I consider myself a feminist, and I've always loved JB's women.  They are smart, savvy and resourceful.  For god's sake, in his five year run on FF, he made Sue Richards go through an awakening of her own as she discovered her self-esteem and went literally from Girl to Woman.  One of my favorite scenes to illustrate Sue's evolution was when she faced off against Jean Grey in FF 286 and defeated her when everybody else was felled by Jean.  That's the work of a man who doesn't treat women well in his books?

JB's women all have their own personalities and their own minds.   I have always come away from his books thinking JB has tremendous RESPECT for women, and not the other way around.

Edited to add: I always thought the scene of Bethany killing her would-be rapist was a very powerful one.  It's so rare that a woman is ever shown able to face her attacker and it's tricky if she does.  I'll never understand the outcry over Thelma and Louise ... the man slapped Geena Davis around, is about to rape her and people didn't understand why women cheered when he was killed?

QUOTE: Oh, and, Dave, I am not accusing Alan Moore of misogynist malice, really. I'm pointing out, though, that the man has written tales wherein women were abused, maimed, spanked, raped, and tortured, and yet some people like "Zan" single out JB to accuse of being a malicious misogynist.

Cool, I just wanted to make sure we weren't actually veering into the realm where the mere depiction and/or discussion of, say, rape, was equated with misogyny. For instance, Moore does delve into the brutal murder of women in FROM HELL, but he actually goes far beyond the usual telling of the tale to define the women as real people. Their fates are, of course, terrible, but it's very clear that Moore's sympathies are with them. 

As counterpoint, I thought the rape and murder of Sue Dibny was abhorrant in IDENTITY CRISIS. It was pure shock value - just something to piss off the menfolk - and Sue's own response to being raped warrants not even a single panel.

JB is right. It's always about context, and I've never thought for a moment that there was any misogyny underlying his work. The guy who brought the Invisible Woman into her own, who created Kitty Pryde, and who wrote the book on smart-and-sexy with She-Hulk? Not a chance.

I do remember noticing many years ago that torture pops up quite a bit in his works, and that surprised me. OMAC, the Master, Lana Lang, Wonder Man, Bethany, Nick Fury, Wonder Woman...plenty of instances, though several of them came from explicitely mature reader titles (OMAC, NEXT MEN), and none of 'em have singled out women in particular. I asked JB about it several years ago, wondering if the recurrance of torture was intended to draw attention to an issue he felt strongly about. Honestly, I've forgotten what his response was.

QUOTE: I'll bet Moore was sniggering like a 12 year old when he wrote that scene.

LEAGUE is a very blackly humorous work.

Here's what Moore has said specifically about that scene and some of the other, coarser elements of the series:

"I think that when you take the sex scene with Pollyanna that takes place in the second issue, you'll see that there is a lighthearted element to it. The scene where the Egyptians try to rape Mina is nasty but comical though. Rape is serious, the idea of rape is a horrible thing and there's no intention of trivializing it. However, one of the unspoken pillars of Victorian fiction was the notion of the 'fate worse than death.' Human sexuality, screwed up as it is, is a big part of Victorian fiction, as is the racism. When you see the Arabs in the first issue and when you see the Chinese in #3, I'm sure they'll be portrayed in the same way. This is what we wanted. We're not talking about real Arabs, real Chinamen, or even real women.

I suppose people could accuse me of wallowing in these elements under the guise of postmodernism and they'd probably be right. I don't think that you get an unpleasant atmosphere after reading the stories. It's more British attitudes that are being pilloried rather than the targets of those attitudes. What makes it funny is the absurdity of the Victorian vision, this idea of a supremacist Britan that ruled the entire world. It's one of those bits than I'm most enjoying, to explore all those Victorian attitudes."