8FOLD/ACRA: Nonfiction # 5, "Justice for Julie Ann"

[Tom Russell]

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 -- NUMBER 5 --- [8F-143][PW-12][HCC] ----- BY TOM RUSSELL --

     [STRONG ACRA/TRIGGER WARNING]

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    ||   ||  ||  . '|..  ||    ||  ||      ||
    ||   '|..'|. |'..|'  '|.' .||. '|...'  '|...'
|| .|'                      for Julie Ann
 '''

It began a few weeks after "The Last Story", those perilous two days
in August where it seemed like the world was going to end, and it very
nearly did. With Beijing occupied by an alien force and thousands dead
worldwide, it's natural that sorrow and pain would give way to anger
and to rage. The tense and tricky situation in China has made direct
military reprisal unlikely, and the Pulse Collective are separated
from our wrath by a gulf of countless galaxies. Which means that that
impotent frustration, that anger, and that rage perhaps has nowhere to
go except against those who brought the Pulse to our doorstep in the
first place.
   By any reckoning, the target should be Max Lang, and he's had his
share of it. Once the most popular four-colour hero on Earth-- so
popular, in fact, that he "was made one of the Seven [Wonders] despite
his singular lack of accomplishment or skill"-- the Human Zeppelin's
approval ratings have been plummeting steadily all year, and now sit
at an all-time low of 9%, making him slightly more detestable than the
United States Congress. It would not come as a surprise, then, that
his wife, Julie Ann Justice, would likewise be unpopular. Call it
guilt by association. Her approval rating?
   Seven percent. The world hates Julie Ann Justice more than the man
who is actually responsible for the Pulse War. In fact, the backlash
against her is significantly more pronounced and virulent, particular
in four-colour fandom.

          "It's the Pulse's slut."

Some of this is expected, due to her alien heritage. In general, those
few scattered alien ex-pats who make their home on Earth tend to be
distrusted and disliked, and this is, perhaps understandably, at an
all-time high, as we still have no way to know which aliens owe
allegiance to the wide-reaching Deep Space empire of the Pulse. But
even among aliens, Julie Ann seems to be an especial target of
invective.
   "There's a reason for that," said one of her (invariably anonymous)
critics. "And that's because it's been hiding what it is."
   "It" is the pronoun of choice for #realjustice, a "movement"
dedicated to "exposing the alien traitor Julie Ann Justice, and the
media that has colluded to push its agenda".
   "It's been pretending to be human for almost twenty years. Its
allies in the media have made the world accept it like it was human.
It has risen to positions of great influence and power so as to
undermine our institutions from within. This should have been obvious
to anyone with half a brain once it destroyed the Seven Wonders, just
in time for its masters to invade the Earth." Or, according to one
member of #realjustice, "It's the Pulse's slut."
   But Julie Ann Justice has never "pretended" to be human. Though she
now identifies as such, nonetheless she was forthright about her
heritage when she made her debut, and has been ever since.
   "It's called hiding in plain sight," comes the inevitable retort.
"It's the way it acts human, the way it looks human, it makes us
forget."
   The primary theory, briefly stated, is that Julie Ann Justice was
sent to Earth by the Pulse to make us ripe for conquest.
   The first of many holes in this theory is that Julie Ann was sent
to Earth from her doomed homeworld as an infant. She was its sole
survivor, and was adopted and raised by a kindly Midwestern couple.
When she debuted, this all become public knowledge, and there is a
substantial trail of paperwork documenting her adoption, her
schooling, and her childhood. Surely the Pulse wouldn't have sent a
baby to destroy us from within.
   Invariably, #realjustice has answers to this-- lots of answers.
First, it's possible that she wasn't really an infant when she
arrived, but only looked like one, a trick of her alien biology-- and
it's not the first time a woman's lied about her age, har-har. Or,
even if she was an infant, her DNA or brainwaves have been programmed
with Pulse instructions since birth (read: she has no agency of her
own, and is a slave to biological urges). There are dozens of
theories, each of them mutually-exclusive, and each of them couched in
the rhetoric of misogyny.
   It's an argument that they are quick to deflect. "This isn't about
women, or hating women, or even hating It. This is about the fact that
no one in the media is asking these questions, and that [the media]
has been working actively, if unknowingly, to further Its agenda. This
isn't about attacking women. It's about ethics in journalism."

       "It's just a worthless cunt and pair of tits."

Core to the arguments of her detractors is the belief that Julie Ann
Justice has never really accomplished anything to merit the popularity
and professional success that she's achieved. "It's never really done
anything. Everything was just handed to it, because she's a woman, and
they needed to fill a quota. And men who actually know what they're
doing, and actually have gotten stuff done, they're denied the
opportunities they deserve."
   But Julie Ann Justice has "gotten stuff done" from the very start.
Whereas most four-colours spend their salad days fighting muggers and
glider-pirates, her first adventure pitted her against the
havoc-wreaking duplicate moon, and last I checked, there was still
just one moon left in the sky, and my house wasn't underwater (the
mortgage on my house, that's another story). The following week, she
rescued the members of the G7 conference from the Retromancer's
Paradox Heart; the week after that, she prevented the anti-explosion
of an anti-particle accelerator accidentally created in a renegade
thought experiment, and celebrated her sixteenth birthday.
   You know what I was doing when I was sixteen? Well, not that. At an
age where most people are screwing stuff up left and right, Justice
was saving the world every other day. The sheer mind-boggling enormity
of her accomplishments is a big part of why public sentiment towards
costumed heroes, and especially the teenaged variety, both of which
had been a steep decline since the mid-eighties, did an about-face.
   But even then, there were those on the fringe who denigrated her
accomplishments. "It's not her," reads a vintage USENET post. "It's
her powers. Anyone could do what she did if he had those kind of
powers. So, really, grading on a scale, she hasn't really done that
great." This was posted after she rejoined an Earth that had been
pulled apart by pseudocylindrical interrupted composite map
projection. The poster, who decried her miraculous array of
super-powers, was a huge booster of the original Darkhorse. When other
posters pointed out that Darkhorse has equally miraculous powers, the
poster argued that a speedster's powers require intelligence. "Hers
doesn't. You [the poster who argued with him] are literally an idiot,
and I guarantee that even you could do a better job than Julie Ann
Jailbait."
   Disparagement of her intellect was a common thread then, and
remains so now. "Have you heard her talk? Have you actually seen her
talk? Dumb as bricks. I'd say she's been getting by on her looks
alone, butt [sic] she's actually not that great-looking."
   At the age of fourteen, nearly two years before her costumed debut,
Julie Ann Justice had graduated egregia cum laude with a degree in
astrophysics (the youngest person to receive that honor until thirteen
year old Emma Lauth earned her degree in parallel Earth geography).
In-between her time spent saving the world, galaxy, and universe, the
teenaged Julie Ann Justice filed several successful and highly
profitable patents for optical lenses. The resulting money, smartly
invested, resulted in a substantial fortune which has in turn been
used to fund a number of world-wide, multimillion charitable
enterprises.
   By any reasonable standard, hers has been an astonishing,
accomplished, and admirable existence. When, four years into her
career, Julie Ann Justice became the youngest member of the Seven
Wonders, many of her peers argued that her invitation had been
long-overdue and well-deserved.
   She was only the fifth woman to join the team in its then-sixty
year history. The fourth, White Mink, had joined the previous year in
1997. It was the first time two women had served on the team
simultaneously, and there was an immediate uproar. Allegations of
political correctness and quotas abounded, along with rumors, never
supported by evidence, of sexual favors performed in exchange for
membership. Julie Ann Justice weathered the storm, but White Mink quit
in early 1999, committing suicide soon thereafter. Julie Ann remained
the only female Wonder until Ogress and the second Spectra joined up
in 2006. A year later, Julie Ann Justice became the first and only
female leader of the team.

       "It's not an agenda. But I think the team's roster
        should reflect the world that we actually live in
        now. Really, it's the world we've always lived in."
              -- Julie Ann Justice, July 2006

>From 1938 to 2005, the Seven Wonders had seen forty-two official
members. Julie Ann Justice was the fifth woman, but only the fourth to
"officially" be a member; the team's very first female member, the
original Spectra, was designated the team's "secretary" and was only
an "unofficial auxiliary" member, despite the fact that there was an
open slot. All the women, and all but three of the men, were white;
one of the non-white members, Firetip, was half-black and took pains
to pass for white in the tumultuous fifties.
   The team Julie Ann inherited in March 2007 comprised (1) herself,
(2) her husband, the world-famous but largely useless Human Zeppelin,
(3) Fahrenheit Man, (4) Ogress, (5) Spectra II, (6) Gremlin, and (7)
Doctor Night.
   Within two weeks, Ogress resigned. She had been angling for the job
herself, and had a long history of personality clashes with Julie Ann
Justice. Some argued that she hadn't resigned at all, but had been
pushed out by the "emotional" new Prime Wonder. In either case,
speculation immediately started as to who would replace Ogress. It was
universally assumed that "of course" it would be another woman, "to
maintain the balance."
   At the next Wonders press conference, Julie Ann Justice announced
the nomination of two new female members, one to replace Ogress, and
one to replace the Human Zeppelin, who was moved to "unofficial
auxiliary" status (the first since the original Spectra). Dramatic
changes in the roster had been a part of the team's mystique since its
founding, but these nominations resulted in a sizable amount of
pushback.
   "Four women to three men. It's not a matter of sexism, but it's
simple math. A few days out of every month, a woman is going to be out
of action. And they tend to synch up, so a few days out of every
month, there's just going to be three Wonders. And that's when
something big is going to hit."
   Not only were both nominees women, but one was black (Fennec Fox),
and the other Lebanese (Shamal). "It's political correctness, just
enforcing a quota, a made-up version of diversity where it doesn't
belong. And you know what happens when they step down? It's going to
be another woman, another negress or Arab, because you know there will
be a shit-storm if they try to nominate a normal person. So those
slots are lost forever."
   That last remark was from their teammate, Doctor Night, who did not
know he was being recorded. He stepped down a few days later and was
replaced with Green Grenade, a man of Chinese descent. Fandom
exploded. "This isn't the Seven Wonders anymore. It's not the team I
love. It's supposed to be the greatest heroes in the world, and she's
turning it into a bunch of minorities that I don't care about."
   "It's bull," said Julie Ann Justice late in 2007. "And it's
incredibly offensive, this idea that I'm somehow deliberately denying
opportunities to white males. For almost seventy years, the team has
denied opportunities to people who weren't white and weren't males.
Everyone is being judged on their merits, and being white and having a
penis have ceased to be considered merits on their own.
   "When I joined the team, they asked me-- they asked me three
separate times in the interview-- 'you're not going to get pregnant,
are you?' And, you know, how dare they ask me that question? What
business is it of theirs what I do with my body and my personal life?
That's not a question they'd ever ask a man.
   "It's not an agenda. But I think the team's roster should reflect
the world that we actually live in now.  Really, it's the world we've
always lived in."
   The Wonders saw a much higher turnover in its last septennium than
in any previous, and this instability led to other criticisms of its
Prime Wonder: she made decisions on a whim, she wasn't strong enough
to hold the team together, she thrived on creating artificial drama.
It was these deficiencies, they argue, that led to the team's
dissolution under her watch. (Some of those who were cast aside, such
as Doctor Night, were more than happy to support these allegations.)
   And yet. Her Wonders solved the Forever Paradox. Her Wonders saw us
through the Day of Terror and stood with Red Hart against the
Never-Lord in the orbit of the Impossible Star. Her Wonders spoke the
names of the Last Warden, routed the legions of Kah'nai, rescued the
year 2012 from Forgotten Time, negotiated (and enforced) Earth's
neutrality when conflict at last broke out between the Dawn Compact
and the Winter King, reversed the collapse of the sub-atomic
multiverse, and thwarted the Devil Prince Satanor.
   Her Wonders were arguably the most accomplished in the team's
storied history, and each of these crises was overcome by a slightly
different roster, one that was uniquely suited to the task at hand,
uniquely chosen to deal with the challenges in a fast-paced and
dangerous cosmos. At times its "unofficial auxiliaries" numbered more
than the official roster-- something heretical to fandom but necessary
for the modern age. Under Julie Ann Justice, the team became fluid and
adaptable-- the best it had ever been and, as it turned out, the best
it ever would be.
   Fandom, already hostile to Julie Ann Justice during her time as
Prime Wonder, was quick to give her all the blame for the team's
dissolution in 2014. But this just doesn't have any basis in fact. For
starters, the team wasn't dissolved; it just wasn't renewed.
   In June 1944, just a few months shy of its sixth year of existence,
the unofficially tolerated vigilante group became the first, and only,
group of costumed adventurers to be put on government payroll. The act
of Congress that "created" the team gave them a budget and a charter
to be in effect for a total of seven years. This was renewed in 1951
for another seven years, and in 1958, and so-on, with each new act
extending the team's life for a single septennium, increasing its
already generous budget, and naming a new Prime Wonder for each
extension. When the charter came up for renewal again in June 2007, it
passed unanimously, as it always had. But if the vote had come up just
a year later, amid the near-total collapse of the global economy and
the resultant culture of austerity, it never would have passed. No
matter who the Prime Wonder was, it would not have been renewed in
2014.
   This was all but assured when Lacey Trimmer replaced Phil Whaley as
head of the DSHA in 2010. Trimmer's relentless championing of the
Daylighters-- ironically, the sort of flexible team that Julie Ann
Justice was moving the Wonders toward-- as a no-cost alternative to
the $25 billion per annum Wonders was the final nail in the coffin. It
was economics, politics, and the changing times that ended the Seven
Wonders.
   In the weeks following the announcement that neither party would
put forward a bill for the next septennium, #realjustice gathered
steam, formed from elements in fandom already dissatisfied with the
"dilution" and "forced diversification" that had "tarnished a
seventy-six year old legacy".

          "Julie Ann Justice deserves to be raped."
          "Two problems with your statement. One, she would
           probably like it. Two, it's not rape if it's not
           a human being."

In these past few weeks, threats of violence, dismemberment, and rape
have been directed not only at Julie Ann Justice and Lacey Trimmer,
"the twin whores who conspired out of jealousy to destroy what great
men built", but at other prominent female and minority superheroes who
dared to speak up for them. #realjustice began conducting campaigns of
vicious and constant online harassment, leaking the addresses and
personal information of its victims, hounding them from speaking
arrangements, rendering several afraid to even leave their homes.
   Admittedly, Julie Ann Justice isn't one of them. Being physically
invulnerable has it perks. This is generally accepted as the reason
why those opposing #realjustice, while quick to defend Trimmer and
other women, won't speak up for Julie Ann Justice directly. There are,
however, two other reasons.
   First, there is the elephant in the room: the Pulse War and the
Last Story have turned mainstream public sentiment pretty squarely
against Julie Ann Justice (despite the fact that neither are her
doing). No one wants to come across as an apologist for that. This is,
I think, a justification for cowardice. It is both easy and
unnecessary to defend someone who everyone already loves. Society
requires that a victim be perfect, especially if she is a woman. It's
part of a larger sickness of which #realjustice is only the most
extreme and virulent example.
   Second, there are some who refuse to speak for Julie Ann Justice
because she was not born a human female, though she has acted and
identified as a woman for her entire adult life. Said one "feminist",
"This is really about women, and so we should we speaking for,
standing up for, real women." Because, I guess, some people "deserve"
to be marginalized; some groups, it's okay to discriminate against.
This ugly prejudice is one these "allies" share with #realjustice.
   Many who do stand up for its other victims see #realjustice as a
lunatic fringe, an outlier, something that is not a part of the "real
fandom" to which they belong. But yet, those same tendencies, and
those same unquestioned assumptions, have been with us all along, in a
less violent but no less insidious and cancerous form. Rather than
working and fighting to make fandom a better and more egalitarian
place, they pretend there is nothing wrong with it, that the cancer
isn't there, or that isn't widespread, or that it doesn't need to be
addressed. And by turning a blind eye to it, they are tolerating the
cancer, allowing it to spread and to thrive, both in geek culture and
in the mainstream.

COPYRIGHT (C) 2015 TOM RUSSELL