Gender, Feminism, and Heroism in Joss Whedon and John ...

do anything of value at all, this is still a statement supporting patriarchy rather than
working against it. Instead of subverting the necessity of masculinity as a prerequisite for
heroism, the female heroes described above are heroic on one hand and feminine on the
other; these attributes work against each other. Again, this is not to suggest that these
attributes cannot coexist but rather that the hero narratives that either predate third wave
feminist influence (and many predate second wave influence for that matter) or choose to
ignore it construct female heroes who lack the positions of leadership, sexual agency,
communication skills, and other attributes that define the heroism of third wave feminist
characters like Astonishing X-Men’s Emma.
Masculinized action heroines who became recognizable during the feminist
backlash in the 1980s took perhaps a bigger step forward but were, like their feminine
predecessors and contemporaries, problematic when viewed through a third wave
feminist lens. Female heroes with muscular bodies, weaponry expertise, and natural
combative skills were constructed with emphasis on traits traditionally associated with
masculinity to drown out femininity (Holmlund, 2005; Tasker, 1993). Certainly a female
body effectively performing acts of heroism, being that they are so strongly tied to the
male form, is in itself a form of subversion to the patriarchal status quo, especially in
comparison to the feminine heroines described previously (Inness, 1999; Owen, Stein, &
Vande Berg, 2007; Tasker, 1993). However, the extremity of these female heroes’
masculinity created a Catch 22 that became a problem for third wave feminists. As Leigh
Shoemaker (1997) explained: “The legacy of second wave feminism had taught me that,
as a girl, I could do anything I wanted to, but the backlash let me know that this was
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