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"Thanks for reminding me again of one of the reasons why I chose to stop seeking work in the "mainstream" (or is it "MANstream?") comics."
"Well, she’s bending over. Pin-up girls do that."
"Now, as we all know, I publish pornographic comics. Not just tease comics or pinup comics or sexy comics- hardcore pornography. Poles & holes, money shots, manga-style spurting penii, cartoon boobies bouncing, etc. I am not ashamed of the adult comics my company publishes. This is because I try to be a responsible editor and I believe there should be adult comics out there with consensual sex, women enjoying themselves and not being treated as mere objects, couples in love who can't keep their hands off each other, and the radical idea that sex, in all its forms, should be fun and pleasant and positive. This means it's often difficult to find artists who understand these concepts, and we often have to reject stuff with very nice art that contains things like rape, snuff, extreme violence, and the like. "
"I imagine Sana Takeda wanted to sell more books."
"Women who display what many regard as traditional male traits - such as assertiveness, independence and ambition - are more often the targets of sexual harassment than "feminine" women, the Canadian research has found. The situation is worst in workplaces dominated by men, where women with so-called masculine personalities - described in the study as "uppity" - suffered more than twice the harassment of other women."
"Anyway. Here goes my irrational, obsolete, and admittedly uneducated view on sexism in comic books: It exists. YES, women aside from supermodels and porn stars don't have those curves. YES, they're frequently scripted into compromising positions. YES, many female characters are "tarted up" and overly (overtly?) sexual. So? They're comics."
"It's been my empirical experience that cultural leaps forward often come from a situation where it's "darkest before the dawn."
"As I’ve been hinting for a long time, the integration of women into the comics world (again) is easily the biggest sociological aspect of comics current rise to respectability. It may actually be the CAUSE of it. Comics regaining a bilateral appeal is a huge story, and any demographic shift in any sphere brings discomfort and border skirmishes... Before moving on, I need to point out that one of the reasons Johanna, Valerie and I are all so snarky and/or jaded is because we’ve been to the mountain. We’ve worked in the comics industry... the messages I received engendered in me a powerful need to help others by showing these message up for the ignorant, insecure messages they are."
"Yeah, I said to myself that I would write this all down one day in some sort of memoir, or I would become active in Friends Of Lulu and protect women everywhere, or I would do a half-billion other noble things so I could see the "silver lining" in my struggle. But deep down I could still see my dad ripping that Wonder Woman poster off my wall:
"You ungrateful bitch! You fucked it all up! You touched the fizzy-lifting drink! Now you win nothing--NOTHING!" And I just wanted to make him happy."
ummm wow.
ReplyDeleteadam hughes defended himself on newsarama
here
and a woman drew that cover, so ummm... yeah...
I am going to stick to my New Avengers and X-men, cause no one raises a stink about how womens are portrayed in there... its just good clean superhero fun... with ninjas!
I like how Hughes says "we’re flirting with self-awareness," which (appropriately) goes a bit closer to the truth than he seems to entirely realize.
ReplyDeleteWoo-hoo, I'm included in your quote day, thanks! As you know my column had quite a bit of "quote day" also. :) I too love Adam's line about "flirting with self-awareness"...
ReplyDeleteI was curious about the psych experiment about "masculine" women in the workplace because I wanted to see if it controlled for whether or not "masculine" women are more likely to consider a form of sexual harassment negatively. I presumed that that would skew the results. (you can read it here: http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/facBios/file/Berdahl%20JAP%202007.pdf)
ReplyDeleteIt appears that the researcher took this into account as well and tested for it, and it turns out that it's not the case that "masculine" women view unwelcome gender harrassment any degree differently than any other women. So "masculine" women really do appear to be sexually harrassed more frequently. But although the title to the reporting news article suggests that women can avoid that harrassment by acting more feminine, the psych study notes that women who act feminine are more likely to be dismissed or ignored.
So there's no way to escape sexual discrimination in a male dominated work environment, basically, just the *kind* of discrimination. How depressing.