Episode 297: Iron Vagiant
on October 8, 2014
and modified on July 6, 2018.
Some people think Gyno-Star’s costume is too sexy for a feminist to wear. I say it doesn’t matter what she wears; if it’s on Gyno-Star, it’ll look sexy — because being a feminist is goddamn sexy.
“I say it doesn’t matter what she wears; if it’s on Gyno-Star, it’ll look sexy — because being a feminist is goddamn sexy.”
and yet she will almost certainly go back to the spandex and heels.
“I’m worried that people don’t take me seriously as a hero”
We take her heroism plenty seriously, it’s her words & ideals that ring hollow.
“Blah blah tuna can”
My, what a lovely lampshade . . .
I hang a lampshade on things all the time, but I’m honestly not sure where you’re seeing that here.
The last panel is the lampshade. People keep pointing out how she dresses and you have the strawman making lewd comments about her sensible armour so you can go back to the spandex and heels.
There is a reason why I hate words like ‘gaslight’ and ‘lampshade’. Unless you’re in on the jargon, you have no idea what people are talking about.
Here’s the thing…given her style of fighting, Gyno-Star is actually better off with a lightweight style. Preferably something that allows her to move more easily and quickly. She’s more a skirmisher than a tank. Or, if you will, more a ninja than a samurai. Could she go with a different style of clothing- sure. Does she have to- no.
I don’t see the point that you’re trying to make through your jargonistic comments other than you disliked this particular comic.
Now, could this comic have been better presented? The ultimate point of this particular comic is two-fold. The first is to have Gyno-Star questioning herself after recent events and the second is to show how men will pretty much objectify her no matter what. It could possibly be better presented, but it is still a good strip overall and conveys both ideas.
Does it lampshade? Who the heck knows. What is ‘lampshading’? All jargon does is obfuscate and make criticism and discourse more difficult by presenting terminology which is designed to make the criticism and discourse more exclusive and isolated.
really?
Make her morbidly obese and i bet she won’t be objectified.
Or make her in a wheel chair..or..give her a defect..ANY big defect. It’s easy to be a moral police douche when you ( think ) you have no flaws.
Arrogance goes haand in hand with hypocrisy. Both typical of feminism of course…
Actually, Zap, there are fetish sites which objectify women who are morbidly obese or who are in wheel chairs or who are missing limbs. There are even sites which objectify women who are all three…
Women are objectified pretty much no matter what. While it may be a smaller percentage of men who objectify such women, it still happens.
Trust me, despite my weight, I’ve been hit on and had my personal space violated by men- and I dared not say that I was lesbian because that would just have made the harassment worse.
Nope, then douchebros would be all “lose some weight….then you might be able to get a man” Two shamings for the price of one. Wheelchair? “Are you sure it isn’t all in your mind? Other cripples have walked again, you’re just not trying hard enough.” Haters gotta hate. When you’re in the crosshairs, they’ll find anything.
Or, if you go back to the start of the story, the first strip is a joke about her cellulite, yet the dudebro trolls are pretending that she has a perfect body just to have something to complain about.
Wow! That time I literally heard the “whoosh” sound! I don’t think that ever happened before. Anyway. Strawman? Sensible armor? Saying “spandex and heels” as if there’s something wrong with them… GTFO
Sorry if I went into academic mode there…I’ve spent ages doing reviews, annotations, papers…and writing a novel.
“Saying “spandex and heels” as if there’s something wrong with them”
Oh my bad, I forgot female superheros in painted-on clothes and heels are only “stripperific” and silly to fight in when drawn by some dudebro.
^ Oh yeah, forgot I haven’t used this computer in years. Guess that name from an old snarkier than usual comment I made was still in the cookies.
Wow geewhiz, why don’t tell us how you really feel? Look, wanting to feel good about your appearance doesn’t make you any less of a feminist than not caring about you looks. Everybody wants to be pretty, that Just means different things to different people. There is nothing wrong with being sexy, being a feminist doesn’t mean you don’t want to be sexy, it means you want equality between the genders. Sexualization doesn’t on it’s own destroy equality, it’s when a person is viewed as nothing more than that. You do your thing, Gyno Star!
Well said, ken!
Nobody likes a suck up. Well, besides Ms. Cohen apparently.
Well, that’s better than being actively *disliked* for acting like a jerk the way you are, GeeWhiz.
Apparently nobody likes YOU, GeeWhiz.
I’d LOVE it if you put your head between your legs, put your mouth on your own asshole, and sucked away!
LOL I like your style Jane
She just got back to looking like her old self and she’s allowing herself to be rattled by what a deprived loser like the Malefactor has to say about her? Ho boy. At this rate, she should just don an entire suit made of metal like Metal Fella on “The Awesomes”.
I think the preceding adventure just gave her a moment of pause. It inspired her to reflect a little more about her appearance choices and the effects they might have. Also, remember the hentai fanart? Maybe GS hadn’t thought of herself as being sexualized by others until now.
This may be my favorite Gynostar yet–it perfectly encapsulates many of the themes of the strip. Poor Gynostar will never defeat Casual Sexism Man, because his forces are legion.
Thank you, Tom. I do feel like that’s one of the major themes of the strip, and pretty much what I was going for here.
Damn right. Some of the sexiest women I know are feminists.
Great strip! Always high calibre.
Thanks, Isaac!
It reminds me a lot of how we women get harassed no matter how we look or dress. I got harassed by a guy at the laundromat while wearing a ratty looking shirt and rumpled skirt.
(Sighs) It IS the truth. One guy pestered me when I was wearing a shapeless ugly down coat in maroon (which is a color that looks good on nobody). I was digging through the trash to get bottles for deposit at the time and I reeked of beer. Guess guys really don’t need much to get excited.
I guess Octopus Pie speaks true. 😐
She’s still in high heels, isn’t she? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Some of the sexiest feminists I know are guys. 🙂 Not all, but some.
Very true.
Hell, I laughed.
And actually I give Tuna Can Guy a point for saying that, whether out of chutzpah or stupidity, to her face.
That said if GS slings him like a screaming javelin through the nearest wall that also is on him. The price of audacity can very much be achieving escape velocity.
Anyway, this is about 3rd Wave Feminism, right? Empowerment and permission to be sexy? Best thing ever, reach for that rainbow. Men could use a dose of “feel good and look good (without being dicks)” for sure.
To be treated fairly and to feel good is a baseline level of social expectations for anyone. That’s not an audacious demand for people’s PETS, nevermind for half the population.
Good point about the pets. lol
I have a healthy, radiant coat and I went to the vet and got tutored!
So just what is the feminist response to a “non-feminist” woman who likes to dress sexy? And how does that differ from GS’s [and the OMG – eww perception] self-appraisal? Maybe we’re a little too hung-up on labels and sorting people out onto shelves. I prefer Free-Range humans to caged and labeled ones. And not in the cannibalistic sense. Human beings of any persuasion are sexual in nature, if we weren’t we would already be extinct. Power of politics is exploitive from any aspect or position. Balancing when appropriate and countering when appropriate that exploitation is the key to successful civilization (or sex).
I’m not sure what you’re asking. What would we be responding to?
I believe the logical fallacy here is “false equivalency”. Just because the fight is unpleasant doesn’t mean both sides share equally in the blame. And just because there are people who go too far on either side doesn’t mean that either side lacks legitimacy.
Both sides have to earn their legitimacy from the central tenants they argue for. And feminism argues to right wrongs based in inequality and prejudice. I’m not sure what the other side is arguing for, other than “some of you go too far”…which is a legitimate point, but not an argument against feminism in general, just against feminist arguments in specific.
And humans need labels so we know what the other person is talking about. Otherwise we’d have to define our terms every time we talked with someone…which is a good tactic for a formal debate, but not for a casual conversation. “I’m a feminist, and by feminist, I mean…”
The outfit is missing three things. A Mk VII helmet, a backpack and a holy flamethrower.:D
It’s a prototype. She’ll have to make improvements.
How about a holy hand grenade? She must remember to pull the pin and throw before five. Or is that four?
So what is Feminism trying to say here. That him speaking to or about her gives Gyno-star the to hurt maybe kill him. Great job showing equality there
no way that could ever be seen as hate.
Ehm, where do you take that from? We see her wondering if she should try a different outfit. Then we see her in the middle of the action with the new look. She’s holding him like that before he even starts talking. Why? We don’t know. But it’s a superhero comic, so maybe he tried to bomb a gender studies faculty? Gass a feminist congress? Embezzle funds for a girl school in Pakistan?
Be gentle with him. He doesn’t even understand that the sequence of events goes from left to right.
So in panels 3 and 4 that’s not Gyno-star with her hand on his throat. I must be reading it wrong.
First of all, you obviously don’t get the joke. Secondly, he has already done something for her to have to stop him, it just happens to not be part of the strip. Thirdly, the joke is about the fact that he, and by extension men in general, will hit on a woman no matter what she is wearing. Please see the comment made by myself earlier about the laundromat. In fact, you are reading it wrong. If Gyno-Star is not your cup of tea, I recommend going off and reading something else. I would, however, not recommend Grrl Power, Spinnerette or Manly Guys Doing Manly Things as those would probably not suit you either.
You’re reading it wrong because he made the comment after Gynostar grabbed him. Therefore, that cannot be the reason Gynostar grabbed him.
I’m *trying* to come up with a Warhammer 40k joke, but I can’t think of any. Probably better, it’s not a smart idea to make fun of people in Space Marine suits.
Power Armour tends to give anyone the upper hand in an argument.
Also the lower foot. Seriously, those kicks can hurt.
Slimes, Oozes, Jellies and the ubiquitous rust monster. Then there is always a Magneto to ruin your power armored day. Still I prefer the rat sized rust monsters, especially in swarms of the infernal variety when I feel extra vindictive.
It’s easy to be a moral police asshole like GynoStar when she looks like a model.
She immediatly irks at even the thought of looking a bit éxtra’- so much for her äcceptance”and moral superiority.
Also spandex, because nothing says “look at my intelligence”than boob and ass enhancing *clothing*.
Give me a break.
I personally read it as her wanting her own body back, not to be defined by anyone else’s idea of what she is supposed to be.
And look. I get that you have certain stereotypes about what a feminist is supposed to look like, but that isn’t an actual part of feminism, so not looking like that is not hypocrisy. In fact, feminism is firmly against the attitude that a woman in spandex doesn’t deserve respect, something that people don’t say about Batman.
Well said.
Thanks. Don’t get me wrong: the characters’ mild hypocrisies are played for laughs. But there’s nothing anti-feminist about wanting autonomy over her own body, even from another feminist woman. (And some of the reactions are showing how dead-on that satire was.) There isn’t even any hypocrisy in a human being preferring to be fit and attractive. And if you go back to the first strip of the storyline, you’ll notice that she didn’t ask to remove any of that cellulite.
You know, if you feel this way, why not go read something more your style. I can’t think of anything, but I’m sure you can find something.
Zap for Gyno-star reaching the moral high ground is a road she can only see but not touch.
Reeeeealllly? I wonder why the Flash, Superman and the X-Men wear them then? It must be for their protective qualities.
Reminds me of this one time when I was playing an online game and my character was wearing full platemail and this guy asked “Are you a girl?” because you can’t really tell under platemail and his follow-up question was “What color is your underwear?” Some people can’t be deterred by armor, they still try to imagine what’s underneath if they know you’re a girl.
Nowadays I use male characters for MMO games, there are less assholes who hit on you when you’re a dude.
I’m male IRL, but I still remember this time I was harassed while playing a female character in The Secret World.
A few rude comments, a /em kiss blown my way, and assertions that I was looking for some action. It wasn’t hugely distressing, but a small taste of harassment was enough to let me know I didn’t like it.
For context, I was trying on clothes in the store at the time, and in retrospect my avatar may have been bugged to appear nude on that person’s client (although she didn’t appear that way to me). Still, it was a mildly unpleasant experience…and one where I just sorta left the situation to go somewhere else I wouldn’t be bothered.
No, I didn’t just say I was a dude. That option ain’t on the table as far as I’m concerned. It’s none of your beeswax what gender I am in real life.
All this and not any reference to Samus?
What moral did I take away from this? “I can wear what I want, because men will objectify me anyway”.
“I can wear what I want” is true. Part of feminism is making sure people understand that you don’t have to follow it with “because anything”. Put a period on the end, it’s a complete sentence. But…
“…because men will objectify me anyway” is sadly also true. Another part of feminism is holding conversations whose outcome is people realizing that this should stop.
And an even sadder addition to that sentence is “… as will a few women as well.
The ongoing Burka controversy is a good example with some women more than willing to rub everyone’s noses in it, then, after initiating their bit of social indignation/engineering, walk away sneering.
I actually think the armour looks great. Maybe she should alternate, wear the armour on days when she’s cleaning her spandex suit?
You have them at your mercy and they *still* give you sass? Oh, that’s it, you need to start *breaking bones*!
Just the small ones. Fingers, knuckles, wrists, toes ankles. No sense going overboard.