Batman and Wonder Woman

Joss Whedon is pretty open about the fact that he is a feminist, but is questioned a lot for making this stance. Oddly, a lot of this fire is from feminists. I'm not an expert on the subject, but I can't help but wonder that it might be that he considers all angles of feminism and not just empowerment. A great example is Xander from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series.

Wait... my superpower is immunity to 3D?

Xander is a take on the man living in the feminist world.  He is the only character by the end of the series who does not have supernatural powers. Almost all of the women have been gifted with magic or super strength and what happens to Xander?  He loses an eye. All these empowered women around him... and he is just a man. But its important that he remain mortal. The concept at work here is that now that women are powerful, what becomes of masculinity? And Xander isn't alone in the Whedonverse.

"I am a large, semi-muscular man!"

In the Firefly universe, the relationship of Wash and Zoe stands forefront to this. He's comfortably in a relationship with a woman that Jayne would hesitate to make angry, and yet he struggles with this on occasion.  As masculinity is essentially a concept based in strength, now that a man doesn't have to be so tough, how do you determine what is in a mans nature and identity? How much of it has been for show? How much of it is really just what a man is like?



In contrast, if you look at most superhero relationships, the man is either more powerful than the female or, in the rare occasions where she has more power, she has power that she can't control (Dark Phoenix, Sue Richards, etc).  It ends up being this Darin and Samantha from Bewitched situation where she has amazing and wonderful abilities but the man knows best and a frown from him means she knocks off the shenanigans. The equally repellent flip side are books like Elizabeth Hayden's, where these strong powerful male heroes act like whiny emo bitches when around her heroine. (I'm all for peeling back the veil on a macho facade, but these men practically have split personalities!)


I suppose that's why I enjoy the relationship between Batman and Wonder Woman. Throughout the Justice League Unlimited series there is undeniable chemistry between the two. Sadly it's only a product of the cartoons and not canon, but I wish it was. Diana is one of the most powerful creatures on earth and Bruce is really just a man. And yet, his reasons for not dating her have nothing to do with feeling threatened by her strength, but are the more garden variety commitment phobic statements.

Like a lot of geeks, I tend to dig too much into the meaning of trivial things, and yet on some level I feel this is important. I think if there was more exploration in fiction of relationships with super powerful females where the men remain heroes you would still like to be, it could help with the weird identity issues a lot of guys deal with.