#about female character coded Jason Todd

[cowboymater]

none of the batboys are "woman-coded" or undergo the "female experience" bc you motherfuckers actually talk about them instead of stripping their backstory for parts and slapping them onto your special guy so that the 839584th whump fic on his ao3 tag can have some extra kick

[benbamboozled]

Not to mention that, since women are often side-characters, when someone at DC decides that it’s time to streamline the narrative and trim the “background lore” down to only the necessary details, guess who tends to end up getting dropped?

Women characters are always in disadvantage compare to the men. Whether dc decided to streamline, add, or change the lore; it's always the women that's cropped out of it. It's upsetting. Moreover when said women characters already have an established role to play and are important to the lore but they get replaced by dc with men characters instead

YEP! Because women and their place in narratives are seen as ultimately trivial/disposable compared to the REAL story and the REAL stars (aka whatever male character is farting about whatever nonsense at any given point in time).

[an-android-child]

There's no way you don't realize how backhanded this is. There's no way

ok but Jason Todd really IS so teenage girl coded. what is being a teen girl if not growing up and your dad doesn’t look at or treat you the same? what is being a teen girl but being heavily traumatized by the age of 15? what is being a teen girl but mourning who you were as a child? what is being a teen girl but not knowing how to handle what you feel and so you go the most direct, the most violent, the most destructive route? what is being a teen girl but the world changing you without your consent? what is being a teen girl but secretly wishing to be who you were as a kid, to be seen for who you were then? what is being a teen girl but fueling the rage from your youth into something that helps? what is being a teen girl but constantly being reminded of your father when you see yourself?

[lilacsandlillies]

I was going through the anti Jason Todd tag because I hate myself and want to understand where people who dislike him are coming from and one thing I kept seeing was annoyance at Jason fans who claim that Jason is female coded and realized that the term “female coded” might not be the best term to describe what we mean.

A female coded character in literature and media typically means a character that has no specified gender or otherwise does not have a gender but is obviously meant to be a stand in for a woman or female. Kind of like how Starfire has no specified race (due to being an alien) but is still obviously black coded based on the way she’s drawn and treated by the narrative.

This is slightly different than what we mean when saying that Jason is female coded. It’s not that Jason is literally supposed to be a stand in for a female character, it’s that the way a lot of characters treat him and a lot of the tropes used on him are things that usually saved for female characters, not big buff men like Jason.

To start with, being Robin is narratively (or at least was) very similar to being a woman in a story. Robin is a role made to complement Batman (who we all know is basically the ultimate male power fantasy). Robin’s role is to be an accessory to Batman. Robin can be smart, but not smarter than Batman. Robin can be strong, but not stronger than Batman. Hell, Robin is often kidnapped and used as a literal damsel in distress, a role often regulated for women as a whole.

What sets Jason apart from the other robins (except for Steph) in this regard is that they were allowed to be characters outside of Batman. Dick might not have been the “man” of the story when he’s with Bruce, but when he’s with the teen titans suddenly he’s the smart one who has all the answers. Jason’s Robin was never really allowed this.

Then we get to the most, controversial, part of Jason’s female coding. The fact the he was effectively fridged. Fridging is usually only referred to as frigding if it’s a female character, but Jason’s death checks pretty much all the other boxes needed. An incredibly brutal death that was more about Bruce’s feelings on it than Jason himself.

This is especially apparent when compared to the other Bat characters. For all the female coding, the only other Robin to actually be fridged was Steph (and we all know about the misogyny surrounding her death). Barbara was also kind of fridged during the killing Joke. The only female character to escape this is Cass (to my knowledge). When you look at it through this lens, the fact that the only other characters to be permanently damaged like this for Bruce’s story are female, it’s not hard to see where the idea that Jason is female coded comes from.

You can even find this in Jason’s origin story. Poor little orphan is saved by benevolent billionaire is a role usually saved for little girls, like in Annie.

Despite what you might think, this even continues after Jason’s revival. Jason is still used less as a character and more as a motivation for Bruce. He’s regularly called emotional and hysterical (terms usually used to refer to women).

Jason is first and foremost a victim. A role performed by women in most media. Men are expected to be stoic and “rise above” the things done to them as to not be victims, as continuously shown by the way characters like Nightwing are not allowed to be effected by the horrific things they go through. The fact that Jason is shown the be angry, and sad, and emotional, constantly, and the fact that he’s punished and vilified for it puts him in a place much more similar to a female character.

There’s a reason that so many Jason fans (that like him for a reason past “antihero with guns”) are female. For most characters, when you swap their genders there would be a pretty clear and big difference in the way their story takes place. If you swap Jason’s gender, the story takes place identically.

A lot of this is best shown in men’s reactions to Arkham Knight’s version of Jason. In that game, Jason is similarly angry and emotional, albeit for slightly different reasons. He is also still unmistakably a victim. You’d think the men playing would like him. After all he’s a big cool angsty guy with a lot of guns and muscles. Instead, a lot of men’s thought that he was whiny. That his feelings were annoying.

There’s also something to be said about how his autonomy is regularly undermined by Bruce (specifically in Gotham war) and how his decisions and feeling are constantly treated as if they’re worth less than Bruce’s, but that’s a discussion for another day.

[feyinvestigations]

Think about how Jason Todd was originally written in a very weird way in relation to gender. All of his most notable traits as robin (and arguably even currently) are more often ascribed to female characters. This weird gender coding for Jason Todd, specifically having as a child being highly emotional and his defining trait being his compassion, even being called hysterical at one point iirc, all paint him as an atypical male character. Those sorts of traits were usually regulated entirely to female characters at the time. And even though his currently incarnation is often conflated as a male power fantasy, a la modern Batman, the actual more accurate reading would be as a Victim power fantasy. Specifically, because his primary motivation at resurrection is revenge and justice by any means necessary, a common ideal found within victim power fantasy narratives. These victim power narratives that revolve around revenge are often regulated to female characters, making Jason stand out further as a female coded character, despite his more masculine traits. These facts all indicate indicate that the most correct way to move forward with his character is to have him be nonbinary. In this essay I will-

[redhoodinternaldialectical]

Having spent the last few weeks un-fridging Catherine Todd, let me tell you, I NEVER want to see another motherfucker complaining about how Jason was """fridged"""

Like, sorry folks but he just fucking wasn't!!! Even if he had been a female character, that would not have been a fridging. The narrative at all times was deeply concerned with his internal experience of the world, his motives and emotions, and always considered him a human being whose agency and autonomy needed to be considered and highlighted. At least half of Death in the Family is about Jason's wants and needs and his attempts to fulfill them. Jason constantly makes decisions that alter the course of the story.

"Oh but his death was used for the development of the other character and the tone of the narrative as a whole" yeah, no fucking shit, of course it was, that is the entire fucking point of killing a character off! When a character dies, they stop developing through their own story arc, so they can only effect the arcs of other characters. The fact that this is done disproportionately to women is only one part of what the concept of fridging is about and reducing it down to only that ignores the real meat of why fridging matters.

Fridging is about the way that female characters are killed off in ways that disregard their agency, write off any choices, emotions, or motivations they might have had as not worth examining, and pointing out that the reason female characters are so often killed this way is because women are thought of as being less capable of agency and less fully people than men.

A good way to tell if a character has been fridged is to ask yourself "Hmm, if this woman was replaced with a literal bitch, an actual four legged puppy dog, would the narrative meaningfully change?"

Catherine Todd was fridged for Jason. She has no opinions, no meaningful personality traits, no agency in her own story or basically anyone else's for that matter. She is sad. She is addicted. She is dead. That is the whole of her character. Her entire purpose is to be a bullet point of angst in Jason's backstory. If you replaced her with a dead dog, none of Jason's story would be meaningfully changed.

"Oh but she was a parent, all the Robins have dead par-" They why was it Willis Todd that got resurrected in order to turn Jason into the 'Damned Prince of Gotham' and not her? It's because misogyny. If you come to any other conclusion why Scott "Known to Write Misogynistically" Lobdell didn't make Catherine Todd the one to come back, you are fucking kidding yourself. She is a female character and was therefore not given the same consideration as the male characters, it is as simple as that.

We all have every right to rail against the way Jason was killed off, the way the narrative blames him for his own death, the ways that he has been badly mishandled. He's even a character that's suffered due to prejudice! The classism in the way he's handled is really strong! I also think there's a ton of value in an analytical comparison between the ways that Jason's mental health is treated and the origins of mental health stigma that are rooted in misogyny. The Jason Todd Hysteria Essay is a frequent reread for me.

However.

None of this makes him "female coded" and any serious comparison of how female characters are treated and how he is treated must inevitably run into the truth that he does benefit from all the privileges that a male character gets for being male. He is treated in classist and ableist ways, and both classism and ableism intersect with misogyny, but the fact of the matter is that he does not have direct misogyny wielded against him and the female characters around him suffer from misogyny to his benefit.

You can call his death obnoxious, a callow cash grab, poorly thought out, bad for his character, of overall detriment to society, et.c. and be perfectly justified in doing so

But if you claim that he was fridged you are factually incorrect and for the crime of ripping the label off of a feminist theory (and failing to learn what it means beyond the most reductive single sentence 'definition' possible) for the benefit of a male character I sentence you to having all of your socks dipped in musty ass bog water.

[sunnie-angel]

God it’s just so heartbreaking isn’t it? There’s no rest, there’s no peace, there’s never a concrete sense of self for him. All that’s left is this thing that he’s been made into and the new mission he crafts for himself.

And wouldn’t it be nice if that wasn’t the case? If there was some kinder, gentler way of simply being? If the parts that don’t fit right slowly lose their poking out edges, and that irritating itch of something being not right, like always having a clothing tag rubbing at his skin, slowly faded away?

I’ve head this head canon for a while that Jason has a complicated relationship with his body (and I’m really in my feelings about it tonight). He wakes up two feet taller and almost a hundred pounds heavier with scars he doesn’t remember getting. His body doesn’t move the way he remembers, things just too far or too close to reach. He wakes up from his grave and the first thing his body is is a weapon.

Just, Jason coming to see his body as a home instead of a weapon. Every time you use his shoulder as a pillow during movie nights. Or you ask him to open a jar because the lid’s on too tight. Sitting on his shoulders to get that last apple off the tree, way up high on a branch. He asks for your opinion on a job interview outfit and can’t stop the flush when you tell him he looks smart. Holding hands, and he starts to like how small your hand feels in his. Waking up together on cold winter mornings and letting you warm your cold feet on his shins (he’s not nearly as annoyed by it as he makes it sound, he runs hot anyway why not put it to use for someone he loves likes). For his birthday, you buy him a shirt because you think the colour matches his eyes. He’s never thought of his eyes as beautiful, especially with the Lazarus green in them, but maybe through your eyes he can see them in a new light.

It’s not as simple as Jason loving his body because you do, but he loves his body because you show him how to love it like a home.

- 🍂 (@fic-over-cannon)

this is so beautiful dude. i agree a thousand times and it makes me hurt thinking about it but also isn’t it so interesting to think about (<- freak scientist coded) like. i feel like there’s such a big body horror thing going on with him.

like when your teeth feel too big for your mouth but worse because your body doesn’t feel like your own. it’s like some sick version of puberty that he never got to really go through that was thrust into him. i feel like. isn’t it so sick to think about. that he dies and it’s in this horrific and tragic way. and he doesn’t even get to rest before he’s pulled back and it’s not his choice but he’s pulled back into this world and it’s the same but it can never be the same again because he died because he came back. i’m so ill thinking about it.

i like that he gets a bit of respite here where we can make it. thank you for sending this in i love every one of your takes

[necrotic-nephilim]

for the recent ask game, i’m really curious about your take on 7 + 8 :P

for the choose violence ask game!

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how the fandom acts about them?

i'll be so honest: Jason Todd. i know there's a lot of argument of "who has the worst fans" and i think that question is flawed and impossible to answer, but i will say Jason fans irked me so deeply. because i read mostly 90s era Batfam, i admittedly didn't have a lot of exposure to Jason for a while, expect for his New-52 runs i'd read years ago. and since i never liked him based on those runs, i could not understand *what* his fans liked about him, or where they got some of their headcanons/ideas from. i've never been more baffled. it ranges from "oh i don't agree but you do you, i guess?" to "what character are you talking about i am BAFFLED". and it soured me on Jason for so long that i actually hate read *most* of his pre-Flashpoint appearances just to understand what on earth people liked about him. and now i can say, i love him dearly, but i can also say, i still don't know what character his fans are talking about sometimes. and i hate the fanon version of Jason who feels almost, Deadpool-ified? with this self-aware slapstick humor but a sad soft interior but also sassy and will kill a man it's just. it feels very hollow to me and it has made me almost tempted to block his character tag more than once over the years bc sometimes certain takes make it difficult to even like him. i just have to tune it out or yell about it for hours.

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

i'm going to get particularly saucy with this one: that Dick Grayson has Eldest Daughter Syndrome. or more generally, that he was parentified. not a single ounce of Dick's backstory indicates him as being parentified. to be parentified you have to be a child taking care of other children either emotionally or physically because your parents are not fulfilling that role. and Dick was *never* a child at the time that another child was under Bruce's care. he has been an adult for the entirety he has known every other Batkid. and even then, the *only* one he was something you could akin to being a parent figure to was Damian, and Dick *chose* that. Dick was a grown-ass man in his late 20s who had the facilities and capacity to make the decision to be Damian's primary caretaker. he's never been parental toward any of the other Batkids, nor has Bruce ever forced upon him the role of having to raise them. did Bruce do a sort of questionable job with Dick? yeah. but i would argue Bruce did the best job with Dick of all the Batkids, and even if he was shitty with Dick, he couldn't parentify Dick bc there was no one for Dick to be parenting. and Dick wasn't parenting Bruce either. they just had a normal relationship of loving and caring for each other.

as for Eldest Daughter Syndrome i just.. i Do Not Like calling any male character "female coded" or "female rage coded" or "eldest daughter coded" because they're *not*. especially not in *this* medium. these are male characters, created by men, written by men 90% of the time, and written to be *male power fantasies*. nothing about Dick or Jason or any Batboy is female-coded bc they exist to be badass men. just because they show emotion and have complex relationships with Bruce doesn't make them suddenly women. Dick shows his anger in a very destructive, stereotypically "masculine" way. even if we strip it of gender, Dick doesn't exhibit most traits of Eldest Daughter Syndrome. he easily makes relationships with people his age, he has no issues telling Bruce no, he did not have caretaking responsibilities forced onto him by Bruce, he's not even really hyperindependent. Dick has a support system outside of the Bats, the fandom just ignores it. does Dick force caretaking responsibilities onto himself sometimes? can he be an overachiever? absolutely. but these are internal complexes that just come with making a character a superhero, it's a complex they all have. if i have to hear one more fan call him Eldest Daughter Syndrome-core or say he's a victim of parentification, i think I'll explode a little bit.

[sasheneskywalker]

Weekly Batman/DC Fic Recs (1)

This week I've read two delightful character studies, one focused on Barbara Gordon and the other on Jason Todd. There's also a hilarious SI/OC fic from the perspective of Tim Drake and two fantastic fics where Lonnie Machin/Anarky plays a major role. Apart from that, two delicious smutty fics got an update: Bruce/Dick/Jason college au and Slade/Jason western au. We also have an amazing DCU, MCU and X-Men crossover oneshot! Hope you enjoy the recs <3

Delta T by Havendance In one universe, mere seconds stop Barbara Gordon from sniping Black Mask. In another, she takes the shot.

G | No Archive Warnings Apply | Batman (Comics) | Helena Bertinelli & Barbara Gordon

this city is the place to be by Jezebunny Gotham city is going to be destroyed in twelve hours.

Jason doesn't see any point in stopping it.

What does he owe anybody, anyway?

T | No Archive Warnings Apply | Batman - All Media Types | Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne

Domestication Protocols for Nocturnal Fauna by rozaceous, vermillion_crown It’s been years since Tim's thought about the secret identities of Gotham’s winged wonders. A chance encounter while searching for college roommates that won’t burn the place down gives Tim a lead and the hope of new accommodations. The only thing he has to do is pretend that he doesn’t know anything.

Easy.

("—and they were roommates!" SI/OC edition)

T | Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings | Batman - All Media Types | Jason Todd/Original Female Character(s), Tim Drake/Original Male Character(s), Dick Grayson & Original Character(s), Original Female Character(s) & Original Male Character(s), Tim Drake & Original Female Character(s)

The Assassination of President Luthor by the Radical Lonnie Machin by NiteWrighter "Hi. I’m Lonnie. So I guess I should start out by saying, I don’t believe violence is a sustainable tool. It’s not. It’s a reflection of our ugliest, most base instincts. But it is the current language of the state, so I apologize for bringing my voice to the conversation."

President Luthor has been brutally killed by a magical weapon, and Anarky has claimed responsibility. The Justice League is struggling with the ensuing fallout, instability, suspicion, and speculation, while a power vacuum opens up in the world of the Rogues. What does a world without Lex Luthor look like? Is he truly gone? Has a greater chain reaction been kicked off by this single death?

T | Major Character Death | Superman - All Media Types, Justice League - All Media Types, DCU (Comics) | Clark Kent/Lois Lane, Diana (Wonder Woman) & Clark Kent & Bruce Wayne, Lana Lang/Pete Ross, Tim Drake/Lonnie Machin

The Half-Life of Sixty Seconds by sunnymusings "The problem with thinking like a detective is not actually that thinking like one is too strict or structured. There’s organization on a document, but Tim’s mind is not a bullet journal. It’s not a legal form, it’s not a spreadsheet, it’s not a ledger.

It’s messy and human and creative. Loose, unstructured, instinctual. Detectives aren’t good at solving cases because they work like machines; it’s much the opposite. It’s that creative mess which aids in seeing between the structure of presented facts, reading the code, and then cracking it. It’s like tracing a spider web back to its center. There’s an observable track leading exactly where one needs to go— a veritable method to the madness— but it’s still art, all the same, even to the broom that ruins it.

So, when Tim is presented with a countdown, it’s not just a mechanical, factual understanding of time that pushes hard against the inside of his ribs; it’s a too-clear visual of a digital clock-face, neutral and unyielding, counting down from sixty in his neocortex. Artistic and messy and emotional.

There is only one place to go once one is caught in the web."

Based on Red Robin #16. Missing Scenes and Relationship Building.

T | No Archive Warnings Apply | Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics) | Tim Drake & Lonnie Machin, Tim Drake/Lonnie Machin

Making The Grade by MelodramaticMrTails Jason partners up with the rich and beautiful Dick Grayson and quickly finds out the Wayne family secret- and that Dick wants him to join in on it.

E | No Archive Warnings Apply | DCU (Comics), Batman - All Media Types | Dick Grayson/Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson/Jason Todd

Nothing to Nobody by Jae_Cillian The kid—Jason—stared at Slade with wide, alert eyes. Big and round like a doe—startled in its grazing, frozen in the sights of a predator. He leaned forward, one hand still gripping the pistol but the other anchoring his weight against the floor as if to stand and chase after Slade. But with Slade’s eye on him, Jason didn’t dare move an inch. All tense lines and silent shudders of breath that Slade could see quake along the kid’s ribs, Jason reminded Slade of a stray dog. Snarling and snapping its canines when he got too close, but whimpering and whining when he walked away.

Slade wondered how long it’d take to tame the kid; and, thereupon, realized he might enjoy the challenge of it.

--

In which Slade, while chasing after the Joker gang's bounties and stolen payroll, finds Jason—battered, beaten, and abused at the gang's hands—alone in the mountains. Intrigued by the kid's feral tenacity, he offers Jason a chance at revenge.

E | Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings | Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Deathstroke the Terminator (Comics), Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics) | Jason Todd/Slade Wilson

Five Supersoldiers Walk Into a Bar by bittercape He spots him through the binoculars, far away and disappearing fast. Logan is, more than anything, a hunter. He knows how to watch, and he watches the sniper moving away, after a single well-placed shot. He moves just like Barnes did. Everyone has a particular way of moving, if you know how to watch. And Logan, as mentioned, knows how to watch.

Logan knows it cannot be him, knows he died, falling from a train. No normal human could survive that. And yet …

He drops down from the watchtower. He’ll catch hell for this, sure. But he has to know.

T | No Archive Warnings Apply | Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Comicverse), DCU (Comics), Deathstroke the Terminator (Comics) | Logan (X-men) & James "Bucky" Barnes, Logan (X-Men) & Natasha Romanov, Logan (X-Men) & Slade Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes & Slade Wilson, Natasha Romanov (Marvel) & Slade Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Slade Wilson

[devine-fem]

Pleaseeee who's out there prioritizing Damian's relationship w Tim Drake over his parents 😭😭 Im not mad I just want to talk

It’s an in general thing. I keep seeing, Tim loves his little brother. Damian calls Tim “habibi” and then… Timdami shippers but like thats a whole other thing. Or like in general batfam people saying we need more of ___ and Damian interactions… baby, when I tell you that these comic book composers need to be using their script paper and comic book ink to repairing Damian’s relationship with his parents who actually have an everlasting and important imprints on his character rather than your favorite batboy because you want more family dynamic and headcanon fuel…

Well, I tell you and I get called “weird” and “stupid” and “I don’t know what I’m talking about” when I’m the Damian Wayne fan account… oh… oh… but I don’t know what I’m talking about?! Please lord help us because if its not a post about how Jason Todd is female coded or Dick should adopt Damian or a post about all the horrible things Tim has done to Damian being fine because he hugged him once in a OOC Gotham book then no one cares anymore…

[tbcanary]

i think the thing that gets lost in the mix is that it doesn’t actually matter whether jason todd is coded as a woman or not. we can agree to disagree on that front. the issue is that you cannot go into the tags for a female character or make a post about women in comics without someone bringing him up, which takes the focus away from the people you actually want to discuss in favor of rehashing the same things about the fandom’s favorite white guy.

the question is not “is jason written as a woman” but, instead, are you aware of the ways in which jason has been used to further misogynistic tropes or diminish the storyline or characterization of female characters in comics, and are you contributing to those same trends within the fandom space. just my two cents.

[the-woker]

The whole Jason Todd is girl-coded debate thing admittedly just rubs me the wrong way.

I understand that there are people who consider gender as a concept and there are other people who consider gender to be something very real. Both are correct and very valid statements of expression, but someone who is genderless and has a heavy respect and fondness for the feminine and people with such experiences, I feel like what we are declaring 'girl-coded' should probably be a bit more analyzed and taken with more care.  

I have no ill-will to any of the people who post about this, they all seem like kind people, and everyone is entitled to their opinions and to posting them.  There is nothing wrong with projecting onto a character, identifying with their struggle and using that to cope with your trauma.  As someone who’s favorite character of all time is Jason Todd, and enjoys gender-weirdness,  and has been severely mistreated for being perceived as feminine before, I understand entirely. 

But there's a point when I can't help but feel uncomfortable with assigning being violent, a victim, “hysterical angry-like a girl”, expressing rage via screaming, and looking up to women in general as 'girl moments' and explicitly stating these as the reasons a male character is girl coded. And those have been the very specific points I have seen cited as what traits Jason has that make him "girl-coded."

I'm putting this all under a read more since this discussion is really not that deep, nor is it really relevant to the average Jason Todd tag surfer. It's just something I keep seeing talked about in the past few months.

Admittedly, just to begin with, the argument that what makes Jason ‘girl-coded’ is the fact that he is a victim in general, has strong connections with women, tends to like strong and muscular women, and has been vitriol in his screaming matches with other characters simply does not sit well with me as an explanation for what people are associating women with.  A female character can indeed do everything Jason did in a comic story, and I would enjoy it greatly, however staking these specific traits of his as the “feminine” ones is treading into a dangerous territory.

Especially since I’ve seen a few times now that people are claiming Jason and Batman’s fight in UTRH to be a Patriarchy metaphor and how Jason represents women’s struggles. The first problem I have with that claim, is very simply that Jason and Bruce’s fight is explicitly not about Bruce being a system that failed to protect Jason.

Nor is it about a pressure for Jason to return to conforming to Bruce and his rules.  Bruce wants him back with him, because Bruce loves Jason, but at no point does he attempt to force him to return to him, nor does he even force him to stop killing.  He certainly gets in the way and he prevents several of them, but when given the direct choice to either kill or force Jason to stop killing, he simply walks away and only intervenes after Jason attempts to kill Bruce himself. Calling this an analogy for women fighting against oppression by an organized system designed to exploit them, is not an apt metaphor, as likable and sympathetic as it is towards Jason, and I’d personally recommend avoiding it.

In general, on that topic.  The argument could be made for other male members of the Batfam (take Dick Grayson’s constant sexual harassment for being a ‘pretty boy’ for example.), but Jason is also simply just not a victim of the Patriarchy.

Unlike Stephanie Brown, Jason was accepted immediately by Bruce as Robin and as part of the family.  He was murdered by his mother for being an obstacle in her operation of stealing from starving people, and by a madman who killed him for being one of his nemeses.  His murder was upsetting but had nothing to do with him not presenting himself as society claimed he should, nor for not obeying said society's customs and arbitrary rules.

Under the Red Hood is a fascinating, engaging, philosophical, and extremely emotional piece of media and it’s a favorite for many people (including me) for a reason.  Highlighting Jason’s actions as being a ‘girl moment’ when he is intentionally trying to push past Bruce’s only boundary, however, is an uncomfortable idea to proclaim. Especially considering when and how Bruce tries to negotiate and reason with Jason. Jason quite literally holds their relationship, and his life, over Bruce in an attempt to get him to behave how he wants, claiming that he does so as an expression of femininity has horrible implications. Jason is entirely allowed to do what he wants (I enjoy it greatly. His violence is very sexy and honestly we should bring it back) but that is a gender neutral choice, and I wouldn’t say that this run nor his backstory have much in common with women’s struggles to label them as “clearly being such”.

Additionally, The narrative is also not portraying Jason as “hysterical”; this was his first proper return to comics after 20 years. The intention of the narrative is to challenge the morality of Batman and to open an in-universe line of discourse for a discussion that for years, has been, and still is relevant in the comic community.  

Jason’s death was notoriously the moment that Batman got closest to breaking his rule and so they brought Jason back to be the character who pushed him on why he maintained it.  They made Jason angry and violent to raise the stakes of what the Joker did to him, and to raise the question of if there was a crime so horrible that it was a moral failing to continue the pacifist approach to criminal reform.  Jason is being treated in a significantly kinder light than most of the characters we would traditionally see doing these actions.  We all agree Lock-up was a bad guy, we can agree that the League of Assassins is wrong, but we’re given a chance to take Jason at face value and are not immediately told how to feel despite the narrative showing us his violence in a raw and uncut way. Killing a bunch of drug dealers while rising in the ranks of the drug trade yourself is hardly a selfless act of good after all. 

Disclaimer 1:  I don’t think Jason is entirely wrong about many things.  But I simply do not believe Bruce “owes” him killing, and that it is wrong of Jason to demand this of him or anyone for that matter. Nobody owes you their innocence and you aren’t entitled to breaking anyone’s boundaries. 

Disclaimer 2:  I cannot stress enough how much I like Jason.  This post is not meant to make anyone feel bad, or make Jason seem like the “bad guy” of the fandom.  It’s simply a disservice to his character to write him off as nothing more than an angry victim and call it an expression of femininity, and a reminder to be a bit more careful when labeling and assigning traits. 

[dg-outlaw]

Batfam Retail and Character Agency

So I've been thinking about how some people take issue with certain ships in the Batfam, especially in fanfic or general fanon. For example, JaySteph and how people will cry "ince$t" when these two or other characters are paired up in a ship.

One, I don't think these people know how biology/ancestry works because the only blood related members of the Batfam are Bruce, Damian, and Kate Kane despite them being called the BatFAM. Two, most of Bruce's adopted children were older or barely interacted in a sibling way as far as growing up together. Sure, they might have a sibling-coded relationship and are legally related, but the best example I can think of in how the Batfam works is not the Brady Bunch or Cheaper by the Dozen, but that they all are or have been co-workers at the same minimum wage retail store. Friendships, drama, dating, rivalries, and other such nonsense is sure to happen. It's called forced proximity and shared experience.

I'm thinking of writing up a humorous parallel of who's who in the retail realm when it comes to the Batfam, but including it here would make this post WAY too long

The other annoyance, that I sort of get IF looked at from the POV of DC editorial or writers (if that's their ill-conceived intention), is the idea that a character, more specifically a female character, is just getting "passed around". Instead, my only guess is that whoever is complaining about this is saying that the male character should be given a new, shiny, fresh off the showroom floor love interest and not some high-mileage used model. I use a car reference here because that's exactly how that female is seen when a person says this, whether they acknowledge it or not.

The female character, for example: Stephanie Brown, is no longer a person with her own autonomy and ability to choose or have agency. She's an object to be owned, possessed, or used for the sake of forwarding the male character's arc or to add drama (e.g. fridging or damsel in distress). To imply that Stephanie Brown (or any other character) is being "passed around" from Tim Drake to Jason Todd is to imply that Steph doesn't have nor did she ever have choice in the matter (again, JaySteph isn't even canon, but if it were to become canon, some people would still have a fit). And yes, these are fictional characters, but in writing them (whether officially by DC or in fanfics) they should be treated as real people with real choices and not some object or virginal "bride" for the male protagonist where you'd retcon past relationships.

Has Stephanie Brown always been treated fairly in comics? No. Has Jason? Also, no. Would pairing these two be some sort of "passing around" or "sloppy seconds" for Jason? If I have to answer that for you or you think 'Yes', then you probably don't see women as people. Canonically, I think Jason has had more love interests so if anything Steph would be the one getting someone else's "sloppy seconds", thirds, fourths, etc.

Again, see the above about retail co-workers. Steph once dated Tim. It was their first job and their first real, young love. It was good, it was bad, they made out in the break room, they broke up in the middle of Customer Service, etc. Former employee, Jason, comes by and picks up random shifts when Bruce is really desperate. Steph and Jason meet and hang-out over a few shifts, even though Bruce doesn't trust either of them and would rather they work somewhere else. Maybe they got stuck working Black Friday and the holidays together and boom, sparks happened. It's maybe weird or awkward for Tim, but Tim fell in love with the snack and soda machine vendor, Bernard, so it's really no big deal.

So if someone can date their co-worker, break-up, and then date another co-worker, it should be none of your damn business (assuming everything is legal, consenting, and above board) if none of those people are you.

Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.

[mintacle]

Jason Todd being girl-coded, you've opened my eyes! You are so right and suddenly a lot of things about him make sense (including why I like him so much), especially with how the narrative treats him (right down to turning a morally complex character into a straight-up card-carrying villain who eats puppies, ironically right around the time they did that to another female character, Talia). Jason is even written how I (a girl) tend to write angry victim power fantasy female characters. Like yes babygirl, scream and rage against the heavens about how unfair it all is!

I remember a post calling Jason "the Punisher for girls" except... yeah he kinda is. The Punisher is a male power fantasy with all that implies, while Jason is such a girl power fantasy and written with a lot of the usual negative narrative bias female characters usually get.

Except if we're honest and look past the superficial similarities of lethal force and guns, the narrative role of Batman is far more like the Punisher than Jason. Jason's role is the Punisher's daughter. Jason is if Lisa came back and was angry after what happened and big parent man Frank had to try to keep his (hysterical emotional angry-like-a-girl) daughter from crossing his arbitrary lines because she was going "too far" and tragically, he's unable to "save" her from herself and he must Move On while his child gets locked up or lies dying behind him (I can seriously imagine exactly how a proper Lisa-is-back plot would go down it's crazy how similar it'd be to Jason's return).

And another way Jason is girl-coded is that he's mentored by Talia, a woman. In comics you don't see male characters mentored by female ones often. Sometimes they can be taught specific skills by them for a brief time (like Tim and Shiva) but Talia's role as Jason's primary mentor and caretaker for several years is pretty unusual in comics.

True!! I'm glad my posts resonated with you so much. :)

I don't really know anything about the Punisher so I can't add my opinion to the mix, but other people will probably recognize your point.

But! On the subject of female characters mentoring male characters @benbamboozled made a great post actually about how women are seen as Having A Specific Skill or Expertise to teach whereas men are mentors For All, or For Life. And yeah Jason does break the rule absolutely! But we also don't get to see to much of that on page. He is in Talia's care for years, but other than Lost Days and utrh we just don't get to see these two interact. I either made a post or drafted and forgot about it, how DC won't publish Talia and Jason working together because it is vital to DC's agenda of keeping them marginalized that they each be alone nomatter how much reason and history they have to be in more frequent and meaningful contact.

At the same time, we really only see Talia caring for Jason in a motherly context, she isn't cast quite in the role of a mentor, rather sending him around to teachers than teaching him herself. It's a step in the right direction, but the fact of any mentoring and most interactions occuring off-screen, as well as their relationship being ignored later, or ret-conned like in the utrh movie where Talia was kind of replaced with Ra's.

For me a lot of Jason's girl-coded aspect arises from his opposition to Bruce who embodies patriarchal ideals. To some extent Jason is in the role of every person who has been let down by the patriarchy. The system we were told is for our benefit as well and which has let us down. It's about how we were let down by this world we thought was fair when we were smaller and trusted to be protected. It's about how our own father's have let us down, even if the time we last thought of them as protectors might have been many, many years ago.

None of these experiences are exclusionary to women either. I am not a woman, but I am queer. And I have been let down both by the idea that my father could ever be my protector instead of the one I needed protection from. And I have been let down by the idea I used to have of a world that would give me a voice without me having to prove myself every step of the way.

The need I have for more interaction between Talia and Jason is so much about two people villainized and victimized by the same patriarch-favoring narrative bonding and rising to challenge and upset the status quo. While I am aware that it will never happen and that DC already left Winnick a lot of leeway to have made Talia play such a type of role at all, logically it should be what follows.

Jason is girl-coded, but he also drinks his respect-women juices.

[who-always-pays-their-taxes]

thought maybe i could try to explain it a bit better since you seem to genuinely want to know why people got ansty at your post A character being "blank"-coded is when a writer could not put a certain type of character into their media, so they tried to give them characteristics representing that type so people can still relate.

A common example is kids' TV full of non-human characters, like Backyardigans. The writers can't make the characters a certain race, cause y'know, they are all neon coloured animals, so they'll "code" them to add representation (ie, Tyrone is a black-coded character). Same is true for queer characters before it was possible to directly add them into media. Instead, certain characters would just be queer-coded, without overtly stating their sexual or gender identity. Thus...Jason can't be "teenage girl coded" because if the writers wanted him to represent a teenage girl, they just would have made him a teenage girl. Teenage girls existed in comics in the 80s, there was nothing stopping them from giving Batman a female sidekick. Every single thing they did with Jason Todd, they could have done with a female character named Jennifer Todd or something. There is absolutely nothing wrong with discussing how you relate to Jason, but the language you used is the problem. No male character created post 1912 can be "female-coded". The "coded" language is WIDLY misused by fandom as a whole (especially superhero fandoms), mainly as a way to virtual signal that they are "diverse and progressive" without actually having to care about any of the characters that are women or poc. Because if your white male character is "female-coded", that's basically the same as carrying about female characters, right? So, you can see how people immediately got up in arms about it. Like. What if someone wrote an entire post about how "black-coded" tom holland's spiderman is because of XYZ? About how relatable he is to black kids? and then in the tags said "it sucks that people don't talk about miles morales :/". You can probably see why people would immediately jump on the idea that you are engaging in that same behaviour. you dont have to post this/respond if you don't want to, I just wanted to give a new perspective

Actually this helps so much, I really wasn’t trying to be disingenuous, I just couldn’t figure out exactly what I did wrong because i do want to learn from my mistakes. That post was written & posted like real quickly so I definitely didn’t think abt the terminology I was using to explain how i relate, but now I get it and I will go back and re-write the post a bit and keep that in mind for future reference. Thank you sm!! <33

[kiseiakhun]

you’re so right but jason todd is so woman coded. and i could go into heavy detail

Listen, Jason Todd can be woman coded because you want him to be woman coded. You know it in your heart. You don't have to provide Irrefutable Canon Proof to prove your point, unless you find that kind of activity fun and rewarding, in which case provide away because I love batshit theories about canon and I am all ears. It just drives me crazy because like, listen. What people say are "women coding" are like, normal tropes that have been applied more to MALE characters than female characters because like... even when women were allowed to be people, their main point in the narrative was to be a prop to a man's story. Even when they were well developed, fully realized characters within their own right, their significance within the narrative was to support a man's journey. Like, I've heard criticisms about fridging that say Alexandra DeWitt was a tragic character from the start, that she had all the hallmarks of being a victim right from her introduction, and it doesn't matter! The point was that she was part of a long line of women who died for the man's story to move forward. It doesn't matter if she was doomed from the start. It doesn't matter if she was a dynamic, complex character who did get focus within the story. It doesn't change the fact that her inclusion in the story was to only serve Kyle's narrative.

So it drives me a little insane to see people argue that this male character is woman coded because he has an emotional arc focused on how other people have wronged him and we see him at his lowest point having a mental breakdown and experiencing irrational emotions because "that's a woman's story". No? It's not? Like historically it's NOT. Men are allowed to feel the full spectrum of human emotion. Men are allowed to buckle under the weight of all the burdens they carry and scream their sorrows out to the world. That's. That's not a woman's story. Achilles wept in the Iliad. Macbeth was flawed and poignant and allowed to be a fully developed person while Lady Macbeth was a scheming schemer from the start. Emotional arcs, through antiquity into the modern day, have been given to men! Men's stories are full of how they've been hurt, how they've been disenfranchised. Underdog stories are an entire genre within themselves. Emotional arcs have been written for men from the dawn of literature.

Like I keep seeing the same argument about how male protagonists have to be stoic and manly men and show no emotions and be hyper successful providers and I want to tear my hair out. No! No they don't!! You are describing a hyper specific genre of action heroes and like, one type of video game protagonist that was popular in AAA titles from the late 2010s. Oh my god. Please read more books. Please watch more movies. I'm losing my mind. Male protags are not like this as a rule BECAUSE IT'S BORING. BECAUSE WE DON'T WANT TO WATCH THE STORY OF A SUCCESSFUL MAN BECOMING EVEN MORE SUCCESSFUL. THAT'S A SPECIFIC TYPE OF POWER FANTASY THAT NOT EVERYONE ASCRIBES TO ASIDJDHDH READ MORE BOOKS.

I'm fine. I'm fine.

Anyway. Sorry anon I didn't mean to dump all this in your ask. I have just been thinking about this since yesterday and it's been driving me bonkers and also I'm a bit tipsy right now. Tell me about why Jason is female coded. I'll find my post about why Kyle is a girl YA protagonist and reblog it in solidarity.