Sunday supervillainy - Ahmadinejad is a mutant

At least his equivalent in the X-Men universe must be. I'm not the first to point out that this guy clearly has six fingers on his left hand. (Follow the link I've given to see how images in X-Men: Schism #1 have been photo referenced using pics of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.)

 Things get interesting when a young mutant with psi powers forces the gathered world leaders to reveal their deepest secrets on television. Voila!

 

What's so creepy about an age gap? Trying to understand...

The Rogneto controversy has settled down a little bit, but someone commented overnight on an earlier thread here, basically complaining that they found the relationship repugnant.

Not they say because of the large age gap between the two characters. But that's clearly a large part of what's bugging people.

I want to focus on this in a minute, but let me talk about a couple of other things first. Some people absolutely love the relationship that Marvel Comics presents between superheroine Rogue and semi-reformed archvillain Magneto. I expect that Dragon*Con this year will have some Rogneto cosplay going on, and there's plenty of Rogneto shipping on the internet.

Others express dislike for it based on the history of the characters - in villain mode, when they've been enemies, Magneto has done some pretty bad things to Rogue. We could have long debates about the rights and wrongs of that. I just want to say that I'm not really interested in yet another debate about how realistic the relationship is, or how much Rogue is being written out of character when she goes back to him after their failed romance in the Savage Land which was shown in the early 1990s and must have been about five years ago, in-world. That's all interesting but there are places to debate it other than this thread.

I'm actually more interested in the fact that some people go, "Eww, he's so much older!" Why do people do that? What's the problem about relationships with a big age gap?

The photo above on the left, of course, is not of a Rogneto scene, but of Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng. I'm willing to bet that many of my readers have an unfavourable visceral response to this couple, and that it's partly to do with the very apparent age difference that we can all see ... and not just because of a dislike for Murdoch's approach to journalism or politics.

But what, exactly, is the problem? Is it the sheer incongruity of an unattractive old man appearing with a beautiful young woman? Is it the thought that Murdoch has treated his previous wives badly? Is it the thought that what has attracted Deng to him is his money - and that this is somehow an unfair thing for a man to use in the social competition to attract desirable women? But if the latter, how is it more fair to use, say, your good looks, which are largely the result of the genetic lottery and your early upbringing ... neither of which you've earned or deserved in any way?

Part of the problem is that none of these things seem to apply to the Rogneto relationship, yet at least some people have the same response. Magneto doesn't look like Rupert Murdoch. He's been around in the world for a long time (in the comics, he was born in the 1920s), but he's usually portrayed as a handsome man of some indeterminate age betwen his late 30s and early 50s with the body of an Olympic athlete.

If we follow the continuity, he is about 40, physically speaking, as a result of a rejuvenation as part of his back story. His hair is naturally silver (much as the hair of his daughter, Polaris, is naturally green, and Rogue's own hair has that natural silver streak). Unlike my hair, for example, Erik's hasn't gone white with age. Even artists who depict his face on the older side, to convey his authority and experience, make him handsome and athletic.

In short, the couple just above on the right don't much resemble Murdoch and Deng ... yet some folks have the same response to them. It can't be something as simple as the incongruity of an ugly man and a beautiful woman: this is a very fine-looking, if exotic, couple. Nor is it that Rogue is attracted to Erik by his money (even if he does still have large amounts of gold robbed from the Nazis hidden away somewhere). She seems to be attracted to him in a raw sexual way, and by his fanatical devotion to a noble cause - or perhaps, in part, she gets off on his power (surely that can't be the problem!).

Is it thought wrong that people with formative experiences in different decades should be mutually attracted? If so, why? And anyway, wouldn't it be a trivial issue here, where both have had extraordinary experiences that are very different from normal people their own respective ages? The kinds of things they've experienced in their various supervillaining and superheroing missions should give them plenty to talk about.

I can't immediately see how any of the things that we might normally find distasteful about relationships with large age gaps apply here, but the age-gap thing still bugs some people.

It can't be that there is something pedophilic involved. When they first fell for each other in the classic Savage Land story, Rogue was being presented as about 19 or 20 (and Magneto as physically in his early 30s), and on that occasion the relationship wasn't even consummated. Magneto backed out of it when he chose to kill Zaladane and physically leave Rogue by flying away to one of his other bases. Rogue is now being presented, I'd guess, as in her mid-20s. So she's quite old enough to understand the character of the sexual act, thank you very much - as she was even in the Savage Land story - and to have made an informed decision when she took Erik to bed back in X-Men Legacy #249.

So, I'm getting the feeling that there is something going on here whereby the age gap itself is considered a problem by some people. My question is about what the problem actually is when you strip away the particular things that might apply to Murdoch and Deng but don't seem relevant to the fantasy story of Magneto and Rogue. Or is this a case of rule utilitarianism in action? Do we come up with a rule that works in many real-life situations, and then we apply it to the full range of situations even where the utility-harming factors justifying the rule are not actually present, as in the fantasy example of two comic-book characters?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not about to chase after your daughter. And although I don't find Magneto and Rogue creepy, I do (I admit) find Murdoch and Deng a bit creepy. So perhaps for me it's mainly the ugly man/beautiful woman thing going on. I'm not trying to justify this response, just trying to work out what my problem is.

What do you think? Do Murdoch and Deng creep you out? Can you offer a good reason why they should? Would you extend your reason to a fantasy example like Magneto and Rogue - or to even more extreme fantasy examples such as Doctor Who and his various companions?

Does it matter whether the Doctor (who is over 900 years old) physically presents as an older man (Jon Pertwee, say) or, as has been the case with recent series, as a man who is physically in his twenties or thirties like David Tennant (who has actually just turned 40, but looks quite a bit younger)?

I'm confused about all this and would like to know how people (including me!) think about it.

Some sense on the carbon tax

Over here from Geoff Lemon.

Coffee or tea?

Mr. Deity

Via Jerry's site, Mr. Deity on current events.

American Humanist Association on stoning

Today, on the International Day Against Stoning, the American Humanist Association is raising awareness of the brutal practice of stoning and demanding the end of stoning as a form of punishment around the world.
The American Humanist Association stands beside the International Committee Against Stoning and its effort to eradicate the cruel tradition of stoning, an inhumane method of punishment which affects predominantly women and girls in developing countries. Fundamentalist religious zealots around the world are responsible for enacting laws based on stringent and unforgiving moral codes, sometimes punishable by sentences such as stoning to death. Women are stoned for “offenses” such as giving birth out of wedlock, extramarital affairs, and even in response to false accusations of murder.

Go here to read the rest.

The barbarity of stoning - support for Maryam Namazie

Please support the ongoing campaign against the cruel and barbaric practice of execution by stoning, which continues even now in the twenty-first century. Maryam Namazie discusses it, and is collecting statements in support of the campaign, over on her blog.

Of the many statements you can find there, one of the best must surely be this pithy summation by Fred Edwords, National Director, United Coalition of Reason: "Stoning is the very symbol of what it means to be primitive, barbaric, and cruel."

Sunday supervillainy

Back to Australia

Arriving tomorrow - which means that things return to normal at my end after a week and half in Vanuatu followed shortly thereafter by a week in New Zealand.

I had a great, if fairly low-key, time at the AAP conference: I renewed friendships, met people, made some new friends ... all good. I'm looking forward to a bit of "normal" life, though. I have a book to continue co-authoring (with Udo), another book to see through production, and a special issue of JET to co-edit (with Linda Glenn), and several other projects to deal with, so the comfort and familiarity of my own study will be very welcome indeed.

Patty Jansen on formatting a (fiction) manuscript

This is good advice.

Though if you are submitting material to JET please imitate recently published articles and follow our submission guidelines. Almost no one does these simple things, but it would make life much easier for them and for me if they did. You wouldn't believe some of the bizarre formats and styles that some people use.