Nothing says "women are strong" like being unable to deal with female superheroes being harmed.
There has been a recent uproar against an ad for the 'X-Men: Apocalypse' movie. The ad has supervillain Apocalypse holding supervillain Mystique by the throat with the caption "Only the Strong Will Survive." Many people, including actress Rose McGowan, have blasted the ad for promoting violence against women. "There is a major problem when the men and women at 20th Century Fox think casual violence against women is the way to market a film. There is no context in the ad, just a woman getting strangled. The fact that no one flagged this is offensive and, frankly, stupid," said McGowan. Fox has since apologized.
Let's note McGowan's hypocrisy for a moment. After all, she didn't seem to mind violence against women on HER show:
This isn't the first time people have been up in arms about a female comic book character being harmed. Look at the image below:
This is a variant cover of Batgirl #41. Inspired by the Batman graphic novel 'The Killing Joke', it portrays Batgirl being held hostage by The Joker. People got mad for similar reasons: people did not like the idea of a woman being powerless. DC decided to pull the variant cover.
Maybe we should get rid of female superheroes. After all, they clearly can't handle the threat of a male supervillain.
In all seriousness, this is such a dumb thing to be mad about. Out of context, yes, this does look bad. If we replace the heroes and villains with an average man and woman, it does look like people are glorifying violence against women.
But it is intellectually dishonest to ignore the context. Superheroes fight supervillains. Supervillains sometimes fight each other. These things are normal in the world of superheroes.The evil characters blow up things. They kill tons of people. They plan on taking over the world. So we can sit through mass murder and destruction, but seeing someone choke a woman is somehow unbearable to see?
If women are going to be superheroes or supervillains, they have to take the good and the bad. We don't see a problem when female comic book characters attack men comic book characters. After all, it comes with the territory. But sometimes, the men comic book characters attack back. Should we faint every time a male comic book character looks the wrong way at a female comic book character, let alone attack her?
Violence against women is a bad thing. But when they put on a mask and try to fight crime, there is going to be violence against them from unscrupulous, evil villains. Either their fans deal with it or leave.
No great loss.
