Strong article on sexual harassment in the Comics Industry

[el_bryanto]

Well worth reading - over at Comics Alliance, by Laura Hudson.

Which one of these statements makes more sense to say: “These people need to find more ways to stop people from harming them.” OR: “These people should stop causing harm.” If you ever find yourself saying the former instead of the latter, take a moment and ask yourself why. The stairs in comics are broken, and if we all just keep silently walking over that missing stair – or failing to realize that it’s missing at all — it’s never going to get fixed, and women are going to keep getting hurt. The answer isn’t that women need to work harder to jump over the gap created by a system that protects harassers and silences victims. It’s that we need to f**king fix it.

Bryant

[seabeyond]

1. read down the rape porn thread. get a feel what men are constantly feeding themselves. then ask,

why we are living in a society today when we are having so many of these issues in major industries that go beyond just individuals.

Of course, there are many, many reasons not to speak up. If you’re a comics professional, maybe you want to be known for your work, for your accomplishments, not for the fact that some jerk couldn’t keep his hands to himself. Maybe you don’t want the first thing that comes up when someone Googles your name to be a story of your victimization. Maybe you don’t want to be called a slut or a liar when you talk about the sh**ty thing that happened to you (which you will, inevitably), or for people to invent every possible nefarious motivation for your decision to speak up – except the idea that it might be true.

And it’s telling, too, that when I saw Greg’s response, I felt a depressing sense of relief – not only that he’d been so honest and on point, but on a deeper level that a man had acknowledged the problem, and thus the kneejerk reaction was less likely to be dismissal — people were more likely to believe him. Behind all of this lurks the subtle, pervasive sense that when women speak up, we treat their account with less veracity. We meet it, first, with doubt.

Since Fowler’s comments, and the wider-ranging debate that followed, I have seen conversation after conversation of men debating with other men whether or not the reality of women is real, men asking other men to confirm that what women were saying was true, men testifying that they’d never seen harassment – or else piping up that they knew there was harassment, yes, but it wasn’t as bad as people were saying. As though they, somehow, were some sort of authority on the experiences of women. When one of the primary criticisms about harassment in comics is that most men don’t understand the scope of it, saying it’s not such a big deal isn’t a useful or relevant observation – it’s a self-indictment.

fuck, and dont we hear this just all the fuckin' time. ya. it is old.

The concept of the missing stair has always been a powerful one when talking about the minimization of abuse: the idea that instead of treating harmful people like a problem, we make women work around them, accommodate them. It’s no surprise to me that over the last week, as woman after woman has identified the problem, pointing at the missing stair, that one of the most frequent reactions is that women are the ones who need to change their behavior. That they are the ones who must accommodate, yet again. That the responsibility is on them for fixing a problem which isn’t truly theirs to fix.

very good article. thank you for posting.

[el_bryanto]

3. Comics Alliance is a great site in general but they've been particularly strong on this issue

They also had a comic on it earlier in the week.

Bryant

[seabeyond]

2. kickin' cause it is a truth that we work so hard on du to deny. nt