Why does Wonder Woman come from an all-female society? Wouldn’t it be a stronger feminist message if her society had men, but no sexism?

Wonder Woman comes from an all-female society because that’s the way her creator, Dr. William Moulton Marston, wanted it for a number of reasons. 

First and foremost, Paradise Island/Themyscira was meant to be a Utopia, a model society for the rest of the world to look to and emulate. Thus, having the island be ruled entirely by women was meant as an endorsement of his belief that women should rule the world…for reasons that I’ll get into in a bit. 

Second, it also heightens and emphasizes Diana’s role as a character who’s bringing a completely female perspective to the World of Men – in her original origin story, Diana was formed from clay and thus didn’t have a father, she’s raised entirely by women, and thus her worldview and background is entirely untouched by men. 

Third, Paradise Island/Themyscira being all-women is crucial to its links to Greek mythology. The Amazons of Paradise Island are supposed to be the same Amazons from Greek myth, and those Amazons were definitively women-only (although they did mate with a neighboring tribe of men to repopulate their numbers). 

Fourth, the gendered nature of Paradise Island isn’t the only significant thing about that society, and this gets us back to Marston’s pretty unique beliefs. The other main thing about Paradise Island is that BSDM is at the very heart of its polity. See, Marston believed that “the only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound… Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society.”  He also believed that women were naturally better suited to exercise “loving authority” over the submissive, and that men wouldn’t be happy submitting unless it was to women in a sexualized context. Thus, the Amazons of Paradise Island live in a Utopia because it’s a society where women exercise loving authority over other women, through wrestling and the use of restraints.

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