Batwoman Comes Out of Her Cave

There's been a lot of brouhaha — okay, not really all that much brouhaha — over Batwoman's coming out. What's funny about this teeny, weeny headliner is the fact that lesbians have been coming and going in comic books for ages now (though few have been high-profile characters, I admit).

George over at Bookninja expresses some concern that feminists are going to be pissed off about this high-heeled, pouty-lipped, ersatz lesbian. Of course they will be, George. Feminists are always pissed off.

Here's the probably-not-very-helpful comment that I left on George's blog:

Comic books have always been a brew of bad cliches. You just toss in a lot of super-tight crotch, plastic-rimmed cleavage, some bent genders, a couple of spikey boot thingies, and voila! You have Robin The Amazingly Useless and Sexually Ambiguous Batman Lover. Think about it: Since when has it ever added up?

Tell “your” gender theorist (is that okay?) to just relax. Sometime soon it will all be revealed that Batwoman is actually a male-identified robot sent by an evil Biptast overlord on a distant planet named Sasnak to destroy the human race, starting with rabbits.

Oh, and one other thing: You’ve got to think that a lesbian with pouty lips and spiked heels would be hard for some comic book readers to resist. (Think target audience here, folks.)

And that's all the incisive commentary that I have to offer on this most arresting issue.