Mr. Fox

Did I miss something why I see people saying Natasha is queer?

Natasha is listed as bisexual on her Marvel wikia page, probably on the evidence of two scenes from Deadly Origin #3 and A+X #2.

Disclaimer first: like the Marvel wikia I am not any sort of official authority, and the last thing I want to do is dictate how other fans can and cannot interpret her sexuality. I try to deal in adjectives and not labels. I do think there are deliberate homoerotic subtexts in a few Black Widow comics (Abattoir comes to mind) and that it’s easy enough to read something other than straight in some of Natasha’s interactions with Maria Hill and Yelena, or, for an MCU example, the lists she makes of women ostensibly for Steve to date.

But I’m leery of the Deadly Origin #3&and A+X #2 scenes. Both show Natasha kissing another woman, on panel:

Both of these scenes are very carefully constructed give Natasha a reason for kissing a woman that isn’t rooted in her own feelings or desires. (Or the desires of the women she’s kissing.) Natasha kisses Bobbi to save her from nanobots, somehow, and kisses Rogue to pass on her own skillset, temporarily. Natasha was in a committed relationship with a man when these issues came out, and these kisses do nothing to change or challenge that. Compare to the random kiss she shared with Hawkeye in Avengers Assemble #5: confused and muddled, but provoking a strong emotional response. There’s no emotional response here, no gasping reveal. It’s not taken that seriously.

Furthermore, both of these sequences are framed by dudes watching. Natasha says she kisses Bobbi for the “theatricality” of it, for the benefit of her one-man audience of Clint Barton, or maybe for the benefit of whoever’s reading the comics. In the A+X issue, a panel zooms in on Natasha’s nipples, while Drooling Guy, the male gaze personified, clamors on about how hot she is.

It’s a joke, get it, about geek guys and desperation, but the punchline is we get to see the tit-shot, too, even as we’re mocked for wanting it. Making the male gaze visible doesn’t subvert it. We learn more here, I’d say, about what this nameless guy finds hot than what Natasha does. It’s the kind of girl-on-girl action that isn’t about girls, the kind Drooling Guy must dream about. And Marvel expects we dream about it, too— another AvX tie-in featured cheesecake girl sexy superhero “fights”, captioned with winner: you.

I think it’s dangerous to mistake this kind of straight-dude flavored fanservice for substantial queer representation. For me, the takeaway isn’t Natasha is officially bisexual but Marvel is officially kinda sketch. But I don’t want to stop anyone from trying to build these scenes into something better.