So I'm feeling a little chatty today and figured I'd actually be all thoughtful right now. Mostly this issue-thing has been banging around in my head a little bit, and it's been amplified a couple thousand times by the whole DC Comics issue with women and gender and LGBTQIA issues. As a kid, I grew up on Sword & Sorcery books, novels that prominently featured women as the heroes. Tamora Pierce, Mercedes Lackey, Sherwood Smith, Meg Cabot, the list goes on. I was rather attached to them and took comfort in the books during middle and high school when life was the worst. Now that I'm my own writer, I feel a little guilty that my main characters are both men.
I love strong female characters more than anything else in the world. I'm devouring paranormal mystery-romance novels where the woman is utterly in charge left, right, and center. But then, when it comes to my comics, I'm mostly reading male books. Oh, sure, I read Birds of Prey and adore Babs, Dinah, Helena, and Zinda, but I usually read them after I read the books that have Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne in them. A lot of this is probably because I've got some messed up gender issues (I've got a pretty fluid gender thing going on, where I'm more one gender than the other depending on the cycles of...whatever is going on at that moment) and my choices in reading reflect this. As does my dress/attire and general attitude. It's interesting. You have to know me for a while to notice it, I think.
I love strong characters in general. I love women who take charge, leaving the men to scramble to keep up, but I also like the men who are flawed and struggle with things. Or are just assholes. Which is probably why I like the Batfamily so much. Yes, even Dick is an outrageous asshole sometimes. Which is why I love him the most. I have to say I was never a massive Wonder Woman fan. I actually really dislike most of the Wonder family. I like Supergirl (what little I've read of her), adore all the ladies in the Bat books, adore Jesse Quick and the other ladies that pop up in books where I follow my Titans (Jade, Grace, Anissa from Outsiders v3, most of the ladies from Titans v1) and I follow them into other books. Rose Wilson is one of my favorite women because she's the daughter of Deathstroke. She frakking ripped out of her own eye to be like Daddy and then turned on him and made something of herself. Don't get me started on the women of the Marvel U. They are fantastic and kick so much goddamn ass it's awesome (Rogue, Kate Bishop, Ms Marvel, She-Hulk, Scarlet Witch~).
All that aside, I write male characters the most. Maybe it's my multiple years in fandoms (where I almost never wrote women) or the fact that my gender identity is so fluid that I write whatever I feel comfortable with. Knowing this doesn't make me feel any less like I'm letting down the authors of my childhood. I want little girls/young women to read my books and be able to take away a sense of strength and empowerment from them. Okay, yes. Most of the women in my world are leading the charge and are kicking massive ass and being the best at what they do, but two of my three mains are male. Dean, though, I guess could count either way. He's ... Lady, my boy is a mess. Medic is definitely male, and Lea is hell on two feet (if you get on her bad side). But it still feels like I'm dealing a disservice to everything.
What I will say, though, is that my books challenge a lot of things. Dean and Medic are absolutely gay for each other. Head-over-heels in love (...75% of the time). They will, no matter what, do whatever they can to protect and support the other. I have superheroes that are blind, disabled, asexual, bisexual, celibate, transsexual, gay, lesbian... I challenge gender roles by putting the women completely in charge and having them be the ones that make the calls. That also means they screw up spectacularly, just like their male counterparts, but it's still there. I loved books where women kicked ass, but not all of them could give the full, rounded, representation of people that are out there. It is an honest worry of mine that people will look at me sideways and go "You just made character xyz that just so you could have them in the book and say you had that kind of character your book." And I'm trying, honestly, to give each of those type of characters at least ONE short story. Some characters will get more than others, but I want so desperately to pass the torch, in a sense.
Maybe I'm being stupid, or overreaching, but these things are important to me. When I was in middle school and high school we didn't have Glee or Lady Gaga telling us that it was okay to be ourselves. Certainly not in the mainstream. Sure, everyone would say that it was okay to be different and unique, but it was also the quickest way to get picked on and to have your life made a living hell. I care. A lot. I only hope that someone else can believe in my gay superheroes where the women outnumber the men and kick ass and where equality is the Golden Rule, above all else, no matter what. It's the sheep that get punished, in a way, because they can't accept themselves or their beauty, and all they want is to destroy the fact that no one is conforming to anything and that everyone is just absolutely, unapologetically, themselves.
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