Fuck that.

The violence and the fucked up things are not the problem.

I take it this shit is referring to the Killing Joke homage cover.

The gun wasn’t the problem. The Joker wasn’t the problem. Barbara being the target wasn’t the problem.

The problem was that a female super hero was reduced to a deprotagonized helpless damsel. The problem was that if you did that sort of cover with nearly any male super hero, his stance would have been one of defiance and strength. A male super hero would be painted as heroic in the face of death. But because Barbara was a woman, she was painted as weak and helpless. She was deprotagonized.

The Killing Joke needs to show the pain and suffering of Barbara because they are integral to who she becomes after, but take very careful note- in the comic, we are not shown Barbara being shot and stripped and photographed and possibly raped–or Jim being quite possibly raped. Not because the writer shied away or was told they couldn’t show that, the Killing Joke was written by Alan Moore, a man who had Mr. Hyde rape the Invisible Man in the League of Extraordinary Men comics. No, Alan Moore, being an intelligent and competent writer, knew that it was unnecessary to show the torture inflicted upon Barbara, that the after effect would have a much greater impact, while the moment would be prurient and juvenile.

The Killing Joke isn’t a snuff film. It’s the story of the Joker trying to ruin Batman the way he’s always been able to, by going after his sidekick, and finding that though he may physically break Batgirl, and emotionally rape her, he cannot break who she is, and she will come out of it stronger.

The Killing Joke is inherently a feminist story because it shows a complex woman who suffers real pain and trauma and comes out the other side hiding neither herself nor her scars, not ignoring what happened, but using it like fuel for her fire. The way the story is adapted is inherently a feminist issue, because if they once again turn Batgirl into a whimpering distressed damsel in need of some big (white) male hero to save her, DC is once again saying that they believe women are weak and inherently less able than men.