Oh, dear. I've gone and been a little testy. Big mouth really does strike again. Not that it matters to anyone but me, and not that any more than about three or four folks will ever notice before yawning and moving on. But if I don't mention that I've done so, then it'll look as if I'm ashamed of myself, and I'd rather not add that to the undoubtedly poor impression I've already created. You see, today's The Year In Comics piece has been postponed, and in its place over at Sequart sits an essay from yours truly - here - which takes aim at two profoundly uncharitable, misogynistic and stupid-headed articles by another contributor to the site. It's the first time I've ever picked up cudgels and had at another blogger, and I hope it'll be the last time too. But since I always place a link up to the latest The Year In Comics post on a Tuesday, I thought it might look a little craven if I failed to mention what I'd done.
Kelly Thompson's No, It's Not Equal article over at Comic Book Resources kicked the whole thing off, though Ms Thompson's entirely blameless for what followed. Hers was a principled and decent-hearted piece which I'm convinced only an ungenerous pedant or dedicated chauvinist would choose to tilt at. Enter Mr Gene Philips, who used Sequart's magazine section to offer two "critiques" of Ms Thompson's work - here and here - which made me feel - shall I try to be polite? - somewhat disconcerted.
Please don't get me wrong; I'm not saying this because I have a deluded ambition to ride to Ms Thompson's rescue. As I've said in the post, she needs no rescuing at all. She can and does look after herself very effectively indeed. Yes, I was appalled at the way in which her beliefs and work was discussed, but then, I'd be appalled at anybody being treated in that way. Nor am I rising to take on those pathetic articles because the bods and readers at Sequart didn't. There's been an admirable and politely forceful response in the comments there, with publisher Julian Darius taking a lead.
As for why I did break my long habit of not tilting at other bloggers, well, I've explained that in the piece. I can't say it's an entertaining post, and it's certainly not a short one. Mea culpa. But it's there, should you inexplicably have the time to kill and nothing at all better to kill it with, and I don't want to give the impression that I wish I'd never posted it in the first place.
.
Rapidly scrolled to the end, since *I* haven't read the original pieces. :)
ReplyDeleteI’ll let my own flaws – inevitable and no doubt substantial flaws – damn me in my own turn.
What was it that Martin Luther King said, "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends". :)
Speaking up is 90% of the battle. :)
Hello gl_hater:- I think you've nailed it. Ms Thompson didn't need me to speak, Sequart's community didn't, and neither did my own interest. But I just felt, as sentimental as it undoubtedly is, that I wanted not just to avoid silence, but to raise some hubbub of my own. Why? To avoid contributing to the silence you mention.
DeleteI really do feel whoever first coined the term 'mansplaining' did the internet an immense service*.
ReplyDeleteAn article from the point of view of a woman that attempts to discuss a film/book/comic in those terms and is roundly rejected on that very same basis?
Mansplaining.
Right so - box ticked - I no longer have to engage with the attacking screed. No philosophical footnotes or appeals to the innate dominance of masculinity will matter a jot.
It save an awful lot of time on the internet Colin, you should try it. Think of it as a conceptual dustbin to consign the babble.
You're a decent fellow sir.
*http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mansplain
Hello Emmet:- It's not a term I've come across before, shamefully, but I'm grateful for the info. In fact, I've always binned this stuff before without responding, even when it was aimed at me. But it tasked me, Emmet, it tasked me. It was a perfect storm. It was unfair, patronising, sexist, poorly written, in my back yard, and it read just like several substantial posts aimed my own work in the past. (By feminists who felt I was too extreme as well as sexists who felt I was betraying the manly half of the species. I mean, what kind of idiot upsets BOTH sides of an argument?)
DeleteI read it, and it was just as if the red light was on, the head was drowsy and the warning "do not handle heavy machinery" was coming up ...
I won't do it again, I wish I'd done it better. But it's not how the game should be played, Mr E, as of course I know you know.
In fact, I'm still angry ...
I was silent on the matter, but that came from my own ignorance of the contents of the piece. I had read the previous articles about "Adult Pulp" by Gene Phillips and I always left baffled at what his points were. As far as I could tell it was just that he didn't object to sexy women posing sexily and that there should be plenty of action and pulp vs anti-pulpsters or something along those lines. That's the full extent that I had gotten out of any of his previous pieces he has written on Seqart. I was so thoroughly unimpressed with his incoherent ramblings that I decided not to read anything else with his name attached to the credits.
ReplyDeleteJudging by your article, it seems I chose correctly. I'm impressed with your intestinal fortitude in being able to shift through his ramblings and pretense to actually find any points to call out.
Hello Joe:- Thank you, I really appreciate you saying that. I was thinking that the one thing I did manage to do was create a model which - even if GP didn't agree with it - seemed to explain what he was going on about. And as daft as it may sound, it took HOURS and HOURS to try to do that. So, if it made it seem to make any more sense, and if it backed up your decision to leave that bad stuff alone, then "hurrah".
DeleteI read through that stuff so that you can invest the hours in finding more of those wonderful comics which you so kindly recommend to me :)
Remind me never to piss you off.
ReplyDeleteI read through the whole thing, and I'm impressed that you wrote so many words on the subject. i couldn't get very far into GP's piece before giving up. I've said it before, but sometimes I'm embarrassed to be a comic book fan.
And where does he get off dragging Gentleman Gene into it? Grr.
I hope your next post is about something you've enjoyed! Or at least something you found laughably bad...
- Mike Loughlin
Hello Mike:- I can't ever imagine you ticking me off, Mike. I'm astonished and, I must admit, really buy-you-a-pint grateful to you for reading the piece. It can be shaming to be a comics fan, and particularly a bloke, at times. Another reason to join the ranks of the folks at Sequart who'd said "pah!".
DeleteThe Colan business .... I had to fight not to be excessively rude right through the piece, but that was a point where my anger tipped over into astonishment. For a bloke who was sneering from word one at Ms Thompson, his work was remarkably ill-informed. Well, stupid, really.
Next post? Absolutely. I'm not sure in what order, but a countdown of the greatest super-heroines, more Frank Hampson, some recent super-books, and so on. Optimism is going to something I cling to for a good while, as long as I can stay away from AvX.
I don't doubt that it took hours and hours as his other work really did look like a tangled mess even at first glance.
ReplyDeleteAs for recommendations, I remember that you said something along the lines of being ignorant of Humanoids' English output. So you may be interested that Jodorowsky and Moebius' first collaboration, The Eyes of the Cat, was to be reprinted in a more affordable edition:
http://heavyink.com/graphic_novel/26017-Eyes-Of-The-Cat
http://www.midtowncomics.com/store/dp.asp?PRID=EYES+OF+THE+CAT+HC+%28MR%29+%28_1205527
It's probably up at other online retailers, but I don't know which ship to England, and it isn't available at Amazon yet since Humanoids seems committed to letting retailers have first dibs on the supply.
Also, I'm curious if you managed to check out Nausicaa yet.
Hello Joe:- Thank you for the nudges. Eyes Of The Cat doesn't appear on Amazon.Co.Uk, so I'll be looking out for it elsewhere. I've been Incal-ing recently, so you don't have sell me any further.
DeleteI keep finding later volumes of Nausicaa, in random order, when I visit the local library. I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get the first volume, aren't I?
Nausicaa is among my very favorite comics and enjoys the company with the likes of The Incal, Hellboy, and Promethea (not that my list of favorites means anymore than anybody else's), so I'd say "I'm sorry to say you might have to," but I'm not sorry, as Nausicaa is a comic that very much deserves to be included on any bookshelf. It's as smart and affectionate and expertly drawn as anything else I can think of, and it's one that I'm not afraid taking the time to praise to the high heavens for.
DeleteHello Joe:- OK, when the next day of pay arrives, top of the list will be Nausicaa. I have been meaning to buy it, and you already had me committed. But now ... you make it sound too cool a prospect to wait.
DeleteBut I've still 14 volumes of 20th Century Boys to go !!!!
In case you need another bit of nudging in order to buy “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind,” let me also say that you should ABSOLUTELY DO SO AS SOON AS YOU CAN.
DeleteIn the front of the copy of the first volume that I read several years ago, there’s a forward by Miyazaki where he says something along the lines of “[comics] is not where my talent lies.” In the short review I wrote when I was finished (which has since disappeared into whatever afterworld forum posts go to when they fall off the back pages), my response to that was essentially, “if this is what lack of talent looks like, then comics is in sore need of more people as talentless as Miyazaki.”
Hello Adam:- Well if I did have any doubts - to paraphrase Lincoln in Scott's McCloud's New Adventures - I certainly don't now. In fact, you've taken my determination to buy that first volume and nudged me to actually do that. Look! I'm going now ...... :)
DeleteIt was after reading and responding to comments by Mr. Julian Darius here at your blog that I first sought out the Sequart web site, something I'm certainly glad I did: For months now, I've been enjoying a variety of essays there, including his series on Miracleman and your own weekly essays. Based on even his earlier essays, Mr. Phillips seems to me to be boxing above his weight class. I think you have done that site and its readers a service by laying out your concerns with his 2-part anti-discussion discussion.
ReplyDeleteIn spite of my long-held nom-de-pixel, I've been away from teaching for a number of years now--but I can still remember what a headache it was when I had to unpack such "arguments" as part of my job as a teacher of rhetoric and writing. Particularly when the writer was smug and cocksure that he or she was being brilliant, and most particularly on those occasions when the essay espoused views I found personally abhorrent, therefore giving me the extra burden of making sure that I was responding to what was wrong with the argument as it was constructed as words on a page without letting my emotional distaste overly influence my own words.*
My professional experience, then, gives me some appreciation of what you had to go through in order to write the detailed response that you did. Well done, I say, and from my perspective as a reader at Sequart, well worth the effort.
Attempted bullying, whether in the schoolyard, the workplace, or a public forum, should be called out for what it is. Again, I say, well done.
-mikesensei
*If we're ever at a pub on the same side of the Atlantic together, oh, the stories we could trade!
Hello Mike:- Ah, the experience of marking a pile of dense essays from a class with a certain number of dense students; how I haven't missed it! And you're quite right, that's exactly what this was like. It was a real slog, although at least there were only two masterpieces and one genius to try to make sense of. I can empathise with everything you mention. It's something which must bind teachers all the world over, and just as reading work by a student who's made an effort, no matter their achievement, is always worth doing, there's always those who either don't try or, worst of all, try according to their stubborn definition of what needs to be done. It's not fascism to suggest that a student who wants to prove themselves a competent psychologist, for example, needs to be able to deliver work which sits snugly in the tradition of psychology. We live in a culture which often sees the mastery of a discipline as violating some sacred principles of self-expression. Match indisciplined self-expression with objectionable views, as you mention, and the experience of marking becomes .... miserable. Better than working down a mine, I readily and respectfully agree. But miserable all the same.
DeleteI'm really glad to hear you enjoy visiting Sequart. I have such fondness and respect for the organisation and its achievements, and the bods there have been very kind to me. They deserve every visitor they get, and far more. They especially deserve good eggs such as yourself, Mr M.
Swapping stories of hellish marking sessions at the chalk-face in a pub? Sounds great. One day, ah? That'd be cool.
Dear Colin,
ReplyDeleteThe article was a slog, but some writing is just so densely loaded with wrongness that it's like defusing a bomb: perseverance, fortitude, and the knowledge that it has to be done fully or not at all. I'm sorry the effort took such a toll on your spirit.
Cheer up, though! The very existence of such a defensive and jumbled counter means that the idea of "No, it's NOT the same!" is gaining ground, to the extent that it can no longer be dismissed out of hand. The good guys are winning!...and the good gals, of course. (...he added sheepishly, as he acknowledged the gender bias of the English language).
If you look at the "Dirty Breast" articles, and recognize in them the desperate evasions, clutches and roundhouse swings of a battered, outmatched and outmaneuvered boxer defending his turf, maybe you could even muster a trace of compassion. C'mon, how would you feel if your precious Mancave were under attack by estrogen-crazed invaders who seemed bent on dismantling your "No Gurlz Allowed" sign? Tragic, really.
Y'know what will cheer you up? 4 words: Al Ewing. Pax Omega.
Cordially yours,
Hello David:- Actually, your comment, in concert with the ones above, has thoroughly cheered me up. I'm in your debt :) And the very idea of Pax Omega is indeed cheering. (Zaucer Of Zilk has also been a real plus too. I read the latest episode this morning and enjoyed it muchly. I love the grit under the playfully psychedelic surface.)
DeleteThanks for your empathy as regards trying to come to grip with a text "so densely loaded with wrongness". Whether I did get to grips with it or not, whether I unpacked it accurately or not, the world it seemed to describe was so dark, so wrapped up in keeping any unwelcome opinion or fact away. As you say, there really is that sense of a "precious Mancave ... under attack by estrogen-crazed invaders". Whether that's true or not, who can say, but if it's not, then I've never come across an article and an author so disconnected one from the other. Of course, it's possible, which does raise the possibility that these articles were fantastic exercises in irony. Wouldn't that be wonderful? I would be so happy to have been entirely fooled!
When the first thing a commentator does is resort to straw man arguments, it shows contempt for the audience and a complete indifference to the opinion of any reader who doesn't already agree.
ReplyDeletePhillips richly deserved the evisceration you gave him, Colin. And any honest misogynist should be able to see that, no matter how desperately they want to agree with him.
It was a worthy effort against an unworthy opponent, but it did need to be said by as many people who want to say it.
Hello Hoosier X:- Absolutely! You're quite right. In many ways, it's not the opinions themselves that I responded to - though I make no bones about disagreeing thoroughly with them - but the methods used to push them while undermining opponents, and I'm grateful to you for accentuating how important that distinction is. Those various, and often combined, ways of devaluing another's beliefs without a great deal of reference to logic or fairness are in many ways far more the enemy than the misogyny itself.
DeleteThank you for the generous words. I really do appreciate them.
Colin, I really enjoy your posts here on your blog, but take it from me - dont listen to those nutters on CBR! I used to participate on the Wonder Woman forum over there and some of the weirdos and crazies...well, I cant even tell you. Im fully ocnfident that the vast majority of ne'do well's that inhabit the posting on CBR really do [its a cliche] live in their parents basements.
ReplyDeleteI wouldnt take seriously anything anyone posts on CBR; its beginning to get quite a notorious reputation for homophobia and racial attacks [particularly the forum mentioned previously] so stick to your own splendid blog, of which I peruse daily. your own insights are much more thoughtful and , yes, truthful than that of certain others.
p.s. I also enjoyed your recent article in the Legion APA.
Hello Karl:- Thank you for the generous words. I've had a great deal of really good times at CBR over the years, including having the chance to be published there last Summer, and it's a shame that some of those who comment there are so out there. And I too have come across a few venomous individuals at the Wonder Woman forum. It's a shame, because there are of course many good folks there, and, of course, we've both been mixing with the crowd. I get torn at this point, because I know - in a passing way - quite a few contributors to CBR and I visit their work all the time. And they get many good folks leaving words, contributing positively. Yet at the same time, as you say, it can get really rough, and there are boards which I've been to which I felt very uncomfortable on. In fact, I've not been to a board there for more than a year, and I regret that. Jonah, the head man at CBR, was very kind to me last year, for example, and Kelly Thompson's fine blog, which I link to above, is a must-read. So, I find myself, as I say, torn. The problem is, as always, that a minority at folks in the wrong place and at the wrong moment, can really spoil the party. And if they keep turning up, who goes to the party? It's not fair on all the many folks who do play fair, and yet, you are right that it's easy to think "I'm out of here". I sometimes feel that CBR is like a great big city - there are places you can go and places you might at times think twice about. Sometimes there are articles where you might not always feel comfortable even going to the feedback, for fear there might be real nastiness a-coming, othertimes the places you feel are the least appalling end up being rather fine.
DeleteIn fact, you've made me think. Since I haven't checked out comments and boards in any detail recently, I really ought to. Just to make sure that I know what I'm talking about. As I say, I'm often there reading articles. It's hardly a major trek :)
Thank you for your kind words about the APA article. Always good to meet another Legion-bod from there-abouts. I have regretted not posting there recently. I intend to do so every time now.
I hope you'll forgive me going on in the above. I wanted to take the chance to think through my thoughts, if I can say that with my brain shutting down at past-midnight. And my thoughts are, I'd better think some more!
I hope your sleep is to be fine and refreshing ..
Once again Colin, congratulations. Obviously you're hoping that nothing else in the online comics community, is going to piss you off again this badly, but you said what needed to be said and said it well. Good job again.
DeleteDina
Hello Dina:- Thank you for being so generous. I fear the style of the piece was desperately clunky, but I would like to think that the content had some value. I nearly wrote "next time someone writes a piece like those two", but you're right: I really am hoping that nothing else gets under the skin. There's been a furious response in one particular quarter to what I wrote, which I won't link to, but I find myself remarkably relaxed about swipes at me. After all, I did dish it out too :)
DeleteHello again Karl:- Just thought I'd add that Kazekage's comment below really bears out your comment :)
DeleteI liked your article. Breast of the Matter was the first article I skimmed and I almost decided to put 'SeqArt' into the 'Forget Exists, get Brain Blach' category before I read your retort. I'm going to try giving the site a try for the next month or so. :)
ReplyDeleteHello Lee:- Thank you :) One of my fears was indeed that Sequart might be regarded by those who, through of course no fault of their own, had only read those articles, or little beyond it. I believe there's really good material on Sequart stretching back a long way, and there's some really exciting stuff coming up too, I believe. I'm only an occasional contributor, I've written and do write elsewhere, I have no interest in Sequart beyond the fact that I admire the organisation. I'm glad that you're going to give it a go. Thanks :)
DeleteAs someone who remembers the amount of blowback Kelly got when she posted the original article at Comics Should Be Good (that was a comments section that made me hate comments sections and think black thoughts about the future) and was dismayed by it, may I say I'm glad you weighed in on this.
ReplyDeleteIt's something I feel like everyone of conscience should be speaking out about, but I wonder sometimes if the reactionary and all too predictable response that immediately follows is just too pressing to push against sometimes.
It makes you think very dark thoughts for the future of superhero comics that these are the folks they're pandering too (possibly because they're the last ones left) and one things is maybe we just gave a little, made room for the idea that maybe not all female characters have to look like Jim Lee-era sex Valkyries (given how things have turned out, the portrayal of Zephyr from Harbinger back in the 90's as an integral character who wasn't drop-dead gorgeous almost qualifies as a radical act) and made room for characters that looked different and were different . . .well, maybe things would be in better shape than they are.
Anyways--I'm rambling. I just wanted to thank you for pushing back against this kind of thinking. I've come to think in my time reading your blog that there is a somewhat understated message in some of the things you write here and elsewhere that encourages a little more thought and discourse than writing about comics usually engenders. Thanks again for walking the walk and talking the talk.
Hello Kazekage:- I hit the comments to Kelly's article a few days after it went up, saw the way the debate was headed and thought "I've read her work, I don't need the rest". That tendency to assume the worst at CBR may just have saved me from realising that the worst is a reasonable thing to presume. I still retain my respect and liking for a great many of CBR's contributors and enjoy a fair selection of what goes on the site. But the Flakkers of the Rump really do cluster at CBR at times. I suppose that's unavoidable with such massive viewing figures, but it's still a business of considerable pah.
DeleteI've been making a list of my favourite super-heroines for a future article. Zephyr keeps coming up as I idly add names on different pieces of paper at different times. I retain a considerable liking for the character, bless her. It seems remarkable that so few female characters have been allowed to appear different to the norm since. DC's 52 habit of making everyone look like a model - ie Amanda Waller - was such a step backwards.
I really do appreciate your generous words. You're always very welcome to pop over to this blog when you've a moment to kill.
I thought I was the only one who found Gene's articles impenetrable, so I wanted to say thanks for your detailed and straightforward statement of opposition. Gene may be the first person I've not felt bad about naming as a "pseudo-intellectual".
ReplyDeleteI think what makes the whole topic so painful is that Gene ALMOST touched on a large number of fascinating ideas.
Following the history of body obsession in superhero comics from the 70s to today? Attempting to defend sexism as a necessary and inextricable component of 'pulp' fiction? That some women will resent ANY representation of women in comics drawn by men (good or bad)? All potentially really interesting avenues of research, none of which he bothers to think deeply about, and sums up with inane cherry-picked surface-level examples to serve some nebulous central thesis which he can't be bothered to define outside of rattling off some buzz-words (of his own invention).
The point where I gave up is where he admits (in the comments section of his second 'breast' article), that he doesn't read many current comics anyway. There's NOTHING worse than a person spouting inane pseudo-intellectual gibberish about a topic they are inexperienced in. Ugh.
But yeah, with you 100%.
Mladen
Hello Purge + audit:- Bless you, your thoughts really do help clarify my own. He does raise interesting topics, and they would be worth reading about if they'd been thought through and clearly & fairly expressed. Some of my favourite critics say things I think are appalling, but their job isn't to agree with me! I was just shivering at Gore Vidal's belief that the USA should never have entered World War II. I love his work to death; agreeing with it isn't the point.
DeleteI somehow managed to miss the comment you refer to about not reading many current comics anyway. I don't know how I did that, but I'm really not surprised. His argument seems designed, consciously or not, to sidestep any need to engage with the real world. He makes the rules, he creates the context, he decides what is and isn't evidence. He's still doing so at length in the comments over at my piece. I won't comment on them, because I promised I wouldn't in general and I stopped reading when the Flakking became so heavy that I lost the ability to remember what he or I had even been arguing about, but he's still set on a ... unique approach to the issues.
A shame. Much of what he describes is abhorrent to me, or seems so. But he could have been interesting, and useful as a tool to sharpen thoughts against. Perhaps as he develops his thought and craft, he'll be exactly that.
Well done, Colin. I think his - was it ten? - individual replies might imply that you struck a nerve.
ReplyDeleteIf it makes you feel any better, I have taught a superhero and genre course at the university level, and my strong impression was that the male comic book fans 18-22 enrolled in that class got it. They get what's wrong with the brokeback pose. They get why Ms Marvel was a promise never kept. They get why the "fridging" discussion needed to happen and needs to keep happening. Sometimes the kids are alright.
Hello Cory:- I hope the evening finds you well, and thank you. I did see the litany of complaint going up under the Sequart piece late last night, but it was all Flakking, and I did promise not to comment any more, so I left it. I expected to have to take it, because I dished it out. Not everyone shares that p.o.v., it seems, but there you go.
DeleteThat news about your university course is tremendously heartening. My experience teaching the social sciences was that blokes in particular really didn't tend to be aware of these issues, even though society does tend, in its way, to assume that everyone is. But it rarely took folks long to cotton on to the fact that these issues aren't about political fascism, but the opposite. Yes, sometimes the kids are alright, when they're given the chance to be. More power to your elbow in enabling that, Mr C.
Poor Nietzche; doomed for eternity to have his words repeated by loudmouthed fools advocating the worst possible positions. I have a feeling that this is the Abyss’s way of flipping him the bird.
ReplyDeleteI saw the “Making a Dirty Breast” article over at Sequart the other day. I clicked on it because I was confused by the title; it seemed like a reference or a pun that was going over my head no matter how hard I looked at it, and my need for intellectual superiority wouldn’t let that sit.* But then I started reading and barely made it through the first paragraph. I wrote it off at the time as my impatient mood at the time not allowing me to engage with the material, but the well meaning and well rendered negative responses to the article are making me think that I just need to have more trust in my own bs-detector.
*I still have no idea what the hell that title is supposed to mean. Is there a really obvious reference I’m missing, or is it just complete nonsense?
Needless to say, your article was very well written and appreciated. It’s disconcerting and discouraging to have to constantly defend what seems like a point as obvious as the fact that there is an imbalance in the sexualization and portrayal of gender in mainstream comics, more so because the responses from the other side are almost always of the kind that are so hard to intelligently and constructively engage with (a blanket statement, yes, but I can’t actually remember coming across or engaging in an argument where the opponent didn’t fall into that category. And I think I’d remember, because lord all mighty do I WANT to find a well reasoned and thoughtful analysis that runs counter to everything I have to say on the matter, because whoever made it would be someone worth getting into a debate with).
The analogy of nerd-boys who are scared of real women and don’t want to deal with them is an easy one to make; I know I’ve done it before. But I think that there is more to it than that. Any time a small, insular group forms, it rallies around the familiar and finds comfort in it reflexively; the phrase “cult audience” is apropos in more than one way. And like any time the orthodoxy of an insular group is challenged, the reaction is the same: instinctive and reactive defense of the way things are and the perception that those making the challenges are outsiders trying to undermine that which the defenders take comfort in. In the land of comics fans, you see it in arguments and disagreements about things as insubstantial and befuddling as debates over continuity and costume changes: there’s always that core group of people who instinctively and without consideration defend the way things are/were for the simple reason that they KNOW that “real fans” think like them, and therefore anyone who disagrees is by definition NOT a real fan. The fact that the current hot topic revolves around gender roles and sexism just makes it that much more sensitive and issue, and that much more aggravating for the people involved in it.
Notice that the default position of the attacks on feminist critiques is to take the stance “comics aren’t made for women.” Inherent in that statement is the implication that any women making these criticisms are outsiders trying to steal comics away from the people who really care about them. Which is, of course, absolutely ludicrous; why would anyone who didn’t care about comics take the time to write a critique like Ms Thompson’s? Listening to the defenders, you get the distinct impression they believe that these uppity women trying to change their funny books are a bunch of carpet baggers come to take advantage of the precious Dixie of nerdom. If these were people who were outsiders who didn’t care about comics, they would have reacted to these events the way the rest of the world did: by not noticing and not giving a sh*t.
Hello Adam:- “Poor Nietzche” indeed. His work’s been appropriated and reframed by every one from his vile sister onwards. I’ve always found visiting Nietzche-world is a fascinating business, but only to sharpen up my thinking for coming back to real world. Is he great, is he fascinating, is his the writing of a bloke from a different world and a different form of abnormal psychology? Yes. Does he have a place in helping us understanding the “tempo” of male and female involvement in adventure yarns? In 2012? Well, in Nietzche-world he does, but not here. File under had-a-rotten-life, said-some-interesting-and-sometimes-vile-things, rest-in-peace.
DeleteI too have struggled with that title. It seems to me to be so spectacularly misjudged, so entirely poorly chosen. As with the title, as the essays; I can’t stop trying to make these things make sense to me, but here, the only sense they made was a disturbing and rather sad one. The reworking of the cliché just didn’t seem to carry anything except a sense of contempt and self-anointed pseudo-cleverness. Still, an appropriate heading for the work.
Thanks for your kind words. I share – as I’m sure you’ll know – a desire to read opposing pieces which are compelling if ultimately not convincing. (I readily admit that someone’s going to have to go a long way to convince me to buy into blokeism.)
The idea of lads resisting what they see as an invasion of “their” cults is a convincing one. I can’t speak for Gene Philips, but there is a general sense that the Rump simply isn’t going to give up without screaming, scratching and stamping their feet. It’s something which Carol at The Cultural Gutter Twitter feed- @CulturalGutter mentioned yesterday – “I do think a lot of the rage has to do with a sense of loss of control over geek culture.” She’s right. They’d rather the likes of the super-book died than adapted to more smart, inclusive etc etc.. And to them, there are no principles except for those which help make them feel more secure in their prejudices. Of course, at this point, the expert Rumpish Flakker will charge in shouting that that’s true of their opponents too. And yet, if the response is then given that there’s a great deal of, for example, evidence re: how culture modifies taste and prejudice as expressed through the media can harm, the eyes roll up and contempt for “facts” suddenly appears when previously respect for “logic” was their rallying cry. Pah! They can’t be beaten, but they can be isolated in the culture through not yielding the discourse to their bullying, and then, over the longterm, they can just die off after a hopefully long and wonderful life during which chance conspired to make sure they didn’t harm anyone else.
And we all lived happily ever after :)
“Listening to the defenders, you get the distinct impression they believe that these uppity women trying to change their funny books are a bunch of carpet baggers come to take advantage of the precious Dixie of nerdom.”
Fantastic! There’s a phrase to roll around the mind. Hurrah for you.
I find Mr Philips' comments make more sense if you read them as a defense of Gor. As a defence of comics, however, they merely make me feel partly culpable in something dirty.
ReplyDeleteHello Brigonos:- You're right, they do "make me feel partly culpable in something dirty" too. And given that you've rarely seen a sacred cow that you didn't want to do something objectionable to, simply because of the pomposity of all that sacredness, that says a lot, doesn't it?
DeleteHis comments underneath my piece are masterpieces of Flakking. I only read a few lines, but the Flakking was so over-whelming that I forgot what it was he was Flakking about in the first place. I even forgot who I was, wandering round the house bumping into walls and asking the cats who lived here. The wife found me in the garden. "You've been reading that dumb Flakker again." she said, and carried me in for sausages'n'chips and Game Of Thrones.
You see, women are superior. There's your proof.
I beg your pardon, but women are NOT superior. I have my mother's, my sisters' and my girlfriend's permission to say so. That is, providing I don't try to claim that men are superior. I'm a conscientious objector to the Gender War.
ReplyDeleteI do enjoy coming here. After finishing a very late shift, I clickety-clicked my way here and found that you had provided me with a series of very interesting articles.
Mr. Phillips seems to be suggesting something like a Schroedinger's Cat of Sexism, in that it depends on the observer. If I were a crass misogynist I would call it Scroedinger's Pussy, but I'm not, so I won't.
Your response was right on the money. 6 clause sentences? They are the hallmark of a good rant. And that was a good rant. Gracious and thourough.
Hello Pops:- The Splendid Wife has said that I agree with you about women not being superior as a moral principle ...
DeleteThank you for your generous words! They are much appreciated, and you're very welcome whenever the mind needs a moment of downtime after late shifts.
You're a good egg on the matter of the rant. It IS hard to control the desperate-to-charge line up of clauses when the rant-gene gets activated. But then, it's a short distance from there to angry messages in capitals full of words which really aren't suitable for the family dinner table. The rant-gene isn't to be trusted, is it?
Your demolition of the childish whining of Mr. Philips was a pleasure to read, Colin. Please keep holding people to a basic standard of both debate and humanity.
ReplyDeleteHello Tordelback:- Thank you. You've always been a generous good egg to this blog and it's very much appreciated.
DeleteI hope you're having a splendid day.
No time bother sorting through the above comments, most of which are crap-- and I especially wouldn't bother on a blog where I could be easily censored, but here's a response to Tordelback's comment:
ReplyDelete"Your demolition of the childish whining of Mr. Philips was a pleasure to read, Colin."
If Colin Liar "demolished" me so well, why hasn't he responded to my counter-assertions in the comments-thread?
One word answer;
Chickenshit.
This is your one and only appearance on this blog, GP. After this, I'll simply delete anything that's posted without reading it. However, I'll answer your point here just to accentuate how lacking in logic your comments often seem to me to be. If you recall, you several days ago posted at Sequart a comment which stated that you wondered whether I would keep my word not to argue with anything raised on that board after I'd said my piece. I have kept my word. Now you're having a go at me for NOT answering you. How odd.
DeleteSo, it seems that you want to be angry at me if I don't answer you, and it seems that you want to be angry with me if I do. It's as strange as claiming that I went through your blog pieces to find one which referred to Nietzsche, when it was your link in your piece which led straight there.
And so on.
I don't care about your counter-assertions. You presented your case, I presented mine. I'm happy for folks to read what I wrote and decide that I'm as thick and mendacious as you claim. Your work is there, and so is mine. If mine fails to convince, then fine. That's the consequence of putting an opinion into print. I've failed before, I'll fail again, and I'll try to get over it without digging deeper and deeper holes to bury myself in.
And as I say, you're banned. So go rant elsewhere. I mean, you're just rude, Gene, you're just rude.
Hi Colin!
ReplyDeleteI only just managed to pop back so I've missed all the fun until now.
Wowee. That savage takedown of that most unpleasant and idiot pair of articles was brilliant. You come across as such has nice guy that I didn't realise you had it in you! I'm suitably impressed that you took the gloves off to someone that really deserved it.
Had it not been for your response I would never had encountered his unpleasant idiocy, or if I had, I would have a bit concluded that it made no sense and mnoved on. Instead I slogged through it (scratching my head several times) and emerged baffled as
to what he was talking about and not caring enough to think about it (what he was probably counting on I admit). Thanks for explaining carefully how it was mean spirited idiotic rubbish, terribly and lazily written (the one thing that I had concluded myself)
His later comments just show how he is an absolutely unpleasant man and how you sir are a gent. I doff my hat to a man who'll put in the effort to stand up and call an idiot and idiot.
Hello Ejaz:- Well, Mr Phillips wouldn't agree that I represented him accurately, but that's fine. What I'm grateful to you for doing is actually going to his work. After all, if he did write the piece he claims to have, your doing him the courtesy of reading his words can only reveal that. So thanks for doing that, and I'm sure GP would thank you too. His work on those articles was, as lots of folks have said, tough to read and tougher to make sense of. I suspect more people have read them because of the above than approached them in the first place, which can surely work to his advantage if he's written the clear and fair piece he obviously believes he has. As for me, the concern isn't whether GP gave the impressions that he did on purpose or because of his poor arguing skills; what matters is that the debate which he opened up is responded to.
DeleteThank you for your kind words. I wouldn't say that GP deserved anything, given that I know very little of him as a man, but his words, by chance or design, did deserve a, shall we say, strong response, which of course lots of folks on the Sequart board delivered before I got involved. As I say, it was a selfish business on my business; he just got my goat, and it's MY goat :)
It's worth pointing out that this has been a week in which little niches of the blogosphere have been spitting out that I'm an idiot who not only writes "the worst articles" ever seen, but who knows nothing about politics and comics. That soon reminds the haughty blogger that their truths aren't everyone else's :) But I dish it out, so I take it without responding. Not because of any deeply admirable nobility, or even the shallowest sheen of it, but because that's the way things need to get done. There's little point in saying "But I really meant" if it didn't look that way.
Yet writing that, I'm sure that sooner or latter, I'll respond to somebody as GP did to me. A bad mood, a terrible day, a sense of hard-done-by-ness. That's the problem with taking publicly ethical stands. The prospect of being hoisted with one's own petard always looms ...
Hi Colin,
ReplyDeleteI got to this one late - (it took some time to carefully read the articles under discussion) but basically I couldn't take GP's arguments at all seriously after I realised that the "Colin Liar" he was referring to in the comments under your article was yourself. Talk about dragging the debate down to the schoolyard bully level.
GP clearly found it difficult to debate your ideas so resorted to to a cheap and unfunny personal name-calling, sheesh.
Good on you taking GP's rubbish head-on, you are a braver man than I Gunga Din.
kiwijohn
Hello kiwijohn:- Thank you! Speaking as "Colin Liar" - a name I intend to take when I begin my career as a non-musician in a punk band - I'm grateful for your generous words. It did indeed seem tough for GP to engage not only with what I'd written, but with what he'd written too. A silly business in the end, but if you're going to be rude and give every impression of being an appalling sexist, then you have to expect to be called on it.
DeleteIn fact, anything written on the net brings with it the likelihood of criticism. Best mean what you say and say what you mean, to quote the always-intellectually admirable Fixx on the matter, or things will always go pear-shape.