Originally Posted by
Shimbo
She's the most radical and subversive character underneath those supehero tropes and trappings. She comes from a lady utopia where she was born out of love, outside the influence of any man. Her upbringing is communal. Her society indelibly queer and sex-positive. She's the perpetual outsider. She's queer but is unafraid to show who she is and where she's from and combat man's bullshit with love and open arms if not a boot to the face. She's the product of two women and a man engaged in a polyamorous relationship, itself a radical counterpoint to the heteronormative "nuclear" family. Her arms are yonic and defensive: the lasso, her bracelets, and her tiara.
As a Latino gay man, there is just so much there. She faces the uphill battle of sexism and misogyny and queer erasure if not homophobia but she's still the most compassionate. Hippolyta so desiring of a child she sculpts her own from clay and begs the goddesses to give her life. It speaks to the power of a maternal narrative in fiction and how powerfully it resonates with women and queer people and PoC, many of us who were raised by communities of powerful women. These women were often the gateway to the "feminine" or the "other" and represent a power and strength that at the time I didn't understand. It was strength not borne of violence but through empathy and understanding. Surviving and persevering in the face of systemic oppression and societal norms and expectations. Maternal "warrior" women , many of themselves not necessarily mothers themselves, not so unlike Amazons themselves. These women could also "see" the queerness in their children and would be accepting far more often than the men.
I write all the above to contextualize her queer appeal. She's the panacea to the muscle men beating their philosophy and ideals into people. She espouses transformative justice and love. She's the queer mom/sister/best friend/aunt we see our queerness in who accepts the queerness of her audience, nay, emboldens us to love ourselves. The Amazons and their Paradise Island are like the ideal mix of our biological and found families loving and accepting us and the Island itself a safe space, neither of those things necessarily existing for many queer people in real life. The queer community understands the fear and violent reach of the patriarchy and empathize with the quasi-historical underpinnings of the Amazons. Again, even her birth is queer love wish fulfillment and an example of parthenogenesis.
I'm rambling but there's just so many reasons and I know I'm missing more but a lot of what she makes me feel and why she does that is hard to verbalize. Like, just reflecting on her importance to me makes me cry haha.