I read something the other day criticizing Wanda’s role in Infinity War as being “just a weepy girlfriend”. And it took a few days for that to settle in, and I gotta tell you, the latent sexism blows my mind.
Let’s talk about Mr. Wando Maximoff, male superhero.
Wando and his love interest have been seeing each other secretly. They’re on their way to send her back when she stops him. She’s trying to tell him how she feels, but she’s blushing and stammering! How cute. Wando doesn’t have that problem, he’s quite confident, and assuredly helps her get it out. But that’s not all–his love interest wants commitment! She wants them to stay together… but Wando has doubts. Wando is a hero, he’s got comrades he fights alongside, and he can’t just give up on them.
But before Wando can give her an answer, they’re attacked–his love interest is grievously injured, and Wando has to fight off the attackers and protect his girl–lifting her up, carrying her away, catching her when she falls… During this Wando assures his love interest he won’t ever leave her.
Later, when we discover what those villains really want, Wando’s love interest nobly volunteers to sacrifice herself but Wando is having none of that. He wants to save the girl and his friends agree. When the villains come for her again, Wando again has doubts about not being with his comrades, fighting alongside them until at least he enters the field and proceeds to absolutely crush the enemy.
So. Wando Maximoff is a character who is a super badass who’s got a soft spot for the girl he loves. He’s all about fighting with his friends, saving the girl, and being the #1 badass on the field.
But Wanda Maximoff is a frail and ineffectual. She’s Vision’s girlfriend, and spends most of her time too paralyzed with all her womanly feelings of love to be useful.
I’m not saying that Wanda doesn’t have a number of feminine-coded characteristics and tropes, but she’s also got quite a few masculine ones that audiences would interpret as cool and heroic if she were a man.
You know you’re FUCKED, when you see one of these magic colors.
I don’t think I’ve ever directly posted this here, but here it is at least for reference: this is from the canon prelude comic to Age of Ultron, explaining why the twins volunteered. While I don’t blame anyone for not reading this comic or not knowing what happens in it, canonically, the twins thought they were volunteering with SHIELD.
There’s some problem with the logic of the twins’ motivation that stems from the writing one way or another, but in the comic, HYDRA is very aware the twins wouldn’t be cool working with them if they knew.
Those Celestial Bodies 