The term refers to a posited treatment differential between male and female comic characters, specifically when a female character is used as a plot device to further the emotional development of a male superhero. It more specifically refers to a list of incidents created when Simone realized, according to her website, "it's not that healthy to be a female character in comics."
Origin of the Term
The term "Women in Refrigerators" comes from a scene in Green Lantern #54 (1994), written by Ron Marz. The Green Lantern name had just famously been handed down to the newly created Kyle Rayner, a struggling young artist who now found himself with the most powerful weapon in the universe, the Green Lantern ring, strapped to his fist.
Marz had given Kyle a girlfriend, named Alexandra DeWitt, in a relationship that predated Rayner's introduction. The majority of their relationship occurred off-panel, meaning that Dewitt's character was largely undeveloped. She served mostly as a function of Rayner, rather than a character in her own right. She was pretty, and blonde, and little else.
Plot Points and Dramatic Structure
Rayner was conceived as an everyman, which gave him no inciting incident. Yet, according to Syd Field's screenwriting bible Screenplay, dramatic structure necessitates a plot point in a story's first act that snowballs the rest of the story. Everyman Rayner needed some trauma to keep him a superhero, since dramatic heroes aren't often good for goodness' sake.
Rayner had been a superhero for all of four issues when a villain named Major Force stuffed the dead, still bleeding, body of his girlfriend in a refrigerator. Alexandra became a plot point to further Rayner's development, dying horrifically so readers could have an incident to point to when they needed to know offhand why Rayner could be so selfless, much like how Peter Parker's Uncle Ben is the reason he became Spider-Man.
The Original List
Inspired by the Alexandra DeWitt story, Simone and some likeminded fans began a list chronicling every story they thought used a female character as plot point rather than a three-dimensional representation of a human being.
The list is over a hundred characters long and peppered with maladies including rape, torture, depowerment, abuse, and death. The list is rather telling in that it includes not only superhero girlfriend archetypes, but major iconic characters like Wonder Woman, the X-Men's Rogue, Storm, and Phoenix, and the Teen Titan's Raven and Starfire. Furthermore, it includes repeat offender male characters, such as Major Force, who is also credited with murdering Guy Gardner's girlfriend, Arisia.
Current Influence
In New Avengers #35 (2007), writer Brian Michael Bendis had his villain The Hood brutally attack female superhero Tigra in an attempt to make him seem very evil very quickly, and it largely backfired on him.
Fans on comic book news website Newsarama seemed to understand that even if the mechanics of the story were unremarkable, the implications of a male villain breaking into the apartment of an unrelated female character and assaulting her while he called her mother was unacceptable.
For a list of out-of-context incidents, "Women in Refrigerators" has become a powerful piece of evidence. It helps considerably that Gail Simone went on to become a popular mainstream comic book writer known for her ability to balance strong female characters with convincing scenes of terrible violence. Her runs on Birds of Prey and Secret Six have only helped raise the profile of the cause she helped manufacture.
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