Among the many panels at the recent San Diego Comic Con was a ‘Gender in Comics’ panel.  It was hosted by Janelle Asselin, and covered a good bit of ground.  Comic Book Resources reveals a bit about the panel:

The panelists quickly dispelled counterarguments claiming that important topics such as gender have no place being discussed in comics. None of the panelists thought comics should get a pass because they are “just comics.” “We express ourselves and articulate our own identity through works we consume or works we produce,” said Pleban. “It’s also the stuff we subconsciously get affected by and don’t realize. When you’re an adolescent and you find this thing that speaks to you and don’t know why it speaks to you just yet at that age, and then you get older and look back and go, ‘That’s why I was really into that thing! I recognized part of myself in this character!’ Data, Data’s the character.”

“It’s the thing we’re most consuming at young ages,” added Tynion. “It’s how we build the world around us. It’s our understanding through these comics and representation in there. If you don’t see yourself reflected in the world you’re building through fiction, whether in comics or entertainment, you start feeling like you don’t belong in the world. You find your little connections and latch onto that.”

Yes.  This.  People of all backgrounds read comic books, and deserve to see themselves represented therein.   Of course for a segment of the comic book readership, they view this as an assault on them.  They think that women asking to be better represented in comics (and requesting an end to sexual objectification) somehow means “no more men in comics” or “no more male creators”.  That’s the furthest from the truth.  The panelists touch on this as well:

The panel turned their attention towards the kneejerk reactions expressed by the male fans — fans that have been catered to by comics for decades. “If you’ve grown up in a situation where everything is about you and is catered to you, I think there is a degree to which equality can be perceived as oppression,” said Hudson. “If you’re used to having everything be about you, to some degree, and then suddenly it’s not, I guess in a way you perceive that as oppression.”

“Instead of opening up the pie,” Gaydos quickly added. “People are going to feel like it’s exclusionary.”

“But you have all the slices!” said Pleban. “Let me just have five of all the slices. That’s enough slices. You can’t be mad that you don’t have the whole pie. You can have three fourths of the pie, is that cool?”

Gaydos added a deliciously inclusive solution: “Make a bigger pie, it’ll be awesome!”

I like the pie analogy.  White male readers have had almost the whole pie for the entire history of comics.  Women, People of Color, LGBT people, and others would like a few slices too.  They’d also like to have the opportunity to create their own pies and see them get distributed equally.