Comments on: Women in Refrigerators: Alexandra DeWitt

By: Scott Anderson

Scott Anderson — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:42:54 +0000

You are confusing “opinion” with “theory.” I don’t mind your opinions. If you say you disliked Alex’s death or thought it was too violent or something, that’s fine. It’s your opinion. There is no right or wrong to that. What I’m concerned with is your theories, things that aren’t opinions, but statements of how the world operates that you believe are supported by facts. I’m not talking about your emotional response to something or your taste in comics. I’m talking about the attacks you’ve made on comic writers and men in general based on what you appear to think are facts. These three are particularly troubling:

“The fact is that, more likely than not, this has to do with the male-female dynamic — along with common misogynistic misconceptions about women.”

“It’s all but inconceivable for a male writer — especially in the comic book industry — to fit a male character into the role of “damsel in distress.””

“The idea that a female character would be fragile, defenseless, and all but helpless in this situation is more comfortable for male readers than the idea of another man not being able to defend himself in a fight.”

These three statements all suggest that there is something wrong with male comic writers specifically and men generally. We’re neurotic and hate women. We are so neurotic that can’t stand the idea that some character who is not us but shares our gender might be hurt by forces stronger than him that we can’t even read comics where guys get killed or beaten.

If you wrote anything like that about Jews, women, any racial group, and failed to back up those assertions with facts you’d be called a bigot and rightfully so. To target comic writers and male readers with this kind of baseless bigotry by playing fast and loose with the facts (like the one of the worst things to happen to male character in comics is that his ex wrote a tell all book — jeez, that’s stupid) then you too get to be called a bigot just like the guy who finds one example of Jew being greedy, a woman being irrational, or an African-American being lazy to then spout his “opinion” that smears them all.

Your article is full of half truths and outright lies used to disparage real writers and real readers.

And you are lying again when you said you were just focused on the treatment of women. If all you wrote was about the treatment of women and said nothing about the treatment of men, you might have been correct. But you specifically said that you also looked at the treatment of men when you wrote things like the following:

“When drawing up a list of male characters who have had a hard time in the name of story advancement, it’s hard to even compare.”

“Some male characters stay dead, but most of them make their way back — and are better and stronger than ever, …”

“Women in comics are treated much more brutally than their male counterparts — main character, supporting, or otherwise.”

You focused on male characters too. You ignored the reality of what happens to male characters in comics to make those statements. You are lying to yourself if you pretend that you didn’t. All of those are statements about male characters that are either completely false or misleading. And you used those false or misleading statements to make derogatory comments about men.

We call that sexism.

By: Marron

Marron — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:09:44 +0000

Scott, I’m not ignoring anything. There’s a difference between ignoring something and focusing on something. The focus of my opinion article, as you may have guessed by the title “Women in Refrigerators” is women comic book characters.

Once again, I never said that male characters don’t go through extreme circumstances within the comics world. If this had been a “Men in Refrigerators” article, then I probably would have written about my feelings on how Jason Todd was bludgeoned to death and how I felt that this was an overly violent death, just as I felt Alexandra DeWitt’s death was overly-violent. But, it was not a “Men in Refrigerators” article, so I did not write about that. If you had a teacher that, say, asked you to write a paper about brown bears and you took half of the paper to also talk about polar bears, you would be off the mark; and I would be off the mark by writing about the treatment of male characters in an opinion piece that was meant to talk about female characters, or one female character in particular.

The point of the opinion article was one woman’s opinion about the particularly violent treatment of a female comic book character, an idea which I believe you either did not think of or chose to ignore in favor of trying to make your point clear by repeating yourself over and over. It was, again, “Women in Refrigerators,” not “Men in Refrigerators” or “Everyone in Refrigerators.” There are just as many pieces out there, yours included, that include male characters. I’ve read some similar articles that are solely about male characters. Did I feel angry or that the writer was sexist? No. It’s an opinion, it’s not meant to be taken personally. My opinion is just an opinion. If you feel it’s wrong, then I won’t argue with you; that’s your opinion. It’s not going to change how I feel about the subject just because you keep pushing your point.

By: Scott Anderson

Scott Anderson — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:59:05 +0000

So does that mean you stand by this statement:
It’s all but inconceivable for a male writer — especially in the comic book industry — to fit a male character into the role of “damsel in distress.”

Are you still unable to conceive of a male comic writer putting a male character into that role? You don’t need to write a “research paper” to see that plenty of men have been in distress. The orgins of several major characters (e.g. Spider-Man, the Hulk, Daredevil, Iron Man, Captain America, Green Lantern II) not only have male characters in distress who were created to die in their wildly famous origin stories, but they only have men in distress in their popular orgin stories. It is one thing to not be writing a research paper, it is quite another to write something for which you display a complete lack of knowledge on the topic. Seriously, 4 Green Lantern origin stories have men in distress in them where the distressed man sometimes dies and you only saw the woman’s death in the 5th Green Lantern origin. Does’t that strike you as odd?

Or this one (which is not a statement of opinion, btw):
Men in comics have taken their fair share of abuse in the name of plot and story, but not to the extent that women have.

Can you name a male character who hasn’t had something like the things done to female characters on the WiR list done to him?
Or this (which might be an opinion if what is more or less brutality is opinion):
Women in comics are treated much more brutally than their male counterparts — main character, supporting, or otherwise.

Finally, there is this, which kind of sums things up:
This entire discussion is a great example of that; my reaction to Alexandra DeWitt’s murder, and that she was created solely to be murdered, is one of senseless violence toward women. Yours, obviously, is not.

But here is the important difference, you only feel that way when a female character is created to die while completely ignoring when male characters are created to die. I, however, don’t think that either male or female deaths of characters created to die are necessarily senseless violence in a medium that thrives almost entirely on violence. Your opinion appears sexist because you don’t hold female deaths to the same criteria that you hold male deaths to while suggesting stating that the problem is that men hate women. If male writers are killing and assulting both male and female charaters with abandon but you only mourn the female charters, that sure seems like it’s your sexism that is the problem, not theirs. But that’s just my opinion, of course.

By: Marron

Marron — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 07:32:11 +0000

@Scott: Nope, I haven’t changed my mind, I’ve just been busy with life. :) As far as everything else you’ve said on the subject, I never denied there are male characters who go through some especially horrendous things in the name of plot; and while I did use the word “fact”, if you look at one of my replies above, you’ll see that I say that it’s not an actual fact, just a fact in my opinion — since this is an article of opinion, not a research paper or news article.
I also believe that one can be misogynistic through ignorance, and not just through outright hatred of women; just as one can be racist or anti-semetic, etc, through ignorance. I feel that a lot of “women in refrigerators” are the direct result of this sort of ignorance; at least with male writers writing “dudes in distress” as you put it, men generally know how men think and feel and can correctly gauge what a male character would think or feel in that situation. I think it’s a lot harder for a male writer, even one who might be very in touch with his feminine side, to as correctly guage the thoughts, feelings, or reactions of a woman. And, once again, the same is true in the reverse situation. This entire discussion is a great example of that; my reaction to Alexandra DeWitt’s murder, and that she was created solely to be murdered, is one of senseless violence toward women. Yours, obviously, is not.
You’ve written a few great articles about men who experience the same sort of situations; although, to be honest, I think your articles may have been a little more poignant if they were articles on their own instead of responding to my opinion piece as it was something I was writing as a news article.

By: Scott Anderson

Scott Anderson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:07:30 +0000

Marron said, “And if anyone thinks this is a controversial subject or that Alex isn’t a good example, just wait until next month’s woman in a ‘fridge!”

I’ve noticed that it has been well over a month since this article and that quote above. Does that mean that you’ve changed your mind about WiR? Or is the article just a little late?