Shocking title for an entry in a blog, no?
Probably no more shocking than ‘Comics Broke My Vagina’ and just about as accurate too.
The aforementioned Ms. D’O didn’t break anything, anymore than comics was responsible for any damage to her own anatomy but, here two years later, V-D (weird coincidence there, no?) is on the precipice of being announced as the new writer of an ongoing Cloak and Dagger manga series.
I imagine I shouldn’t really be all that surprised a society that plays into the whole victim mentality can have people who are so readily capable of making themselves into celebrities over their own bad choices.
What I’m trying to wrap my mind around is whether or not this is the materialization of some kind of analogous battered wife syndrome, because if comics indeed did break V-D’s vagina she seems all too eager to immerse herself in the field.
Maybe, though, that isn’t it at all.
Maybe, it’s more a question of not getting the kind of response a person wants and having to create a framework where failure is attributable to some force beyond the person themselves. What happens I wonder if Cloak and Dagger fails to do numbers? Will it be, ‘Cloak and Dagger’ broke my vagina next?
See, V-D lost me a long time ago. I read the diatribe about her experiences and was fascinated by the remarkable way she walked away from the incident. An external force mysteriously was responsible for the damage she suffered, basically as it was written it comes down to, ‘Well, someone else should know my body better than I do!’
Go read it, and come back here if you want and leave nasty comments. Or maybe you’ll agree with me.
V-D lost me when she wrote the following:
It is colossally f**ked up that it is 2007 and my gender hasn't produced an Alan Moore or Grant Morrison yet.
No, what’s colossally fucked up is, in one sentence you managed to take a swipe at Louise Simonson, June Brigman, Bobbi Chase, Marie Severin, Glynis Oliver, Christie Scheele, Wendy Pini, Rowena Merrill, Dale Messick, Lynn Johnston and a host of other creators just because they don’t measure up to your skewed value system.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Shitty things happen in this world all the time.
That’s not excusing them, it’s more a statement of fact. At the time I was reading this whole thing, I realized that it played into something of this perception of women as victim and men being crap. But, the question that I keep coming back to is: if you view all of your experience through the lens of sexism, how much of what you are bringing to the dynamic shapes the course of events?
What if people are just nasty because they don’t like you? What if they’re nasty because they find you disagreeable? What if you’re a person who seeks out conflict?
I don’t know if that is relevant to V-D or not.
Simply put. the one statement she made that’s in italics there... that REALLY bothered me.
It bothered me because it just failed to recognize the contribution of a lot of women who came before. Maybe that wasn’t what she meant but, I’ve got to say there are a few names I listed there whose work really ranks up there, whose work is pretty high on my list for their contribution to the medium.
Marie Severin... let me tell you, I met the woman. You could not find a nicer person on the planet, and further she had chops to stack right up there with anyone in the comics pantheon. I think she is long overdue for some kind of book about her or something that will recognize her contribution to comics. Her contribution to comics dating way, way back in a career that streatches across decades is simply incredible.
June Brigman is another person whose work I loved (and I can remember trying to tell her that at a NY Comicon not too long ago before Jim Steranko interrupted like a dick because he has to be the center of everything).
I’m thinking of Amanda Conner, Anne Nocenti...
I look at VD’s production of work and from my standpoint I’m... meh.
Maybe failure has less to do with gender?
I understand comics as far as the big two (or whatever) historically had been a very male dominated industry, I will concede that but that is changing. Then again, looking at the output of those companies, it’s not as if it’s hard to understand with the product they have been putting out.
You know what is interesting to me though?
If you go beyond the universe of the big two and drag your ass over to something like the MoCCA festival you see a much broader and more representative spectrum of people working in the medium - people who are concerned about for lack of a better description... their ‘art.’
And there is some amazing, incredible work there.
Comics as a two headed beast of Marvel and DC is a very outmoded view of the medium - more outmoded with every passing day and I am saying this as a person who stopped the weekly walk to the local comics store - even that mode of delivery is going away too and we should be celebrating that because it means there will be an infinite number of voices and creators finding new ways to reach an audience - ways that weren’t available to them even 5 years ago.
Back to the subject at hand though... surprisingly enough, when I did do a search again for V-D, I found more sturm and drang about cyberbulling, sexism, etc. Another big internet fight, very public, very much to draw more attention to someone who is dying for all the attention they can get.
Maybe you should just focus on the work?
Your work.
Fuck these other people, if you do really good work they’ll just have to suck it up now won’t they? There is this quote I think applies in this circumstance: “Love art in yourself, and not yourself in art.”
Or how about this... sometimes people just don’t like you, your gender is secondary and if you don’t want it to be an issue stop bringing it up. I keep thinking about all the creators on the internet who have had all kinds of flame wars and things thrown their way (John Byrne and Peter David both come to mind) and they didn’t suddenly cry cyber-bullying or anything of the like, they just dealt. The world is a crappy place, people are assholes myself included on lots of occasions - likely exemplified by this post as viewed in some quarters. Just do good work and fuck ’em.
Again, my biggest beef was someone who was so wrapped up in their cause (or maybe it wasn’t about any cause as much as it was about them) that they roundly managed to slight all the people who came before them in one careless throwaway statement that took the legs out from their argument.
But what do I know, I’m a guy.
3 comments:
Wow, thanks for mansplaining!
Yes, I know - having an opinion at all and my gender casts me as a misogynist - and anyone who has disagreed with this particular disagreeable person seems to be cast as such.
But this statement made in the course of that whole tale still speaks volumes to me: It is colossally f**ked up that it is 2007 and my gender hasn't produced an Alan Moore or Grant Morrison yet.
Happy to help.
You know, I am hoping your comment was an attempt to show irony and not a snippy off-the-cuff, snide remark that was being dismissive and through use of language was a sparkling example of the kind of bias you purport to be against - certainly you wouldn’t actually embrace the clichéd gender bias a word like mansplaining would imply.
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