#because it gives me points but I will never meaningfully observe the queer aspect of that identity and it can make me seem comfortable with

[clawsextended]

in my perfect world everyone makes so many lesbian muses the men then have to deal with the exact same behavior when every single post ever written isn’t about dick.

[aion-rsa]

Batwoman: How Housing and Homelessness Shape Ryan’s Heroism

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From the very first promo, where we saw Kate Kane give first money and then her gold watch to a young woman panhandling, Batwoman has concerned itself with homelessness and housing. In Ryan Wilder (Javicia Leslie), however, Batwoman has a new protagonist with lived experience of homelessness. Unlike a lot of television shows that use homelessness as a shorthand to demonstrate that a main character is a good or bad person, Batwoman meaningfully incorporates Ryan’s housing struggles into her long-term character arc and how she approaches her time in the cowl.

In that first teaser back before season 1 premiered, the audience was meant to learn both that Kate Kane was incredibly wealthy and that, unlike the jerky anonymous member of the Crows, she actually cared about doing something to change Gotham’s notoriously tough streets, and not just in a “lock ‘em up” kind of way. As the first season unfolded, heiress Kate became more aware of how gentrification and the lack of affordable housing was squeezing low-income Gothamites out of their own city, thanks to her one-time girlfriend, Reagan.

At a press event before the start of season 2, showrunner Caroline Dries shared that incorporating housing policy wasn’t some kind of strategic goal, but she did always see Gotham as a kind of Los Angeles 2.0 – except even bleaker.

“From a creative point of view, I think that happened a little bit subconsciously. Living in LA the homeless population has just exploded in the last seven years or so,” Dries says. “It’s everywhere you look, and it’s such a huge problem, and it feels like there’s really no solution to it.”

For Dries, fiction allowed her a measure of wishful thinking: “When I was offered the opportunity to write Batwoman and to write Kate Kane, it seemed like: Oh, at least maybe there’s some way that I can have control over this seemingly like endless pandemic of homelessness in our city.”

After hearing about Reagan’s grandmother’s housing struggles – and how common they are across Gotham – Kate went on to form Gotham Pride Real Estate, her way of improving her city by day, under her own name. Kate bought and renovated apartment buildings and rented them at reasonable rates as a way to lock in long-term affordable housing. In some cases, Gotham Pride bought buildings in Gotham’s wealthiest neighborhoods and still rented them at very low rents, pushing back against the extreme wealth segregation that the show has hinted at and that is a reality for much of America.

As Dries says, “It was just like a little bit of hopefulness that I was trying to put out into the world.”

Kate also created The Hold Up, an LGBTQ bar that seems to cater specifically to the sapphic set, which is its own form of business activism. Nationwide, lesbian and queer bars for marginalized genders (women, trans people and nonbinary folks) are an endangered species. As we saw when Kate and Sophie got kicked out of Allesandro’s for holding hands, having spaces where queer folks can simply exist safely and openly isn’t a given, so creating one matters. By owning real estate and using it to make safe, affordable spaces for vulnerable populations to live or to gather socially, Kate Kane has leveraged her wealth to help various communities reclaim Gotham so it can belong to everyone, not just the wealthy few.

With Ryan Wilder stepping into the spotlight for the second season, housing takes on more urgency. The premiere showed how squatters from Alice’s Wonderland Gang killed Ryan’s mother in her own apartment. That made Ryan an orphan and forced her out on the street. She’s been living in her van, and as of the end of the second episode, our Batwoman is still marginally housed, meaning that while she can stay in her van, that’s neither a permanent solution nor is it a sufficient one.

How many other superheroes have experienced homelessness in the present tense – and not as part of going undercover or in some kind of training exercise, but because they literally had nowhere else to go? Dries intentionally pivoted to a different kind of Batwoman in a number of ways, and Ryan’s housing status is one of them.

“With Ryan, it was part of the overarching goal that I had in creating a character who is nothing like Kate Kane, and Kate is a billionaire who never will have to worry about being homeless, she can work to help homelessness,” Dries says. “So it just made sense to me that in creating Kate’s foil, more or less, that maybe Ryan came from a more troubled background where she was part of this problem in her city.”

While Kate was an excellent hero for her city, in many ways she was still a privileged one. Ryan’s experiences, including her time navigating what it means to be unhoused, open up a whole host of possibilities for the ways in which her Batwoman could best serve the people who need her most, because she knows their needs acutely. A common critique of Batman is that many of the people he physically brutalizes are in need of mental health services and/or are at the mercy of an unjust criminal legal system and a city with no social safety net that has pushed them toward a life of crime. Just as Kate’s queer Batwoman before her, Ryan’s Batwoman poses the question: What does a radically reimagined Batwoman look like? How can she better serve the people of Gotham with the greatest need, while pushing back against the authoritarianism of the Crows and the demands of the wealthy elites who hire them?

Toward the end of the second episode, “Prior Criminal History,” Luke Fox offers Ryan a warehouse to draw the poisonous bats away and then detonate a bomb to take them out, away from innocent civilians. On the city plans he has access to back in the Bat cave, the warehouse looks abandoned. But Ryan does a double-take and tells him no, they have to find somewhere else – that’s actually a homeless encampment. Luke immediately starts looking for a new locale, and Ryan comes up with the idea to use the Crows Security bus, resulting in a great little set piece.

It may seem like a small moment, but this demonstration of how Ryan’s knowledge and therefore actions as Batwoman would be completely different is spot-on and an absolute game-changer. In every city in America, there’s a complex infrastructure that people who are currently homeless or marginally housed must navigate in order to get through their day to day. Just out of sight from housed people, there are encampments, shelters, and an array of social services all requiring completely different paperwork, hours, and counselors. Ryan would know the safest places to park her van, the hours for the best soup kitchens, where the women-only shelters are, and the places that stay open latest, in case it gets so cold late at night that she has to go in.

Just before she detonates the bomb, Ryan sees a young woman sheltering in a tent nearby. She runs over and shields them both with her cape. Afterwards when the coast is clear, the young woman looks up at Ryan in the batsuit with admiration.

“Batwoman?”

“Oh no, not really,” Ryan says, hesitantly.

“Well,” says the young woman, “you are to me.”

Read more

TV

Batwoman Season 2 Episode 2 Review: Prior Criminal History

By Nicole Hill

Comics

New Batwoman Ryan Wilder Gets Surprise DC Introduction

By Kayti Burt

Just as Kate Kane helped many more people see themselves on screen as heroes, Ryan Wilder is now doing the same thing, in-world, and I suspect, irl. For Black women and queer Black folks, but also for anyone who has experienced homelessness. For the people who have couch-surfed for months on end, lived in their cars, lost their housing through no fault of their own, or who struggle to keep their head above water because of a record – even if it’s one they got unfairly, like Ryan.

Leslie speaks about how with the character of Ryan, the show gets to bring in a firsthand story to show what it’s like to actually live through these experiences, rather than having characters observe or comment on them from afar.

“I think that what’s really dope about what we’re doing this season is you get to see Ryan’s story and how she ends up where she is,” Leslie says. “And a lot of it is just, it’s the system and being lost in the system and not having support in the system. So I do think that that’s another way it’s being addressed.”

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Batwoman has long taken on serious social issues that other superhero shows lack the moral heft to consider, whether that means police corruption, racism within the legal system, American’s broken and inadequate healthcare, or discrimination against LGBTQ people. The show’s diverse cast of characters speak about these issues firsthand, and Ryan Wilder is no exception. Her backstory as someone who has struggled with housing insecurity isn’t a throwaway line but rather a current aspect of her life that sets the tone for who this new Batwoman is, and how the show will be moving forward.

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[shithowdy]

I realize this is a personal question from a rando stranger, but: do you mind explaining a little about what made you pull back from being a 4ch raider/participating in lulz culture? a friend of mine works for twitter's abuse dept and she is really struggling how to figure out the best ways to fight online trolling - any anecdote would be useful? (i recognize this is a big ask - feel free to ignore this if it's too much/private to talk about)

No it’s fine to talk about! I prefer to be open about my abhorrent behavior in the mid/late aughts since it was pretty impactful on both people I hurt and my own way of dealing with that kind of culture.

Trolling online these days is so much more organized, methodical, and scientific than it was back then. Social media was still a new concept, and websites had a lot more focus on niche audiences. Peoples’ online presences were scattered across several websites– their art would be on DeviantART, their private musings would be on their Xanga, their most social activity would be a forum attached to an anime fansite, and their different interests would be spread across several messageboards, LJ communites, Yahoo/MSN groups, etc.

Site names have changed and this isn’t 100% untrue now, but for the most part, segmented online presences are a dying breed. Most people share ALL of their work and thoughts on tumblr/instagram/twitter/reddit, all with one account, all very easy to learn about somebody. Things like DA still exist but are tertiary and not a primary method of interacting online. Reverse image searching, google maps, facebook, and people-finding tools also make hunting down someone to harass or impersonate them a lot easier.

I start by saying this because it’s important to observe the evolution of trolling, both in methods and intent. The internet is a completely different animal– before, to use an unsettling analogy, it was almost more about the hunt, now it’s about the kill.

Nothing in particular made me leave the subculture overnight. There was no conscious revelation that I could share in the hopes that others have it. I began roleplaying in World of Warcraft in 2009, and if I had to offer a turning point, that would be it. I went from being an angry little internet elemental to somebody meaningfully involved in a creative community that needed to work together to make each other happy instead of constantly trying to one-up one another. I played a character that was friendly, charismatic, and loved to help people. Between having to be in this constant mindset for roleplay’s sake and just in general getting to know people, I developed empathy for my fellow internet inhabitants.

As time went on it helped me explore more facets of myself, namely my very closeted queerness. RP communities are an extremely mixed bag and I encountered a lot of people openly sharing points of view I’d never considered about the world, eloquent people using a written platform where they can say everything they want to say in one place and consider it as long as they need before putting it out there.

I didn’t leave behind cruel behavior because I was stricken by shame. I just lost interest in it because I found more positive outlets, and listened to people with opinions counter to ones I’d held.

But how does this tie in to preventing abuse? I’m not sure that it does. Obviously there are plenty of cruel, manipulative, dreadful people in RP and other creative communities that have no intention of working as a team or considering others’ viewpoints, so it’s obviously not a result of the environment. But I think the empathy is an important factor– people behave as they do online because anonymity dampens empathy. Even if someone’s Twitter handle is their real name and their icon is their real face, their feelings are ultimately just a bunch of words on a screen, a person that in no way impacts your life. You don’t have to be privy to the devastation on their face as you tell them they’re broken and deserve to die. Bullying is a senseless but perpetual aspect of human nature and the emotional disconnect makes it worse.

Unfortunately empathy is not something Twitter, or any website, is capable of instilling in its users. That is something that needs to be addressed offline. People need to be made more acutely aware of their monkeyspheres, and be asked difficult questions like, “Why do you perceive X as unworthy of compassion? Who are they hurting? What is your goal? Why do you think that needs to be a goal?”And you can’t ask these questions online. You can’t make somebody uncomfortable with their worldview if they can hit backspace at any time and ignore it. But maybe asking the right questions often enough will eventually force them to think about it whether they want to or not.

Regardless, most people who bully do so because they have a perception of what’s “right”. This isn’t always a deep social issue such as racism; sometimes it can be something as simple as not liking how they spend their time, or the way they dress. One of my lowest moments in my teens was against a fanartist who traced various artwork to instead be their OC and a canon character. That’s it. That was their crime. But I was determined to make them stop doing it by any means necessary, and this meant impersonating them on /b/, alerting them to their existence. They figured out pretty quickly that it was me impersonating but they had already fixated on their artwork and I received no backlash, and they continued to hound them across various accounts. For what it’s worth, I did reach out a couple years back to apologize– but the damage remains.

Take that mindset and apply it to anything, from the notion that the bully has been denied something and is lashing out against a perceived cause, to a genuinely devoted moral crusade. The belief that they are “doing the right thing” (teaching a lesson, attacking somebody “bad”, thickening someone’s skin) is a unifying factor. Nobody sits there chuckling about how evil they’re being– they’re thinking, “this will show them”, and they get a rush out of having some control over this perceived slight.

What can websites do? They can take a more active role in moderating their community. They can ban hateful accounts and personally reach out to victims.

What can victims do? It fucking sucks, but don’t engage. I see a lot of debate on this but standing up to bullies online is a lot different than in real life. With a lot of media being based on “sharing”, retaliation opens up the potential for a wider audience of scum and they absolutely thrive on distress and watching people spend their time acknowledging them. You are not showing that bullying won’t be tolerated by refuting their words, you’re just giving them more shit to screenshot into their group chats before they roll in and call you more slurs that you publicize for them yourself by engaging. I say this from the perspective of someone who did that. A blocked/deleted insult is no fun. An insult with a “get a load of this guy cam” reaction image followed by several reblogs of people insulting the anon or saying how unacceptable this is is successful.

What can trolls do? Find a better outlet, you guys. Honestly. It’s a rush to feel like you have some kind of control and power over people by drawing reactions out of them but making people happy feels even better. Cruelty impresses only people that will have no qualms hurting you too.