#bop 68

[purpleladyofthenight]

Birds of Prey #68 and #98 aka the worst and most unecessary writing 

Gail while writing BoP: Helena is such a slut. Is there anyone she hasn’t had sex with?

Also Gail while writing BoP: Helena is such a prude, she doesn’t date, she never has any sex.

[purpleladyofthenight]

Birds of Prey #68 AKA The issue where Gail Simone slut shames Helena Bertinelli.

Okay…let’s talk about this. Before I start this, let me just add that I despise Helena and Dick together, so my problems are with the slut shaming in case someone assumes I’m mad cause of the shipping. So a quick summary of this issue:

[[Gail writes Babs and Dinah to slut shame Helena. Dinah goes to spar with Diana, and Gail uses all those Diana pages to praise her after she slutshamed Helena. Then she writes Helena allowing this lowlife car salesman guy to grope her any way he wants and then have sex with her. Yes, Gail has a ton of respect for Helena…not really.]]

So Helena and Dick hooked up in Nightwing/Huntress (1998). In the same series, both Helena and Dick agreed it was a mistake. Many other writers brought up the subject of Helena’s one-night stand with Dick, and they all wrote it as a mistake and showed Dick and Helena to have moved on from that stage. The topic was addressed so many times.

But here comes Gail (6 years later in 2004), beating a dead horse, and makes Helena blurt out of the blue (because really they weren’t even talking about relationships…they were talking about Savant) “I’m sorry for having sex with Nightwing…” Umm…no. You don’t have to apologize for that, Helena, because as you said: you didn’t know her and they weren’t together at the time. Dick isn’t Babs property and she’s not the one who decides who Dick wants to sleep with. And yes, Dick wanted to have sex with Helena. She didn’t force herself onto him. She didn’t use toxins on him. It was consensual. Both Dick and Helena wanted to have sex with each other. So Helena has nothing to apologize for.

Now let’s move on to Barbara’s response: “You ever want to be part of a cheap, meaningless one-night stand again…be my guest.” And here starts the slut shaming. Not only is Helena guilty because she slept with Nightwing, but she’s guilty because she had a one-night stand. Because if you’re a woman, you’re supposed to wait until marriage to have sex and god forbid you have one-night stands with people who you find attractive.

And then Dinah is the voice of reason and tells Babs “Dude calm down, it’s all history.” And what does Babs do? She takes the slutshaming even further “Did she tell you she had sex with Arsenal?” Because she knew that was gonna make Dinah side with her and get Dinah to help her slutshame Helena even more. And I hate that Gail dragged Dinah into this, because Dinah would never stoop so low. We’ve seen Babs ready to abandon moral values for the sake of inflicting pain onto Helena (or Batgirls who don’t work for her during NML), but not Dinah. Dinah is one of the few people who believed in Helena from the very beginning. Back to our subject though…They forget again that Roy and Helena were both consenting to this and that they’re both adults who can make their own choices. And even if it was wrong for Helena to have sex with Roy, although it wasn’t…it’s not Barbara’s right to say those things. I forget how Barbara found out about Roy and Helena in the first place. I don’t remember Helena ever mentioning that to her. So that’s probably just the voice of Gail Simone telling people of another one of Helena’s sexual partners to show everyone what a “slut” Helena is for having sex with two different people.

Oh, and what comes next: “Geez, is there anyone you haven’t fucked, Helena?” Yes! She only slept with like 4 people. In this exact moment when Dinah asks this, Helena only slept with 3 people. Yes, Dinah and Gail, there are plenty of people Helena hasn’t fucked. But it doesn’t stop here…nooo….She has Helena “justify” herself for having sex with Roy, even though there’s nothing wrong with that, by saying “you know…he wasn’t even that good.” Which is extremely out of character for Helena. She wouldn’t say stuff like that. She’s not the kind of person to make fun of others. And later, in the car, Helena says “I can’t come with you guys, I have a date.” And what does Dinah say? “Well, now there’s a surprise.” Which by the bolded words in that panel and the look on Dinah’s face translates to “What else to expect from the team’s whore? Gonna go fuck some other dude, aren’t you?” So Helena gets out of the car. Something she should have done a long time ago. And Dinah goes to spar with Wonder Woman.

After that, we see the damn date (which is probably the creepiest moment in all the comics I’ve read…I mean it makes me uncomfortable as hell just looking at the panels…it’s downright creepy). And what happens during their date? Helena meets Josh, a car salesman she asked to bug a car for her. Cause there was no other way to bug that car, with all of Hel’s resources and all of Oracle’s resources. It was absolutely necessary for Gail to write Helena being groped and treated as this guy’s trophy. Their entire date, Helena’s uncomfortable as hell and looks like she’d rather wrestle that boar from Year One. It’s disgusting even reading it…And the whole date ends with Josh suggesting Helena drives by his ex-girlfriend’s house to make her jealous and then they end up having sex.

Oh, but it doesn’t end here…because in Birds of Prey #84, Gail brings up Helena’s sex life again, because she handles it so well. So in BoP #84, she has Helena tell Josh “I’m done with sex for good.” And oh sweet Jesus what a wonderful character is Helena now that she doesn’t have any more sex with people…

Helena Bertinelli is one of the few female characters who is comfortable with their sexuality and is not a villain. She’s a hero who doesn’t fit the standard that if you’re a woman you should remain a virgin until you find the right guy. It was one of the things I loved about Helena and there was no reason for Gail to slutshame her for it and remove that from her. But we all know that the slutshaming was there because how dares Helena get in the way of Gail’s precious DickBabs ship. And DickBabs was canon. Everyone and their grandmother knows Dick and Babs will end up together. And they’re gonna end up together even without slutshaming Helena.

As I said in a previous post: I’m not saying there’s anything bad about NOT wanting to have sex, but I kinda wish they would stop with the idea that it is bad to have sex. It was completely out of character for Helena to act that way. I actually feel like it’s bad character development and bad writing.

My advice: Stay away from this issue. It’s the absolute worst. It’s more of a filler issue that only exists to slutshame Helena. The only thing you can add to this to make it worse is have Seely and King collaborate to the issue and have Ed Benes as the artist.

EDIT: I want to add one more thing to this. Slutshaming is horrible no matter where it happens or to whom it happens. But Gail chose the character who was sexually assaulted when she was 6 and decided to call her a slut. I know that Rucka took out Helena’s sexual abuse from her origin story, but it’s something that’s always going to be part of Helena Bertinelli’s history and I wish writers would treat that with more care rather than to ignore it only because it’s no longer part of her story.