I feel that @nightween​ already explained the difference very well, but since some people are having trouble understanding the difference, let me share with you part of this comic on Objectification/Empowerment by Ronnie Ritchie. You can find the full comic on Everyday Feminism.





“It is the responsibility of the creator to portray active consent as if the character were flesh and blood.”

The main problem with Grayson is that Seeley and King don’t understand the difference between empowering a character and sexualizing them. Dick has never held the power in the situations where he’s been sexualized.

Dick has to put up to being harassed because he has to keep working for Spyral. In the Grayson 13 page, he had to put up with being touched, nude, by a woman who had made repeated unreciprocated sexual advances on him. He was told that this was “procedure” and not given a choice in the matter. In fact, in this case he even verbally states that he doesn’t like the situation.

“Yeah. Privacy and integrity.”

“It’s standard policy, agent 37”

Take a moment and just let this situation sink in. Put yourself in Dick’s shoes here. You’re somewhere where another person has more power than you (a boss, airport security, a police officer) and that person tells you that before you can leave/move on you need to submit to a search. Maybe you’re uncomfortable with it, but you know that you don’t have a choice, so you submit. During the search you’re touched in ways you do not want to consent to, and the searcher acts inappropriately with you. Maybe you voice a complaint, but there’s still nothing you can do about it if you want to be able to leave, since the other person has the power.

This is a situation that real life people go through every day. It’s disgusting, it’s harassment, and it’s wrong. It sickens me to think of the real life people who have had to experience something like this. It’s easy to say, “But this is just fiction!” but the creators of our media have a responsibility to treat their characters with the same dignity deserving of a real human being.

“But you’re saying bad/problematic things can never happen to fictional characters!”

No, I’m not. Bad or problematic things can, and should, happen to fictional characters. That’s part of what makes a compelling story. However these bad/problematic things need to be portrayed as being bad and problematic. When a character gets sexually assaulted, the comic needs to make it abundantly clear that it’s not okay to sexually assault other people. When a character gets catcalled, the comic needs to show us that catcalling is disgusting. When a character acts racist, the comic needs to portray that racism as inherently wrong.

“Why does it matter? It’s just fiction!”



Look, let me start off by saying (because God damn I have to repeat this every time) that men being objectified in comic books and in real life is a very small problem. The big problem is with women, because that happens far more often. We agree on that. However, just because female objectification is the “bigger problem” doesn’t mean that we should laugh off when other people get mistreated, just because it’s on a smaller scale. It’s still problematic, it’s still not cool.

The reason that the comic above emphasizes that creators need to treat their characters as if they’re real people is because the way we treat characters in media has a direct connection to how people treat others in real life. @cheshiredomain said it wonderfully the other day:

“…It is found that fiction and media play an even more important role: they help shape our perception of reality…It was shown that those who watch more crime shows tend to feel more unsafe because they have an unreasonable perception of how much violent crime ACTUALLY happens. So while cops may only deal occasionally with a murder case, these people believe that murder cases are the majority of what police handle. Their perception of their safety is shaped by their specific media consumption.”

For the things that get put out for media consumption, we need to make it as clear as we possibly when actions are right and when actions are wrong. Dystopian stories might be full of horrible things, but they’re portrayed as being horrible.

Grayson hasn’t been doing that. The creators themselves have said they think they’re writing about sexual empowerment, but Dick is never the one in control of the way he’s being treated.

“But Dick hasn’t seemed bothered by the way he’s treated, so it doesn’t matter, right?”



Ding dong you are wrong.

It’s so easy for creators to hide mistreatment or problematic things by simply writing the character as apathetic. It happens to female characters all the time, and is a pretty aggravating attempt at logic.

“Oh, they doesn’t care that people are sexualizing them, so it’s okay!”

They don’t care because the writer chose to not make them care. This goes back to writing a character as if they’re a real person. You need to consider how a real person should react in this situation, and let me tell you, it’s almost never with apathy. One of the biggest perpetrators of this is Frank Cho, who drives every self-respecting person up a wall with his “women are so silly making a big deal about sexual objectification in comics.”

In short, we should want our fictional characters–male, female, or otherwise–treated with the same respect and as the same autonomous consenting adults as real life people. Though I truly believe Seeley and King intend to write a comic about empowerment, they are not, and that’s something that we as fans have a responsibility to point out.