Superheroines team up to fight the real enemy
Superheroines really are the greatest metaphor ever! The brilliant Stacey Montgomery uses all the cliches of superhero team ups to examine the idiocy of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival’s transgender exclusion policy. The result is called “Transsexual Fury: Summer Camp Edition,” and it’s available for free on the web.
For those who are coming in late, the Michigan Festival has barred transwomen from entering for years now, although the rationale has evolved over the years. (Read Michelle Tea’s excellent article about the policy and Camp Trans, the protest camp set up by transfolk, here.)
Montgomery has done protest comics for Camp Trans in the past, but they were much more straightforward critiques of the policy. This year, instead, she hits on a brilliant metaphor: a trans superheroine and a genetic female superheroine (who looks somewhat familiar) have to team up to fight the real enemy: a steroid-enhanced evil guy who wants to turn the Michigan Festival into his own private harem. (He’s sort of like Iron Enforcer.)
It’s sort of like the trans superheroine and the non-trans superheroine are from the X-men and the Avengers. Different teams, same side, with some disagreements over stuff. What makes the comic really sing is Montgomery’s deft humor and ear for dialogue — it reminded me of the best moments from the Giffen/Dematteis JLI or Hero Squared. Like when Transsexual Fury reminds the butch Fighting Feminist of the time she took part in a faux drag queen pageant and wore (shudder) makeup and heels. Along the way, Montgomery gives her characters plenty of dialogue that digs into the idiocy of excluding the women who’ve worked hardest at being women from a women’s event.
But she almost doesn’t need to include the overt speechifying. The underlying message of the Summer Camp Special is pretty clear: women need all the allies we can get in the fight against real sexism. Check it out!
The ending to that comic is really depressing. Like real life, I guess, but really depressing.
What I love about that ending is that it can be read a bunch of different ways. It’s not a total downer ending, but it’s also not a polyanna one either.
Spot on!
Helps expose the hypocrisy of it all.
I got very frustrated at the comic, because I’m frustrated at the real-life situation, and Montgomery exactly nailed the debate I’ve heard in queer circles for years and years. This is one of those times I have a hard time keeping an open mind — that is, I have a hard time not seeing the anti-transwoman womyn as tools of oppression themselves, rather than comrades in a common struggle against (male) oppression.
Oh, that rocks!!!!!!
[...] In another instance of relating comics and feminism (this time with a superhero twist), this one Charlie Anders of othermag comments on a talented artist who is using comics as a medium to explore the anti-trans policy of Michfest, a popular women’s festival. The post, Superheroines team up to fight the real enemy, is worth a read, but don’t forget to check out the comic itself as well. It should be noted, however, that since the publishing of the comic, the festival that is alluded to has changed its policy and is now inclusive of all women. [...]
[...] In another instance of relating comics and feminism (this time with a superhero twist), this one Charlie Anders of othermag comments on a talented artist who is using comics as a medium to explore the anti-trans policy of Michfest, a popular women’s festival. The post, Superheroines team up to fight the real enemy, is worth a read, but don’t forget to check out the comic itself as well. It should be noted, however, that since the publishing of the comic, the festival that is alluded to has changed its policy and is now inclusive of all women. [...]