My Non-Adventures in Misogyny

By Samantha Tynes

Like many other children of the 80s and 90s I grew up watching the X-men and Spider-man on Saturday mornings, thinking about how awesome it would be to be Batman or some other masked crime fighter. I watched Sailor Moon after school growing up; it came on right before Pokémon.

Adorable next-gen nerd at NYCC 2010
(image by Sharese Ann Frederick)

In the evenings, my mom would drop me off at a friend’s place to play 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons with their parents. There were five or six of us at a time, parents included. She could not understand why I wanted to hang out with a group of boys and play a tabletop roleplaying game with them. Though my afternoons were filled with fantastical adventures, I did not read comics. Lilac walls with ballerinas decorated my room, worn copies of The Hobbit and Harry Potter lived harmoniously next to my horse figurines; I was a nerd in training.

Many of my friends have the same story, playing Magic: the Gathering and D&D was something girls did not do, and flipping through any of the handbooks with their illustrations of half-clothed female deities and demons in odd poses did not help my case for playing. But unlike comic books, it could provide an escape available for anyone. Yes, the pictures in the books are obviously aimed at a male audience and are laden with sexual fantasies; nevertheless there is no penalty for being a female character. There is an openness that allows anyone to play anything they want, with any story. Latching onto that idea of openness, we started wading into that giant pool of nerdom.

I remember the first time I walked into the local comic store with my best friend. The store was dusty and smelled like old books, crowded with boxes stacked high making it seem poorly lit despite the sun pouring through the glass storefront. We stood in the doorway as the store owner looked up at us with grouchy look, the confused and sometimes accusatory looks of the patrons asked, “Who are these two high school girls intruding on my sanctuary?” We didn’t bother to look around at the stacks of new comics and boxes filled with older copies carefully wrapped in plastic. Picking up the few dice we needed for our D&D game later that evening, we left rather quickly. They made sure we knew we didn’t belong there then. But time passes, things change, and now we do.

But by all means, BBT, keep flogging that dead horse.
(image via WhatCulture and © CBS)

My first foray into the mainstream comic world was the first Spiderman movie; The Lord of the Rings trilogy had already started and being a nerd was suddenly cool. No longer did I have to keep my library copy of Elf Quest under my desk but could talk openly with my classmates about the Hobbit. The Justice League was and still is one of my all-time favorite shows. Female superheroes like Black Canary and She-Hulk were getting on the same level of popularity and exposure as the pantheon of male superheroes, popular actresses started taking roles in comic movies on purpose. Comics are cool now, and though there is still a core group of diehard fans forever searching for that #1 copy of their favorite story arc that is not a variant edition (I’ve resigned to never finding that Lady Mechanika #1) they should expect and accept more women in their ranks.

As I got older I found more female friends that shared the same interests I did.  It was a little strange at first, when I finally did fall into my real group of fellow geeks and gamers. But the strangeness didn’t stem from being one of the only girls (I wasn’t) or being treated as if I didn’t know what I was talking about solely because of my gender, but the lack of these things. The guys we hung out with weren’t shocked or put off by having a girl to talk to about their favorite superhero or game. They were thrilled by it - and no, not because there was a girl, but because they had found another person that shared their flavor of geek. Real life geeks aren’t a horde of sex-crazed, misogynistic men who believe that the only good woman is in skin-tight latex and has the spinal flexibility of a cat.

It took me awhile to settle into my own geek self, and I’ll admit that some of the prejudices I had to get past were my own. I was expecting to be treated differently, but always by people I didn’t already know. The thing is, once you stop expecting that, it stops coming up. My current regular tabletop RPG group is overwhelmingly male still, but it doesn’t really matter. There are still plenty of women doing LARPs and padded weapons, helping run conventions and sitting on panels, waiting hours in line to meet their favorite artist or writer with other fans and generally having a blast pursuing their interest and being themselves. I do many of those things myself, and no one is passing over my panels on A.I. and time travel just because a woman is leading the discussion.

Finally, SDCC ran a Women in Comics panel.
(image by Alan Light, taken in 1982)

The female presence in comics, on and off the pages, has changed greatly since its creation. The media’s treatment of comic books has made them more mainstream with their multi-million dollar budgets movies, like the recently wrapped up Dark Knight trilogy or the Avengers. There is a greater diversity within and change in overall attitude towards comics as something not just for boys and young men, but for adults and women as well. It has opened a window for girls to come through a few at a time, but our excitement and interest won’t keep it that way.

Today, I could spend hours in a comic or gaming store pouring over boxes of back issues and picking just the right mini figurine to piece together and paint. I haven’t gotten a funny look in a comic or gaming store in years, nor have any of my female friends. People have been recognizing the ridiculousness of the portrayal of women in comics in equal parts serious and humor. I hear horror stories on the internet about “true nerds” and “fake geek girls” out to get you, women being heckled, yelled at and harassed at conventions and I feel for these women, truly. But I’ve never seen it in person, known anyone who’s experienced this. Maybe I live in a bubble, or maybe these stories are the inflammatory exception, not the rule.