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Just went out for a cigarette.

Thought about this.

Fell guilty to admit I haven't read ALL of this thread (c'mon - it's just got *too* big...) but I just wanna throw my two bits in.

The argument for Rorschach's alledged homosexuality seems to focus around the line "possibly homosexual, must remember to investigate further" line.

I dismiss this because:

- the reasons given above regarding Kovac's uncomfortability when forming relationships
- his asexuality shown by dislike of sexual encounters

The main reason I have is that I think that Rorschach sees himself as a criminal investigator and as this he must explore EVERY avenue that leads away from the crime. Thus, Rorschach wants to investigate every aspect of anyone connected to the deceased in order to understand their personalities and possibly rule them out as suspects - see 6.18.1 "1975. Kipnap case. Perhaps you remember". Everything is a "case" to him. The language he uses is that of a cop/private eye. He sees the world as a detective.

This is not a "oooo is he gay, maybe we could hook up" line (apologies for the crudeness), this is a serious line of investigation to Rorschach.

Be seeing you.

The dynamic between Dan and Rorschach is something that really intrigues me, personally. I find it telling that Dan is the first person he visits at the start of his investigation. He feels totally comfortable chillin' in Dan's kitchen, as if he has an open invitation to come over anytime.

These two haven't seen each other in years. This initial encounter is totally awkward. It really reminds me of ex's who run into each other years after they split. Rory even seems bitter when he says to Dan, "you quit". I think he really did take that personally. ("You quit" referring to "you quit/gave up on me") Now, of course I'm not arguing that the guys were a pair, other than being good friends and working partners.

It's entirely possible R has repressed feelings toward Dan, misinterpretting friendship for something else, and being completely oblivious to these feelings on a conscience level.

Not taking any sides... just want to point this out- the "possibly homosexual, must investigate further" line is obviously used for comic effect only.

Yes, definitely. I don't believe for a second that the line is actually code for "I wonder if I can get a date".



Sexual abiguity in a character that sees the world in black and white is great stuff though

i wonder why so many make the instant conclusion that rorschach´s gay based on his behaviour towards dan. i mean, here we have a man who´s basically a sociopath, at best someone who´s never learned to form bonds with other people, who´s extremely clumsy in social interaction. for him, even a friendship is something extraordinary, something that´s bound to be extremely awkward - see dan´s assessment "it´s as if he wants ti make firnds but doesn´t know how". that nails it, for me. to draw any conclusions simply from this aspect feels very flimsy to me.

Rorschach could just be sexist, rather than gay. As you can see, women clearly bother him, but he has no problems around men. In Happy Harry's, he easily breaks a man's fingers, but doesn't harm any women (might be considered a sexist crime or something). That doesn't necessarily make him homosexual. He slams Moloch into the wall, but simply gives Moloch's date a message and walks off. That doesn't make Rorschach a queer. His experiences with seeing his mother having sex with a random man just simply affects his views. The fact that he thought she was in pain might simply lead him to believe that women are simply weak, and that men can withstand more pain, so he has no limits when facing a man.

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I've been lurking for a little while and just had to jump in on this one. I have been thinking about this topic and have opinions.

I don't think he's even remotely asexual. Wishes he was, but isn't. People who don't experience lust don't need to put on masks and invent alternate personalities in order to make themselves "immune" to lust (and I kind of doubt the effectiveness of doing that--why would someone even write a line like that in their own private journal unless they were trying to convince themselves of how true it was? I don't think Rorschach's journal should be taken at face value for anything except basic descriptions of events--he has great reasons to lie to himself about just about everything else).

Plus, masked adventurers' activities as a Sex Thing is a big theme in the book. It's all about feeling powerful and in control (heck, that's how Dan gets it up). I suspect that when you grew up as a shrimpy, poor kid who got picked on a lot, the idea of that kind of perfect control over scary, mean people is very, very exciting.

I'm not sure the man fits neatly into any of the nice little buckets we have for people's sexuality (most people don't). We know about his creepy wet dream as a young teenager, we know he was shy with girls in school while being generally all right with other boys, we know he was kind of freaked out by having to touch women's clothing at work--all a lot more indicative of being ashamed of heterosexual lust than of being homosexual. The only things really in favor of the gay interpretation are the awkward handshake (which could be taken a number of ways) and the fact that Rorschach actually steals Dan's cologne, which is a really damn weird thing to take from anyone. Does he even actually use it? I know the bottle breaks in his pocket when he's trying to escape from the cops, but that's it. The gay signals are a lot more ambiguous than the hetero ones, so I'd tentatively say Rorschach is probably bisexual or straight, but fiercely repressed.

His attitude toward women is very, very weird in general, though. We've got this very pre-Victorian idea of women as carnal, morally-inferior creatures, creatures he's generally very uncomfortable with, but that's combined with this compulsion to save them, very white knight. He saves women from rapists. The second person he kills is a known serial rapist. Clearly the man fiercely dislikes rapists (which makes it all the more interesting that he at least doesn't seem to have a huge problem with the Comedian's past "moral lapses"). The thing that gets him to put on a disguise and run around fighting crime to begin with is the Kitty Genovese story (which he either has or deludes himself into imagining having a personal connection with--and in either case it says something interesting about him).

I do agree with the previous folks who said he's scared of sex. I wouldn't say what he experienced was something completely irreversible or that there was never any hope of recovering from the mental trauma, but more that the trauma was planted and no one ever cared enough about him to try to uproot it. Lots of people have horribly traumatizing experiences with sex at a young age--not all of them end up with views of sex as twisted and conflicted as Rorschach's. His experience was really a perfect storm of bad luck and bad decisions.

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"Under no circumstances should anyone encourage the ordinary person to be funny."
--Bob Mackey

[NOTE: This post used to be its own thread, before it was merged here. --"Curiosity Inc."]

I've been rereading the novel, and something occurred to me about Rorschach's character: it seems inconsistent about his attitudes towards women.

On one hand, there seems to be plenty of evidence that he doesn't like women in general:
- - his attitude about his mother
- - his attitude towards his landlady
- - attitudes towards both Silk Spectres
- - the vehemence with which he took the "female" out of the original dress that allowed his mask to change patterns

It seems like the book is trying to paint a real woman-hating attitude with Rorschach. But then, there is this:
- - part of his interest in becoming a mask was to avenge the death of Kitty Genovese, the woman (in the comics, not the real life case) who had ordered the press that became his face. She's a woman, and her death was important in his history.
- - the thing that caused him to snap and become Rorschach? The death of a girl, and his avenging of that death, created his persona.
- - the only other person he killed was a multiple rapist at the outbreak of the Keane act.

So - do you think that Rorschach's anti-woman sentiments are consistent and believable across the breadth of the book, or was it a way for Alan Moore to create a murky moral ambiguity with the character, but that actually isn't that believable psychologically in the real world?

Rorschach's inconsistent about a lot of things; it's intentional.

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I don't mind being the smartest man in the world. I just wish it wasn't this one.

Agreed. Rorschach is something of a hypocrite.

One could argue that Rorschach has a virgin/whore complex with women, where they're innocent victims (Genovese, Roche) or "whores" (his mother, Sally Jupiter). (It would be in keeping with his "black or white, no gray" outlook.) He's very distrustful, even hateful, of women who express their sexuality.

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Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste......

Yeah, I agree with the virgin/whore dichotomy definitely being part of his worldview.

To be honest he seems to kind of settle in the middle with Laurie though. She definitely doesn't fit nicely in the virgin/victim category at all. He immediately suspects her of being up to no good when he first spots her with Dan, and he's "never liked" her revealing costume, but he still seems to hold some respect for her. I doubt it's just because of her being a mask, either. I mean, Sally Jupiter was a mask, too.

I kind of wonder if he noticed the weird parallel between his childhood and what he knew about hers.

I also kind of wonder if the desire to save women had something to do with subconsciously wanting to redeem his mommy.


Yeah, I love that. It's easy to want to take everything Rorschach says at face value, but that would be ignoring the fact that he's completely delusional.

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"Under no circumstances should anyone encourage the ordinary person to be funny."
--Bob Mackey

A key difference between Laurie and Sally, which Rorschach may have picked up on, is that Laurie took her career as a mask seriously, whereas for Sally it was more about fame/publicity/getting a movie deal. I mean, just imagine if someone made the mistake of showing him Silk Swingers of Suburbia.

Yes to this. Hooray for unreliable narrators!

Hey guys, it'd be a pretty massive undertaking, but I'm thinking about properly analysing sexuality in Watchmen, character by character.
Could you help me with a list of panels that imply anything about Rorschie's orientation? I could then put scans of those frames together and see what's consistent...

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I think that Rorschach's view of Laurie is somewhat similar to his view of the Comedian: he's willing to forgive 'moral lapses' (rape or a slutty costume) if he admires the person.

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[NOTE: The next few posts were merged here from the "Intentional Fallacy" thread. --"Curiosity Inc."]


Amazing. I would totally read an analysis of Watchmen by Rorschach. Also . . . homosexual? I don't remember that being implied anywhere. I would feel really stupid if I missed that.

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We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings.

Ditto on the homosexuality.

I think Curi was referring to the recurring theory among many readers that Rorschach might have repressed/latent homosexual tendencies, which he sublimates through nihilism and violence. Some key bits of evidence for this viewpoint (that have shown up in discussion on these very forums!) include Rorschach's obsession with/rejection of his mother, his awkwardly lingering handshake with Dan, and the fact that he wears a famous dead woman's dress on his head. Take these as you will.

Personally, I'd sort Rorschach into the "asexual" bin myself, but everybody's got to have their own crazy-go-nuts fan-theory to flog.

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"The light is taking me to pieces, and I'm afraid I just blue myself."

What? Awkward handshake is his laxk o connection with humanity, dead woman's dress has nothing to do with it, he just likes the design, rejection of his mother is a point, but I don't that makes him gay, just I think he feels akward around women, he is like a guy who has never kissed a girl or anything, will always be uncomfortable.

Like I said, Rorschach's asexual. I define hetero- and homo-sexuality as being entirely about what you've got in your pants, and what your sexual partner has in their pants. For asexuals, this is a moot point because they aren't having sex with anyone at all, maybe not even with themselves.

The laundry list of "evidence" was to familiarize newcomers (or relative newcomers like Ominick) with a theory that's gotten some talk going on the forums. I don't buy into the theory myself, but I thought it might be helpful to point out the reasons why other people do.

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"The light is taking me to pieces, and I'm afraid I just blue myself."