In the debate over the alternate Batgirl cover, some terms kept coming up that made for some great button pressing, but didn't really belong in the debate. Rather than adding to the debate, they detracted from it as some people were more interested in stirring things up and keeping them that way rather than engaging in an actual debate; the terms amounted to emotional hand grenades that effectively obscured the debate and made it harder to discuss the matter at hand because they needed to be dealt with. As such I think it may be interesting to look at these terms and why I don't feel that they didn't belong in the debate.
[Slipping into writer mode for a moment: Joker's crimes against Barbara were nothing compared to what he planned to do to her father and were a necessary prelude. The crimes were heinous, sure, but she would have survived with a chance to come out stronger. It needed to be shown to what degree Joker was willing to go to make his point, and to make us honestly worry about Gordon. What he wanted to do was much more worse than merely killing him: The Joker was shooting for Gordon's very soul, and through it the death of the souls of both Gotham and Batman. By attacking Barbara, we were given a prelude to what Gordon was in for; the stakes needed to be shown so we could appreciate them. Back to the commentary...]
Rape: Although a rape scene was originally planned in "The Killing Joke", the scene was deleted during the writing phase by the editor. Although Joker could be charged with sexual assault (it could be upgraded to "aggravated" if it could be shown that he touched her intimate parts during the stripping), too many concentrated on the sexual act itself when they should have focused on the significance of what Joker was doing, and how it was but part of a greater crime.
The planned crime was concentrated on instead of the actual crime, and so the conversation became obfuscated rather quickly as it needed to be explained to those that had apparently never read the actual book that not only was rape not in the book, but that an arguably worse crime had happened, as Barbara was tossed away once she was assaulted as a mere object lesson. The conversation quickly became mired as some condemned a crime that never happened while ignoring the greater crime, and so those conversations died quickly. Just making the observation that when you're discussing something that happened in a book, it helps to know what happened exactly so as to ensure that you make intelligent conversation.
It's weird: You know you're writer when you're more interested in debating which crimes are acceptable to inflict on your characters than the political issues caused by those crimes.
Women In Refrigerators: I think that this is officially a term that has evolved past any point of usefulness. Originally it referred to the lazy writing technique of introducing a woman to be killed or otherwise hurt in order to raise the emotional stakes for a male protagonist. However, somewhere along the line it came to mean any attack or damage to a woman, regardless of the source. Not only has it come to mean killing or raping a woman, but it also, according to the site, applies to any form of cancer, sterilization (even that due to the character's own abilities), and generally any calamity that befalls a woman. The problem is that once you get to that point, it becomes a bit sexist; one of the basic tenets of writing is that characters should be tortured, and torture is not limited to just female characters. Once it just becomes general problems regardless of the cause, there is the problem is that it's no longer a form of misogyny, and just general character development: There is the question of why Firestar's sterility counts while Wildfire's doesn't, and "she's a girl!" just isn't a sufficient answer.
Making it worse is that that provides an interesting barrier to equality. In order to be considered equal women need to be able to take the same risks as men; if a woman can serve on the front lines she needs to be just as likely as a man to suffer an attack. There needs to be recognized that there is a difference between an attack on someone because she is a woman and an attack simply because she is in a position that is it at risk for taking some sort of damage. Women should not be immune to damage simply because they are women.
This is why the attack on Barbara Gordon does not constitute a misogynist attack. She was not attacked because she was a woman, but because she was the only child of the police commissioner. Joker needed to destroy Gordon's sense of security, and an attack on his only child, one that had permanent effects, fits that bill. Removing someone's clothes as a form of humiliation applies to either sex; it makes the person feel vulnerable and puts them at the advantage of the person forcing the stripping. It's easy to say that it's more humiliating for your sex to be stripped, but that's not relevant here. All that matters is that even had it been a son, the same shot, the same stripping, and the same photos would have been taken for the same reasons. We need to get past that a woman is immune to the risks of her position because of some fear of offending the politically correct.
Censorship: When the cover was pulled at the illustrator's request, a request made in response to threats of violence against those requesting the pulling of the cover, cries of censorship went up. First off, threats of violence from an anonymous internet shouldn't scare anyone: They are an unfortunate part of allowing freedom of speech, as anyone thinks that just because they have something to say they should be allowed to say it regardless of how vile it is. However, I can respect pulling the cover in this case, as it was in protest of sort against the people threatening the others.
However, an illustrator removing the cover is not the same as censorship. The government did not step in and have the cover removed, nor was there even the hint of that. Censorship is solely under the purview of the government; it is meant for when an idea is threatening the government and the government eliminates the idea to the best of its ability. A government should not restrict the flow of ideas, no matter how dangerous they are to the government. A company, on the other hand, should not feel as if it needs to publish something just to make its fans happy, unless that happiness equates to profits. If it feels that something will besmirch its reputation or waste its resources, or even just create any number of long-term problems, then it has no reason to publish the item in question. Choosing not to publish something due to business reasons is not censorship by any stretch, and they know that public outcry is not the best way to make business decisions.
[There is the feeling from some that DC created the cover specifically for the controversy, especially after seeing the effects of the Spiderwoman cover. I know it's a straight conspiracy theory type of thing, but it just feels like something DC would do....]
The bottom for me is that while I can see while others would be offended by the cover, it was a good homage to the events in "Dark Knight Returns". We need to be reminded that there are dragons out there so that we know why the hero is so brave. We need to be reminded that the heroes have villains to fight, and why. We need to be reminded that the villains are not nice, and that there are possible penalties for fighting them. This cover does that, and it should have been produced.
[Slipping into writer mode for a moment: Joker's crimes against Barbara were nothing compared to what he planned to do to her father and were a necessary prelude. The crimes were heinous, sure, but she would have survived with a chance to come out stronger. It needed to be shown to what degree Joker was willing to go to make his point, and to make us honestly worry about Gordon. What he wanted to do was much more worse than merely killing him: The Joker was shooting for Gordon's very soul, and through it the death of the souls of both Gotham and Batman. By attacking Barbara, we were given a prelude to what Gordon was in for; the stakes needed to be shown so we could appreciate them. Back to the commentary...]
Rape: Although a rape scene was originally planned in "The Killing Joke", the scene was deleted during the writing phase by the editor. Although Joker could be charged with sexual assault (it could be upgraded to "aggravated" if it could be shown that he touched her intimate parts during the stripping), too many concentrated on the sexual act itself when they should have focused on the significance of what Joker was doing, and how it was but part of a greater crime.
The planned crime was concentrated on instead of the actual crime, and so the conversation became obfuscated rather quickly as it needed to be explained to those that had apparently never read the actual book that not only was rape not in the book, but that an arguably worse crime had happened, as Barbara was tossed away once she was assaulted as a mere object lesson. The conversation quickly became mired as some condemned a crime that never happened while ignoring the greater crime, and so those conversations died quickly. Just making the observation that when you're discussing something that happened in a book, it helps to know what happened exactly so as to ensure that you make intelligent conversation.
It's weird: You know you're writer when you're more interested in debating which crimes are acceptable to inflict on your characters than the political issues caused by those crimes.
Women In Refrigerators: I think that this is officially a term that has evolved past any point of usefulness. Originally it referred to the lazy writing technique of introducing a woman to be killed or otherwise hurt in order to raise the emotional stakes for a male protagonist. However, somewhere along the line it came to mean any attack or damage to a woman, regardless of the source. Not only has it come to mean killing or raping a woman, but it also, according to the site, applies to any form of cancer, sterilization (even that due to the character's own abilities), and generally any calamity that befalls a woman. The problem is that once you get to that point, it becomes a bit sexist; one of the basic tenets of writing is that characters should be tortured, and torture is not limited to just female characters. Once it just becomes general problems regardless of the cause, there is the problem is that it's no longer a form of misogyny, and just general character development: There is the question of why Firestar's sterility counts while Wildfire's doesn't, and "she's a girl!" just isn't a sufficient answer.
Making it worse is that that provides an interesting barrier to equality. In order to be considered equal women need to be able to take the same risks as men; if a woman can serve on the front lines she needs to be just as likely as a man to suffer an attack. There needs to be recognized that there is a difference between an attack on someone because she is a woman and an attack simply because she is in a position that is it at risk for taking some sort of damage. Women should not be immune to damage simply because they are women.
This is why the attack on Barbara Gordon does not constitute a misogynist attack. She was not attacked because she was a woman, but because she was the only child of the police commissioner. Joker needed to destroy Gordon's sense of security, and an attack on his only child, one that had permanent effects, fits that bill. Removing someone's clothes as a form of humiliation applies to either sex; it makes the person feel vulnerable and puts them at the advantage of the person forcing the stripping. It's easy to say that it's more humiliating for your sex to be stripped, but that's not relevant here. All that matters is that even had it been a son, the same shot, the same stripping, and the same photos would have been taken for the same reasons. We need to get past that a woman is immune to the risks of her position because of some fear of offending the politically correct.
Censorship: When the cover was pulled at the illustrator's request, a request made in response to threats of violence against those requesting the pulling of the cover, cries of censorship went up. First off, threats of violence from an anonymous internet shouldn't scare anyone: They are an unfortunate part of allowing freedom of speech, as anyone thinks that just because they have something to say they should be allowed to say it regardless of how vile it is. However, I can respect pulling the cover in this case, as it was in protest of sort against the people threatening the others.
However, an illustrator removing the cover is not the same as censorship. The government did not step in and have the cover removed, nor was there even the hint of that. Censorship is solely under the purview of the government; it is meant for when an idea is threatening the government and the government eliminates the idea to the best of its ability. A government should not restrict the flow of ideas, no matter how dangerous they are to the government. A company, on the other hand, should not feel as if it needs to publish something just to make its fans happy, unless that happiness equates to profits. If it feels that something will besmirch its reputation or waste its resources, or even just create any number of long-term problems, then it has no reason to publish the item in question. Choosing not to publish something due to business reasons is not censorship by any stretch, and they know that public outcry is not the best way to make business decisions.
[There is the feeling from some that DC created the cover specifically for the controversy, especially after seeing the effects of the Spiderwoman cover. I know it's a straight conspiracy theory type of thing, but it just feels like something DC would do....]
The bottom for me is that while I can see while others would be offended by the cover, it was a good homage to the events in "Dark Knight Returns". We need to be reminded that there are dragons out there so that we know why the hero is so brave. We need to be reminded that the heroes have villains to fight, and why. We need to be reminded that the villains are not nice, and that there are possible penalties for fighting them. This cover does that, and it should have been produced.
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