They need safe space yes, but Themiscyra is not that. It's a whole society based on the segregation from another sex. it's not even a Matriarchy, it's openly a nation which refuses entrance to Men (and people who weren't born Men but identify as such, i guess, I'm not sure it was ever mentioned) because they are born male and not female. No matter how people try to spin it, it's just plain old segregation. If you want a superior society, then having it a place where gender roles simply don't exist is leagues better than what paradise Island currently is.
@GaiUs : yes, but those are not as much a necessity for them. Superman can be a Champion of the Oppressed (like in New 52) and not a sort of eugenistic dream creation - in fact he was created to be that. And even Batman is supposedly more than that, even if in recent years he has certainly... devolved toward it more and more.
I definitely think the Amazons and their exclusion of men is the ugly truth of their society. But that's shouldn't be taken away, it should be addressed and we should see them coming around to a new way of thinking. I think one of the biggest disappointments of modern WW is that they don't want to write comics about the modern debates around gender. It shouldn't be "fixed" per say, it should be explored.
Marston wanted to imagine a society that had evolved beyond war. He took a group that the ancient Greeks had stereotyped as violent and dangerous and turned them into a utopian ideal. The truth is that we in Man's World treat women terribly, denying them opportunity and downplaying their potential whereas in Themyscira, women were allowed to flourish and they built invisible planes, figured out space travel and created purple healing rays.
There is a reason why folks have a problem with the Daddy Zeus thing. Diana is meant to be the best representation of an all female society; she is compassionate, humble, diplomatic but also a warrior who is as powerful as any Greek God or hero. Saying she is special because she has Zeus genes is like retconing Black Panther's origin and giving T'Challa a white European father and having be raised in Europe before coming back to Wakanda, like no, T'Challa is special because he is the symbol of a culture that's flourished untainted by colonialism and slavery. Diana is a symbol of a culture that's grown untainted by misogyny. If Themyscira had their own lunatic fringe it would be more along the lines of Erik Killmonger in BP who wants their home country to take a more aggressive stance in addressing the ills of the outside world.
All women have male sires, so that doesn't make Diana any less Themysciran than her sisters. She was not raised by Zeus, so she still represents a society untainted by misogyny. Also, the Amazons should have flaws, since the idea that men are the cause of all wars and imperfections is misandrist/sexist.
The Amazons separating themselves from society and men made sense from the time period where it happened and what they had gone through, and Diana is there to bridge them back to Man's World.
To be honest in certain interpretations they're completely closed off, so they're not really letting in new women either. It's just the Amazons as a race and culture separated completely from the outside world.
Yeah, just do it like the movies and just mention the Zeus angle as little as possible .
Perhaps. Marston still ended creating an abomination of a society which basically says that if you're born a male, you're born inherently evil and violent. That's what so called "Paradise" Island is. A misandrist vision of humanity where women have qualities and men have vices.
Being an all female society is a problem in itself. Just replace female by White, or Christians, or Pagans, or whatever and you see how horrible that idea sound. Marston's Amazons didn't build an utopia, they built an horrible civilization and we are supposed to hail them as if they were the best thing ever created who had things to teach the outside world, when they have nothing, strictly nothing, over it. Diana is the daughter of a segregationist and isolationist violent society who in spite of it became incredible because said society profess great values - just like in real world you have great peoples, men and women, born out of societies (our very own) which professes values and yet practices them very little, if at all.
And Zeus as a father is far betetr than the clay origin, because, again, this one imply that if she Diana had been born naturally, she would be inherently tainted. Again, replace it with any other group than Men as the source of taint and you have at the very best a very troubling message.
The only society which could approach one where one's gender is neither a hindrance nor a boost to one life would be one where gender roles simply don't exist. If the Amazons actually lived with men and that no tasks whatsoever were alloted to on gender, you'd be right, Diana would come from a non-mysoginistic, superior civilization. As it is, she doesn't.
I don't think the taint is inherently men but a male-dominated patriarchy that the Amazons left behind. I don't think it's operating under the assumption that all men are evil and all women are good, although some interpretations seem to lean on that angle, but more just representing the world outside Themyscira than just a single gender.
The Amazons should not be inherently violent. The Amazons are isolationist, and they had reason to be at the time they isolated themselves, but I feel like there's a value in the vision of a female utopia that Marston envisioned and how that informs Wonder Woman's character as she brings her beliefs to Man's World.
I don't think it was shunning a natural birth, the clay origin leans more into the mythology of a gift from the gods than saying there's something wrong with giving birth naturally.
You mean the same Goddesses who started the Trojan War ? or Hera, who drove a man who had done no other crime than be born to blind fury so he killed his wife and children and had to undertake 12 great works to redeem himself ? The Greek Goddesses are hardly better than the Gods, and in that at least the myths are superior to Marston's writing, the representation was a lot more balanced.
And while Zeus has raped women, he also seduced some. Why couldn't Hyppolita be one of those few ? Why would it reduce her importance for Diana? So what if her powers come from Zeus ? Her personality comes from her mother and sisters.
I’m not denying anything the goddesses did but the entire basis of DC’s Amazons is that they’re a flip on the misogynistic Greek myths around them and making Aphrodite one of their main patrons. Zeus at no point when he’s been presented in DC comics, especially at the time they made him her father, is presented as any way meaningfully different from his mythological counterpart.
And it doesn’t really matter if Zeus rapes Hippolyta or seduced her. It undermines the mother-daughter aspect in favor of another wrought deadbeat dad trope, gives what we’re female accomplishments to male figures (whether through Amazon training or divine blessings from the goddesses), and makes Hippolyta look like a complete idiot for sleeping with a man with the most vindicate wife in existence.
While I maintain that the exclusion of men is an ugly truth in their society, I still argue that the more respectful and trustful people are of each other the less they will harm each other. Yes, the amazons probably still have a lot of disagreements and probably have their own prejudices for each other, but at least they don't have to worry about the patriarchy and if society is molding them into a particular kind of woman or not. Heck, maybe the amazons still have racists among them that hate other ethnicities within themyscira, but it's still one less thing they have to worry about without gender discrimination or insecurities over their gender.
And I think the whole point of Diana is that she isn't a normal amazon. She is (in most versions) the first woman created only by other women. And this makes her have a different relationship with the male gender than the other amazons.
Last edited by Alpha; 01-14-2021 at 01:16 PM.