Are You Even Serious Right Now, DC Comics?

[Content Note: Misogyny; heterocentrism.]

Behold, two new terrific t-shirts being offered by DC Comics:


Victoria at The MarySue explains:

On the left, we've got a men's shirt that depicts a scene inspired by Superman/Wonder Woman, which, you'll remember, was a romance themed title developed last year to appeal to women since why would we ever want to read a comic book that's not about kissing? (edit: it's actually from a cover of Justice League 12, however, because DC does sure love their crossovers) The text reads "Score! Superman does it again!"...

Also, Wonder Woman's a lasso-less "it" now, we guess. Yeah, that's why her arm's all weird at the bottom of the shirt; she's supposed to be lassoing Superman in the picture. But why present a powerful female superhero using one of her trademark symbols as a marker of sexual agency when you can instead present her as a stiff, rigid board to be scored upon?

On the right is a shirt from the juniors department of Walmart, which says "Training to be Batman's," and then "wife" in a different more stereotypically feminine font. It's a little known fact, but you are not allowed to spell the word "wife" in any font other than cursive.

Just to be abundantly clear: These are licensed shirts. Licensed and approved by DC Comics. Who continue to be mystified by the continual outrage and contempt of many of their female fans.

Why u so mad, tho, when we make such great shirts for ladies?

One of the problems, as ever, is that there are simply not enough female superheroes, and, among the small stable of female DC superheroes, very few have the status of the most prominent male DC superheroes. (Arguably that number is exactly ONE: Wonder Woman.) In the cavernous vacuum of female heroism, turning Wonder Woman into a sex toy for Superman and inviting women to train to be Batman's wife are even more insulting.

And they would be insulting even if there were more female superheroes.

But DC is essentially communicating here that not only do they not care about developing and promoting top-tier female superheroes; they want to diminish the one top-tier female superhero they have, because women are only worth being sex objects and wives for male superheroes. Their property.

Which is to say nothing, of course, of the aggressive heterocentrism of this shit. (Suffice it to say, there is not an equivalent "Training to be Wonder Woman's wife" t-shirt.)

Again, I am struck by how an industry built on wildly creative imagination can be so aggressively unimaginative when it comes to human women.

It should be an embarrassment to people who can imagine the future, conjure the past, and create new worlds and their inhabitants, that they can't imagine a woman who wants to be Woman Woman because she is herself a superhero, who wants to be more than a male superhero's fucktoy.