Batman #122, 1959

I think the absolute best move they made when reintroducing a version of Batwoman with Kate Kane was making Kate a lesbian.

Partially because I like the representation, partially because I think that the weird triangle of Renee/Maggie/Kate has arcane power, but also selfishly because it 100% prevents any possible re-hashing of Kathy and Bruce.

To be francois I dislike Kathy and Bruce for the same reason I dislike most canon heterosexual relationships from older comics -- they're in a fundamentally very weird, unequal dynamic, with Bruce leveraging his "role as the husband" over Kathy.

So, imo a lot of Kathy comics are quite subversive, but very 1950s. She's showing up Batman. He'll say "women can't fight crime!" and then there she is, fighting crime and rescuing him left and right.

But it's also like, if he views her this way, his attraction to her is, imo, unrelatable and kind of gross.

idk, maybe this is just me being a big homosexual who was raised by his grandma and aunt -- not a lot of competent, respectable men in my life as a kid -- but I personally always viewed the 1950s "traditional marriage" gender roles as a kind of nightmare hell.

Both for women and men actually.

I just do not understand what Batman or the boys reading this are supposed to be getting out of it. What's the fantasy?

Obviously relationships like this transparently worse for women, I'm not equating the abuse in these kinds of dynamics. What I mean is that, the way women are infantilized and made something a husband has to "put in place" makes it feel like men are expected to be attracted to someone who's "supposed to be" kind of like a not-quite-adult, an almost-child, if that makes sense? You know, they characterize kids as emotional, irrational, needing to be "disciplined" and only putting themselves in danger when they deviate from expected social roles. That's exactly how they contextualize women.

And being a man, I look at the fictional men in those relationships and I'm like, this seems uncomfortable as fuck bro, you would definitely be happier with someone you can respect and support as an equal partner, not someone you have to, idk, make servile by being a relentless asshole to and fighting with all the time. idk. The greatest evidence I have ever seen for our desired social roles being somewhat conditioned, is how straight relationships are written in older media. Aliens imo.

So, even though I would challenge the idea that Renee, Maggie and Kate are "ideal representation" or whatever the fuck, and in fact sometimes their weird love triangle does replicate weird u-haul stereotypes depending on the writer, it is so much more appealing to me that they all see each other as equals.

I don't see Kathy and Kate as the same person, and I find myself having to disagree here. Kate is portrayed as something DC wants to promote as being in favor of queer and feminist issues, but we see how they've treated Wonder Woman, their greatest heroine and a bisexual character. Kate (Batman's cousin) is someone DC simply doesn't allow to be happy and fulfilled in a relationship. Kathy (the original Batwoman) was richer than Bruce, capable, a heroine as good as or surpassing him. She was independent, strong, and doesn't lose that even in a relationship. She was an equal to Batman and Bruce. I think we lose a lot of the character by dismissing her like that. Most of Bruce's love interests are villains, civilians, or have powers, and that's always presented as a barrier between them. Kathy is the only one who shares Bruce's vision; they understand each other. I like how they complement each other and the "what if" scenario where they get together. I like the idea of ​​Bruce having a happy ending in the future, and the support she gives him. I can't praise anything about how DC treats their female characters.

I didn't say that they're the same person, to be clear.

What I mean is: they fulfil a similar role as Helena Bertinelli to Helena Wayne. Both Kate and Kathy are versions of "Batwoman," but not versions of each other, and by making Kate both related to and absolutely sexually disinterested in Bruce, they 100% guarantee that Kate will never be reduced to "Batman love interest." Being Batman's love interest is a precarious situation for a woman; if you aren't Shondra Kinsolvinged and erased from the narrative, or Vicki Valed into becoming "edgy Lois Lane," then you're probably going to be flanderized into something that has no resemblance to the core of your original self like Catwoman of East End era Selina Kyle.

Lesbianism and blood relation are valuable shields that prevent Kate Kane from becoming like every other she/her pronoun possessor in the Batman mythos.

Anyway, the idea that Kathy was richer, more competent and more successful as a superhero than Bruce is sort of a revisionist retcon from the Grant Morrison Batman run. I like that version of Kathy too, but I think it's a bit naive to attempt to apply that as some kind of consistent blanket interpretation of who and what the character originally was, especially what she was when the fake-out marriage issue hit the shelves.

These are comic books from the 1950s and 60s, written to comply with a conservative censorship system that began with a moral panic that was, in part, about queerness in comic books. While elements of Kathy's character and the occasional story do present a resistance to the concept of women as naturally domestic (she's a motorcycle stunt performer, for instance), they do not consistently present a progressive view of women even by the standards of the time. I think that when we read her appearances that way, we are presenting a very revisionist view that focuses as much on what we want to see as it does what actually happens.

So, if you read her stories, her being more competent than Bruce in specific occasions is usually used as a punchline. Often when she achieves something Bruce and Dick can't it's undercut with Dick making some sexist crack about golly gee whiz, shown up by a girl, I hope the fellas never find out about this. It is just as often that they'll show you a gag issue where Batman has to stay home and bat-babysit a bat-baby while Batwoman fights crime in his stead, as a whole, "man??? looking after baby??? while the woman works????" in a way where the concept itself is supposed to be funny, rather than the "take that!" at conservative familial roles that we might want to instead read it as.

Kathy Kane is very much a "woman underfoot" archetype from the era, and many of her earliest appearances involve Bruce being like "hey now, this superhero shit is no place for a woman! it's dangerous you know!" and she's like "gosh! I never considered that fighting crime could result in bodily injury! I'll retire now." Then she's so horned up for the Bat that she comes out of retirement specifically as a love interest rather than as some kind of independent actor who's doing superhero shit because she wants to. Like, that idea is nixed very early into her appearances, quite literally her second story iirc.

I don't even agree that they really understand each other. Up to her absolutely shit death in the 70s, writers were usually presenting Bruce as unable to understand Kathy's decisions to be a superhero, or trivializing them as petty thrillseeking from a bored socialite. Which, yes, okay, that kind of is what it is, but he's not exactly relating to it in an empathetic or "hey that's what I do sans the trauma" way; it's his brooding and tragic war on crime vs. her silly and frivilous girlish adventure. Y'know?

This is a consistent thing with how a lot of men write Batman, he tends to be able to intuitively and immediately understand traumatized little boys like Dick and Jason, but has to come to accept most of the superhero women he encounters, particularly characters like Barbara (we tend to forget his "this is no place for a batgirl!" era), Helena Bertinelli, Stephanie Brown, yada yada. Bro doesn't even grasp what's going on with Talia al Ghul or Selina Kyle, in a weird "women sure are mysterious creatures!" way half the time.

With that said, I do like the Grant Morrison and fanon versions of Kathy Kane. I just think it's a misrepresentation of these crusty old sexist comic books, and if we care about how DC comics writes women, glazing the past feels like a mistake.

Rather, I think a more salient criticism to compare the sexism of the 1960s Batwoman with the sexism behind the writing of Kate is that while Kate, Renee and Maggie all represent a pretty neat advancement in how DC writes women and queer women especially, that DC effectively cancelled a run when the creators wanted to show Kate and iirc Maggie getting married because "superheroes can't be happy" (an obviously bullshit line dropped to excuse blocking a queer marriage) demonstrates how they still impose hard limits on what women in their books are allowed to be and do.

Finally I simply do not believe that a lesbian should have to be happily married to be Good Representation. Girl all the lesbians I know are fucking miserable. Which is not to say all lesbians are miserable, I just know some sad bitches.

The idea that queer people must be like something out of some rosy teen bullshit like Heartstopper to be considered a worthy example of who we are denies us our complexity and humanity for the sake of saccharine feel good Lifetime Original "positive" views of who we are, and I just don't feel like that's necessary. If Kate's inability to maintain a relationship was related to her lesbianism, yes, I'd agree with you. However, her inability to maintain a relationship is rooted in her actual characterization. Dating someone like Kate Kane would suck ass. She is constantly dodging social commitments, she can be obsessive, moody, brooding and flippant when she doesn't care about something personally. She's the kind of person who ends up caught up in other bullshit, as in she like a lot of dude superhero characters is going to stay out for three nights at a time solving a case. She seems to find day to day life shit boring. You ask Kate Kane what restaurant she wants to have dinner at she'll be like "whatever you want babe," every time. Y'know? That's not her being a lesbian and lesbians being preternaturally unable to do relationships, that's Kate Kane as an individual being shit at relationships.

If we want to talk about Kate as bad representation we should probably talk about how she associates lesbianism with policing and service in the US military lol. There's much more to say than just, "she can't keep a girlfriend locked down."

tl;dr I agree that DC is sexist but I think that we're losing out on something by favourably comparing a woman literally created by conservative censorship standards to promote a nuclear family model of the story she exists in to one of the more unconventional, nonstereotypical queer women in the medium.

I think that regardless of the reason she was created, Kathy is a character who, despite the values ​​of the time and problems that still appear today, has values ​​that should be appreciated. And DC doesn't treat Kate (Bruce's cousin) well at all; she was created as a way for DC to promote itself in favor of queer culture, but she wasn't treated well at all. Many female characters have been reduced to the role of love interests for a male character and only gravitate around them, as DC currently does with Barbara and Diana. Kathy Kane? As I said, she manages to exist beyond him and have a heroism and independence that goes beyond Bruce. In the 50s, a character who, despite being created to be a love interest, has more independence than the way DC has written current female heroines in the last decade.

I think it's pretty inconsistent to hold the character's reason for creation against Kate (Bruce's cousin), that is that she was "created as a way to promote itself in favour of queer culture," but excuse it in the case of Kathy, who was created explicitly to satisfy an anti-queer moral panic.

Batman #122, 1959

I think the absolute best move they made when reintroducing a version of Batwoman with Kate Kane was making Kate a lesbian.

Partially because I like the representation, partially because I think that the weird triangle of Renee/Maggie/Kate has arcane power, but also selfishly because it 100% prevents any possible re-hashing of Kathy and Bruce.

To be francois I dislike Kathy and Bruce for the same reason I dislike most canon heterosexual relationships from older comics -- they're in a fundamentally very weird, unequal dynamic, with Bruce leveraging his "role as the husband" over Kathy.

So, imo a lot of Kathy comics are quite subversive, but very 1950s. She's showing up Batman. He'll say "women can't fight crime!" and then there she is, fighting crime and rescuing him left and right.

But it's also like, if he views her this way, his attraction to her is, imo, unrelatable and kind of gross.

idk, maybe this is just me being a big homosexual who was raised by his grandma and aunt -- not a lot of competent, respectable men in my life as a kid -- but I personally always viewed the 1950s "traditional marriage" gender roles as a kind of nightmare hell.

Both for women and men actually.

I just do not understand what Batman or the boys reading this are supposed to be getting out of it. What's the fantasy?

Obviously relationships like this transparently worse for women, I'm not equating the abuse in these kinds of dynamics. What I mean is that, the way women are infantilized and made something a husband has to "put in place" makes it feel like men are expected to be attracted to someone who's "supposed to be" kind of like a not-quite-adult, an almost-child, if that makes sense? You know, they characterize kids as emotional, irrational, needing to be "disciplined" and only putting themselves in danger when they deviate from expected social roles. That's exactly how they contextualize women.

And being a man, I look at the fictional men in those relationships and I'm like, this seems uncomfortable as fuck bro, you would definitely be happier with someone you can respect and support as an equal partner, not someone you have to, idk, make servile by being a relentless asshole to and fighting with all the time. idk. The greatest evidence I have ever seen for our desired social roles being somewhat conditioned, is how straight relationships are written in older media. Aliens imo.

So, even though I would challenge the idea that Renee, Maggie and Kate are "ideal representation" or whatever the fuck, and in fact sometimes their weird love triangle does replicate weird u-haul stereotypes depending on the writer, it is so much more appealing to me that they all see each other as equals.

I don't see Kathy and Kate as the same person, and I find myself having to disagree here. Kate is portrayed as something DC wants to promote as being in favor of queer and feminist issues, but we see how they've treated Wonder Woman, their greatest heroine and a bisexual character. Kate (Batman's cousin) is someone DC simply doesn't allow to be happy and fulfilled in a relationship. Kathy (the original Batwoman) was richer than Bruce, capable, a heroine as good as or surpassing him. She was independent, strong, and doesn't lose that even in a relationship. She was an equal to Batman and Bruce. I think we lose a lot of the character by dismissing her like that. Most of Bruce's love interests are villains, civilians, or have powers, and that's always presented as a barrier between them. Kathy is the only one who shares Bruce's vision; they understand each other. I like how they complement each other and the "what if" scenario where they get together. I like the idea of ​​Bruce having a happy ending in the future, and the support she gives him. I can't praise anything about how DC treats their female characters.

I didn't say that they're the same person, to be clear.

What I mean is: they fulfil a similar role as Helena Bertinelli to Helena Wayne. Both Kate and Kathy are versions of "Batwoman," but not versions of each other, and by making Kate both related to and absolutely sexually disinterested in Bruce, they 100% guarantee that Kate will never be reduced to "Batman love interest." Being Batman's love interest is a precarious situation for a woman; if you aren't Shondra Kinsolvinged and erased from the narrative, or Vicki Valed into becoming "edgy Lois Lane," then you're probably going to be flanderized into something that has no resemblance to the core of your original self like Catwoman of East End era Selina Kyle.

Lesbianism and blood relation are valuable shields that prevent Kate Kane from becoming like every other she/her pronoun possessor in the Batman mythos.

Anyway, the idea that Kathy was richer, more competent and more successful as a superhero than Bruce is sort of a revisionist retcon from the Grant Morrison Batman run. I like that version of Kathy too, but I think it's a bit naive to attempt to apply that as some kind of consistent blanket interpretation of who and what the character originally was, especially what she was when the fake-out marriage issue hit the shelves.

These are comic books from the 1950s and 60s, written to comply with a conservative censorship system that began with a moral panic that was, in part, about queerness in comic books. While elements of Kathy's character and the occasional story do present a resistance to the concept of women as naturally domestic (she's a motorcycle stunt performer, for instance), they do not consistently present a progressive view of women even by the standards of the time. I think that when we read her appearances that way, we are presenting a very revisionist view that focuses as much on what we want to see as it does what actually happens.

So, if you read her stories, her being more competent than Bruce in specific occasions is usually used as a punchline. Often when she achieves something Bruce and Dick can't it's undercut with Dick making some sexist crack about golly gee whiz, shown up by a girl, I hope the fellas never find out about this. It is just as often that they'll show you a gag issue where Batman has to stay home and bat-babysit a bat-baby while Batwoman fights crime in his stead, as a whole, "man??? looking after baby??? while the woman works????" in a way where the concept itself is supposed to be funny, rather than the "take that!" at conservative familial roles that we might want to instead read it as.

Kathy Kane is very much a "woman underfoot" archetype from the era, and many of her earliest appearances involve Bruce being like "hey now, this superhero shit is no place for a woman! it's dangerous you know!" and she's like "gosh! I never considered that fighting crime could result in bodily injury! I'll retire now." Then she's so horned up for the Bat that she comes out of retirement specifically as a love interest rather than as some kind of independent actor who's doing superhero shit because she wants to. Like, that idea is nixed very early into her appearances, quite literally her second story iirc.

I don't even agree that they really understand each other. Up to her absolutely shit death in the 70s, writers were usually presenting Bruce as unable to understand Kathy's decisions to be a superhero, or trivializing them as petty thrillseeking from a bored socialite. Which, yes, okay, that kind of is what it is, but he's not exactly relating to it in an empathetic or "hey that's what I do sans the trauma" way; it's his brooding and tragic war on crime vs. her silly and frivilous girlish adventure. Y'know?

This is a consistent thing with how a lot of men write Batman, he tends to be able to intuitively and immediately understand traumatized little boys like Dick and Jason, but has to come to accept most of the superhero women he encounters, particularly characters like Barbara (we tend to forget his "this is no place for a batgirl!" era), Helena Bertinelli, Stephanie Brown, yada yada. Bro doesn't even grasp what's going on with Talia al Ghul or Selina Kyle, in a weird "women sure are mysterious creatures!" way half the time.

With that said, I do like the Grant Morrison and fanon versions of Kathy Kane. I just think it's a misrepresentation of these crusty old sexist comic books, and if we care about how DC comics writes women, glazing the past feels like a mistake.

Rather, I think a more salient criticism to compare the sexism of the 1960s Batwoman with the sexism behind the writing of Kate is that while Kate, Renee and Maggie all represent a pretty neat advancement in how DC writes women and queer women especially, that DC effectively cancelled a run when the creators wanted to show Kate and iirc Maggie getting married because "superheroes can't be happy" (an obviously bullshit line dropped to excuse blocking a queer marriage) demonstrates how they still impose hard limits on what women in their books are allowed to be and do.

Finally I simply do not believe that a lesbian should have to be happily married to be Good Representation. Girl all the lesbians I know are fucking miserable. Which is not to say all lesbians are miserable, I just know some sad bitches.

The idea that queer people must be like something out of some rosy teen bullshit like Heartstopper to be considered a worthy example of who we are denies us our complexity and humanity for the sake of saccharine feel good Lifetime Original "positive" views of who we are, and I just don't feel like that's necessary. If Kate's inability to maintain a relationship was related to her lesbianism, yes, I'd agree with you. However, her inability to maintain a relationship is rooted in her actual characterization. Dating someone like Kate Kane would suck ass. She is constantly dodging social commitments, she can be obsessive, moody, brooding and flippant when she doesn't care about something personally. She's the kind of person who ends up caught up in other bullshit, as in she like a lot of dude superhero characters is going to stay out for three nights at a time solving a case. She seems to find day to day life shit boring. You ask Kate Kane what restaurant she wants to have dinner at she'll be like "whatever you want babe," every time. Y'know? That's not her being a lesbian and lesbians being preternaturally unable to do relationships, that's Kate Kane as an individual being shit at relationships.

If we want to talk about Kate as bad representation we should probably talk about how she associates lesbianism with policing and service in the US military lol. There's much more to say than just, "she can't keep a girlfriend locked down."

tl;dr I agree that DC is sexist but I think that we're losing out on something by favourably comparing a woman literally created by conservative censorship standards to promote a nuclear family model of the story she exists in to one of the more unconventional, nonstereotypical queer women in the medium.

BREAKING: 21-year-old protester, Kaden Rummler, was shot point-blank in the face by ICE. he just spoke about how he’s blind for life and almost died:

“I will be blind for life. I have fractures in my skull that they can't fix. They pulled a piece of plastic the size of a nickel out of my eye. I had shards of metal, glass, and plastic behind my eye and in my skull. They said it was a miracle I survived.”

What the hell is wrong with these people?

GoFundMe for Kaden Rummler, the young trans man blinded by ICE agents this week.

Fundraiser for K R by Sarah Gallimore : Help ICE Protestor After being shot by Feds

rip to the dilbert guy. i feel like you were a trailblazer in the very specific way the internet turns people nuts

Check my Patreon out if you’d like to support the comic, even a little bit helps. Or just to check out the reward tiers, there’s some neat bonus stuff and I tried to make them fun: https://www.patreon.com/waitingforthet

Usagi Yojimbo vol. 13, Fantagraphics

Just once I would love for a character cut loose from bindings to chew out the one doing the cutting like, are you out your goddamn mind? Undo the knot. Swinging your sword around like a PENIS

I don't think you've thought out the logistics of having an erection while someone makes an incredibly precise cut down the front of your body close enough to slice through ropes like that

Somewhat related here is a picture of a banana split

Time to make a career change #cunningeunuch

Usagi Yojimbo vol. 13, Fantagraphics

Just once I would love for a character cut loose from bindings to chew out the one doing the cutting like, are you out your goddamn mind? Undo the knot. Swinging your sword around like a PENIS

I don't think you've thought out the logistics of having an erection while someone makes an incredibly precise cut down the front of your body close enough to slice through ropes like that

Somewhat related here is a picture of a banana split