So in less than 48 hours my She Has No Head! – No, It’s Not Equal column has generated 307 comments. Many of them supportive, many of them insightful. And many of those are critical of the piece, which is good, or at least fine. I have nothing against an intelligent dialogue, whether it agrees with me or not. What I DO have a problem with are people projecting their own shit onto me and onto a piece I’ve written. As such, I’ve put up a response on the piece which you can find here (it’s comment #311). If you don’t want to wade through the comments (and who can blame you for that) here’s the comment in its entirety:
“All right. I’ve tried to stay out of these comments and I’m not going to fully engage, but at 307 comments in less than 48 hours, I think I’ve got to make a couple things clear.
Again I say, to those of you offering intelligent, insightful comments, critical or otherwise, thank you. And another hearty thanks for all the supportive comments – I have gotten a ton of email and retweets, twitter comments, etc., and they have been amazing.
As for the rest, I’m sorry but a lot of you are projecting things onto this column that simply are not there.
Nowhere in the piece do I say I’m offended.
In fact, the word offensive is only used once in the entire 2600 word piece and it’s to say “NOT offensive”. So that’s you projecting offense onto me. Stop doing it.
Nowhere do I call creators, fans, or the industry at large misogynistic. Seriously, re-read the piece, do a search for the word, it’s simply not there. Also, sexism and misogyny, not the same things. Look it up.
This piece is only intended to be an illustration of how the portrayals of men and women in comics are not equal. The piece is not intended to call out specific artists (it’s a nearly industry wide problem, and far more people than just artists are responsible for what we see in comics). The piece also does not attempt to make suggestions about how to combat these things, it’s simply to illustrate the problem and get people to acknowledge it. Judging by these comments, that in and of itself is a Herculean task that we are nowhere near being done with.
I go out of my way at least four times in the piece to be clear that art is personal and it’s an individual’s prerogative if they want to like what they see in comics, whether it’s equal or not. I’m not passing judgment on anyone, in fact, I go out of my way to NOT do that. So if you are getting defensive and seeing something that’s not there, I suggest you consider looking inward. I’m not doing it to you…but you may be doing it to yourself. And that is between you and well…you.
If you came here to say “it’s just comics, it doesn’t matter” get real with yourself. You read a 2600 word piece about this and then took the time to comment…it clearly matters to you. If it doesn’t, you should exit stage left, cause you’re apparently on the wrong website.
And to those of you echoing the refrain of “if you don’t like it, stop reading, but stop complaining” I’d ask you to take your own advice. If you don’t like what I have to say, stop reading, and also, stop complaining. See how fun that is?! Yeah, it’s completely counter productive. You should absolutely be able to complain and say that you disagree with my opinion, the same way that I should be able to deconstruct what I see as inequality between the sexes in their visual representations in superhero comics. See how that works?
To the hilarious idea that I’m some kind of “johnny come lately to comics” now that it’s “trendy”. Please. Do your research. Your ignorance is painful to us all.
Also, I don’t know what a swamp donkey is but it sounds awesome. Is it some kind of donkey alligator hybrid that lives in swamps? Badass.
Kelly”
