Batmans gay

Batman is very, very gay. There's just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he's intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay. As we reported last week, this was the claim made by Batman, Incorporated writer Grant Morrison in an interview with Playboy where he offers his insights into the psychology of superheroes.

In Morrison's view, Batman's attachment to Alfred and Robin and his alleged detachment from the women in "fetish clothes" who "jump around rooftops to get to him" is symptomatic of his conceptual gayness. That's a very selective framing, but as Morrison told the LA Times in"Batman can take anything.

You can do comedy Batman, you can do gay Batman. That's not true, of course. As Morrison himself says, Batman is intended to be heterosexual. And yet there is a gayness to Batman, and it has been part of his identity since his earliest days. You may ask how one can talk about "gayness" as a concept distinct batmans gay sexuality.

That's a perfectly good question, but it has a simple answer. Our culture has not always been comfortable presenting the realities of sexuality, but it has always found ways to explore its fascination with manifestations of sexuality. The cultural markers associated with being gay were fair currency for fiction even when talking about gay people was not, and thus gayness, with all its broad strokes and stereotypes, was detached from sexuality, with all its nuance and diversity.

When we talk about Batman's gayness, we talk about presentation and perception. It's not a question that generally gets asked about other heroes, but in the public imagination it's one of the first questions asked about Batman. Psychologist Travis Langley, who co-wrote a book on the psychology of Batman, says it's the question he was asked most often when he told people what he was working on.

Something about Batman begs the question, and there are multiple possible triggers. There's the high camp of the s Adam West TV batmans gay, with its tongue-in-cheek dialogue and theatrical villains; but it didn't start there. And there's the scandalized innuendo of the s Senate witch hunt into the deviant influence of comics on juvenile batmans gay ignited up by psychologist Fredric Wertham's notorious study Seduction of the Innocent ; but it didn't start there.

It started ina year after Batman's debut, and it started with a sensible solution to a writer's problem. As Bill Finger recalled it in an interview shortly before his death, there was a frustration that Batman did not have anyone to share his deductive reasoning with.

He needed a Dr. Watson to his Sherlock Holmes. In the model of dime novel sporting hero Frank Merriwellwhose sidekick and ward was his younger half-brother Dick, the writers decided to give Batman a junior Watson to talk to. Batman and Robin. A wealthy bachelor living with a young boy.

The Gayness of Batman: A Brief History

That's where it started. The implication is not merely that Batman is gay, but that he is a pederast and a predator - concepts that have too often been conflated by prejudice. Wertham perceived the gayness of Batman, and perhaps even went looking for it, but he did not invent it.

He found it in the patients at his New York clinic for "sexually maladjusted individuals," many of whom were gay, and many of whom read comics.