[ SECRET POST #3811 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3811 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[resized, not a repeat]











Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 45 secrets from Secret Submission Post #546.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

i'm not sure i get this, what is the "other" image and in which way is it hypocritical to complain about the cover but not the other thing?

it feels like some sort of "gotcha, feminists" point but i don't know any context except the debate about the cover

[(Anonymous)]

it feels like some sort of "gotcha, feminists" point

of course that's what it is. that's fucking all it is.

[thewakokid]

The point, I believe, is that there are some key similarities in these two scenarios that should evoke similar emotional reactions. chiefly the victimisation, the menace, the obvious threat to someone not in a position to defend themselves and the use of bodily fluids on the mouth.

If one of these scenarios makes you uncomfortable it's not unreasonable to expect the other to. And people got really upset about it happening to Barbara.

The problem is that there are also some significant differences, chiefly the gender, the ages, and the facial expression. Bruce is male - which will, lets be honest always count against him when it comes to a competition with a woman for sympathy, all other things aside you gotta admit that - Much Younger - so would be expected to sho more terror, not less - and seems scared stiff while Babs seems openly terrified and is actually crying. Babs is reacting worse than Bruce to what is roughly the same situation, hence some peoples reactions may be heightened by that.

You could conclude that people don't care about bad shit happening to a male compared to a female based on the different reactions, or you could conclude that people see the differences in the situation as significant enough to justify getting less upset about this act being done to one of these two people.

I don't know which side I'm down on. but I don't think either side is being totally unreasonable here.

[(Anonymous)]

i don't think that's any reasonable train of thought. one is the cover for a comic book unrelated to TKJ, the other is a scene in a tv series(?) one of the major points about the cover was that it was on a comic book for fans of barbara and if i recall correctly, aimed at a younger audience than TKJ. i'm not saying "think of the children!", but making the sexual and physical trauma of the heroine the subject of a special edition cover for young women is something very different than making a storyline involving the same sort of imagery. and IMHO it's really tacky?? (feel free to correct me, that drama was ages ago)

if the cover had been a panel from the comic then i could see the point, but it's a bit apples and oranges and even then...
i don't think you can compare the scene in there with the plot in TKJ, since barbara explicitely gets crippled and sexually assaulted to cause a man pain, which has a long proud and really gross tradition in media.

like, saying "a man and a woman being tortured in media should evoke the same kind of reaction" is nice and all, but it's a bit like the "colour blind" excuse. it's not the same, it doesn't exist in a vaccuum, yada yada


but that's all irrelevant anyway, because the reason the cover was so controversial was not that portraying violence against women is forbidden while violence against men is okay (in fact, a big point was made that male heroes don't get portrayed like that in modern media... again, feel free to correct me). and it certainly wasn't a bit of blood on the face either.

[thewakokid]

"one is the cover for a comic book unrelated to TKJ"

making the sexual and physical trauma of the heroine the subject of a special edition cover

The cover was unrelated to TKJ. Any of those younger fans who haven't read TKJ would not have made any connection from that cover to any sexual or physical trauma. Hell, Even I think the connection is tenuous. She is being menaced by a villain on the cover of a comic. It happens. It's happening to Bruce in the same way in that screenshot.

Barbara explicitly gets crippled and sexually assaulted to cause a man pain

In TKJ, yes. In this cover she is being menaced and made helpless to cause her pain. This story is about her. So you are complaining about her pain being a side effect in TKJ to build a guys story, and you're complaining about it being used directly in this cover for her story, so the way it seems to me is that you just don't want to see bad shit happen to female characters. Which is bullshit, partly because of the implication that equally bad shit happening to men is a-flipping-ok, and partly because bad shit happening to superheroes is what makes them interesting. Lets be honest, TKJ, while badly handled for her in the original story, it gave babs the best character development DC has ever done. Her transition from Batgirl to Oracle is still the most significant and impressive development any character has ever done under DC.

Anyway, your point, if I can summarise, seems to be that its worse because of what TKJ did to babs. To that I simply reply, that this is not TKJ. Can The joker not ever menace Barbara now because of TKJ? Can she not be in a position of helplessness for the Joker now without it being, what, problematic? Can she not have the joker as a nemesis now? No. I simply disagree.

As for that whole paragraph about how "It's just different what bad shit happens to men than women because Not A Vacuum" I ENTIRELY disagree. Entirely. The idea that bad shit happening is different - lets be honest, we're talking about less impacting, less upsetting, as I see it less significant - the idea that suffering should be seen as less based on gender being justified by ANY social bullshit or buzzwords, that is why I do not consider myself a feminist. That is just... I mean, word fail me.

Fucking equality. it doesn't mean "It's the same, but not in this case because nothing happens in a vacuum"

[(Anonymous)]

man, buddy, if you're just going to build a straw man out of me don't bother replying.

also you completely misunderstand what "doesn't exist in a vacuum" means. it's about how men and women suffering IS ALREADY being depicted differently and has always been depicted differently in media and if you disagree with that you're quite frankly too hideously uniformed to participate in these discussions. it is not about real life people get your head out of your ass .