Zeb Larson reviews Bitch Planet #8…
Kam is reunited with her sister.
After the usual but still interminably long wait, Bitch Planet is finally back, and this is definitely a back-to-business kind of issue. Three major threads drive this particular issue. Kamau has begun to search for her sister in the prison, a daunting task given that she’s not listed anywhere and is supposed to be dead. Mr. Makoto is conducting his own investigation into his daughter’s whereabouts, which makes for some of the most painful reading in the entire issue. Lastly, there’s a mysterious new prisoner with a deceptive amount of influence to wield, a woman named Eleanor Doane.
Without giving anything too major away, this is the first issue of the series to substantively deal with trans issues in this prison. To be honest, I’ve been waiting for this issue for a while, because a world as screwed up as this one (or our own) is begging for this kind of discussion. The treatment of the woman in question is interesting in no small part because while they (the patriarchy) are doing everything they can to misgender and mistreat her, they’ve still put her in this prison for women. Why is that?
I think it comes down to the way that they’ve put her in this prison, which is that she’s there, but segregated from the rest of the population. She can be a woman as long as she gets to be treated as some kind of freak, which seems to be the point of the weird medical experiments she’s forced to undergo. She exists, but is apart, and while she is included in the gender binary, it’s only with a giant asterisk next to it. Is that meant to be a broad commentary on the treatment of trans women in general? Seems apt to me.
Whitney and Kamau’s relationship makes for more entertaining and less painful reading, notwithstanding the solid punch Kamau lands on Whitney. Whitney’s in a position of underestimating Kamau and overestimating the men of the prison, which makes sense given the role she once had to play. When she asserts that somebody is always watching, she’s technically correct. However, the system is so enormous that the chances of being caught are relatively small, and Kamau is able to use this to her advantage. How is this going to change Whitney in the issues to follow? It’s hard to believe that just being in the prison will somehow make her more sympathetic, but maybe seeing the blind spots of the system she’s been standing up for will help. For that matter, how will Whitney’s whiteness be a factor in this place? She’s wielded considerable privilege over others her entire life, so how will that play out now.
Then there’s Mr. Makoto’s section, which I don’t want to spoil. Suffice it to say, it’s as painful as the sixth issue was.
As if Bitch Planet wasn’t loaded with enough commentary, it is continuing to develop as some kind of zine. Are there more essays in this issue than there were in the past? Certainly feels like it, but that’s not a bad thing. A book this loaded deserves a bit of unpacking. De Connick makes it clear in her bit that this particular issue was written with the help of a number of consultants, a sensitive move and a doubly wise one, given the controversy over the transphobic elements present in Airboy last year. John Jennings has an essay about skin color, blackness, and the idea of it as a kind of cage that imprisons African-Americans in ideas about criminality that they cannot escape. There’s also an interview with the founder of a feminist sticker club, which is something I had never heard of, but sounds awesome.
Mey Valdivia Rude has a really killer essay about the hypervisibility of trans women in pop culture. She notes that while trans characters are getting more representation in the media, that has been accompanied by a surge in violence against black and brown women and a dramatic increase in legislation restricting the rights of trans people nationwide. Her solution is to write trans characters that are actually human beings, which seems really obvious, but of course hasn’t really been done by a great many writers. I came away wondering whether poorly-written characters in fact inform this kind of backlash that we’re seeing today, which would of course make visibility for the trans community far more dangerous.
Ok, I’ve written too much about this book again. It’s just so good, though, and as it adds scholarly analysis on top of its parables and parallels, there’s always more to discuss. Take another three months if need be, Bitch Planet. This is the best book being published right now.
Rating: 9.3/10
Zeb Larson
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