Jesus, everytime I think maybe I'll check out a comic book for auld lange syne (or because Greg Rucka, that bastard, waited until I quit comics to finally drop
Queen & Country no. 32 - No worries, dude, I've only been waiting a freaking
year, I can do the extra few months/years until/if the trade comes out on my head
*rassumfrassum*), I see shit like
this and I'm pissed off all over again.
And, as we've established, Perpetually Pissed-Off does not accessorize well with my new outlook on life.
That said, domestic violence? Is not fucking cool, Intertoobz.
Imagine that instead of Canary clocking Green Arrow, it was GA laying a smack on his lady-love. Would anyone consider that appropriate foreplay? Or more to the point, would it get printed? True, we live in the era of
B&D Marvel covers but people now generally agree that wife/girlfriend/child beaters are scumbags.
So why do we still put up with this bullshit in fiction where it's not only okay for a woman to smack around her (male) partner, it's considered cute? Because here's a reality check for you - it's not. When your partner hits you, it's not cute, it's not romantic and it sure as hell doesn't put you in the mood. And it really doesn't matter who's doing the hitting - it's a violation of trust, it's hurtful and it's wrong.
For both sexes.
I'm also pissed because the whole 'slap/wrestle/clinch' gag infantalizes the female character, implying that she is unable to tell the difference between anger and desire until she is shown her 'true' feelings by the more dominant and assured male, totally unfazed, of course, by either the slap or her attempts to resist his seduction (bitch, please *eyeroll*). As a 'literary' - and we use the term loosely indeed here - trope, this shit just barely plays in
Gone with the Wind but there's no excuse to fall back on such trite, lazy and negative characterizations today. Particularly not when the female character in question is supposed to be one of
the best martial artists in the world. When I studied Aikido, my
sensei solemly instructed us that our training was a serious matter and not something that we showed off to friends at parties - what we were learning could result in someone being seriously hurt - but it's okay for Black Canary to be slapping her fiancee around?
Riiiiiiiiiiiight.
Here's the thing about equality - it cuts both ways, hence the word "equal". It isn't wrong for a man to hit a woman because she's smaller than him - it just makes it that much more heinous - it's wrong because violence is
wrong. And if it's wrong for a man, it's wrong for a woman. And everytime we wink and accept a lesser or a double standard where women are concerned, we undermine that fundamental tennet and make it that much easier to excuse other acts of violence.
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