Poison Ivy: the sum of all Jon's nightmares.

The title to this particular blog post really is a swing at the author. He's labelled Poison Ivy a misandrist environmentalist on many occasions. What I love most about this is the continuing debate as to whether misandry exists. I personally don't think it does. A woman can hate a man for having typical male behaviours i.e. being a sexist or telling sexist jokes. However, a woman's hatred for a man will never affect his ability to get a job, to go out when he pleases or ever affect his ability to feel safe in his surroundings. However, misogyny means that women who aren't as pretty are less likely to get that promotion, misogyny means us women better watch what time we feel like going for a jog or whose standing next to us in an elevator.

The best part of this is that Poison Ivy isn't a misandrist; she just doesn't take shit from any of the men in Gotham. Pamela is a real stand on her own villain who came to represent the much under-appreciated female face of crime in the Dark Knight's home city. Without her, the female populace seems a little thin and the other female villains rely too much on men to really set them apart. Catwoman isn't exactly a real baddie, especially considering in an AU she has Bruce's son and/or daughter depending on which AU you go by. Harley Quinn I'll come to later but even she needed the Joker.

Pamela Isley didn't need a man and what I think threatens Jon the most is that she has the power to seduce. Personally, I love this power. Even though I don't think femininity should be criminalised, I love the fact that Ivy is allowed to be as unapologetically clever as she is whilst still being able to just push men around. I mean, why not? Women throw themselves at Batman all the time, and at Nightwing. Why can't it be a woman for once who has the ability to be beautiful and use it to her deadly advantage? Mostly, I think Jon is bitter towards this idea of a women who doesn't have any kind of commitment to men. Pamela isn't a misandrist because she thinks all men are inferior. She thinks humans in general are inferior and that she's better than them.

Here comes the second part of Jon's worst nightmare... she loves the environment. We all know Jon has a deep seated hatred of hippies and the like, so to make a deadly, unmistakably intelligent woman an eco-warrior probably makes Jon shit his pants. He doesn't give Ivy her props because she's a great villain whose fighting for her humanity after literally being turned into a plant; he's just interested in calling her a freak.

If anything, Ivy should have been where Jon learnt his lesson about mixing species. Pamela is turned into a plant mutant who couldn't care less about humanity, despite the fact that she was human. However, the animated series and comics have her form a rare friendship with Harley and we see the woman who couldn't care less about 'flesh-bags' deal with the most annoying human possible, but still manage to regain enough of her own humanity to care about Harley's well-being.

Jon states that 'All men are property. All women are competition; that is the heart of Poison Ivy.' Jon obviously doesn't understand Ivy's character very well. Although her appearance may suggest otherwise, Ivy isn't all about the men. In many incarnations she's not bothered about the men around her, they're just pawns for her to use and so to say that she views all women as 'competition' is incorrect. Mainly because Ivy couldn't give a shit. She's knows there's no competition and most of all she doesn't care about humans in general. This brings me to believe that Jon can't accept that there's a woman that doesn't care about commitment and men without turning her into a snake. He wants to believe that Ivy is all those mean girls that said no to him in the past, and so wants to turn her into a negative stereotype for women as well, effectively trying to convince other females that Ivy is that bitch who used to try to steal your boyfriend.

In reality, Ivy don't give two fucks about you or your boyfriend. She's too busy being a bad ass scientist who wears killer lipstick and enjoys breeding man-eating plants.