Tropes vs. Women: #2 Women in Refrigerators

Movies post by Anita Sarkeesian on April 7, 2011 - 10:00am; tagged comics, tropes, Tropes vs. Women, women in refrigerators.

Tropes vs. Women is a six-part video series by Feminist Frequency that explores the reoccurring stories, themes and representations of women in Hollywood films and TV shows.

Women in Refrigerators is a trope identified by comic book fan (and now comic book writer) Gail Simone because she was sick of seeing "superheroines who have been either depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator."

Special thanks to Jennifer K. Stuller author of Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology and Rachel O from Feminist Fatale for their respective comic and gaming expertise.

Related Links and Articles:

Women in Refrigerators: this is the official WIR website including Simone's original letter, full list of comic book characters as well as responses from other comic book fans.
Women in Refrigerators at TV Tropes (they also created a page for Stuffed into the Fridge - but if you watch the video you'll know how I feel about that)
Women in Refrigerators at FanLore
Dead Men Defrosting by John Bartol
The Cold Shoulder: Saving Superheroines from Comic-book Violence by Shannon Cochran at Bitch Media
The 10 Worst Women in Refrigerators (i.e., Cases of Violence Against Women in Comics) by Rob Bricken
Women in Refrigerators: Alexandra DeWitt by Marron at Eat Sleep Geek
A woman’s place is not in the refrigerator by Marie Brennan at Science Fiction & Fantasy Novelists

**Full video transcript is available at FeministFrequency.com

**This video is available to be translated into other languages by volunteers like you. Please visit the subtitling page on Universal Subtitles and click TRANSLATE to get started.

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Comments

5 comments have been made. Post a comment.

Fable II

Posted by Mia (not verified) on April 7, 2011 - 10:42am

While I agree with most pf the information presented in this video, I'd like to point out that the main character in the game Fable II can be male or female, based on the choice of the player. And for once she's not hypersexualized or underpowered in comparison to the male counterpart.

ILY!

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on April 7, 2011 - 12:36pm

ILY!

Escaping the refrigerator...

Posted by supersarah (not verified) on April 7, 2011 - 2:48pm

Thank you for this post! Always happy to see comics-related coverage from Bitch. (Though of course this trope isn’t restricted to comic-dom.)

Forgive me if this was mentioned in the video and I missed it, but note that Stephanie Brown is a great example of what can happen when we call creators out on these misogynistic tropes. Fans pitched a fit after Stephanie’s death — formed Girl-Wonder.org, wrote letters, persistently asked DC’s editors and writers about her fate at con panels — and now she’s back and headlining her own (very funny, highly recommended) “Batgirl” series. Bitching gets results!

Yes, I agree, female

Posted by kallisti (not verified) on April 8, 2011 - 2:03am

Yes, I agree, female characters being tortured for little reason is terrible, and I am glad Gail Simone brought this issue to the fore front. There was a particularly egregious example in a comic some months back where a popular female supporting character was tortured and left in a highly sexualized position simply to prove how evil the villain was. That was in a recent issue of Wonder Woman written by.... oh... wait, never mind....