viz.

Image Credit: dc.wikia.com

In future posts I would like to delve into the ongoing conversation in the comic book world about the hypersexualization of the superhero women who fly, strut and kapow their way across the industry's glossy pages. Before reaching out to this debate in abstract terms, I would like to present one of the key images that catalyzed the explosion of feminist rage, feminist approval, and, quite frankly, some sexist reactionary defenses. In 2011, DC announced the New 52: a complete relaunch of their comic book line including, surprise, 52 titles all starting, or starting over, at issue #1. DC followers set the internet aflame with reactions, thoughts and feelings about the ensuing comics, and a particularly impressive inferno sprang up around Red Hood and the Outlaws #1. Why? Here's a hint. It's the reason this post is tagged Not Safe For Work.

Image Credit: Center for Inquiry's Women in Secularism 2 Conference Website

Controversies over sexism have recently embroiled the online and in-real-life spaces of the gaming, fandom, and atheist communities. The sexist behavior that has sparked controversy and the backlash facing those speaking out against harassment are too hateful and ugly to discuss at any length here. I'll link to two examples with trigger warnings for threats of sexual violence: Rebecca Watson and Anita Sarkeesian. The controversy in the organized atheist community, however, has also seen an act of resistance and some levity in the face of abject misogyny by repurposing a visual trope well known to the community.

Photo credit:  Pargon, Flickr Creative Commons

There are plenty of negative things to be said about the Tea Party, particularly in the wake of Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally:  that the movement's appropriation of the words and images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln represents the deployment of unreconstructed white privilege at its worst, that it is controlled by corporate and media elites with a vested interest in obstructing a Democratic agenda (note the Tea Party's inexplicable support of the Citizen's United decision, which seems completely out of step with their populist ethos though perhaps somewhat consistent with the libertarian ideal of unfettered markets). 

Image Credit:  Screenshot from Youtube

Since almost everybody else on the Internet is commenting on this year’s Super Bowl ads, I couldn’t resist offering my take.  The obvious issue with the Super Bowl ads this year is their fairly blatant sexism.