LGBT+ Marvel Characters Discussion

[t hedge coke]

Yeah I've seen those panels of Catman being "confirmed" as bi. He's talking with a woman while a man has his hand on Catman's shoulder. I've seen people say that Psylocke is not bisexual even after she was shown on panel naked in bed with another woman after they had sex. So I highly doubt that Catman being bisexual would be accepted by a lot of people based on that scene.

John Constantine can date a guy for a year (in-world or 12 issues) and have on-panel sexual relations and there's still going to be folks who're all, "He's just doing it... for the job/because he's bored/in a not gay way..."

Kitty Pryde is licking frosting off another woman, telling her she's completely in her hands, and the artist can actually call it a lesbian seduction... there are people who insist it isn't really gay, she's not anything but straight straight lalalacan'thearyou straight.

You can't convince everyone. Not in a world where people legitimately have training camps to ungay people or believe in "hate the sin not the sinner" applying to homosexuality as equally as to theft or murder (but not disrespecting parents or forgetting the sabbath, because those are hard to not do sometimes; being not-gay is a cakewalk).

[Tiamatty]

Without counting the Claremont stuff ?.

Come on, Claremont doesn't count, every woman he wrote was drowning in lesbian subtext.

Invert the gender ratio of the writers, and it will turn out that half of the male roster have the hots for each other.

That would require female writers get to do books with male characters, first, of course.

So they should simple say that someone is lesbian, or gay, or bi, or something ?.

Ideally? Yeah. Subtext is all fine and good, but if you want a character to be LGBT, have it said on-panel.

Kitty Pryde is licking frosting off another woman, telling her she's completely in her hands, and the artist can actually call it a lesbian seduction... there are people who insist it isn't really gay, she's not anything but straight straight lalalacan'thearyou straight.

Is it OK to not want that as proof because it's a 30-year-old woman seducing a 15-year-old girl? Age of consent in the UK is 16, so if anything had happened, it would've been statutory rape, and that's really goddamn creepy and weird.

[t hedge coke]

Is it OK to not want that as proof because it's a 30-year-old woman seducing a 15-year-old girl? Age of consent in the UK is 16, so if anything had happened, it would've been statutory rape, and that's really goddamn creepy and weird.

It's okeh to want it. It's not okeh to deny it happened.

Teenage Spider-Man beating the hell out of a delusional fat man who wandered from the hospital is illegal as all hell, and a little dodgy as a way to handle things, too, but it happened. Everything Daken does is creepy and likely to be illegal as all get out, but it all happened.

[MasterOfMagnetism]

John Constantine can date a guy for a year (in-world or 12 issues) and have on-panel sexual relations and there's still going to be folks who're all, "He's just doing it... for the job/because he's bored/in a not gay way..."

Kitty Pryde is licking frosting off another woman, telling her she's completely in her hands, and the artist can actually call it a lesbian seduction... there are people who insist it isn't really gay, she's not anything but straight straight lalalacan'thearyou straight.

You can't convince everyone. Not in a world where people legitimately have training camps to ungay people or believe in "hate the sin not the sinner" applying to homosexuality as equally as to theft or murder (but not disrespecting parents or forgetting the sabbath, because those are hard to not do sometimes; being not-gay is a cakewalk).

Yeah, you make good points.

Is it OK to not want that as proof because it's a 30-year-old woman seducing a 15-year-old girl? Age of consent in the UK is 16, so if anything had happened, it would've been statutory rape, and that's really goddamn creepy and weird.

True, but apparently Kitty was in a sexual relationship with Pete Wisdom when she was underage and that's canon.

[Rogue Star]

Without counting the Claremont stuff ?.



Invert the gender ratio of the writers, and it will turn out that half of the male roster have the hots for each other.



So they should simple say that someone is lesbian, or gay, or bi, or something ?.

What about the Claremont stuff? To my knowledge Rogue has never been shown to have desires for the same-sex. Mystique and Destiny were in a relationship though, since we're talking about Claremont's stories. The point I was making was that the kiss between Rogue and Black Widow was character breaking (unless one of them is actually bisexual) and it's obvious that it was done because someone thought it was hot. It happens often with female characters because it's more "acceptable". It's a double standard. That's all. To your last question, it's dependent upon the person.

[NexusTenebrare]

I think there might be more lesbians in ongoings right now than there are gay men, but the two books with the greatest lesbian representation - Angela and Weirdworld - are both ending. So, yeah, I'm with you on Marvel needing more gay men, and more gay men in relationships, but I also think that, at least until this past year or so, Marvel's been better about gay relationships than lesbian relationships.

DC, I can't comment on, because I don't care about them.

I wouldn't necessarily disagree with this, but I would point out that this means very little. Marvel is slightly better with their gay men right now, but not by much. Both are still very much underrepresented. Especially in meaningfull ways.
I'd also say that which of the two (gay men or lesbians) gets better representation swings wildly between the two. But again, the diference is very small.

Either way it's pointless to argue over which has had more so far. This kind of oppression olympics are incredibly unhelpfull. We should be fighting for better representation for every member of the LGBT spectrum.

[Diamond]

True, but apparently Kitty was in a sexual relationship with Pete Wisdom when she was underage and that's canon.

When she was dating Wisdom she was written as being 18 or older. It was only later that Chris Claremont established she was still underage (and I bet he had no clue about who was Wisdom.)

[Anduinel]

When she was dating Wisdom she was written as being 18 or older. It was only later that Chris Claremont established she was still underage (and I bet he had no clue about who was Wisdom.)

The people who put forward the theory that it was an underage relationship use the basis that Kitty Pryde's last stated age prior to the relationship was 15, and since people age slower in comics, Kitty Pryde couldn't possibly be of an appropriate age when she fell for Pete Wisdom five years later real time. But yeah, Ellis wrote Shadowcat as old enough to buy drinks in an English pub in his run, so she was at least 18, and he clearly intended her to be in an adult relationship. He also stated in Wizard interviews at the time that Kitty Pryde was "all grown up and going to get f*cked". (Not one of his more charming interviews, imo.) Then Claremont came back and expressly wrote down that his little Kitten was only sixteen and had never done anything as icky as have sex -- he had a clue about the Wisdom relationship, and disliked it enough to try and retcon bits of it out of continuity.

Frankly, I didn't find Ellis' "ooo, lookit how 90's edgy I am!" interviews appealing, but at least the stories were good, so I go with the notion that Kitty's subsequent birthdays didn't get celebrated on-screen. Claremont coming back and giving Shadowcat a hymenoplasty was just creepy.

[dragonmp93]

Come on, Claremont doesn't count, every woman he wrote was drowning in lesbian subtext.

That's why i asked.

That would require female writers get to do books with male characters, first, of course.

Well, i did say that if you invert the gender ratio.

Ideally? Yeah. Subtext is all fine and good, but if you want a character to be LGBT, have it said on-panel.

Is it OK to not want that as proof because it's a 30-year-old woman seducing a 15-year-old girl? Age of consent in the UK is 16, so if anything had happened, it would've been statutory rape, and that's really goddamn creepy and weird.

No, i was talking about that if they should simple say that someone is LGBT, but never showing anything.

[Tiamatty]

It's okeh to want it. It's not okeh to deny it happened.

Teenage Spider-Man beating the hell out of a delusional fat man who wandered from the hospital is illegal as all hell, and a little dodgy as a way to handle things, too, but it happened. Everything Daken does is creepy and likely to be illegal as all get out, but it all happened.

I acknowledge that the scene happened. I do not acknowledge that it counts as evidence of Kitty being bi. It's a case of Sat-Yr-9 being a goddamn sexual predator.

True, but apparently Kitty was in a sexual relationship with Pete Wisdom when she was underage and that's canon.

That's an unfortunate screw-up related to the sliding timeline, and to the fact that Claremont was way too protective of his characters. As pointed out, Ellis wrote her as 18 (actually, I think he might have said 20 or 21). It was still a fairly inappropriate relationship, but it was a legal one, until Claremont came back and said, "NOPE IF I DIDN'T WRITE IT IT DIDN'T HAPPEN!"

I wouldn't necessarily disagree with this, but I would point out that this means very little. Marvel is slightly better with their gay men right now, but not by much. Both are still very much underrepresented. Especially in meaningfull ways.
I'd also say that which of the two (gay men or lesbians) gets better representation swings wildly between the two. But again, the diference is very small.

Either way it's pointless to argue over which has had more so far. This kind of oppression olympics are incredibly unhelpfull. We should be fighting for better representation for every member of the LGBT spectrum.

Yeah, definitely. I wasn't saying that Marvel needs to have more lesbians to catch up with the gay men. (I think, at the moment, they might have more lesbians in ongoings than they do gay men.) I was just taking issue with legion_quest's dismissal of lesbian representation, by pointing out that, at least at Marvel, gay male relationships have traditionally been more prominent than lesbian relationships. But absolutely, more of both, and more of all sorts of other non-traditional relationships.

When she was dating Wisdom she was written as being 18 or older. It was only later that Chris Claremont established she was still underage (and I bet he had no clue about who was Wisdom.)

Yeah, he didn't create Wisdom, so clearly, Wisdom couldn't matter.

No, i was talking about that if they should simple say that someone is LGBT, but never showing anything.

Ah, OK, I'm with you now. Yeah, they should do both. So maybe Dante, from the Inhumans, hooks up with a guy and says he hasn't done it since high school. Or Storm and Psylocke start a relationship, with Storm mentioning that gender has never much mattered to her. Make it canon through action and dialogue, that way, there's just no way around it. Make it clear that they're not straight-with-an-exception, nor are they theoretically gay but practically neuter.

[legion_quest]

Yeah, definitely. I wasn't saying that Marvel needs to have more lesbians to catch up with the gay men. (I think, at the moment, they might have more lesbians in ongoings than they do gay men.) I was just taking issue with legion_quest's dismissal of lesbian representation, by pointing out that, at least at Marvel, gay male relationships have traditionally been more prominent than lesbian relationships. But absolutely, more of both, and more of all sorts of other non-traditional relationships.

I wasn't dismissing lesbian representation, I was dismissing LGBT representation, or indeed any representation, that is either played for titillation or isn't used for storyline purposes. I don't care about the POD character, but the current use of her sexuality to humanise her is a perfectly good story. In many others, especially recently, it's been a tick in a box and move on; something for the corporate figures to point at, but that no one wants to actually do anything with, beyond make a joke or provide Tumblr slash opportunities.

Sexuality isnt like skin colour or gender, when just using the characters helps a cause, for us to get anything of use in terms of representation it has to be a storyline point, not just an exercise in filling a quota.

[NexusTenebrare]

Ironically, the only time I could ever stand Kitty Pride (I normally hate her as a character) was during her time in Excalibur while she was in a relationship with Pete Wisdom.

[t hedge coke]

When she was dating Wisdom she was written as being 18 or older. It was only later that Chris Claremont established she was still underage (and I bet he had no clue about who was Wisdom.)

He admitted, himself, he under-aged her, too, and aged her up, himself, a few issues later, though not as far. (I'd connect this to the fact enough of her fans seem happy to apply "lolita" to her, but I'm not gonna do the legwork there.)

[gifted]

As someone who's very recently out, I don't see why there would be a problem with a new reveal of a character being LGBT. As long as it is handled and written well and not a decision made for the sake of being diverse and for that sake alone (something I believe DC Comics has a problem of doing).

If the characters never explicitly stated their sexualities, then there shouldn't be a problem. If the characters have labeled themselves as straight in the past or were involved in heterosexual relationships in the past, so what? I did the same and it's because I was in the closet.

As long as it is not, "Let's take this big A-List character and make him gay because yay, we're diverse!" It has to make sense for the character.

I honestly only read the last few posts in this thread regarding the issue, so I may not even know what y'all are talking about. Haha.

[Fokken]

Rad avatar, Gifted.
Wheredjageteeet??