Let’s Play Make Believe

Last summer, I wrote about a time I encountered sexism in comics. The piece received nearly 200 comments, most of which were some version of that didn’t happen. Funny enough, the one that stands out in my memory was left by another woman—one of maybe five or six who participated in a thread that was almost exclusively men talking to other men.

Even in the context of a blatantly sexist comment thread, her words really bothered me. That critic is unimpeachable, she wrote. I know because he’s been supportive of me. You’re inexperienced and you should toughen up. P.S. Comics is perfect!

Which: good for her. (Genuinely, I mean it.) But I still have no idea what her experience had to do with mine. What you’re saying about you isn’t correct because it’s not what happened to ME is a weird way to filter the world.

Yet people do it all the time. Her comment is a really mild example of an ugly problem I have seen elsewhere in comics: the inability to imagine that life even exists in someone else’s shoes. As a semi-casual observer who has witnessed this, this, and this—a small sampling against which my own experience literally pales in comparison—it’s clear to me that this industry is dominated by straight white men who are constantly finding new ways to discount the perspectives of people of color, women, and queer people just because they are different.

It is hugely important, now more than ever, to listen to those perspectives. One of the most respected publishers in comics is about to launch his new imprint with what he calls transgressive art, a comic that contains some of the most racist and misogynistic imagery I have seen anywhere, ever. That he is doing so in the name of “a publisher’s obligation to take risks” is not just a travesty; it is a crisis.

We talk about racism and misogyny in comics as though these are problems that belong to a bygone era. Meanwhile, in the last six months, The Comics Journal ran a column defending imagery that could have come straight out of a Wikipedia entry about black stereotypes, and Fantagraphics promoted its glorified white supremacist comic with folksy words like “innovative, quirky, idiosyncratic, oddball, experimental, [and] downright crazy.” It is no doubt a mark of my paltry knowledge about comics that I am so astonished by these incidents. My guess is that people much more involved in the industry aren’t even remotely surprised.

I was thinking about all of this as I watched a different crisis unfold in the literary world with regard to serial harasser Edward Champion. Some would call him a book blogger or a literary critic, and who knows, maybe he was those things once. In any case now he’s a person who says really despicable (and sometimes criminal) things under the banner of criticism. He has finally been denounced by the publishing world—a process that began in June, when he published a misogynistic nightmare screed against Emily Gould, and ended recently when he harassed another female novelist on Twitter.

One weird thing I observed as that scandal unfolded was how some corners of the Internet tried to dictate the terms of how people talked about what he did. In many ways, Champion served as his own chief of propaganda; his public suicide threats caused many people to privilege his mental health over the well being of his victims, which included women who have been afraid to attend their own book events or even leave their houses at all. Watch what you say about him, these people implored. He’s clearly not well.

From a diametrically opposed point of view, I confess I felt a similar urge to dictate the terms of the Champion conversation as I watched some critics place what I believed to be undue emphasis on the question of his mental health. We should focus on the known quantity, which is the abusive behavior, for both his sake and for the sake of his victims. That’s what I want to talk about. That is the story I see.

But the weirdest (and maybe the saddest) thing about the whole sick sorry spectacle was watching women that Champion harassed chastise each other for deviating from the narrative as they see it. The most jaw-dropping display of this was, of course, Sarah Weinman, Champion’s ex-partner, who publicly scolded (and maybe privately threatened) everyone from Porochista Khakpour to the entire population of Twitter for not responding to Champion’s behavior in a way she deemed appropriate. Laura Miller at Salon, who was once the subject of Champion’s ridicule, weighed in with a “don’t feed the trolls” take that downplayed the violent imagery and threats in his rants and implicitly blamed Gould and Khakpour for his harassment. And most recently, I saw Khakpour call people out for being tough on Weinman, minimize threats that were of a different nature than the ones she received, and even (tentatively, ambivalently) defend Weinman as on-the-record reports of her abuse of power began to trickle in.

I don’t mean to suggest that these three women’s situations are analogous (and am especially anxious to seem critical of Khakpour, who I admire, and who was the victim of a crime). Weinman, Miller, and Khakpour are all quite different from one another—and that is exactly my point. Not one of their stories can stand in for another’s, just as the woman’s story I mentioned at the top of this essay can’t stand in for mine.

It has been a few weeks since I wrote the bulk of this post—time enough for the Champion thing to have become old hat. Time enough, in fact, for an entirely unrelated literary scandal to have unfolded. Time enough for another woman writer to publish a truly despicable essay that is a much more flagrant example of the me-first phenomenon I’m describing. Time enough for all of that to have become old hat, too.

While those events already feel far behind us, you will see the same pattern elsewhere, if you look. It seems like an understatement to call it a lack of empathy. It’s more like a Tyra Banks-level solipsism. David Foster Wallace has described it as a default setting that has to be actively overcome:

Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it’s so socially repulsive. But it’s pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being “well-adjusted,” which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

A bold choice, I know, to quote extensively from someone’s commencement speech in a screed against “edgy” comics, but I find myself returning to these words all time. The central task of adulthood, DFW suggests, is to push past the boundaries of self. A lot of people will dismiss or diminish this enterprise with accusations of political correctness or pretentiousness or whatever, but the truth is a more stripped down and simple and fundamental to being human. And I’m pretty sure that a lot of us are failing at it.

It’s natural that we use our own life experience to relate to other people. (You may have observed this essay is itself an act along those lines.) But we should never wield those experiences as some sort of testimony that diminishes, discredits, or replaces some other person’s. The “my story is somehow more real and correct and relevant than your story” response is not just an act of ego and faulty logic; it is a form of sabotage, however well intentioned. This sabotage may be innocuous, like my example of that woman’s self-involved comment on my essay. Or it can be something much, much more serious and damaging, like discrediting a rape victim.

It could be, say, publishing gore so dim that Danzig himself wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot demon dick. It could be dismissing the concerns of readers who clearly and calmly point out the blatant racism and misogyny in the work. (This narrative is not about them, after all. It’s about you and your bravery and your “obligation to take risks.”) It could be capitalizing on that controversy even as you’re dismissing it (as any savvy businessman would), hoping that your customers will buy the thin excuse that it heralds a return to your punk rock ethos, or something?

No need to think about that last part too hard! These wild and zany comics will practically sell themselves to other white men who will not recognize that this “return to your roots” masks a profound lack of imagination.

I think a similar lack of imagination fuels all those contentious comments threads that come up whenever the issue of diversity in comics is broached. Increasingly, I suspect that many, if not most, of those comments can be boiled down to solipsism more than hate. They represent a total failure to see past the self that is then reinforced by people who largely—and by no coincidence—look exactly the same. And to borrow a term from their Pale King, I can scarcely think of anything more square than a bunch of white guys quacking at each other about their own perceived edginess, a self-image that has relied on the same old shit for nearly half a century.

Are you a white man in comics who has received a critique regarding your treatment of a different demographic? Instead of merely reacting, try to step outside yourself.

Imagine for a moment that there are other people in the world whose experiences exist independently from your own. Imagine that those experiences are valid, and that the people reporting them aren’t just confused, or overly sensitive, or stupid, or lying. Imagine yourself as a person who’s capable of listening to what they have to say. This is our real obligation—not just as publishers, or cartoonists, or critics, or readers, but also as humans.

Or, hey, we can play a different game of pretend. Let’s make believe that Gary Groth is doing something noble by building his brand on some bigot’s stupid garbage art.

Up to you!

64 thoughts on “Let’s Play Make Believe

  1. Imagine that there are people out there who have experiences different from your own and who find Fukitor funny, but who aren’t bigots. Step outside yourself.

  2. The two most common arguments for FB’s decision to publish Fukitor:
    1. It rankles the too-sensitive PC crowd. Presumably, this is laudable because these folks have transformed comics into a haven for second and third wave feminists and a host of other easily offended Tumblr tulips, and as a result have deprived us of a rich tradition of transgressive comics art.
    2. The second is that if you don’t like Fukitor, don’t buy it. The rationale here is that somehow, just because you don’t read something, you’re not affected by it. I guess this is why when I go to the comic shop, I never notice all the superhero comics I don’t read, and why the shelves are full of new releases from Fanta. D&Q, Adhouse et al. Also, this is why every local comic shop is filled with a diverse array of enlightened consumer-individuals voting with their dollars, which on average they earn equally regardless of race, gender or political disposition.

  3. I guess it’s transgressive for tulips.

    And I’d love to not hear about Bechdel or Crumb ever again, but it doesn’t seem possible. I don’t really feel violated by that, though.

    Anyway, my 3rd reason: the book is funny and enjoyable.

  4. Charles, this post is not about accusing readers of bigotry, policing reader responses, or “feeling violated” by the comic’s existence (LOL). Try to keep up.

  5. Charles, when you wrote about the book (at Alex’s link) you didn’t really make the case it was funny and enjoyable? You mostly used the piece as an excuse to bait folks (which would put you under Nate’s point 1, above.)

    Or at least, the point seemed to be, feminists deserve to be trolled, therefore you like Fukitor…

  6. Wait, explain to me how Spurgeon’s tweets calling for recognition of a woman comics scholar were sexist? Maybe applicable to some articles about Hilary Chute and maybe not, but sexist?

    Comments threads that reach the 200 mark are not unusual here, I don’t think. I’m not sure how it was blatantly sexist. People were arguing with your interpretation. And you did include the complete, electronic exchanges that you found objectionable; that’s not the same as experiencing something in person and then having a bunch of people who weren’t there tell you you imagined it. Doesn’t debate always involve disputing another person’s interpretation of events?

  7. Zan, I’d rather not relitigate/restage Kim’s earlier post if we can avoid it.

    Re: Fantagraphics and the underground…I think there’s actually an aesthetic/ideological investment there in *not* seeing other people’s viewpoints. Crumb’s project (or schtick, depending on how charitable you want to be) is agressive confessional; he’s dumping out the contents of his head unapologetically/defiantly; if you’re amused that’s great, if you’re horrified that’s even better, but it’s very much about him, and very much not about caring for other’s feelings or opinions.

    It’s sort of an overreaction to the perceived failures of the mainstream comics market, bowing to public pressure with the comics code and generally being focused on popularity rather than personal expression. The punchline of course is that in rejecting the mainstream the underground (not always, but often) mirrored its gender politics. The man rejects the Man, but it’s still the man either way.

    I have less of a sense of what’s going on with Champion, I have to admit. Though from what I’ve seen there’s some of that speak truth to power thing going on with him too, right? The other he’s courageously defying seems like it’s supposed to be a debased feminized book culture, right? Maybe someone else has followed that more closely than I have.

  8. Well Noah, it seems to me that that’s exactly what’s being done in the first paragraphs of this piece.

    “Last summer, I wrote about a time I encountered sexism in comics. The piece received nearly 200 comments, most of which were some version of that didn’t happen. Funny enough, the one that stands out in my memory was left by another woman—one of maybe five or six who participated in a thread that was almost exclusively men talking to other men.

    “Even in the context of a blatantly sexist comment thread, her words really bothered me. That critic is unimpeachable, she wrote. I know because he’s been supportive of me. You’re inexperienced and you should toughen up. P.S. Comics is perfect!”

    Mind you, I don’t get the feeling that Kim is interested in debating these assertions either. One of the reasons I gave up attempting to participate in that thread was her repeated announcements that she didn’t want further discussion of the matter. But I think I would appreciate being defended if someone publicly accused me of sexism and I didn’t think I deserved it.

    How closely have you followed Crumb’s work, by the way?

  9. Gamergate is terrorism, pure and simple. I’m not going to deny that it’s worse than any of the comics stuff I’m talking about. GG terrorists are the new female circumcision of conversations about sexism, I guess.

    But hey, since someone brought it up, let’s compare/contrast.

    One difference worth noting: Gamergate is an anonymous fringe group that has been denounced by industry leaders. Gary Groth is a respected industry leader who launched his latest project with a white supremacy comic.

    A similarity worth noting: Gamergate and Groth publishing Fukitor have essentially the same effect (though on a different scale): they lock down the culture as a place for white men. Gamergate is just a lot more intentional about it.

  10. Zan, I’ve read around in Crumb’s early stuff and read Genesis. I’m not an expert or anything; I’ve read enough to know I really don’t like him much at all, though I admire his drawing skills.

    GG is bizarre. I’ve talked to some of the folks on the hashtag — there are a lot of people associated with it who are not interested in issuing death threats or harassing people (including a number of GG women.) But the discussion about journalistic ethics appears to come down to the belief that it’s unethical or unprofessional to talk about representation of women in games, and/or to provide positive coverage of indie games that don’t look like mainstream games. It dovetails with your article, Kim; GG is as far as I can tell literally saying it’s immoral to come at games from a different perspective than them.

    I wrote a couple things about GG if people are interested in hearing me babble more about it. Here and here.

  11. I think Noah is right, but the aesthetic of not caring about your audience’s feelings seems totally legitimate to me. Art that explores the subconscious interests me, and the subconscious just isn’t concerned with avoiding sexism and racism. Beyond that, don’t you think the most memorable voices are those that stand out from and even have contempt for the crowd? Even if the crowd has theoretically laudable goals, keeping your distance may be a good idea–for example, I think the clichés of internet social-justice writing (“Wow. Just wow,” “THIS!,” “Check your privilege,” etc.) should be avoided.

    I’m not sure there’s a place for worrying about other people’s feelings in criticism, either, even when those “other people” are minorities and the critic is a Privileged White Male ™. Popular taste in art is often/usually really shitty, and I don’t think minorities are immune from that. I mean, if most Jewish people in America think that Schindler’s List is a brilliant and touching memorial to the Holocaust, that doesn’t necessarily make it so. Another example is a blog entry I mentioned here before (http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2011/08/10/spinster-aunt-casts-jaundiced-eye-at-scepter-of-passion/), in which a feminist describes Lolita as a glowing tribute to the glories of child-rape and 200 of her readers agree completely. I just don’t accept that these commenters’ status as women and possible sexual abuse victims has given them insights into the book that I lack. In my opinion, they lack my insights because I’m reasonably bright and they’re dumb, or at least extremely simple-minded when it comes to art.

    Regarding Fukitor–some tcj commenters described the artist as exploring an 80s-era “angry white boy” aesthetic filled with racism and misogyny, which seems at least potentially interesting to me. I was a kid in the 80s, and my limited exposure to era’s rock music (particularly the Metallica t-shirts that older kids would wear) and action/slasher movies always disturbed me. Some of that pop culture schlock, like Rambo, can probably be linked to Reagan’s abetting of Guatemala’s and El Salvador’s mass murders. Anyway, I haven’t seen Fukitor and it might be horrible, but it seems theoretically possible for a comic along those lines to be good.

    That Champion guy is all over the place and occasionally acts like a noble male feminist; his Emily Gould rant includes complaints about her supposed betrayal of women writers and enabling of “mansplaining.” It’s all pretty incoherent.

  12. The iblamethepatriarchy post does quote a passage from Lolita which should get a “bad sex” award though. But maybe writing fanfic-quality sex was Nabokov’s intention; as in the best way to denote creepiness is to make the protagonist “write” badly about sexual intercourse?

  13. Jack, I’d say that the fallacy in your discussion is the suggestion that something like Fukitor is bucking the crowd. I also don’t really think it’s true that racism and sexism are somehow primal truths, and anti-racism and anti-sexism are social conventions. It’s all social conventions. Gary Groth may be annoying certain people, but the comics underground tradition is built on annoying those people. It’s kicking the man in order to be the man; the rituals of rebellion are as tired and as reverent as any other form of worship.

  14. Noah, Gamergate–even just the “journalistic ethics” faction of Gamergate–is hard to talk about because a lot of different stuff has been launched under its banner. The ethical concerns you’re referring to about relates most to @femfreq’s work (I think), and so far as I can glean, I wouldn’t attribute it to solipsism so much as a fundamental misunderstanding of what journalism even is.

    Of course the “journalistic ethics” convo that launched Gamergate were the (false) accusations that Zoe Quinn slept around to get positive reviews for her game. And now, of course, there’s a “journalistic ethics” faction accusing @femfreq and Brianna Wu as staging their own harassment for attention.

    Jack, I don’t think that work by minorities should be immune to criticism. (What?) It’s curious, though, that you see that Schindler’s List example as going hand-in-hand with Lolita, a work that you seem to think is impervious to criticism. Or is it just criticism from simple-minded women that you object to?

    Should artists and critics be concerned with people’s feelings? Nah, I don’t think that’s my argument. I think they should be concerned with people’s humanity, though. If for some reason they choose not to recognize it, or to otherwise undermine it, I look for what that choice is in service of. Frankly, I’m not sure what’s worse: if the choice is in service of your bigotry or your brand.

  15. I’m glad, and fwiw I didn’t really read it that way. I read it sort of as a joke, but the kind that has a little bit of truth to it.

  16. I tend to agree with Jack that Lolita takes a pretty strong moral stance against child rape and misogyny. Nabokov is slippery though; I don’t think it’s crazy to feel that he’s siding with Humbert, or trying to side against Humbert and not entirely succeeding.

    Schindler’s List is objectively horrible though.

    Kim, the accusations against Zoe Quinn were tied up in (or at least from what I’ve seen seem to be tied up in) the presumption/assertion that her game is obviously, objectively, on its face, a bad game, and that therefore the fact that she got some good reviews/interest is a sure sign of collusion/sexual favors. It’s all an incoherent mess, but as far as I can tell that’s how the ethics arguments and the sexism and the anti-feminism and the anti-indie games seem to (sort of) fit together. I think that on top of the misunderstanding about journalism, it’s linked to a reluctance/refusal to see games as art rather than product (and to solipsism too, I think).

    I watched this Huffpost live piece where they interview women GG supporters. The moderator is not very good, I’d say, so a lot of unanswered questions are sort of lying around twitching feebly at the end.

  17. I find gg sort of fascinating/horrifying/can’t look away, and it does seem related, but we don’t have to talk about it or anything. Just tell me to stop. I can stop. I’m sure of it…

    It does seem like the comics community not that long ago, with some of the markers switched around. TCJ was a flashpoint too because of the way it criticized the mainstream as facile dreck. If TCJ had had a feminist commitment like Sarkeesian does (or maybe even if Gary had just been a woman), the backlash could well have been even more virulent.

  18. Yeah, Noah, that parenthetical is key. Even then, I think you need the internet for gg levels of crazy. Groth was 30 years too early.

    tcj can still be oddly tone-deaf about identity/gender/race stuff, like when they reprinted that Terry Beatty’s girlfriend thing a few months ago.

  19. Gamersgate et al. probably belongs somewhere alongside one’s stance on Woody Allen’s family life. It’s pretty irrelevant, but there was some pretty shitty behavior going on among the socalled journalists (agreeing to a party line by releasing a series of attacks all at once is one example; sleeping with the subject of your reporting while not disclosing it would be another). Online game criticism seems pretty silly on the whole, Poe’s law being well demonstrated by all the fake Kotaku essay titles that appeared within the Gamersgate hashtag.

    And Sarkeesian isn’t the first censorious nitwit to receive an abusive shitstorm thrown her way by gamers. Jack Thompson received death threats against himself and his family a few years ago. (I know, misogyny hurts men, too.) She’ll be forgotten just like he was in a few years. Most charlatans are.

    KIm, if you’re not arguing against the immorality of publishing Fukitor on the grounds that it upsets you and likeminded types (“tulips”) — that it’s blatantly racist and misogynist, serving white male power by keeping others out of comics, etc. — you don’t have much of a point in bringing up the comic’s publication. In other words, of course you’re “policing” (your word, not mine), if it has any meaning at all in such a context. You provide no other reason for why it might be published or read, so it’s pretty clear what mindset you’re assuming for anyone who might enjoy the book, or to think enough of it to publish it. As for the rhetoric of victimhood (“violation”), it’s all over your essay. It’s the only register you seem capable of writing write in.

    Noah, in a climate where everyone is looking to be offended, causing offense to these passive aggressive critics is probably too easy, despite serving the commonweal in some meager capacity. It seems pretty clear that Fukitor transgresses many people’s safety zone, even though these same people try to make it seem (while going on at length) like their objection is rooted in boredom (you tried the same thing in another similar discussion). I’m sure Groth or whoever thought there was enough friction there and that there were more reasons for reading the thing than its being a white power manifesto to justify publishing it in FB’s new controversial line. My “baiting” (which doesn’t seem any different from anything else on this website) didn’t sound like I was giving enjoyability as the reason for publishing Fukitor, mainly because I wasn’t arguing for a reason to publish Fukitor. I did, however, say the reason I felt like writing that was because I found the comic funny (which is a form of enjoyment — at least, to me) and because of what we now can call reflectionist assumptions being made by a hysterical mob.

  20. Laura Miller was right on the money about Edward Champion. He’s a trolling shitbag with zero influence who gets off on people’s reactions. Ignore him. Ever hear of the Streisand effect?

  21. Charles, no one slept with the subject of the review. The piece in question was published before there was a relationship…and it wasn’t a review. (or at least that’s my understanding.)

    There was no coordinated collusion either. People just wrote about misogyny among gamers at the same time, because (duh) there’d been a massive misogynist outpouring by gamers.

    So…in terms of journalistic ethics, there’s nothing there. Which makes the appeal to journalistic ethics, whether by you or others, seems like a bad faith attempt to minimize harassment (or simply confusion.)

    Why is Sarkeesian a “nitwit” exactly? Have you seen her videos? They’re really low key, and most of the things she points out are fairly obvious and straightforward. She’s not calling for banning; she points to games she likes and talks thoughtfully about why they’re worthwhile and how they differ from the games she dislikes (by taking sexual violence seriously, for example.) Really, it seems like you’re being the censorious knee-jerk whiner there, doesn’t it? There’s no effort to engage with her argument; just a censorious tantrum because she’s coming from someplace you’re not. Surely if pissing people off is the goal, Sarkeesian is way better at it than Karns, who seems really pretty small bore as a shit-stirrer (if shit stirring is what makes him interesting.) Sarkeesian’s even better at that than Groth — and again, she does it without really any histrionics at all. If outrage is your metric for worthiness, and if you find the outraged contemptible, then you should be on Sarkeesian’s side, as far as I can tell. Why aren’t you blaming the victim here, Charles, since that seems to be your ideological preference?

    And Charles, I didn’t say you were writing to explain why Groth should publish(?) I said you’re piece, and your writing on it, does little to explain why you find it funny and interesting, except that you think it pisses people off. You’re not really moving out of that paradigm here.

  22. Charles Reece, I didn’t know you were that kind of guy. But it’s good to see your kind expose themselves. “Censorious?” Pointing out something isn’t “censoring,” what is wrong with you, dude? What is your actual problem.

  23. I think it’s far more rational for someone who believes (as Ms. O’Connor seems to) that that the publication of Fukitor is a really bad thing, to advocate for censorship than to merely “point something out.”

    I think this is particularly true, if the impact of a work like Fukitor has an impact beyond those who will ever read Fukitor, as Nate suggests it will.

    Charles is being generous in assigning censorship as a motive here. Otherwise what is the motive? The author pleasing herself (talk about solipism)? Singing to the choir? Trolling?

    If the world would be a better place without Fantagraphics publishing Fukitor, why not call for Fantagraphics not to publish Fukitor?

    I agree with ZAN that if Noah and Ms. O’Connor do not wish to rehash the other thread, then I’d suggest (at the risk of paternalistically telling a woman what to write) Ms. O’Connor find a different entry point than spending 10% of the essay on a topic that the publisher doesn’t want to rehash.

    There are two things in her treatment of the last thread in this article that are relevant here.

    1. A minor one, perhaps, but as I recall, one of Ms. O’Connor’s issues with Tom Spurgeon’s tweets is that they were subtweets, that he was making comments about Ms. O’Connor’s writing without referencing Ms. O’Connor. Why then does Ms. O’Connor not name the author of or link to the specific solipistic post she has problems with? What’s good for the gander is good for the goose.

    2. Ms. O’Connor’s responses in that thread are a clear example (certainly more clear than any of here examples here) of the solipism she decries. Most of the posts that she labels sexist or “men talking to men” are people trying to point out that there were other ways to look at the Tom’s tweets. Remember that even after Tom stepped up to explain himself, she was unwilling to even entertain large parts of his explanation. She was unwilling to step outside herself in that, and pretty much every other instance on the thread.

    It’s possible I suppose that only privileged classes are required to step outside themselves, because only the privileged have the power to oppress from inside themselves, hence this

    ” Are you a white man in comics who has received a critique regarding your treatment of a different demographic? Instead of merely reacting, try to step outside yourself.”

  24. Sarkeesian certainly isn’t a “nitwit”. Her youtube videos I’ve seen are straightforward and smart.

    They don’t seem likely to be forgotten either, especially when folks like Charles give them increased exposure when they get hysterical over them- like in the post above.

  25. BTW Fukitor is only being printed in an edition of 300-500 copies. Though if enough Kim O’Connors talk it up I guess it could go through the roof…

  26. I doubt that a piece on HU is going to push the sales up that much.

    Two things. First, there’s always a tendency around bullying or trolling to say, hey, just ignore it, it will go away, they’re trying to provoke you — and you’re only giving them the promotion/attention they want. The problem is that you end up there telling the people who are being kicked that it’s their responsibility to respond in the way that you prescribe — and the way you prescribe comes down to telling them to shut up. Why should Karns’ be the only voice that gets a hearing exactly? Kim had something to say; sneering at her because of that strikes me as not super helpful.

    Second, the point of the piece is that the issue isn’t just Karns. So yes, interest in him may sell a few more issues, but there are other things being discussed here. Kim doesn’t claim she wants to bankrupt Karns or Fantagraphics anyway, so using that as some sort of metric seems misguided.

  27. Dean: “I think it’s far more rational for someone who believes (as Ms. O’Connor seems to) that that the publication of Fukitor is a really bad thing, to advocate for censorship than to merely “point something out.”

    That seems like faulty logic. Speaking for myself, I think the publication of Fukitor is a bad thing overall; I’d much rather Fanta spend its efforts elsewhere, and that the underground get over its belief that racism and sexism are validating signs of the true artist. However, I think that in most cases censorship is itself a bad thing for any number of reasons; I’d prefer more speech in response to speech, rather than police or carceral solutions. It’s almost like your interlocutors are able to hold more than one idea in their heads, or aren’t the ridiculous caricatures you imagine them to be. You know?

  28. “Speaking for myself”

    You should try stepping outside yourself.

    If you see censoring Fukitor as more harmful than having it published by FG (it’s already been published elsewhere, right?), I get that. All that tells me is that Fukitor is not all that bad to begin with.

  29. I’m pretty sure Kim isn’t saying I should speak for anyone else. Looking at things from other perspectives isn’t the same as pretending to be empowered with someone else’s voice.

    Fantagraphics is a big deal; Gary Groth’s imprimatur is validating. It says, this is important comics. So yes, I think it matters; I would rather he hadn’t done that. I’m not going to send Gary death threats though, or even declare him a “nitwit”.

  30. Hardly an imprimatur when Fantagraphics sets up a whole separate imprint to publish this.

  31. Darryl,

    I’m with Jack when he said, “I think the clichés of internet social-justice writing (‘Wow. Just wow,’ ‘THIS!,’ ‘Check your privilege,’ etc.) should be avoided” and you’re clearly not. We’ll agree to disagree.

    Noah,

    There was a series of leaks from a gamers journalist mailing list to the conservative site Breitbart that suggests a good deal of group planning and consolidation went on regarding how they’d write about these topics. You can say it’s just like minded people talking among themselves, I guess, the same way many of the world’s leading capitalists get together at Davos, Switzerland to talk over their common interests, but one thing you shouldn’t call it is good journalism. And it’s good practice for the journalist writing about someone who’s a good friend, a lover, a recipient of the journalist’s money or whatever to disclose it. Again, I grant that this is on a pretty small scale of relevance, but so is all the criticism directed at video game content or the .000001 percent of gamers who send out empty death threats.

    Sarkeesian is a nitwit because of her simplistic belief in psychological causation: the mere iteration of certain types of violence in the games actually effects a similar structural change in the player’s own belief system, even if the player doesn’t subscribe to the purported ideology of the game. Now, we’ve argued about this before, and you said you don’t believe that shit. So which is it? And there’s plenty of gamer rebuttals on YouTube demonstrating how she manipulates her data. One example that was brought up (since I’m no more of a gamer than Sarkeesian) is her use of the killing of strippers in a Hitman game. The player actually gets points deducted by doing anything to those characters, yet she makes it seem like the game encourages the violent route. Granted, any time I’ve played these sorts of games, I just kill everything in sight, but that isn’t the encouraged course of action for the example she uses repeatedly in one of her earlier videos. I don’t see any more than the PMRC’s anti-dialectical approach to pop culture all over again. Bad lefties or even worse liberals, one and all.

    A friend sent me a pretty hilarious anti-gamersgate essay at the Guardian for those so inclined.

  32. And terms like “white supremacist,” “racist” or “misogynist” are far worse things to call someone than “nitwit.” (Unless, of course, they’re true, but the same applies to the use of “nitwit.”)

  33. “Sarkeesian is a nitwit because of her simplistic belief in psychological causation:”

    That doesn’t make her a nitwit, man. It means she disagrees with you.

    I disagree with a bunch of things in Sarkessian’s videos. I think her use of causation is too simplistic. I think she needs to think more about sex worker issues (she called sex workers “prostituted women” in one video…though the outcry seems to have led her to back off that language for the next, which I thought was good.) And you can argue about her interpretations of particular games, of course. But that’s somewhat different than saying she’s a fool, or getting hysterical because she’s criticizing your entertainment, you know? She has a consistent, generally insightful reading of the games she looks at. She doesn’t call for censorship; she doesn’t say the end of the world is coming. Her language is much more measured than yours. Yet somehow she’s…what? A sign of a very dangerous tendency? A moral monster? Someone we all need to be protected from with great gouts of outrage? Shouldn’t your claim that reflection theory is simplistic mean that you don’t think Sarkeesian is actually affecting anyone, allowing you to ratchet down your outrage considerably (and indeed calling into question why you’re even bothering to spend all this time commenting if none of it matters.)

    Taking a stand for journalistic integrity based on a Breitbart article is some next level trolling though. Congrats.

    Alex, starting a new line seems like it gives the book even more importance, I’d say.

  34. Oh…but Sarkeesian never calls anyone a racist or misogynist. She says the games are misogynist. That’s a good bit different, I’d say.

    And of course using racist or misogynist imagery doesn’t mean you’re supporting it. Karns, though, has come out and said he uses racist imagery because he thinks it’s accurate (terrorists are really like that.) And I know this isn’t going to get through, but it is the case that sometimes, deliberately or even inadvertently, violent racist or misogynist images may in fact be racist and misogynist. Even when someone as utterly pure of heart as yourself enjoys them.

  35. Doing something white supremist is worse than being called on it. Being misogynist is worse than being called on it. This is complete crybaby nonsense.

  36. Kim, thank you as always for writing these articles. I don’t think it’s particularly worth wading into these comments, but I so appreciate what you’re doing here.

  37. Her views on videogames are silly, Noah, which seems to fit the dictionary definition of nitwittedness. She “disagrees” with me by having dumb views that allow her to get a lot publicity. No substantive difference from the approach of Fox News and other prominent media nitwits. Another version of scare mongering.

  38. Come on Charles. Now you dislike her because she’s scare mongering, while you scare monger about her scare mongering. I generally presume that you’re writing in good faith, but you’re definitely making that harder and harder to credit in this case. Saying, “I’m not insulting her, she is in fact [fill in insult]” is really a new low for you in bottom-feeding bad faith. Cut it out.

    EDIT: I got overly cranky, there, so I deleted the cranky bit.

  39. Can someone definite censorship and explain the basic tenets of journalism to Charles Reece? Or I dunno, Charles, maybe just Wikipedia it.

    Let me state the obvious: this isn’t a conversation about censorship. Racist metal snuff comics certainly have a right to exist. And Noah’s right; they seem sort of boring in themselves. My point is that launching an imprint on racist metal snuff comics isn’t brave or subversive or cool. It’s pathetic. It’s bullshit. And it has cultural significance.

    I don’t write these posts to promote censorship, to please myself (ha), to sing to the choir (HA!), or to troll. I write them because I’m frustrated with the conversations I see–and don’t see–in comics, which largely take place in ridiculous comment threads like this one.

  40. I don’t know whether it’s fair to hold Karns’s work to his dumb comments on the internet, though. He also denied that the Arab terrorists in his comic are Arab terrorists and added something like, “If you think that, then YOU’RE THE REAL BIGOT!,” didn’t he? Maybe he just says really stupid things when he gets defensive and his work is a little smarter than that. I’ve only seen the Fukitor panels on tcj.com, but it looks like there’s a somewhat satirical aspect to the racism, with the whole thing intended as a parody of macho war movies and comics. Has anybody other than Charles actually read this thing?

  41. Jack, I’d say it’s reasonable to use author commentary in thinking about a work, though you’re right that it doesn’t have to be the end of the conversation.

    I believe(?) that Jacob has read them…? I’d be open to a reading that argued there was something worthwhile there…I haven’t seen anyone really try to do that, though. The rationale seems to mostly be that it will annoy people (though not as much as Sarkeesian’s videos annoyed people, obviously.)

    EDIT: Charles’ piece was arguably trying to make a case that there was worthwhile intellectual content in Karns. I found it really unconvincing, though.

  42. Charles Reece: So left *drag on a cigarette* he’s right.

    Seriously though Charlie if you really shoot everything in hitman or GTA or whatever you are playing those games in the most boring way possible. Ever play GTA with the invincibility code on? It’s about as dull as a Superman comic and for the same reasons.

  43. Well, I think it’s a little questionable to call the book a glorified white supremacist comic without reading it first. There’s obviously a racist element to it–I saw the panel with the Vietnamese guy saying “Tee cow dow mow tong dee.” But the same panel did show the American hero eating someone’s intestine, which seems to indicate some kind of overall parody going on. The comic could have similarities to that New Yorker cover ironically depicting the Obamas as black-power Muslims–an attempt at satirizing racism that wound up striking people as sincerely racist.

    Kim, I don’t understand why it’s curious that I mentioned Schindler’s List along with Lolita. Sorry if my point was muddled, but I was trying to say that persecuted minorities can be wrong about art and smug white guys like myself can be right. Sorry if that has no bearing on your overall point–maybe I was just using your piece as an excuse to bitch about that feminist blogger and her views on Lolita.

    Having done an image search of Fukitor, I see that Karns is really into drawing naked women being raped and tortured by monsters, and I can’t blame women for hating that. This may strike everyone as the lamest attempt at empathy in history (it also harkens back to Charles’s comparison of Fukitor to The SCUM Manifesto), but here it goes–I’ve always been squeamish about women artists graphically portraying female-on-male violence. Two examples from underground comics come to mind: Roberta Gregory did a strip about a group of women tying up, raping, biting the dick off of, and shitting on a guy because he likes Crumb comics, and Diane DiMassa’s Hothead Paisan gleefully depicts its title character mutilating and killing white guys for crimes like talking in movie theatres and taking up too much room on benches. My reaction to that material is, “Geez, these people are basically advocating violence against me” (although I’m pretty courteous in movie theatres and public seating). I think there’s an element of self-righteousness to that stuff that I don’t see in Crumb, but I guess the bigger difference is that women do have legitimate concerns about rape, whereas my concerns about anti-Crumb-inspired female-on-male gang-rape/castrations are less realistic. So, yeah, I can somewhat grasp the concept of being upset by Fukitor.

  44. I think if it were actually satirizing racists, or actively anti-racist, that would make a difference? I just don’t really get much sense that that’s what it’s doing.

    I hadn’t thought about Hothead Paisan in a while, Jack. I really liked that comic.

  45. Sometimes I wonder whether or not I should engage with the comments here. I respond to some of them, but there are plenty more I ignore. Sometimes I don’t have the time. Sometimes I don’t have the patience. Sometimes I don’t have the heart. Sometimes I don’t want to shame my family.

    But after giving it some thought I’d like to take a moment to shine the spotlight on my least favorite commenter, Dean “Not All Men” Milburn, who as fortune would have it has probably left me more comments than anyone else at HU. Most of them were on my first post, but he also left a comment earlier today where he accused me, in turns, of being irrational for not being a proponent of censorship, of writing to please myself (like that’s bad?), preaching to the choir, and trolling. You see, it’s easier to call someone a hypocrite when you can’t form a coherent accusation.

    I find his “I know you are, but what am I?” mentality especially disingenuous and juvenile. In the proud tradition of Jason Karns himself, Dean is fond of turning my own accusations back on me. So today I’m sexist for not linking to a blog comment I referenced. I’m guilty of solipsism for referring to my long lousy comment thread as sexist. Noah’s guilty of solipsism for saying he speaks for himself. Riiiight.

    (This tactic is not unusual; you’ll see it elsewhere even w/in this comment thread. Notice Alex Buchet’s repeated insinuations that I’m somehow responsible for selling copies of Fukitor. . .because I criticized Gary Groth for selling Fuktior? Or Charles Reece’s assertion that calling someone a racist is. . .somehow worse than racism? I’m rolling my eyes, fellas. Also smdh.)

    Charles was wrong about me: the rhetoric of victimhood is not the only register I’m capable of writing in. I’m quite adept in the rhetoric of fuck you. I use it judiciously here because in a lot of ways it’s antithetical to my cause. But I can spot it a mile away, even when someone is using it clumsily. Honestly, Dean, do you think that slinging around a bunch of “Ms. O’Connor”s gives your comments some veneer of respectability? Should I imagine that you’re tipping your fedora or what?

    I myself will dispense will all pretense, particularly the pretense of taking you seriously. In the words of the great Corky St. Clair, I hate you and I hate your ass face. Let’s just consider that my response to your comments ad infinitum.

  46. Hey Jack, you’re right. I don’t think that saying minorities can be wrong and white people can be right had anything to do with my post! I don’t disagree with the sentiment in itself, but I can’t say I appreciate your using a feminist post as an excuse to bitch about how feminist bloggers are wrong sometimes? Or to argue that white men are right sometimes? Do you see how it’s a bit weird to make those points in this context?

    I don’t subscribe to the whole “reading Fukitor” argument. (I remember seeing Darryl Ayo post about that and he said it much better than I can.) Suffice it to say I feel totally comfortable calling it racist based on what I’ve seen, much less the author’s defense of it. Whoo boy. That was totally nuts.

    I haven’t read the Gregory or DiMassa comics you mentioned, but what you described doesn’t sound to me like they’re advocating violence.

  47. I only read as much Fukitor as I could without paying any money for it, and I agree – there is no need to read it totally cover to cover. It’s unambiguous in its sensibilities, and the way Karns spoke to me about it only hammers home his approach. The “you have to read every word” argument is totally invalid.

  48. There’s a big difference between ”racist” and ”white supremacist”.

    O’Connor:

    ”Notice Alex Buchet’s repeated insinuations that I’m somehow responsible for selling copies of Fukitor. . .because I criticized Gary Groth for selling Fuktior?”

    I never insinuated anything of the sort. I stated it.

    ”I myself will dispense will all pretense, particularly the pretense of taking you seriously. In the words of the great Corky St. Clair, I hate you and I hate your ass face.”

    Always a pleasure to see the level of discourse thus elevated.

    The plain truth is that O’Connor is utterly intolerant of dissent from her views. Thus the constant ad hominem attacks, the femsplaining, the abuse.

    Ah well, in the words of a wise philosopher: “Zero fucks. Zero fucks.”

  49. “I haven’t read the Gregory or DiMassa comics you mentioned, but what you described doesn’t sound to me like they’re advocating violence.”

    I don’t think Jack was saying they’re advocating violence; he’s just saying that his reaction to them is maybe a way for him to understand your reaction to Karns.

    Not sure what gendered reaction to my other pieces elsewhere has to do with anything; HU’s comment threads tends to skew pretty male.

  50. I carefully crafted a comment that got eaten in a connection problem. Here are the bullet points, because I haven’t the heart to try again:

    Unfiltered/Aggro Confessional Artists

    Vs.

    Socially Aware/Conscious Artists

    Dorothy “Bastard out of Carolina” Allison as an interesting hybrid of the two poles

    Allison speaks in favor of more honest-to-the-point-of-ugly confessional voices, AND in favor of enriching our own dialectic with an openness to what those voices reveal, good and ill.

    Also, I’m not sure why Karns is loathsome but Johnny Ryan is swell, though I’m willing to be schooled.

  51. Hey Aaron. I’ve written quite a bit on why I think Johnny Ryan is an interesting artist. I think in general he’s actually pretty careful about racism and sexism, in a way that Karns doesn’t seem to be. Jacob wasn’t convinced, but fwiw, you can see what I’ve written at this tag over here.

  52. Hi Noah! I think Ryan is an interesting artist, too… as for Karns, I’ve only seen the images that accompanied that original TCJ writeup, and I’ll admit I liked their doodley energy. The old Umberto Eco title “The Cliches are Having a Ball” came to mind; in Karns’ case the offensive cliches are having a ball. Karns may or may not believe in the cliches he deploys. I haven’t read it, so I don’t know.

  53. Okay…we’re sort of on the verge of descending into just slinging insults here, which I would like to avoid if possible. So I think I’m going to close the thread, at least for a while. Thanks for commenting everyone.

Comments are closed.