Women in Refrigerators is a website created in 1999 by a group of feminist comic-book fans that lists examples of the superhero comic-book trope whereby female characters are injured, raped, killed, or depowered, sometimes to stimulate "protective" traits, and often as a plot device intended to move a male character's story arc forward, and seeks to analyze why these plot devices are used disproportionately on female characters.
History
The term "Women in Refrigerators" was coined by writer Gail Simone as a name for the website in early 1999 during online discussions about comic books with friends. It refers to an incident in Green Lantern #54, written by Ron Marz, in which Kyle Rayner, the title hero, comes home to his apartment to find that his girlfriend, Alexandra DeWitt, had been killed by the villain Major Force and stuffed into a refrigerator. Simone and her colleagues then developed a list of fictional female characters who had been "killed, maimed or depowered", in particular in ways that treated the female character as merely a device to move a male character's story arc forward, rather than as a fully developed character in her own right. The list was then circulated via the Internet over Usenet, bulletin board systems, e-mail and electronic mailing lists. Simone also e-mailed many comic book creators directly for their responses to the list. The list is infamous in certain comic book fan circles. Respondents often found different meanings to the list itself, though Simone maintained that her simple point had always been: "If you demolish most of the characters girls like, then girls won't read comics. That's it!" Journalist Beau Yarbrough created the initial design and coding on the original site. Technology consultant John Bartol edited the content. Robert Harris, a librarian and comic-book fan, contributed to site maintenance and updates along with fan John Norris. The idea for placing the list online originated with software developer Jason Yu, who also served as the original site host.
Creator response
Simone received numerous e-mail responses from comic book fans and professionals. Some responses were neutral and others were positive. Additionally, arguments on the merits of the list were published on comic-book fan sites in early 1999. Simone published many of the responses she received on the website. Several comic book creators indicated that the list caused them to pause and think about the stories they were creating. Often these responses contained arguments for or against the use of death or injury of female characters as a plot device. A list of some responses from comic book professionals is included at the site. Marz's reply stated "To me the real difference is less male–female than main character-supporting character. In most cases, main characters, "title" characters who support their own books, are male. ... the supporting characters are the ones who suffer the more permanent and shattering tragedies. And a lot of supporting characters are female."
Dead Men Defrosting
In response to fans who argued that male characters are also often killed, content editor John Bartol wrote "Dead Men Defrosting", an article arguing that when male heroes are killed or altered, they are more typically returned to their status quo. According to Bartol’s claim, after most female characters are altered they are "never allowed, as male heroes usually are, the chance to return to their original heroic states. And that's where we begin to see the difference." Discussing the site in his book Dangerous Curves: Action Heroes, Gender, Fetishism and Popular Culture, Bowling Green State University professor Jeffrey A. Brown noted that while male comic book heroes have tended to die heroically and be magically brought back from the dead afterwards, female characters have been likelier to be casually but irreparably wounded or killed, often in a sexualized fashion. To support his claim, he cited the Joker shattering the original Batgirl's spine just for fun, resulting in her being written as a wheelchair user for over a decade. He also cites the villain Black Mask binding, torturing and killing the first female Robin from DC Universe, Stephanie Brown.
In popular culture
''Deadtown''
Deadtown, an upcoming television series from Amazon Studios, an adaptation of the Catherynne M. Valente novel The Refrigerator Monologues, centers upon five recently deceased women who meet in Deadtown, a purgatory where they discover that their entire lives were merely in service to the superhero men, resulting in each of their deaths once they provided emotional backstory for the men.
Notable contributors
Several contributors to the site and the original list later became comic book creators and entertainment industry professionals.
Daniel Merlin Goodbrey – digital designer and underground comicbook author, creator of the hypercomic Six-Gun: Tales from an Unfolded Earth, and the iPod comic Brain Fist.
