Spider-Man comics treatment of women

[JJS]

Absolutely appalling.

See the much abused Betty is about to turn up pregnant and unhappy.

MJ had the whole marriage erased thing.

Gwen got Norman.

Felicia got raped.


Who the **** thinks this stuff is okay?

[Vortex85]

You could say the same thing about the male characters as well.

[PCN24454]

Wow, this feels clickbait-y.

[Spidey_62]

Silk with the pheromones stuff was pretty bad, and her debut costume being her basically naked covered only in her own web fluid was also pretty bad. It pains me to think how kids have probably been out there picking up the Spider-Verse trade after enjoying the movie and being greeted with Spidey getting horny with Silk constantly and tons of spider-murders.

[Spiderfan001]

You could say the same thing about the male characters as well.

Agreed.
Peter got assaulted by the Spider-queen.
Flash with the weird Spider-lady in the other.
Norman has the thing with Lily(Harry's fiance)

It's just comics in general.
OMD is being addressed.
We don't know mcuh about Betty's pregnancy yet.
SP is considered not canon by most and is isolated and can easily be ignored.
Felicia is a little gross but the story is good besides that

[Snoop Dogg]

You could say the same thing about the male characters as well.

no, because the male characters drive the franchise

[Vortex85]

no, because the male characters drive the franchise

I don't see how that's relevant. Even if the protagonist, it doesn't stop a character from being treated poorly to the extent of the reader asking "what the hell is the writer thinking?"

[Revolutionary_Jack]

There actually is an interesting debate to be had about women in Spider-Man comics. And how much, or how little, Spider-Man's world and characters can be grappled in terms of various gender dynamics, and also how the comics at different moments subverted (quite unintentionally) a lot of the same dynamics.

We can also reflect on the small number of female writers/artists/editors working on Spider-Man, and certainly no major female comics writer got to do a big run on ASM.

On the other hand it's an iron fact of publication history that the first and so far only female superhero to clock 100 issues in an ongoing is the daughter of Spider-Man -- Spider-Girl, so Spider-Man's titles have a major claim to a historic first (one that will be forever) in terms of female representation. And of course so many like Spider-Gwen and love her costume.

As a character, Peter (in the comics) is so different from usual superhero characters in that he primarily relates more to women than to men, is always going to put his girlfriends and wife above any of his male friends. He's a very heterosocial character (something which hasn't translated in the movies where it's always a suite of male patriarchal daddies and chatty bro-pals to keep Peter as a reinforcing agent of conventional masculinity).

I don't see how that's relevant.

What drives the franchise is the merchandise sold to kids which is essentially the Spider-Man costume and some props, lol.

Next to that, nothing is relevant, but that's hard for some folks to grasp, so I commiserate with you there.

[Spiderfan001]

There actually is an interesting debate to be had about women in Spider-Man comics. And how much, or how little, Spider-Man's world and characters can be grappled in terms of various gender dynamics, and also how the comics at different moments subverted (quite unintentionally) a lot of the same dynamics.

We can also reflect on the small number of female writers/artists/editors working on Spider-Man, and certainly no major female comics writer got to do a big run on ASM.

On the other hand it's an iron fact of publication history that the first and so far only female superhero to clock 100 issues in an ongoing is the daughter of Spider-Man -- Spider-Girl, so Spider-Man's titles have a major claim to a historic first (one that will be forever) in terms of female representation. And of course so many like Spider-Gwen and love her costume.

As a character, Peter (in the comics) is so different from usual superhero characters in that he primarily relates more to women than to men, is always going to put his girlfriends and wife above any of his male friends. He's a very heterosocial character (something which hasn't translated in the movies where it's always a suite of male patriarchal daddies and chatty bro-pals to keep Peter as a reinforcing agent of conventional masculinity).



What drives the franchise is the merchandise sold to kids which is essentially the Spider-Man costume and some props, lol.

Next to that, nothing is relevant, but that's hard for some folks to grasp, so I commiserate with you there.

Agreed to most of this.
Specially the Spider-girl stuff.
In TASM he talks mostly to Gwen.Again they were together for a short time.They started their relationship from scratch and ended it in the same movie.They didn't end it then but close enough.
Also Pete mostly doesn't have anyone to talk to since his secret identity.
In Spider-man 3 we got the Venom stuff so that made talking out stuff not viable.
MCU spider-man needs to develop MJ further or get a new love interest(like the actual MJ(I don't care about the actress,Zendaya could do a great MJ .The problem is with the personality),I know it's not gonna happen but still)

[Rob London]

Isn't it a little misogynistic to assume that because Betty is pregnant, she must be unhappy? We've seen her pregnant in one panel so far, and she doesn't seem too miserable to me.

(It's probably safe to assume she'll eventually be unhappy, but that's more because she's the perpetually-unfortunate Betty Brant.)

[Frontier]

It depends on the writer.

[Spider-Tiger]

It depends on the writer.

Basically. In general though I would say the comics have been more progressive than other media.

Though I'm not sure if OPs post is specifically about sexism or just bad things happening to female characters. Bad things happen to all characters in Spider-man comics at one point or another.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Basically. In general though I would say the comics have been more progressive than other media.

Though I'm not sure if OPs post is specifically about sexism or just bad things happening to female characters. Bad things happen to all characters in Spider-man comics at one point or another.

Spider-Man comics has had a lot of melodrama but I wouldn't say bad things happen to characters compared to the awful nightmarish things that happen to characters in Daredevil and X-Men comics.

On the whole only one major supporting cast has died (Gwen). You can argue Ned Leeds is a second but I don't think he was ever a major supporting-character. The rest have come back to life at some point.

Spider-Man comics exist in a fairly sanitized corner of the Marvel Universe. If you compare Spider-Man to Daredevil or X-Men comics the stuff that the latter two deal with -- genocide, sexual assault, prostitution, human trafficking, child abuse -- aren't dealt with at all in Spider-Man comics. So it's an open question in terms of how bad things get in Spider-Man comics, really?

There's a question of taste and censorship there --
a) censorship as in Spider-Man comics because of the all-ages nature cannot deal with stuff that punctures the fantasy,
b) taste in the sense that the general comedic-dramatic nature (the focus on "Parker luck" which is absolutely a BS-concept) and tone of the hero quipping and making jokes wouldn't work if his stories touched on real oppression, because he would come off as a sociopath.

Paradoxically, that has had the effect of Spider-Man comics having a more nuanced focus on gender dynamics than it otherwise would have (for instance, from reading some writers, it seems that more than a few saw Mary Jane as closer to Jenny from Forrest Gump, which is a highly sexist portrayal of women, than the more progressive character in the stories). Where more or less women are treated as persons and written as individuals with nuances. Now that doesn't mean the art has followed the writing because the art and design of characters has been sexist in numerous occassions.

[PCN24454]

On the whole only one major supporting cast has died (Gwen). You can argue Ned Leeds is a second but I don't think he was ever a major supporting-character. The rest have come back to life at some point.

George Stacy as well.

[marhawkman]

I don't see how that's relevant. Even if the protagonist, it doesn't stop a character from being treated poorly to the extent of the reader asking "what the hell is the writer thinking?"

This^

Crap happens to EVERYONE in Spider-Man comics. The only question is a matter of degree. And quite frankly I'd say the character who gets it worst is Peter Parker.