I guess this is the part where I finally just go WHOOOOOSH!

It’s not supposed to be some part of a grand paternalistic conspiracy. Nobody believes that. “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”.
That’s the whole point of the entire tumbler: to get the people who draw and write these things to look at it in a different way and reappraise what they’re doing out of nothing but ignorance.

I was just pointing out that I’ve seen this before. It was a standard pose in the Jack Kirby universe. Look at anything late 60s through the 70s. Look at New Gods. Everyone is either hurtling around in a hunchback-battering-ram pose or a frog leap.

Look, I’m not saying the current trend is not sexualized and strange, but I am maintaining that pose was used before and was just as weird in its own way, so much so, that I noticed it at the time and assumed Kirby had a series of micro-strokes, or had really gotten lazy what with his myriad black squiggles and frog poses. Bug was the quintessential frog leap super hero whether he deserved to be portrayed that way or not.

To illustrate, what is a trait that we can see in comics that we might not recognize as a stereotypical male display of “attractiveness.” What about heroism? If you break it down, heroism is someone overcoming all obstacles, for great benefit to all/many. It puts that character in a separate class, they are above the average person. But we seem to revere heroes differently based on gender most of the time. Why is that? How are female heroes viewed by society? As desirable objects? Are women even often referred to as heroes? Compare that to the view and appeal of male heroes(real and literary), and there seems to be a difference, female heroes do not get the same attributes from heroism in our society. So heroism, in my view, is seen culturally as a “male” attribute, and confers a certain amount of desirability. Women apparently aren’t portrayed as powerful in the same way because it makes them seem less feminine, not because there is some grand paternalistic conspiracy, but because we ignore the impact of male stereotypes. Other characteristics of the way men are portrayed in comics should be examined as well to see how they focus or direct the way women are portrayed. Whether each characteristic is “right or wrong” should be discussed, but they have to be recognized first.

But seriously, if evolution is your thing, it should come as no surprise that we have evolving social structures as well as physiology. I think it is beyond reasonable to assume we do. Supposedly our big ole’ brains allow us to act beyond instinct, I say we prove it and try.

It is my understanding that these gender/sexual roles are derivative behaviors from our basest natural instincts

You probably should have outed yourself as a Victorian time-traveler earlier in the conversation.

It is my understanding that these gender/sexual roles are derivative behaviors from our basest natural instincts, twisting and turning as social and cultural pressures molded them to what we see today. These didn’t occur in a gender vacuum; certain behaviors elicited certain results… even if the behavior was “I will encourage your submission by punching you in the head, cavewoman.” These aren’t the baseless “wish-fulfillment fantasies” you imply they are, they’re fantasy rooted in real world social interactions and to a large extent MUTUALLY expected gender roles. These gender roles affect the portrayal of men and women in this art form.

What we are saying now in this day and age is “Hey, why don’t we use our big brains and actually make some deliberate conscious and conscientious decisions about how we view and treat each other?” Sounds good to me, but what I am arguing is that to do that, we should really understand the full nature of gender roles to avoid going in circles. For example, the criticism here is that women are shown as submissive, flat, and zero-dimensional simple sexual objects. So women should be portrayed instead as powerful, yes? But then why is power a positive image or trait? Isn’t that a male-oriented canard that forces women to adapt and integrate into a male dominated social structure? What about stripping sexuality from women, is that good? The Puritans seemed to think so, but that is not something to crow about. 

It’s too easy to throw up the same old arguments, we need a bit more depth in this discussion.

There are also adult videos that challenge the mainstream with performers that may have a different standard of beauty, body weight, age, etc., and some videos that are even made by feminists and/or producers who are actually concerned about aesthetics.
Super hero female comic book characters are not adult XXX performers — they are only drawn like they are, with unimaginative roles as supporting characters, BY unimaginative artists/writers who don’t seem to have any comprehension of female characters acting any other way.

Why can’t they be both?

Do please post a photo of yourself spreadeagled with your tits and ass hanging out so that we can understand you as a whole person. I’m sure that it wouldn’t distract anyone from the depth of your philosophical argument.

Regarding this other site, it appears to be 80% manga/anime, extremely obscure (appearing multiple times is Boundless Comics’ “War Goddess” which probably has nil circulation), or Rob Liefeld art or other artists’ technically poor art. Many images appear multiple times.

In other cases, scans of photoshop disasters from catalogs are posted, which has nothing to do with comics.

The people who do that site must be stiff as hell. I have a bad back, and I can rotate my torso at least 110 degrees.

it’s just that male stereotypes of gender are based on what women find, or we feel they find, attractive.

Setting aside your assumptions about what women find attractive in men, that leaves men idealized as muscular and powerful, traits which many men would embrace.

How many women embrace being idealized as big tits and a couple of wet holes?

It’s not difficult or obscure to find butt/boob poses at all.

See: every single one of your examples, where women are the ‘reward’ for a man conforming to a traditional male gender role.

http://thehawkeyeinitiative.tumblr.com/post/37109992017/aw-yeah-empowerment

http://thehawkeyeinitiative.tumblr.com/post/37106538169/is-she-balancing-her-sword-on-her-butt

http://thehawkeyeinitiative.tumblr.com/post/37102916552/im-not-a-good-artist-but-i-thought-id-jump-in

http://thehawkeyeinitiative.tumblr.com/post/37101859016/thecolourfulway-so-i-did-the-hawkeye

In fact, very few of the women in comics in general are “rubberized.”
In the cases where the art is genuinely bad in an anatomically-impossible way, it gets critiqued without the need for an “initiative”:

http://gammasquad.uproxx.com/2012/06/sexist-catwoman-0-cover-parodies?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+uproxx%2Fgammasquad+%28Gamma+Squad%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher#page/1

http://www.progressiveboink.com/2012/4/21/2960508/worst-rob-liefeld-drawings

“One group of characters are treated as people, and one group of characters are treated as objects.” 

This is simply not borne out by the examples, except, as I said, for the obscure, desperate, cherry-picked, obvious attempts at titillation. I mean, come on, who’s read this:  http://thehawkeyeinitiative.tumblr.com/post/37185043329/clint-u-so-fierce-3333 ?

No one, that’s who.

You know. The “geek girls”. Who are apparently all supposedly “fake” or something in the eyes of most male superhero comics people.

Think about that, boys. The idea that a woman can’t kick ass unless she’s pornified is so ingrained in mainstream comics that new examples of it can be found and posted ALL THE TIME.