Strong Enough to Survive: Bitch Planet and Embracing Intersectionality
Photo by Lindsey LaMont on Unsplash
By Hollyanna McCollom
Comic books and science fiction have long been at the forefront of creating social commentary, thanks in part to the play of space and time that is offered within each. Within the realms of another planet or an imagined future, it is easier to make sense of the far reaches of our own biases or ignorance. By stepping into a world just outside our own, we can imagine a trajectory that might be hard to believe without the comforting inclusion of fantasy.
Although both genres are frequently marginalized for a lack of complexity or seriousness, within the frames of the comic book or the pages of science fiction, there is a tremendous potential for communicating themes such as psychology, science, math, classic literature, technology, and political science. According to the 2014 documentary She Makes Comics, for feminists in the second wave movement of the 1960s and 1970s, comic books became a useful medium for contemplating a strange future or imagined world set to the tune of modern-day gender politics. However, even with these stories and even with a structure built on responding to social change, the comics industry itself has been reluctant to accommodate fair representation of women. Until quite recently, in fact, the representation of women in comics has been minimal or unrealistic. In 1999, Gail Simone (a leader in the industry and writer of DC’s Birds of Prey, among several other notable titles), famously created an online list dubbed “Women in Refrigerators” that depicts the unfortunate fates of female superheroes and characters. Says Simone of the list, “Not every woman in comics has been killed, raped, depowered, crippled, turned evil, maimed, tortured, [sic] contracted a disease or had other life-derailing tragedies befall her…but it's hard to think up exceptions.” However, as the third wave of feminism continues to take form and gain momentum, we are seeing a significant shift in the way comics present women and marginalized characters. I believe the comic books Bitch Planet: Volumes 1 &2 by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro could be greatly influential in this new movement. The characters and treatment of Bitch Planet have not only sparked a new conversation about what it means to be a woman in a patriarchal society but have also inspired a new generation of “non-compliant” women, thanks in part to the unconventional use of exploitation imagery and the embrace of intersectionality.
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality to address the ways that many forms of oppression can overlap and compound each other. Crenshaw sought to create a framework for seeing and recognizing our differences, but also to define how the feminist movement could be more diverse and inclusive. For whereas feminism advocates for the rights of women, intersectional feminism does the same while also recognizing the many ways in which a woman may experience oppression due to other things such as racism, xenophobia, homophobia, classism, or ableism. She used the metaphor of an intersection to illustrate how a black woman can be caught in the middle of an intersection, impacted by oppressive traffic in multiple directions. Says Crenshaw, “Without the frames that allow us to see how social problems impact all members of a targeted group, many will fall through the cracks of our movements, left to suffer in virtual isolation.”
Intersectionality is an important inclusion in the conversation about feminism because the sources of inequality and injustice are different for different people and while a white woman may experience sexism, she will still have the privilege of race. A black woman may face discrimination because of her gender as well as her race. If she also happens to identify as queer, that represents another facet of discrimination that must be considered when seeking to fight injustice against her. Crenshaw is not alone in her thinking. In a 1990s book Gender Trouble, Judith Butler notes “the sexualization of racial gender norms calls to be read through multiple lenses at once, and the analysis surely illuminates the limits of gender as an exclusive category of analysis.” Butler’s work as a gender theorist has been greatly influential on the third-wave feminist movement and her reflections on gender, sex and sexuality have inspired a number of artists and writers to look deep inside and beyond themselves.
DeConnick, the writer of the Bitch Planet series, believes that it is her job as a creator to transcend her own experience if she is to do justice to her work. In a 2015 conference speech, she discussed her reason for embracing intersectionality and her aim in seeking to understand a view outside her own stating, “As the people who make the maps that illustrate our connections, we have a calling to both embrace and rise above our own experience, to listen with our whole hearts and imagine how the world must look from another perspective.” This mindset and the resulting treatment of the story is one of the reasons that Bitch Planet stirred so many conversations about intersectionality. As Elisabeth Anne Leonard noted in her article “Race and Ethnicity in Science Fiction,” most science fiction stories choose to address racism by not mentioning it all or by imagining a world with so much racial mixing that distinctions become irrelevant. In Bitch Planet, DeConnick chose to embrace the tension instead of shying away from it.
When Bitch Planet was released in 2015, it was immediately recognized as an homage to the women-in-prison exploitation films of the 1960s and 1970s like Women in Cages (1971) and Caged Heat (1974) and Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill! (1965). Bitch Planet imagines a not-so-distant future earth in which women are subjugated and the ruling class is an authoritarian organization called the Council of Fathers. Women are expected to know their place. They are expected to be quiet, obedient, beautiful, and available. Those who do not fit the mold are deemed “non-compliant” and shipped to a prison planet known as the Auxiliary Compliance Outpost, or Bitch Planet colloquially. In this world, non-compliant women are locked up, but the “compliant” women are essentially locked in a prison of their own, for as society grows more tense, the crimes that one can be locked up for become increasingly arbitrary. Insubordination, pridefulness, jealousy, and “wanton obesity” are among the offenses that land people in cells.
The cast of prisoners of Bitch Planet is beautifully diverse because, of course, disadvantage plays a role in one’s ability to fit the role of the young, sexy white female. The incarcerated characters represent women of all colors, shapes, ages, abilities, and sexual preferences, all of which are recognizable in our own world. In getting to know these characters, it becomes very clear that the world that DeConnick and De Landro are creating is not at all unlike our own. It is a concept not unlike the scientific racism one might have heard from Ernst Haeckel in the 1940s, who believed that the morality of natural selection had led humans to a place where intervention was required to correct the damage that humans had brought upon themselves. Haeckel argued for the extermination of anyone with failings, be they social, racial, or physical. The Council of Fathers is disposing of their perceived trash in much the same way.
The art of the story, created by Valentine De Landro, is gritty and graphic, much like one would expect from an exploitation comic or film. What surprised many readers, however, is how DeConnick and De Landro used those familiar sounds and visuals to tell a very different story, essentially exploiting the idea of exploitation. In the first issue, the reader is introduced to Marian Collins, a white woman who claims she doesn’t deserve to be incarcerated. It feels reminiscent of the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black and one could easily speculate that, like in the Netflix series, the story of Bitch Planet would center around the perspective of this particular white woman. In a surprising turn of events, however, Marian is immediately removed from the story and becomes simply a plot device.
Another way that Bitch Planet uses exploitation to break patterns is through what is literally referred to as “The Obligatory Shower Scene”. In the scene, we see many of the characters showering and engaging in sexual activity. It is noted that while there are no cameras, the women are still being watched. Says one character, “We have an arrangement with Tommy Peepers. He doesn’t report us and in exchange, he gets to watch.” The scene cuts to a wide panel shot of an eye peering through a hole in the tile, a not-so-subtle representation of the male gaze. Two issues later, Kamau, a black woman at the center of much of the first volume uses this particular male’s gaze to her advantage and literally smashes through the wall so that she can gain control over him.
DeConnick and De Landro play with our expectations repeatedly throughout the issues, first giving us what we expect and then quickly turning it on its ear.
A common theme running through the Bitch Planet series is that of recognizing and embracing difference, not only within a community but also within one’s own heart. In a society where uniformity and compliance are demanded, being an outlier, an outcast or an oddity could very likely get one killed. We are programmed to respond with fear when confronted with something unusual or unexpected and the Council of Fathers represents the darkest parts of all of us that wish to banish all things that make us uncomfortable or afraid. When Penny, a large, angry, outspoken black woman is incarcerated, it is not because she is outspoken and fat. Penny commits the ultimate crime of believing that she is perfect just the way she is. In volume two of the series, we are introduced to the transgender sister of Kamau, Moroma, when she starkly recalls, “We were the first to be sent away. We are always the first.” Moroma is a clear leader and is unapologetic about who she is. After being beaten across the face, she soothes Rose, another transgender inmate by kissing her and smearing her blood across both of their lips like lipstick. “I’m fine, Rose.” She says, “And now we’re both pretty.” These deviances are key to the story because they foreshadow the breakdown of the system of patriarchal expectations. The women will fight together not despite their differences, but because of them. Civil rights activist Audre Lorde recognized the importance of this stating, “it is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation.” Indeed, one issue later as a riot breaks out a plea goes out over the loudspeakers, “We are not prisoners and captors any longer. We’re just people. Trapped together, worlds away from home on a hostile planet. A people whose future…whether or not we have a future…depends on our willingness to work together.”
In the aforementioned 2015 speech, DeConnick also said, “The book is an angry satire born of a desire to vent my spleen; and if the word ‘feminist’ puts your toes into embarrassed little fists, you might find it off-putting.” She has no issue with making the reader uncomfortable because she understands that getting a little uncomfortable may be the first step in really seeing each other. As dark and terrifying as it is, Bitch Planet is also a little bit hopeful. It has inspired a legion of followers who have tattooed themselves “NC” for non-compliant. Catchphrases from the book like “extraordinary machine,” “strong enough to survive,” and “born big” have become rallying cries for solidarity in difference. If the story was meant to frighten us, maybe it did; but it also issues a calling for us to transcend our own experience and see the ways in which acknowledging racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, and the like can help us seek justice for a more diverse group of women.
Joan Slonczewski and Michael Levy noted in “Science Fiction and the Life Sciences” that some films, such as Jurassic Park, that were meant to be pessimistic have actually ended up inspiring a new generation of scientists .” To that same end, I believe that Bitch Planet could inspire a whole new generation of feminists who see intersectionality as an integral part of their cause. We need each other to make real progress. We may already live on Bitch Planet, but we live here together.
