Smell that, son. It's the scent of fuckwit on the air. Yes, I know, we're supposed to be an advanced civilised society, but fuckwits and arseholes still manage to wriggle their way to the top of food chains and under our skin. It's kind of our fault for having a civilised and advanced society that we allow these...um...interesting individuals to burble away and annoy us. Would be nice to just round a few particularly dicky dicks up, through them on an enclosed plain and hunt them down. Population control. Alas the whole 'illegality' and 'immorality' of such a venture bugs some people. For some reason.
I've been vocal about my annoyance at the sexism and misogyny in two of my favourite art forms before. Gaming has seen a high-profile debacle with the Game Jam that went down the toilet because of sexist remarks. You have to applaud the people who put a middle finger up to that shit. It's not the first incident of its kind in gaming and I don't think it will be the last – not for a good long while, sadly. I can't help feeling that all the nasty shit some gamers say while playing online might be the desired end result for some games creators, "I'm miserable, so you're all going to be miserable. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!" Or something.
I want to talk comics, though.
Recently this bullshit pushed its sweaty way into my consciousness. Do I need to tell people what's wrong with this situation? If I do, then please feel free to go for a walk down the middle of a motorway, you know for your own and everyone else's sake. It will be for the best.
Going by the discussion and the toxic sludge that passes for forums and comments sections, talk I must. It's because it talks of a wider problem in our culture, where treating women like punching bags, both emotionally and physically, still doesn't have the stigma it deserves.
Let's go back to that misty time of April 11th of this year, an idyllic time when everyone got along and no one was throwing around rape threats like it was big and clever.
What?
It's never been like that?
Okay, but this part of the story still starts on that date. A day when a woman decided to critique a recent comic book cover. She pointed out that while the figure work was mostly pretty good, the composition was dodgy as fuck. I mean, to me, most of the things around the figures look like they've been scribbled in without any thought about whether they should be there. That lunch bag in Beast Boy's hand looks especially tacked-on. She points out something that could be potentially racist. That last one's hard to call, it could just have been down to the overall iffiness of the composition.
The less ambiguous issue is with Wonder Girl's anatomy. Namely her gigantic, unreal knockers. Miss Asselin rightly takes issue with the blatant sexualisation of a teenage girl, fictional she may be, but it's still a creepy thought. She points out the ridiculous proportions of the character's hips before turning her attention to everything that's wrong with Wonder Girl's breasts. You can read it in the link.
And that's what people took issue with. How dare she, a mere woman and non-artist, criticise a comic artist for DOING WHAT A VAST SWATH OF COMIC ARTISTS DO! Then came the rape threats. Rape threats.
I'll say that a third time so that those of you who don't quite get it can feel the full horror: rape threats. We know the people involved know what they do is wrong because they concealed their activities in private correspondence.
This kind of thing isn't acceptable. This is shit. It's nasty and unpleasant and, if the all-time number one downloaded song ever is an indicator, disgustingly prevalent. We have a culture in which threatening rape is a way of dealing with women. How is this still a thing? Why are we still letting it happen? Are we afraid of losing our bros when we call them on having grotesque attitudes towards women. Let me tell you, you don't need friends like that, yer mate who's always calling women sluts and whores and thinks they're good for nothing but bed post notches is the human equivalent of radioactive waste. His attitudes are going to reflect on you and give your soul cancer. You wouldn't sit on an atomic pile would you? See?
Even in the public domain, people who are supposed to be professionals in the field resorted to, "you have a vagina, so you are wrong," arguments when it was clear their defence of one of their colleagues wasn't going their way. That's harder to deal with, because they don't seem to see what they are doing is wrong. That's a problem too big for my puny brain to think up even a bullshit solution for.
And the argument it's the way comics are done is such a huge pile of bullshit there are satellites orbiting it. We have the capacity to change that particular status quo. Ridiculously-boobed women (teenagers and adult women) are the juvenile fantasies of a small part of the comics community, yet it's those shit heads who call all the shots. Yes, they're the loudest monkeys in the enclosure, but they are also the most stupid, selfish and least representative. Big companies can take away their power with one simple tactic: ignore them. It's not our fault some essential part of their life is missing. Get on with doing shit that isn't offensive in every wrong way and start to grow. You won't be seen as unsympathetic, you'll be seen as smart. Ignore the fuckers who want comics to stay the same stunted medium forever*.
What I say to everyone: is shout as loud as you can about these internet degenerates. Shine a big torch on every reprehensible proclamation. There should be a website dedicated to this, where women who've been on the receiving end of this crap can post the sickening crap they have to put up with so that the rest of us can laugh and the pathetic specimens who feel it's right and proper to verbally beat women down with grimy threats just so they can feel empowered. Would such a place work? Dunno. It would be nice to experiment and see. Someone. Anybody?**
* Actually moderating forums and comments sections might be a good start too. Too many of these places just let slobbering misogyny and any other foul prejudice run rampant without saying much. Don't feed the trolls is not an adequate way to moderate a forum either.
** And fucking hell more shit!
Will
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