Why aren't there more female supers?

[Lethologica]

Getting to direct a $200m budget film is like getting tenure at a top department. If one group of people tends to get those positions more than another, would you evaluate the disparity solely at that level of achievement when determining cause? Or would you track how the disparity develops along the educational pathway leading to tenure and then start explaining what's happening? I would be a lot less hasty to assign cause here, whether it's cultural or institutional bias, personal choice, ability (feh), or whatever else.

I personally think of the trench charge and the accompanying battle as the movies high point myself. But I would also point out that the decision not to have that blindingly obvious bit of dialogue and inevitable accompanying groans indicate a director with confidence in the scene and theaudience who didn’t belabor an obvious point. The movie was better off overall, and it made the message at play stronger for not beating you over the head with it. Hence why people don’t mind the feminist overtones. It’s actually quite easy to manage provided you can let the need to push ideology take a backseat to effective story telling.

That doesn't have anything to do with more or less ideology, though. Jenkins is pushing ideology there as much as any feminist film you care to name. It's solely a difference of craft. And it shows up in scenes (and movies) without ideology just as much as those with it. Yet we still get legions of people arguing that SJWs are ruining movies when they're orthogonal to the problem. And then the pushback is interpreted as the studio trying to insulate bad movies by dismissing all legitimate criticism as racism or sexism or whatever, when the tone of the criticism was set from the beginning.

[Friv]

I am suggesting that more men decide to go into directing than women. I am not suggesting that men make better directors than women. I don't know enough about how directors are chosen for projects to even begin to hypothesize on why an imbalance exists except to theorize that fewer women were putting themselves forward for the job.

You are suggesting that men are nine times more likely to want to go into directing than women. And I'm actually interested that you don't consider yourself qualified to make a hypothesis, except for making the hypothesis that would make this not a problem and thus something you don't have to think about. There's a knee-jerk reaction in place in that sentence that might be worth critically examining.

Furthermore, directing is not the only way to tell a story. What is the demographic spread of fiction authors compared to of the population? What is the demographic spread of painters? Standup comics? Actors? Does it all average out to about the as the population at large?

Why not do some research and get back to us? But I can get you started:

And I just looked, the BLS does not include sex distributions among directors and producers in their statistics. Does somebody actually have a source for the "90% of directors are men" statistic? Or is it, like so many things argued about on the internet, simply an urban legend?

The Atlantic has an in-depth study on the top 250-grossing films in Hollywood that breaks the numbers down pretty directly. It's technically 88% of films having no women director, which is close enough to 90% to be rounded off.

You may also want to take a look at this study, which only looks at the Top 100 films, but breaks down a lot more to identify the scope of the problem.

One note from that second study that is worthwhile - of the Top 500 films, women accounted for 18% of directors. Cut to the top 250 films, women accounted for 11% of directors. Of the Top 100 films, women accounted for only 8% of directors. There is a clear drop in women being allowed to make films each time the budgets go up.

[Lethologica]

Rockphed got into this part of the conversation by quoting Ramza00's link to a news article about the top-100 study, so I'm kind of surprised that the veracity of the statistic came up at all.

[Traab]

You are suggesting that men are nine times more likely to want to go into directing than women. And I'm actually interested that you don't consider yourself qualified to make a hypothesis, except for making the hypothesis that would make this not a problem and thus something you don't have to think about. There's a knee-jerk reaction in place in that sentence that might be worth critically examining.



Why not do some research and get back to us? But I can get you started:



The Atlantic has an in-depth study on the top 250-grossing films in Hollywood that breaks the numbers down pretty directly. It's technically 88% of films having no women director, which is close enough to 90% to be rounded off.

You may also want to take a look at this study, which only looks at the Top 100 films, but breaks down a lot more to identify the scope of the problem.

One note from that second study that is worthwhile - of the Top 500 films, women accounted for 18% of directors. Cut to the top 250 films, women accounted for 11% of directors. Of the Top 100 films, women accounted for only 8% of directors. There is a clear drop in women being allowed to make films each time the budgets go up.

There are various fields where the gender disparity is that lopsided. For example, I believe 94% of all loggers in america are men. 1.5% of plumbers in america are women. Im not even going to bother trying to dissect everything about why that may be the case, or to claim that it means directors are the same, just pointing out that there are fields that are amazingly lopsided as male or female. On a slightly different note, 70% of nfl players are black. Considering the percentage of the population african american males are, that seems to be an oddly lopsided figure. The nba in 2015 was 74.4% black. Of course the nhl is 93% white while the mlb is only 8.4% black. Honestly, I think my main point is that demographics for various jobs arent going to match population figures, and getting upset that they dont is unreasonable. Assigning blame to the various "isms" is probably not accurate either. Or at least, not entirely. There is probably at least a little bit of that in just about anything you care to think of but leaving it at that seems like sloppy thinking to me.

[Cheesegear]

Now, though? I wouldn't know where my nearest comic book store even is. I've never seen a comic book in a grocery store, or on the magazine racks at Barnes & Noble. The closest I think I'd find if I looked is anthology collections placed next to the Manga section.

Basically, unless you have already cultivated the habit from years of nerd-dom, there is no way into the community.

Well, since you're here. I know you have access to internet.
More specifically, I know you have access to Google, and Google Maps, and definitely likely, Amazon.

Even better. Comics have moved heavily into the digital space. If you want to buy comics online, you can!

Saying that you don't know how to buy comics is bulls****, especially if you're posting regularly on internet forums.

If you wanted to be reading comics, and you could afford them, you would be.

Now? Everyone in this thread immediately becomes disingenuous. I know all of you have access to internet, and you could be reading comics if you wanted to.
Now that I've posted a list of currently active, Big 2 comics, you could read female comics anytime you want.

So when they make female superhero comics, they're still mainly being seen on the shelves by the same group

I'm telling you, right now. **** the shelves. Buy online. Go and look at some reviews for the current Runs, and buy some comics if you want to, right now.
Don't support brick-and-mortar stores if they don't feel like a space you want to be in.
You never have to go into a brick-and-mortar store if you have access to internet and/or a delivery service.

You can support female supers, right now.

They didn’t just depower Thor in just about the most inane way possible, but actively called their core audience losers for not liking it and practically tried to chase them out of the fandom.

That's weird. I didn't feel chased out of the fandom. I read plenty about Odinson when he didn't have a Hammer. I addressed that on Page 3.
Jane!Thor is the best they did.

[Rockphed]

You are suggesting that men are nine times more likely to want to go into directing than women. And I'm actually ./ that you don't consider yourself qualified to make a hypothesis, except for making the hypothesis that would make this not a problem and thus something you don't have to think about. There's a knee-jerk reaction in place in that sentence that might be worth critically examining.

No, I am suggesting that men are 9 times more likely to want to go into directing when they are ready to do so. Your interpretation is the equivalent of saying that in 2000 men were 4 times as likely to want to be engineers as women, when the graduation rates were 80/20. And I am not trying to get out of thinking about this, I am trying to explain why I don't knee-jerk agree with your explanation that it is because the women are being oppressed. Maybe women are better at realising that directing is not what they want to do. Maybe sexual predators have systematically broken the wills of 80% of women in entertainment. I actually would place the likeliest option as a combination of somewhat different initial desire (probably no more than 60/40), different attrition conditions (some bad, others benign), and different hiring requirements for men and women (which is bad).

[Ramza00]

No, I am suggesting that men are 9 times more likely to want to go into directing when they are ready to do so. Your interpretation is the equivalent of saying that in 2000 men were 4 times as likely to want to be engineers as women, when the graduation rates were 80/20. And I am not trying to get out of thinking about this, I am trying to explain why I don't knee-jerk agree with your explanation that it is because the women are being oppressed. Maybe women are better at realising that directing is not what they want to do. Maybe sexual predators have systematically broken the wills of 80% of women in entertainment. I actually would place the likeliest option as a combination of somewhat different initial desire (probably no more than 60/40), different attrition conditions (some bad, others benign), and different hiring requirements for men and women (which is bad).

So if I understand what you are saying correctly, you do not feel the need to investigate further, and you feel offended that people say the current system may be injust without evidence to your satisfaction?

Well you are acting like the myth of an ostrich burying their head in the sand. Now ostriches really do put their heads in the ground for they put their eggs in the ground to keep warm, and you seeing an ostrich putting its head in the ground in order to turn over the eggs and keep the temperature balanced.

So the question is why would you do that? Why do you feel the need to defend something which you have not investigated, that you feel the need to tell everyone "it is all right" that we have less than 10% of women directors giving different perspectives in story, that is because men want to be directors 9 times more often than women do, and the money just naturally flows to the number of candidates for this is how a "just and fair world" will operate.

Of course the Just World idea is a fallacy and is one of dozens of human biases that we have. Now I myself am susceptible to many biases for we as individuals (not as a society) are all susceptible to cognitive biases but certain biases are stronger while others are weaker in individuals. We all screw up, but we screw up in different ways.

[HMS Invincible]

No, I am suggesting that men are 9 times more likely to want to go into directing when they are ready to do so. Your interpretation is the equivalent of saying that in 2000 men were 4 times as likely to want to be engineers as women, when the graduation rates were 80/20. And I am not trying to get out of thinking about this, I am trying to explain why I don't knee-jerk agree with your explanation that it is because the women are being oppressed. Maybe women are better at realising that directing is not what they want to do. Maybe sexual predators have systematically broken the wills of 80% of women in entertainment. I actually would place the likeliest option as a combination of somewhat different initial desire (probably no more than 60/40), different attrition conditions (some bad, others benign), and different hiring requirements for men and women (which is bad).

Interesting factoid, computer programmers used to be entirely woman. It was considered poorly paid secretarial women's work. Today programmers are now almost entirely men, and very well paid. I don't know how else to say it, but you're acting very dense and lacking in knowledge regarding historical sexism. So instead of asking if you're curious why that happened, I'll just tell you. It's cuz when men enter an occupation, salaries & prestige rise. The reasoning is that women's work is devalued, and men's work is highly valued. This happens regardless of what work is done, or how productive/valuable the work is.

[MPA2000]

There have been four ever made, to my knowledge. Supergirl, Catwoman, Wonder Woman, and now Captain Marvel. In my opinion, it's insane that it wasn't until the forth one that it was actually good. (BTW Captain Marvel is radical, you should go see it.) You could argue that Incredibles 2, with its focus on Elastigirl, was another, but we're still looking at only five films, all within the 21st century. Female heroes can be awesome. Wonder Woman has been running since 1940, one year less than Batman and two less than Superman, one of only three characters to remain in comics publishing for that long. She can be badass: Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman was the only enjoyable part of the DCU, Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman is iconic, DCAU's Wonder Woman is almost as iconic (despite being a cartoon). However, most of her comics are

really
really
bad.

Why? DC has had nearly a hundred years to figure out this character. Superman has All-Star Superman, Batman has Death in the Family, what's Wonder Woman's big thing?

And where are the other girls? 51% of the human race, but far less of the superhuman race. There are countless that come to mind for a comics nerd like myself (Stargirl, Ms. Marvel, White Tiger, the Question, Black Canary, etc.), but the common person likely knows no more than Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, and Black Widow (maybe Spider-Gwen). Meanwhile the male supers number far greater. Furthermore, most of those female heroes I know are great characters, but their comics usually suck. Wonder Woman spent thirty years being the secretary to the Justice League and fighting Egg Fu. Supergirl has been through more edgy teenage phases than a whole Spiderverse can shake a stick at, Powergirl passes out if you shake a stick at her. There are definite exceptions, like Ms. Marvel and Batgirl who have both been pretty excellent lately.

What do y'all think? Why have the majority gender gotten the short end in the world of supers?

Oh you are asking why there aren't more female superhero movies made. I was going to say that there are plenty of them in comics. As to why generally? Demographics. Historically girls just weren't as interested in what I call, "Gen-Con". stuff. That's every thing from RPGs, video games, superhero comic books to Star Wars and Star Trek. Historically it's been male dominated and male financed.

That being said, I say in the last 20 years I have seen an increase in girls who like to play RPGs, video games and read superhero comics. But be that as it may the money is still not there from women consumers.

Therefore the producers, writers and society have had to find a way to both get males to buy in and motivate women. The result has been a saturation of female starring action heroes and super heroes in the past 10 years. Especially in Marvel and others that may or may not be out of print (Image, etc.). Thor's powers were given to a woman for the past two years and was actually playing his role as the Thunder God (not Goddess). Other women from Asgard started taking over things, like Hel, Valahalla and apparently Odin had an illegitmate goddes daughter called Angelina or something supposedly from a 10th world (There are nine in Norse myths). As you can see some of the concept bled into the MCU Thor: Ragnarok.

I can list tons of Marvel female Superheroes who have either had their own comic or was the leader of one of the formerly all male teams (Xmen, Avengers etc. ). She-Hulk, Dazzler, Captain Marvel (the African American one), Infinity (an infinitely powerful cosmic entity), Moondragon, Storm, Rogue, Valkyrie (yes from Asgard) and the list goes on.

The MCU and DCU did a good job getting social media on board to motivate females. I think some guys were okay with Wonder woman, but hesitant with Captain Mar-vel (aka Ms. Marvel). All I can say is if you liked watching Captain Mar-vel, then you will definitely in joy Monica Rambeau (yep from the movie also) when she becomes Captain Marvel. She was so powerful she nearly leveled a city trying to defeat Zeus, who already laid out the Avengers without sweating. Of course Zeus was slightly amused by the mortal's display of power.

[Rockphed]

So if I understand what you are saying correctly, you do not feel the need to investigate further, and you feel offended that people say the current system may be injust without evidence to your satisfaction?

Well you are acting like the myth of an ostrich burying their head in the sand. Now ostriches really do put their heads in the ground for they put their eggs in the ground to keep warm, and you seeing an ostrich putting its head in the ground in order to turn over the eggs and keep the temperature balanced.

So the question is why would you do that? Why do you feel the need to defend something which you have not investigated, that you feel the need to tell everyone "it is all right" that we have less than 10% of women directors giving different perspectives in story, that is because men want to be directors 9 times more often than women do, and the money just naturally flows to the number of candidates for this is how a "just and fair world" will operate.

Of course the Just World idea is a fallacy and is one of dozens of human biases that we have. Now I myself am susceptible to many biases for we as individuals (not as a society) are all susceptible to cognitive biases but certain biases are stronger while others are weaker in individuals. We all screw up, but we screw up in different ways.

Why are you offended when I imply that the world is not as unjust as you assume? I am not investigating further due to the combined problems of a lack of power to do anything to change the situation and having no idea of where to start looking for good data. If you have good data, please point me to it. Otherwise, your conjectures carry exactly as much weight as mine (i.e. none), so you should stop trying to claim things without evidence.

And all this because I dared ask "how many women are actually both interested in and qualified to be directors?" This should not be a controversial question that even finding an answer to is unreasonable. Presumably somebody has an answer, though, so far as I can tell, not in this thread. The first step to solving a problem should be understanding the problem. If there are 9 times as many men as women who can be directors, then the problem is not in the hiring process, but would be further up the chain. Even if we go all the way up and find that 9 times as many men as women want to be directors at all (and thus implying that the problem is neither in the hiring process nor one of greater attrition on women than on men), then we would need to know why more men than women wanted to be directors. It might be an entirely benign reason. It might be a completely sexist reason. But pure conjecture gets us no closer to knowing, and nobody here seems to actually have data.

[Lethologica]

Another step towards data on the issues Rockphed is interested in can be found here. According to this study, while there is undoubtedly a smaller talent pool, there is also an exaggerated perception of talent scarcity, as well as mistaken impressions about the ambitions of female directors, reluctance on the part of major distributors (though not distributors as a whole) to pick up woman-directed films, and a general bias towards the perceived maleness of direction.

[Rockphed]

Another step towards data on the issues Rockphed is interested in can be found here. According to this study, while there is undoubtedly a smaller talent pool, there is also an exaggerated perception of talent scarcity, as well as mistaken impressions about the ambitions of female directors, reluctance on the part of major distributors (though not distributors as a whole) to pick up woman-directed films, and a general bias towards the perceived maleness of direction.

Thank you. That answers my original question quite nicely. If I am reading it right, women make up about 25% of people who (at least think they) can direct movies, but only 5% of directors of major films (which I think means that female directors get 15% the shots at major films that male directors do). They note that woman directed films at Sundance are equally likely to get distributed as man directed films, so we can probably rule out sex-based differences in how well men and women perceive their directorial abilities. They did mention that women tended to direct drama, comedy, and romance films more than other genres, though they did not elaborate on whether that was self selected or imposed by others (i.e. whether women preferentially chose to direct those genres, or if projects in those genres looked for female directors more than other genres). There is the slight possibility that woman directed films get picked up by distributors looking to "increase representation of women directors" despite the product being substandard, but that strains credulity in multiple directions.

All that said, the only thing I can think to do to change any of this is what I have been doing already: sneer at Hollywood whenever they try to lecture me on man/woman relations in the workplace and point out their own hypocrisy on the matter.

[Rodin]

Well, since you're here. I know you have access to internet.
More specifically, I know you have access to Google, and Google Maps, and definitely likely, Amazon.

Even better. Comics have moved heavily into the digital space. If you want to buy comics online, you can!

Saying that you don't know how to buy comics is bulls****, especially if you're posting regularly on internet forums.

If you wanted to be reading comics, and you could afford them, you would be.

Now? Everyone in this thread immediately becomes disingenuous. I know all of you have access to internet, and you could be reading comics if you wanted to.
Now that I've posted a list of currently active, Big 2 comics, you could read female comics anytime you want.



I'm telling you, right now. **** the shelves. Buy online. Go and look at some reviews for the current Runs, and buy some comics if you want to, right now.
Don't support brick-and-mortar stores if they don't feel like a space you want to be in.
You never have to go into a brick-and-mortar store if you have access to internet and/or a delivery service.

You can support female supers, right now.

Oh, I assure you, I will continue to buy just as many female superhero comics as I do of their male counterparts.

Sarcasm aside, you appear to have missed my overall point. Comic books grew their industry by being front and center in the view of the shopping public. Kids hanging out at the drug store reading comics, seeing them on the grocery store shelves, having the comics displayed in the front window to draw in customers. Over the past 50-60 years, we've gone from that to having comics isolated in specialty shops, where only people who were already highly invested in them would go to see them. A similar thing applies to online shopping - even as someone who spends all day debating the movies online, I've only ever been vaguely aware that an online subscription was a thing. Now consider trying to get new readers in with that. And that's not even going into the cultural changes that have come where reading in general is concerned.

Like I said before, the advertising for comics simply isn't there. That's part of why we get stuff like Capt. America saying "Hail Hydra" - to try and make enough buzz that it hits the actual news, because that's the only way the advertising gets to the general public.

So yes, if you are a comic-book reading person (which I am not), there are many ways for you to go out and find them. The problem is that you have to go out and find them, which utterly kills the casual readership market and prevents new blood from joining.

[GloatingSwine]

Well, since you're here. I know you have access to internet.
More specifically, I know you have access to Google, and Google Maps, and definitely likely, Amazon.

Even better. Comics have moved heavily into the digital space. If you want to buy comics online, you can!

This matters much less than you think.

The reason why is that comics are still an extremely insular medium. If you aren't already into comics, you almost certainly don't go to any websites where comics are discussed in detail, even a relatively nerdy site like this doesn't get beyond the existing pop culture characters*, and so even if there were comics that would appeal to you you will never know they exist.

Because comics themselves are not part of the cultural conversation, even when the characters they have spawned are the cultural conversation.



* And even if it does start talking about diverse characters one of the usual suspects will slime up the thread to the point that any value to an interested outsider is lost.

[Cheesegear]

Sarcasm aside, you appear to have missed my overall point. Comic books grew their industry by being front and center in the view of the shopping public.

For the purposes of this? I don't care about the public anymore.

Comics are available digitally.
Hard-Copy Comics are available via delivery service.
Google and Google Maps will tell you if you have a place near you that sells and/or orders comics.

I'm talking about you now.
I'm talking about anyone reading this thread, and this post.

Why aren't you buying comics, right now? Given that you have the tools to do so? You don't need to go into a brick-and-mortar store. I'm telling you that you can see what current Titles are available, and you can find reviews for them if they're already in the middle of a Run (and almost all of them are). There is nothing stopping you from buying comics if you have access to reliable internet, and since I'm pretty sure that includes almost everyone on this forum...

[deuterio12]

Why aren't you buying comics, right now? Given that you have the tools to do so?

Because I can't check the comic/book with my own hands and eyes before deciding if I'll buy it like I can do it in a normal bookstore.

Online is indeed full of tools to make you waste spend money, but that doesn't mean they're good tools, in particular when online already offers more free entertainment than anybody knows what to do with.

[Rodin]

Why aren't you buying comics, right now?

Because I don't want to. Simple as that. I don't buy comics for the same reason that I don't buy manga, despite watching a metric ton of anime. If I buy a book, I'm buying hours and hours of reading time. With a comic or manga, even a compilation will only see me through an hour or so. This is mostly due to medium - I can "process" a scene much more quickly when all of the description is laid out in pictures and there's only the dialogue to read through.

Even with books my time spent reading has dropped massively. With the Internet providing interesting things to read in ways that are interactive (e.g. this forum), the appeal of sitting down and reading for long periods is no longer what it once was. I generally read during quiet periods at work, or if I am on holiday and don't have access to reliable Internet.

The only comics I read regularly are Webcomics, and that's because they're easily accessible in a page-a-day format where I can just read the page as part of my daily routine. My readership there is falling too - I'm not picking up new webcomics to replace the ones that are completing (or that I lose interest in), so I'm down to only a handful.

As to supporting female superheroes, I absolutely AM doing that in mediums I care about. I went to see Wonder Woman after initial reviews indicated it wasn't tainted by Snyder Syndrome. Went to see Captain Marvel opening weekend. Watched all of Jessica Jones. My two favorite webcomics are both female leads (Girl Genius and Gunnerkrigg Court), and I've bought stuff from both to support the authors. When the Black Widow movie comes out, I'll be first in line.

The only purpose to me buying comics would be to try and make sure they don't stop making movies. And at this point, that connection is irrelevant, because the movies dwarf the comics in profits. If Marvel stopped printing comics tomorrow, all that would happen is that the writers would be absorbed into the movie studio and they would tell the stories that way instead. I simply feel no obligation to be badgered into buying comics.

[Eldan]

For the purposes of this? I don't care about the public anymore.

Comics are available digitally.
Hard-Copy Comics are available via delivery service.
Google and Google Maps will tell you if you have a place near you that sells and/or orders comics.

I'm talking about you now.
I'm talking about anyone reading this thread, and this post.

Why aren't you buying comics, right now? Given that you have the tools to do so? You don't need to go into a brick-and-mortar store. I'm telling you that you can see what current Titles are available, and you can find reviews for them if they're already in the middle of a Run (and almost all of them are). There is nothing stopping you from buying comics if you have access to reliable internet, and since I'm pretty sure that includes almost everyone on this forum...

The only (American) comic shop I know in my city is mostly only open in the evenings. I've seen other comic stores that had an "Age 16+" policy. Shipping comics is painfully expensive with shipping and taxes. (As in, I have a friend who buys stacks of comics every month. He still pays more in shipping than for the comics. If he shipped single issues, he'd probably pay 2-3 times what an issue costs to get it.) Grocery stores etc. only have Franco-Belgian and European Disney and maybe a handful of manga, no superhero comics.

Would be nice if proper comic stores were a thing over here, but I guess they wouldn't be viable.

[Aotrs Commander]

For the purposes of this? I don't care about the public anymore.

Comics are available digitally.
Hard-Copy Comics are available via delivery service.
Google and Google Maps will tell you if you have a place near you that sells and/or orders comics.

I'm talking about you now.
I'm talking about anyone reading this thread, and this post.

Why aren't you buying comics, right now? Given that you have the tools to do so? You don't need to go into a brick-and-mortar store. I'm telling you that you can see what current Titles are available, and you can find reviews for them if they're already in the middle of a Run (and almost all of them are). There is nothing stopping you from buying comics if you have access to reliable internet, and since I'm pretty sure that includes almost everyone on this forum...

Speaking only for myself?

Because without a local comic store - and these days, it'd have to be a special trip to go to them even if there was, because I don't go into town and for that matter, it is often literally cheaper for me to pay postage than the bus fare for stuff - and faffing about with Forbidden Planet's subscription system with impossibly narrow the window between "announced but can't order yet" and "can subscribe but too late to not miss the first two or three issues and half to arse about on ebay" is something I just can't be bothered to do anymore, not Even For Jubilee; given I have to chop and change every five minutes, since they don't seem to stick to something stable for more than a year at a time with any characters I give a frack about. Especially considering that it's not exactly cheap now, for something that I get through faster than most fanfiction chapters.

So the only comic I am currently getting is MLP, which is still on my subscription.



On the other hand, my space is limited, so the fact that I'm not filling it with decades of comics (even bearing in mind I got RID of a lot of them, by passing 'em on to someone else), so there is that.

[Lacuna Caster]

Since I was describing mechanisms by which people in the market are ignoring data, I think I am not on the side of ignoring data any more than y'all. Which is not to say that there's an easy way to improve in this regard, but...I mean, Alien/Aliens and Terminator 1/2 are also data, after all. So what led to the generation-long gap between those movies and the 2010s crop of solid female-led blockbusters? The perception against that idea was born from bad execution in the intervening time, not some ground truth of the market. Just like the superhero market was dying before X-Men and Spiderman.

I broadly agree that good execution will usually trump more superficial evaluations of market trends and that appeals to the latter are usually a form of ass-covering intended to excuse executive incompetence. The broader problem here is that most of hollywood doesn't seem to have any reliable way of ensuring good execution.

Rather than get into the biology and so on (because for Pete's sake, it's not like Batman and Wonder Woman are comparing grip strength), I think it's enough just to point out that this is a quite limited conception of how superheroes happen.

Historically, the research and understanding of differences between sexes has been no better than understanding of other sciences, and comic book writers frequently suck at science. For example, Superman's eye rays? Yeah, X-rays don't work like that. The whole concept was based on an outdated theory of vision.

I'm not referring particularly to differences in physical strength or athletic performance (although the archetypal superhero power-suite might be thought of as a hyper-exaggeration of those differences.) A more plausible argument is for a temperamental difference in interests. Superhero comics blend elements of power fantasy, physical exploration and hard-science/tool-use, which according to certain evo-psych theories would appeal more to boys and men than women and girls. I'm not certain to what extent that's true, or to what extent it might explain imbalances in readership, but it does seem like a testable hypothesis.

One could also theorise that different media may have been supplying demand for similar stories or experiences at different times. Romance comics (with all their failings) gave way to TV soap operas, and it's reasonable to argue that the horror, war, adventure and crime stories marketed to boys and men in the 30s and 40s are recurring staples of AAA video games.

In contrast, recent comic sales for marvel don't seem to be doing too badly by women, and Sandman and Lucifer sold quite well in that regard, if I recall correctly. It can also be argued that women heroines were actually fairly common in the early days of the Golden Age. So, I dunno. It's complicated.

Comic books had had heroines intended to appeal to young women and men alike since the war years, when the quotient of females in the home-front marketplace expanded at the same time that military readership increased the demand for drawings of shapely young female characters suitable for pinning up. With many male artists drafted, moreover, women artists found more work and were frequently assigned to do the female-oriented comics. There were jungle girls to outnumber the African population: Camilia (drawn by Fran Hopper and the supremely talented Marcia Snyder), Judy of the Jungle (by the versatile Alex Schomberg), Tiger Girl (by Matt Baker), Sheena (perpetuated by innumerable artists under Jerry Iger, and countless others.) There were costumed heroines and quasi-military heroines: Phantom Lady (by Matt Baker), Yankee Girl (by Ann Brewster), the Blond Bomber, and the Girl Commandos (both of the latter drawn by Jill Elgin and Barbara Hall). There were science-fiction heroines-Gale Allen and Her All-Girl Squadron and Mysta of the Moon (both by Fran Hopper) — and there was a wondrous assortment of strong, smart, and sexy proto-postfeminists: the nurse-turned-aviatrix Jane Martin (by Fran Hopper and Ann Brewster), “girl detective” Glory Forbes (by Jean Levander), and the crime-solving fashion model Toni Gayle (by Janice Valleau, who sometimes signed her married name, Winkleman).

[Cheesegear]

Because I don't want to.

That's actually the answer I was looking for.

Who, here, stopped reading Thor when Thor Odinson lost the Hammer? Who here never read Thor Titles in the first place, so who gives a ****?
Who stopped reading Captain America when Steve said "Hail Hydra."? Who never read Cap Titles in the first place?

Who, here, did start reading Thor Titles when they heard the God of Thunder would be a woman?

Nobody cares about comics.
That's why I can post a list of almost 20 currently running Titles featuring women on the front, and at worst, only two of them are part of a pair... I get tumbleweeds.
Yet the title of the thread is asking for more female supers.

Female super-heroes are currently being supported, right now.
Many of them dealing with public issues and current events in the kind of way that only comics can.

But nobody actually cares, unless it's part of a movie. Why? I dunno. Comics are hard...Even though they're more accessible than ever.

It doesn't matter what Comics do with their heroes. Because fact is, you weren't going to buy them anyway.

Comics became an effectively dead medium when high-speed internet became a thing, and people had better things to do with their time and/or money. Not even Trades (i.e; Completed storylines which you know are good before you buy them, because they're complete, and they sold well enough the first time 'round to make it to Trade) sell that well anymore.

Where are all the female Superheroes? Not in traditional comics. But Disney and Warner Bros. own the IPs of traditional comics and thus don't have to do real leg-work anymore. So you're going to have bad time for a while. But who in their right mind, would make a Superhero Movie whilst Marvel and DC Movies are currently in competition? I mean...Hellboy's gonna come out. Yet for some reason I feel like it wont do anywhere near as well as any recent Marvel movie.

Despite Joss Whedon being an amazing hypocrite, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is still a good show.
Dark Angel tried. Alias kind of-succeeded

You can't ever just remake Buffy, it wont work.
Even Supergirl is turning into a ****show. It's a hot mess...It's also a **** show.

If Marvel stopped printing comics tomorrow, all that would happen is that the writers would be absorbed into the movie studio...

lol. No they wouldn't.

Because without a local comic store - and these days, it'd have to be a special trip to go to them even if there was, because I don't go into town and for that matter, it is often literally cheaper for me to pay postage than the bus fare for stuff - and faffing about with Forbidden Planet's subscription system with impossibly narrow the window between "announced but can't order yet" and "can subscribe but too late to not miss the first two or three issues and half to arse about on ebay" is something I just can't be bothered to do anymore

And you can't read digital comics because?

[Rockphed]

Why aren't you buying comics, right now?

Because comics have evolved into an elitist medium that doesn't tell stories in a way that interests me. I don't know why I never got a taste for print comics, but it probably should be taken as evidence that the american comic industry has missed my generation.

[Tyndmyr]

Interesting factoid, computer programmers used to be entirely woman. It was considered poorly paid secretarial women's work. Today programmers are now almost entirely men, and very well paid. I don't know how else to say it, but you're acting very dense and lacking in knowledge regarding historical sexism. So instead of asking if you're curious why that happened, I'll just tell you. It's cuz when men enter an occupation, salaries & prestige rise. The reasoning is that women's work is devalued, and men's work is highly valued. This happens regardless of what work is done, or how productive/valuable the work is.

This ignores a great deal of actual history. The female dominated era of computing largely existed when the term described what we now call accounting. This originated in wartime practices when women were not drafted, but men were, so women dominated in a number of support roles. This "computing" was not very much like programming.

The IT industry itself has been male dominated for essentially it's entire history. One ought not discount those women who did play a part in the origination of it, but they were always outnumbered, save for in the soviet union, which went off on some odd tangents(including trinary instead of binary!), that did not contribute much to the modern state of industry.

Describing the current IT industry as men taking over from women and suddenly being paid more is ahistorical. Female graduation rates in CS actually were increasing until '84, but they never got much past a third of the industry. Earlier, they were far lower, as they are today, though today's 1 in 5 remains higher than some of the early years.

The above is all an aside to superheroes, I think, but accurate representation of history is important.

For the purposes of this? I don't care about the public anymore.

Comics are available digitally.
Hard-Copy Comics are available via delivery service.
Google and Google Maps will tell you if you have a place near you that sells and/or orders comics.

I'm talking about you now.
I'm talking about anyone reading this thread, and this post.

Why aren't you buying comics, right now? Given that you have the tools to do so? You don't need to go into a brick-and-mortar store. I'm telling you that you can see what current Titles are available, and you can find reviews for them if they're already in the middle of a Run (and almost all of them are). There is nothing stopping you from buying comics if you have access to reliable internet, and since I'm pretty sure that includes almost everyone on this forum...

Because, by and large, all of that sounds like work. I don't want to have to read reviews, track down back issues, or all of that. I absolutely can buy comics if I want to put in the effort, but in practice, it's far, far easier to partake in say, a movie. I see a good sounding movie is at the cinema(anything in the MCU is a gimmie), and I go. I can get reviews and stuff if I wish, but I certainly do not need to.

I buy and sell a *lot* of gaming fandom related stuff, and my perception is that the comics industry is, save for the movie phenomenon, is going the way of baseball cards. There's interest there, but it's aging, and young people don't care at all about baseball cards, and if it wasn't for the films, they wouldn't about comics either. Even with the films, comics are niche at best.

Edit: If you want someone to blame, blame Diamond. They're the distributor for...almost all comics. The industry model is a three tier system with retail outlets, distribution, and production, but the middle step's a monopoly. If Diamond doesn't bother to get in #2's for a line, that line is screwed across the board. Nobody will have it. Often limited time exists between when preorders are open and filled, and that trickles down to the customer, because no store wants to take money for a promise of a thing they ultimately can't deliver. That way lies frustrated customers. So, availability is routinely a mess.

Yeah, you can just buy trades, like I do, but how's a series going to last long enough to get a trade if they have no subscriptions?

[The Jack]

The IT industry itself has been male dominated for essentially it's entire history. One ought not discount those women who did play a part in the origination of it, but they were always outnumbered, save for in the soviet union, which went off on some odd tangents(including trinary instead of binary!), that did not contribute much to the modern state of industry.

Conspiracy theory o'mine; Trinary was better for performance, but binary was better for capitalism, as it's growth rate is slower and more controllable so you can measure out improvements each year for sale. Trinary's exponential growth would've been too fast and people wouldn't buy products because they'd be waiting for the next one.

(the soviet trinary lost because, well, the soviet union didn't work well, not for any faults of trinary)




Back on topic: Nature Vs nurture
It's always a bit of both and people're individuals, there are exceptions.
Reactionaries go for nature, radicals go for nurture.

Hollywood is an incestuous mess and definitely an argument for nurture, but my limited experience (I worked as a drama teaching assistant for a saturday job, children and teens) says that girls often want to be actors and often don't want to touch the camera or the script or the chair. There were two girls who wanted these jobs, and the girls vastly outnumbered the boys. Maybe they'd grow up and go for it, but the percentage of boys vs the percentage of girls... Maybe the actress stuff had prestige and glamour for em whilst the other rolls didn't, and maybe that's a cultural thing. But the bottom line is when 8-17 year old girls go for film, they go for acting, to be in front of the camera rather than behind it.

Another thing, if you ham-fist a girl-power movie, you might get "Look how beautiful/powerful she is"
but you certainly won't get 'look how genius the female director/writer is'

[Lethologica]

Conspiracy theory o'mine; Trinary was better for performance, but binary was better for capitalism, as it's growth rate is slower and more controllable so you can measure out improvements each year for sale. Trinary's exponential growth would've been too fast and people wouldn't buy products because they'd be waiting for the next one.

(the soviet trinary lost because, well, the soviet union didn't work well, not for any faults of trinary)

Let's put this one to bed real quick. Ternary is only slightly more efficient than binary in terms of theoretical radix economy, and loses much of that edge in practice because a ternary transistor will have more voltage sensitivity issues. Instead of off/on, you need two distinct 'on' states, which means the precision to measure those voltage differences, which means bigger, more complex, more expensive hardware. In the era where this choice was effectively made (and in most eras of computing), hardware was the limiting factor, not choice of logic. And this last point also kills your speculative motive: logic doesn't control growth rate, so the binary/ternary choice couldn't have arisen from a conspiracy to limit growth rates.

[Psyren]

There are various fields where the gender disparity is that lopsided. For example, I believe 94% of all loggers in america are men. 1.5% of plumbers in america are women. Im not even going to bother trying to dissect everything about why that may be the case, or to claim that it means directors are the same, just pointing out that there are fields that are amazingly lopsided as male or female. On a slightly different note, 70% of nfl players are black. Considering the percentage of the population african american males are, that seems to be an oddly lopsided figure. The nba in 2015 was 74.4% black. Of course the nhl is 93% white while the mlb is only 8.4% black. Honestly, I think my main point is that demographics for various jobs arent going to match population figures, and getting upset that they dont is unreasonable. Assigning blame to the various "isms" is probably not accurate either. Or at least, not entirely. There is probably at least a little bit of that in just about anything you care to think of but leaving it at that seems like sloppy thinking to me.

But bold is absolutely worth examining. Just not here. You are correct that the director disparity has its own root causes however.

I can say I support female supers. But, when it comes to voting with my wallet...Between both my partner and I, I think we're only reading 2 or 3.

Why do the comics have to be the only medium for financially supporting female supers? Or black ones, asian ones, gay ones etc...

I and many of my friends saw Captain Marvel opening weekend. I'm not opposed to seeing it again if my friends do, and I'm certainly going to rewatch it once it hits [insert streaming service]. That is pretty clearly "voting with my wallet", and likely has much higher margins for Marvel than their online comics delivery portal.

More important than both is merchandising, and I can guarantee you that any Halloween site you go to later this year is going to have a ton of Captain Marvel costumes for women and little girls alike. Not to mention toys, lunchboxes, decorations, etc etc.

[doctor doughnut]

A good reason is the simple numbers and types of people.

You get two big groups of most humans:

Type A-the 'aggressive assertive' leaders
Type B-the followers

So when it comes to fictional characters, you ger two types of fans:

Type A-they like the character and want to BE the character(or ''themselves as the character")

Type B-they want to be best friends(or more) with the character. THIS is why the whole 'super hero sidekick' even exists.

You can make a nice split, half of each of the male and female fans are type A or Type B (though sure there are a couple more 'minor' types too).

Except this little wrinkle:

Male Character: Of the fans half are type A, half are type B, for both males and females. All the Type A females have no problem with 'thinking or pretending' to be a 'male' character. For example, plenty of women have no problem with wanting to be a 'Iron Woman', but not one of the silly 'lady' Iron People: they want to be Tony, just as a woman. So like Toni Stark.

Female Character: Well....here is the wrinkle. The half of males that want to 'be' a character......well, they would never want to 'be' a female character(though sure there might be a couple guys that want to do this).

And that's it right there: loss of half the male fans.

[Liquor Box]

There are various fields where the gender disparity is that lopsided. For example, I believe 94% of all loggers in america are men. 1.5% of plumbers in america are women. Im not even going to bother trying to dissect everything about why that may be the case, or to claim that it means directors are the same, just pointing out that there are fields that are amazingly lopsided as male or female. On a slightly different note, 70% of nfl players are black. Considering the percentage of the population african american males are, that seems to be an oddly lopsided figure. The nba in 2015 was 74.4% black. Of course the nhl is 93% white while the mlb is only 8.4% black. Honestly, I think my main point is that demographics for various jobs arent going to match population figures, and getting upset that they dont is unreasonable. Assigning blame to the various "isms" is probably not accurate either. Or at least, not entirely. There is probably at least a little bit of that in just about anything you care to think of but leaving it at that seems like sloppy thinking to me.

Very good post.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: Locked for review.