Just a starter checklist, mind you — far from complete or even authoritative:
* Think about things besides sex. Any of the things.
* Assume every woman you meet, online or offline, is not interested. Odds are tremendous that they’re totally not.
* Realize life is not a porn flick, an ’80s teen sex comedy, or Mad Men, where anyone who’s persistent and dense will eventually luck into a sex scene.
* Stop worshiping sex as your happy fun god that demands regular conquests.
* Accept the reality that other humans are not your playthings.
* Learn the difference between female characters written poorly by men, and actual females.
* No, seriously: think about things besides sex. If you can’t think of a topic, go to WikiPedia and click “Random Article” in the left sidebar till you find anything else to contemplate.
* Hands to yourself. Forever.
* Ogling is an unacceptable substitute for eye contact.
* Just because you’re an all-star doesn’t mean everything you do or say is justified by definition.
* Just because you’re male doesn’t mean everything you do or say is justified by definition.
* Just because you’re an adult doesn’t mean everything you do or say is justified by definition.
…because some people need practical advice.
The subject is in my mind’s forefront of my mind because it represents 90% of all memorable, nondisposable news in the world of comic books this week. Long story short: the comic book industry has had more than its share of sexual harassment incidents over the decades, but the past two weeks have seen several women stepping forward to share their experiences in the wake of one newly high-profile case in which a former comics creator took the bold step of naming a rather popular name…and learned she wasn’t alone.
This, of course, is all in addition to the never-ending discussions of abysmal behavior that women are expected to suffer at conventions. Add sci-fi conventions as well, and one could go on for years recounting the deplorable incidents of men demonstrating how much they don’t Get It.
I couldn’t begin to summarize here, especially since so many others already have. The following represents my incomplete harassment-in-comics link collection so far from the last two weeks. They’re not remotely in chronological order, though the first article collates and contextualizes the most important ones. Some of them are tangential, but all of them were stops found along my reading trail at some detour or another and didn’t escape my notice. Many of these articles link to many other articles. In some cases the Comments sections contain still more cautionary tales.
http://tessfowler.tumblr.com/post/67091692836/my-response
http://annescherbina.tumblr.com/post/67350574208/i-am-not-the-other-woman-i-am-another-voice
http://gimpnelly.tumblr.com/post/67599775530/harassment-in-comics
http://rantzhoseley.com/blog/?p=367
http://beccatoria.livejournal.com/179948.html
http://squidygirl.blogspot.de/2013/11/silent-all-these-years.html
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/11/20/harassment-and-being-the-superhero-in-our-story/
http://www.tcj.com/where-do-we-begin/
http://www.doctornerdlove.com/2013/11/nerds-male-privilege-tess-fowler-comic-harassment/
http://gwillowwilson.com/post/66992106551/sex-gender-and-the-comics-industry
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-responses-to-sexism-that-just-make-everything-worse/
http://comicsalliance.com/sexual-harassment-women-in-comics/
http://www.theouthousers.com/index.php/news/125004-hate-the-player-hate-the-game.html
I loathe sites that post lists of links instead of cleaned-up hypertext, but that’s pretty much the only way I can handle processing all of this at the moment. Labeling them, prioritizing them, ranking them, pointing out which ones are “best”, prettying them up — not in the mood for any semblance of refined cultivation or finicky site design. (One exception: writer Marjorie Liu’s piece on Facebook, which I want to include but this site’s software kept wanting to embed her post here automatically instead of merely linking to it.)
I’ve gone on record time and again about cutting up my man card for numerous offenses against the he-man masculinity cabal. I grew up essentially fatherless and was denied all those childhood lessons I was supposed to receive about how to grow up a thoughtless, oppressive male. Vocalizing any of this doesn’t help my case. Now they’ll never teach me how to change my own oil, or how to hypnotize a woman into agreeing that her “no” really means “yes” because it suits my shallow worldview.
And this is just in the comic book industry. Lord knows how many other fields and industries have the same problem. Many of them? All of them?
Seriously, guys: is baseline civility that difficult? Manners? Recognition of rights? Personal space? No? All sounding foreign? Ruins the mood? Interrupts your endless stream of sexytime thoughts? Does it pain you to consider that some of your fellow humans don’t want to live every aspect of our lives as if we’re in a seedy, roughhouse bar in the ghetto part of town?
All this, then, is the ugly underside of my lifelong hobby that’s overtaken my online “leisure” reading this week. The bravery to be seen in so much confrontation is commendable; the offenses that necessitated it, reprehensible.
In a medium whose creations and creators once prided themselves on the celebration of heroes and the triumph of good over evil, I missed the bell-ringing for the exact moment when so many folks on either side of the printed page stopped taking those lessons to heart….and/or stopped teaching those lessons.
