Zurückgezogenes "Batgirl"-Cover GamerGate der Comicszene?

"Instead of making Batgirl cry, why can't the Joker do something to make feminists happy? Because nothing does."

Nick Gillespie erörtert auf dem linken Blog The Daily Beast die kulturellen Hintergründe der Entscheidung, das Cover eines Batgirl-Comics nach feministischen Protesten zurückzuziehen. (Genderama berichtete.) Ein Auszug:

It’s easy — and totally legitimate, I think - to read Albuquerque’s barely coherent sentiments as capitulation to an online mob demanding that art be made subservient to ideological concerns about sexism and related issues. After all, what can it possibly mean to declare that "no opinion should be discredited"? If that’s true, shouldn’t Albuquerque’s original intent in creating the cover count for something?

(...) The Batgirl controversy bothers me because it proceeds from the same assumptions as attacks on comics in the 1950s, when the left-wing psychiatrist Fredric Wertham assailed the medium for supposedly turning boys into homosexuals and sexual deviants and girls into lesbians and nymphomaniacs (that Wertham routinely lied in making his supposedly scientific case against comics only drives home for me the stupidity of demanding that art be morally instructive).

Both Wertham and people pushing to exclude certain themes and topics fundamentally misunderstand one of the core functions of art, which is to create a space where we can explore some of our worst impulses and ideas. Those following in Wertham’s footsteps further seem to worry that the audience for popular culture is especially subject to being influenced if not literally programmed to act and think in socially suspect ways. "We" — the putatively dumb, unthinking audience — must be protected from the wrong ideas because we’re so goddamn likely to mistake fantasy or art for reality. Or we are too delicate to countenance uncomfortable art.

Hätte es für Feministinnen nicht ausgereicht, sich nach dem Anblick des umstrittenen "Batgirl"-Covers mit Bilderbüchern, Spielknete, beruhigender Musik und Fotos von herumtollenden Hündchen zu beschäftigen?