Thursday, August 24, 2006

"Bi-poly switch". Yep, I had to look that one up too.


The full article is fascinating.

Comic Book Resources - CBR News - The Comic Wire:
"Wonder Woman's creator was William Moulton Marston, a Harvard-educated psychologist, lawyer and provocateur who invented a precursor of the modern polygraph... Realizing that strong female role models in comics were virtually nonexistent, Marston sold Gaines on the concept of a superheroine who would combine "all the strength of a Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman"...

In a letter to comics historian Coulton Waugh, he wrote, "Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world." Marston believed that submission to "loving authority" was the key to overcoming mankind's violent urges, and that strong, self-realized women were the hope for a better future...

With this unusual brand of feminism as his stated aim, Marston filled his stories with bondage (both male and female), spanking, sorority initiation rituals, cross-dressing, infantilism, and playful domination.

...Marston's erotic proclivities may have been plain to the general public, but his private life contained a bigger bombshell. The psychologist's superheroine was at least partly inspired by his wife, Elizabeth Holloway Marston, but there were actually two Wonder Women in the family . Marston wasn't just kinky, he was a polyamorist.

...[Olive] Byrne was a former student and research assistant who moved in with Marston and his wife in the late '20s and subsequently bore him two sons. The exact nature of the women's relationship is not known, but it's clear that they were very close. Not only did the two know about each other and raise each other's children, Elizabeth Marston formally adopted Byrne's children as her own and even appears to have named her daughter after Olive.


...In modern terms, Wonder Woman might be best described as a "bi poly switch." But with her creator's departure, the Amazon lost her enthusiasm for bondage and much of her proto-feminist message (within a couple years she had a newfound appreciation of matrimony, and "Sensation Comics" had become a romance book)."

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