Joe Corallo: Wonder Woman Queer; Restrictions Apply
Last week Greg Rucka, current writer on Wonder Woman Rebirth, confirmed in an interview that Wonder Woman is queer. Whether you agree with Greg Rucka’s approach on the character, it’s a good interview and worth your time. Basically, the ideas delved into are that since Wonder Woman’s home Themyscira is an all woman’s paradise that whereas they may not exactly consider it being queer since same sex relationships are all they could have, we would consider it queer by our standards. And certainly any women that come to our world from there would almost certainly be queer by our standards.
This is certainly important for queer representation in comics. However, there are some factors here that limit this milestone that are worth discussing.
First, Wonder Woman has not always been queer. Some sites like this one make the claim that she always was, and that was always creator William Moulton Marston’s intentions. We have absolutely no evidence that was his end goal. Yes, he was in a polyamorous relationship with two women and enjoyed BDSM. While he clearly drew on some of his bondage experience for the comic, that does not mean he wished the character to be openly queer and to ultimately acknowledge that in the comics. Seeing as William Moulton Marston passed away in 1947, there are little to know formal interviews his creating Wonder Woman. Believe it or not, people didn’t care a lot about comic creators back then.
When it comes to Wonder Woman in comics as well let’s keep in mind that Comics Code Authority. The code as it stood in 1954 banned any reference to sexual deviations as they saw it, so any form of queerness, straight through 1989. While both Marvel and DC had printed a few comics that could not get the Comics Code Authority seal, it was almost always for something related to drug use. Rarely if ever was the seal denied to Marvel or DC for queerness.
The companies followed those guidelines so closely that Chris Claremont was forced to drop the idea of a queer relationship between Mystique and Destiny from his X-Men run. As a result, multiple generations of Wonder Woman writers had no intention of writing her as queer as it would not be published. Furthermore, straight cis white men (with the arguable exception of William Moulton Marston being polyamorous) exclusively wrote Wonder Woman for over four decades until ComicMix’s own Mindy Newell got to write three issues in 1985 before George Pérez took the reigns after Crisis On Infinite Earths.
Since 1942, various incarnations of Wonder Woman appeared in comics, on TV, and now Gal Gadot is Wonder Woman in the DC Cinematic Universe. From cartoons spanning Super Friends, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited to the live-action Wonder Woman starring Lynda Carter, Wonder Woman has presented straight or at most warm and welcoming to other women. Her love interests didn’t stray far from Steve Trevor or Superman. With Steve Trevor cast in the Wonder Woman film debuting next summer in addition to the movie having mostly been filmed already, it is highly likely if not entirely impossible she will be presenting as queer in the film. Though I do fear there’s a chance she may appear queer briefly in the film in a cringe-worthy-for-the-male-gaze fashion. I’m hoping that won’t be the case.
It’s also worth noting that DC has retconned quite a few characters as being bisexual/queer. These characters include Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, John Constantine and now Wonder Woman. All of them are cis and white with only one of them being male. Many of the characters named have appeared in other media recently; when the Constantine show premiered on NBC, the showrunners stated they would not portray him as bisexual. Harley Quinn was just in the film Suicide Squad with no reference to her bisexuality. It’s hard to say you’re pushing for diversity when you’re pushing for it in the medium with the least amount of people engaging in it, while not demanding it with those characters’ counterparts on TV and in the movies.
The characters being cis and white are part of the limitations DC has when they retcon characters. The overwhelming majority of the characters created decades ago were straight cis and white. When you aren’t creating new characters and are retconning queerness into them, the result is a lot of white queer characters and few to no queer POC. This sort of backdoor diversity approach to queerness isn’t the best approach. As I’ve been advocating on this column for a while, we need more new queer characters and to use some of the queer characters who were made with the intention to be queer like Coagula, who granted is white, but would still bring DC’s trans superhero count from 0 to 1. DC needs new characters, not more backdoor diversity.
We have decades of a straight-coded Wonder Woman in our culture. Yes, she has often been a symbol of feminism, but we cannot conflate feminism with queerness. Whether people want to admit it or not, Wonder Woman being queer is a retcon and we need to treat it as such.
We can embrace this news as positive and push for more overt queerness in Wonder Woman, which is what I plan on doing. We can praise Greg Rucka for taking positive steps in this direction and for his handling of Wonder Woman. What we can’t do is go around acting like DC Comics has been progressive on this front for decades and we just didn’t realize it. And we can’t praise Wonder Woman being queer in the comics and not acknowledge how she’s presenting as straight in other media. That’s not how this works.
Diana could be queer. She could turn out to be bisexual or even pan-sexual. The most unlikely possibility is that she is completely heterosexual–which would make her the deviant in her home of Themyscira.
Joe, here’s my quote from my interview with Gail Simone on her “FIVE QUESTIONS WITH…” site:
“And as for men? How would she react to a world where women were just starting to break the glass ceiling, where they made 70 cents to every dollar a man earned? How would she understand a country that went nuts just because Hillary Clinton didn’t want to just stay home and bake cookies? And what about relationships? Frankly, I thought her background would lead her to be a lesbian. But that could also bring up lots of different things: nature vs. nurture, genetic disposition vs. environment.”
Just for the record, my friend.
It’s still retconning. Wonder Woman was never LGBT. This is just bad writing. And frankly,I’d rather not have them ruin a childhood icon by doing this. -_-
I’ve read theories that the concept of heterosexuality/homosexuality is relatively new in terms of human society. For millennia, people just had sex with whomever they wanted to have sex with, of whatever type, and didn’t feel the need to label themselves one way or another. The labels only became important when a conquerer decided to demonize a conquered society (I think it was Greece, but I’m not going to swear to that) by saying their behavior was “unnatural,” whatever that means. Our closest primate relatives, the bonobos, have sex with whomever is available.
While I lack the scientific or research chops to swear that this is true, it makes sense to me.
It also makes sense to me that a girl child who grows up on an island of women would imprint on women as a source of emotional and physical affection. Especially when her male role model is Zeus.
Does this mean she couldn’t have feelings for Steve Trevor? Of course not.
Hey DC on the news recently, you say that Wonder woman is gay? Please, please stay far away from making her anti-male, feminist, or a homosexual, that kind of stuff is a big turn off and bad for business. Make her views on man’s evil clear but let it be clear that she will always work side by side with man, to be his helper, his companion and to face every challenge with him together as one, then she will soar and so will the movie. Remember she is pure, this is at the heart of being a hero, not these anti-heroes, Wolverine (no hesitation to kill), Deadpool (a pervert, this is disgusting), Punisher(a deranged killer). Also what happened to the Comic Code Authority to protect children from the dangerous content of these crazy irresponsible writers, did you think we forgot, we didn’t its going to keep coming back to DC and Marvel for being so irresponsible and uncaring about our children. You really think that being homosexual is the norm? Just because some male writers want to impress their girlfriends so they can have sex with them? When a sicko-perverted man rapes your little 4 year old son and screws up his head to make him think that he’s a girl, are you going to be fine with making homosexuality mainstream, is that what you want to allow?! Or that equally as dangerous one of these predatory lesbians brainwashes your sweet, beautiful baby girl into hating all men, including her own father! All because she was raped, or badly mistreated by some troubled male to the point that she becomes confused and thinks all men are the same, and so tries to make everyone hate all men. I don’t think so because if it happened to my son I would want that sick-o punished. So are we going to allow this deviant behavior to be allowed because someone who has a lot of money or knows top -people wants to force a change that is as crazy as selling guns to people with a history of violent offenses and mental illness. No I can’t be silent, because silence=death remember. Now that will never be an excuse for anyone to attack or become violent to a person who is a victim of same sex rape, especially at an early age, who has been screwed up mentally and can no longer see the truth only anger. No, that will never do, but neither will your campaign to allow the acts of perversion to become mainstream, no! Never. I know some of you feel you have been born that way, there may be truth to this but if so it is a very rare occasion and not the norm and you can’t go around trying to make it mainstream, its not going to be allowed, people will get tired of it and will rebel. Do what you do if this is the truth of your nature but don’t try to force it on others. Also Nature says otherwise, the Lion does not mate with the Lion but with the Lioness and for the express and sole purpose of procreation and all other creatures follow suit, Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve.
JC, I’m afraid the only visible sicko here is you. Your rant
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You really think that being homosexual is the norm? Just because some male writers want to impress their girlfriends so they can have sex with them? When a sicko-perverted man rapes your little 4 year old son and screws up his head to make him think that he’s a girl, are you going to be fine with making homosexuality mainstream, is that what you want to allow?! Or that equally as dangerous one of these predatory lesbians brainwashes your sweet, beautiful baby girl into hating all men, including her own father! All because she was raped, or badly mistreated by some troubled male to the point that she becomes confused and thinks all men are the same, and so tries to make everyone hate all men.
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assumes that perversion — excuse me, I'll change that word so you won't misinterpret my meaning: Your rand assumes that EVIL/RAPE/PEDERASTY is the norm for bisexual or homosexual people. That's simply not true, any more than it is for heterosexual people. It assumes that lesbianism arises from having been raped or otherwise badly mistreated by a man. Also not true.
The simple fact is that SEXUAL ORIENTATION IS GENERALLY INBORN. People whose orientation is different from society's theoretical heterosexual-monogamous norm often don't recognize it till puberty, or even much later because they suppress it on account of society's pressure. They think it's evil. It isn't.
If you believe in Divine creation of us, then accept it that people who are homosexual, bisexual, or otherwise different from the norm you insist on were created that way.
(Just for the record, I am none of the above. I am a cis het white male who believes in fairness and equal rights for everyone.)
First of all you are a hypocrite, you also don’t read carefully or choose not to do so to suit your own agendas as they please you, perhaps to impress someone you know and have something to talk about. I never said that rape is the norm for homosexuals and bisexual, however if you think it doesn’t happen or if you think gay people are not violent offenders or capable of this you are wrong. I personally knew of one gay man who was beat regularly by his homosexual partner and that is not an isolated incident it exist on a broader scale. I only mention one of the most common reasons for girls who become lesbians, there are other reason. Yes ofcourse it isn’t the norm for a heterosexual man to rape a little boy, because it’s deviant behavior for people who are not normal, who have serious mental problems and are dangerous.
I wonder if you have children and wonder if you had a 4 year old son and your son was raped by some pervert, how quickly you will sing a different tune. I’m sure by what you say that you probably never knew anyone whose son was molested by some sick and filthy man, so you don’t know what you’re talking about. Perhaps you happen to be so troubled by the comment because you may have had some attraction to some males in your life and had your advances rejected by them. I see that you make clear at the end of ‘your rant’, that you are none of the above, meaning homosexual or pervert, it seemed that last line was important to you perhaps because of it, you sound insecure. I hope you’ve never tried to do anything to any young boys or girls because when you or any of these other perverts out there are caught, your name will be placed on a registry of child sex molestors, sex offenders and the neighborhood may be notified of it.
Lastly you mention of believing in people’s rights, well what about my right and the rights of millions not to be exposed to having homosexual views attempt to manipulate and brainwash us into thinking its the norm. Real men don’t have sexual feelings towards other men, you don’t fantasize about it, you don’t think about it and you sure as heck don’t want it. Also your theories, and that’s what they are, can be countered by other theories that will cement my statements above, that having these sexual preferences for same sex are the rare exception not the rule and certainly not the norm. For example I know of a few cases where some women who talked about their attraction to guys who are sensitive and wanted to marry them. Later what you don’t hear, is that some of these women divorce these same men because they are not masculine enough! Some of these women even cheat on these sensitive men that they said they wanted to marry and go to clubs to have relations with the real men they find there. Proving in these cases and others that women don’t want effemanite qualities in a male and that it will destroy a marriage.
Another point is that those few people who have these rare sexual preferences, may have them due to some hormonal disfunction, biological aberration and the like. In the case of these select individuals, I reserve all judgement and none of this applies to them as since, none of it is their fault or anything they can control. My deepest respect goes to these individuals who suffer all their lives, may they through the Lord find peace, assistance and help throughout their lives. If you read carefully above you will see that I respect the decision of any individual who chooses to engage in same-sex relationships (although I don’t agree with it) as long as they are consenting adults and not children.
Hey, JC, my cousin’s dog spends his time humping the pillow. (And he’s been spayed! LOL!)
That’s what Nature says.
yeah alright, so get him a little girl-dog-friend maybe he’ll stop doing that, yeesh, and you put your head on that pillow? anyway thanks for the humor, I know things get so serious.