america – a simple man

Earth’s Mightiest Poems

I made it to Barnes & Noble this week earlier than ever before in the morning, just after the store opened. On a Friday, that meant the store was mostly empty and quiet, just perfect for a bit of poetry play and rhyming.

This time I worked along two avenues, one with two forms that mix and match a poet’s own words to form new poems, and the other in exotic forms in the vein of the haiku.

My theme today was the Avengers.

The first two forms I worked with were the Cento and the Clerihew. Both ostensibly re-work an existing poet’s lines of poetry to form new poems. Instead of taking an existing poet and his words, I instead worked from another medium that I enjoy: film. For my centos I remixed lines from the three Iron Man films to form poems. A cento also uses the name of the purloined poet as the first line of the poem, and in this case, the name of the movie. There is no meter or rhyme scheme.

Cento 1

Iron Man
Yeah, well, vacation’s over,
there’s the next mission, and nothing else.
(Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk.)
What you’re asking about: it’s me.

It’s not technically accurate,
I’m just not the hero type.
(Yeah, I can fly.)
The truth is: I am Iron Man.

Cento 2

Iron Man 2
It’s subtle, all the bells and whistles,
It’s a high tech prosthesis,
The suit and I are one:
It tastes like coconut. And metal.

The point is: you’re welcome,
I am your nuclear deterrent,
I’ve successfully privatized world peace:
it’s about legacy.

Cento 3

Iron Man Three
Let’s track this from the beginning:
we create our own demons,
the prodigal son returns.
Technically, I am Iron Man.

(I broke the crayon)
Everybody needs a hobby,
my armor was a cocoon:
I am Iron Man.

For these centos I tried to encapsulate what each film was about, speaking to both the plot and theme. And, as I said, all are composed entirely of lines spoken by Tony Stark/Iron Man.

Next was the Clerihew which is again formed by lines from an existing poetical work, for which I again used lines from a film, in this case, the first Avengers film. The clerihew uses the name of the poet for the first line of two couplets. There is no set length, and again, it is non-metrical and non-rhyming.

The Avengers

Thor
Who controls the would-be king?
Do I look to be in a gaming mood?
This is beyond you, metal man!

Tony Stark
Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?
Have you ever tried shawarma?
We have a Hulk.

Bruce Banner
So this all seems horrible.
I’m always angry.
Puny God!

Steve Rogers
There’s only one god, ma’am.
Put the hammer down.
We have orders, we should follow them.

Natasha Romanoff
These guys come from legend.
I’ve got red in my ledger.
This is just like Budapest all over again.

Clint Barton
You and I remember Budapest very differently.
Ever had someone take your brain and play?
I see better from a distance.

For better or worse: a clerihew. I tried to capture the core of each character, and also do a sort of call and response from one stanza to the next. In actual fact, each stanza is its own clerihew, as a proper clerihew is only four lines long. This is, truth be told, a super clerihew, just as the Avengers are a super team. Neat, huh? My cleverness knows no bounds, apparently.

Next up I tackled some more exotic forms. First, a Japanese form called the tanka, which is a five line poem consisting of lines of 5,7,5,7,7 syllables. Again, the Avengers gave me inspiration.

Hulk

Banner is a man
who got hit with gamma rays.
The man’s a monster
who turns tall and strong and green.
The Hulk is always angry.

Cap

Steven Rogers fights
for the small and helpless man.
The military
experiment made him strong,
time made him legendary.

Thor

He’s a demi-god
Thor from the realm of Asgard
He wields a hammer
a weapon to pound, a tool
to build a much better world.

After that I wrote a tanaga, a Filipino form consisting of four seven syllable lines, all rhyming.

Romanoff

Natasha’s a widow black,
a spy with assassin’s knack.
Fear and cowardice she lacks,
she shuts down the tesseract.

Finally, after all that, I wrote a Persian form called a Ghazal, which is written in couplets that rhyme the final word before an ending refrain. The ghazal is typically signed by the author in the last line.

The Avengers

There are six who fight: the Avengers.
In Loki they inspire fright, the Avengers.

Romanoff, a woman with widow’s bite,
Hawkeye, possessed of keen sight, the Avengers.

Thor, whose hammer throws light-ning
Captain America stands for the right, the Avengers.

Hulk, he smashes with green might,
Iron Man, a modern metal knight, the Avengers.

Though the world’s in a plight,
I, Redbeard, love to write the Avengers.

Do remember that all my poems are basically explorations of a form or style of poetry and are not claiming to be exemplars of said forms. They merely adhere to (most) of the rules of the form, no more, no less. Thus they are not great poems, or even good poems, but they are poems. I enjoy writing them, and as always, I hope you enjoy reading them.

League of Justice #2.6: “We Few”

U.S.S. Enterprise, Atlantic Ocean

Admiral Russo was speaking.

“The foreign object made splashdown at oh four hundred this morning. NORAD tracked it coming down, and it slowed before impact. As of now we are classifying it as an extraterrestrial object. Our mission is to go in, assess the wreckage, and recover what we can.”

An actual UFO? Hot damn. I never thought I would see the day when we made contact with an alien species. And my mother said that joining the NAVY was going to be a dead end job that would take me nowhere. Hal thought.

“I’d also like to introduce Ms. Diana Prince. She is a new addition to our team that I know you have been getting to know.”

Heh. Getting to know. If only the Admiral knew… Hal thought.

“She is a civilian contractor with special skills that will be assisting with special operations.”

After defining some mission parameters, the meeting broke. A few minutes later, the team was gearing up. They would be taking a helicopter to the location of the underwater craft, then diving to check it out. Also on the team was Dr. Maria Kyle, team scientist, Dr. Alan Craig, team engineer (who designed the crashed jet), and Lt. Steven Markus, the only other soldier on the Admiral’s roster.

They geared up. As usual, Diana wore her metal bracers, but left her lasso off her gear list, for obvious reasons. Wearing wetsuits and scuba gear, they boarded the helicopter. It rose off the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise. The entire team had transmitters in their ears, under their gear, so they could hear each other. Talking was done by subvocalization, so that while they were breathing through the breath mask they could still communicate.

It was a twenty minute ride from the aircraft carrier to the drop zone. They said little, but were excited for what might be.

Once there, the helicopter hovered, the rotors whipping up the ocean into a spray, and making the sea just below more than a little choppy. One by one they dropped from the chopper into the ocean and began swimming. This part of the ocean covered an undersea mesa, and thus wasn’t very deep. The object was embedded on the edge, hanging over the deep blue.

Hal kicked her fins and looked over to Diana, who seemed to be swimming like she was born a fish.

“How’s it going, D?”

Diana flashed a thumb’s up.

Not far under the sunlight dissipated and the team engaged their powerful search lights. The few fish that were around scattered from the intruding divers. Slowly the ocean floor came into view. It was craggy and rocky; here and there crabs and other crustaceans scuttled out of the light to hide behind plants or rocks.

“Does anyone see it?” that was Dr. Kyle.

“Negative.” Lt. Markus.

“The Admiral gave a bearing of oh point four. It must be just ahead.” Hal.

“I think it see it. Look one o’ clock.” Diana.

“I’ve got it. About four meters, oblong, silvery.” Hal.

“Wow. Look at the size of it.” Dr. Craig.

The divers converged, and examined the outside. The craft was shaped like a cigar, but fat in the middle. There was a bubble of a cockpit emerging from bulge, but other than that the craft was smooth. There was no visible means of propulsion.

There was a gasp over the comm.

“There’s a body!” Dr. Kyle.

“Is it alive?” Lt. Markus.

“Negative, unless this species lives with dents in their skulls.” Dr. Kyle.

Her search light illuminated a humanoid, purple skin, and bright blue blood, slumped against the canopy.

“He must have smashed his skull against the cockpit on entry. I’m guessing earth’s gravity is heavier than he is used to. Of course I’m using the male gender speculatively. This species could have none or multiple genders. But the cockpit looks intact. I don’t see water. We should lift this entire ship out of the ocean before opening it.” Dr. Kyle.

“I concur. If there are working electronics or onboard systems, we don’t want to damage them with water.” Dr. Craig.

“Let’s get to work.” Hal.

Digging with short spades, Hal and the rest worked to move rubble away from the craft. Other than the fact that it had crashed into the ocean floor, and was crumpled in a few places, it seemed relatively undamaged. Overhead a search and rescue craft had been moving into position. Lt. Markus swam to the surface to coordinate with the above team. Shortly a bunch of self-inflatable bags were lowered and secured to the alien craft by large, sturdy straps. Either end of the craft was accessible, so it was merely a matter of looping the straps around and cinching them tight. The bags were activated, and they inflated against the water, and with a gentle push from Diana, the craft began to rise to the surface. The divers swam with it, guiding it and making sure it didn’t rock or tip. Soon it was floating on the surface of the ocean and was secured to the side of the rescue craft.

The team hauled themselves out of the water and removed their masks. Hal was grinning broadly, and she threw a wink to Diana.

“A real live alien craft!”

“And a real dead alien.” That was Dr. Kyle. She was examining the creature in the daylight and muttering to herself. She moved all around trying to get a good look. Dr. Craig was measuring the craft, eager to get started analyzing it.

The rescue craft turned slowly and headed back to rendezvous with the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Half an hour later, they met up with the larger vessel. Under cover of a tarp, the alien craft was taken on board and stowed in a large lab that had been specially designed and added to the aircraft carrier for just this purpose. A few hours after that, the team got to work. The alien was carefully removed from the cockpit and laid on a stainless steel table. His purple skin gave off a slight shimmer under the artificial lights. He was wearing a close fitting uniform of dull green, and he was vaguely humanoid, though his proportions were all wrong and he had a third eye in the centre of his forehead. Each hand had four fingers, and on the left hand, there was a metallic green ring.

“What’s this?” Hal reached out to touch the ring.

“Don’t!” that was Dr. Craig, and that was too late. The ring, somehow under its own power, shot off the alien’s hand and zoomed onto one of Hal’s fingers. Try as she might, she couldn’t remove it. And then it glowed green. With a shimmer of green, Hal vanished.

I was taken to an alien world, or what looked like one. It was nowhere I’d ever seen on Earth. There before me stood the alien from our table, or one like him.

“I am Abin Sur. I was the Green Lantern for this sector of space. My craft was damaged and I tried to make an emergency landing on Earth. Unfortunately, I did not survive. What you are seeing and hearing is my last thoughts and feelings. I am from another world. You may be shocked to know this, but Humans are not alone in the universe. You have been chosen to replace me as the Green Lantern. You will be visited by another shortly after receiving this ring. They will explain to you what your responsibilities are to be. If you choose to become a Lantern, you will then swear the oath, and take up after me. If you decline the honor, another will be chosen. Until then, the ring will protect you. Defend Earth. Defend the Galaxy. Shine Green Lantern’s light. Farewell.”

There was a shimmer of green light and then I was back in the lab.

Hal returned to the lab and promptly collapsed. Seconds later, she awoke.

“Well, that was an experience. I think this guy was some kind of cop.”

She related what she had seen and heard. Obviously she wanted to accept the role of a Green Lantern, whatever that was. After all, how could she refuse the first alien invitation Earth had ever received. Besides, she still couldn’t get the ring off. All Admiral Russo said was, “We’ll see. And be ready for the next visitors.”

It wasn’t long before they arrived. Later that night, in Hal and Diana’s quarters, two beings like unto Abin Sur suddenly appeared.

“Hallie Jordan, greetings.” They spoke in unison. “We welcome you to the Green Lantern Corps. The Green Lanterns are charged with protecting their home planet’s and the surrounding sectors of space. We come from the planet Ungara, which is not far from Earth. Abin Sur has been protecting Earth for the last hundred years. Since his death, a new protector is needed. The ring chose you. Should you choose to accept, the duty will be yours.”

“Um. What will I have to do?”

“For now, as Earth is young and you are inexperienced, you will only protect your planet. The ring will guide you as you go. It is now connected to your brain, and will respond to thought and will. The task of defending the sector of space will be handled by other Lanterns. Will you accept the honor?”

Without a second thought, Hal said yes. After all, if the deed was done, she doubted Admiral Russo could do anything about it.

“Then repeat after us the oath:

In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight.
Let those who twist Lantern’s light,
Beware my power… Great Lantern’s Might!”

Hal did so.

The beings spoke again.

“The ring is a ring of power. It will create what you think. It will form what you summon. Any object, any device, any substance. These you use in the performance of your duty. Should you need help, we can be summoned by tapping the ring and uttering the oath. Do you require further assistance?”

“Uh. I don’t think so. Thanks.”

“Then farewell, Green Lantern.”

With that, they vanished.

And Hal Jordan became Earth’s next protector, Earth’s new Green Lantern. She stared down at the ring in awe. A few seconds later she turned to Diana, who through it all had been silent.

“So now what do I do?”

League of Justice #1.4: “That Patient Merit”

Smallville, Kansas

Clark Kent, now 15, emerged from the bunker beneath his father’s barn. He had come to refer to it as his “fortress of solitude”. It contained an alien space capsule. A capsule he had been placed inside when only a few days old, a capsule that contained a hologram of his father. My space father. Clark reminded himself. His real father, Jonathan Kent, would be heading out into his fields to work after breakfast. Harvest was soon.

Clark had grown with the knowledge that he was more than he appeared, more than everyone thought. Clark had known ever since he had known anything that he did not belong on Earth, that he was an outsider, a loner, one of a kind, an entirely different species. The reality was hard to accept, most days, because he had arms and legs and hurts and dreams just like all his friends and everyone he knew, but there was that capsule. And, there were, well…other things. As far as he knew, none of his friends had nearly unlimited strength, quickness, or the ability to fly. Clark could hear the slightest sounds at extended distances, see the smallest objects or those far away. He could even shoot lasers from his eyes. He was a freak of nature that he didn’t understand. To make it worse, he had acne, often tripped over his own feet, and was incredibly awkward. In other words: Clark was a teenager with extra headaches.

When he was a small boy, he discovered that he could see and hear much more than anyone else, and more than he himself wanted to hear or see. The constant assault on his senses was more than he could bear. His mother, Martha Kent, had spent extra time training Clark to focus on the sounds and sights he wanted to see and hear and to let everything else fade away into a background buzz. Still, most times Clark wore noise canceling headphones that blocked a majority of what he could hear, making him almost normal, and he wore dark glasses that forced him to only see what was immediate. It was explained to his classmates and teachers all his life as a disability, but Clark knew the real truth: in human terms, he was the superior man, the ubermensch that obsessed Friedrich Nietzsche.

At key points in his life, five years old, ten years old, and today on his fifteenth birthday, the capsule that once kept him alive also would reveal history, information, science, or family details in the form of the hologram of his father, a man named Jor-El from a dead planet called Krypton in a far, far away corner of the galaxy. Today the hologram showed him an interface hidden inside a wall panel, an interface that would allow him to search for any piece of information the seemingly endless database held. The training hologram was finished, the rest of his Kryptonian education was up to him. What he would do with it, Clark had no idea.

He took the porch steps two at a time, which meant a single step from ground to porch, and walked into the old farm house. The screen door closed behind him with a slight bang. It was September, but Kansas was still warm. The fading summer warmth swept through the house on the prairie breeze. Clark could smell his mother in the kitchen, and more importantly, the eggs and bacon she was cooking. His father, from the sounds of it, was still dressing upstairs.

“Good morning, Ma.” Clark hugged his mom from behind while she flipped bacon and stirred eggs.

“Good morning, Clarky. What did your father have to say?” He knew she meant Jor-El. Jonathan Kent was always “Pa”, just as she was always “Ma”.

“The rest is up to me. No more guided lessons. He showed me a built in computer, and how to use it. I can look up anything I want to, read anything stored inside.”

“Wow. Well, Happy Birthday from Krypton!”

“Ma-a” Clark elongated the final “a”. He was less enthused by his galactic heritage than was his mother, but then, Ma always was fascinated by anything and everything scientific. It was she that speculated how he could shoot lasers from his eyes: she postulated light emitting cells embedded in his retina, much like those in bioluminescent animals on Earth, but more powerful, that were focused by Clark’s lens and cornea in the reverse way in which they worked for normal sight. But, speculation it remained since the Kents had never let anyone closely examine Clark for “abnormalities”. His special abilities remained a family secret for now.

Meanwhile, Clark poured some coffee into a “World’s Best Dad” mug, and walked it up the stairs to his dad. He knocked on the door.

“Come in” came from inside, specifically the master bathroom. Clark could hear the scraping of his dad’s razor against his face. He was shaving.

Clark opened the door and walked past the bed into the bathroom. Pa Kent finally smelled the coffee.

“MMmm. That smells good. Coffee for the old man? Thanks, Clark.”

“You’re welcome, Pa. Oh, you missed a spot.”

For a brief second Clark’s eyes glowed red, then a small beam of scarlet light leaped from his eyes, ricocheted off the bathroom mirror, and ended on Pa’s face. There was a small flash and a wisp of smoke curled up from just above Pa’s chin.

“Ow! Scamp! I told you not to do that!” Pa’s anger was a mascarade. In truth the laser felt like a bit of a pinch, and wasn’t all that bright, just enough to singe hair. Clark and Pa were close, and they constantly teased each other. It was around Pa only that Clark felt comfortable being completely himself, relaxing into the full range of his super human abilities. Pa rubbed his face ruefully and sipped the coffee.

“Hm. That’s good coffee. Your mother must have been awake this morning when she brewed it.”

Clark smirked, leaking a small laugh. Martha’s intermittent coffee making skills were a long established family joke.

“Ma says breakfast will be ready soon. Better hurry or I won’t leave any for you.”

“Yeah, right. Then you can walk to school this morning.”

“I’d rather fly!”

“Yeah, that’ll be the day. You keep dreaming, Clark.”

Clark floated down the steps just because he could. Today was a good day. Someday he knew that his powers would be used for more than just playing or showing off. When one could do what Clark could do, it wouldn’t stay hidden for long. And once the world found out about it all, it all would change. When that day would come, or what it would hold, Clark didn’t know. All he could do was patiently wait, and remember what his father told him that morning, in the dim light under the barn:

“You will change the earth, Kal-El. You will be an impossible standard for humanity. They will strive to master you, but will be unable to match even your shadow. Be better than we were. In our arrogance we invited our own end. Use your power only for good, reach down from the heights, and build humanity up. They are young and violent and proud. You will fly in the sun and they will run to catch up. You are an example of the best they can strive towards. They are mere men. You are the super man.”

On Gender Inequality in Modern Myths

I am not a scholar of myth, ancient – modern – or in between, nor am I a professional historian, sociologist, or qualified authority on gender. What I am is a keen observer of people and things.

The world is changing.

In my lifetime, I have seen the rapid empowerment of women in my society go from a backswell to a prominent and unignorable fact. In like manner, I have seen the treatment of women in popular culture change radically. When I was a kid, there wasn’t much being said about the lack of female roles, or the lack of gender diversity. Today: it is sneaking in everywhere. And I am not that old.

This battle for gender equality in life and fiction started long before me, though I hope desperately that it may grind itself to a halt in my lifetime. I will be grieved indeed if it does not.

However, my own thinking in this area has undergone change, and sadly I confess that I am not completely there. But lately a few things have caught my attention and have turned the lights on for me. I want to discuss the portrayal of females in popular culture, as well as their roles in popular culture. By portrayal I mean: what they look like. By role I mean: what they do.

Portrayal. It is the stereotype, and still the dominant way of displaying a female within pop culture, as an icon of beauty, of sex, and little else. Personally speaking, I sexually prefer women, and I think the female body is powerfully beautiful in all shapes and sizes. Therefore, for me, it is very hard to separate my personal enjoyment of the female body and the effect that has on my perception of women. Generally speaking, when one objectifies something, it becomes more difficult to see that something for what it really is. When one gets into the habit of recognizing women only for their sex appeal, one has trouble seeing them as people. (I only use women here in this context, because, like I said, I am a person who sexually prefers women. That’s how I understand this paradigm best. I works for men who prefer men, men who prefer women, etc.)

To analogize a bit, I’ll put this in other terms that I am also quite familiar with. I use, and am quite a fan of, Apple products. That is iPhones, iMacs, iPads, iPods ad nauseum. I tend to objectify them, if I am not careful, and hold them up as exemplars of modern technological engineering. In certain cases, Apple has made some fantastic products. Some of them are quite good. But I can tend to see them as objects of beauty rather than what they are: a phone, a computer, a music player, a tablet, and really, when you get down to it, no better at their job than anything any other company makes. In this modern era what any piece of technology is able to do is pretty amazing. My point is that I see my iPod as a gorgeous object for something which merely allows me to experience my music.

Yes, I just compared beautiful women to iPods. I apologize. Please don’t send me hate mail or refuse to have sex with me (simply because of that). I only try to wake up the mind to what I am realizing: women are so much more than just a hot body. They are people, precious souls, and irreplaceable members of human society and advancement.

Consider this picture, a recent comic book cover:

This is the brand new, Issue #0 reboot of DC Comics’ Wonder Woman from last year, 2012. It tells me three things, visually. One: Wonder Woman has massive breasts. Two: she has a thing for chrome. Three: she can fly? To be clear, that is exactly what I am supposed to notice and in that order. When I first see the comic book, I won’t have time or capacity to read the title. There, staring me in the face, are breasts. Then I see other things, then I read “Wonder Woman” and go “well, yeah”. This is wrong. Wrong. I shouldn’t need to have a massive pair of mammaries thrust in my face for me to be interested in a comic book about a woman. What isn’t wrong is that she is beautiful. That is all well and good. But beauty is skin deep, culturally defined, and transient. What is really important about Wonder Woman? She fights for truth, justice, and gender equality. Her magic lasso makes it impossible for anyone ensnared in it to tell a lie. Wonder Woman fights crime. Wonder Woman, being a powerful woman herself, is very committed to making sure every woman is given respectful treatment. So why show her boobs first?

I’ve been aware of images like that my whole life. It didn’t really bother me or make a dent in my brain until very recently. Sure, I had an intellectual understanding that such comic book covers objectified women and that it was wrong, but it didn’t mean anything to me until this week when I saw another image. This is entitled Miss America and comes from Fan Art Exhibit.

This is a digital manipulation of a shot of Captain America from the recent Avengers film. Obviously the creator has merged a female body with that of Steve Rogers to give us Miss America. I noticed two things about this picture. One, she has a bare midriff. I have no idea why she also doesn’t have a low cut top and copious cleavage as that seems more standard for female superheroes, but she does have a bare midriff, which is Item No. 2 on the “Make Her Look Uber Sexy” checklist comic book artists apparently have. This is the image that lent a machete to my intellectual thicket. Why the hell would a soldier wear body armor of any type that leaves such a vital (to life) area of the body completely exposed. This makes no sense whatsoever. The “sexy for sexy sake” did not pass the “it makes sense” test for my brain and I short circuited. I could almost buy a super hero like Wonder Woman wearing less than a bathing suit because, usually, she has a Superman level of invincibility. Therefore, armor is irrelevant (even if her wardrobe makes no sense for other reasons). But a genetically enhanced super soldier leaving the gut exposed? No way. And two, why is she called “Miss America”? The artist named her so, but why not Captain America? Captain is a rank and is gender neutral. And then the lights flashed on and I went “Ooooh.”

Don’t judge me too harshly, please. My point here is that society my entire life has been feeding me this idea of women and it is hard to break. By the way, I do want to point out that men have it no better, but it is less kosher to point it out, mostly because, as a society, men still have a majority of the power and influence so it is boorish to whine. But, do walk through a comic shop sometime and see if you can find a realistic looking man on the cover of anything. Go ahead, I dare you. I could not look like Captain America as he usually looks any more than any girl could hope to look like Wonder Woman.

Role. Most women in popular culture are eye candy, the damsel in distress, or non-existent. They exist to look pretty, to be rescued so the man looks heroic, or they simply aren’t there. I really, really enjoy the Lord of the Rings, both in book and film form. Do you know how many females there are in the main cast, in the Fellowship of the Ring? 0. Nine males. How about the Hobbit, how many women in the main group? Yeah, 0 again. There are 13 male dwarves, a male hobbit, and a male wizard. Even in Star Wars the ratio is still 5 to 1. (Han, Luke, Chewie, R2, C-3P0 to Leia). And what does Leia do in the first film? Gets captured by men and gets rescued my men. In the Empire Strikes Back? Gets rescued by men. In Return of the Jedi? Tries to rescue a man, gets punished by way of brass bikini, gets rescued my men and male ewoks. I love Star Wars, but it has a gender equality problem. Only recently, and very slowly, has this changed. Even the mighty Joss Whedon, who elevated women so spectacularly in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was shackled when he made Avengers because, yep, women were outnumbered on the super hero team 5 to 1. But Joss did what he could and made that one woman one of the most important and smartest of them all. Men break things, men fix things, men are the heroes. That is the message I’ve heard my whole life. And not only does it not make sense, it is stupid, and ignores completely the role women have wrested for themselves at great cost. Even in our long, patriarchal history there were women who did great things and stood high above men, but mostly they are ignored or marginalized. For shame.

How did this happen? That is a very long discussion. But, I blame two things: biology and laziness.

Not to ruffle feathers, but you can’t argue with evolution. The male part of the human species, rather generally, has more muscle mass than does the female part. Way back when we were fighting for evolutionary survival, that mattered. Men led because men could kill more, hunt more, build more simply because they were stronger. And, because all who gain power fear to lose it, once women let men fight for the power, men never gave it up. The majority of societies built since our meager beginnings have been male dominated (to my knowledge). Once we, as a species, kill our predators, kill our food, and build a fire, we like to be entertained. So we tell stories. We are smart, but not that imaginative, so our stories reflect everyday life. They are about warriors, hunters, builders. And, since what we see every day are men in those roles, men take those roles in our stories, our legends, our myths. Hence, laziness.

Since the dawn of history, until now, very rarely have we as a species deigned to allow women into our myths in any significant way, just like in real life. Sadly, it is only recently, and then only a little, that this is changing. Modern comics, tv, film, books are the myths of old retold again and again. Why else is Wonder Woman the lone female member of the Justice League (in popular consciousness) why else is Black Widow the only female member of the Avengers (again, in the popular consciousness, I am vaguely aware that in the comics Wasp was also a founding member)?

Humanity is a species slow to change. It has taken me 25 years. It has taken us millennia. I hope not much longer before women are in power, realistically portrayed, alongside realistic men is simply the way of everyday life and the stuff of legends. I advocate not for a reversal of the binary, but a destruction of it. Men and Women are equal in every way that matters biologically speaking. We should be socially and mythologically as well.