Editing William Moulton Marston (section)

===Themes===
William Moulton Marston's philosophy of diametric opposites has bled into the design of his Wonder Woman mythology. This theme of diametrics took the form of his emphasis of particular masculine and feminine configurations as well as dominance and submission.<ref>{{cite journal|first=Geoffrey C.|last=Bunn|url=http://comicsstudies.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/52420066/bunn.pdf|title=The lie detector, Wonder Woman and liberty: the life and work of William Moulton Marston|journal=[[History of the Human Sciences]]|publisher=[[SAGE Publications]]|location=Thousand Oaks, California|volume=10|issue=1|date=1997|page=93|doi=10.1177/095269519701000105|s2cid=143152325}}</ref>

Marston's "Wonder Woman" is an early example of [[Bondage (BDSM)|bondage]] themes that were entering popular culture in the 1930s.<ref name="NYT-20141023" /> Physical and mental submission appears again and again throughout Marston's comics work, with Wonder Woman and her criminal opponents frequently being tied up (or otherwise restrained), and her [[Amazons|Amazonian]] sisters engaging in frequent wrestling and bondage play. These elements were softened by later writers of the series, who dropped such characters as the [[Nazi]]-like blonde female slaver [[Eviless]] completely, despite her having formed the original [[Villainy Inc.]] of Wonder Woman's enemies (in ''Wonder Woman'' #28, the last by Marston).{{sfn|Daniels|2000|p=75}}

Though Marston had described female nature as being more capable of submission emotion, in his other writings and interviews,<ref name="THG" /> he referred to submission as a noble practice. He did not shy away from the sexual implications, saying:

{{blockquote|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... Giving to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element.<ref>{{cite book|first=Gerard|last=Jones|title=Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book|url=https://archive.org/details/menoftomorrowgee0000jone|url-access=registration|publisher=[[Basic Books]]|location=New York|date=2004|isbn=978-0465036578|page=[https://archive.org/details/menoftomorrowgee0000jone/page/210 210]}}</ref>}}

One of the purposes of these bondage depictions was to induce eroticism in readers as a part of what he called "sex love training." Through his Wonder Woman comics, he aimed to condition readers to become more readily accepting of loving submission to loving authorities rather than being so assertive with their own destructive egos. About male readers, he later wrote: "Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to, and they'll be proud to become her willing slaves!"<ref>{{cite journal|first=William Moulton|last=Marsters|url=https://theamericanscholar.org/wonder-woman/|title=Why 100,000,000 Americans Read Comics|journal=[[The American Scholar]]|publisher=[[Phi Beta Kappa Society]]|location=Washington DC|volume=13|issue=1|date=Winter 1943–44}}</ref>

Marston combined these themes with others, including restorative and transformative justice, rehabilitation, regret, and their roles in civilization. These appeared often in his depiction of the near-ideal Amazon civilization of [[Themyscira (DC Comics)|Paradise Island]], and especially its "Reform Island" penal colony, which played a central role in many stories and was the "loving" alternative to [[retributive justice]] of the world run by men. These themes are particularly evident in his last story, in which prisoners freed by Eviless, who have responded to Amazonian rehabilitation and now have good dominance/submission, stop her and restore the Amazons to power.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Held |editor-first=Jacob M. |date=2017 |title=Wonder Woman and Philosophy: The Amazonian Mystique |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=we0mDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA191 |location=Hoboken, New Jersey |publisher=[[Wiley (publisher)|Wiley]] |page=191 |isbn=9781119280750}}</ref>

Some of these themes continued on in [[Silver Age of Comic Books|Silver Age]] characters, who may have been influenced by Marston, notably [[Saturn Girl]] and [[Saturn Queen]], who (like Eviless and her female army) are also from Saturn, are also clad in tight, dark red bodysuits, are also blond or red-haired, and also have [[telepathic]] powers.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.writeups.org/fiche.php?id=4817|title=Eviless – Pre-Crisis DC Comics – Villainy Inc – Wonder Woman|work=Writeups.org|date=March 2015|access-date=March 27, 2018}}</ref>

Wonder Woman's golden [[Lasso of Truth]] and in particular one of the Amazon queens' scions of the [[Girdle of Aphrodite]] or Venus which Marston first fictionally encountered as Wonder Woman's 'Magic Girdle of Aphrodite' then reaching back to its origin called her [[Golden Girdle of Gaea]], were the focus of many of the early stories and have the same capability to reform people for good in the short term that Transformation Island and prolonged wearing of Venus Girdles offered in the longer term. The Venus Girdle was an allegory for Marston's theory of "sex love" training, where people can be "trained" to embrace submission through eroticism.{{sfn|Daniels|2000|p=36}}