91 posts from 2008

Over here, Valerie D'Orazio discusses the whole Simpsons child porn thing again and writes the following:

 

The biggest question I received in this debate has NOT been, "do you think people who possess Simpsons child porn should be arrested."

It's been:

"Why do you think illustrated child pornography is harmful when it's just drawings?"

And that's such a naive, blissfully clueless question.

Again: why aren't children reading more comics?

Who is looking out for children in this equation?

 

Let me respond to this first by asking:

 

Valerie D'Orazio, do you think people who possess Simpsons child porn should be arrested?

 

But the reason people aren’t asking that question as often as "Why do you think illustrated child pornography is harmful when it's just drawings?" is because the answer to the “Is it harmful?” question informs us on the “Should it be a crime?” question. If you don’t believe it is harmful, what is the reason for the crime? And if you do believe it is harmful, what makes you believe that?

 

Ms. D'Orazio appears to be suggesting that illustrated child porn will hurt the comics industry. She sites very little to support this thesis, however.  She says:

 

You wonder why kids don't read comics anymore? Why the readership numbers couldn't be higher in general? Wake up -- a portion of the United States thinks your industry and your fandom aren't fit for children. Or fit for any healthy individual. You think that's all fundamentalist Christians? I run into adults in New York all the time from all walks of life who think that comics are for "weird," "socially backward" people. For people with sexual hangups, who live in basements. They don't want to let their children go to comic shops. And they ask me: what's a "normal" comic that they or their child can read?

 

Let’s disregard for a moment that Ms. D’Orazio seems to be suggesting that hurting the comic industry means that you have committed a crime or at least that right minded people shouldn’t defend you from jail time if you’ve hurt the comic industry and just look at what she actually says. Ms. D'Orazio seems to think that the "weird," "socially backward" stereotype comes from things like the Simpsons porn drawings instead of Wertham, literary snobs, and the fact that there are some weird, socially backward people reading comics. I would suggest that the Simpsons material that has most hurt the comic fans’ rep is not this virtually unheard of porn but the ubiquitous Comic Book Guy, who is a product of Wertham, literary snobs, and those weird, socially backward people reading comics.

 

The odd thing about D'Orazio line of reasoning is that it only seems to apply to comics. We don’t hear, for instance, that kids have stopped watching television because weird, socially backward Trekies are watching Star Trek. We don’t fear that kids will stop watching movies because there are weird, socially backward porn films, or for that matter those comic book related movies that those weird, socially backward people stand in line for days for. We don’t suggest that weird, socially backward D&D players with their fantasy books have somehow tarnished the image and sales of Harry Potter novels. Somehow, every other genre seems to survive and even thrive despite those geeks.

 

And let’s remember that the place with the most comics porn is also the place with the most comic readers, the place were comics are the least stigmatized and the most cool: Japan! Granted, we (or at least I) don’t live in Japan and there are significant differences in our cultures, but I can’t help but to notice that the comics American adults do seem to be buying for kids come from the very culture that gave us Hello Kitty Brothels, Rape Man, and all that wholesome hentai. Seriously, does anyone think the Japanese have a really good reputation in the US when it comes to things sexual?

 

What makes parents buy comics (or anything) for their kids is kids wanting them. And what makes kids want something is almost impossible to peg, but I think we can rule out Australian court cases as a hindrance to their desire. In fact, I can almost guarantee that the idea of dirty Simpsons drawings will, if anything, pique kids’ interest. So the idea that defending a guy from prison time for having Simpsons porn on his computer is somehow going to substantively harm the comics industry seems more than a little far fetched.

 

And I’m not sure that passively accepting that those weird, socially backward people are such a threat to society that they should be imprisoned does a lot for our image.

 

“Who is looking out for children in this equation?” Helen Lovejoy Valerie D'Orazio asked.

 

I would say that the people defending the right of free speech are. And I come to that conclusion for a number of reasons. First, some of the people who could be arrested for this stuff are parents who are not molesting any child including their own. Second, some of the people arrested could also be children themselves. Underage people have been arrested for distributing “porn” to other underage people. Really. Third, I’d note these statements from Attorney General's Commission on Pornography (1986), which was written by some fairly rabid anti-porn crusaders and discussed at my old blog here. Here are two quotes from it:

 

Kutchinsky's work was lauded by the British pornography commission (Williams, 1979) for its thoroughness and the restraint with which he interpreted his findings. It singled out the dramatic reduction in offenses against children coinciding with the availability of pornography and, while the Commission did not endorse the "safety valve" hypothesis, agreed that Kutchinsky's interpretation was plausible, absent any other likely factor (p. 84).

 

More recently, Kutchinsky (1985) has maintained that the increased availability of "hard-core" pornography in Denmark "may have been the direct cause of the real decrease in incidents of peeping and child molestation" (p. 313) and has proposed the "substitution" hypothesis as the most likely explanation. He further cites a similar pattern in West Germany with legalization of pornography in 1973 bringing about a decrease in sex offenses against children.

 

None of the studies is conclusive in finding that an increase in the availability of child porn decreases the instances of sexual offenses against children. However, there does seem to be something going on that should make us question the idea that porn, even drawn child porn, will increase the probability of a child being raped.

 

Let me make clear that the marketing of actual child porn that uses children would absolutely cause some children to be raped in the production of said porn, and I am fully supportive of the prosecution of said offenders. However, Lisa and Bart can’t be raped because they don’t exist. So if the production and distribution of drawn porn will decrease the likelihood that children will be raped, does Valerie D'Orazio's “ethical” stance really stand up as being ultimately ethical? Mightn’t the more ethical stance be “Arrrrrgh! I hate this crap, but it saves children; so, I’ll tolerate it.”

 

We don’t know exactly what causes pedophilia, but I can tell you that the evidence points more to the relationships pedophiles had with the adults in their lives when they were children than it does to comics they might see as children or adults. I think we can safely say that no adult has been transformed into a pedophile or a pedophilic rapist by looking at a cartoon, so what is the danger to children if an adult sees drawn child porn?

I’m still on my gay marriage kick and I’d like to address the falsehood that Huckabee and several other anti-gay marriage folks spread, namely that if you allow gay marriage, you’d have to allow polygamous marriages too.

 

My thought is: what if we suggest the same thing about straight marriages and accuse straight marriages of leading to polygamous marriages? There is in fact far more evidence to suggest that straight marriages lead to the recognition of polygamous marriages than there is to suggest that gay marriages lead to the recognition of polygamous marriages.

 

For instance, all of the countries that promote and perform polygamous marriages recognized straight marriages, but none of them recognize gay marriages. Libya and the Sudan are in the business of polygamy, but they make homosexuality illegal, not just gay marriage, homosexuality. If you look around the globe, you’ll see that the more likely a nation is to perform polygamous marriages, the less likely they are to recognize gay relationships. Clearly, the connection to polygamous marriages comes from straight marriages, not gay ones.

 

In fact, every polygamous society has recognized straight marriage. 100%! Coincidence? I think not! Look around, people! Those communes of polygamists are filled with supporters of straight marriage! You don’t see communes of gay married people forcing their kids into multiple marriages! It’s only straight married people doing that! The Book of Mormon is filled with support for straight marriage and multiple wives! Wake up to the threat of straight marriage!

 

And don’t think we haven’t seen it sneaking into our American society and all Western societies. A significant number of people, more all the time, are divorcing and remarrying! Clearly, allowing a man to have second wife could lead to a man having a second wife! And doesn’t the Bible say that remarriage is a form of adultery! (Matthew 5:31-32, Matthew 19:3-9, Mark 10:2-12, Luke 16:18) Straight marriages and their all too common divorces have already led us down the slippery slope of multiple wives (and husbands)!!!

 

What argument can you possibly make to man who you’ve allowed to have one wife that he can’t have another? Especially, if you’ve allowed him to remarry to a second wife after a divorce? What’s to stop you from being forced to allow him to remarry his first wife while he's still married to the second? Surely, if a society recognized both the first and second marriages, it would be forced to recognize the first marriage again! How can you tell a man he can’t marry the mother of his children?!?

 

Only Massachusetts, the only state in the US that still performs gay marriages and the state with the lowest divorce rate, seems to be aware that the only thing preventing the pernicious advance of polygamy is gay marriage!

This is a story I heard from one of my legal classes on picking a jury:

 

A lawyer was working on a case that involved Native Americans in an area that was known to have a bias against Native Americans. To weed out biased jurors, the lawyer asked the prospective jurors their feelings on Native Americans. One juror proudly said that she had no bias against Native Americans and cited her upbringing as the reason. She said, “Sometimes Indians would be traveling through town and need a place to stay. My father would let them stay in our barn.” To which, the lawyer said, “Did your father make anyone else sleep in the barn?” With a sudden realization, the prospective juror burst into tears as she realized that her prejudice had been cruelly obvious and the behavior she was so proud of was despicable. The lawyer let her on the jury because she knew the juror would be especially wary of bias now ... and might even try to redeem herself.

 

Now this interview between Mick Huckabee and John Stewart:

 

The first thing I want to point out here is that Huckabee says that marriage under our law is a privilege, not a right. He is wrong. Here is what the Supreme Court said in the landmark case Loving v. Virginia:

 

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival

 

Huckabee is wrong. Clearly, absolutely, and fundamentally wrong. And Stewart made a direct hit when he said:

 

It's a travesty that people have forced someone who is gay to have to make their case that they deserve the same basic rights.

 

Stewart is right. Shouldn't the burden be on Huckabee and his ilk to come up with compelling reasons to deny marriage instead of the other way around? Shouldn't we err to the side of giving rights? Upon hearing his, Huckabee changed his tactic and said:

 

... if a person does not necessarily support the idea of changing the definition of marriage, it does not necessarily mean that they are a homophobe.

 

Later Huck said:

 

... we have to be very thoughtful and careful before we say that we are going to undo an entire social structure

 

While it is theoretically possible that someone could oppose gay marriage and not be a homophobe, Huckabee reveals himself in the statement above as a homophobe. To be homophobic is to have an irrational fear of homosexuals, to have fears that aren’t based on reality. Huckabee clearly has fears of gay marriage or he wouldn’t think that we needed to be “careful.” Saying that you think we need to be careful implies that you think there is risk; it implies that there is something to fear. And when I say “fear,” I don’t mean the fear of the cold sweat. I mean it like a psychiatrists means it. I mean “anxiety.” Gay marriage makes Huckabee anxious, irrationally anxious.

 

We can tell that he is irrationally anxious because he suggests that allowing gays to marry will “undo an entire social structure.” But is that a rational belief? Have the gay marriages of Massachusetts undone the entire social structure of Massachusetts or even Huck’s marriage when he campaigned there? Are heterosexual Canadian marriages undone by gay Canadian marriages? Does Huckabee believe that his own marriage was undone when he was in the NYC doing this interview because NY recognizes gay marriages performed in other states?

 

Like the juror, Huckabee is staring directly at his irrational bigory. Unlike the juror, he did not have the good sense to weep.

A quick story: a man and his infirmed father were at a local mall here in Nashville some years ago. The man was helping his father to their car so they walked arm in arm. Some local guys spotted them and assumed they were gay snuggling, so they shot them. I doubt the father and son even considered that someone would think they were gay, and never considered what might happen to them if they made it appear that they were gay.

 

I was reminded of that story because of this story that happened last Sunday: two Ecuadorian bothers were in New York and had been to a bar. They too were walking closely together and, as is the custom in Ecuador, they may have been walking arm in arm. Three men jumped out of a car and attacked them. One of the brothers escaped but the other had a bottle broken over his head and was beaten with a baseball bat. He died.

 

Now this:

The idea that Mike Huckabee seems to be expressing is that gay rights aren’t that big a deal because we homosexuals haven’t had to deal with the kind of violence that African Americans have. What Huckabee fails to recognize is that much of the reason we aren’t the victims of violence more often is that we hide that we are gay, something the families in the stories above didn't know either. But saying that we don’t deserve the same kind of civil rights movements as African Americans because we could stay in the closet to escape from violence is like saying that Anne Frank in didn’t need a civil rights movement because she could stay in the attic.

 

The guys in the two stories above didn’t know they had to live in fear because they’d never had to. Like Huckabee, they didn’t have an assumption that violence would follow if they stood too close to each other and appeared gay. I doubt Huckabee has thought about the threat of violence to people who could frequently seem gay because they are gay. Why should he? His life hasn’t depended on hiding.

 

But like those separate facilities and those issue of second class citizenry that Huckabee denounces for what they did to African Americans, the separate facilities and issues of second class citizenry that Huckabee espouses for people like me create the same permission to use violence that was used to justify hosing people and cracking open their heads in the 60s.

 

Huckabee brings up the “attack” on that old women, where someone brazenly slapped her Styrofoam cross out of her hand and equates that with the bias and violence used against gays ... and people suspected of being gay. He equates the very out Christian Church, the one that to which every President has proudly proclaimed his membership to, with homosexuality, to which no President and few elected leaders have been willing to admit membership to.

 

One has to wonder if anyone has ever been killed by strangers on the streets of America because someone mistook them for being Christian.

In the comment section of Brandon’s column on rape in comics, he defends his column against my critique on it seen here. The first method Brandon uses to defend his smearing of comic writers as rape-obsessed hacks and comic readers as proto-rapists is to attack me and James, who argued against Brandon’s column in the comment section, as being neither notable nor organized writers. Brandon wrote:

 

I think it's weird that the apparent seriousness or dedication to writing is the mode of attack for you and Jason because neither of you are particularly notable or organized writers.

 

Perhaps this argument would have been stronger if Brandon had been organized enough to notice that James is not named Jason, but even if we ignore that, this is a really weak defense for libel.

 

Brandon persists on claiming that comic writers are littering their works with rape origins despite offering no evidence whatsoever that this is actually occurring and having read my evidence that it is not. His defense is that I’m not notable or organized enough to make that criticism. Brandon is telling us that something exists when we can clearly see that it does not. Like the Emperor in his new clothes, Brandon is telling us a naked lie and assumes that he is too important for us to contradict him. Well, he’s not. Saying that my blog is neither notable nor organized may well be true, but that hasn’t dressed up his Emperor’s New Theory by even one thread.

 

Let me add that there have been plenty of notable and organized people who have been wrong, who toted the popular theory of the day without really scrutinizing it. Bill Kristol comes to mind. He’s certainly notable and must be organized to do all he does, but he’s been wrong repeatedly while spouting whatever popular theory came along. Iraq will be easy! Bush will be great! Sarah Palin is a wonderful idea! Were the people who criticized those theories wrong if they weren’t as notable or organized as Kristol? Saying that comics are full of rape and that male readers are sleazy perverts who hate women is a popular sentiment. You can build a fan base of people who will nod their heads in agreement and tell you how compassionate and wise you are. But you’re still wrong. You’re still lazy. If you aren’t looking to see if those theories hold up against the facts, no amount of praise or organization makes you right. You’re Bill Kristol. You’re Bill O’Reilly. Organized, notable, and wrong.

You can harp on the boob-jiggling joke all you want, the point was there's a weird sense of voyeurism or like pervy-ness going on in rape/sexual assault in comics. Indeed, one reason it's often used in comics is because it's sort of seedy and a way to show sex/sexuality without being overtly sexual.

 

Wow. It was a joke? I mean did anyone think the following “joke” of his was funny? Take a look again at what he wrote:

 

And that's rape! It's an origin story or dramatic turn of events that allows a writer a lot of freedom and complexity without doing a whole lot of work. The character is harmed in a way the society at least pretends to see as sometimes worse than murder and therefore gains sympathy, rises above it and therefore becomes "strong[er]", and also, maybe some creepy boob-jiggling panels during the rape scene are in there which makes the whole thing kind of naughty and appeals to the ever-present torture porn aspects of our reptile brains.

 

So that was a literary theory joke? A pro-feminist rape joke? Did anyone laugh after reading that? He implied that comic writers are lazy and that comic readers are reptilian in their love of rape and that’s a joke? Does that mean that he doesn’t think that writers are lazy or that readers are reptiles because he was being ironic? Or does it mean that he thinks baseless slurs are inherently funny ... you know, so long as they aren’t about him?

 

What’s odd about this “it was all a joke” defense is that he becomes more insulting to writers and readers in his defense of his “joke.” He implies that writers and/or readers are weird, pervy, and seedy. Will we be told that calling them (i.e. us) weird, pervy, and seedy was also a joke?

 

Odder still is Brandon’s continued insistence that “it's often used in comics” while also continuing to leave this statement completely unsupported by any facts at all. He still hasn’t told us of even one rape origin scene, boob-jiggling or otherwise (unless Dreadstar’s Willow’s 26 year-old origin story involved a rape which it might have but I can’t remember that far back; I remember there was a rape but in her origin?), so how did he come to the conclusion that rape is often used in comics?

 

And what does he mean by often? If we were to look at crimes in comics, we’d find that murder, assault, kidnapping, and arson all occur many, many times more often than rapes. Rapes occur is only a tiny fraction of superhero comics. They happen so infrequently that saying that they occur in less than 1% of comics still sounds like a bit of an exaggeration to me. Marvel and DC put out something like 1,500 superhero comics a year. Virtually all of them have assaults in them. Every comic with an explosion is depicting an arson. So many people are held against their will (tied up, trapped behind force fields, shrunken into bottles) or transported to other places (mysterious planets, the Dark Side Club, the Legion of Doom HQ) that I couldn’t even begin to figure the number of kidnappings. I wouldn’t even try to count how many murders happen in a year of comics. In any given year, the Joker (or the Punisher or Wolverine or Darkseid or Midnighter. etc.) alone will kill many times more people as will be raped in all the superhero comics produced by Marvel and DC combined. But Brandon says rape is used often. It’s possible that Brandon thinks that a rape or three a year in comics is often, or that once every 26 years is often, but because he doesn’t back up his claim, we don’t know what “often” means to him or if he is correct about this theory that rapes happens as often as he believes they do.

 

If Brandon wants to defend his criticism as criticism and not the hogwash that I think it is, the way to do it is to support his claims that rape is used often in comics by giving examples of it being used often in comics. Attacking me as lacking notoriety or organizational skills is great fun (try it at home!), but doesn’t change the fact that Brandon supports his literary analysis like a 4^th grader who didn’t really read Superfudge, reiterating what he thinks is in the book while bumbling out evasive answers and trying to deflect the focus from himself. It fools no one.

 

And of course, it could all have been a joke (on a site called “Are you a serious comic reader?”) and if that’s true, I’m sure the following analysis of Brandon’s work will be hoot for him:

 

Brandon’s writing betrays his love of child abuse discussions, both the merely physical and the perversely sexual. Child abuse has long been a trope in media (e.g. true crime magazines and TV shows, Nabokov novels, and internet porn) used to excite the humors and lure readers in with lurid descriptions. It used mainly by hacks who don’t have the skills to draw readers in with anything other than the most sensational. Brandon uses child abuse often. Child abuse columns (particularly those focusing on sodomy) supply dramatic turns of events that allows the critic a lot of freedom and complexity without doing a whole lot of work. He discusses how the child is harmed in a way the society at least pretends to see as sometimes worse than murder, and therefore, the critic gains sympathy as he appears to rises above the horror of child abuse like a saint slaying a dragon from horseback. He appears morally "strong[er]", while he includes some discussion of semen seeping from various cavities during the abuse scenes, making the whole thing kind of naughty, which appeals to the ever-present power-hungry, sexual, and violent portions of his reader’s caveman brains. Critics like Brandon can’t seem to keep their hands off child abuse. There is no need from some nerdy compilation of data on Brandon’s frequent use of pedophilic imagery. Instead, we can be assured that because Brandon critiques pulp fiction, his writing is sated with the gaudy schlock of sodomized babies.

 

Pop quiz!

 

1. Now, that’s _____!

 

A. criticism

B. a joke

C. libelous

D. poetic justice

E. douchey

Over here, Ari appears to be claiming that the scene with Wonder Girl being choked by her own lasso on the cover of Teen Titans #64 and in the pages of Teen Titans #65 is evidence of misogyny, at least he has tagged it as such. He never really says in his post what the problem with Wonder Girl being strangled by her own lasso is, but we can tell he doesn’t like it.

 

It is possible that a misogynist would draw a woman being strangled. However, an image in a comic of the hero almost being murdered by the antagonist is not exactly uncommon and doesn’t necessarily suggest that someone hates women. Similar images can be seen on other DC covers. The cover of Terror Titans #3, Deadbolt is being electrocuted by his own father. On the cover of Justice Society #21, the Flash is being murdered by his own speed powers. And over in the Batman books, Batman is resting in peace, right? Are those images and deaths evidence of misandry? I don’t think so, but the charge makes as much sense.

 

What Ari fails to notice about Teen Titans #65 is that the book was about female empowerment. While it is true that Wonder Girl is at one point being strangled by her own lasso, it is also true that the she defeats Lycus, the guy choking her, and the way she does it is that she rejects using power given to her by men, Zeus and Ares, and instead relies on her own (female) power. She is now more powerful than ever because she relying on herself, not some man to empower her. And her own power far exceeds that of the Lycus. She comes off as being superior to the man both in her morals and her abilities.

 

Hey, look what she’s doing there on those final panels of her battle: kicking him in the face, throwing a car at him, and look! She’s choking Lycus with her own lasso. Then she commands him to go to hell, and he disintegrates under the force of her will.

 

Is that a message that misogynists would like? Seriously, if that is misogyny, it is the worst misogyny ever. It is anti-misogyny.

My caption:

 

“At first, I thought I was paralyzed. Then Laura explained that it wasn’t a mirror.”

Time for the second response to a couple of bloggers who responded to my post from the other day on criticism of rape in comics. This time, I’m going to get a little mean (for gay readers that's "jungle red" and for straight guys that means "I'm gonna be a real douche") because I took offense to what Brandon wrote here, and I’m clearly a small person. I apologize to everyone (except Brandon) for the tone. I know how you gentle readers hate harsh words. Having said that, however ...

 

The main point is, Scott's really condescending and there's an awkward contempt when he invokes "feminist criticism" towards the end of his little essay.

 

Please note, gentle reader, that I referred to Karen Peltier’s post as a “reasoned and levelheaded essay” and Brandon called mine a “little essay” while claiming that I was condescending. If there is a Nobel Prize for Irony, someone’s gonna win a free trip to Stockholm!

 

I’m not sure what Brandon means by “awkward contempt” in that sentence, but if he means that I have a contempt for feminist criticism, let me assure you that I don’t. I am a feminist and a critic who writes feminist criticism. Mind you, I don’t agree with all feminist criticism or all feminist theories, but I have great regard for feminist theory generally, which is why I’m critical of lazy or unfounded feminist theory. When Physicist A criticizes Physicist Z as being a lazy physicist, who doesn’t back up his theories with actual proof, we don’t assume that Physicist A has contempt for physics. If anything we’d assume that Physicist A holds physics in great regard.

 

Here is an example of criticism that you will never see me write: Your astrological prognostication is lazy and unsupported by the facts! The reason you won’t see me write that is because I have no respect for astrological theory to start with. It’s all bullshit, so I don’t care how lazy or unsupported astrological claims are because the whole field is lazy and unsupported. The same cannot be said for feminist theory. My fear is that lazy and unsupported feminist criticism lowers feminism in many people’s eyes to the level of astrology, phrenology, and Mormonism. I am saddened by how many women refuse to call themselves feminists. Those women frequently mention this or that bullshit theory as the reason they reject feminism; even though, those same women will say they agree with the central ideas of feminism. Respecting feminism requires that we criticize the bullshit. So if Brandon meant that I had contempt for people who tarnish feminism with dreck cloaked in feminism, he is correct. I do. Feminism deserves better.

 

I'm not even sure what his point is really, other than some nit-picking at Karen's phrasing and a lot of not-backed-up references to "lazy" comics bloggers.

 

Not-backed-up references? To make this clear to Brandon and whoever else might not be aware of which lazy comics bloggers I was referring to, I was referring to the Stuff Geeks Love blogger (who I referred to at least twice) and Karen Peltier (who I said I was referring to in the first paragraph while linking to her post that I quoted from.) I said that the SGL blogger was lazy for saying that virtually all strong women in comics were raped and  backed up my contention that s/he was wrong and that Karen was lazy for suggesting that there was some significant frequency of female characters being raped as a means for female ascension to superhero ranks and backed up that she was wrong. Even a moments review of the actual rapes in comics would have revealed the errors they were making, but they didn’t take even that moment. Those are the lazy bloggers and those are the reasons why I called them lazy. Was that not clear? There are other bloggers who might fit the bill who I didn't refer to, of course, but I can’t see how anyone could miss who I referring to after I named her in the first paragraph and quoted her throughout.

 

Since Brandon seemed to have some trouble figuring out who I was referring to in my earlier post, I’m going to make this one easy for him. (Psst, Brandon, that was me being condescending.) Brandon wrote this:

 

And that's rape! It's an origin story or dramatic turn of events that allows a writer a lot of freedom and complexity without doing a whole lot of work. The character is harmed in a way the society at least pretends to see as sometimes worse than murder and therefore gains sympathy, rises above it and therefore becomes "strong[er]", and also, maybe some creepy boob-jiggling panels during the rape scene are in there which makes the whole thing kind of naughty and appeals to the ever-present torture porn aspects of our reptile brains.

 

But this is a not-backed-up reference ... Ugh. That is really poor writing. Let me start try that again.

 

But that is an unsubstantiated reference to something that may or may not have happened in a comic character’s origin story -- at least, I don't think it has happened in the kinds of comic origin stories that Karen and I were referring to. Creepy, boob-jiggling panels during the rape scene?  I can’t think of any superhero’s origin that this fits. Is he referring to Red Sonja? Is he reading a Penthouse comic? Is this a figment conjured from his own reptilian brain that he is projecting onto comic writers?

 

Not only isn’t there any reference to this bizarre scenario happening in any comic, Brandon makes reference to exactly zero (0) actual rapes in comics. He references specific works of literature written over a century ago. He references specific films. He mentions some TV characters. He embedded a video of a band. He mentions some male comic book characters who weren’t raped, but there isn’t a single mention of an actual rape that happened in any comic book. In fact, he doesn’t even mention a single female comic book character unless we count Skully from the X Files spin-off comic. That is lazy comic criticism. LAZY!

 

(Brandon, I was referring to you and your adorable, little essay seen here. Perhaps you’re familiar with it. It is the essay I'm quoting from, and you wrote it. I'm calling you, Brandon, a lazy blogger.

You = Lazy Blogger

If you still don't understand that the lazy blogger I am referring to now is you, please, contact me so I can dumb it down more.)

 

Moreover, given that Brandon has made clear that references shouldn’t be “not-backed-up references” ... Ugh. I just can’t stand it. “Not-backed-up” hyphenated? Really? You’ve read Le Morte d'Arthur, but you don’t own a thesaurus? Or were you too lazy to use it?

 

Moreover, given that Brandon has made clear that references in essays shouldn’t be

unsubstantiated, unconfirmed, unproven, unsupported, or uncorroborated, pontificating about rape in comics without mentioning even one (1) is yet another example of his ironic writing. (Come on! Someone must have the phone number for the Nobel Prize Committee!)

 

If you criticize without using critical thinking, you aren’t even a lazy critic. You’re a blowhard. You’re Bill O’Reilly, making up perverse stories from your creepy, boob-jiggling imagination to tar others with your own reptilian fantasies.

Today, I’m going to respond to a couple of bloggers who responded to my post from the other day on criticism of rape in comics, both of which can be seen via Journalista. The first I’m going to respond to is charles yoakum, who judging from the tint of his picture and cleft chin may or may not be a Skrull. I agreed with a lot of what this possible alien conqueror said, so if I don’t comment on it here, you can assume I thought it was brilliant. Perhaps too brilliant ... as if written by someone from an advanced alien society! As for the rest ...

 

He took the time to do research on the female characters who have been raped, as well as taking the time to annotate some of the lists that he found.

 

I wish I could claim to having done that annotation, but the bulk of it was done by the folks at When Fangirls Attack. I did some, but most of it was the work of others. So let’s give a big hand to Ragnell, kalinara, and company.

 

I think that I have to disagree that simply listing the number of female characters who haven't been raped to get a statistical analysis for the percentage of women in comics is missing the point of the arguement for the data:

 

That depends on what you say is the argument. For instance, if someone says “I don’t like rape in comics,” I won’t argue with that. It’s a subject opinion. (“Subject opinion” is redundant, isn’t it?) But if someone says “Virtually all the strong women in comics have been raped,” that is pretty much as objective statement and it can be argued. You can say that’s not the main point of the original poster’s essay, and I’ll pretty much agree with you. The SGL blogger was suggesting that geeks don’t really like strong women, but saying that strong women in comics are always raped was essentially the only statement made by the SGL blogger to invalidate the strength of women in comics. If “they’re all raped” is the only argument you use to show that comic geeks don’t really like strong women, then your argument falls on its face. There are virtually no weak women in comics and only a small minority of the strong women in comics have been raped. In order for the SGL’s blogger to be correct, the blogger would have show either:

 

1. Most of the strong women in comics have been raped
2. Comic geeks have been requesting rape in comics

 

Neither statement is supported by the facts. Instead, what we see among modern geeks is a reverence for strong women (e.g. Buffy, Ripley, Xena) and an almost complete disregard for weak women. Can we even name any weak women in our cult favorites? Even Aunt May is now a strong woman who fights Doc Ock and refuses a dependent role.

 

Comics have primarily been a boys club, and there are years and years worth of negative stereotypes to overcome, especially to a traditional male audience that is generally not known for having fairly enlightened views of sexuality.

 

I’m a little reluctant to suggest that today’s art or media has the obligation to overcome yesterday’s art or media. I think it is beholden only to itself. But I won’t fight too much (or at all, really) against the idea that it is a good thing to strike a blow for feminism in comics. Why not enlighten? At the same time, I haven’t seen anyone point to a rape story in American comics that suggested something anti-feminist. For instance, I don’t think there have been any rape stories that suggested any of the following:

 

• the person who was raped deserved it
• the rapist was a good person
• the raped person would come to romanticize the rape
• the raped person really wanted to have sex with the rapist
• rape is not a big deal

 

Actually, there have been some stories where men have been raped where one might make the case for some (most?) of those, particularly in instances where the rapist was an alien disguised as someone having sex with the hero, e.g. Colossal Boy & the Human Torch.

 

When the rape stereotype comes up, it can stand out a bit too much like a sore thumb, or at least lazy writing.

 

But is it lazy writing? Or rather, I should ask, is it any lazier than killing off parents, killing romantic interests, killing cops, destroying cities, destroying countries, destroying planets, threatening to destroy the universe, alien invasions, Nazis, mad scientists, killers on the loose, monsters on the loose, unethical corporations, unethical religious leaders, unethical kings, or unethical politicians? Or for that matter super heroes and super villains? Comics have 20-some pages to get you to feel something big, to make you hate someone and hope our hero beats the crap out him; otherwise, the hero looks like a jerk when he starts beating someone. Writers could eschew those bits of “lazy writing” but would we buy the comics? What will motivate our hero to take violent action within 22 pages (every month!) if not something obviously terrible?

 

(Here is something fun to try. When you hear someone say that death in comics is a sign of lazy writing, ask that person to name the 10 best comics stories. Odds are you’ll see some death in there. Maybe in most of them. Then ask if Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, and King Lear are examples of hack work.)

 

As the comics ahve become targeted to a more adult audience, the suggestion of the sexual assault have moved from the inference to more concrete, and thus, has become even more disturbing.

 

Absolutely true ... well, unless we go back to the golden age, pre-Code crime comics maybe. I’m just guessing here. Where the rapes obvious then? In any event, Sue’s rape was more obvious than anything I can think of from the late 20^th century, i.e. 1973, when I started reading, to 2000.

 

As a father of two girls, yes, it bothers me tremendously, and while you could argue that that makes the rape an effective dramatic device since I do have an emotional reaction to it, I'm tired of it.

 

This is the argument against rape in comics that works. This is true. And it is the only argument necessary. There is no need to clutter it up with intellectualization about feminist or literary theory.

 

The argument that there’s lots of rape in comics fails because it always comes off as an overstatement. Far less than 1% of comics have rape in them. Most writers have written zero rape stories and few have written more than 1. The argument that rape is lazy writing fails because comics are built almost entirely on big, obvious threats that could just as easily be considered lazy writing, but it is for those big, obvious threats that we tend to buy super hero comics. But saying that you just don’t like rape stories works. There is no arguing against it and it seems to be true of many readers, and their real motivation for speaking out against rape in comics. The vast majority of decisions we make are made on our personal feelings, not abstract theories especially when those theories are not supported by the facts. We don’t like rape in comics because we don’t like rape.

 

Personally, I don’t think comics should do rape stories because they seem to turn off a significant number of readers while not really pulling in new readers. Certainly, there are rape fetishists who like some rape stories in comics, but those don’t tend to be the kind of rape stories told in American superhero comics where the rapist is invariably scum who gets beaten up. Superhero comic rape stories do not empower rapists or indulge what rape fetishists enjoy. So who is really fond of these rape stories? As near as I can tell, the bulk of superhero comics readers fall into two camps in regard to rape stories, the indifferent and the pissed off. There is to my knowledge no one clamoring for more rape in American superhero comics but plenty of people calling for less.

 

Just as too many years of off-off-off-Broadway plays in New York made me hate the "every male is gay, they just won't admit it" plot line constantly written by gay off-off-off-Broadway playwrites.

 

Ugh. I’m over those too. And I could do without ever seeing another angst ridden coming out story. Also, I'm getting really tired of Skrulls. Hey, wait a minute ...

So I was asked to review Manly, a book of illustrated gay erotica by Dale Lazarov & Amy Colburn (and colors/inks by Dominic Cordoba) and I seriously considered writing just one sentence. Something like: Holy crap, that was the sexiest comic I’ve ever seen! But how would that make me look clever? Why should someone else’s truly extraordinary work show me up?

 

 But before we go forward, let me warn you that this review might be a little too much information about my sexual proclivities for you so you might want to avert your eyes now!

 

All right now that the sissies, prudes, and haters are gone, let’s talk porn for a second. There is a shocking decline in the quality of sexually explicit material out there. Oh, there’s a lot more of it. You can’t shake a hard penis without hitting some, but most of it so pathetically amateurish that you won’t have a hard penis to start with. It seems like anyone with a laptop and lap is videotaping said lap and uploading his load onto the internet. I have nothing against Xtube and its ilk, but do that many guys really think every instance of them jerking off is an audience-worthy event? I suspect they’re stroking their egos more than they are their cocks. Which is why I was so pleased with Manly. All aspects of it are professionally done. Real thought and effort were put into every panel.

 

I’ve been a fan of erotic comics since the first time I saw a Tom of Finland drawing. I obsessed over those for a while and tried to get my underage hands on all of the Kake adventures with little success. No internet back then, damn it. It’s hard to say for sure because the sexual response is generated in a deep irrational section of the brain, but I believe that part of what I liked about those erotic comics was that they could exaggerate. The problem with exaggeration is that, ironically, needs to be used sparingly. Exaggerated amounts of exaggeration can push an erotic work out of the realm of sexiness and into the realm of freakishness. Generally speaking, we lust after humans, so to be sexy, the image has to look human. It can be super human, but if it goes too far beyond human, it is no longer sexy. The Washington Monument might be phallic, but it isn’t sexy. Tom uses a bit of a balancing act between nearly photorealistic images and unrealistic proportions on the bodies of his men. If the details of a Tom of Finland drawing weren’t rendered with such precision, I don’t think his overblown (and frequently blown) guys would be as erotic as they are and his art would not have had the impact that has on the entire gay community. Artists like the Hun I don’t think were as successful in part because his art is not as realistic.

 

Similarly, Manly uses a fairly realistic style. A bit cartoony in its simplicity of line, but it keeps exaggeration to a minimum. There is no doubt that you are looking at a drawing, but the proportions of the bodies are pretty much realistic. Everyone is perfect, or at least, a perfect example of his type, it is still a human perfection. All the guys are remarkably hung, but none of them has a dick as big at that guy you saw on that video where you feared for the life of the bottom guy. You know, the one where you spent most of the time gasping and cringing instead of coming. None of the Manly guys are nearly as hung as Tom’s guys. And I think that makes the guys in Manly sexier than the guys in the works of Tom or even that dangerously hung guy you saw in video. Sure, we’re all pretty much size queens, but there is point where sexy ends and mere novelty begins. Manly is well aware of that border.

 

In the final analysis, what really makes Manly sexy is the sex. And it’s as hot as anything I’ve seen. As you might expect from the title, the guys in it are mainly masculine archetypes. There’s a cop, a pair of boxers (as in two fighters, not underpants), and some leathermen, but where you could predict exactly where the story was going with a Tom of Finland comic, Manly plays with your expectations with plots driven by the characters’ personalies, personalities that are more complex than being simply horny. There are interesting moments of shyness and back stories of lust.

 

And all this is done without dialogue or captions. It is really astonishing. Manly is both as hot as anything you've seen and still a work of art. I highly recommend it.