Bitter Is As Bitter Does

Johanna Draper Carlson calls me "bitter" for my words about DC. Hmm...This the same woman who wrote about her own tenure at the publisher:

"You put a bunch of immature men, many of whom were very sick as children or had absent fathers or both, and all of whom escaped into over-muscled power fantasies as a result, in charge of a publishing subgroup with no prestige and little money. Several of them have never worked anywhere else, or if they have, it was at one of the few similar companies in the same industry that behave the same way. They’re still geeks, mentally, with low self-esteem and no success with women, few of whom they actually know in person, but they’re power brokers within their little world, and there are thousands like them who desperately want to be them… and you wonder why it all ends up so twisted?"

Another quote:

"I spent less than a year inside the sausage factory, and I went in knowing I could leave any moment and get a job using the same skills that paid twice as much (which I did)."

DC, a "sausage factory?"

"The people I respected there, those who had a sense of the outside world and were considerate and good to work with, have all since left as well; several of them were forced out. Those left, the ones that come to mind when I bother to think of them, I’m mostly contemptuous of."

And:

"Dealing with them was like dealing with argumentative, impulsive children who had to be constantly reassured of their power and value for fear they’d throw a tantrum."

I've endured this woman's complaints/backhanded compliments regarding Friends of Lulu for over a year in silence. I've had to read about her accusing me of "conflict of interest" while she reviews her stacks and stacks of comp copies. I was so impacted by her words that I was afraid -- afraid! -- to support the comics of my friends and loved ones for fear that "CWR" would call me out on it.

I don't need this type of "comics feminist" supporting me. I don't need "feminists" telling me what I should and should not say on my own damn blog. This sort of mentality is, to me, just as stifling and oppressing as the work environment I wrote about in "Goodbye To Comics."

Honestly! I've lived my life over the last two years "mindful" about what "feminists" might think. Was I a "good feminist?" Was I towing the line? If I made this or that decision, would that "undermine" my "identity" as "the poster child of DC sexism?"

Yeah, I was, for some women, the "the poster child of DC sexism" -- when it was convenient.

I'm not a label. I don't need to answer to a handful of computer jockeys bitching about what a terrible feminist I am. I don't need to justify or spell out every concrete action I've done -- concrete action, not bitching behind a keyboard -- to help women in comics.

Rather than to answer anymore to this bullshit, to respond and let myself be flustered by the crabs in the bucket who snap at my heels, I'll go shake Dan DiDio's hand tomorrow.