Huntress and Arsenal. 1 page from outsiders volume 3 issue 12

[requiem2adream]

I have a question about Huntress and Arsenal's one night stand so of course I turn to the lovely ladies and gents of scans_daily to hopefully find the answer.

The first I heard of it was in BoP: Dinah, Babs and Helena are meeting in a park to discuss whether or not they can work together as a team and the subject of Helena's one night stands with Dick and Roy comes up and Helena has the brilliant line 'Archers... they pull a mighty bow but they're quick to let fly'. Which of course pisses Dinah off royally and nearly ends the team before it even begins.

I went back and read the Outsiders issues where Helena takes Roy's place on the team while he recovers from being shot, thinking that would be where I could find the Huntress/Arsenal stuff (I'm a massive Huntress fan and I've been trying to track down and read pretty much everything she's been in because yes I am obsessive) but apart from the kiss at the end




there's not really any interaction between the two and certainly no sexy times going on between the pair.

So folks my question is this: is this the first time it's ever referenced or is does the Helena/Roy stuff happen in different issues to the ones I've been reading? 

Comments

[jaybee3]

As I've said before - this one scene did more damage to Huntress's reputation (and is the primary source of the "She Gets Around" mention she's in under TV Tropes) since prior to this she was never presented as a casual sex with no feelings kind of person (she had a one-night stand with Dick yes but there were hardly "no feelings" there and Devin Grayson even seemed to be building up to something more when she had Dick when he visited her at New Year's).

Now, thanks to Winick, all of a sudden she'll go to bed with anyone - whether it be Roy or Josh the parking attendant who treated her like a piece of meat (though I think Gail was actually using that to move Helena away from this characterization). Prior to her "guest" appearance in Outsiders she had not only never seen to be the slightest bit interested in Roy - she had never had scenes with him, and after this (aside from the BoP mention which seemed like another Gail meta-comment on this Outsiders thing) she never mentions him again - and has had no scenes with him since.
Winick basically brought her onto the book just for this. So she could be used as a sexual sparring joke between Roy and Dick (who've both slept with her - ha, ha, right, Judd). It's not even about her.

Winick does that a lot. Reading back the Lost Days of Red Hood mini he sexed up Talia more than she had ever had been before (she has sex with nameless minion AND Jason in story where she's a supporting character) and the whole point of the story seemed to be getting to Jason and Talia having sex. Literally that was the climax (pardon the pun) of the entire mini-series and what it seemed all to be building up to. And just like this Outsiders story it was a story about the GUY where the woman in question is basically used as a prop and nothing more.

In case anyone missed I really, really, REALLY hate this story.

[whitesycamore]

Winick basically brought her onto the book just for this. So she could be used as a sexual sparring joke between Roy and Dick (who've both slept with her - ha, ha, right, Judd). It's not even about her.

Except that if anything, the exchange seems to be about Roy and his promiscuity. He's the one getting negative judgement from Dick, however mild it might be. Dinah and Helena's joking over Roy was in much, much poorer taste than anything Dick and Roy said - particularly considering Dinah's relationship with Roy.

prior to this she was never presented as a casual sex with no feelings kind of person

Not everyone agrees that that is such a terrible thing to be. I actually find Simone's portrayal of Helena's sexuality far more offensive. I'd take a happy slut any day over a woman who sleeps with Josh just because she has low self-esteem, then decides to "reform." Ugh. Then again, I've always hated the trope that women only sleep around because they have emotional issues.

[jaybee3]

My problems with it seem to be that Huntress is basically a X Female insert. Any other super-heroine could have done the same. Which is a disservice to her.

No disagreements about the thing with Dinah or with..ugh...Josh. I gather that those both those situations were actually Gail commenting on Helena and the "rep" she got from this scene above. But it actually made it worse. Josh was a distasteful person and the fact that she slept with him after that made me question her sanity (whereas sleeping with Roy just makes me question her taste in men).

[whitesycamore]

My problems with it seem to be that Huntress is basically a X Female insert. Any other super-heroine could have done the same. Which is a disservice to her.

Well... Yes, it could have been any heroine. I don't agree that it's a disservice though, because I can't see anything inherently negative about her sleeping with Roy.

I'm afraid I just don't really understand why a casual hook-up means that her character is being trashed, or that she is less worthy of respect.

[thebigapricot]

Of course there is nothing wrong with her sleeping with Roy if he were X male. The problem with the scene it is Winick chose to write a scene with Roy and Helena as the X Female. And the problem with that is 1) Helena was Simone's character at the time 2) Helena was being written as trying to fit in with a team that included Roy's defacto step-mother

Now whether Helena could or would isn't the question really. It's whether Winick gets to write something that Helena did that would/could have an effect on the main book she was appearing in. Which he did.

I'm not fond of the scene where the birds all talk about who slept with who. I understand the purpose of the scene, to show how the nascent team was still quite fragile, but the slut shaming just pisses me off.

The other thing about Winick's writing of her that I hate is when Helena says to Nightwing, "The rest of the team is okay. Except Grace. She's a total bitch."

[benicio127]

The other thing about Winick's writing of her that I hate is when Helena says to Nightwing, "The rest of the team is okay. Except Grace. She's a total bitch."

Ugh, seriously? Unimpressed.

I'm not fond of the scene where the birds all talk about who slept with who. I understand the purpose of the scene, to show how the nascent team was still quite fragile, but the slut shaming just pisses me off.

Which issue is this?

[cuntfucius]

Winick seems to love using the word bitch. 8|

[benicio127]

Hmm, yeah, I've seen it in Powergirl at least once already, but he's not the only one. I fondly recall an "I'm Donna Troy, bitch!" LOL

P.S. Where have you been? :O :):):)

[cuntfucius]

Lol let's not even get into how much Donna is using that word in Robinson's JLA (along with "cow", "witch" and any other gendered slur she can toss around. )

I ... had to take a long break from comic fandom because it was pissing me off, hahaha. WHENEVER I HAVE TROUBLE SLIPPING INTO THE MODE OF NOT TAKING THINGS SERIOUSLY I feel like it's time to step away for a while. :) I'm slowly making my return (and will get back on tumblr soon!). I still stalk you all ;)

[strannik01]

I'm afraid I just don't really understand why a casual hook-up means that her character is being trashed, or that she is less worthy of respect.

Because we as the society (and I am not just talking about Americans here) are still struggling with the cultural implications of sexual revolution. We want to treat men and women as equals, yet we still tend to judge behavior based through the prism of gender. When men engage in casual sex, it is a sign of their virility. When women engage in casual sex, they are being improperly permissive.

There are arguments to be made against casual sex, but this sort of double standard bugs me.

P.S. Another thing that occurs to me is that while it is possible to show a character having casual sex without compromising her dignity, as (jaybee3 said) too many writers fall into the trap of treating a woman as a prop, as if she has no thoughts, feelings or motivations of her own. I think Roy/Helena thing would be far more palatable to our merry community if both characters were treated with the same level of thoughtfulness and complexity.

[bluefall]

I'm afraid I just don't really understand why a casual hook-up means that her character is being trashed, or that she is less worthy of respect.

Some women don't sleep with guys they're not pretty seriously into. That's not a judgement on women who do, in any way. It's simply a reality that that's a choice some people make. It was established, over several years of character work, as Helena's choice. To have her act in a way not in accordance with that is, yes, a disservice to her character, in exactly the same way that Clark Kent waking up tomorrow as a die-hard emo with Crow mascara would be a disservice to her character: failure to respect prior characterization is a fundamental failure of respect, period.

As for whether it was insulting beyond merely the fact that it meant Winick didn't care about who she was as a character? That has far less to do with objective fact and far more to do with how Winick saw it and how he expected his audience to see it. You can think penises are the most awesome things in the entire world, it doesn't make someone calling you a "dick" any less an insult.

Basically, Winick writes this scene as a sexually-based indictment of Helena. "Is there anyone you won't sleep with," Dick asks Roy, as though Helena were somehow sexually distasteful. "Casual sex with people you aren't in love with is bad," Dick tells Roy, as Helena says goodbye to someone she had casual sex with and doesn't even appear to like. There's no way he wasn't looking down his nose at Helena as he wrote this, and no way the dudebros that make up 80% of the comic-reading audience would interpret this as anything other than a massive validation of the natural dudebro inclination to slut-shame, with bonus offer of a tasty new target.

The fact that that's an effective insult is horrible, yes. It's a disgusting truth of kyriarchy. But it is a truth nevertheless, and that damage had to be answered.

(Not, mind, that I'm all that fond of how Gail chose to answer it.)

[bluefall]

"Clark Kent waking up tomorrow as a die-hard emo with Crow mascara would be a disservice to her character"

His character, even.

[benicio127]

Some women don't sleep with guys they're not pretty seriously into. That's not a judgement on women who do, in any way. It's simply a reality that that's a choice some people make. It was established, over several years of character work, as Helena's choice.

I totally understand what you're saying in this wrt this scene and while I agree for the most part, sometimes women in reality themselves change. ie. I know a woman IRL who recently got divorced and was monogamous with her husband of 15-plus years, and has now been enjoying a newfound sexual freedom.
Here, in this scene, we don't see some kind of character development for Helena, but I don't know if I really like this idea of saying, "well this character has been written this way and that can never change" in regards to the character's sex life, especially if that character is a woman.
And even more so if that character is a woman and a heroic one because then it starts to go down the whole "good girls don't do that" route.

[bluefall]

Well, sure, if Helena decided for whatever reason that she was going to change her relationship philosophy, that would be fine. But that should be something that happens from her perspective and respects her as a character, not something that happens off-panel without explanation in order to set up a different character's punchline.

It's true there are an awful lot of serial monogamist women in capes. Renee and Zinda are, offhand, the only two I can think of at DC who aren't, though I'm sure there are probably a few more. But most of the guys are too, after all. These are all pretty old characters with old sensibilities, and the new characters are all subject to the blanket "let's not delve too deeply into teenagers' sex lives" policy.

[benicio127]

It's true there are an awful lot of serial monogamist women in capes. Renee and Zinda are, offhand, the only two I can think of at DC who aren't, though I'm sure there are probably a few more.

Kate Kane, Kory, Grace Choi, Jess Jones (pre-Marriage) are a few I can think of. And Mia Dearden, she definitely wanted to have sex with Dodger, she brought condoms with her to visit him. (I don't know if they ever got to do anything since he cheated on her with Emma Watson.) And she hit on Connor a lot.

[whitesycamore]

You took the words out of my mouth (off my keyboard?)

Whether or not a woman ever could/would enjoy casual sex or not is not something germane to most comic book conversations. Pretty much the only way to introduce that possibility is to write her as having casual sex at some point. And actually, it kind of bugs me that we even need to establish a "type" of female character who would do that - particularly when most male characters are assumed by default of being capable of casual sex in at least some situations.

[benicio127]

And actually, it kind of bugs me that we even need to establish a "type" of female character who would do that - particularly when most male characters are assumed by default of being capable of casual sex in at least some situations.

Ohmygod Yes. But by comic book logic, it seems that the fandom equation is, for example: Cheshire having casual sex is OK; Stephanie Brown is not. (

[whitesycamore]

Basically, Winick writes this scene as a sexually-based indictment of Helena. "Is there anyone you won't sleep with," Dick asks Roy, as though Helena were somehow sexually distasteful. "Casual sex with people you aren't in love with is bad," Dick tells Roy, as Helena says goodbye to someone she had casual sex with and doesn't even appear to like.

Does this bit happen somewhere else in the comic, or is it something you're inferring from the page above? Because Helena and Roy seem to like and respect each other there - he thanks her, said he knew he could count on her, they kiss, she leaves.

I agree that Dick seems vaguely slut-shamey here, but towards Roy, not Helena. I thought the "is there anyone you won't sleep with?" comment has more to do with - as Roy himself points out - the fact that Helena and Dick had a history. Dick is chiding him, albeit mildly, for breaking a code of friendship.

There's no way he wasn't looking down his nose at Helena as he wrote this, and no way the dudebros that make up 80% of the comic-reading audience would interpret this as anything other than a massive validation of the natural dudebro inclination to slut-shame, with bonus offer of a tasty new target.

I think there's two ways you could take this scene: 1, that Winick really was looking down his nose at Helena and knew exactly how the fanboys would react; and 2. That Winick, perhaps naively, assumed that the average reader had more egalitarian views on gender and sexuality than they actually do.

I can easily imagine an identical scenario with the genders reversed (not in comics - perhaps in Sex and the City or something like that) that wouldn't be taken as insulting to anyone. The fact is that this type of thing isn't always an effective insult any more, not everywhere. Perhaps Winick just misjudged his audience?

I think most of the seediness on this page comes from the art, not the writing. The scene would read completely differently if the kiss between Roy and Helena was subtler, and the panel didn't centre on Helena's waist and hips.

[bluefall]

Does this bit happen somewhere else in the comic, or is it something you're inferring from the page above?

Elsewhere in the comic. Helena's pretty contentious with the whole team the whole time she's there, but she has some extra-pointed insults for Roy IIRC.

I dunno. You could be right, but Winick's treatment of women elsewhere has pretty much robbed him of any remote shred of the benefit of the doubt with me.

[whitesycamore]

I dunno. You could be right, but Winick's treatment of women elsewhere has pretty much robbed him of any remote shred of the benefit of the doubt with me.

I haven't really read much of Winick's writing apart from his Jason-centric stuff. I know some people took issue with Talia's portrayal in Lost Days, and I definitely don't think we were intended to look down on her there - she was obviously written to be a sympathetic character imo.

I guess I'm also giving Winick the benefit of the doubt because he is heavily pro-LGBTQ, and that doesn't normally go hand-in-hand with misogyny.

[icon_uk]

Some women don't sleep with guys they're not pretty seriously into. That's not a judgement on women who do, in any way. It's simply a reality that that's a choice some people make. It was established, over several years of character work, as Helena's choice.

Ummm, how does that tie into her sleeping with Nightwing, who she hardly knew, and with no intention of taking the relationship further?

[bluefall]

She didn't sleep with Nightwing, she slept with Batman's Son. It was an attempt to make a physical connection with the Batclan as a concept, and she did indeed already have a very serious emotional thing about the Batclan concept. That was kind of the whole point of that mini, her trying to find a way into the family after spending ages upon ages circling desperately around the edges.

Beyond that, it's my understanding that Grayson actually did intend for Helena to continue to pursue Dick and for them to take that relationship further, but was ultimately overruled by Dixon's Babs/Dick before it could get off the ground.

[icon_uk]

That still speaks an approach to sexual relationships that a a bit far from "Some women don't sleep with guys they're not pretty seriously into" if a convenient body which happens to be an emotional proxy will suffice.

I've never been a huge fan of the Dick/Babs relationship, but if the alternative would have been Dick/Helena (And Devin Grayson written Dick/Helena) I think I'm grateful.

[alienist]

I haven't read the scene in context, but I agree with that last bit so hard. Casual sex does not degrade a character, and that arc in BoP? Complete with slut-shaming from Barbara and Helena? Ugh.

Mod note!

[greenmask]

While it's acceptable to point out inconsistencies with characterization, in some cases there is a danger of tipping into "slut shaming", which is completely unacceptable on this community.

It's reasonable to criticize writers not showing the journey between one attitude towards casual sex and another, but comments about a character being "sexed up" because they're shown having sex with two characters definitely tips towards slut shaming, and we've had correspondence from a number of members who feel the same.

It is simply not okay to shame based on when a woman is shown enjoying more sex than a commenter feels is "appropriate".

Please consider this if commenting further.