Entertainment

Batman Apparently Won't Go Down On Women, And Twitter's Got Big Feelings About It

by Elizabeth Broadbent
DC/Youtube and _psdo/Twitter

It started out simply. The two co-creators of “Harley Quinn,” an R-rated DC Entertainment-HBO Max cartoon, inserted a joke about Batman going down on Catwoman. The DC universe has featured Batman boning Catwoman. “The Killing Joke” went out of its way to show Batman banging. Catwoman and Batman’s relationship is practically canonical in the DC universe.

But according to the creators of “Harley Quinn,” when they showed DC execs a quick scene of Batman down under, execs unequivocally nixed it. “You can’t do that,” they said. “You absolutely cannot do that… Heroes don’t do that.”

Did you hear that, those of you with vaginas? Heroes don’t go down.

Season two of “Harley Quinn” ends with Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn running off into the sunset together — literally. In fact, Poison Ivy ditches her dude for Harley Quinn, and it’s presented as a good thing. So DC’s problem isn’t sexual representation. Purely, simply, it’s Batman performing oral sex on a woman, and some fucked up idea of emasculation that comes with it.

And Twitter’s gone ballistic.

Most of the tweets side with “Harley Quinn” co-creators because hello, would Catwoman, a strong-ass woman, seriously put up with a guy who doesn’t do oral?!

As people pointed out, Batman’s sort of made for it:

And seriously, what woman puts up with this bullshit?

Apparently, a fuckton of them put up with it. It’s ingrained in our culture.. Flare reports that in 2015, DJ Khaled said that he expects his wife’s knees to hit the floor, but he doesn’t go down under. “I believe a woman should praise the man, you know, the king,” he told a New York radio show.

Gynecologist Jen Gunter told Flare that “I have listened to women with completely normal exams weep that they have been told that they do not smell or taste correctly… They were told these things by men.” There’s misogyny built into the very fabric of our culture, and if Batman won’t go down, it speaks volumes: about emasculation, about attitudes towards vaginas, and about attitudes towards women in general.

Whole industries are devoted to telling women we smell bad down there. Despite gynecologists, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office on Women’s Health, telling women not to squirt scented water up their lady holes, a full one-fifth of vagina-having people aged fifteen to forty do so. Nearly half of those do it every week. That’s how brainwashed we’ve become over our perfectly normal vaginas. Thank you, DC execs, for perpetuating the anti-vagina rhetoric embedded in our culture.

Then there’s the idea that labia are supposed to look like Barbie dolls: all tucked up and neat. Guess what, boys, girls, and others, labia come in all shapes and sizes, and some inner labia protrude from the outer labia. It’s normal. They aren’t “hamburger pussies.” DC execs? You’re inadvertently perpetuating stereotypes that our vagines are icky. I once had an ex call vaginas “hideous clam-beasts.” Thanks, fucker.

That kid hasn’t gotten laid since he wrote that fucking tweet.

Then again… why should Batman go down? Why are we assuming Batman wants to go down in the first place? Oh yeah: because in the “Harley Quinn” cartoon, we think Batman’s straight. Way to toss heteronormativity in there, Twitter. And during Pride Month, too.

But a sizable contingent of Twitter is adamant that DC execs are simply wrong about their favorite hero, and “Harley Quinn” creators are in the right: Batman would definitely eat a person out, and he’d do a damn good job at it, too.

The Twitterati have spoken: Batman goes down like it’s his job; Twitter’s gone sex-positive about our vaginas (particularly Catwoman’s) and strong women; and DC execs are in some serious trouble. With all the ruckus about Batman, Catwoman, his canonical love for Catwoman (and therefore Catwoman’s underparts), they’re going to have to craft a response. That response is going to be utterly fucking hilarious — and just the embarrassment those misogynist dickwads deserve.

Batman doesn’t go down? It’s gross to think that “heroes don’t do that.” Everyone with a vagina and a clitoris knows that real heroes get their faces between a person’s legs. If Batman doesn’t, either no one’s banging Batman; Batman’s a total dickhead; or Batman’s gay/ace. Period.

DC execs, hopefully, will be forced to issue a statement clarifying Batman’s position on oral sex (no pun intended), to the endless glee of Twitterati united, for once, in one thing: Oral sex on women = good. Oral sex by Batman = better. Oral sex on Catwoman by Batman = best.

Because Catwoman, like everyone with a vagina, deserves it. But at least, as a small consolation, we know Harley Quinn’s probably getting it from Poison Ivy.