On Venus Girdles
I am almost completely in love with really old Wonder Woman comics. They fill my ironic little feminist heart with a bizarre sort of glee. They make me smirk.
I have the good fortune to be reading through Wonder Woman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told courtesy of my local public library. The really old Wonder Woman comics by Charles Moulton are the most innocently kinky things I have ever read. By innocently kinky, I mean that you could conceivably read them without seeing some bizarre sexual kink writ large—but not by someone like me. In those early issues, everyone is getting bound up and compelled to do things. It really is like some kind of BDSM fantasy.
Take, for example, how the Amazons deal with their prisoners:
I especially love the feminist subtext played with by having the conduit of submissive bondage being a girdle. That is about as effing perfect as you can get. Especially when paired with this panel later on in the same storyline:
Remember, kids: When women get too uppity, they get bound into loving submission by a strong master! And they don’t just like it…They love it.
Technorati Tags: Feminism, Comics, Wonder Woman, DC, Comic Books, Submission, BDSM, Humor
July 19th, 2007 at 12:10:42
No, even better - bound into loving submission by a strong mistress!
So not only is it b&d fantasy, it’s lesbian b&d fantasy the likes of which the mainstream wouldn’t see until S.M. Stirling’s Draka books….
Best,
Tim Liebe
July 21st, 2007 at 0:55:53
This is what passed for feminism in 1940-something? I think Gloria Steinem, or anyone who talks about how feminist Marston was, needs this rubbed in her face.
Oh, DC/National, why didn’t you just let Marston’s Wonder Woman trademark die with the rest of the badly written 1940’s propaganda/titillation crap?
And people get on Chip Delany for that, “I don’t like women,” line in one of his Wonder Woman comics in the early 1970’s. Yeah, that’s SOOO much more offensive.
Or am I the messed up one here?