One step in the perpetual cycle of socially constructed gender expectations is depictions of Gender in Fictional media, with Comic books being a prime example of this. Since these action packed stories are targeted towards young men and boys, comics are inclined to create stories with a heavy bias towards men. They are known for portraying various male power fantasies, giving men extraordinary powers and vast/ varied stories while women -if they significant to the story at all- are often depicted as demure love interests, femme fatales whos only power is seduction, or the 'token girl'. These portrayals of women do not treat them like characters but instead objects for the male audience to ogle or disregard.

During the Claremont Run, we also got to see a change in the way that women in comic books are written. Instead of having a singular girl character with the occasional love interest cameo, Claremont introduced and explored a variety of women as main characters. Women that were considered powerful, heavy hitting members of the team that go into the front lines, women who's story lines centered around their own identities rather than their relationships with other men, and most importantly, enough dimension and nuance as characters that they shared equal if not greater narrative relevance and impact to their male peers.

There was also a significant diversity between the women of X-men. You have women of Color like Storm and Jubilee, openly non christian girls like Shadowcat, and Women with physical and mental disabilities like Rouge and Destiny. (He was also known for wanting to write a lesbian couple between two major women where they have a biological son together, but this was shot down by the publishers)

This allowed Claremont and his team to explore narratives of intersectionality, tying explorations of women's rights with multiple other minority struggles that cannot be addressed separately. "Without frames that allow us to see how a social problem impacts all the members of a targeted group, many will fall through the cracks of our movements." (Kimberle Crenshaw) by having a diverse cast of women, the exploration of feminism in the X-men comics is allowed to be much less supeficial and much more reflective of the nature of feminism in real life.

This changed significantly in the Claremont Era with the Pheonix Saga storyline. With Claremont focusing in on her character, Jean Grey, goes from the supportive token love interest to a literal force of cosmic nature, changing her epithet to "the Phoenix" being Reborn in more ways than one under Claremont's writing.

Her character is developed further in the Dark Phoenix saga, which is one of the first times a comic narative writes a character going from being a good guy to being a bad guy. Jean gets manipulated, not because harming her would hurt the team, but because she as a character became an actual threat and major power, and the devastation she caused as a villain cements her as one of the most powerful X-Men of all time.

During the Claremont era, she has multiple storylines exploring what being Black means to her, and how this connects to her identity as both a woman and as a mutant. The comic story line "Lifedeath" is considered one of Claremonts best works of Character exploration during his run of the X-Men, acting as a full character dissection of Storm and who she is without her powers.

The idea of characters role being that of anstand in for the more youthful audience is not unheard of in comics (robin and Jimmy Olsen from DC comics comes to mind in this era), but the the choice to have that role be fufilled by a girl was very subversive, as it effectively understands and is proud of the fact that girls will read and enjoy comics too. Also, despite being a "weaker" character she still is not a depiction of the 'token girl' role, since shes only one of many women in the X-men, most of which are proper powerhouses.

Beyond her unique role in the X-men, Rouge also has a lot of story arcs about personal identity and trust. Her power to steal peoples memories and powers cant be turned off, forcing her to starve herself from human contact and leading to a lot of trust and self worth issues. She also has some harrowing mental health storylines as the memories thats shes taken affect her mental well being, further isolating herself from possible connections. These messy psychological storylines for someone that is a redeemed villain makes rouge into a very emotionally complicated woman.

Early into developing the ideas for these new international characters, the inital writers they planned on having for this new run of X-Men became too busy for the project, leading Chris Claremont to take their place as the lead writer, hence why the beginning of this international writing was called the "Claremont Era"

This extended to how he wrote the women in X-Men as well, having his own issues with portrayal of women in other Marvel comics. “Every team had a female character who was ‘the girl’ never ‘the woman’ always ‘the girl’ I figured ‘why cant we have more exciting people?'” (Claremont) He wrote the Women in X-Men with equal amounts of attention as the men on the team, and also actively pusehd to write more female main characters beyond a token girl. As comic curator Karen Green States, "Whenever he has sat down to create a character he would always say first… 'is there any reason that this character can’t be female?'"

“The advantage that x-men built is that it was fundamentally the product of two people. Two writers, me and (Louise)” -Chris Claremont

Giddens, Anthony, et al. “Gender Inequality.” Essentials of Sociology, 8th ed., W. W. Norton & Company , New York, NY, 2021, pp. 262–272.

Meaney, Patrick. Chris Claremont’s X-Men. Performance by Chris Claremont, et al., Youtube, 2023, https://youtu.be/A_6qVaux1d0?si=sOY7y_VYB76ja580. Accessed 2025.