A Warped Feminist Statement

Lately, there’s been a rise in both comics feminism and in the popularity of Guy Gardner. Or, perhaps, a rise in the visibility of both. They’ve probably been there all along, and this is the first time people are taking note.

So, I ask myself. Are the two connected?

When I was working on my Hal post, I started thinking about the concept of strong femininity, and flashed back to Guy before he was brain damaged or a Lantern. This Guy is the one who managed to overcome a fucked up, broken family life and establish himself as a healthy, productive member of his community. Compared to the troubled teenager he once was, this adult Guy is in a position of strength, but– fascinatingly enough– not one based in Manly Masculinity.

This Guy is, first of all, a teacher. A gym teacher, but still a teacher, and in modern American society, teaching is frequently associated with nurture– usually considered a “feminine” trait. In the few spaces we do see Guy interacting with his students, we see that he does take a nurturing approach to his profession. He singles out the students who have fallen behind and tries to find ways to best help them, and goes the extra mile to chaperone cross-country summer field trips. (Chances are these trips probably involve a lot of “mommy work”, such as doing headcounts, and making sure each kid eats.)

Aside from that, pre-Crisis Guy seems to be more polite than your average DCU male– he says his pleases and thank yous, addresses Dinah as “Miss Lance”, and even manages to choke out that Ollie’s chili is “wonderful” despite evidence to the contrary. This Guy also dresses in what appears to be a conscious manner. Granted, I don’t think he’s spending long hours in front of the mirror trying to decide whether he’s a summer or an autumn, but hey, a matched suit and sweater vest requires some effort, yo.

While pre-Crisis Guy does display a lot of traits generally assigned to the female gender, perhaps the best word to describe him is androgynous. He’s got a good balance going between the anima and the animus, and, when placed amidst a hypermasculine superheroic universe, this makes him stand out.

Furthermore, when Guy does become brain-damaged and venture into the realm of the hypermasculine, this is when we see his DCU peers lose respect for him. Post-Crisis Guy is a great way of showcasing all that can go wrong in a patriarchal society that privileges what is “masculine” over what is “feminine.” Never has the phrase “mentally unbalanced” been more appropriate. Post-Crisis Guy is unbalanced, having simply gone too far in one direction.

On the other hand, Post-Crisis, Guy does retain the most important element of his personality– his sheer inability to give up. Before the brain damage, it was there, but in a more subtle fashion. Whether Guy won’t stop punching a supervillain until said villain is knocked out, or whether he’s overcoming poverty and a bad upbringing in order to get a college education, Guy’s like one of those inflatable punching bags with a weight in it that you give to little kids. He just refuses to stay down for long.

Of course, I haven’t been having all of these thoughts in isolation. Kalinara and I have had many discussions on the hidden girlyness of Guy. Kalinara also introduced me to the idea that Guy Gardner is “coded female” in the way that DC writes him. I’ll try not to go into this too much, as it’s really her post, but essentially what she told me is that, a lot of the time, Guy is there to provide angst for Hal. “Oh no, Guy’s battery exploded, and now he’s in a coma! It’s too bad Hal wasn’t there to protect him!”

On top of that, a lot of the things that happen to Guy are the sorts of things that, had they happened to a woman, would have a lot of fans invoking the WiR list. Guy’s personal checklist includes such gems as coma, brain-damage/mental instability, childhood abuse, being depowered, and sex under mind control, which yes, translates to rape. And I’m probably forgetting things here.

The thing is, over the past few decades of comics, these problems have stopped being Hal’s failures and started becoming Guy’s battles. Guy has had to achieve what Hal has had to, only, the Ginger to Hal’s Fred (Poisonivory MADE me use this analogy, I swear), he’s had to do it metaphorically backwards and in heels. Again and again, Guy has sought out new powers, forged new relationships, overcome personal demons, and re-earned the respect of his peers. He’s had his own title, and now plays one of the leads in the Green Lantern Corps book. Essentially, Guy has created his own place in the DCU.

The comics industry could learn something from this, I think. So frequently bad things happening to female characters is justified by “But bad things happen to women in real life!” Yes, this is true. But people read superhero books to see problems being overcome, not just people bogged down with problems. But Guy is a problem-solver. Perhaps this is why Guy has the potential to be appealing to feminist fans– Guy faces a lot of the problems that female characters regularly face, but lately he’s been allowed to overcome them and deliver some sweet asskicking justice in the meantime. Now, I’m not saying that comics feminism should immediately stand up and recognize Guy Gardner as its Messiah, because that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Guy’s still biologically male, and it’s probably because of that fact that DC more readily recognized the need to develop him. What Guy does do is provide great ammunition. We can say, “Okay, DC Comics, if you can grant agency to Guy Gardner and have him overcome his pitfalls, you can grant agency to Carol Ferris/Dinah Lance/Cassie Sandsmark/whoever and have her overcome hers.”

In short, if the powers that be of comics are going to insist that women need to be tortured for the sake of a storyline, then we obviously need more women who will fight like Guy Gardner has.