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Leigh Finke, born in St. Paul, Minnesota is a single, trans, mother of two. She is an author, filmmaker, media producer, and speaker. She's the creator of a video production company, Totally Gay Productions, and the author of Queerfully and Wonderfully Made and Welcoming and Affirming: A Guide for Supporting and Working with LGBTQ+ Christian Teenagers.

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In 2014, the year this article was written, President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden launched the "It's On Us" campaign to encourage both men and women to help prevent sexual assault on campuses.
Malala Yousafzai, aged 17 at the time, along with Kailash Satyarthi received a Nobel Peace Prize for their fight for equal education for all children. Malala became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Wonder Woman has been an icon for feminism since her first appearance in 1941. Her unique background reflected the life of her creator, William Moultan Marston, a man in a polyamorous relationship with two women, whom he had four children with. The women that Marston was in a relationship with both contributed to the creation of Wonder Woman, wanting to show the importance of equality and women's rights.
Another key feature of the Wonder Woman comics was the representation of BDSM. While it was likely an interest of Marston's relationship, BDSM was also used as a symbol of women's oppression at the time. Women were shown bound and gagged to represent how they were bound by society.
An important feminist at the time, Margaret Sanger depicted a woman bound to the weight of unwanted babies on the cover of an article on Birth Control.
After Marston died, the feminist nature of Wonder Woman changed. She was pushed back into a typical man's idea of a woman, working as a secretary and featuring on the cover of one comic as a helpless woman being carried across the stream by her romantic interest.
In 1972, Wonder Woman was featured on the cover of Ms. Magazine with the headline, "Wonder Woman for President." Despite the many changes to Wonder Woman over the years, she continues to be recognized as a feminist icon to today.

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Wonder Woman shows that women can be physically strong instead of dainty beings that need constant assistance. They can be just as intelligent as any man. They can be independent and have their own, important place in society.
I think what can be misguiding about female superheroes, though, is that they show that strong, independent females, can do anything a man can do, or more, the same way a man does it. This idea isn't inherently wrong and, but in modern feminism, we need to show that women can be strong and independent in similar and different ways than men. Women don't have to be just as physically strong and capable as men in order to be on their level. In reality, there are many different ways to be strong, to be capable of making differences, and to fight for what you believe in, without pure physical strength and ability. Examples are being emotionally strong versus physically strong. Making small changes in a small community versus constantly fighting immediate, life-threatening villains. Putting effort into one fight for a long period of time, little by little, with patience and dedication, versus the constant satisfaction of defeating another bad guy in a short amount of time, or always winning a battle.

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Our class discussion about whether or not Wonder Woman truly is a feminist icon really made me think about the complexity of the question - Wonder Woman was created by a man, after all, and she behaved differently under different writers and in different time periods. We know that William Marston created Wonder Woman with feminism in mind, but could a white man in the early 20th century even really grasp the concept? Is Wonder Woman a feminist icon?

I have two separate answers to this question - though they might sound like they are in opposition, I believe that they are equally true and equally important. I arrived at these answers by splitting the question into two questions, the first of which being: Is Wonder Woman a feminist icon in 2015?

My answer is a resounding no.

Analyzing past media (movies/articles/books/etc) through a feminist lens is an important practice for the furthering of modern feminist theory. It allows us to better understand the prejudices and biases of a time period, and by extension to better understand the problems in our society today. It's also true that it's just as important to critique past works of feminism as it is to critique non-feminist media; modern feminism is no longer the "if you educated women they'd be better wives for men" argument that Mary Wollstonecraft once wrote about. Wonder Woman can be critiqued in just the same way. Yes, it's true that she is a woman and a superhero; it's also true that many of the plots of her comics (at least in the 40s) aimed to teach lessons of gender equality.

But Wonder Woman was never quite allowed to be as strong or as capable as the male superheroes that she associated with - she was secretary of their league, she had to stay home when they went war. Wonder Woman is also problematic when viewed from an intersectional standpoint. As Gloria Steinem points out, the Wonder Woman comics tended to get racist and jingoistic around wartime, while she still claimed to be a supporter of human rights. One hardly has to watch the news for 5 minutes in the U.S. nowadays to understand that we still do the same thing when it comes to our depictions of Muslims. Perhaps the patriotism of the 40s simply won out over the attempts at feminism (for example, though Wonder Woman is Amazonian she's also... a white American woman?), or perhaps a nonwhite or non war-supporting heroine just wouldn't have sold comics at that time. Either way, Wonder Woman certainly does not pass inspection when it comes to the standards of feminism in 2015.

Question #2: Did Wonder Woman symbolize the ideals of Western feminism in the 1940s?

My answer here is yes, absolutely. Wonder Woman has a lot of flaws that are important to acknowledge and keep in mind, but in my opinion she was a positive step in the advancement of feminism in the United States. Perhaps Wonder Woman presented a slightly watered down version of the ideas that were really circulating among feminists at the time, but she offered a strong and independent female icon to a world that desperately needed them. Wonder Woman never explicitly tells her readers to dismantle the patriarchy or to use birth control, but consider what she does do: she encouraged woman to earn their own living, to join the WAVEs or WAACs, and she (at least originally, under Marston's control) demonstrated to her young readers that women can be just as successful without a husband or children. Her existence alone as a female superhero allowed girls to see that world as one that they belong in too, instead of the boys' club it used to be (and mostly still is, sadly).

The image I've included, the closing panel from 1944's All-Star Comics #22, is an example of Wonder Woman's progressive nature relative to her time period. Does she follow this creed unfailingly? No, she doesn't; but she played an important role in bringing feminist ideas to the general public, and inspired many women (like Steinem) to defy the patriarchic order and learn about feminist theories. 70 Years from now, that which we believe to be progressive now will probably be considered conservative and problematic, as it should be. There is merit both in acknowledgment of Wonder Woman's faults and her successes, and though she's lost her status as a feminist icon, her American iconicity is undebatable.

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Wonder Woman as Feminist Icon: Two Different Perspectives by Calvin Thrall

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Our class discussion about whether or not Wonder Woman truly is a feminist icon really made me think about the complexity of the question - Wonder Woman was created by a man, after all, and she behaved differently under different writers and in different time periods.