Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, dc comics, entertainment, Micah Ian Wright, Opposites, wonder woman

You're Never Too Young To Learn Sexism

Published Mon, 15 Dec 2014 19:00:54 -0600

DC Comics has a book you can buy on Amazon.com called Super Heroes Book Of Opposites and it includes some of the following pages:

Now the first thing I should say here is that this book was published in 2013. It has that late 70's feel to it though. Not only from the art, but take a look at the page below.

This was one of two pages comic writer Micah Ian Wright brought up to his Facebook followers by saying "My First Book of Superhero Opposites by ‪#‎DCcomics‬ is straight up sexist. I'm embarrassed to read it to my daughter and it's going back to Amazon."

Here Superman is pulling the giant machine while Wonder Woman pushes a child in a swing. Wright said about the above image: "Wonder Woman doing that heroic stuff that the Patriarchy allows female heroes to do. Ever wonder why we've never seen a Wonder Woman film? You're looking at what this company thinks of their own character."

He posted the below image as well with the following caption: "Full grown females… are GIRLS. Full grown male counterparts with identical abilities are MEN. #So1960s"

Now it's pointed out in the comments that the "girls" in the above picture are the character names. Though Batwoman could have been substituted for Batgirl… but the point Wright brings up is that these are also the only two example of women in the entire book.

The two images on their own do seem a bit sexist, but the lack of any other use of female characters to off set them kind of drives the point home. Perhaps we are reading too much into a pre-schooler and up book. Let's try another. DC has a book that just focuses on their female characters.