I have a rather philosophical, rather than artistic, response to this piece. I hope you consider this as food for thought based on your intro to this piece. I speak as a therapist, and a male in a largely female profession.
There is a severe disconnect between your background info re rape culture and women as sex objects, and what you have actually drawn. You describe her as badass, but what you have drawn is a woman in a sexualized pose, in skimpy underwear, with a "come hither" look on her face common to anyone who peruses porn magazines. The fact that you describe her as powerful *and* sexy is an interesting thing I see in many men - they can't seem to leave the "sexy" out of it - so she is
still a sex object, just in a different way - a
male's fantasy of the dominant woman. Think about it - we don't automatically describe powerful men as sexy and powerful, do we...?
When you say
it's is clear that you recognize that you have decided to draw a woman whose
primary defining attribute is her sexuality. You then justify your decision by saying it's what excites you. How, then, is this different than all the other objectification of women that you say you hate? It is this more subtle and unthinking
male-centered definition of women's empowerment as essentially sexual, that is a bigger problem than traditional, outright male chauvinist behaviour - just because it is more subtle. I personally think it's a way for men to deal with feeling threatened by powerful women, by diminishing them to sex objects.
I should note that the only reason I posted this is because of the disconnect between your into and the image. In and of itself the image isn't awful (although it has been done to death already by every videogame artist on the planet). It's just that it was so jarring to see that was the route you were going after such an impassioned expression of your distress.
When you're done, it might be an interesting exercise for you to take the finished image to one of the gender studies / feminist classes (don't tell them it's yours) and see their take on it.
Anyway. Food for thought as I said. Please don't take this as an attack on you personally; I'm sure your hatred of rape culture is completely genuine. But I've dealt with the subtleties of this kind of thing for a long time and I just wanted to shine a bit of a light on something many of us don't even notice. Here is a lovely eye-opening piece about sexism and racism that talks about how blind we can be to our own actions, should anyone care to read it:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/crommuni...ingers-rapist/
Cheers
D'Arcy
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