Wonder Woman Unbound

by Hanley, Tim

  Ms. also had a book-publishing division, which put together a collection that reprinted twelve Golden Age Wonder Woman stories.* The book was prefaced by an article on the history of the Amazons by Phyllis Chesler and a lengthy introduction by Steinem. The comics were divided into four sections: “Origins,” “Sisterhood,” “Politics,” and “Romance,” and Steinem provided a brief introduction for each as well.

  After years of decline and increasing irrelevance, Wonder Woman teamed up with the women’s liberation movement to restore the character to her former glory. The editors at Ms. were fans of the original Wonder Woman and saw her as a feminist icon. Edgar wrote that she hoped the new direction for the series would “return our heroine to the feminism of her birth,” and Steinem echoed these sentiments, writing that she wanted to see “the feminism and strength of the original Wonder Woman—my Wonder Woman—restored.”

  However, when the women at Ms. talk about “the feminism of her birth,” they’re referring to the Marston era. His feminism was complicated, filled with contradictions and some troubling fixations. With their celebration of the original Wonder Woman, Steinem and her friends glossed over the more problematic bits of the character and focused on the areas that reflected their own modern feminist beliefs. Their depiction of Wonder Woman restored parts of the original, but ultimately they re-created Wonder Woman in their own image for a new generation.

  The Liberal Feminism of Ms. Magazine

  Ms. magazine has rightly been called “the most widely recognized publication of liberal feminism.” At the core of feminism is the idea that women deserve the same social and political rights and privileges as men, but the women’s liberation movement grew rapidly and branched off in innumerable directions. “Liberal feminism” is a term that described a wide range of these many branches. Words like “liberal” can be tricky because yesterday’s “radical” is today’s “liberal” is tomorrow’s “conservative” as more and more radical voices emerge. It’s a term with shifting meanings. But for the early 1970s, “liberal feminism” is a good description for Steinem and Ms. magazine, especially in contrast with more radical feminist beliefs.*

  Many radical groups thought that patriarchy was so pervasive that every aspect of society was rooted in male dominance, and so they’d have to tear it all down to accomplish anything for women. Working with the government or participating in things like marriage and traditional child rearing was seen as colluding with the enemy. Instead, radical feminists banded together to come up with ways to fix society on their own.*

  Some thought that marriage was a way to keep women down and that traditional romantic love was just a fantasy; some decided that lesbianism was the way to go. Others looked to science and hoped that artificial reproduction could free women from the shackles of the nuclear family and domesticity and maybe even eliminate the need for men altogether. Whatever the specifics of the plan, the overarching theme among radical feminists was that society was rigged against women and that true liberation could only come from escaping the existing structures. It wasn’t women who needed to change, but the world as a whole.

  Liberal feminists were not as extreme. Rather than replacing oppressive societal structures, they tried to work within existing systems to improve the lives of women. One of the first groups to come out of the women’s liberation movement was the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966. NOW’s Statement of Purpose, written by Betty Friedan, declared: “The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.” The Equal Rights Amendment was of paramount importance to NOW and liberal feminists, and notable leaders including Friedan and Steinem appeared before Congress to support it. Equality was the ultimate aim, and both Friedan and Steinem led a march through New York City in 1970 as part of the Women’s Strike for Equality.

  Alongside their legislative efforts, liberal feminists focused on self-improvement. Mary Peacock, an editor at Ms. from 1972 to 1977, said that the magazine’s version of feminism was based on “self-esteem and independence.” “How-to” articles dominated the magazine, based on the editors’ belief that their average reader wanted to take more control of her life by doing things for herself. Women’s health issues were a common topic, most notably sexual health; there were articles with information concerning birth control, abortion, and the value of owning one’s own speculum. There were also practical home repair tips in the regular “Populist Mechanics” column, as well as detailed instructions about how to start a women’s caucus in the workplace or a feminist group in your home.

  Instead of looking outward at the problems of patriarchy and wanting to tear down the system, Ms. advocated looking inward to improve oneself. There was a critique of patriarchy inherent in this approach: the implied message was that it was more beneficial for a woman to be independent and take care of herself than to rely on a man.

  Self-improvement was a substantial task, and it required some inspiration. The sisterhood of the women’s liberation movement offered support and encouragement, but there was another aspect of liberal feminism that many women found empowering. This hope for a new, more equal future was actually rooted in a powerful past.

  Originary Matriarchy

  A major difference between radical and liberal feminism was their preferred historical text. The radicals tended to favor Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, first published in 1949. De Beauvoir famously wrote that woman

  is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.

  This is why radical feminists were so leery of existing social structures. The entire history of the world was rooted in the idea of men as the default, and thus everything was stacked against women.

  Liberal feminists didn’t hate The Second Sex by any means. It was a classic, and it well described the current predicament of women in society. For the origins of humanity, though, many liberal feminists turned to Elizabeth Gould Davis’s The First Sex, which was first published in 1971. Clearly a response to de Beauvoir, Davis argued that male domination hadn’t always been the default. Instead, matriarchy was the original state of humanity and patriarchy later took over. The theory is known as originary matriarchy, and it quickly became popular.

  The First Sex started at the beginning of our existence and argued that humanity was first female, not just figuratively but literally. The first human beings were women who reproduced through parthenogenesis, a form of asexual reproduction where an egg doesn’t need to be fertilized by an outside source. Parthenogenesis occurs in several plant species as well as a few types of insects, lizards, and other creatures. It’s never been observed naturally in any sort of mammal, much less in humans, but accuracy wasn’t at the core of The First Sex. Davis also wrote that “the first males were mutants, freaks produced by some damage to the genes caused perhaps by disease or a radiation bombardment from the sun. Maleness remains a recessive genetic trait like color-blindness and hemophilia.”

  Matriarchies ruled human society after the males arrived. Davis cited worship of a Great Goddess as evidence of these matriarchies, as well as snippets of myths and histories of early civilizations. However, matriarchy was later overthrown when men, resenting their inferior role, took over and suppressed women. This marked the shift from “the previous age of peace and non-violence to the barbarism of the patriarchal age.” Female deities became male, and history was rewritten to remove any evidence of female rule. Thus, only these snippets remained to allow Davis to formulate her theories.

  Similar theories predated The First Sex, and two historians are particularly key figures. The first was Helen Diner, the English pseudonym of Austrian author Bertha Eckstein-Diener. Diner began her book Mothers and Amazons with the declaration that “in the beginning, there was
woman”; she argued for parthenogenesis as well. The second was J. J. Bachofen, a student of mythology and ancient history who argued that matriarchy was the most important cultural stage of every society. The maternal values of matriarchy, or what he called “mother right,” led to order, religion, and morality, creating a strong foundation for these societies before men took over.

  Ever since these theories first appeared, historians, biologists, and all manner of other educated experts, male and female, have pointed out the many inaccuracies behind originary matriarchy and The First Sex specifically. There are sporadic instances of female-led societies in human history, but the idea of some universal matriarchy at the dawn of all things just doesn’t hold up, nor do Davis’s biological ideas. Nonetheless, Davis was very popular. Women could now view themselves as more than an oppressed Other; they were the inheritors of the original, utopian state of humanity.

  Some of the principal proponents of Davis and originary matriarchy could be found in the offices of Ms. magazine. When Davis died in 1974, Ms. ran an obituary that glowingly praised her work. Rhoda Lerman summarized Davis’s core arguments and declared, “The true history of woman was rewritten in The First Sex.” Also, The First Sex regularly appeared on suggested feminist reading lists compiled by Ms. magazine.

  In a 1973 issue, Ms. published Jane Alpert’s manifesto “Mother Right: A New Feminist Theory” with an introduction by Steinem. Alpert referenced Bachofen with her title, and she discussed originary matriarchy at length in the article. Like Bachofen, Alpert believed that the maternal nature of women was the power behind past matriarchies, and the power that feminists should harness now. The article was controversial. Many feminists criticized Alpert for reaffirming the qualities that the patriarchy used to limit women, i.e., the loving, motherly role, a role that often kept them in the home and out of the workplace. Steinem and Ms. stood by Alpert, taking a lot of heat for doing so.

  Part of this outrage came from some issues with Alpert herself, who had a rather checkered past, but a lot of it came from a growing stance against anything that referenced originary matriarchy.* Many radical feminist groups thought that a past matriarchal age was pure fantasy and that by rooting women’s liberation in some sort of fairy tale, the real-world potential of the movement became nonexistent. Despite these criticisms, originary matriarchy remained a popular theme among Steinem and her cohorts.

  It’s ironic that the camp that believed in past matriarchies was the camp that was least interested in directly overthrowing the patriarchy and instituting female rule. Originary matriarchy implies a sort of superiority for women, but equality was the watchword of Ms. and liberal feminism. Rather than looking to their matriarchal past as a blueprint for the future, they saw it as a source of inspiration to restore dignity and pride to womanhood. Rediscovering their history was empowering; it told women of an inherited strength and nobility that they didn’t know they had. It also reinforced the importance of sisterhood by showing that women who worked together could achieve great things. All of this came together in Ms. magazine’s adoption of Wonder Woman as a feminist mascot.

  The Amazon Connection

  While there were massive divisions and differences among the many branches of feminism in the 1970s, there was one thing everyone agreed on: they all loved the Amazons. For instance, Ti-Grace Atkinson, a radical feminist and the founder of the creatively named group the Feminists, called her 1974 collection of essays Amazon Odyssey. Jill Johnston, a sort of flower child/lesbian feminist and author of Lesbian Nation: The Feminist Solution, titled one of the book’s chapters “Amazons and Archedykes.” Amazons were everywhere in the women’s liberation movement, and nowhere were they more popular than among the advocates of originary matriarchy.

  If you believed in past matriarchies, clearly the Amazons would have been of great interest to you. And if you were keen on the Amazons, then Wonder Woman would most definitely be your kind of heroine. When Steinem and her friends adopted Wonder Woman as a feminist mascot, they merged her Amazon heritage with the theories of originary matriarchy to make her a representative of womankind’s lost past. Steinem wrote that Wonder Woman was “just one small, isolated outcropping of a larger human memory. And the girl children who love her are responding to one small echo of dreams and capabilities in their own forgotten past.”

  Chesler was even more thorough than Steinem. Her essay in the Ms. Wonder Woman book was called “The Amazon Legacy” and addressed the universal reach of originary matriarchy. It began with an imagined meeting between herself, Diner, and Bachofen.* All three were in conversation with an incredulous fictional interviewer, who stated that the Amazons were merely myths. Chesler, Diner, and Bachofen disagreed, saying that the myths were more than mere stories and that women once ruled the world.

  In her original work, Diner saw the ancient Greek wars with the Amazons as a pivotal turning point in history, casting it as a battle over whether patriarchy or matriarchy would shape European society. Bachofen believed that the extremism of the Amazon culture was “a step forward to a purer form of life” and that warrior women were an important part of all developing matriarchies.

  For Chesler, it wasn’t just the Amazons of Greek myth that were important but the concept of Amazonism generally. The takeover and suppression of matriarchies by patriarchal forces was a universal occurrence, and there were Amazons of all types now long forgotten across the world. Turning to Marston’s Wonder Woman, Chesler found that “many genuine Amazon and matriarchal themes are portrayed,” making Wonder Woman the heiress of this matriarchal past. She even read Hippolyte sculpting baby Diana out of clay as a form of parthenogenesis. Chesler hit all of the originary matriarchy bases with her essay.*

  Steinem and her friends made the connection between Wonder Woman and originary matriarchy very explicit, and others picked up on this theme. A letter in Wonder Woman #212, eight issues into the restored Amazon Wonder Woman era, read, “Wonder Woman is an important symbol to me, since we contemporary women are now beginning to realize our great matriarchal Amazonian heritage.” Originary matriarchy seeped through all of these discussions of Wonder Woman, and it explains why Steinem and her cohorts were so drawn to her and keen for her to return to her Amazon roots. Wonder Woman was more than just a character they liked when they were children; she was a symbol of the lost power of women they were trying to restore. Not surprisingly, their feminist values had an influence on how they read the early adventures of Wonder Woman.

  Revising Wonder Woman

  As a young girl, Steinem had loved the heroism and humanity of Wonder Woman; she wrote, “her creator had also seen straight into my heart and understood the secret fears of violence hidden there.” William Moulton Marston’s aim for the series hit home with Steinem, and she wrote glowingly of his creation of a superhero who relied on love more often than force. However, despite the celebration of Marston’s Wonder Woman that prefaced the Ms. Wonder Woman book, less than half of the stories were actually written by Marston.

  Of the twelve stories in the Ms. Wonder Woman book, only five were Marston’s. There were four by Robert Kanigher, two by Joye Murchison, and one that was credited to H. G. Peter.* This mistake certainly isn’t the fault of Steinem or anyone associated with the book. All of the comics said “By Charles Moulton” and were from the 1940s, and in 1972 they didn’t have access to the records we have now. In fact, Steinem probably would’ve been delighted to know that a woman wrote two of the stories in the book. Regardless, the lack of Marston is the least of the Ms. Wonder Woman book’s issues.

  Although Steinem wrote that she wanted to see the “the feminism and strength of the original Wonder Woman” restored when the mod era ended, the portrait of Wonder Woman that emerged from the Ms. Wonder Woman book was noticeably different from the Golden Age Wonder Woman. While looking back at the early stories, Steinem and her friends didn’t see Marston’s complicated feminism. Instead, they saw Wonder Woman through their own feminist lens, focusing on the aspects of
the character that reflected their modern values and downplaying the aspects that didn’t. The result was a new take on Wonder Woman with a decidedly liberal feminist bent.

  This kind of revision was common among believers in originary matriarchy. Discussing the liberal feminist focus on past matriarchies, Joanne H. Wright states that this past offered “a glorified image of woman on which a new identity could be based.” She continues:

  The new identity being forged has little to do with past matriarchy, but is rather a construction, one which is then read back into the past and sanctified for the future.

  In the few snippets of myths and ancient history that referred to female rule, liberal feminists built a history of universal matriarchy that reflected, and in turn legitimized, their own values. The details of the actual past were revised or, as Wright says, sanctified to allow the modern values to shine through.

  Steinem and her friends did the same with Wonder Woman. They transferred their own values onto the original Wonder Woman stories, creating a historic icon that reflected their own beliefs instead of accurately depicting her original feminism. They were interested in the similarities between Wonder Woman and themselves, not the differences. As such, their image of the Golden Age Wonder Woman was based on selective readings and, at times, inaccurate discussions of the character’s history.

  One of the ways the original Wonder Woman was reconciled with modern values was by downplaying parts of the comics that a modern audience might find offensive. Coming on the heels of the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement was very concerned with racism. Like most comic books in the 1940s, Wonder Woman often portrayed nonwhite characters in stereotypical and racist ways. Case in point: the sinister Japanese soldiers Wonder Woman regularly faced, with their savage appearance and exaggerated dialogue, like: “So the gr-reat Wonder Woman is-ss pris-soner at las-st! Will be pleas-sure to s-see you die s-sslowly!”