I held off saying this because I didn’t want it to seem like I was just salty about how Shaw was written in “X-Men Black: Emma Frost” and because TUMBLR but: I am used to Emma Frost doing shitty /shady sex-related things and it not being questioned because she’s a sexy evil lady, and I love Emma Frost as a character and I accept this as part of her characterization, but it bothered me in this issue A LOT. Because this issue is very clearly about the issue of men in power using it to sexually abuse others, written by a woman who says Shaw represents toxic masculinity. So we know this author understands stuff about power dynamics and consent and all that, I imagine she has feminist beliefs, etc. She clearly, clearly had good intentions, at the least. Yet Emma uses her powers to make everyone in a room “make out” so she can walk by without being stopped. She used her powers to FORCE PEOPLE TO KISS WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT. This is not treated as being sexual assault on her part in the slightest, or even as skeevy. It’s passing and comical. This is written by a woman who is obviously trying to make a statement about sexual assault and predators being punished, but has the heroine of this story force other people to passionately kiss on her way to deliver justice to said predator (whose own wrongness is delivered with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, so I don’t think there’s a chance that Emma is supposed to be wrong too and it’s just delivered so subtle that I’m missing it). And this is not treated, that I can tell, as a symptom of Emma’s own trauma or a hypocrisy or anything like that. Look, I’m all for female characters doing shitty, awful things. Women should be allowed to be as shitty as men in fiction, because we’re human beings and that includes human shittiness. If anything, there needs to be more acknowledgement in comics that woman can be sexual assailants, because as it is that’s not a thing taken seriously in real life or comics as it is now (ffs are we ever gonna recognize Kurt was raped by deception by Amanda Sefton? Or how many times Mystique has committed rape by deception?) But what I am saying is that when they do a shitty awful thing, it should be treated the same way as if a male character had done it, and it’s especially fucking tone-deaf to give it a pass in an issue trying to ADDRESS sexual predation ffs. Also, this is not JUST a problem with Emma or this issue or this writer, this is an overarching issue in general. But it happening in an issue with such an obvious anti-predator theme, and Emma as the deliverer of justice while casually getting away with the very crime she’s supposed to be punishing, is just an especially egregious instance.
