(i am an asian person who is from a muslim asian country and household so if you’re an american or wanting to be a white savior i beg do not argue with me over this)
the way that talia al ghul has been handled by white writers as a brown woman is just blatantly anti-arab, orientalist, and terrible. there’s no way to argue that. however i do think that it’s a little funny when stans blame all of this on batcat and by extension, selina. when they try to push this narrative that batcat is only a thing (especially in modern comics) to “erase” their ship and that selina is some evil skank who’s existence is there to erase their blorbo, i can’t help but laugh.
because what world are you guys living in? batcat has always been the most popular batman ship, and arguably the most popular dc ship overall. it has been a thing since the 1940s. it has been a fan favorite since before talia was even created as a character. selina herself has been a fan favorite since her creation. there’s nothing to “push” there is no secret agenda, especially when talia and brutalia are objectively way less liked than selina and batcat. it’s literally just a popular ship, that evidently many people love. of course writers and adaptations will prefer it over a character that’s not even a top 5 batman rogue. and well, you can’t say that “talia was created to be bruce’s OTL!” because then selina fans can just say she was created to push selina out of the story and that doesn’t look too good does it :/
orientalism and racism that dc writers hold have nothing to do with selina and batcat being popular. (and if we want to go there, selina has been portrayed and loved by fans as a black woman before talia was even a thought in o’neils mind. even just 3 years ago we had a biracial selina who was widely loved by audiences). please stop being bitter and coping that selina is just the more popular character and batcat is a pop culture staple and beyond dc comics at this point.
of course there are writers who use batcat to project their hate of talia (tom king for example) but this does not mean that every single appearance of selina and batcat is the evil white mans invention to demonize your innocent rich feminine fave who’s the best dc love interest and nothing like that whore selina 🥹. oh and also please stop calling selina promiscuous, a poor thief, a “girl from the slums”, etc and saying that talia is better for bruce because she’s willing to drop everything for bruce and is a borderline pick me, while selina is either 1. too poor or 2. has too much agency to ever be a “proper” love interest. that’s not making your ship better or will make it more relevant lol.
my main issue with scemma is that you can’t have the ship without violent misogyny aimed at jean. i couldn’t give a fuck a scott summers nor do i think hes a prize for jean and emma to fight over but the ships foundations are jean being killed off by morrison because she needed to “hand” scott over to someone else and her time was up.
there is no way to have scemma and also ignore the fact that jean was fridged for scott and emma’s development & her trauma with the hellfire club was turned into a bdsm fetish for scott (i mean… scott feels emasculated by the fact that jean is more powerful than him) and i talked about this in my previous meta but scott can no longer engage with jean sexually so he seeks out emma to dress up as jean and a sexy dark phoenix. that is grossly misogynistic and there’s no way to excuse that no matter how much scott fans want us to ignore his infidelity because jean didn’t talk to the grown man about his feewings 🥺 (note: you should be able to talk to your wife about your feelings however i am a messy and hateful jean stan so idgaf! scott fans have been disrespecting jean for far too long.)
okay their development is great and we’re so happy you guys have 50 greg land panels of them fucking to post on twitter but there is no scemma without jean being brutalized; humiliated; her sexual, emotional, and physical abuse from the hellfire club & suicide as the dark phoenix being mocked and fetishized by scott and emma (though mainly scott, emma does not owe jean anything at this point in time); and killed off & fridged for 14 years.
you can’t ever erase that no matter how many pages you post of scott being a hot alpha and emma humiliating herself for him sorry! and scott & emma stans will never understand jeans fans pain when it comes to their fav being brutalized and murdered for others development 🤷
i propose a story where jean fucks apocalypse because scott didn’t let her hit one night, dresses him up as scott after he dies in death of x/IvX era, and then scott gets killed off for 14 years while jean and apocalypse get to be drawn in lingerie and developed as a power couple. someone put me in x-office right now i can’t be worse than quesada
grant morrisons madonna/whore complex in their new x-men run and how it impacted jean/emma/scott 🧵
a meta written in a feminist perspective on the way jean grey and emma frost's dynamic is written, especially in relation to scott summers, and how gross morrison's (perhaps unintentional) use of the madonna-whore dichotomy is.
(for reference, my sources/citations for any panels or images will be italicized at the end of the paragraph. additionally, this is not a criticism of emma frost or jean grey or the scott/emma relationship. i am not a jeanscott shipper and i do not want jean back with that man)
the madonna/whore complex is a psychological phenomenon coined by sigmund freud in the early 1900s. while freud's psychology is, at best, a little.. weird, this phenomenon can still be observed in many fictional and real life stories alike. the core of the complex is some men's inability to love and lust after a woman at the same time. in this complex, a woman is either a madonna (akin to mary, mother of jesus; pure and virginal) or a debauched whore. there is no in-between.
in this dynamic, jean is the "madonna". she is described as being above human emotion and her relationship with scott is “pure and special”. throughout the entirety of new xmen, her and scott’s relationship is essentially nonexistent. scott isn’t able to talk to the "holy" jean nor is he able to engage in any sexual activity with her. (new x-men #139, new x-men #142)
morrison uses a blatantly misogynistic dialogue to describe this situation which goes with the entire basis of madonna/whore: “Where such men love they have no desire, and where they desire they cannot love” (new x-men #128)
aside from the fact that jean only wore a corset when she was being raped, mind-controlled, and in a non consensual relationship with mastermind, the phrase “she ran around in a corset for everyone but with me it’s sensible shoes . . .” describes the love/desire dichotomy that freud discussed. in morrisons own words, scott felt disconnected from jean (and needed to be “given” to someone else) because she was ascending to godhood (see: the madonna) and could no longer ask her to engage in his taboo desires. this is where emma as the “whore” comes in (comic creators on x-men)
scott is able to use emma as a tool for his sexual desires and kinks as jean is now too pure, the “love” half of this relationship. he uses her as a “sex therapist”. emma is now beneath him, her previous aristocratic status as the white queen notwithstanding. she dresses up as jean—specifically as jean in the worst part of her life, and acts like her ("you'll be scott and i'll be jean", "so anyways, i'm fire and life incarnate", "do you like me with red hair", "you're making me lose control. i'm going to explode with my passion and fry the stars". all clear references to jean during the dark phoenix saga). a deep trauma that scott witnessed firsthand. additionally, the dark phoenix is part of jeans holy ascension. within this dynamic, . scott is free to discard emma at any time—this isn't his beloved wife, he has no love, only “desire”. (new x-men #131, new x-men #138)
emma verbatim states this, saying that jean and scott have a “pure love” and asking herself and wolverine why she had to fall in love with scott summers. emma’s entire role in new xmen was to act as the scandalous auntie emma and a sex object, as morrison stated she only started the affair with scott to get revenge on jean. jean on the other hand continuously gets more divine until her eventual death and then her actual departure in endsong… a mini where jean like, literally, ascends and starts out with emma and scott in bed. it could not be more obvious. the “here comes tomorrow” arc also has jean becoming the white phoenix..oh and scott and emma need to fuck to save the timeline. right. (new x-men #154)
jeans “madonna” status and emma’s “whore” status linger even in the era where jean is dead and emma is meant to be scott’s one true love. jean is honored in death while writers are unable to write emma as anything but second to scott no matter what, even at her peak as a leader. she always has to be attached at the hip to him. jean, on the other hand, is forced to be the central character in almost every arc she appears in (specifically, with the phoenix).
(i apologize if this sounds crude or hateful, english is not my first language. i am criticizing writers decisions regarding emma here, not trying to hate on emma.)
also, emma is a victim of intimate partner violence at the hands of cyclops. say what you want about the phoenix corrupting them (or how OOC avx is, it still exists unfortunately) but magik, piotr, emma, and namor didn’t become abusive at any point.. lol. these panels are specifically meant to evoke a feeling of assault. there is an eerie resemblance to rape in the way her phoenix fragment is forcibly taken from her body by cyclops, her boyfriend, who overpowers her and ignores her pleading cries for him to not touch her along with him forcing himself on top of her body. (avengers vs x-men #11, uncanny x-men #4. note that the second panel is directly from emma's mind and how she remembers this incident.)
she is literally discarded by him in a similar way jean was discarded at the time of her death in new xmen and then in endsong (moreso by the writers and not scott). in the end, in jean and emma's cases and in the overall psychological complex, both the madonna and the whore in this phenomenon are harmed by the man. there is no winner
