WONDER WOMAN: LESBIAN OR DYKE?
Paradise Island as a Woman's Community

By Trina Robbins

Originally presented at WisCon, May 2006

In his now-infamous 1954 indictment of comic books, Seduction of the Innocents, Dr. Frederic Wertham called the Wonder Woman comic book of the 1940s and 50s1 "The Lesbian counterpart of Batman," whom, along with his young sidekick, Robin, he had already accused of membership in NAMBLA. Using acrobatic leaps of logic, Wertham went on to make the following connection, about Wonder Woman's sidekicks, students at the all-woman Holliday College: Her followers are the 'Holliday girls,' i.e. the holiday girls, the gay party girls, the gay girls."2

Later critics would echo Wertham's theory. In the 1970 classic, All in Color For a Dime, Jim Harmon describes how Wonder Woman would "exchange hugs and kisses of delight with the readily available Holliday Girls." He adds, "It was a very sick scene."3

In a 1996 private phone interview, Robert Kanigher, who took over writing the comic in 1948, after the death of creator William Moulton Marston, who wrote the comics under the pseudonym "Charles Moulton", let me in on what he called the truth about Wonder Woman: the amazons from her home, Paradise Island, where no men are permitted, were all lesbians.

Not everyone agrees. Jules Feiffer, clearly wishing for something closer to Hothead Paisan, draws a different conclusion in his 1965 memoir, The Great Comic Book Heroes. "Wonder Woman," he writes, "wasn't dykey enough. Her violence was too immaculate, never once boiling over into a little fantasmal sadism."4 In her introduction to the Bonanza Books 1972 collection, Wonder Woman, and again in her introduction to Abbeville Press' 1995 collection of Wonder Woman covers, also titled Wonder Woman, Gloria Steinem avoids the issue entirely, preferring to write about "sisterhood." And in the 2000 Chronicle Books production, also titled Wonder Woman, writer Les Daniels, hired by D.C. comics, writes off the accusation in one short sidebar of the 206 page book: "(Wertham) saw innuendo everywhere, and...managed to work himself into a lather because he thought Wonder Woman contained 'Lesbian overtones.'...as Robert Kanigher later pointed out, surely some inhabitants of Paradise Island must have had Sapphic tendencies. Not in the comics, however!" 5

So, are the amazon princess Diana, her home-town amazons, and her Holliday girl sidekicks lesbians? And is this a bad thing? William Moulton Marston was a successful pop-psychologist, and also happened to be the inventor of the lie detector. The man knew what he was doing, and if there is lesbianism in the Golden Age Wonder Woman6, he put it there. What hints does he give the reader?

Well, there's the hugging, but, as previously mentioned, women do hug.7 What about lovers? Marston occasionally hints that Wonder Woman might be in a Xena and Gabrielle relationship with another woman. In Sensation comics #19, 1942, Wonder Woman's amazon best friend, Paula, is called in to help when the princess runs amok because her bracelets have been removed.8 Stopping Wonder Woman in the act of strangling a suspected fifth columnist, Paula says, "Easy, darling -- it's your Paula!"

Another story9 deals with Marya, a beautiful eight foot tall "Mexican mountain girl," who definitely has a crush on Wonder Woman. She calls Wonder Woman "brave princess" and "beautiful princess." When the two women are captured in nets, Wonder Woman, ungraciously considering only her dumb blond "boyfriend," Steve Trevor, tells her, "I'm sorry for you, Marya, but at least we've saved Steve..." Marya, with the selflessness of true love, replies, "I care not what happen to me if I help save your friend, Preencess!" Finally, Marya is encased in cement up to her chest. But when the amazon princess is about to be killed, "Driven desperate by her great love for Wonder Woman, Marya wrenches savagely at the solid cement which encases her legs." Leaping from the cement she shouts, "My preencess -- I come!" Finally, Wonder Woman freed and the villains vanquished, Wonder Woman declares, "The credit goes to the biggest girl and the bravest -- my little friend Marya!" Marya kneels at the amazon's feet, clutching her hand rapturously, saying, "Oh Preencess!"

Getting in the way of Wonder Woman's relationships with other women is always Steve Trevor, the Token Boyfriend.10 The Lois Lane to Wonder Woman's Superman, he seems to exist only to be rescued. She always puts him off, when he asks her when they will marry, with statements such as, "When justice has finally triumphed over wrong!" or "When evil and injustice vanish from the earth!" In other words, it'll be a cold day in hell, buster. Her reluctance to marry Steve may have had nothing to do with her interest in other woman, but rather, her reluctance to spend the rest of her life with someone so stupid that he constantly fails to make the connection between the Amazon princess Diana and her alter ego, army nurse Diana Prince.

It is generally accepted that Marston created Wonder Woman for girls, as an alternative to the male-oriented superhero comics of the time; however, I could find no actual statement on his part saying that. In her introduction to the collection of Wonder Woman covers, Gloria Steinem writes, "...(Marston) had invented Wonder Woman as a heroine for little girls, and also as a conscious alternative to the violence of comic books for boys."11 Of course, Steinem was not there, nor did she ever interview the good doctor. The statement I have found by Marston that comes closest to reflecting Steinem's conclusion is from an article written by Marston in The American Scholar12:

It seemed to me, from a psychological angle, that the comics worst offense was their blood-curdling masculinity...it's smart to be strong. It's big to be generous, but it's sissified, according to exclusively male rules to be tender, loving, affectionate...'Ah that's girls stuff!' snorts our comic reader, 'Who wants to be a girl?" And that's the point; not even girls want to be girls as long as their feminine stereotype lacks force...strength.

I have also found no statistics that show just how many girls did read Wonder Woman13, so my only evidence is anecdotal. Obviously, as she tells us in her writings, Gloria Steinem read, and was strongly influenced by, the amazing amazon. In her introduction to the collection of Wonder Woman covers, she describes the origin of Ms magazine: " Since Joanne Edgar and others of its founding editors had also been rescued by Wonder Woman in their childhoods, we decided to rescue Wonder Woman in return. (by putting her on their first cover)" On the back cover of my book, The Great Women Superheroes, author Jane Yolen writes, "I was one of the legion of young girls who adored Wonder Woman back in the 1940s..." In her article, "Looking For Wonder Woman,"14 Lillian Robinson writes of "devouring monthly installments of Wonder Woman." She continues, "I didn't know she was an icon, of course. But she was certainly the apotheosis of the female hero I ...sought..."

And of course there's my own memory. When I was a young girl, my girlfriends and I all read and loved Wonder Woman.

Much information can be gleaned from the letters pages of a comic. The original Golden Age Wonder Woman comics had no letters pages, but as late as the early 1960s, when Robert Kanigher was writing and editing the book, the letters page reveals the demographics of his readers. The April, 1962 issue contained letters from two girls and one boy, the May, 1963 issue had letters from five girls, and the October, 1964 letters page was another all-girl affair, with letters from five girls. Judging from their letters, the writers were all young, and they wrote to Wonder Woman herself, rather than to the writer or editor (in this case, the same person), as later, older male fans would do. In her letter from the 1963 issue, Linda Parson, from White Castle, La., wishes to actually visit Paradise Island:

When another reader begged you to take her to Paradise Island with you, you answered that Paradise Island is imaginary. Well, how about taking me on an imaginary trip there?

In asking to go to Paradise Island, Linda Parson is expressing a desire to go to a woman-only world, the world of Golden Age Wonder Woman comics. Steve Trevor is not only the Token Boyfriend in these comics, but often the Token Male in stories that otherwise feature only women. Any other males in these stories are usually villains, like Mars, god of war and sworn enemy of the amazons.

Many Golden Age Wonder Woman stories, especially the ones that take place on the all-woman Paradise Island, do not include even Steve, because men are not allowed on Paradise Island. Some of the women in these stories are butch to an extreme. In Wonder Woman and the Coming of the Kangas15, male cat-headed alien invaders turn out to be women in disguise. "We're amazons like you," says the beautiful redhaired leader, after she has been defeated, "We have no home. Won't you let us join your nation?" In Villainy, Incorporated!16, the evil "Hypnota, magician of the Blue Flame," is a mustached and bearded woman with breasts. Another of the villains in this story is the cross-dressing "Byrna Brilyant, the Blue Snow Man."

Even off Paradise Island, in what Marston referred to as "Man's World," the amazon princess mostly interacted with women. In A Human Bomb17, Suzan Patience, "the famous woman penologist," wants Wonder Woman to help her convince the governor to make her warden of the new woman's prison. Steve Trevor, whose imagination is on par with his I.Q., says, "Impossible! Whoever heard of a female prison warden?" Of course Wonder Woman agrees to help, and she starts by giving the prisoners new outfits. As they toss off their gray uniforms and try on the colorful dresses, the prisoners exclaim, "These clothes aren't like prison uniforms at all!" "Cute!" and "We don't look like convicts anymore--all the uniforms are different!"

For at least a few years after Marston's death, Wonder Woman continued, in the spirit of her deceased creator, to interact with women. In the 1950 story, Hollywood Goes to Paradise Island, the amazon puts together the "first all-girl crew in cinema capital history," including a "directress," "The only woman director in Hollywood!"18

Even Wonder Woman's birth, as related in the very first issue of Wonder Woman, is an all-woman affair, without even the aid of a turkey baster. In a feminist reversal of mythic hero birth stories, in which a virgin mother is magically impregnated by a male deity19, the virginal amazon Queen Hippolyta, desiring a baby, is instructed by the goddess Athena to mold one from clay. Then Aphrodite bestows the gift of life upon the statue, who becomes the baby princess Diana. Thus, like Heather, Diana has two mommies.20

The world of boys and men can be threatening to girls.21 In The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History, Marie Wilson has this to say about adolescent girls:

Sexual comments, jokes, and threats become more intimidating as girls develop an understanding of sexuality and as boys, on average, become physically bigger and stronger than girls....they begin to realize that good looks are necessary for certain kinds of success, and that good looks lead to being looked at, which for young adolescent girls can seem threatening.22

In the 1940s, sexual harassment in the workplace and in schools, although never approved of, was accepted as an unavoidable evil, as was domestic violence, which was not then illegal. At home, young girls saw their mothers being hit by their fathers, and accepting it.23 In school, it has only recently been understood by educators that traditional teaching has focused on boys' interests and behaviors. Teachers have traditionally called on boys more often than girls. They have accepted that boys tend to act out and disrupt the classroom in various of ways, meanwhile encouraging girls to be passive and quiet.24

Girls have needed, at least in their fantasy lives, a safe place to be with other girls, where they could express themselves without being threatened by boys. British girls' magazines seem to have recognized this need. In my study of four British girls' magazine annuals, from 1956, 1958, and 196325, I found comics in which the protagonists, usually students from all-girl schools, interacted with other girls, and any male in the stories is usually a villain. In a typical story from 1958, three school girls dress up as "The Silent Three," in hooded robes and masks26, to help a younger girl whose dog has been stolen by a wicked man, who hopes to use the dog to retrieve a hidden paper that will lead to treasure.

In "Staunch Allies of the Swiss Skater," from 1956, two British schoolgirls, vacationing in Switzerland, befriend a young Swiss ice skater, buying her a dress to wear for a skating contest. When the girl's cruel uncle locks her up, forbidding her to enter the contest, they free the girl and find a paper proving he is an impostor, masquerading as her dead uncle "to steal the legacy her mother left her!" One of the contest judges knew the real uncle and would have recognized him. In the end, a British girl hugs the skater and says, "Your troubles are over, Odette dear. You're free - free to skate!"

American girls' comics from that period are very different. Instead of the sisterhood themes of the British comics, the American comic stories usually revolve around the theme of the eternal triangle -- two girls, one of which is the protagonist, fighting over the Token Boyfriend. Patsy Walker and Hedy Wolfe fight over Buzz Baxter, Betty and Veronica fight over Archie Andrews, and so on. In the women's community of Paradise Island, girls did not have to have boyfriends; they could be "free - free to skate!", or free to be themselves and to interact with other girls.

Whether Wonder Woman's creator really intended any hidden lesbian agenda in his comics, or whether suspicions of Sapphism were simply products of Wertham's McCarthyist mentality, William Moulton Marston provided a safe place for girls in the pages of his comics, away from Man's World.

Copyright Trina Robbins 2006

Girl-Wonder.org thanks Trina for graciously allowing us to reproduce her paper.