"Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

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"Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

Post by Ares »

So, as with any good discussion, it's important to define your terms. And since this thing has it's own Wikipedia page, here we go:
Wikipedia wrote:Women in Refrigerators (or WiR) is a website created in 1999 by a group of feminist comic-book fans that lists examples of the superhero comic-book trope whereby female characters are injured, raped, killed, or depowered (an event colloquially known as fridging), sometimes to stimulate "protective" traits, and often as a plot device intended to move a male character's story arc forward, and seeks to analyze why these plot devices are used disproportionately on female characters.
Created by Gail Simone back when she was just a blogger, Women in Refrigerators puts forth the idea that female characters basically serve as a plot device to motivate and move the story of a male hero, rather than treat the female character as a character in her own right. Depending on the person putting forth the idea, this practice can be seen as an example of lazy writing, as blatant sexism or misogyny, or as promoting violence against women.

And in the defense of people making the claim, it isn't hard to find examples of female characters surrounding a hero who get brutalized, traumatized, transmogrified or even killed.

But here's the thing: Is this a gendered issue?

And there I say "No, it isn't."

The whole concept of Women in Refrigerators is nothing more and nothing less than the idea that one of the most effective ways to cause change in a hero is to change the people around them. This is something literally as old as fiction. The Epic of Gilgamesh has Gil's best friend and warrior ally Enkidu get killed by the gods, and his death is what prompts Gilgamesh to go on his epic quest for immortality. Heracles missed out on his chance to aid Jason and the Argonauts because his friend/minion/love(?) Hylas got kidnapped by nymphs. The thing that drives Achilles into his tent is the loss of Briseis and the thing that gets him out of his tent is the death of Patroclus.

This trope has been around forever.

Now, does it disproportionately affect women? Potentially, but even then, I'm not sure. And if it does, it's certainly not due to sexism.

One reason that it seems to happen a lot is that a lot of the most popular enduring heroes in fiction are male. Whether you want to argue that is sexist or not is a whole different argument, but relevant to this topic is that a lot of heroes are men, and in most cases, some of the people most important to a male character are people like his girlfriend, his wife, his sister, his mother, etc. Putting those people in danger is a sure-fire way to get the hero active.

That might be considered sexist, if the same thing didn't happen to male characters roughly as often. Just think about it: how many male mentor characters die so that the protagonist, male or female, can learn some lesson? How many fathers are murdered either alone or alongside their wives to make orphans of heroes?

Uncle Ben, T'Chaka, Thomas Wayne, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Uncle Owen, Jor-El, Jonathan Kent, Alfred, Jason Todd, Bucky Barnes, the death of a male character to motivate a male hero is very frequent as well.

In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein's younger brother and best friend are both killed before his bride to be dies as well.

It's also hard to call this a sexist thing when it happens to the male love interest of female characters. Wonder Woman gets her own movie, and Steve Trevor is the one who dies at the end to motivate her character growth. This also happened to Steve several times in the comics as well, dying and being brought back to change Diana's motivation. And when Diana got a new boyfriend, Trevor Barnes, he wound up dying before the story was over as well. He recently introduced younger brother likewise kicked the bucket to further her story.

It's not limited to Diana either. Carol Danvers' motivation during Civil War II was due in large part to the death of her boyfriend Rhodey, whose death likewise motivated Tony Stark. Carol's boyfriend also got murdered by Mystique in her earlier solo book.

It's almost like female characters tend to value their male boyfriends, husbands, brothers and fathers the same way that men value their female supporting cast.

It's also not unheard of for male heroes to die as often as female ones to motivate other heroes. The Martian Manhunter's death kicked off Final Crisis and was the motivating force for Ollie and Hal to do some exceptionally stupid stuff. Captain America died after Civil War to hit home the cost of the war. Spider-Man died in the Ultimates Universe to motivate Miles Morales to be a hero. Ted Kord died at the start of Infinite Crisis to set the stakes and make way for Jaime Reyes. Hawkeye died in Disassembled. Firestorm died during Identity Crisis.

It's true for gay characters as well. Moondragon wound up getting killed to motivate her lover Phyla-Vell.

This isn't a case of women having bad things happen to them to motivate male heroes. This the case of supporting characters, male or female, having bad stuff happen to them to motivate the hero, male or female. And it's a practice that's unlikely to change because it's such a sure-fire way to create drama.

Some people have said that this largely doesn't apply to male characters because they have tendency to return to life. This is no less true for female characters. Both Aunt May and Mary Jane have died, but returned. Jade was killed and brought back. Namorita was brought back after Civil War. The Wasp died and was brought back.

Some characters like Jean Grey die often, but it's for the same reason guys with regeneration or cybernetic limbs are the ones who keep getting badly damaged: because people know they can be put back to normal with little effort. The same thing keeps happening to poor Vision and Wonder Man as well.

There have been legit terrible things done to female characters that were stupid, borderline sexist. I consider things like Carol Danvers mind controlled pregnancy by her rapist to be one example, Sue Dibny's rape to be another. But the whole "Women in Refrigerators" concept just isn't a thing to me. Mostly it just served as a way for Gail Simone to get her foot in the door with the comic industry.
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Re: "Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

Post by NoOneofConsequence »

My take has always been somewhat similar. Do those kind of things happen to female character? Yes. Do they also happen to male characters? Yes.

My biggest complaint has always been that those events tend to be poorly written, and often just for shock value. Especially in crossovers. (I'm looking at you, Bendis. Specifically at what happened to Janet Van Dyne at the end of Secret Invasion.) I very distinctly - and still angrily - remember dropping all of the X-titles after Age of Apocalypse because in the X-Men: Alpha book that relaunched everything right after, they pointlessly and needlessly killed of Rusty Collins.
X-Factor was one of the books I picked up when I started getting into Marvel back in the early 80s (after being introduced to it by Spiderman and His Amazing Friends, the Secret Wars miniseries, and my cousin's issues of the Marvel Handbook and the entries for the RPG in his issues of Dragon Magazine), so I was very strongly invested in Rusty and Skid's relationship under Lousie Simonson's run (and was annoyed when they got written out near the end of New Mutants). Even after killing him off as an after thought, I think it was years before anyone remembered Skids was still a character, and I've never heard of his death being addressed by any of the five original X-Men who were his mentors, nor by any of the other X-Factor kids.

So, yeah, it's not just female characters that have this kind of thing happen.

I have long suspected, especially at Marvel, that number of writers - or maybe editors - grew up with the Dark Phoenix Saga, the Death of Gwen Stacy, and the Death of Elektra (and perhaps also what happened with Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne) being a huge deal, and desperately wanting to recapture that lightning in a bottle. (If nothing else, it would certainly explain what John Byrne did to Sue Storm. )
I think DC eventually got the same disease, hoping they could do something as "shocking" as what happened to Batgirl or Jason Todd. (Although, in the case of Batgirl, I think the reinvention of her into Oracle ended up being the biggest example of turning lemons into lemonade to ever happen in comics.)
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Re: "Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

Post by Ken »

Thomas AND Martha Wayne were shot.

In the comics, originally, both Ma and Pa Kent died before Clark went to Metropolis. In most other media, Jonathan dies, and Martha lives.

Steve Trevor was killed on in the late 1960s.
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Re: "Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

Post by NoOneofConsequence »

I will mention that I do think that there might be some merit to the argument that killing a character's significant other or other family members/supporting cast did for a while become a cheap and lazy way for a writer to get rid of characters they didn't like, free them up for some preferred relationship, or just try to generate pathos/sympathy/motivation.
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Re: "Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

Post by csyphrett »

NoOneofConsequence wrote: Sun Oct 18, 2020 7:05 am I will mention that I do think that there might be some merit to the argument that killing a character's significant other or other family members/supporting cast did for a while become a cheap and lazy way for a writer to get rid of characters they didn't like, free them up for some preferred relationship, or just try to generate pathos/sympathy/motivation.
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Re: "Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

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NoOneofConsequence wrote: Sun Oct 18, 2020 7:05 am I will mention that I do think that there might be some merit to the argument that killing a character's significant other or other family members/supporting cast did for a while become a cheap and lazy way for a writer to get rid of characters they didn't like, free them up for some preferred relationship, or just try to generate pathos/sympathy/motivation.
I don't disagree that doing terrible things to the hero's family, friends, acquaintances and other supporting cast specifically to change the hero is a plot point that is frequently overused to the point of being cliché. The dead parents, the murdered-before-your-eyes mentor, the romantic interest that could be raped, beaten, kidnapped or murdered, the children that get corrupted into evil, the friends that die, are grievously injured or become villains, unless handled in a way that make sense they can feel completely overplayed.

My argument simply is that this isn't a gendered issue, or a racial or orientation one for that matter. This is not some example of misogyny, sexism, racism or homophobia. If anything, it's worse because it's often a symptom of LAZINESS in the creators.
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Re: "Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

Post by Jabroniville »

To me, I think "Women in Refrigerators" exists in the sense that the "Pointless character killed off to justify a reaction from others/as a token death this week" was more likely to be female, especially back when the vast majority of solo books featured men, and most super-teams had more men on them. So you get stuff like Kyle Rayner's girlfriend (the originator of the trope; part of what they hated is she was specifically created to die), Candy Southern (who got toasted to make Warren mad), etc. Gwen Stacy being such an industry-defining shocker probably created a lot of copycatting, too.

As I recalled in my build of Shanna the She-Devil, she had the same stuff happen to her, but with a male character. So it wasn't SPECIFICALLY gendered- it just tended to be that way because most of the characters were men. Or people wanted to create "Lost Lenore" type stories (which is a trope with its own level of criticism), etc.
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Re: "Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

Post by catsi563 »

Also look at Atom eve how many times was she mauled and maimed in that series, Now granted invincible had a lot of that happen but Eve seemed to have it happen frequently over the course of the story
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Re: "Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

Post by Ken »

Jabroniville wrote: Wed Oct 21, 2020 5:20 amTo me, I think "Women in Refrigerators" exists in the sense that the "Pointless character killed off to justify a reaction from others/as a token death this week" was more likely to be female, especially back when the vast majority of solo books featured men, and most super-teams had more men on them. So you get stuff like Kyle Rayner's girlfriend (the originator of the trope; part of what they hated is she was specifically created to die), Candy Southern (who got toasted to make Warren mad), etc. Gwen Stacy being such an industry-defining shocker probably created a lot of copycatting, too.

As I recalled in my build of Shanna the She-Devil, she had the same stuff happen to her, but with a male character. So it wasn't SPECIFICALLY gendered- it just tended to be that way because most of the characters were men.
There's another aspect of this, the love interests of male heroes are generally better remembered: Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Lori Lemaris, Vicki Vale, Silver St. Cloud, Gwen Stacy, Betty Brant, Mary Jane Watson, Pepper Potts, Iris West Allen, Jean Loring, Carol Ferris, Karen Page, Jane Foster, Sharon Carter, Alicia Masters, Linda Park, Betty Ross, Sue Dearbon Dibny, Kathy Sutton, Mera, and Lady Dorma.

Now, try that with the love interests of heroines: Steve Trevor, Wyatt Wingfoot, Terry Long, Larry Lance, and ... that's all I got.

Part of it is that heroines are often created to be a part of a team and are left unattached so they can date within the team: Jean Grey, Sue Storm, Princess Koriand'r, Wanda Maximoff, Rita Farr, etc.

And a lot of it is that the number of heroines who have carried their own solo titles is slim.

But, Steve Trevor was killed, and brought back, and then reimagined as Etta's boyfriend, before resuming his role as Diana's boyfriend.
Terry Long was killed off for good.
Larry Lance was killed off for good, freeing up Dinah to date Oliver Queen.
I have no idea what happened to Wyatt Wingfoot.

Which is to say that because there are more male heroes than female heroes, bad things happen to female love interests more often. BUT being a male love interest to a female hero actually gives your chances of having something bad happen to you actually increases.

It's like on "Star Trek". Everyone remembers that the non-regulars in the red shirts were often killed. But the non-regulars in blue or gold shirts were also killed , there were just fewer of them. If you weren't a regular, and you weren't humping the Captain, your chances of returning from an away mission were actually better if you were wearing red.
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Re: "Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

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Ken wrote: Wed Oct 21, 2020 1:32 pm
Jabroniville wrote: Wed Oct 21, 2020 5:20 amTo me, I think "Women in Refrigerators" exists in the sense that the "Pointless character killed off to justify a reaction from others/as a token death this week" was more likely to be female, especially back when the vast majority of solo books featured men, and most super-teams had more men on them. So you get stuff like Kyle Rayner's girlfriend (the originator of the trope; part of what they hated is she was specifically created to die), Candy Southern (who got toasted to make Warren mad), etc. Gwen Stacy being such an industry-defining shocker probably created a lot of copycatting, too.

As I recalled in my build of Shanna the She-Devil, she had the same stuff happen to her, but with a male character. So it wasn't SPECIFICALLY gendered- it just tended to be that way because most of the characters were men.
There's another aspect of this, the love interests of male heroes are generally better remembered: Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Lori Lemaris, Vicki Vale, Silver St. Cloud, Gwen Stacy, Betty Brant, Mary Jane Watson, Pepper Potts, Iris West Allen, Jean Loring, Carol Ferris, Karen Page, Jane Foster, Sharon Carter, Alicia Masters, Linda Park, Betty Ross, Sue Dearbon Dibny, Kathy Sutton, Mera, and Lady Dorma.

Now, try that with the love interests of heroines: Steve Trevor, Wyatt Wingfoot, Terry Long, Larry Lance, and ... that's all I got.

Part of it is that heroines are often created to be a part of a team and are left unattached so they can date within the team: Jean Grey, Sue Storm, Princess Koriand'r, Wanda Maximoff, Rita Farr, etc.

And a lot of it is that the number of heroines who have carried their own solo titles is slim.

But, Steve Trevor was killed, and brought back, and then reimagined as Etta's boyfriend, before resuming his role as Diana's boyfriend.
Terry Long was killed off for good.
Larry Lance was killed off for good, freeing up Dinah to date Oliver Queen.
I have no idea what happened to Wyatt Wingfoot.

Which is to say that because there are more male heroes than female heroes, bad things happen to female love interests more often. BUT being a male love interest to a female hero actually gives your chances of having something bad happen to you actually increases.

It's like on "Star Trek". Everyone remembers that the non-regulars in the red shirts were often killed. But the non-regulars in blue or gold shirts were also killed , there were just fewer of them. If you weren't a regular, and you weren't humping the Captain, your chances of returning from an away mission were actually better if you were wearing red.
This.

Also:
catsi563 wrote: Wed Oct 21, 2020 6:26 am Also look at Atom eve how many times was she mauled and maimed in that series, Now granted invincible had a lot of that happen but Eve seemed to have it happen frequently over the course of the story
Eve was badly wounded twice that I recall, once while fighting Conquest and once when Robot attacked her. In the former she was acting as a hero facing a powerful opponent, and in the latter she was used as a way to motivate Mark. Compare with Mark's little brother who, over the course of the series, lost his jaw, lost his arm, and then lost his life. Or Mark's father who was kidnapped, tortured, had literal holes punched in him, and was then killed. Or Mark's mother, who had her arm broken by Angstrom Levy once. Or the numerous characters who were maimed or murdered over the course of Invincible to motivate Mark, from fellow heroes to civilians.

And then there's Mark who, over the course of the series gets mutilated, has holes punched in him, gets depowered, banished, and raped.

This was not a case of sexism or Eve being singled out to be a victim. This was Eve existing in a universe where this happened to everyone equally. And in her case the fact that she could instantly heal herself or bring herself back to life. So she honestly got mauled less than other folks with healing factors, immortality and cybernetic limbs that usually get injured to show off what a threat the current big bad is.
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Re: "Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

Post by CTPhipps »

Women and Refrigerators isn't meant to be an example of 100% straight purity of fact but a sense that female characters were less valued than male characters and often used as emotional fodder.

Rather than list them all, let me point out that Supergirl and Batgirl are two of the most famous superheroines of all time.

* Supergirl was killed and left dead for decades.
* Batgirl was crippled and it took Suicide Squad to give her any role again as Oracle.

And the thing is: it's not that this is coincidence. DC Editors admitted they HATED the characters. They thought they made Superman and Batman "less serious."

Which is why they wanted them gone. Which seems pretty gendered.
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Re: "Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

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Barbara Gordon was crippled in Batman: The Killing Joke, but DC had already had her retire as the Batgirl in Batgirl Special #1 earlier in the year as a general company wide attempt to pair down the roster of all their books.
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Re: "Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

Post by Ken »

CTPhipps wrote: Mon Mar 22, 2021 9:10 pm Women and Refrigerators isn't meant to be an example of 100% straight purity of fact but a sense that female characters were less valued than male characters and often used as emotional fodder.

Rather than list them all, let me point out that Supergirl and Batgirl are two of the most famous superheroines of all time.

* Supergirl was killed and left dead for decades.
* Batgirl was crippled and it took Suicide Squad to give her any role again as Oracle.

And the thing is: it's not that this is coincidence. DC Editors admitted they HATED the characters. They thought they made Superman and Batman "less serious."
Supergirl was not killed off and left dead for decades. Supergirl was killed off, yes. And approximately two and a half years later there was a Supergirl again. "Superman" #16, vol. 2 introduced Supergirl. This Supergirl remained a supporting player in the Superman books, then received her own series that continued into the early 2000s when there was a noted change in DC management. And soon after that, Kara Zor-El was reintroduced.

DC didn't object to there being a Supergirl. They objected to Superman having a Kryptonian cousin. During this time, the classic Phantom Zone villains were gone (but some reimagined) and Kandor was gone (but again reimagined.) With the Phantom Zone villains, the men outnumber the women 7 to 1 or somesuch. Kandor is more gender balanced. DC was against there being huge numbers of Kryptonian survivors, male and female. Kara at least got a heroes death.

Also at this time is when DC decided to do away with Superboy (i.e. Kal-El's teenage self.)

Oh, I'll also mention that a month after they killed off Supergirl, DC killed off the Flash (Barry Allen), who also stayed dead for well into the 2000s.

Yes, DC treated Barabara Gordon poorly. Thankfully, it only took 10 months for Kim Yale and Jim Ostrander to bring in Oracle. Do you know what else DC did during that same 10 months? They killed off Robin. Specifically Jason Todd, but at the time he was the Robin of record. Granted, there was a new Robin even faster than there had been a new Supergirl (the writers & editors forgot about the power of DC's licensing deals, despite those being why Jason existed). But in 1988-89, it was a bad time to be one of Batman's junior partners, no matter the gender of the junior partner. And, there would be more Batgirls to follow Barbara.

But in both cases, what happened to Kara and Barbara was NOT the result of them being female. It was the result of them being spin-offs of other characters. I'm not denying what happened to Supergirl and Batgirl. I'm just not letting their gender blind me to what happened to Superboy, Robin, Krypto, Ace, and the bottled city of Kandor during that same time.
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Re: "Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

Post by Batgirl III »

I don’t think DC treated Barbara Gordon unfairly at all. She got a special one-shot devoted to telling the story of her retirement from heroism (instead of just dropping her flat and letting fall into comic book limbo) and then months later she was featured in one of the most highly regard Batman stories of all time (it won the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album that year for crissakes!)

Bad things happen to characters in murder mystery detective procedurals, otherwise there is no murder to be mysterious that needs a detective to proceed... and the Batman books are, underneath all the superhero trappings, detective stories. Authors can get a lot of mileage out of making up a new victim for every story, but to get the most emotional impact you gotta hit the reader where it will be felt and hurt a recurring character.
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Re: "Women in Refrigerators "? I don't think it exists.

Post by MacynSnow »

Batgirl III wrote: Mon Mar 22, 2021 11:12 pm I don’t think DC treated Barbara Gordon unfairly at all. She got a special one-shot devoted to telling the story of her retirement from heroism (instead of just dropping her flat and letting fall into comic book limbo) and then months later she was featured in one of the most highly regard Batman stories of all time (it won the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album that year for crissakes!)

Bad things happen to characters in murder mystery detective procedurals, otherwise there is no murder to be mysterious that needs a detective to proceed... and the Batman books are, underneath all the superhero trappings, detective stories. Authors can get a lot of mileage out of making up a new victim for every story, but to get the most emotional impact you gotta hit the reader where it will be felt and hurt a recurring character.
1000% agree with this. I may have issues with how the Bat clan does their job(which i refuse to get into here, as it's well documented elsewhere), but in the end of it all, the Bat book's represents both Detective Noir(specifically in it's depiction of Gotham itself) and Procedurals. There's a REASON show's like Law & Order(and ALL of it's spin-off's), Blue Bloods, Criminal Minds(even though i personally despise the ground Early Spencer Reed walk's on), CSI(and affiliates), NCIS, hellfire & damnation even show's like Murder, She Wrote & Matlock have lasted as long as they have.
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