Who invented wonder woman

Though William Moulton Marston May 9, — May 2, died fairly young, at only age 53, he collected an impressive, and incredibly varied, list of accomplishments: he was a lawyer, a psychologist, creator of the DISC system of personality classification, inventor of an early version of the lie detector machine, and creator of the comic character Wonder Woman. Over the next ten years, Marston worked in academia, teaching at American University and Tufts University, and developed his version of the polygraph machine—which had been invented in by a student at the University of California, Berkeley.

While teaching at Tufts, Marston met Olive Byrne, a former grad student who became his research assistant in his work on the polygraph. He went on to invent the systolic blood pressure test, which used blood pressure cuffs and a stethoscope to take intermittent blood pressure during questioning, and ostensibly revealed changes when the subject was lying.

This was the first functional lie detector. If you make a purchase using these links we may earn commission. FB Tweet More. You'll get the latest updates on this topic in your browser notifications. Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is now playing in theaters. All rights reserved. Close Sign in. In Professor Marston and the Wonder Women , Elizabeth and Olive are portrayed as having been romantically involved not just with William, but with each other too. This is disputed, but what is true is that the women shared a close bond — after William Marston died of cancer in , the women continued to live together for the rest of their lives.

Marston spent much of his career studying personalities and emotional behaviour, and he used his research to shape Wonder Woman into what he viewed as the ideal personality.

His book Emotions of Normal People laid the groundwork for a very influential method of measuring personality types known as DISC theory. It is a method still used to measure personality types to this day. Through this research, he came to believe that women naturally had a tendency towards submitting to loving authority, whereas men tended towards dominant authoritarian behaviour that he found toxic.

Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman. So while Wonder Woman can Dominate her opponents with her truth-compelling lasso or by knocking them out with one punch, she will Submit to reason or empathy if she deems it the right course of action.

William Marston was an admirer of fetish and bondage aesthetics, as presumably were the women in his life — Professor Marston and the Wonder Women certainly makes that case. In fact, Marston would write detailed descriptions for his artists for how a chained-up Wonder Woman should look. Naturally, the comics received complaints. The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound.

Giving to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element. Perhaps Marston convinced Gaines with his reasoning; or maybe the publisher was just content with the incredible sales figures of Wonder Woman comics.

The influence of the two strong women in his life, his psychological research and gratuitous use of BDSM imagery was all in service of one goal; he wanted Wonder Woman to be a feminist icon, who would inspire young women to stand against the patriarchy. The aforementioned imagery of Wonder Woman being chained and bound took inspiration from the feminist cartoons that often portrayed chained women breaking their bonds, as a metaphor for breaking free of the restrictions placed upon them by a male-dominated world.

Taking inspiration from Greek myth, she and her fellow Amazonian women were once enslaved by the male demigod Hercules, chained at the wrists as part of their servitude.

Eventually they broke free of their chains, and started their all-female society, although continuing to wear bracelets on their wrists as a reminder never to let men enslave them again.