The Wild, the Wacky, & the Weird

I’m not so sure this is about feminism anymore.

In case you haven’t heard from my numerous previous rants or the Internet in general, DC has just decided to cancel what could’ve become one of the most iconic variant covers ever. The cover, which featured a grinning Joker pointing a gun-shaped-hand at an understandably horrified Barbara Gordon (donning her badass new Batgirl attire), seemed to “trigger” people all over SJW-run places like Tumblr, Kotaku, and even Twitter. These outraged social justice warriors, ever the ones to call for peace and equality, demanded the cover be removed from existence or else they would write a very, very angry letter to DC filled with bad words and tears. The artist of the cover, Rafael Albuquerque, was so overwhelmed that he asked DC to pull the cover, which they promptly did.

So why exactly were people so upset about this cover, depicting a maniacal villain being, well, a maniacal villain? In Alan Moore’s 1988 classic graphic novel The Killing Joke, the Joker essentially shoots Barbara Gordon, paralyzing her from the waist down, and then strips her clothes off and forces her father, James Gordon, to view giant pictures of his naked, wounded daughter. The Joker does this, of course, because he is fucking crazy. He has always been fucking crazy, but it is believed that this particular instance was the very moment that made readers realize just how psychotic the Joker really could be.

Flash forward to today. Twenty-seven years later. Since then, the Joker has torn his own face off, harassed Batman on multiple occasions, and blown up a 15-year-old boy after brutally beating him. In other words, the Joker hasn’t exactly been a good guy during his 75 year run.

But this – this variant cover of a man (although Batman himself has questioned many times whether or not the Joker is, in fact, a man) holding hostage perhaps his most notable victim – this is the thing that pushes SJWs overboard. Why? Because it’s triggering. Because it’s misogynistic. Because it’s degrading toward women.

Never mind the fact that Harley Quinn – Joker’s long-time girlfriend – was in a physically abusive relationship with the bastard, and never mind the fact that the Joker killed Jason Todd, a fucking fifteen-year-old child, and never-goddamn-mind the fact that an innumerable amount of vicious, violent acts have occurred within the Batman and DC universe… no; none of those things matter. And why not, I ask? Why should this variant cover which takes place twenty-seven years after one of MANY violent DC events suddenly be the thing that triggers SJWs?

Because it isn’t about feminism. In fact, I don’t think it ever was.

Nowadays millennials seem to enjoy the act of complaining. More often than not they have every right to complain. This goes triple for women. We are living in a male-dominated society, and that sucks. It needs to change. Fortunately there are strong and important people, both female and male, who are trying their best to make a difference, but I’m not entirely sure Social Justice Warriors are among those people. In fact, I’d say SJWs care about social justice as much as PETA cares about animals. Because this variant cover has absolutely nothing to do with feminism, or women’s rights, or anything of the sort. If it triggers you, good. You should be scared of the Joker. He is an absolute mindless, soulless, heartless villain in every single sense of the term. Everybody should fear him. The fucker is barely even human, and he has always been portrayed this way.

So why the hell should we make an attempt to portray him any differently? Why should we tone down the most infamous, alarmingly evil baddie of all time? If I read Stephen King or a particularly chilling story that really fucking gets to me, I’m not going to ask the author to remove it from existence – I’m going to gain a ton of respect for him or her, because it takes a ton of creativity to forge and invoke that fear; that sense of dread and terror. This is not a depiction of the Joker even remotely sexually-harassing Batgirl, but rather an image that conjures the horrors the man is capable of, and that is something to celebrate. That is art. This is a cover that could have been one for the books (pardon the pun), but the goddamned Social Justice Warriors of the World had to step in and complain and destroy just that: a piece of art.

Keep in mind another thing SJWs strive for is a censor-free society. The irony burns the tongue.

This is not feminism. This is not social justice. This is whine-a-rama. This is “I want my opinion to be heard!” The Social Justice Warriors are not unlike the Westboro Baptist Church in that they are purely extremists who stand for essentially nothing while prancing about claiming to stand for something good. They want only to be heard; they seek only attention. They just want to win, even if they’re so unfathomably wrong. Everything they do anymore is selfish, inane, absurd, and nonsensical, and the absolutely worst part is that like a spoiled brat at a toy store they will not stop bitching until the rest of the world sighs and says, “Fine.”

• 17 March 2015
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