At least according to many critics, “Jessica Jones” is in the “struggle against patriarchy” camp. The Marvel Comics-based heroine, a private investigator endowed with superhuman strength and speed, battles the mind-controlling supervillain Kilgrave even as she deals with the trauma of her past enslavement and rape by him — which the sociopathic Kilgrave sees as a romantic relationship. He’s not just an antagonist but the ultimate abusive ex-boyfriend.

We are in the midst of a feminist moment — which means, among other things, a new focus on female protagonists and female-driven stories on television and at the movies. This is a season in which the final “Hunger Games” film, with its indomitable heroine, rules at the box office, while one of the most-talked-about new television shows is the female-centric Netflix series “Jessica Jones,” which blends superhero adventure with the gritty private-detective genre. But fictional feminism, just like the real-life kind, is fraught with tensions and conflicts: Should it be about sisterhood and struggle against patriarchal oppression, or about women as individuals whose lives and choices are not limited by their gender?


Several reviewers have treated Kilgrave’s power to make people feel irresistibly compelled to obey his commands as a metaphor for male privilege in our society, or for a nebulous patriarchy that shapes our choices even when we think we’re doing what we want to do. It’s a reading that is as demeaning to women as it is irrelevant to most men’s lives.

It is jarring, as well, to see “Jessica Jones” hailed as a feminist achievement for making its heroine a rape survivor. While prevailing over trauma is a positive message, making sexual victimhood central to female, and feminist, identity is not only grim but ultimately regressive: woman-as-rape-victim is a cultural image that goes all the way back to Greek myth.


The series itself does not dictate the male power/female victimhood interpretation; at times it shows that women, too, can be cruel and abusive, and Jessica herself has a definite dark side. But the show’s allusions to modern gender issues occasionally become a bit heavy-handed.

By contrast, “Mockingjay 2,” and the “Hunger Games” saga as a whole, offers female empowerment without gender politics — and with broad appeal to both male and female audiences, despite the cliché that men aren’t interested in women’s stories.

The oppression Katniss Everdeen faces has nothing to do with being female; the brutal regime under which she lives is scrupulously gender-neutral in selecting one boy and one girl to die in its annual fight-to-the-death spectacle. While this regime is headed by a man, president Coriolanus Snow, the final book and film (spoilers ahead!) show that the female rebel leader, Alma Coin, is no less capable of tyranny and barbarism. In the end, Katniss, chosen to publicly execute Snow after the revolution’s triumph, chooses to kill Coin instead.

Katniss’s gender is not irrelevant to her life — we see her grapple with the prospect of motherhood — but it does not dictate her allegiances or her choices. In a neat role reversal that never feels forced, she often acts as protector to her love interest, Peeta Mellark, and even feels that his survival is more important than her own because he’s a better, kinder person. The story never idealizes its female characters, nor suggests that violence against women and girls is worse than violence against men and boys.


In a year when the public voice of feminism has often consisted mainly of complaints about the terrible things men do to women, “The Hunger Games” is a refreshing vision of feminism at its best: women and men as human beings and equals. Let’s hear it for this version of girl power — also represented by a promised television comeback of “Xena: Warrior Princess,” whose heroine broke all the gender barriers in the 1990s and was all-woman, all-hero, and never male-basher or victim.

Cathy Young is a columnist at Newsday and RealClearPolitics.com. Follow her on Twitter @CathyYoung63.