’80’s Wonder Women in an Instagram frame. (Kyle Jones/Creative Commons/Flickr)
The comic world has been abuzz for the past few years. Marvel Comics and DC Comics have been putting out fascinating super hero movies. This past year, we got to see the latest Captain America movie as well as the newest movies in the DC Comics universe. Despite all of these good things (subjectively speaking, looking at you Batman vs. Superman), the comic world, or more specifically, one sect of the comic world, is up in arms. This past week, Greg Rucka, one of Wonder Woman’s writers confirmed that the super heroine is queer.
Queer is a word that can mean many different things within the LGBT+ community. Most people understand it as a representation of people who follow under the lesbian, gay or bisexual umbrella. Getting back to the actual point, Rucka was responding to a question about whether or not Wonder Woman has ever dated a female. Regardless of all of that nothing changes. Wonder Woman is still as a great of super hero even if she is queer. Her sexual identity does nothing to affect her super powers.
Critics argue that Wonder Woman has been with Batman and Superman in the comics so there is no history to the argument that she could have been with a woman. Wonder Woman is the princess of the island Themyscira, which happens to be populated by only Amazonian women. Amazonians don’t have a concept of being straight or gay, it’s more that you spend your life with someone that makes you feel happy. Based on that information, it would only make sense that Wonder Woman has spent time with a woman.
Wonder Woman is also not the first super hero in the DC universe to get this treatment. The writer for Catwoman confirmed that thief is bisexual and the writer for the Green Lantern confirmed that Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern, was gay. This is not authors bowing down to the PC Police, whatever that means. This is just authors filling in the blanks of characters based on previously available information.
It’s almost identical to J.K. Rowling, the author of the popular Harry Potter series, saying that Dumbledore was is fact gay. While many people were up in arms over the announcement it does not take anything away from the character. Dumbledore could still do the same great magic that he performed when people assumed he was straight. The same can be said for Wonder Woman. She has saved no less people because she is now queer. She’s no less a member of the Justice League because of her sexual orientation.
This new information about Wonder Woman’s identity only serves to make her more of a role model than she was before. She gives young queer-persons a role model to look up to. Sure, there are already real world role models for queer-people but everyone wants to have a superhero. Superheroes show us that with our actions we can actually change the world. Wonder Woman’s “new” identity allows her to do that.
Wonder Woman was created in the 1940s by a man named William Moulton Martson. While Martson was a slightly creepy man, he was also a huge feminist. Wonder Woman was his creation based on the ideas of notable feminists such as Margaret Sanger. When Wonder Woman was first created she was a champion of the working class woman who was making less than her male counterpart. She was a champion that fought America’s enemies during a time that women couldn’t fight in wars. She represented another future for American women, a future that may have seemed out of reach. To deny this “new” portion of her identity is to deny her history and everything that she fought for.
Wonder Woman has always been a role model for young people all around the world. Her “coming-out” as queer does nothing to affect that. She will continue to save the world and maybe even a few superheroes while she is at it. Queer or not: Wonder Woman is still Wonder Woman and deserves our respect.
Amar Batra is a senior staff photographer and opinion’s staff columnist for The Daily Campus. He can be reached via email amar.batra@uconn.edu.