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

second wave feminism’s success in allowing her to have a career, but any unhappiness
she may feel from being stretched too thin between her work and family life stems from
her personal inability to manage her time rather than a professional environment that
refuses to accommodate a working mother and ignores a father’s responsibility to his
children. The post-feminist solution would inevitably be to reduce work responsibilities
because while the women’s movement was necessary and the hypothetical mother would
not want to leave work altogether, she recognizes her inherent feminine maternity as the
more important and more natural of her dual roles.
Falling in line with the X-Men’s history, Emma points to her society’s prejudice
rather than individual ineptitude as the reason she cannot function “properly” within her
culture. The X-Men were designed to represent discrimination and inequality in general.
Mutants can stand in for any number of groups and can change groups between and even
within individual texts. For example, the original X-Men were an allegory for racism and
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s nonviolent methods, which are referenced in Emma’s opening
speech in “Gifted.” In turn, in the “cure” storyline in Astonishing X-Men a scientist has
developed an injection that will “cure” the mutants of their abnormal genetic structure,
following similar discourse to the idea of “curing” homosexuality. Emma remarks to the
“cure’s” inventor in the first volume, “Nothing but noble intentions. Yes, you’re a
veritable Oppenheimer. What’s next? Eliminating the gay gene?” (2004, p. 113).
Emma’s othering as a mutant is comparable to her othering as a woman, so the
post-feminist equivalent would be to blame her separation from humanity on her
superpowers and her inability to find an adequate way to work them into a normative
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