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Bisexuals just got a huge boost in visibility as Wonder Woman officially confirmed as queer
Bisexuals just got a huge boost in visibility as Wonder Woman officially confirmed as queer
Wonder Woman is queer. Current author of one-third of DC Comics' Trinity, Greg Rucka, confirmed what most of us have suspected for years during an interview with Comicality about Diana's current ongoing comic. [Y]es, [Wonder Woman is queer]. I think it's more complicated though.
A rundown of this panel was posted last week but I like this article about how important it is. Does need to be in the comics, and hopefully Rucka gets to be the one to confirm it in story because he'd know to frame it from her cultural viewpoint, as someone who never hid her bisexuality and didn't realize that it was a Thing than as some awkward coming out narrative where Amazons are exactly like Americans.




I thought this was already a thing? Didn't Gail Simone confirm years ago that Amazons in general were women-loving-women? And since Diana has definitely had relationships with men, doesn't that make her bi already?
The Amazons were confirmed to have regular same-sex relationships. DIANA is another matter. Coming from a society where samesex is normal never meant she was into that. As a heterocentric society like ours can still have gay people, then the Amazons being wlw still never confirms Diana.
Perez confirmed same-sex relatiosnhips among Amazons but it was not compulsory, some women abstained. During Rucka's original runs, they were still insisting Diana was a virgin. Heinberg, who preceded Simone by just a year or two, had confirmed heterosexuality in his interviews. Simone's still portrayed the Amazons on the island as ALL being her mother, meaning there would have been no peers to be involved with.
This is the first time anyone at DC has confirmed DIANA has had previous relationships with women in continuity. Rucka specifically says, if Diana isn't attracted to women and has no romantic experience on this island than it means she's not giving up paradise. No one has done that with the title character of this franchise. It's an assumption in certain corners of fandom, but not everywhere and its never been official before.
This is a HUGE deal, I promise you.
Its great that they have FINALLY said it and not had it be subtext that everyone knows about but never says it although at this point can there be a single person who knows even the littlest amount about Wonder Woman who could be surprised by this
I'm surprised they up and did it. DC is still run by the same dudes who had her dating Superman last year because LOIS is too threatening for them.
As for subtext, well. I hate to say it but subtext doesn't mean anything. Some people think there's sexual subtext in every meeting between Wonder Woman and Batman. People thought Stucky was subtext in the Captain America movies, and the two directors both said they were aiming for a brotherly relationship--it's worth noting those two directors are brothers.
People are still arguing against this, and any amount of deniability means it just doesn't count because two writers down the road they'll do something to reinforce her as solely heterosexual because that's the way comics work.
And honestly? I don't think people who didn't know enough about WW to know this was a thing should be shamed for it. She's an icon, a lot of people love her and are fans without having seen her in shows or in comics. People who are dying to go to her movie. People who might just be extremely excited to find out she overlaps with them, now that her queerness has hit the mainstream.
Yes, actually. The capacity for fan denial is incredible. There were people who read Stormwatch and didn't realize Apollo and Midnighter were together.
It isn't just maliciousness of course. Some people are just very sheltered or come from repressed backgrounds where they may not recognize the signs that many of us think are obvious.
But now it's overt. No one can deny it anymore. And that's fantastic.
I was more referring to Themyscira / Paradise Island and all the women there including her mother which even Kanigher admitted were obviously in same sex relationships but due to the times it couldn't be said
Wonder Woman's original catchphrase was sweet suffering Sappho the Greek poet who lived most of her life writing poems about her love of Women on the island Lesbos leading to one of the origins of the word lesbian
I wouldn't say subtext is worthless as due to the time of her creation saying it out loud would never had been allowed but people could see it then and especially when she became a much bigger feminist icon in the 1970s which I feel is different to today where subtext is used when it could just be text
but thankfully we now live in a time where she doesn't have to be hidden away and we no longer rely on subtext only representation
Well, the Amazons have been a thing but like I said above, confirming Diana is bi and hasn't just been someone who has never experienced sex or romance during her time on the island is a really big deal.
I suppose subtext gives us the groundwork, but it is worthless unless something backs it up. We know Marston's background. But what good is subtext when the CCA stripped all of those elements for 30 years and then for the next 30 years at every convention and in every interview the WW writers and editors said she's a virgin who likes men. When the New52 decide Steve "Decorated War Veteran" Trevor wasn't even manly enough for her and set her up with Superman as part of their "Rebrand Superman as the machoest of men" initiative. (That failed so badly they had to off that version and bring in the old one form an alternate timeline.) It's meaningless. It's not substantial. It's actually extremely frustrating. I've been on WW boards since the 90s, and I remember the ranting and the hate when they brought back Steve b/c they thought he meant she'd never be allowed to be with a woman.
I'm getting frustrated, I guess, with all the jaded WW fans going "Well, WE knew that." Because sure there's subtext but DC has officially denied it on every level for decades. They have answered any requests for her to date a woman with "no" for years. They let the Amazons have lesbians, in the background, but didn't let even Hippolyta/Phillipus get confirmed until this latest origin retelling. (They had Hippolyta hooking up with HERAKLES in the WML and Byrne runs and and then the considerably better but still proving her heterosexual bonafides Wildcat in the Jimenez run.) Last time Rucka got to write he had an Amazon, Io, with an unrequited crush on Diana. Simone established the Amazons had courtship rituals and get with each other, but reinforced the idea that they were ALL mothers to Diana. But this time around, Rucka gave us Amazons gossiping about her sexual exploits with women on the island, Etta's statement on her connection with Steve, and a verbal confirmation at a con panel and in an interview.
If you don't think that's a big deal, you don't really know what's been going on with Wonder Woman the last few decades. If you don't see the significance, then you haven't really been paying attention to anything but out of context subtext panels.
I haven't been around long enough to have the experience of a few decades and didn't mean to act like this isn't a big deal as my all caps finally would indicate this is a moment 75 years in the making and one that will hopefully be well advertised with the new comic and movie coming out and cement this as part of her character going forward
I was just surprised it hadn't happened till now in the main DC title The recent Morrison earth one wonder woman had a female partner
Yeah, comics have been a little conservative for a long time.
I heard about Mala in WW Earth One , but only when this hit. The book got badly panned in my circles, the Superman Earth One stuff was terrible, and it was during the New 52 period of very strange editorial decisions so a lot of fans I know gave it a pass at the time. (It's back on the reading list) Either way, deniability because it's in a non-continuity Grant Morrison book. This, though. Even I caught the impressions in WW#2 Rucka was trying to give off, it's following some disastrously heteronormative editorial decisions for her (Okay, one really disastrous heteronormative editorial decision that had its own spinoff book) and the mainstream media has this. This is set up during the origin retelling that precedes her movie. This is meant to stick.
The Morrison Wonder Woman Earth One is flawed in both story and art in big ways but he does manage to distill some of the Golden and Silver age ideas in a way that works for now similar to what he did with Batman and Superman but overall its fairly weak
Disappointing. I was such a fan of his JLA, and Doom Patrol.