What Is The Portrayal Of Gender In The Wonder Woman Series?

Gender can be defined as “sex roles” which are conditions that one considers to be for men or women. People tends to mistake it with sex or thinks that they are both the same. We discussed about the patterns of gender which how the authors of The Kaleidoscope of Gender describes it as “regularized, prepackaged ways of thinking, feeling, and acting” (Spade and Valentino,2017). It becomes an identity for us. We believe that there is and can only be two genders, being masculine for men and feminine for women. These roles has been forced onto us since birth: blue for boys, and pink for girls. You can see the roles being push onto a person throughout one’s life, but we don’t notice it since it’s “normal” to us.

With the implementation of the Comics Code Authority and its domination of the comic field, Marston’s creation that subverted gender norms had become problematic. The Code called for comics to conform to the social conservative ideals currently held in society and the original Wonder Woman flew in the face of that. Though Marston’s widow begged DC Comics to be given the reins of the Wonder Woman series after Marston’s death, the company handed over control of the series to Robert Kanigher, who they knew would conform and adhere to the regulation of the Comics Code Authority. The Code called for an emphasis on “the value of the home and the sanctity of marriage” and Kanigher absolved to honour and submit to the symbolic power of the Code. All gender subversion was wiped out of the series. Wonder Woman conformed and under Kanigher’s run, feminine gender performativity became evident. Lepore best describes it: “In the 1950s, Wonder Woman followed the hundreds of thousands of American women who had worked during the war only to be told, when peace came, that not only was their labour no longer needed, but it threatened the stability of the nation by undermining.” The following sections will examine how Butler’s concept of gender performativity was present in Wonder Woman series under the height of the Comics Code Authority’s power in the comic field.

According to Judith Butler, gender is not biologically rooted but socially constructed. Gender is “a stylized repetition of acts […] which are internally discontinuous [so that] the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief” (Butler 140-141). Gender is something learned from social surroundings, it is an imitation of the dominant conventions of gender.

Argument/Conclusion: Gender is a social construction or a process in which human beings are brought up to believe that only two genders (male or female) were normal and that based on your sex you are classified to a specific gender.

Joan Scott (Gender and the Politics of History/Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis) and Judith Butler (Gender as Performance and Performativity) are two influential feminist scholars who have chimed in on the debates about how gender should be used. Joan Scott is a Feminist historian and author this area of study and Judith Butler is a philosopher and one of the most challenging influencers in feminist, queer, and literary theories. They are both theorists; someone who considers given facts and comes up with a possible explanation. Theorists observe various phenomena and use reasoning to come up with practical ideas that must be proven. Theorists come up with abstract ideas and then spend their lives trying to prove them. However,

The representation of gender within film and television texts is still that of out-dated stereotypes and rigid structures. Although many modern texts claim to be subverting these archetypal representations, they are still very prominent and do not seem to be leaving our screens anytime soon. In this essay I will discuss how the concept of genre impacts upon the representation of gender, specifically female, in film and television texts. In particular, how traditional stereotypes are used to aid the structure of genre and cater to audiences.

Judith Butler is an American philosopher, feminist and theorist born in 1956. Butler works explore that whether gender is constructed or performed. Butler played influential role in shaping modern feminism. Most of her well known books and essays such as Gender Trouble, Bodies That Matters, Imitation and Gender Insubordination,

The boundaries of gender are expansive. Many theorists have debated the etiology of gender and the norms within a gender. Recently, given the expansion of the types of genders these theories have been studied more closely. Thus it has been offered that gender is both natural and socialized. There are biological and social factors that play into the identity of a person.

Typically, gender is defined as the social construct that sets variances among men and women as well as the opinions and characteristics that back the disparity. Despite the efforts made to enhance diversity

We see the horrible effects of the portrayal of women in entertainment in the way that they are castrated from having a significantly imposing presence in society. According to Miss Representation, “More than 70% of women on TV are in their 20s and 30s… A male dominant system values women as child bearers so it limits their value to the time that they are sexually and reproductively active and they become much less valuable after that”. In other words, as soon as women go past their physical peak of their lifetimes, the majority of them are seen as washed up and not worth shining the light to. The further disproportion of women in society in comparison to men is demonstrated in the diminishing manner that women are

Comic books have been used as a mirror of society to show or influence the behavior of people. Wonder Woman was a breakthrough from all the masculine superhero franchise at the time of her conception and was created with the intentions of being propaganda for the new type of woman during the second wave of feminism. The comic world which was filled with male heroes, readily welcomed the first comic heroine to make an appearance in the DC Comic book universe. “The new character was immediately successful. Marston’s idealized Amazon—capable, strong, but traditionally “feminine”—seemed to strike the perfect chord for a country at war” (Stanley, 2005). Wonder Woman has been reinvented many times throughout the years, since her origins to recent contemporary films. Not only were her costume changed, but major themes and storylines were altered to “reflect both patriarchal society’s need to redefine according to cultural and economic circumstances” (Stanley, 2015). Wonder Woman has become a successful female character and global icon, balancing traditional masculinity and femininity using her superhero identity and her alter ego as Diana Prince. This paper will be focus on the comic book portrayal of Wonder Woman, including an overview of Wonder Woman through the comics, how Wonder Woman breaks and embraces gender norms through her role as a heroine and through her alter ego Diana Prince.

In the past, gender was a simple binary concept that categorises either male or female, a construction of characteristics so engrained within society that during animal studies we extrapolate features like aggressive or strong and labelled it as a ‘male brain’ or ‘female brains’ being associated with flirtatious or timid behaviour (Woodward 2011: 21) and this was considered the natural way. Ann Oakley (1972) however argued the complexity of gender, suggesting it is a matter of culture, a reference to either masculinity or femininity whereas ‘sex’ was to do with our physical characteristics like genitalia and hormone balance- of course this can be further expanded on and divided, but this is it simply. This sense of cultural influence was further expanded on by Judith Butler (1990 and 1993) through the Drag theory. This theory was based upon drag queens, but generalized to the general population in the sense that we “perform” the gender we are socially identified as and thus conform to social stereotypes through the repeated performance of gendered acts, for example, blue blankets for boys and pink for girls. These influences shape and form what we identify as. There are however criticisms to this theory in the sense it is too individualized and not all women experience what Butler describes, however it is a good foundation to look at the way society helps formulate ideas of gender

Anyone who has ever attempted to read any literature written by gender theorist, Judith Butler, knows how much of a struggle it is to decode her main points. Even after taking three gender studies courses, reading multiple articles, and analyzing portions from her books, I still have a difficult time comprehending just exactly what Judith Butler is stating. One cannot simply read her writing once and expect fully understand her points. If you say can, then you are lying. I would describe Butler’s writing style as elegantly confusing. Her vast vocabulary and placement of words is so exquisite, that her message seems to dissipate. The trick to understanding Butler (at least the trick that has somewhat worked for me) is reading through her writings repeatedly and intensely examining every single word she wrote. In this essay, I reflect on Judith Butler’s writings and express how I understand those writings in relation to my own life experiences.

This dissertation aims to examine gender performativity in the Wonder Woman series as it influenced by factors within the cultural field of comics. In order to fully comprehend, the factors at hand in this examination, foundation must be laid on what a cultural field is and how the comic industry is a cultural field.

Feminism and gender studies have been described as having the ability to "challenge literary and culture theory to confront the difficult task of assimilating the findings of an expanding sphere of inquiry" (Contemporary Literary Criticism 567). This area of study has taken center stage during the last fifty years, not only in our society, but also in literary criticism. Although the terrain Feminism traverses can hardly be narrowed down to one single definition, the exploration of the genre can, at times, be the most intriguing feature of the criticism itself. While feminism has undoubtedly changed the way women and gender roles are considered in society today, it has