The Feminist Fangirl

(via rainbowlung)

(via ladyavenger)

• I run the kids class at our local big name craft store and today only two kids showed up. They were two little boys ages 5 and 7 and they immediately started talking about superheroes with me. The 5 year old liked the Hulk best and the 7 year old liked Iron man and after they went on a while about those two I asked "Did you like any of the other Avengers?" I guess I thought they'd start talking about Thor or Captain America but nope. This is pretty much the conversation we had.
• Me: Did you like any of the other Avengers?
• 5 year old: YEAH! The gun lady I liked her she was so cool I liked her name!
• Me: Black Widow?
• 5 year old: TASHA! I like that name!
• 7 year old: Yeah and she was with the bad guys and was like tied to a chair *imitates being tied to a chair* and then she KICKED THEIR BUTTS.
• 5 year old: Oh and then she rode the alien spaceship! She jumped up and beat up all the aliens I'd beat up all the aliens just like her POW POW DIE ALIENS!!
• 7 year old: And she was in the Iron Man movie and Iron Man is my favorite--
• 5 year old: BEAT UP ALL THE ALIENS!
• 7 year old: And she was on the phone beating up the bad guys that was funny! She's cool!
• They spend more time talking about her than Captain America and Hawkeye combined. Oh and when the 7 year old started talking about Thor, the 5 year old said he liked Darcy too (he called her "the taser lady") because she tased Thor and he thought that was the funniest thing in the universe.

I have a very specific skill set.

(via ladyavenger)

(via ladyavenger)

“Women have always been the strong ones of the world.”

(via ladyavenger)

fuckyeahblackwidow:

Natasha: Do you know why I’m here?
Laura: It is not to help these girls. You are the spy, Black Widow, an Avenger. The Avengers cannot stop slavery or help hurt girls.
Natasha: Neither can the X-men. But we try.

Just as a final meditation on today’s impromptu theme: one of the things Natasha’s had a special interest in throughout her superhero career is sex and child trafficking. Laura points out that this is an unusual preoccupation for an Avenger, and she’s right. This is not the kind of thing that usually gets dressed up in capes and tights. But Black Widow deals with this stuff semi-regularly, even, because she’s not a typical superhero and this is why she fights.

As much as her origin story has been muddled recently it has, in every iteration, been wound around themes of control and liberation. Natasha was once a loyal servant of lies and half-truths, a perfect agent who blinded herself into ignoring her conscience and her masters’ cruelties for the sake of being a perfect agent. But she couldn’t let them tell her who to love, and she broke free.

There’s a gendered element to this, too. The Red Room trains only women, the chemical treatments given to their best operatives drive men insane. And so the men in charge of this whole twisted scenario christen their best agents after a spider that devours her mates, something that they fear, but also demean. They sharpen these women so that they may be seen as tools, weapons, something manufactured and replaceable. Not women at all.

(Natasha knows she is one-of a kind, unique, and is therefore unstoppable.)

So her career in espionage gave her ability and paranoid edges, but it also commodified her. This is the basic Marvel formula: power is the gift and the curse together. And as a result, she has a special interest in keeping women from being manipulated, from having their bodies and their sexualities be treated as commodities or weapons, instead of tools of their own enjoyment. Instead of bodies.

That’s why she tries to help rescue these trafficked girls but recognizes that their trauma isn’t something that can be fixed with punching. It’s why she reaches out to Laura Kinney, who has been grown in a lab and taught to kill for other people, and offers to teach X-23 how to be useful on her own terms.

(It’s also the reason why I cringe sometimes to see her twisted around for easy ass shots, to see her uniform tweaked and modified so that we get a better view. It’s like Ms. Deconnick says about Carol Danvers: It’s bizarre. There’s a part of me that’s like, “Why do you care?” And part of me that gets angry about it. That’s not what she’s about. Or at least, I don’t think it’s what she’s meant to be about.)

From X-23 #20, by Marjorie Liu and Phil Noto.

(via themarysue)

fuckyeahsuperheroines:

scratch-the-maven:

Natasha Romanoff: Avenger, super-spy, and fashionable hat wearer.

She is so fab

(via fuckyeahsuperheroines)

Avengers pumpkins!

We’re missing Hawkeye because he’s still with Loki at the moment (AKA we didn’t get enough pumpkins).