Put it Down, Flip It and Reverse It (Gender Depictions)

By Lauren Jacobs

The way women are often portrayed in science fiction and fantasy art is a problem. The postures that women are depicted in, and how the characters relate to the rest of the compositions in each frame, is so provocative that it becomes the most important thing about the character.

(copyrighted by Tim Chamberlain, creator of Our Valued Customers)
Denying the problem exists by insisting everything is fine, because
"comics aren't real, [you idiot]" is a way of silencing discussion and
invalidating the offended person, rather than addressing the issue. 

  

I’m not saying that female super heroes shouldn’t be sexy. I’m not saying that male super heroes don’t have bodies that are just as ridiculously exaggerated as the women’s. But when we look specifically at the body language of female characters in science fiction and fantasy art, and how their bodies are framed within the picture, this imagery doesn’t give added dimensionality to the characters; it attempts to replace dimension.

As a nerd, an artist, and a feminist, this is an issue I’m passionate about. But it’s nothing new. Lots of people have pointed it out this phenomenon, and discussed it ad nauseam. A few artists have realized that a picture is worth a thousand words and begun using their talents to highlight the problem in a way that can be understood immediately (image links are bolded):

• Of course, there’s Kevin Bolk’s “Avengers Booty Ass-emble” piece, which is up with our podcast with Interrobang Studios.
• In a similar vein, The Hawkeye Initiative swaps out ridiculous female comic character poses with Hawkeye doing the same thing (Here’s their BBC coverage).
• And another with Coelasquid, creator of the Manly Guys Doing Manly Things comic, putting a male heroes into a ridiculous wonder woman pose, which then went viral.
• Lastly, Theamat’s  “If I don’t get pants, nobody gets pants,” a submission to the Comic Book Resources’ challenge: The Line is Drawn: Male Superheroes See How the Other Side Lives

But what do we do about it? Saying that women should not be portrayed sexually establishes a precedent for dictating a woman’s behavior, or that women who want to be taken “seriously” shouldn’t behave sexually. It smacks too much of slut shaming for my liking. I don’t want society dictating the “appropriate” way to be a woman at all.

I also don’t want society dictating to men the appropriate way to behave. I want there to be one set of social standards, regardless of gender. I’m not saying that people should stop expressing their gender identities, I’m saying that morality and codes of conduct should not be dictated by gender identity; morals should be universal.

Right now, there is a huge division between how women and men are portrayed sexually. This problem can’t be fixed by rethinking the portrayal of women alone. There’s been a lot of discussion around the revision of what is considered “acceptable” female sexuality. I want us to come at the problem from a different direction. I want us as a culture to reexamine male sexuality.

(awesome image by Alyssa from the 2012 Slut Walk DC)
Respect is sexy, for everyone. 

I teach life drawing, and have found when my students are drawing nude models they draw the female model’s breasts bigger than they are, and male model’s genitals smaller than they are (if they draw the male genitals at all). About 97 percent of my students do this, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.

We in the United States have a strange aversion to the nude male form. Having an erect penis in a movie automatically earns the movie at least an NC-17 rating, but fully nude women run amuck through many an R rated movie (Here’s a great article about the double standards of the MPAA). Even a non-sexualized cartoon penis created outrage over one sequence in the Simpson’s movie.

The socially accepted expression of male sexuality is critically limited in the United States. I’m not just talking about baring penises. I’m talking about male expressions of emotions. As outdated a notion as it is, plenty of men grow up being told that they’re not allowed to cry. This has many repercussions on our culture, only one of which is the portrayal of women.

If feminism is about equal rights for women and men, then it can’t just be about women. We need to start addressing outdated, oppressive stereotypes in male culture too.

Chally Kacelnik has a (frequently unattributed), eloquent response:

The thing is, it’s patriarchy that says men are stupid and monolithic and unchanging and incapable. It’s patriarchy that says men have animalistic instincts and just can’t stop themselves from harassing and assaulting. It’s patriarchy that says men can only be attracted by certain qualities, can only have particular kinds of responses, can only experience the world in narrow ways. Feminism holds that men are capable of more – are more than that. Feminism says that men are better than that, can change, are capable of learning, and have the capacity to be decent and wonderful people.

[original source]

We might not feel the need to over-sexualize women the way we do if we weren't so intimidated by male sexuality. We could evenly distribute the burden of being sexy, provocative beasts.

In other words, giving freedoms to part of a community raises up the entire community, and limiting the freedoms of any part of a community oppresses the community as a whole.