Musings on Gender and Accountability

Jay Edidin's recent column examines the incidents of rape involving both Jack Knight and Oliver Queen. It's a good post and I recommend reading it. It actually reminds me very much of the incident in Nightwing 93. In both cases, the male characters were taken advantage of by female characters, but neither comic ever really gave the incidents the proper resolution. The Nightwing scene is different because it's ambiguous as to how much consent Dick is actually giving at the time. The story after seems to vacillate between treating it as a rape or not, but doesn't really bring any sort of resolution regarding Tarantula. Whereas the Ollie story is unquestionably rape, but the story never treats it that way at all. The thing is, if the scenes were structured the other way around, the reaction would have to be different. If Shado was a man who molested a delirious Olivia Queen, or even if Tarantula had initiated sexual intercourse with a traumatized Dee Grayson, there would be more of an outrage. Shado is a RAPIST. Tarantula may or may not be depending on how one reads the comic, but the assholishness inherent in pushing sexual attention in that specific situation would, I think, not be given quite as much of a pass if she were a man. There are other examples of this sort of phenomenon. Hank Pym hits Janet once, in the midst of a psychotic break, and is forever known as a wife beater. Kate Kane punches Renee Montoya, in full possession of her facilties, and is never called on for it. I say this as someone who enjoys Batwoman's appearances in 52 quite a lot, but that was something that would never have flown with Bruce Wayne. Let's look at Kendra in JSA for a moment. She undergoes a pretty rough time as the whole Hawkgirl reincarnation stuff starts to hit. She's angry, confused and doesn't know which way is up. Twice, in the heat of the moment, she strikes a male team member. Now admittedly, the target of her rage is a sand monster and thus not likely to suffer any permanent damage. But let's say, for just a moment, the circumstances were different. Carter's the one undergoing the confusing reincarnation crap and he up and belts Power Girl. Would that really fly? What about Jade? Her relationship with Kyle is pretty creepy if you look at it the other way around. I'm not saying this as a condemnation of these characters, they're usually pretty interesting reading and most of these stories are written by writers that I tend to enjoy. I do think there's a noticeable double standard. For whatever reason, female heroic characters appear to have less accountability for their actions. This strikes me as a shame, honestly, because I think there could be a lot of interesting fall-out if these situations were treated with the same severity as if it were the other way around. Having heroes come to terms with less than glowing behavior can make for really fascinating stories, especially if gender assumptions do start to come up during the course. I think I'd like to read them. (Entry edited on December 1, 2020 to reflect accurate names and pronouns.)