One Woman in the Justice League

Just one woman, maybe two, in a team or group of men.

Also watch Jimmy Kimmel’s "Muscle Man’ superhero skit - “I’m the girly one”

The Avengers:

In Marvel Comics:

“Labeled “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes,” the original Avengers consisted of Iron Man, Ant-Man, Hulk, Thor and the Wasp. Captain America was discovered trapped in ice in The Avengers issue #4, and joined the group after they revived him.”

5 / 6 original members are male. Only one is female.

Modern films (MCU):

The original 6 Avengers were Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, and Black Widow.

Again, 5 / 6 original members are male. Only one is female.

Justice League

In DC comics:

“The Justice League originally consisted of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and Aquaman”

6 / 7 original members are male. Only one is female.

In modern films (DCEU):

The members were/are Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Cyborg. (+ introducing Martian Manhunter (in Zack Snyder’s Justice League director’s cut))

5 / 6 main members in both versions of the Justice League film are male, with appearances by a 7th member in the director’s cut who is also male. Only one member is female.

The Umbrella Academy (comics and show)

7 members:

  1. Luther (Number One / Spaceboy)
  2. Diego (Number Two / The Kraken)
  3. Allison (Number Three / The Rumor)
  4. Klaus (Number Four / The Séance)
  5. Five (Number Five / The Boy)
  6. Ben (Number Six / The Horror)
  7. Vanya (Number Seven / The White Violin) Later becomes known as Viktor and nonbinary in the television adaptation after Elliot Page’s transition but that’s not really relevant to this.

Here, 5 / 7 original members are male. Only two are female. Only slightly better than the other more famous superhero teams, and they had to add another member (compared to Avengers’ 6 members) to improve the ratio (maybe executives still demanded to have 5 males).

Now let’s look at some sitcoms and other stories.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:

4 males, and 1 female slightly less prominent character who is abused constantly. The show claims to be politically aware and satirical but gets away with a lot of misogynistic comedy, tbh, that I’m willing to bet a lot of people are finding funny for the wrong reasons.

Community:

Jeff, Britta, Abed, Troy, Annie, Pierce, Shirley. This one is a little better, 3/7 are female. Notice it’s always more males though, they never let it become more than 50% female, or else then it’s a “chick flick” or a “female team up” or “gender flipped” story. And of course the main character, and the leading few characters, are almost always male or mostly male.

Stranger Things:

Main original group of kids consisted of: Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas, and El (Eleven). 1 original female member, who is comparable to an alien and even plays the role of E.T. in direct homage. When they added Max, I saw people complaining that although they liked her, there should be only one female member. 🤦

Why is it ‘iconic’ to have only one female in a group of males? Does that just mean it’s the tradition, the way it’s always been? Can’t we change that? Is it so that all the men can have a chance with the one girl, or so the males can always dominate the discussion with their use of force and manliness? Or so that whenever the team saves the day, it’s mostly a bunch of men doing it, but with ‘a little help’ from a female/a few females (at most), too!

It’s so fucked up and disgusting to me I’ve realised. And men don’t seem to care. I’m a male and this is really disturbing to me now that I’ve woken up to it. How do women feel about this? Am I overreacting?

  • Rowan Thorpe@lemmy.ml
    1·
    4 days ago

    Also, pondering again your comment which spawned this slightly lengthy subthread, namely:

    If we say “males and females” and use the equivalent terms for both, is there a problem with this? Because it’s not treating them differently so I don’t really understand

    I am not a linguistics expert so I’m probably not using exactly the right terminology here, but I think the bit that matters is using:

    1. adjectives as reductionist/caricaturing pseudo-nouns

    2. when any such words are used merely as labels vs as signifiers for emphasis

    Namely:

    A. Calling someone a “human” or “person” is using a less common noun as ambiguous label

    B. Calling someone a “woman” or “girl” or “man” or “boy” is using a common noun as general label

    C. Calling someone a “female human” or “male human” or “female person” or “male person” is using an uncommon adjective-noun combination as explicit signifier

    D. Calling someone a “female” or “male” is using a usually unwelcome adjective-as-pseudo-noun as reductionist signifier

    In this context “reductionist signifier” means “reducing the value, worth, and significance of a person to only that defined by a single abused adjective”. So a line in a book which says “The bar full of people fell silent when a female entered the room” is implying that the “people” (probably primarily/entirely male, by inference) are “whole people” (with hopes, dreams, struggles, character arcs), while the “female” is as far as the writer cares merely a one-dimensional representation of a (different) gender, and not “a whole person, who happens to be female”. I remember reading long ago (but can’t remember attribution): “Never trust an author who shows you they don’t care about their characters”. I think the application of that can be extended from authors to people in general, based on how they speak.