#says the guy who's been proposing to betty all throughout the comic's history

[bughead-in-the-comics]

From Marriage Mirage, Archie's Girls Betty and Veronica #51 (1960).

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

This going to sound harsher than I mean it to but...I think there is a certain subset (and I really do think it is a subset and NOT the majority, far from it) of female fans who are in their own way as guilty in regards to Peter’s character as they are of what a subset (albeit a way more vocal and currently in charge subset) of male fans are guilty of in regards to MJ’s character.

  They are very quick to throw the shade at the character (even throw him under a bus at times) without either properly contextualizing the specifics of a situation they are talking about or else not bothering to place themselves in his shoes and try to imagine realistically how me might feel.

  Or else they simply don’t try to ask “Okay Spider-Man is doing this thing that seemingly makes him look bad. Let me consider if there is a believable enough justification for his actions before I commit to condemning the character.”

  On tumblr I’ve seen that more and more among some posters in particular female ones (far from all of them though, like I said I believe them to be a minority) who clearly do LIKE Spider-Man, both as a series and as a character, nevertheless throw out shade along the lines of:

 -          Well he just makes such poor life decisions

-          He’s such a MESS, God get your life together Peter

-          What an asshole he was for not wanting to meet Mj because he didn’t realize she was pretty

-          Peter has such an EGO, look at whenever he used to interact with other heroes

-          Peter is so self-centred wow

-          MJ and Felicia and Gwen are too good for Peter

   Saying Peter makes poor life choices is untrue half the time and only true the other half of the time within the context of a dramatic entertainment series wherein it’d be boring if certain concessions were not made.

  Saying his life is a mess is intrinsically idiotic for the same reasons saying MJ sucked for worrying about Peter and complaining about his life as Spider-Man the way she did in the 90s. If YOU were in either of their positions and had the same histories, the same emotional attachments would YOU be much different? Would YOUR life be totally in order when you spend a large chunk of your time being a superhero both to financially support yourself and you know for ENTIRELY ALTRUISTIC REASONS? Would YOU honestly NOT act the way MJ did in the 90s?

 These sorts of attitudes to me demonstrate a really, really weird dismissal of the (relative) realities of life as or with a superhero. It’s like Peter being Spider-Man somehow ‘doesn’t count’, like he’s going out to play sports or something as opposed to actually being something important that should be taken into account when analyzing his life. Like...the entire premise of Spider-Man very much hinged upon the notion of showcasing the realities of life as a hero, how it came with a cost and didn’t fix everything. Like Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man No More literally SHOW you that NOT being Spider-Man WOULD allow his life to NOT be a mess, but that’s the price he pays for making sure nobody else loses THEIR Uncle Ben.

  Did Peter used to have an ego? Yeah...as did you know...EVERY Marvel hero under Stan Lee. Shit Silver age Superman had a humungous ego. It’s a trope something you don’t take 100% at face value. That smoothed out with his maturation and whilst he still had an ego at times, that was a debilitating flaw, just something that happened every once in a while as it would for a lot of people.

  Not to mention after what he has lived through and how hard he is on himself most of the time SOME ego is surely forgivable, healthy even. Which brings me to the whole ‘he thinks everything revolves around him’ argument.

  No...he doesn’t. He just holds himself to an incredibly high standard due to an obviously highly traumatic event he went thorugh growing up compounded by a few other similar events (Gwen’s death) as well as threats to his life and those around him by individuals specifically out to get him (Betty Brant was targeted at least 3 times in the Ditko run).

 Is it any wonder he’d be somewhat self-centred? And not even self-centred in a selfish way, self-centred in a ‘I suck, I let everyone down, I should have done better.’ Kind of way which is a million miles away from say pre-heart injury Tony Stark kind of self-centred.

 And finally the thing about not wanting to meet MJ...I’m sorry...how many male and female teenagers would NOT have been apprehensive over a blind date their old fashioned Mom set up for them out of fear that the date will be unattractive. Especially when in canon the qualities mostly pushed about her was that she would allegedly ‘make a good housewife’. 

 That isn’t a ‘Peter Parker is shallow’ thing or a ‘men are shallow’ thing. That’s a ‘teenagers who’re naturally immature and inexperienced with dating, romance, sex, etc tend to be shallow’ thing. 

 Don’t lie to me and pretend like the pre-Parallel Lives 14-18 year old Mary Jane herself would have been all for meeting her aunt’s neighbour’s geeky ass nephew. She wouldn’t have been and we all KNOW she wouldn’t have been. And that’s okay, that’d be realistic and entirely in keeping with how most teens (male or female) would feel in that situation.

 Let me be clear there are MALE readers guilty of this too (especially on CBR) but maybe it’s because I spend more time here in my (admittedly far from comprehensive) observations the fans who say stuff like that tend to be female more often than male.

  It’s nowhere near AS bad as the shit that unjustifiably gets thrown at Mary Jane mostly by male fans, but whilst collectively it might be worse each accusation is as equally unfounded.

  And as someone who truly loves both those characters I loathe seeing either of them unfairly thrown under the bus that way by people who aren’t even bothering to TRY to justify what the characters are doing out of laziness, a desire to be snarky or just enjoying the act of ripping into them.

  In much the same way a lot of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings fans these days have been defencive and protective of Luke and Frodo in light of the mass shade thrown at both characters, I’ve become more and more like that towards Spider-Man in recent years. I’ve been like that with Mj for ages but only recently have I felt it necessary to extend it to Peter too.

 I don’t know WHY exactly these sort of ill considered, narrowminded, half assed criticisms are emerging more and more these days. I can’t blame it on the existence of other Spider characters because I’ve more frequently seen this stuff stem from people who didn’t even discuss guys like miles or Kaine or Spider-Gwen. Just Peter himself.

  The hard truth is...I think gender might be the biggest factor.

 Like I said I really do think this is a MINORITY of female fans who say the stuff I’ve discussed but I think for them there is a certain lack of empathy or at least attempt to honestly see through the eyes of Spider-Man himself because they are female and he is male.

 Whilst this doesn’t seem to happen much at all in Harry Potter fandom (which might possibly be owed to Harry being a male character written by a woman), critically the HP narrative is mostly utterly dominated by seeing through Harry’s eyes it makes identifying with him less of a leap as compared to Spider-Man where there is more ‘distance’ between the character and the reader.

The Spider-Man series is mostly from Peter’s POV but whilst Harry Potter rarely deviates away from Harry is experiencing at any given moment within his own skin, Spider-Man cuts to other scenes and other characters and even presents scenes with Spider-Man from their POV very frequently. It’s perhaps the natural pay off to the comic book medium vs a novel. You do have to SEE your protagonist from the outside whereas with a novel you can much more easily be on the inside looking out.

 I think because of that relative distance, for some (but far from all) female Spider-Man readers it becomes easier to emotionally/mentally not make the leap into his head and really questioning why he thinks, feels and acts in the ways that he does beyond what is on the surface level presented to us.

 Peter talks back to the Fantastic Four when he first meets them. It must be because he’s an asshole and not because he’s you know, a teenager, who just lost his Dad, is desperate for cash, is somewhat naive and used to being an entertainer and wrestler

  Although I think at the end of the day a character can be relatable and identifiable regardless of what their identity might be (skin colour, gender, etc), I do feel that male readers of Spider-Man are probably going to be more inclined towards empathising with Peter and inclined towards trying to see if there might be an explanation for his actions.

  The reverse holds true as well. It’s painfully obvious that 90% of the garbage criticisms levelled against Mary Jane throughout her history stemmed from mostly (but again not all) male readers who were simply not even trying to put themselves in her shoes or else couldn’t.

  Okay sure, you could argue institutionalized sexism or the larger proportion of male to female Spider-Man readers is the reason there seems to be way more male MJ bashers than female Peter bashers, as well as using that to explain why the female Peter bahsers still seem to like the character on some degree whereas MJ’s loudest bashers tend to just hate on the character.

 However I’d also propose that a big reason for one group’s larger and more intense negative feelings compared to the other stems again from the genders involved.

 Male readers are going to find it comparatively harder to make the jump into MJ’s head and seeing things from her POV than they would Peter’s simply because they are men and she is a female character.

 It’s far from impossible and I think most male fans do make the jump. But it helps to explain why so many do not. The problem is exacerbated by MJ being a supporting cast member and thus her POV and panel time is given far less breathing space than Peter’s, who’s story and POV dominate the narrative. So when MJ is compalaining about Peter’s life as a hero to him in a scene from his POV it’s challenging for male readers to take a step back and consider HER pov.

  I’m not even calling that some kind of soft core misandry or misogyny.

 I just think it’s something that naturally occurs for a lot of people as a consequence of life and the style of storytelling weare discussing.

 Doesn’t make it cool to do though.

 Stop bashing MJ AND Peter and try to justify anything they do before you tear into them.