So Batwoman is a lipstick lesbian now. And CNN is making a big deal out of it.
I can see the motivation they allegedly have in creating this character for the sake of diversity. Sure, let’s have some gay Super Heroes™. There are gay people out there; it makes sense that there would be gay heroes. It would also make sense that there would be some overweight, ugly, and otherwise unsavory looking heroes (besides the monsters, because the even though the monsters are hideous in the story they look perfectly badass to us readers). But let’s maintain the idea of diversity within good-looking and physically well-endowed people here for a moment.
With the advent of the new Batwoman being a Gotham City high class socialite, and making her a “lipstick lesbian,” they’re not really promoting and displaying diversity. It wouldn’t be upon them to make a hero who just, I dunno, happens to be gay. They’re making a character for the character to be gay. Putting the purpose forward. If you think about it, it ain’t all that different from when characters like Black Vulcan and Luke Cage the Power Man were conceived. They wanted to make black characters, so they made characters whose purpose in existence, really, was being black. Kinda like this Batwoman scenario.
Picture this: What if they kept it a secret until the book came out. We see Batwoman out and about fighting crime and kicking ass and stuff. Then she comes home after a hard night’s work to go on a date with her girlfriend.
Y’know… revealing the detail as an aspect of her character at a good story moment, rather than reveal the fact waaaaay before the fact to stir up a benign shitstorm to get everyone to talk about it. Because it would probably have gotten the same amount of press, and they’d look less like assholes. Also, aren’t surprises just… better?
And along with Batwoman in their push for diversity, we’ve got a new Atom who’s Asian, and a new Blue Beetle who’s black. Because, as Maddox said, “True diversity comes from people who look different.”