I was recognizing the sort of inherent contradiction in things.  Found a survey that reveals that almost half of comics readers are females, and I can't help but connect this with the rise in female characters suddenly, and it makes me twitch, because, well, it smacks of pandering/ghettoizing/tokenism.  This idea that girls need female protagonists. Uh, you have 50% of us, you know, without that. We don't have a problem relating to male protagonists.

But on the other hand, and here's my internal conflict, of course I WANT female characters! I want women with stories as complex and interesting and valuable and real as male characters! I want competent women, smart women, interestingly flawed women of all shapes and colors and religions etc, represented and I want them to not be simply distaff males or existing as plot devices for the males.  You know, their own subjectivity and agency and their own story. (Yeah, I don't ask for much, do I? Only what...western lit has given to men for the last two millennia!)

So why do I feel so uncomfortable?  Because I fear that there will be a 'that's for GIIIIIIRLS' push.  The way Toys R Us has become so sex-segregated: the blue side, the pink side. There was already a guy on the IDW site raging about having My Little Pony advertised on the back of his Transformers comics, as though that somehow assaulted his gender. That is FOR GIRLS, and by implication, Transformers is FOR BOYS and never the twain shall meet. 

I don't want that. I don't want to go there. It's what historically has almost always happened once binary gender becomes a thing: we have two, therefore one must be above the other. Good/evil, white/black, rich/poor fat/thin. As soon as we have binaries, we set up a better/worse structure. And it's probably not news that in Western culture, when we have man/woman, woman ends up on the losing end of that. 

You know, that presumption that guys write for everyone: girls write chick stuff., for other girls.  The fact that IDW is screeching so loudly that WINDBLADE WILL BE WRITTEN AND DRAWN BY WOMEN is at one level self congratulatory and at another, a step down that segregationist slope. 

So all this yay let's make more female characters and let's give female characters their own comics and such, part of me celebrates, but past history, especially of the comics industry which appears rife with misogyny, makes me hesitate, makes me afraid that they will become 'comics 4 gurls' instead of 'really good comics that just happen to have female protagonists'.  That they will continue to promote things like heteronormativity and obedience to a certain body type (gracile, curvy, 'made up', conventionally pretty, predominantly white in appearance (I refer not just to skin color but to things like nose shape, forehead angle, etc--most women in comics of all races are drawn with very supermodel Anglo features).)  And I'm not saying that I object to kick ass smart women who also happen to be hot and maybe, just maybe, in control of their emotions and sexuality (I'm looking at you Joss Whedon).  But I wonder about that second wave 'have it all' perfection, which third wave feminists have at least realized is sort of an impossibility for most women. 

And I realize I seem like the 'never going to be pleased' raging feminazi that Furman takes down in his stunningly misogynistic Prime's Rib!, but all I can say is, well, at least I am aware of the contradictory impulses.