I don't remember them being despondent. They seemed content with their role as Hephaestus's assistants. I don't remember anything that would support the "slaving away" interpretation. They seemed to get satisfaction out of their work. (Also, there were no brutal overseers, whippings, or other signifiers that most authors would put in to indicate that they were slaves, or being forced to do something that they hated.) And I don't remember them not caring when one of them died, but here I assume you have a specific instance in mind. In any case, can you provide references and citations for these interpretations? They seem pretty far afield from what I read, but it was a while ago.
I also don't remember anything they said, thought, or did, that indicated they thought of themselves as "not whole." There are plenty of other reasons to want to reunite with your biological family, especially after the circumstances that lead to the separation have changed, or appear to have changed. (I could give you plenty of examples out of the lives of gay men I know who were distanced from their families of origin and later reunited. These men were not, and did not consider themselves "not whole." In fact, it was their happiness and comfort in their own lives that gave them the strength to approach, and in some cases where necessary, forgive, their families.)Yes, the Sons of the Amazons wanted to reunite with the Amazons, but it was because they wanted to feel whole for the first time in their life.
The all-female Amazons hated and murdered men, The all-male society of the Sons didn't hate women (even though they had been abandoned by their mothers, which saved them from an even worse fate at their hands), forgave their female kin, and held no ill-will against them. Those guys were pretty nice. They didn't taunt each other; they didn't even taunt the Amazons. I don't see the equivalency.
“[S]tew[in] their pain and suffering”? Is that what they’re doing? Maybe in Azzarello’s version. In most versions, however, the Amazons on Paradise Island/Themyscira seemed to have largely left their pain and suffering behind, and devoted themselves to creating a loving, supportive society where they could live their lives (and guard Doom's Doorway, or whatever) without the sexism of Man's World breathing down their necks. Not a lot of non-meal-related stewing involved.The Amazons are victims who have decided that it was better to segregate themselves and stew and their pain and suffering instead of even trying to change the world after it hurt them.
Originally I wrote something much longer concerning the Amazons' choices, using comparisons from both alternate histories and The So-Called Real World™. But really it comes down to this:
People who have (as you describe the Amazons) been victimized (especially when that victimization is based on systemic oppression which is part of a society's ideology) do not have a moral obligation to offer themselves up for re-victimization in order to "heal" the society that victimized them in the first place, and would almost certainly try to do so again. Especially when their population is small, so that, despite their talents, they have no a priori reason to believe they would be able to make much of a dent. And may easily find themselves mistreated, imprisoned, attacked, or killed. (Or, alternatively, setting themselves up as conquerers.)
Now, in The So-Called Real World™, a certain subset of people who have been the victims of oppression do devote part of their lives to fighting it. (Not all of them, by any means. Some just keep their heads down, try to avoid being victims again, and try to simply live their lives as best as they're able.) But part of the reason for that is that they have nowhere else to go. There's no way out of the system, you either fight back openly (with all the sacrifice and risk that entails) or try to stay under the radar. The Amazons' patron deities gave them another alternative: live your lives away from Man's World, free from sexism, and while you're at it, protect the world from Ares or Titan-zombies or whatever. To castigate the Amazons for taking that choice is literally blaming the victims.
Not that I consider the Amazons on Themyscira victims. They have left their victimhood behind.
(Consider for comparison the African-Americans in the 1940's-1960's who moved to Paris, where, in their estimation, racism was considerably less than here, and just wrote their books, played their music, painted their paintings, and danced their dances. I'm not going to attack them for being immoral, either.)
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Let’s also realize that we’re talking about the DC Universe, in which you can’t always apply highly literal and hyperrealistic expectations to the characters. We could ask why the Flash, Superman, and Green Lantern don’t solve the homelessness problem in this country. With superspeed, superstrength, and a power ring, I’d estimate that one day with Habitats for Humanity would do it. (We’ve seen the Flash restore buildings destroyed in super-fights in a matter of moments. But he stops there.)
Even more, we could ask: why don’t the superheroes, with their vast powers, resources, and technology, make it a goal to make sure that no child ever goes hungry again? They could do it.
Sometimes we get vague, hand-wavey answers to this, which amount to restatements of the Prime Directive (but which, to me, never seem like a good enough reason to let children starve or people live under bridges). But it’s rare to hear somebody say, “Superman is immoral because he hasn’t taken on the world hunger problem yet.” Most readers believe, at some level, that Superman has a role in the DC Universe, and that’s not it. That's part of the genre.
But for some reason it’s considered more valid to say, “those Amazons are immoral cowards because they live on their island, have their own civilization, and pursue their own lives (which include protecting the world from Ares or Titan-zombies or whatever), rather than abandoning all that and fixing - somehow - the problem of sexism in Man’s World. That makes them the real sexists!” Even though they’re not as powerful as Superman, who we let off the hook.
I think maybe we have unreasonable expectations of women in general.