A Sex-skewed look at GL relationships

As I've mentioned in a previous post, I occasionally toy with thinking about what the DCU would be like if the principle characters were of the opposite sexes. I came to many conclusions, but one actually surprised me, so I'll post it here.

Kyle Rayner as a woman would not work. It's not his personality that's the problem, he'd probably make a charming female character with very little alteration to his personality. The problem is that the sheer amount of time he ends up tied up/tortured/gratuitously beaten in occasionally disturbingly suggestive ways would have the feminists in an uproar if he were female.

Especially in terms of his relationships.

I mean take Kyle's relationships as they are now and just switch the sexes involved:

Okay, so you start with "Kyla Rayner", a freelance artist given the ring after "Holly Jordan" went nuts and/or gets possessed by the Parallax spirit. She has a very supportive boyfriend named "Alexander DeWitt", who ends up in her fridge.

So far so good.

Now, under mind control, "Kyla" ends up attacking the Titans. She manages to expel the telepath from her mind and starts hitting it off with "Donald Troy". It goes relatively well until he catches a nude male model in her apartment posing for "Kyla's" painting. He starts to go on a rampage, where upon he brings up Alex-of-the-Fridge.

Hmm, a bit disturbing I think. It can be scary when a guy is yelling at you like that. And the jealousy's unnerving.

Okay, they reconcile, she gets to meet his son, and things are going well. But naturally circumstances intercede. Don's ex and son are killed. He also ends up breaking up with her and ultimately dating a sexy weapons specialist.

Well, that's not too bad. Reads the same either way. The jealousy's the worst part and the yelling's not as forgivable in a man as it is in a woman.

But now we have Jade or...um..."Jadeite"? "Jonny Lee Hayden", or something like that. I like to keep my naming schemes consistant. Anyway, "Jonny" begins his tenure by barging in and insisting on being allowed to stay at "Kyla's" apartment while she's still dating "Don".

Okay, already there's a few warning bells. Barging into someone's place and insisting on staying there is cheeky when you're a girl, not so much for a guy. Now anyone who's read GL knows how the relationship goes. They get together, she becomes Ion, he gets a bit freaked out by this but is reassured by a haircut. She restores his powers. Resurrects the Guardians/Oa. Yay.

But her little assistant is attacked, and that in combination with the culmination of being a god, having one's heart yanked out in 3000 years ago Atlantis, and having the JLA's souls stored inside, and other factors lead to her going out into space for a while. "Jonny" comes along at first, but eventually chooses to go back whereupon he ultimately cheats on her.

Okay, pretty hateful regardless right there.

Anyway, she comes home to find this and a fight takes place in which she says "I never thought you were such a-" And then is slapped before she can finish. She apologizes.

...See, there we're getting into troublesome territory. With sexes shifted, what was just a hateful move from a woman who couldn't wait becomes a bit more disturbing. Regardless, "Kyla" leaves, lets "Jonny" keep the apartment.
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Now what's interesting to me is that if I just read the above story outline, and forget the original comic. I actually start to get worried. I mean, if I saw a female friend, after the death of her boyfriend follow that pattern, I'd be really really worried about her. "Don" isn't bad, as much of his behavior can be excused because of grief. But "Jonny" is pretty hateful as he is. And it seems like the woman has entered into a self-destructive pattern. It's only a matter of time before she dates a real abuser. She seems to be heading in that direction.

What I find absolutely fascinating about this is that the thought never occurred to me reading the comic. Everything I've described here happened in the comics. The pattern remains in the comic. But it was only when the sexes were reversed that it started to occur to me how fucked up it was.

It's interesting to me, because domestic abuse for example happens both ways. But the female-abuser is not something our society is incredibly adept at comprehending. We immediately assume that the guy is weak or emasculated which of course is not the case. But blaming the victim is even more obvious in this case. Now comics have done a lot of new, modern stories before, and I'd actually be very impressed if a good writer chose to tackle the topic of female-to-male domestic abuse. I doubt they would, but if they did, Kyle with his pattern, and his fixation on dominant women, would be a logical choice for the writers to use. If they'd decided to go that route.

I don't exactly know what I'm getting at in this post, it's more an observation of myself that I found particularly noteworthy.