Brilliantly constructed argument that the professionally offended would do well to listen to and understand. There is a clear context in which being offended makes sense and outside of that context you end up doing damage to the cause you were championing.

Under the banner of equality, the magazine writers created a problem where there wasn't one previously. If anything, the Spiderwoman drawing championed equality. And now people will think twice before drawing Spiderwoman doing the same things Spiderman does - what a great day for equality!

I'm just here for the the completely entertaining Maddox outrage. Also interested in any potential debate this may bring about.

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by eric3579.

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Friday, September 5th, 2014 12:15am PDT - promote requested by eric3579.

My first thought when the video started was 'I recall Spiderman being in exactly that position, repeatedly, so what's the problem?', then he pointed that out too.

When it comes to Spiderman and Spiderwoman it could actually be argued that it is sexist to consider the Spiderwoman image offensive and the Spiderman image inoffensive. And.... GO!

Absolutely. What these people seem to be saying it it's OK for SpiderMAN to pose like that, so OK they didn't even notice it, but if SpiderWOMAN does it she's being a provocative whore that needs to be slut shamed.

totally reminded me of this....
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Stupid-sexy-Flanders

Stupid sexy Flanders! has been added as a related post - related requested by newtboy.

Love it. Btw, "painted on"? Come on, take 1 minute to google "yoga pants" and after you zip up, do a quick comparison... you can see the junk, the trunk, and everything in it.

p.s. "apoplectic shit fit" - that's going on my next t-shirt.

that drawing of spiderwoman would never make the cover of any comic...it's far too primitive

much ado about nothing

Just to play devil's advocate here, the poses of the male and female covers are actually quite different, in my opinion.

Spiderman is lying flat against the surface of a globe with his body pressed against it. I haven't seen any gay porn that depicts models (admittedly I'm not one to peruse much gay porn) in this way in order to evoke sexual feelings.

Spiderwoman on the other hand is simply kneeling on a rooftop and has her ass thrust into the air, with back arched and head raised. As a hetero male, that's imagery I see used to evoke sexual feelings in Sports Illustrated, Playboy, etc. It does totally looks like she's presenting her ass to me specifically because there's no reason for her ass to be up in the air higher than her head (in Spiderman's case he's upside down so of course his ass is going to be over his head).

As far as the rest of his argument goes, I'll simply say this--people are not upset about the sexualization so much as people are upset that when men get sexualized in media it is often in a manner that is idealized by men themselves (i.e. muscular, ripped body) and when women get sexualized... it is often in a manner that is idealized by men themselves (i.e. big boobs, unrealistic body figure, etc.) because it is the men who often control authorship in the media. Of course you're going to alienate potential women readers if you don't present them with an idealized version of themselves but instead give them an idealized version of who men want them to be.

Love the Mother Brain t-shirt.

The Spiderman cover is actually kinda creepy, it looks like he got over excited and entrapped all those poor criminals in a big ball of Spidey Sperm.

Equality for the sexes is still a relatively new thing historically speaking. we are still wired in the brain that the men should be dominant, and the women should be submissive. Men who are submissive are scrutinized. Women who are aggressive are scrutinized. It takes a long time to change how the brain views that stuff. Just because there is a law that says the sexes are equal doesn't change that. Men have routinely been scrutinized for saying demeaning stuff to women and a lot of times the men didn't even think that it was demeaning. You only have to go back to the 60s and the 70s and it would have been considered socially normal.

Not condoning it, but I understand it.

Also playing devil's advocate. What if the cover had depicted her on her knees? On her back spread eagle? straddling something long and cylindrical, possibly pointed?

What makes you think the instinctive part of our brains that are related to those things is going to change?

The only way it would actually change is if there were conditions where being a dominant male and being a submissive female were both looked down upon until there were less reproduction being carried out by said group. I don't have any hard data, but I doubt those hard wirings are going away any time soon.

This video shows that it's already changing. The video's argument is to get over it. For the guy in the video, he doesn't view it as sexist.

attitudes change all the time. If they didn't we wouldn't have equality of the sexes codified in the law, we'd still have slavery, support for same sex marriage would not be over 50 percent as it is now. Violence would still be the default method of resolving any conflict

it just takes time.

@SDGundamX Searching for gay porn where a man is hugging a globe while suspended from above. While that search is ongoing, the same one is being done for women, also still ongoing.

Meanwhile: http://blackdreamer.com/spiderman-31-picture.html

@SDGundamX and addressing the devil's advocate rather than 'you'...

Spiderman's head is also raised (the same angle of their face is shown) and his back is arched, and i think that's clear when they are side by side. If anything i think spiderman's left leg is poorly drawn and his backside does need to be more in the air, whereas spiderwoman is a more human-like natural position for raising a knee over a ledge with your chest close to the ground. Remember that they are different artists bringing their own styles to a particular genre, they both have their own personalities and methods/methodologies. Furthermore, how much of an arch difference is necessary or acceptable and who makes those rules? Surely we must draw men and women differently so that we know whether the character is male or female (do we have too few fem superheroes is another question), and as a species we have different shapes. Surely amongst all these factors we must accept that the spiderwoman is a reasonable artistic recreation of the spiderman pic? If not, why not, taking all of those factors into account (and i can probably list more)? Basically we're asking the question "what is art?" here.

So that's why i think it's impossible for anyone to say the pose is sexual but the creator. No one questioned whether the spiderman pose was overtly sexual until someone drew spiderwoman doing "the same" (for argument's sake) thing. To a bunch of people who do not automatically see women as sexual objects (and i consider myself among that bunch), her pose is not sexual because the context isn't sexual. The question of sexuality arises when someone looks at the pic and goes "Gee, if i were levitating several hundred meters in the air directly behind her and she wasn't wearing any pants, she'd be 'presenting' to me for a split second."

So the ultimate level of 'equality' (or whatever) would be a world in which anything, in its particular context, is legal and absolutely ok. But of course, we can't depict nude youngsters in cinema even in the context of a bath for good reason, which let's generalise to all potentially difficult subjects (like sexism, racism, etc.) and call the "no one's perfect rule" - we can't trust everyone to keep things in context.

Our supposedly greatest form of organisation and problem solving - national governments, the pillars of our society - can't sort their proverbial arses from their proverbial elbows; if they're not perfect, how can we trust all of society to be?

In conclusion - i suppose we need a certain level of sexism or reverse-sexism that hopefully keeps us balanced between short-changing the future prospects of young girls in favour of young boys because of a biased society, and treating other people unfairly because of an over-zealous pursuit of what seems to be impossible.

One way of helping this is by very carefully checking the facts, the context and the meaning of what someone says before saying things like "sexist" or "mansplaining" or "racist". Always react as slowly as you may, that way you can be more or less enraged in your response depending on new info!

Edit: Want to add that if i had a pic of myself in that spidey pose, i'd be pretty happy putting it up on an eharmony profile or something - it is a 'sexy' pose, it looks good, he looks lean and strong and fit. I don't like this idea that women don't have sexual urges or that lean, fit men aren't sexy to women. It's possibly sexist to assume that! He's kind of presenting too, from a certain position...

My only reaction when I look at this Spiderwoman image is that there is a perspective problem in the buttocks. Her upper torso and head should be much bigger compare to her ass. I know it was purposely exxagerated by the artist but it looks weird to me.

True, I think the intention behind the two covers is very different, even if the results are similar. In the Spider-man cover, he looks like a spider who has already wrapped up his helpless terrified prey. And if you know about spiders you know what happens next, it's pretty nasty. The real spider in the lower right corner helps drive home the impression.

Where as with the Spider-woman cover I don't have any real doubt that Milo Manara was trying to make her sexy; that's kind of his thing. He's best known as an erotic artist and his artwork ranges from pinup girl to pretty hardcore porn (which I enjoyed as a young man). Check out his Wikipedia page and the first thing you'll see is that that pose is not one he's new at drawing.

I think where critics go wrong is the idea that sexiness implies sexism. If she were both drawn as sexy and being degraded or made fun of that would qualify as sexism. But there's got to be some room for sensuality without automatically feeling it's a personal insult to all women.

Her butt looks like a heart. I like that.

My only problem with her ass is it looks fake, like so many Hollywood & pop stars with gigantic ass implants. I have no issue with the pose, it's spiderman/woman after all. But you have to admit, in the comparison cover the ass is proportional, in the controversial one it is not.

Oh yeah I've seen plenty of Manara's work before; but you say you enjoyed his work as a young man? What's stopping you now? Manara is 68 and he seems to enjoy his work just fine. I'm 41 and if I ever stop enjoying that then I may consider that to be a sure sign that it's time to pack it in.
@Xaielao
I think it looks fine to me. Women are typically better endowed in the hip department than men are so if you're comparing it to the picture of Spiderman then they should look different.

I couldn't bring myself to read some of the longer comments above. But has anyone mentioned the dimples above her butt? Spiderman's butt dimples don't show -- he is clothed, she is essentially naked.

Plus what @SDGundamX said. He sees why some folks are upset and articulates it beautifully.

I'm quite tired of being told that my reactions are wrong. Especially when someone who presumably hasn't lived in my gender's skin can so easily see why someone of my gender would be upset.

If certain men would stop arguing so much and try to understand, even a little bit, maybe we could get past this topic. But as long as women get lectured as to how they are wrong wrong wrong, we are going to be stuck here forever.

Sexualization and the objectification of women is not an individual psychological thing. Its a larger social phenomenon. Our society remains sexist and treats women like sex objects. Showing an image of a woman in this pose presents itself as sexual, and when given to a society that readily sexualizes everything about women, then its going to come off as sexist.

I agree with most of the video but the points about 'just don't think of it' mistakes a social-vale-effect for an individual-psychological one.

PS: Art cannot discriminate or objectify anyone. People do that. Someone runs over someone with a car, is it the cars fault? Someone gets stabbed, do you ban knives? Someone publishes a sexual fantasy, should we ban all books? Feminists embrace marxism for this reason.

I grew up watching all manner of pornography. Larry Flint is one of my personal heroes. Yet I never once tried to use a woman like some kind of fleshlight. Although I noticed boys all around me without access to pornography poaching school-girls with lies and deceit and then breaking their hearts by never calling them back, or worse, leaving them with child and no support. THAT is what objectifying someone is, if you think TV and comic books is what causes these monkey-men to behave this way, that a little bit of censorship is going to transform them into empathetic intellectuals, I just want to let you know you're in for some disappointment.

Truth is today's feminists don't even know what objectification is. Mainstream POP music literally advocates rape. It encourages and teaches millions of young boys how to con a "bitches's" trust, sleep with her under false pretenses and and then break off any future contact.

So pop/rap culture celebrating/teaching boys how to rape women isn't considered by marxist feminists as objectification but some nerd rubbing one out to a softcore hand-drawn picture of a woman is "hardcore sexism". It's no wonder most women don't take feminism seriously.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Sift of the week. I pose like this when I'm sifting. It's comfortable.

Besides, objectification isn't even the problem, the real problem that liberals ignore is DEHUMANIZATOIN. Spider-woman is far from dehumanized. She's a very complex character, you learn all about her. You learn her favorite color, he dreams, her interested, her fears. You learn of her needs, the things she hates.

Through pin-ups you learn all about her sexuality as well. It is not the artist or the fan that thinks of spiderwoman as something dirty or subhuman for expressing her sexuality but the critics that reduce her to an object. In truth they do this not to defend spiderwoman, but to dehumanize her fans. They are told they are subhuman beasts for having sexual thoughts. That they are monsters for having interested in a female as anything other than a role model. It's total and complete hyporacy. The fans of spiderwoman view spiderwoman as nothing less than a complete human being, the fans themselves are reduced to nothing more than animals. Once the object is reduced to a level below humanity, any level of decadent violence can be done to them by the feminist, and that's the point.

Well, this is just silly. Uninformed silliness.

I haven't read everything above. I'm going to assume it's more of the same old argument that is always delivered when it comes to comic characters.

BUT here's something to think about:
When I was in art school. We drew and painted nude models. male female, old and young. none were particularly "attractive", just normal.

But the the Feminists banned together in our school and started chastising men, saying they had no right to ever paint/draw a nude female. regardless of how mundane the pose was - saying, "No man can EVER draw a nude female because men are incapable of not sexualizing them.
So many of the men buckled because these women were very threatening. I didn't paint nudes but but had over 50 messages left in my studio because I included clothed images of my female friends in my paintings.
As a result, one of the guys in a studio next to mine, started painting nude images of "Himself" because he was going out of his way to avoid them. Guess What. He came under fire for painting nude images of himself in semi-erotic poses (not pornographic) because he wasn't Gay. How dare he paint a male figure that way. ONLY the gay men should be able to paint men that way. How dare a Hetro male paint a nude figure of a male because hetro males only want to sexualize everything.

There was no escape, If you were a Hetro male, you were only allowed to paint landscapes or Men in Parkas it seemed. The point is, it doesn't matter what you paint/draw or even photograph, someone is going to find a reason to stand up against you because of their sexual hangups and preferences. They will read into your vision with all the hate they have built up for issues that have been used against them in their lives.

It sucks and that's the society we're living in. Artists have a choice. Either cave and conform or be suborn, stand up for themselves and carry on.. I, myself choose to be stuborn.

Edit: And I will not appoligize for being stuborn when it comes to my art. (no matter how badly I want people to like me.)

...And for those who panic at the idea of women being painted in a sexualized manor. Look up Olivia De Berardinis. She's highly published and as far as I'm concerned, she's a modern master of the female form, despite her subject matter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_De_Berardinis

What really bothers me most about all this hoohaw, are the number of statements about "Men do this..." and "Feminists are that..."

It's a pretty safe bet that anything generalized that far is almost as much wrong as right (or vice versa). Making general statements about billions of people is really not helping...and shrinking the number to just millions doesn't make it any more right.

It really makes no sense to try and claim the moral high ground by committing the very same kind of stereotyping that you're bitching about the other side doing. Stop. Just stop.

Adding video to channels (Geek) - requested by ant.

Holy crap, I almost spewed my coffee when he said vagina and showed Bill O'Rielly.