With her Godly abilities, extensive training, and powerful weaponry, she’s able to defend herself, others and the world by any means necessary – but she is, first and foremost, a diplomat and advocate for peace. The over-riding feature of her character, as distinct from that of Batman and Superman, is emotional intelligence – which she has developed over the course of centuries. While Batman and Superman have the benefit of wisdom accumulated over the course of part of a single lifetime, Princess Diana of Themyscira has a perspective based in historical experience – by virtue of her status as a demi-goddess.
The difference between Wonder Woman and her male counterparts is further evident from the gifts the gods bestowed upon her. In addition to strength, durability, flight, speed, stamina, reflexes, healing and agility, the Wonder Woman of DC Comics benefits from the powers of dimensional teleportation, animal rapport, tactics and strategy, unarmed combat, weapons mastery, linguistics, wisdom and aviation. She wears unbreakable wrist cuffs forged from the impenetrable shield of Zeus – which deflect projectiles and can form an energy shield when crossed. She wields an indestructible Lasso Of Truth, which burns with the Fires Of Hestia and compels anyone bound by it to be truthful. She wears a golden tiara, which doubles as a throwing weapon, and uses a magically-forged sword and shield.
But, it’s not merely her wisdom, grace, power and demi-goddess Amazonian warrior status that make her such an important character – it’s the nature of her homeland, as designed by William Moulton Marston all those years ago. Diana hails from a society made up entirely of women, which means she’s fundamentally self-reliant, unapologetically assertive and entirely egalitarian in her outlook. She holds the existence of life in the highest esteem, and systematically challenges the largely testosterone-based idea that violence is inevitable when faced with conflict.
The concept of patriarchy, and the idea of a culture in which women are seen as less than men, is entirely nonsensical to her – as it should be to all of us. Just as Superman benefits from the combination of lessons about humanity he received from his Kryptonian relatives, and his Earthly adoptive family, Diana wields the knowledge of equality as her most powerful weapon. She’s wholly unhindered by the insidious psychological effects of sexism and misogyny, and it’s this aspect of her character that makes her truly unique.
It makes her unique in comic books, certainly, but it makes her unique in film-dominated pop culture, too. Even in the fantastical genre of science fiction – from the politically framed Star Wars, to the frontier-exploring Star Trek, to the monster-defeating Pacific Rim, to the time-bending Edge Of Tomorrow – creators continuously fail to imagine a version of society in which equality has truly been achieved.
In general pop culture, capable female characters remain rare, and are still commented upon in that rarity by their male counterparts. Those around them repeatedly express surprise at heroic women – singling them out as the exception to the rule. Female heroes in film are most often depicted as coming to their heroism as the result of some kind of abuse, too – as seen, to name but a few examples, in Avengers: Age Of Ultron, the James Bond franchise, or literally every Quentin Tarantino movie ever made.
Wonder Woman and her homeland of Themyscira, on the other hand, are among the only real examples – in comic books and beyond – of a reality that’s entirely unobstructed by sexism, misogyny and patriarchy. On the most basic level, Wonder Woman and her story show us that an egalitarian approach is not only possible, but that it would also save the world.
