James Hudnall seems to have forgotten about the other 51 percent of the population.

I get mail:

If this combination of two of your favorite topics doesn’t rouse you from your blogging doldrums, nothing will.

To which I replied:

My my.

Then I started writing this post, which is, as per the title, about James Hudnall’s remarkably unselfconscious rant about Wonder Woman. Hudnall’s not interested in her costume change, which was apparently a topic of no small interest while I had my head in the sand, and about which all I have to say is this: if you attended a meeting and were the only one there wearing a swimsuit, would you feel uncomfortable? Enough said. For Hudnall, though, the debate about her costume merely provides him an excuse to attack her character. Like many a spurned misogynist, he does so by accusing her, and by proxy all feminists, of misandry. He begins:

The problem with Wonder Woman isn’t her look. It’s her personality. She has never been a warm, appealing character. She comes from an island populated only by immortal Amazons who hate men. And men aren’t allowed to set foot on the island. This island of super-women send her to “the man’s world” where she brings the baggage of this sexist worldview.

You want to talk about baggage? Consider what Hudnall brings to the table: women who are not “warm” are also not “appealing.” The first question, obviously, is what does he mean by “warm”? The second, of course, is “appealing” to whom? That he failed to notice that his definition of “warmth” entails that she must be “appealing” to men like him is a remarkable, albeit typical among his lot, feat of argumentative blindness: women who possess characteristics that he finds unattractive hate all men because they fail to cater or conform to Hudnall’s needs.

In addition to his inability to distinguish the universal from the particular, he simply misunderstands the character. Wonder Woman does enjoy giving those who underestimate her because she’s a woman, be they thugs or comic villains, their comeuppance—a category that by extension includes readers like Hudnall, but more on that in a bit. But notice what Hudnall fails to: the comic universe is predicated on the logic of a vicarious enjoyment of comeuppance.

Consider this scene in The Dark Knight. The nifty camerawork helps ratchet up the tension on a formal level, but on a narrative one, the tension comes from the viewer knowing what the Joker doesn’t: the implications of having crashed Bruce Wayne’s fundraiser. The viewer anticipates the comeuppance, because the Joker underestimated Wayne on account of his being a wealthy playboy. Same thing works in any situation in which Clark Kent is threatened. It even girds works that demonstrate the limitations of the genre, as that last panel neatly illustrates.

In other words, despite being the motivating force behind the genre, the logic comeuppance only bothers Hudnall when men who underestimate women receive theirs.

I wonder why that is?

Let’s deal with some reality for a second. I know the PC crowd and leftists in general love the concept of “protected classes” and the idea that, say, women could do things better than men if they had the chance.

Because he’s boxing the shadows of the reactionary first wave of feminism? Perhaps.

[W]hile Diana Prince (Wonder Woman’s real name) does change her attitude somewhat when she comes ashore, the “whole men are evil” mentality continues. It’s misandry, plain and simple and that’s unappealing. She does undergo some growth as a character from her early days, but writers continue to revert to this lame argument, which is going to limit your audience to the self-loathing types.

Because his fundamental misunderstanding of the character extends into outright ignorance? Wonder Woman, after all, frequently opposes the Amazonian misandry by speaking in defense of the world of men when her sisters criticize it. Which is frequently. If anything, her opposition to that misandry is based on her belief in equality, inasmuch as the word can be applied to her and, say, Superman. Hudnall glosses over this with the “some” before “growth of character,” because he wants to ignore what is a defining quality of her character as currently conceived. His resistance to the manner of comeuppance she provides blinds him to the vicarious enjoyment others may take from it. Don’t believe me?

[S]he lacks personality. Any protagonist needs to be appealing in some way for the reader to identify with them or care about them.

He can’t even imagine a reader who might care about or identify with a strong female character who enjoys giving men who underestimate her the comeuppance they deserve. No more need be said.