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Sunday 14 December 2014

Trans Representation and Batgirl #37: The End of Progress?


Right so last Wednesday Batgirl #37 arrived on our comic store shelves. Now, although I had my reservations about the new team, as I outlined in a previous post, overall I have been enjoying the new direction for the character as it was different from everything we were reading and such a turn-away from the other Bat books because it wasn’t so freaking dark. But then this happened. I’m sure a lot of you have already seen this, it seems to be everywhere but in case you missed it, here’s what happened.

Discloser: In fairness, the creative team has apologised for what happened and how the issue panned out, but at the same time, a creative decision has to go through a huge amount of people before it gets green-lighted to print, and no one stepped up to stop it, it is not the first time problems with representation has been an issue, nor will it be the last. And if anything positive comes from this, at least the issue is being highlighted and addressed.


WARNING! THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR BATGIRL #37

So for the last couple of weeks Babs has been trying to find out who has been impersonating her online and the comic opens to a group of girls dressed in bat-garb and robbing celebrities houses with someone who they think is Batgirl, but with a very bedazzled costume. Their bubble is soon burst when the real Batgirl shows up and arrests them while the impostor gets away. It later transpires that the impostor is an artist, Dagger-Type, who has been commissioned to create an exhibit of insightful photos documenting the “real” batgirl while he works towards killing Babs so he can take her place. Right, so here’s where we get problematic.

If you cast your minds back to Gail Simone’s run on the series you will remember the introduction of Alysia Yeoh, Barbra’s Transgender room mate. As one of the first Trans character in a mainstream (read mainstream) comic, it was really refreshing to see her portrayed as a person. That’s all, so simple but so effective, to see a character who was going to have such relevance to so many people just living their lives. Yes, they have gone through the hardship of coming out, of having to fight to live the way they want but they have come out the other side and are not defined by that label. In the same way that Babs has a life outside of being Batgirl, Alysia is a person outside of her gender and how she expresses it. Barbra has developed as a character through her interaction with Alysia too but not because she suddenly came to understand how she should accept people no matter how different they are, she was already there. I remember smiling to myself when Babs responded to the news.

So in issue #37 we had the first reappearance of Alysia since Babs moved out in the new team’s first issue, something which I'm sure loads of people were looking forward to. We all hoped she would have survived the switch but it wasn't to be. And it seems Barbra’s character development was to follow as she responded to the realisation that the photographer Dagger-Type was cross-dressing as her.


The question has to come into it: what did the fact that Dagger-Type was a man dressing as a woman add to the mystery of the reveal of the impostor? We could have introduced a female character in the exact same situation and I know I wouldn’t have been suspicious! It could have been the art dealer from mid-way though the issue, at least she got more page space than the one fleeting picture Dagger-Type got. When the reveal happened, the only thing we noticed was that he was cross-dressing, and was not presenting as the gender we thought they were. Because there was no character-development at any point in the issue, I didn’t even recognise who it was! How is that helpful? What we have here is using someone’s identity as shock value and employing the “man in a dress” trope that people have been working so hard to get away from when it comes to the representation of trans-people. All of this for the development of a plot point, the opposite of what we had for Alysia.  


For me, the icing on the disappointed cake was the line which was chosen for Babs to say to an officer after they arrested Dagger-Type. “My friends call me Babs”; the exact line that told Alysia that the fact that she was trans did not alter how Babs saw her, that it was not going to be an issue at all, I think that is the definition of irony. 

What do you guys think? Make sure to let me know!

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Monday 14 July 2014

Hard-core to Hipster: In Defence of Batgirl

As is the case with most high profile comic titles, changes in the creative team can lead to some.. tension. The announcement of the new creative team for DC's New 52 Batgirl is no exception. Pictures have landed of the new artistic direction for the character and her new costume and this, combined with the new setting, is placing one word on everyone's lips- Hipster. In this post I plan on quickly going over a couple of the most popular complaints circling the internet about this new turn. This should be fun.
batgirl
The new direction for the title sees Babs leaving her father and Gotham behind to try and live the life of a modern 21 year old in Burnside, a trendy area outside the main city. She plans on going to grad school and turning over a new leaf and, it would seem, going to a lot of trendy boutiques.

Although the new setting seems really interesting, what we have here is something that DC has had difficulties doing in the past (most characters stay within their city limits and rarely move somewhere completely new, see new Harley Quinn) and people have been having trouble accepting this new turn and in this post I plan on defending these choices.   
One of the first things that I read with regards to this change is the fact that Barbra is young enough to be going to grad school (again). Right, first of all, Simone has stated that in the New 52 continuity, Babs is 21. This can get a bit confusing considering how much she achieved before the reboot- we know the shooting happened as she went through a large amount of rehab and still has the wheelchair accessible car, but what happened to her life as a librarian? Her PhD? Why is she going back to college? Although DC is no stranger to mixing things up, this change seems to be deleting a large amount of Babs' life. But still, I can see where they are coming from taking some things and leaving others.
I think the fact that Babs is being portrayed as a younger woman is a positive thing. I loved Gail’s run and I think the darker tone was needed for the reintroduction of the character. She showed us that recovery is not easy and that the darkness of her past was still haunting her but still allowed her to have her youth.
The use of a younger character than pre- new 52 allows her to access a demographic that no other member of the bat-family can (in a solo capacity, Teen Titan's Robin is still a bit young). As a 20 year old who has only been reading comics for a year, I can safely say that would have loved to have found what we are being promised with this Batgirl when I started because she was a bit more modern. It remains to be seen how close to the “hipster” line she goes but I think this is refreshing. Marvel have been updating their characters with reboots- just look at Ms. Marvel, and I think it’s time for DC to make itself more modern and have their real-life troubles more believable. 

Finally, the argument about “the lack of women” after the powerhouse that is Gail Simone leaves. Right first of all, with an artist and the colourist being women, there are already more women on this comic than there were before, just because the men are writing this, doesn't mean we have to give up on the progress Gail made. I'm sure most will agree that the representation of women in comics is pure BS but it is not the gender of the creator that matters, it is what they do with it character and I think this team respects that. Yes, we need more female creators because, yes, comics are for everyone but it is not right to disregard something because it is assumed they will mess it up because of their gender (gosh, that sounds familiar).  

So yes, I will be reading the new Batgirl, not just because I am curious but because I am genuinely excited and interested in what the new team are going to do and am confident in their abilities. This post is just a simplified summary of the challenges this comic faces and I could write a piece three times as long if I had the time. Tides are changing and people are realising that, more girls are reading comics and they want characters they can relate too, not the same paint-by-numbers crime-fighting that we are used to. Babs is not going to be any less bad-ass or complex and she is simply moving onto another part of her life in a way that has not been tried before. I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t wait.


Friday 18 April 2014

Why I won't be eating meat tonight

As today is Good Friday, I wanted to post about something very close to my heart and which has affected me personally for a good part of my life. I’d love to hear your stories and thoughts and will respond to everything you throw at me. I know this can be a sensitive subject which is why I put in my own story, I want people to see an example of how religion is not just something you put in a box on Facebook.
Growing up, I was incredibly religious. Interestingly, not because of my family; they went sporadically and at big holidays, but because of a deep need to belong somewhere, to have something in my life to hold on to and that wouldn't change or get sick of me. As a Protestant being educated in a rural Catholic school, from when I was aware that I was different, it never went away. You would think that being bullied because of something that I couldn't change at age 7 would push me away from religion, it had the opposite effect. I clung onto that thing that made me different and put everything I had into it. My parents were always really supportive and so I knew that it was their problem and not mine. When I began to go to bible camps I felt that I had found people who would accept me and I could ignore a lot of the strange things they were teaching. From there I became a Born- Again Christian and up until I was 17, everyone knew me as the religious one. Even when I left the Catholic school at 10 and went to a Church of Ireland one to finish primary and then for secondary, I still felt that people didn't understand and was bullied for it there too. My faith became a crutch even more at that time because now it was personal beliefs being attacked, not the faith I was born into.

Finally when I was in my final year of secondary school, things changed. It wasn't a sudden thing, not at all, it took a lot of thinking and revision of the thing which I had been believing since I was 8 years old. I realised that I didn't feel it any more. That connection to my religion, to the way I justified the world in my eyes wasn't there any more. I had friends who were of other faiths, not just Christian, and I couldn't understand why it was that because I was born Christian and just happened to be raised it that I got into heaven when my Muslim friend, who was much more devout to her faith than I ever was, didn't? As things started to come out about abuses in the church and I thought about how they treated the people who put all of their belief into them, I knew I couldn't be the same person any more. I changed personally and felt stronger in myself and so didn't need the crutch any more. I felt confident in my own ideas and way of living.

Nowadays I categorise myself as agnostic. If there is a god, they will not care about what I was born as. I like to think that if there is something to be reaching for, an afterlife or anything else, that whoever gets to choose if I get in will see who I am as a person, not which team I back. I hope they can see the person that I had hid behind my faith and see that I was someone worth setting free. Maybe I will go back to religion, I can’t tell. Something may happen to help me believe again and if that happens, I will welcome it but I can’t force it to happen, nor would I want to.


Because of this, because of how I was treated for what was one of the most important things in my life, I will never judge someone for their faith. I have many close friends and family who have a strong Christian and today will not be having meat because it’s Good Friday. Religion is not a set thing, it means different things for different people and considering yourself better because don’t hold the same beliefs is incredibly ignorant. There will be loads of people who will put pictures of themselves eating a burger today in an attempt to spite those who believe. It is fine if you fine if you don’t believe and I know it can be annoying if a whole country is very much wrapped up in the state religion but don’t think that by saying these things you will somehow shame people from stopping it, nor will it make yourself look more intelligent because (I cannot count the amount of people who have said this to me) “religion is for idiots who will believe anything”. 

As someone who has read the bible (twice) I can tell you that it is not just a bunch of stories in a book. Try reading it before you pass judgement or look at the presentation of the faith in classical times. You will be shocked at how much you will learn. And the thing is, you can do this for all of the major religions. You will find connections between them and see that in many cases they are not that different and that there are merits for all. Don’t assume that just because someone believes that they are weak, or ignorant, or don’t believe in science (again, another one I got).You don’t know the full story. And so, if today if my friends are not eating meat or not drinking, I’ll join them. We know how each other feels but I don’t think it’s my place to tell them otherwise. 

Monday 14 April 2014

An Open Letter to Nerdfighteria on Haters

Dear Nerdfighters,
I was about 16 when I first discovered the VlogBrothers. I have read the books, met John and Hank and it has been important to me for many years. Being almost 21 now, I have seen the community ebb and flow in popularity, by this I mean, mostly the same people loved it while the outsiders went between general uncaring and annoyance by its presence all over nerd-culture. While on the Irish Nerdfighter page a while ago, I came across a post about a Nerdfighter-hate Tumblr blog and there was quite an up-roar about it and this has imspired me to write about my feelings on the subject.


The community that is the Nerdfighters is not defined by this opinion. No matter what you do, people will get annoyed about it. Modern culture has decided, of late, to take nerd culture and try to make it mainstream. thinking that nerds are all Sheldon Cooper and should be laughed at for being passionate about something. We are the people who know that being a nerd is not wearing big glasses and a bow-tie (they do not understand fully why bow-ties are cool). These are people who can't understand how you can retain a child-like passion for something. It does not mean that we are immature, only that we can separate that part of ourselves that must be grown-up with that which doesn't want to be. I personally have perfected the art of being an "adult" when I need to be and letting go of that completely when I am around people who understand me. It is not a case of hiding myself, I am not afraid to tell people about my hobbies if they ask, but in a situation where you have to act a certain way, you can't avoid it. It is a harsh truth but it is still important. I fins that the best thing to do is to try and reduce the amount of situations in which you have to act that way but that can only go so far.

But that is not the only thing which needs to be said. Guys, everything starts from somewhere and these hate post do have a small amount of truth. I have found in my years, not only as a nerd but also as an advocate for things like feminism (many people cringe at the word), that there will always be a few that will ruin it for the many. It is usually the extremists that people remember (which is why people seem to think that I am a man-hating feminazi when I say I am a feminist) because there are a small amount of extremists who hold that view and that is what people remember. What you guys need to remember is that although the roots of Nerdfighteria is in Nerdom, it does not give you an elevated status when it comes to the lakes of fandom or even things like Tumblr. In the same way that you don't want someone discriminating against you because you are a nerd, you shouldn't work against someone just because they don't belong to the same group or have no desire to join that group.

Sites like Tumblr are supposed to give a creative outlet to people and help them connect with others of the same mindset but that can be difficult and sometimes annoying for people when, instead of talking to a person, you get someone hides themselves behind the wall of comfort that is Nerdfighteria. Writing DFTBA at the end of a conversation is awesome within the community but when it is said (or written) to someone who doesn't know what it means it can come off as jarring. The community does not define you. It is an awesome way to meet people when you maybe have problems with it or when you move somewhere new or start in a new school but it shouldn't become a crutch to the point where you loose yourself.

 But even within the threads of Nerdfighter conversations there is some discrimination and this goes for all, not just Nerdfighteria, however it is important here. When someone wants to enter a fandom or learn more about something, it should be a really fun time and there should be a community ready to help them get involved. Nerdfighteria should be that community and most of the time it is. HOWEVER there are a small group who are so passionate about their fandoms that they alienate those who have lesser knowledge and seem to take some joy from building themselves up by breaking others down. Don't let yourself become this. It is much better to feel as though you helped someone discover something new than feeling as though you know everything and have proved it to a group of people who were only trying to have fun.

To finish, I know that the vast majority of you are awesome but please remember: take a moment before you post to see how your comment could be received by someone else and PLEASE be yourself. Use your love of John and Hank and all things Nerdfighter as another passion, not as what defines you. You will learn more about yourself that way and everything can only get better from there.