Monstrous Feminine: Patriarchal Fear of Female Sexuality in Superhero Narratives

    This piece was originally presented at the Transition 5 conference held at Birkbeck University in London England, October 2014. This conference was one of my favorite things during my PhD. It gave me an excuse to go visit London, talk with other comic researchers, and to work through the unimaginable mass of ideas I was trying to deal with as a PhD student. This paper is part of my Jean Grey/Scarlett Witch cycle. I really came to love these two characters and despise how the comics had done them wrong. So in a lot of ways, these pieces, and most of an eventual dissertation chapter, are basically me exercising and trying on the theory, and pleading to just give these women a break.  

Monstrous Feminine: Patriarchal Fear of Female Sexuality

It has often been argued that the powers and explosive fights of superhero comics feed into adolescent power fantasies. However, by examining the role of powers, their acquisition, and the role they play in defining and creating superhero identities, powers in superhero narratives can also be seen as representations of sexuality and the development of sexual identity. For many superheroes, the acquiring of powers and the transition to the superhero world, mirrors the development and transformation into sexual maturity through adolescents. Nowhere is this more evident than in the super powered mutants known as the X-Men. The X-Men, “Children of the atom, students of Charles Xavier, mutants - feared and hated by the world they have sworn to protect.” are born as average children with nothing amazing or uncanny about them, however, as they reach puberty, their X gene is activated and they develop their powers. These powers can take any number of forms. Some mutants receive telekinetic powers or the ability to phase through solid objects, while others present abilities that disfigure them, growing a tail or blue fur. Where normal teens have to deal with developing breasts, acne, or facial hair, the X-men also have to deal with eye beams, teleportation, and bursting into flame. For these mutants, coming into sexual maturity also means coming into powered maturity. For other heroes, like Spider-Man, who also receives his power as he goes through adolescents, having acquired powers means that they are more sexually confident and desirable.

Before receiving his spider like powers, Peter Parker is portrayed as nebbish, and frail. He is also presented as unappealing to women. In multiple instances throughout his first appearance, his advances are rebuffed and he is compared negatively to the more attractive or sexually appealing Flash Thompson. Without any powered or sexual identity, Peter is sexually inferior. However, as Spider-Man himself attests on the cover of Amazing Fantasy #15, the mockery, through disinterest by women, will disappear now that he has the powers of Spider-Man. Much as puberty leads to the forming of a sexual identity, being bit by the radioactive spider leads Peter Parker to a powered identity; and by extension being presented as more sexually appealing and desirable to the opposite sex.  This idea is stressed even more in later retellings of Spider-Man’s origin. In the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, again Peter is bullied by his class mates and ignored by the girls he is interested in, but after the fateful spider bite, he is able to flirt with Mary Jane, joins the high school basketball team, and becomes the object of sexual attention from girls that had previously ignored him. With powers, comes a superhero identity, and a sexual identity. However, in the superhero narrative, this development of a sexual identity is framed in a specifically hetero-normative construct and subject to patriarchal power structures of strict gendered performances. 

For male characters, sexual identity, autonomy, and virility, are praised and encouraged. While female sexuality needs to be controlled and maintained by male authority. Within the superhero narrative, unchecked female sexuality is dangerous, destructive, and monstrous. As Naomi Wolf points out, “Fear of female sexuality is male projections of fear of subversive power”. The superhero narrative works to absorb that fear by showing female power and sexuality controlled. unchecked female sexuality is shown to be normalized or punished returning the narrative to a state where male power and sexuality is dominant and privileged in comparison to female sexuality and power. One of the most prominent examples of this type of normalization and reassertion of patriarchal power is the transformation of original X-Man Jean Grey into the world destroying Dark Phoenix.

In the late 70s, Original X-Man Jean Grey was given new powers and a new name. As Phoenix, Jean possessed a stronger set of powers and became more sexual. Describing how she felt when she used her new powers, Jean used terms with a more physical and sexual connotation. “My mind burning — so many memories — sensations,” and, “My power, it’s hitting me like a drug. I’ve never felt such, ecstasy.” Jean discovering and using her new powers is like discovering new sexual responses and a new sexual freedom. When she is having the limits of her powers tested, she is asked how using her powers makes her feel. She says, “If anything, it makes me feel good.” Being more powerful, means Jean Grey is now a more sexual being. As Phoenix, Jean and her new sexuality is acceptable and meets with expectations of female sexual performance. This Jean is in a committed relationship with her teammate, Cyclops, and her powers are constrained by her mentor and X-Men founder, Charles Xavier - Professor X. As a powered and sexual being, she exists in a sphere of male control and constraint. She performs the girlfriend/wife role with Cyclops and the student/daughter role with Professor X. As long as she submits her power and sexuality to patriarchal control, she is performing femaleness and female sexuality as expected. However, as her power grows and her sexual desires grow, she can no longer be contained by these men. Once she can no longer be constrained or controlled by patriarch authority, she becomes monstrous, evil, and in need of normalization.

As Jean’s powers and sexual appetites grow, she is tempted by sexual freedom that is outside the control of Cyclops or Professor X. While using her psychic powers to scan the thoughts of patrons of a seedy disco club, she notes that “Some of the images I’m receiving are so vile…Part of me almost finds those thoughts attractive.” In this scene, Jean and Scott dressed in conservative coats and slacks are placed in opposition to the club patrons in their various states of undress as they grope and cavort around the idyllic couple. The sexuality on display, or vile thoughts that Jean is observing, are presented as outside the norm. It represents a dark and forbidden sexuality that the wholesome and angelic Jean should not enjoy. However, this sexuality is something that her growing powers and desires find attractive.

 

The dichotomy created for Jean of controlled female sexuality and unchecked female sexuality is similar to the whore/madonna or angel/monster dichotomies presented Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic. As Gilbert and Gubar point out, female characters have traditionally been forced into this binary and that readers and writers have come to understand female characters by which extreme of these dichotomies they fall in. In superhero comics, the presumed dominant reading position is “identifying her with the ‘eternal types’ they have themselves invented.” The dominant position has come to expect the angelic or monstrous woman. Not because women in the real world could actually fit into such simple binaries, but because to the dominant position, that is the way it has always been. The angelic woman is submissive, silent, and controlled. She strives for domesticity. The role of the mother and the wife are the only possibles available to her. To defy any of these assertions or requirements, marks the woman as monstrous, evil, and frightening. Where the angelic woman should be lauded, praised, and emulated, the monster woman is reviled, hated, and punished for her subversive and transgressive self. This Jean finds the thoughts of the patrons in the club vile and disgusting. However, as her powers and sexuality grow past the limits of male control, there is part of her that finds their thoughts desirable. This part of Jean is the whore, slut, and monster. It is a power and sexuality that can not be contained by the normative monogamy and gender performance offered by her relationship with Cyclops. By accepting, even reveling in this part of her sexual identity, Jean is transgressing the patriarchal order that dictates the narrative. When an all-powerful, sexually autonomous Jean is confronted by her father figure, Professor X, he lays out dichotomies as rules to frame her transformation from angel to monster: “Power without restraint, knowledge without wisdom, age without maturity, passion without love.” The sexually uncontrolled Jean has plenty of passion, but no restraint; like Rogue and her coma inducing kiss. The narrative presents her as selfish, undisciplined, and in search of new pleasures and sexual gratification. Jean becomes the image of the monstrous feminine as she transforms from Phoenix, to Black Queen, and finally to Dark Phoenix.

As the Black Queen, Jean is sexually aggressive. Her Phoenix costume is replaced with one that consists of a corset, panties, and a cape. The Black Queen also brandishes a whip that works as the finishing touch on her new dominatrix style costume. Her new appearance is in defiance of sexual hierarchy, and to show she is not subservient to Cyclops and no longer in need of him to provide her with sexual and emotional satisfaction. The sexually uncontrolled Jean moves from man to man. Surrounded by her new allies, the inner circle of the Hell Fire Club, Cyclops notices that, “Jean’s flirting with them all,” and that she has “the instincts of a minx.” With her sexuality free, Jean flits from man to man. Patriarchal authority and the normative expectations of female performance no longer constrain Jean’s sexuality or power.

 

If a woman uses her sexuality to control, manipulate, or dominate men, she is labeled monstrous, subversive, and villainous. With her sexuality uncontrolled, Jean becomes the main villain of the narrative. Even the previous villains, the Hellfire Club, are secondary to her. The telepath, Master Mind, who has been trying to manipulate and control Jean throughout The Dark Phoenix Saga is confronted by Jean for his attempts to control and constrain her. In the face of the monstrous Jean, he pleads, “Jean, no more, I beg you! You’re killing me!” But Jean, now the villain, responds, “I intend to do a lot worse than that.” Instead of killing him, Jean attacks his mind and leaves him a brain dead husk.

Master Mind serves as a potential stand in for the dominant position as he tries to perceive a sexually liberated woman; a task that is presented as unfathomable. A monstrous woman like Jean can only destroy, and leave men drooling husks that would be better dead. However, for the narrative to make Jean as true monster, destroying the the mind of a single villain is not enough, she must do much worse to serve as an appropriate allegory of the destructiveness of uncontrolled female sexuality. 

As Dark Phoenix, Jean flies into space and destroys a star in search of her next orgasm. Since her power and sexuality have far outgrown her former relationships and home planet, Jean finds herself near a large sun. Ravenous, she dives into the star and causes it to explode. “And in the center of the super-nova she created, Dark Phoenix thrills to the absolute power that is hers. She is in ecstasy.” Furthermore she, “Craves that ultimate sensation and she will pay any price to achieve it once more.” While Jean’s search for sexual freedom does lead her to destroying a man that tried to constrain her sexuality, orgasm, and the ecstasy that comes with it, it is when she destroys a sun and a planet that “is inhabited, by an ancient, peace-loving civilization,” that she becomes truly monstrous. The image of the planet she destroys shows alien humanoid creatures, some obviously fathers and mothers, holding their frightened children, fearful of the exploding light in their sky. This is a fear echoed by the dominant position. If Jean were more passive, submissive, and easily controlled, her sexuality, like all women’s unchecked sexuality, would not lead to the destruction of civilizations.

The narrative, presenting Jean Grey’s sexuality as destructive and terrible, must work to normalize her sexuality or punish her for subverting the patriarchal order. The virginal Phoenix is normalized to hierarchal structures of male dominance and female submissiveness. As Phoenix, she is ready to be the wife and daughter, which is something that the Black Queen and Dark Phoenix would never do. Jeans sexuality submits to Cyclops as a husband and lover and her power is constrained by Professor X as her father and mentor. Jean must submit to all patriarchal authority to be put in her proper place within the particular power structure. Though, for this particular narrative, normalization is not enough of a punishment for just how monstrous Jean became. In the very next sequence, Jean and the X-Men are taken by an alien tribunal to be put on trial by combat for the death of five billion people.

Though she is no longer Dark Phoenix and has been sexually normalized, Jean admits that the lure of sexual freedom is still there. To be sexually autonomous and in control of her own sexual gratification is too tempting and enticing for Jean. The desire experience what she did as Dark Phoenix transmits a new message about female sexuality and power. Once a women has a taste of  sexual autonomy,  there is no going back. This communicates the idea that women should not be allowed to indulge in sexual freedom or allowed access to personal, cultural, or sexual power. Access is a slippery slope and an addiction that may turn the angel permanently into a monster. The archaic ideas of women being emotionally unstable and irrational play into the idea that they are also incapable of controlling their desires and passions. Like Rogue’s impulsive kiss or succumbing to her sex drive and desire, Jean will inevitably give into her passions and desire for another cosmic orgasm.

 

Jean admits that even thinking about the sensation of her cosmic orgasm brings back those sensations and a desire to experience them again. “It felt good! I don’t want that feeling ever again. And yet I do!” Once she has experienced sexual liberation and a cosmic orgasm, Jean realizes that there is no going back. “Jean to Phoenix to Dark Phoenix, a progression as inevitable as death,” she tells Cyclops. Jean has become too powerful, too sexual, to be controlled by any of the men in her life. Her irrationality and inability to control her own passions means that her sexuality will lead to more death and destruction. The narrative, meeting the expectations of the dominant position, closes off any other possible outcomes except that Jean Grey must die. Even Jean understands the narratives inevitability and the expectations of the dominant position. “It’s better this way. Quick. Clean. Final.” Accepting her punishment, Jean steps in front of an oncoming energy bolt, and is incinerated. For the sexually uncontrolled woman in superhero comics, death, depowering, or constraining are the only inevitable outcomes. For Jean, death and depowering were equal possibilities for her punishment and was decided on by editors and creatives at Marvel Comics.

Four years after the release of the final of The Dark Phoenix Saga, an alternate ending was released along with an interview with editors and creators in a special single issue. This was the ending that the creators had originally wanted, but were persuaded to change it at the urging of Marvel editorial. In this version, Jean is not killed, but instead is lobotomized and rendered powerless. The decision to kill Jean, instead of this original ending, was made by then editor Jim Shooter who “felt that there had to be some consequences for the actions. I felt that the way the story was originally designed to end, it did not have enough consequences for what happened.” Depowered or killed, the outcome was the same: the monstrous female, with her unchecked sexuality and power, was punished and any anxiety or dread from the dominant position was assuaged. Examining the treatment of male characters in similar situations is all that is needed to add greater confirmation that female characters, and especially Jean, are punished and normalized in this way.

In the 2012 event series Avengers vs. X-Men, or AVX , the powerful Phoenix Force that had been at the heart of The Dark Phoenix Saga, returns to Earth and empowers a number of mutants including Cyclops. Throughout the series, Cyclops works to consolidate all of the Phoenix power into himself, defeats and imprisons the Avengers, and to shape the world into a mutant utopia. As powerful as Jean was, Cyclops becomes Dark Phoenix. Just like Jean Cyclops becomes the villain of the narrative and kills his father figure, Charles Xavier.  After endorsing war, genocide, and committing patricide, Cyclops is simply defeated, imprisoned, and then escapes to continue as the lead in a monthly series as opposed to Jean, who remained dead for six years. 

 

For Dark Phoenix Jean, and her uncontrolled power and sexuality, the only outcomes are death or complete loss of power. For Dark Phoenix Cyclops and his cosmic power and sexuality, a simple return to status quo is in order. Yes, Cyclops is depowered from his cosmic status as the Dark Phoenix, but he still retains his mutant optic blasts and is returned to a leadership role. In the version of her narrative where Jean is depowered and lobotomized  and no remnants of her mutant abilities remain as she becomes the passive, submissive house wife. Both Jean and Cyclops are returned to normalized roles and performances based on their genders. The default status of men is to be active, in control, and powerful, where the default nature of women is to be passive, submissive, and powerless. The expectation within the narrative and outside of it, is that for women to be powered is the exception, not the norm. To unleash cosmic power and destruction and to be sexual beings is the expected performance for male characters, but one of the most grievous and subversive acts a female character can commit.

While these are only two examples, the superhero narrative, privileging the hetero-male reading position reinforces again and again the expected role of female sexuality and sexual identity. Within the patriarchal power structure, it must exist under the control and direction of male power, the subversive power of female sexuality must be kept in check, and if it is not, it must be punished or normalized to return the narrative and female characters to acceptable performances of femaleness and femininity.