Once and for all: should Wonder Woman be a lesbian?

[Temis the Vorta]

The idea that people become gay because of their childhoods has long ago been discredited. Sexual orientation is very strongly inborn. You don't become gay because you didn't have a daddy in the household or you had a smothering mother or any archaic nonsense like that, that bigots like to use to rationalize anti-gay bias.

All you have to do is observe that in all societies in the world, children are socialized to be straight. In many societies that socialization is extreme and any sign of homosexuality is punished. Yet a certain percentage grow up to be gay anyway. Why doesn't socialization eradicate this effect?

Or take the example of transgendered children, who are born male and know they are female, or vice-versa. Attempts to raise those children according to the genitals they are born with fail spectacularly and eventually they opt for gender re-assignment.

If a child's genitals aren't enough to determine their sexual orientation, how in the world can socialization do it? It's all to do with brain chemistry, that's the only explanation that fits all the evidence.

 

[Gaith]

Some other points: remember WW was created asexually. Her mom carved her from clay; she wasn't created in the normal fashion.

Well, that's a throwback to a stupid and misogynistic religious trope of disinterest in the human birth canal. Jesus may have come out of it, but Joseph certainly didn't go in it, at least not until later. Athena sprang from the head of Zeus. Eve came from Adam's rib. God is male with no mother. Etc. If I were in charge of DC I'd retcon that away on Day One... ain't you glad you asked?

 

[saturn5]

I voted bi, she's too gorgeous to deny her to men or women

 

[Gov Kodos]

Portraying Wonder Woman as a lesbian would miss the entire point of the character as set out by Bill Moulton back in the 1940s. She is a renegade, a rebel, an outcast from her society - one of the reasons being she WASN'T a lesbian. Or, to be more precise, she came from a race of asexual people and she started getting the urges when Steve Trevor landed on the island. I've nothing against the idea of a lesbian superheroine, but in the case of Wonder Woman it just makes sense for her not to be one, based upon the very concept of the character.

Some other points: remember WW was created asexually. Her mom carved her from clay; she wasn't created in the normal fashion. Also, based on some interpretations of the amazons on Paradise Island/Thesescura (or however that's spelled) when they're referred to as Diana's SISTERS, the word is to be taken literally. I'll just leave that point where it lies.

Alex

Sisters literally? Not at all, the island is a monarchy, those other Amazons aren't up for the throne. She uses it with women off the island as readily as with the Amazons. And the other Amazons all refer to one another as sister quite frequently as well. It is a term used as a group identification not familial relation.