The recent free eight-page preview for DC’s upcoming Cyborg series by David F. Walker and Ivan Reis revealed a significant change for title character Victor Stone; after having his cybernetic arms severed and his life ended by rampaging monsters, the three-quarters mechanical hero came back to life with new, more human-looking limbs. To some readers it might seem a mere cosmetic makeover, but the change may have deeper implications. To understand why, it’s helpful to understand how Cyborg is regarded by black critics.
At Emerald City Comic-Con earlier this year I was lucky enough to be on a panel on diversity and representation with David F. Walker, two months after his Cyborg title was announced. During the panel Walker, a black man, mentioned something about the character that I had never considered; Cyborg is an emasculated black man. In his New 52 origin story, he lost the entire bottom half of his body, which means that before becoming Cyborg, he was castrated. This was, for Walker, a problem with the character.
That might seem an odd point to raise given that genitals aren’t a prominent feature in mainstream superhero stories; artists often famously elide any suggestion of genitalia on male characters down to a Ken doll smoothness. Marvel and DC don’t tell sexually explicit tales in their main lines. Genitals are not a feature of the genre. It’s not something readers are invited to think about.
But if we were to think about it, we might presume that we’re expected to believe that other male heroes have genitals. We know that Cyborg does not. And there are people for whom this distinction does matter, with Walker among them.
Cyborg isn’t just an emasculated man, but an emasculated black man, and as one of comics’ higher profile black superheroes — starring in his own movie in distant 2020 — the unspoken fact of his castration is demeaning. The racist narrative of black man as sexual threat is served by the idea of a character who is rendered heroic in the same event that symbolically renders him sexually unthreatening. (Genitals do not define gender or sexual power, but they are often tied to an individual’s relationship with their sexual, gender, and cultural identities.)
Writer Robert Jones Jr., known online as Son of Baldwin, set out the problem of Cyborg’s castration in a guest post for the blog The Middle Spaces, noting, “This, to me, is the comic book version of the historical castrations that white supremacists often enacted against black men, of whose sexuality (which they exaggerated and demonized) they were enormously envious and frightened of.” Jones asks whose fantasy Cyborg is meant to represent, saying; “Sufficiently neutered, Cyborg is DC Comics’ idea of a black character safe enough to be embraced by white people.” Jones also laments that Cyborg “will not suddenly grow a penis” when Walker launches his series.
But perhaps he just did?...............Read More at
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