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Women In Refrigerators 13 Years Later

Trigger Warning: discussion of sexual assault.

Sexual violence is so ubiquitous in superhero comics that it is a part of the language. It’s a trope, a shortcut, a means to an end. It’s use is fetishistic: it’s about the hero; it’s about the trope itself. The dead girlfriend, the tragic sex worker, the battered wife—these are not characters, they’re props. Their abuse has a mystical value within the story. It signals that our hero is going to go dark, and then he’s going to prove his worth, by coming through the other side. And just trotting it out has some kind of value. It says, or tries to say, “this ain’t no funny book; this shit is real.”

Sexual violence, the trope and trend, isn’t addressed to women. On a certain level, it isn’t about female characters and it isn’t about female readers. Packed into it, along with all the ass shots, and artful blood-spray across breasts, is the assumption that women aren’t real, and any violence done to them is of no consequence, except insofar as it affects men. Sexual violence in comics is a spectacle, apparently without deeper meaning, to which women aren’t invited, even as audience. But it’s so terrible, so awesome a plot device, because sexual violence against women is an attack on male honour. The sexual exposure and exploitation (legs splayed open, breasts on view) coupled with violence (the absolute vulnerability of the literally open body) represents a male hero’s failure. It’s his failure to protect his woman, that gives this trope vitality.

Alex DeWitt’s literal fridging is Kyle Raynor’s biggest failure.
Gwen Stacey’s death is Spider-Man’s biggest failure.
Black Canary’s torture and rape was Green Arrow’s biggest failure (alas, he would go on to fail harder).
Karen Page’s everything is Daredevil’s biggest failure (he has a lot of biggest failures, does Matt Murdock).

It’s not just the violence and sex that makes it so potent, but the insult.

What we call Women In Refrigerators (sexually objectified violence against women as plot device) is a conversation between men. The Women In Refrigerators list was about pushing our way into the conversation. It was and is threatening because it questions certain things that are just understood: that harm to his woman is the worst thing that can happen to a man; that sexual violence against women is somebody’s failure. You can remove the male character from the scenario, but the male creator and the assumed male reader is still there. When Kate Bishop talks about being raped are we meant to feel with her, or for her? What we are talking about, when we talk about WiR is objectification. Not just for the sake of a male hero’s journey, but for a male reader’s emotional experience of the book.

Women In Refrigerators isn’t happenstance: it exists because it satisfies, and its use continues because it seems only natural. Of course sexualized violence is terrible. Of course it’s a way to raise the stakes. Of course it sells books. It’s just part of the language of superhero comics. Right down there with dead parents, child abuse and involuntary government experimentation—what could be more motivating? And there’s just something tantalizing about it, isn’t there? Crossing that line. Oh shit, he went there. Oh shit, that’s kind of… hot. But it’s not just that it seems perfectly natural, it’s that every instance of objectified sexual violence exists because a creator chose to tell that story, that way. Someone reached into the big bag of tropes and decided that yes, the villain is gonna assault and kill the hero’s girlfriend in this issue, and the only comment she’ll have on the situation is her tears.

We need, not just to be part of this conversation, but we need to interrupt it. We need to change the language of superhero comics. Because this is not just blazingly unacceptable, it’s unnecessary, it’s cheap and it’s lazy.

You guys have seen Kill Bill, right? In Volume One, Beatrix Kiddo is comatose in a hospital bed. A male nurse rapes her, and then sells her body to others. Then one day, she wakes up and she kills that nurse. Sounds like another case of a male creator torturing a female character for cheap thrills and ‘character development’, right? But there’s a small, key difference between this scene and say, I Spit On Your Grave. Kiddo’s comatose body is not objectified and the movie does not endorse the nurse’s actions. Our sympathies are always and clearly, with her. There are no lingering shots over her exposed body. No pretty lips, forced open. No pretty tears. No pretty victim. Beatrix Kiddo remains, always, the hero of her own story.

When you objectify the rape or abuse of a character, whether she is newly introduced or established, you strip away her existence as a character. She’s not Tigra anymore, she’s a device. She’s not Lois anymore, she’s an object. She’s not Ms. Marvel anymore, she’s a cautionary tale. And so, an ever-growing list of characters reduced to fetish art.

It’s time, guys. It’s time to put this trope into the box and leave it there for good.