The Perpetuating Homophobia Surrounding DC’s Character Joseph Wilson
Joseph Wilson (aka Jericho) was first introduced in Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s Teen Titans: The Judas Contract. From his very first appearance he was shown as incredibly artistic, both musically and with paint. He was also shown as very in tune with his emotions and would always try to help his friends and other people as much as he could. In narration boxes he got called ‘gentle’ countless times. As someone who is LGBT I instantly picked up on all of this and thought that he was gay. This turns out not to be true which I was not surprised by since this is the 80’s and sadly I’m use to the lack of representation in media even in 2018.
I brushed off the fact that he was straight and it did not bother me much since it was expected however this changed when I came across this quote from George Perez:
“While Marv and I did discuss the possibility of Joseph Wilson being gay, Marv decided that it was too much of a stereotype to have the sensitive, artistic, and wide-eyed character with arguably effeminate features be also homosexual”
This frustrated me beyond belief and I got extremely angry. They decided to not make Jericho gay based on not wanting to feed into a stereotype, while I know a lot of people may not understand that this is wrong but it is and it is homophobic. If this was a conversation between two gay men this would be a different story since they would have a grasp on the way society views gay people and they may choose a different route. But this is two straight men acknowledging the fact that they created a character that clearly reads as gay and knowing this they choose to not have the character be gay because of their preconceptions of what gay men act like based on stereotypes.
Again while I got annoyed with this it would not be as big of a deal, and I wouldn’t be writing this in the first place, if what followed did not happen. Since he first appeared there was not much mention about his love life, yet as time went on it was mentioned more and more. What I interpret from this is that people reading the comic, came to the same conclusion as I did, that Jericho is gay. Like I stated before while he was specifically chosen not to be gay that did not mean that he didn’t read as gay. This lead to Wolfman adding in dialogue stating how he was on a date with a girl, and over time this quickly escalated into painting Joseph as some type of womanizer. There is a hilarious moment where Dick Grayson goes on a long winded explanation talking about all the women that Joseph has been with and how girls fall head over heels for him, almost as if Wolfman and Perez were desperately pointing to Joseph while yelling, “See! He’s not gay!”
While the whole “too much of a stereotype” argument that was given irritates me but the fact that they then went and tried to shove him being a womanizer down the readers throats as a way to not make him a stereotype is just disgusting. How would gay/non-straight people who related to Joseph feel after seeing him being portrayed this way? Also the stereotype argument has no excuse here since if he was made gay he would have been a confirmed gay DC character in a wildly popular comic. Not to mention they did not have the issue of “will we get the sales?” since he was introduced during The Judas Contract and incredibly successful Teen Titans story and shortly after he joined the team. It was already popular and it would not suffer much by some people dropping the series.
There is a version of Joseph Wilson that is not gay, but bisexual in Christopher Priest’s Rebirth Deathstroke title. This peaked my interest at first since he is my favorite comic book character and I myself am bisexual and I’m always looking for representation. However, I was thoroughly disappointed, some of this disappointment is biased as what I perceive to be defining characteristic of him were not present, but I will not be talking about that here. I will take a brief moment to say that I have not read much of this comic so if I get any of my facts wrong I apologize. To start the way that Priest handles Joseph’s bisexuality is horrendous. First you see him engaged to a woman but he had previously had a relationship with a man, this is all fine. But the man is significantly older than Joseph to the point where it is uncomfortable and this man tells Joseph that he doesn’t “really” love his fiancé (He just needs to make a choice because bisexual people are just confused and need to choose one or the other. Which is a) incredibly biphobic and b) erases non binary people since it implies that there are only two genders). The fact that the man he had a relationship with was significantly older is important since it perpetrates the idea that men who love men are predatory. Also Joseph never says that he is bisexual, instead he does the whole “its complicated” thing which as a bi person I can say the only people who find bisexuality complicated are people who aren’t bi.
Since I heard about Joseph being bisexual in the current Deathstroke something about it did not seem right to me. For a long time, about a year, I couldn’t figure out why but recently I came to conclusion. It is because he was originally going to be gay and when he came back in 2016 instead of sticking with the original idea they decided to have him be bisexual. This strikes me as wrong, even though he was not canonly gay it definitely felt like he was and the homophobia surrounding his creation ripped his character once of his gay identity. And with him being bisexual it feels like a repeat in history where he once again was ripped of his gay identity. The bi community should not gain representation at the extent of gay community (or any non-straight community). This is my personal opinion but looking at the history since his creation it just feels wrong that he was made bi instead of gay.
From the creation to his current incarnation Joseph Wilson is surrounded by homophobia and there are no signs of this changing.
