catsuit? She's a thief and unapologetic about it  - and the outfit makes sense to a certain extent. But in this latest issue? It's all Catwoman getting dressed.  Which - fine - I'm all for characters getting dressed...but it's all just body parts. Her ass. Her abs. Her breasts. You don't actually see her as a character until well into the comic book. And it ends with her banging out Batman on the rooftop. (Okay - I grant she's sexual and there's nothing wrong with characters having sex. But it might be sorta nice to have her first issue standing on her own here, and not just relegated to softcore porn.)

Hell, she can't even STEAL something without falling out of her god damned clothes.

When was the last time you saw a male superhero get put on display like that?  (Or as I put it on Twitter last week... Remember that issue where Batman did the bend and snap? No? Me neither.) We don't see Superman pulling on his big red panties in that phone booth, do we?

And then there's Starfire.  Quoting directly from this fab article:

Starting from the beginning: Starfire is an alien warrior who also happens to be a very busty, golden skinned hottie. She’s always been such (like I said, comics have always sexualized women first, unless they were Sue Storm, and then she got turned right into a mom). She’s also always been a sexually aggressive character, a woman who engages in passionate relationships with superhero men, such as Dick Grayson, aka Nightwing. 

That aspect of her personality was actually fairly progressive once upon a time, back when comic books were hugely chaste. The new Starfire is still busty. This is probably her preeminent trait; her costume has even been further reduced to glorified pasties in order to emphasize her knockers. She’s still an alien. She’s still golden-skinned. And she still is sexual. Very, very sexual. 

 But what Scott Lobdell has done is to turn her from a character into a jerk-off object. See, Starfire has no long term memory. While she used to be with Dick Grayson in this New 52 universe she can’t remember him. Or any of her past lovers. And what’s more, she has a hard time telling humans apart. Since she can’t tell humans apart, she’s happy to have sex with whatever human is closest to her at the moment. 

 She’s not all sex, though! She’s also a powerful destructive force… who takes explicit orders from the man she’s fucking. 

 Let’s put it this way: Starfire is a woman who is memory impaired, who doesn’t know the person she’s sleeping with and is fully open to suggestion from men. She’s the first Rohypnol superheroine. Scott Lobdell has turned Starfire into a metaphor for date rape. Not just that,  a CELEBRATION of date rape. See, she’s so willing to fuck that she just goes from Red Hood to his good buddy Arsenal. Everybody gets a shot at that Tamaranean pussy. Hell, even a little kid in the comic gets his rocks off by filming Starfire as she endlessly poses in a teeny bikini on the beach.

Harsh words - and the ultimate Madonna Whore. And perhaps an easily brushed aside opinion...until you realize that even a seven year old girl picked up on it.

And while admittedly some of these comics are definitely not intended for children, it's still extremely telling. For a heroine, I can't relate in any fashion...and she's certainly nothing I'd aspire to being.

And it doesn't have to be that way. Just look at Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example - (Dark Horse) -->

She's still sexy and strong...but she's PRACTICAL.  (At least in the comic book world). She's wearing real clothes. She doesn't have gratuitous T&A shots every other panel.

Is it perfect? No - but at least it's a body I can sort of relate to. Buffy's a character who makes her choices and suffers consequences for them and she isn't just there to be dressed up and paraded around.

And the Spike and Angel notwithstanding - sure, they're love interests, but Buffy doesn't exist to simply be propped up by those relationships...and she certainly doesn't need them to justify what she does.

Touched For the Very First Time

by KAK 

Every time I hear "the Madonna-Whore," my 1980s brain automatically goes to Madonna's "Like a Virgin." Not only is it a song that sticks with you for thirty-odd  years, but Madonna's classic MTV Video Awards performance really gets at the meaning of it. She clearly had a ball mocking the hell out of such a patently patriarchal concept. She made it through the wilderness all right.

So did her namesake.

Leave it to a bunch of walking dipsticks so hasty to strip the powers of priestess leading competing faiths, they laid a foundation for a "modern" religion with all masculine protagonists. Oops.  Little problem. The women weren't buying it. So, they took a tragic teenage pregnancy and made the victim into a vessel. ~insert angelic chorus here~ "Women, behold your purpose -- to walk a lot and pop out male messiahs."

Why yes, yes I am a lot of fun at fundamentalist gatherings.

If you're still with me on the bullet-train into Hell (named after a woman, btw), let's move up a few cars, shall we? Let's note the more probable tragic truth behind the Madonna myth and its appearance in contemporary female protagonists. The Urban Fantasy genre exemplifies female protagonists from non-idyllic backgrounds. Some of the protags are victims of sexual deviancy. Most are social pariahs. All have had their lives irrevocably changed by something mystical. The female protagonist is in someway broken and is determined to become more than that. Readers sign on for the journey. They're not interested in purity and light, pedestals, or the untouchable. They want the struggle. They prefer the truth behind the myth.

A broken Madonna is someone with whom an audience identifies. 

I like to imagine the Madonna middle-aged and laughing her ass off whenever men extoll the virtues of virgin women. Touched for the first time, indeed.

Heroines - Madonnas and Whores

by Laura Bickle

I've always loved reading about powerful heroines, women who are in charge of their own story. I grew up reading stories about women who slew their own dragons. I was even sympathetic to the legend of Medusa - in my eyes, she was a tragic figure who turned all her lovers to stone. Myths are rich in stories of women who have attempted to balance power and passionate love, who reject the idea that naivete is a virtue.

One of the myths I've been drawn to was the myth of Ishtar. Ishtar is the Babylonian goddess of love, war, and sex. Her love was known to be fatal - there's no blushing innocence, here. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh tells her:

“Listen to me while I tell the tale of your lovers. There was Tammuz, the lover of your youth, for him you decreed wailing, year after year. You loved the many-coloured roller, but still you struck and broke his wing… You have loved the lion tremendous in strength: seven pits you dug for him, and seven. You have loved the stallion magnificent in battle, and for him you decreed the whip and spur and a thong... You have loved the shepherd of the flock; he made meal-cake for you day after day, he killed kids for your sake. You struck and turned him into a wolf; now his own herd-boys chase him away, his own hounds worry his flanks."

One of the most famous myths about Ishtar involves her descent to the Underworld, in pursuit of the soul a lost lover. She descends through the gates of hell, shedding her weapons and clothing as offerings, until she reaches Ereshkigel, Queen of the Underworld. Ereshkigel poisons Ishtar, dooming her to the Underworld. She can only be freed if someone will take her place.

Ishtar returns to the surface of the earth, in the company of demons, to find someone to take her place. She finds that her husband, Tammuz, has not mourned her. In a fit of rage, she sends him back to the underworld in her place, with the demons.

The myth fascinated me, the idea of a mythic heroine who was a love goddess, who could also be so ruthless. She wasn't like any of the other tender love goddesses I'd studied. Ishtar didn't recline prettily on a fainting couch, twirling her hair, and awaiting her destiny; she picked up her sword and fought for who and what she wanted.

I've gotta respect that. And I respect that in a way that I don't respect naive and innocent heroines.

The first image is from Doreen Virtue's Goddess Guidance Oracle, and the artist is Jonathan Earl Bowser. The second image is by Nuktya. 

Eye of the Beholder

by Jeffe Kennedy

Morning glories are weeds, by most definitions. Bindweed being one of the more common names for them

I learned this when a friend, who grew up on a farm in Ohio, took one look at the mass of wild morning glories in my back yard, hissed "bindweed" as if naming a demon and offered to come over with a good herbicide. These weren't the lovely purple ones like this one, but I loved seeing the dewy fresh white blossoms that covered the vine in the early shadowed hours, before the sun hit it and burned them all away. I wouldn't let him touch my morning glory vine which, after all, was hardly choking food crops. He was angry with me, that I'd suffered such a noxious weed to live.

Like many things, whether we call it a weed or a vine, bindweed or morning glory, whore or madonna, is all in the eye - and more importantly, the mind - of the beholder.

And one of the things I've learned in my lifetime so far, is you can never change anyone else's mind.

Oh, someone else might change their opinion about something, and your well-reasoned argument might play into that, but most of the time what we think is dictated by our beliefs, and those tend not to change.

Like my friend who thought in terms of farming. Anything not a food plant - or worth showing off at the county fair - had no value. If it has no value, it must be destroyed. This same guy, an inveterate bachelor, held onto the idea that he wanted a "babe." He often pointed out which women were babes and which were not. In fact, he tended to be very critical of women who did not meet his standards of beauty and womanly behavior.

He also never, ever had a date.

See, this guy was far from Prince Charming material. He could never be described as good looking. He was frequently cantankerous, exacting, past his best years. In truth, we remained friends with him because we shared responsibilities in common - and because he had no other friends.

I let most of his opinions about women go, as they weren't worth getting into. The only time we really got into it was when he complained about an otherwise attractive woman he'd see in a shop downtown, who had something of a mustache. Why wouldn't she remove it, he grumped. So I explained to him her cosmetic choices, along with the time and cash investment required, then asked him what choice he would make. Did I mention he held the purse strings tight? Yeah, that shut him up.

Meanwhile he ogled his Playboy Magazines and told bitter tales about the one woman who ever had slept with him (so far as I could tell). What he thought about women had nothing to do with them and everything to do with himself.

I think this is true of most people.