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Marvel's Female Superheroes Are Gradually Becoming More Super
New submitter RhubarbPye writes: A new study shows an increasing trend in the power and significance of female superhero characters in the Marvel comic book universe. Several criteria were used to examine the trend, including cover art, dialog, and the actual superpowers. Over 200 individual comic books from Marvel's 50+ year history were compared for the study. What's of particular interest is the study's author is a 17-year-old high school student from Ohio.
Stop the presses, this is front page news! The idea that as acceptance of leading ladies grows they'd be more accepted? Holy crap that is unbelievable.
50 years ago women were always the damsels in distress now we have entire film series based around strong female characters. OF COURSE comic books will feature more and more women as it becomes more mainstream to have them as worthwhile characters and not simply used as something to be captured by the baddies and saved by the goodies.
Marvel wouldn't have been going for 50+ years without adapting to the current trends. Why has there been this sudden spate of research which is telling us exactly what we already knew?
Sure, but why the sigh? The aim of the study was to see if portrayal of women in the comics had changed over time. It was found that this was the case and indeed it was hypothesized from the investigator that the reason was change in reader demographics as well as writer demographics. Sounds like a nice little study (especially as they hint to a somewhat randomized process in selecting the comic books), would have loved to actually see the data though rather than just the summary.
I could do the exact same analysis on Superman and find the exact same result that over time his powers have inflated. Power Creep is a well known issue in comics. The score of 12.2 in the 60's to 22.5 for female characters today is absolutely meaningless without the corresponding male character scores.
Aren't we touchy?!
Equality makes boys feel inferior. Men can live with it.
So, shut up, you big baby!
Yes, but there has been such a rise in feminism over the past 10 years that it seems every facet of society - no matter how trivial - is viewed through the prism of how it affects females.
If school boys were exposed to as many "news" articles covering the topics in which males are screwed - e.g. in the areas of health, education, criminal law, family law, etc - then you would also see school boys motivated to research and publish articles focused on males. Unfortunately, the popular media only ever publishes articles on "male privilege", rarely (if ever) on "male disadvantage". Conversely, we often see a lot of "news" articles that highlight "female disadvantage", and rarely (if ever) "female privilege".
Women and girls encounter notable disadvantages in every day life. The goal of the Mens Rights Movement (MRM) is to raise awareness of the disadvantages that men and boys also encounter in every day life. Unfortunately, some people see this as a zero sum issue; any government funds diverted to assist boys represent funds taken away from girls. So sadly, we end up with a number of people who try to silence Mens Rights Activists whenever such issues are raised in a public forum.