My Body, My Choice!
Although they outnumber men in the United States, women continue to struggle and fight for equal rights, equal pay and governance over their own bodies. While some comics chronicle women’s suffrage movements during the first-wave of feminism, many modern comics dive into defiant acts of second-wave feminism during the 1960s-70s and female empowerment movements that continue today. Not only do numerous comic anthologies document women’s marches for bodily autonomy (1), the act of publishing them, often as fundraisers for women’s rights organizations, serve as a form of social protest itself (2, 3). Increasingly, comics include representations of advocating for gender-affirming care and inclusion of transgender women (4). In the short story “La Operación,” we learn the tragic history of forced sterilization of Puerto Rican women from 1930-1970 (5).
The vast majority of these comics are historical or autobiographical, however, issues of women’s rights depicted through social protest appear in fictional settings as well. Two examples of that are Bitch Planet, where women protest being cited by police when their outward appearances do not conform to patriarchal views (6), and Shade, the Changing Woman/Wonder Woman Special, an alternate reality fiction where we see confused women at a protest that works to maintain the status quo and uphold the patriarchy (7).
