fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #582 ]

[ SECRET POST #582 ]

⌈ Secret Post #582 ⌋

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

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154. Because women are never sexist.

What, exactly, has Steph done that's so disgraceful? Have a child? Take over the Robin suit? Be blonde? Either give us the details, or fuck right off.

171. Christ, yes. The two Barbaras were RIGHT there, but do we even get to see baby!Barbara's face? NO. Bastards.

Babs is his niece/adopted daughter and I believe she came to live with him after his divorce (wife got James Jr, don't think the daughter exists in comics). Hopefully she'll show up later on in the movie-verse.

The problem with that interpretation is that if you watch the Dent scene, there is a young red-headed girl in Mama!Barbara's arms. :/ If that's not Babs, who is it?

They could've just added random!faceless daughter to make the divorce more tragic when it comes in movie-verse. She wasn't named in the credits. Until they name her or Gordon mentions his divorce or niece in the next movie, it could go either way. But that doesn't mean we should give up hope!

Too late. They fridged Rachel, they ignored Babs completely...

It's not like they've been totally faithful to origin stories up until now, anyway. They've edited other shit out or in. They couldn't have made this change, seeing as how pretty much no one knows the son and everyone knows Babs?

Edited 2008-08-09 22:48 (UTC)

Frankly I'm more upset over what they did to Montoya!fill-in!cop than any perceived slight to Babs.

Until we get more backstory, we don't know if this girl is intended to be Barbara Gordon or not. We could get moving footage of Jim's divorce in the next movie where Jim Jr (who is canon) chooses to live with his mother while faceless!girlchild develops into an actual character. We could have the wife get both of them and Jim's niece comes to live with him. Until they ACTUALLY fubar Babs, I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Clearly, I'm just more cynical than you. Considering that they knocked off the only major female character in order to make Bruce ~angst~ more, I'm not particularly inclined to give than any benefit of the doubt whatsoever. Also, we got faceless!girlchild but a face and personality for the the boychild? Yeah, I'm not so much with the trust.

I'm pretty pissed about Montoya!fill-in too. (No Harvey falling in love and outing her? BASTARDS. D:)

Yes, despite everyone's best efforts, my capacity to hope remains intact. The movie had problems. Most movies have problems with this, especially in the superhero/comics genre. (I'm holding out hope for a She Hulk comedy action movie that breaks this curse). But there is still room in this movie-verse for Babs to show up and be completely awesome, whether she was intended to be faceless!girlchild or not. Of course, if the next movie drops the ball my rage will know no bounds, but until we get that next movie, I'm not giving up hope.

(PLUS the whole making her a dirty cop thing. She may have been slightly tarnished by the end of the whole Corrigan thing, but corrupted enough to sell out the city? Hells no.)

Oh, I don't know...CAUSED A MASSIVE GANG WAR BECAUSE SHE WAS TOO SELFISH TO GIVE UP ON BEING ROBIN!?

Also: Misogyny =/= sexism.

That said, I was ticked about not seeing Babs' face, too. Guess they did that so she'll be easier to cast in the later films.

Yes, thank you. That's exactly why I think she didn't deserve to be Robin and never, ever, deserved a memorial in the cave. It's not misogyny. It's definitely not sexist. She got herself and thousands of others killed.

Well, I guess it's a good thing she never got one. Because she was still alive.

(I think the gang thing was sexism in action, however. Imagine if Tim got stripped of his cape, and he tried to pull off something like what Steph did-- maybe he would have flubbed it, but his efforts would have been redeemed at the end. Steph, though...)

I'm aware. I was more making a point about the massive outcry about zomgmemorial since that went hand in hand with anyone talking about Spoiler before her return. I wasn't clear in that point though. I am thankful that the writers at least threw in that Bruce suspected and that's why there wasn't a memorial. Because if Steph and Leslie pulled on over on the World's Greatest Detective? That would have pissed me off more.

(I don't see it that way, I guess? I see it more as the difference between Tim and Steph as Robin. Tim was trained and competent. Steph wasn't, at least not on that level. She was brash, acted out, and ended up setting something in motion that she shouldn't have. Because she should have known that, the plan being Batman's, there was stuff involved that she didn't know. Shitty writing more than shitty character? Probably, but it ruined Steph-as-Robin for me. If Jason Todd had pulled the same trick? Yeah, it would have failed just as spectacularly for the same reasons it failed for Steph. )

As I mentioned downthread, I think the memorial outcry is because Steph encapsulates a lot of issues female fans have with the treatment of heroines-- she's a Robin-- part of a line of sidekicks with a long history of being important. And then her character was treated as less competent and got killed off without even as much acknowledgment as the Robin fans voted to kill. It's was sort of the essence of everything that people have problems with, you dig?

(Personally, I feel like had any other Robin been given that storyline, they would have been redeemed, or at least got a deserved dressing down, and then forgiveness at the end. I saw it not as selfishness, but as a fateful attempt at proving her worth-- which is something other Robins have done, and are usually vindicated. Her sin was in thinking herself as worthy as Dick, Jason and Tim.)

The whole "part of a line of sidekicks with long history of being important" was half of the reason I get so mad seeing Steph-as-Robin. She was not good in the role, she lacked in inate selflessness that a Robin has to have. Even Jason was selfless to a certain extent. But Steph? The only selfless thing she *ever* did was give her baby up for adoption. Everything else that she ever did was just to further some goal of her own - whether that was getting back at her dad, forcing her way into the bat-family, or stealing Tim away from the girlfriend she *knew* he had - it was always about *her*.

Steph didn't get the acknowledgement as Robin becasue she *didn't deserve it.* It wasn't becasue she was a girl, people just try to *make* it that way. That's not the way it was.

(And personally, neither Dick nor Tim would *ever* commit that storyline, because it's simply not in the nature of their characters. But if they *had,* or if Jason had, I believe they would have been treated exactly the same way. Her sin was selfishness, not deeming herself 'worthy' of anything)

Even assuming that Steph really is a terrible Robin who didn't deserve any acknowledgement, do you think it's a coincidence that the only female Robin is the one who was worst at the job?

♥ ♥ ♥

Yup. Because there have been at least three other 'Girl Wonders' in Elseworlds who don't suck near as much, so it must just be that Steph's character is unsuited for the role. Doesn't matter that she's a girl, just that she, as a character, should never have been Robin.

I'm pretty sure someone's made the "main continuity is different from Elseworlds" point already, so I won't try to argue that one. But I will say this:

I don't care whether you like Steph as a character or as a Robin. Honestly, she's not one of my particular favorites either (though I don't hate her). I just think it's disingenuous to treat her failure and/or lack of recognition as though it's an isolated incident rather than part of an overall trend in comics.

And I think that it's disingenuous to turn something that *is* an isolated event into a rallying point for a certain politcal stripe. Especially when said incident is more about story and character than gender.

Re: 154

xenoglossy - 2008-08-10 15:49 (UTC) - Expand

Bad writing, not a bad character.

She didn't "deserve" or not deserve anything. As she's not a real person.

The good stuff was a willful choice by a writer--like giving up her baby for adoption so it had a better life than she could give it. The bad stuff, like the gang war, was a willful choice by a writer.

She could've been a GREAT character, and there wasn't anything wrong with her actual personality. There was good in it, there was bad in it.

A writer made a bad choice and chose to make her make a stupid decision and kill her off instead of making her make good decisions, and saving the day.

Just like a bunch of phone calls made Jason Todd go into the warehouse when Batman told him not to take on Joker alone, just like a bunch of phone calls made it so the situation even existed, since it was a situation that was constructed.

There is no point in hating characters unless their construction was utterly hackneyed. Batman is a good character, at root. If he does something stupid, like, for instance, building a satellite that allows TWO villains (Ra's and Maxwell Lord) on separate occasions, to target most of his friends and allies (and doesn't destroy it the first time a villain takes advantage of it) and it's responsible for the death of a colleague and friend (Ted Kord, who was investigating the issue), robs a teenage boy of a year of his life because he chooses to selflessly help the heroes despite a complete lack of experience as a hero (Jaime Reyes, who helped uncloak the satellite and got caught up in the dimensional riptide after Brother Eye was destroyed, losing a year of his life) and nearly kills every metahuman on Earth...

Is he a bad character? Overall? Poorly constructed? A horrible person?

Or not a person at all? Because he's fictional.

Writers made him make craptastic decisions and he was what they MADE him.

Batman can be an utter DICK or an admirable-but-slightly-broken Dark Knight protecting his city. Superman can be a holier-than-thou, dickish, Gary Stu or one lonely man, from an alien world and from a loving Kansas family, trying to save the whole world every day, prone to making the mistake of sometimes holding others to his own rigid personal moral standards (ones he has because he wants to do the very best for the world he can, and that maybe other people SHOULD follow).

Steph could've been a great Robin, and she served the spirit of it just fine. She did care about people or she never would've become Spoiler OR Robin. She didn't make bad choices. The writers made her make bad choices. Just like someone could do the same for Tim. It wouldn't make his character a bad one.

There are no bad characters, only bad writers.

I'm going to have to disagree with that interpretation of events, but okay.

Also, women can be misogynist as well as sexist. Especially seeing as how one is more intensified version of the other (institution of sexism versus the individualization of sexism).

Ha. Mine is a bitter laugh. Nolan? Cast Batgirl? Hell will freeze over first.

But that's *not* what misogyny is. The definition of the word, according to the dictionary, is "a hatred, dislike or mistrust of women." It's not "institutionalized sexism," it's a personal, exteremie view.

And I'm still hoping for Robin to show up...fingers crossed despite the chances being almost zip.

"a hatred, dislike or mistrust of women."

What the hell do you think sexism is, deep down, at its core?

Not hatred.

Disrespect, yes. Opinions against empowerment, yes. Views of women as the 'weaker sex' or something less than a man, absolutely. But none of that indicates all-out hatred. Misogynism does, and that's the big difference between the two terms.

And might I remind you, it is very possible for a woman to be sexist against men. However, there is a big difference between that sexist woman and a misandrist.

However the definition is "hatred, dislike or mistrust"-- those can take shape any number of ways (for ex, calling a woman a "slut" is both sexist in impugning the individual woman by dint of her sexual experiences and misogynist in implying that any woman's worth is tied to her sexual drive. Which does not imply hatred of women, but mistrust of women and their sex drives in general). The idea that women are the "weaker sex" stems from mistrust of women's mental faculties-- fear that they might be as intelligent as men, and lack of trust that they are.

There are a lot of different kinds of dislike and mistrust, and all of them are misogynist, and all of them feed into sexism.

Being a woman does not mean one is safe from being either sexist or misogynist. We live in a society that is both, and every person picks up those attitudes to one extent or another, whether they want to or not.

I don't really care that women can be prejudiced against men, as that's neither systematic in Western culture nor particularly germane to the topic at hand.

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[ SECRET POST #582 ]

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