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Posts tagged: challenging masculinity

The Sexualization of Tony Stark

sakuratsukikage:

starkreactors:

The Sexualization of Tony Stark 

If you’re at all familiar with me and my personal thoughts on comicverse Tony Stark, you probably already know that I believe Tony is at least semi-canonically bisexual. There are a lot of reasons for this, most of which I plan to address at some point in the future, but this post is only tangentially related to that viewpoint.
This post is mainly about how Tony Stark is sexualized/has his virility or manhood mocked or questioned by villains and antagonists in the comics. At the end, I vaguely describe why I feel this adds fuel to the fire of my theory about his sexual orientation, but in this context that’s more for my personal justification than anything else.
In the 1998 Iron Man and Captain America Annual, upon first meeting Tony psychically, Metallo immediately calls into question Tony’s playboy status. image

This innuendo, while obviously intended to be a throwaway insult to Tony, is interesting because it presents Tony’s sexual promiscuity as something which weakens Tony, thus questioning his power and subverting the typical societal view of a promiscuous male (one that equates male power with sexuality). According to Metallo, because he is suddenly able to resist Metallo psychologically (he intends to mentally stop him from using mind control), his sexual strength must be diminished through his own will, making power and sexuality mutually exclusive. This then calls into question to power of Iron Man, whose identity is still a secret to everyone at this point. Iron Man’s power is clearly non-sexual in nature, but Tony’s reputation has allowed for questioning of his agency and virility on the part of Metallo, subverting traditional views of male sexual prowess.

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