A dustup in the comic book world reminds us — as if any of us needed reminding — that the world of comics fandom is filled with a lot of the same sort of garbage people who’ve been harassing (mostly) women in the name of #GamerGate.
The sightly confusing story: On Friday, a bunch of “variant” comic book covers featuring The Joker alongside an assortment of other DC comics characters were posted online, with DC planning on releasing two dozen more “variant” covers for June.
One of these covers, intended for Batgirl #41, featured The Joker and a terrified-looking Batgirl, an unsettling reference to an quarter-century-old graphic novel called The Killing Joke, in which the sadistic Joker crippled Barbara Gordon, the original Batgirl, with a shot to her spine. The Joker’s sadism was highly sexualized, with the graphic novel strongly suggesting that she had also been sexually assaulted.
Well, a lot of Batgirl’s present day fans were upset by a reminder of this dark storyline, in part because, as Jude Terror writes on The Outhousers, a cover referencing sadism and sexual assault is a bit “contradictory to the lighthearted tone” of Batgirl comics today.
After hearing this criticism, the artist behind the cover, Rafael Albuquerque, asked DC Comics to pull his artwork, noting that he never meant “to hurt or upset anyone through my art.”
DC Comics granted his request. But DC’s official statement also alluded to “threats of violence and harassment,” which many people took to mean that Albuquerque and DC Comics had been bullied into pulling the artwork by, you know, those evil “social justice warriors” we hear so much about.
Nope. It was the” antisocial injustice warriors” all along. Albuquerque made clear that he hadn’t actually gotten any threats. As Batgirl writer Cameron Stewart noted, it was the people who criticized the cover who were getting threats.
That’s right. Albuquerque and DC took down the artwork because some of the DEFENDERS of the artwork were harassing critics in their name.
Ethics!
Naturally, the people who previously brought so much ETHICS! to the world of gaming have some highly ETHICAL opinions on this controversy.
On Kotaku in Action, Reddit’s home for the #GamerGate crowd, commenters complained that Albuquerque and DC had given in to “a bunch of screeching hens on Twitter.”
“Another win for the feels-censors,” one commenter lamented. “Yeah for moral panic and outrage for they win the day!” another commenter remarked sarcastically.
“I say fuck ’em,” still another commenter defiantly added. “Be as fucking edgy as you want, and if anyone complaints, just tell them “don’t buy it moron”.”
But my favorite comment is probably this one, not just for the “let me explain to you how art works” stuff but also for that slightly ironic bit at the very end.
Dude, I hate to have to tell you this, but you’re part of a movement whose main goal is to shut down peope who disagree with you.
#GamerGate has spent the past, what, six months, harassing and threatening and trying to ruin the lives and the livelihoods of game developers and journalists and cultural critics for the terrible crime of … saying things you don’t like about gaming culture (sometimes even while being female).
Indeed, #GamerGaters have managed to convince themselves, if very few others, that it’s somehow “unethical” for journalists to publish anything #GamerGaters don’t like. And then they complain about “censorship?”
H/T — Big tip of the hat today to Skiriki, for alerting me to this and providing helpful links, and to lifestyled on GamerGhazi for a post highlighting some of the best — i.e., worst — comments from GamerGaters on Reddit.
QFT! 🙂
@lith
You sound like an awesome parent!
Someone linked me this today… seems strangely relevant (I hope it embeds):
http://s10.postimg.org/emb42778n/Actually_It_S_About_Ethics.jpg
@lith
I really hope she does come to understand that. That is a beautiful goal to have for your child.
Growing up, I never realized how much I was being shoved into the “feminine” box. I remember my mom coming home from work to find me in a tree, reading a book. Her response was always to tell me to get down. It doesn’t sound like much, but that’s just one example of how I was taught what behaviors were and were not acceptable for me. My mom did do some great things for me, like encouraging me to pursue science, but there were still sexist restrictions placed on me as a child. It took me a long time to start to break that box down and I’m still working on it.
@ej
I always thought my mom was a strong, independent woman and did an excellent job raising me to admire that (and this is still mostly true). But knowing what I do now, I can see where there were a lot of instances of implicit gender roles/feminine ideals. For example, I was taught (through actions, not words) that it was not ok for me to speak up or raise my voice. So, I’m with you on still working to overcome those issues.
because reasons:
Full confession time: Even those of us guys who are active feminists, who were raised that way, and who truly want to be better, are still fighting constantly with ingrained sexism. There’s simply so much misogyny in our culture that it’s impossible not to pick up. This isn’t an excuse, merely an explanation; it’s still our responsibility to confront and deal with the baggage.
I have to say, I love the direction this thread has taken. Hearing so many people acknowledge sexism and it’s effects and commit to fighting it is very encouraging.
@ej Here, here! 🙂
@freemage I totally understand that. It’s something a lot of us women have to fight against too (our own sexist notions that we were taught were normal). Basically, no one is “perfect” lol and that’s ok. What counts is working towards being better.
So here’s the thing. I’m 33 years old. I’ve read The Killing Joke, and a few other Batman graphic novels, I’m following “Gotham”, and I’m familiar with the grim ‘n’ gritty, aimed-at-adults part of the Batman mythos. And it’s hard for me to look at that cover. Not because of any personal trauma (thank all-powerful Atheismo), but because of Batgirl’s expression of abject terror. She’s staring at the viewer, tearing up in fright, begging you to save her.
You don’t have to be an essjaydoubleyou to find that unsettling. You don’t have to be a feminist to compare that variant cover to the others and notice that only the female superhero is drawn as frightened and crying. You don’t have to be anything more than a Batman fan to realise that Batman would never be shown frightened and crying when at the Joker’s mercy.
And if the current Batgirl series is more focused on escapism and cartoony capers with fantastic gadgets than grim ‘n’ gritty realism, this cover is out of place. It’s the kind of cover that might put readers off for no other reason than “oh great, she’s a girl so they’ve drawn her frightened and crying, I bet they’re going to make her all weak now”.
Course, that requires being a real Batman fan and not a fake, like all the gomblrgokers freaking out over “censorship” when they don’t even read Batgirl.
I had to post, because I think this issue is being treated far too black and white, when, like all art, it’s open to interpretation.
To me this is art, but it was used inappropriately. It doesn’t capture the spirit of the new Batgirl series and it contrasts it far too much, particularly alluding to a potential sexual assault. The fact that it is an homage to the Killing Joke means that most people’s thoughts are going to lead directly to the horror of the story (mine did). That’s fair enough and makes perfect sense. I also don’t see the removal of the cover at the artists’ request as censorship. If an artist doesn’t want their art on display, that’s their call. DC handled it appropriately and this art is far from censored as it’s on display all over the internet if people really feel compelled to view it. It’s been displayed appropriately on this site as well, giving users the choice to view it (or not).
But I also feel as though ‘PantsJihad’ made some reasonable points, particularly what art is.
After reading the comments, I took a good, long look at that picture, and it’s unsettling, but to me personally, not for the reasons that have been commonly stated. It evokes a sense of powerlessness and a desire for rescue and mercy. I see a terrified person who wants nothing more than to be freed from the nightmare of a smugly confident, unhinged individual who believes that their warped perception of the world is the absolute truth and everyone else is simply in denial. I see a menacing individual that is so on the fringes of society, that their only recourse is to drag the rest of humanity into the dirt so they can finally blend their vileness into the common ‘normal’. He believes the current paradigm is a sham, and human decency is a lie and he’s trying to define the new paradigm. In order to convince people, he puts his atrocities on display, with the smug smile of a snake-oil salesmen selling his wares to the crowd. Of course I’m alluding to the Killing Joke, where the Joker tries to prove that even the best of us can be broken by proudly showing his torment of Barbara to Jim Gordon…so some knowledge of the story is required for that interpretation, but that’s not what’s unsettling about it to me….
…what’s unsettling is when you you take the costumes off. Take the costumes off and apply my personal interpretation of the image and they become real people that exist in our world – a world where violent, misguided neanderthals are trying to provoke the the rest of the planet into ‘becoming like them’ by proudly and smugly putting their horrific killings, destruction and mutilation of innocent people on display for the world to see. They believe that our way of life is a lie, completely wrong and needs to be undone. They want all of us to see what they’re doing and become violent monsters like them by either joining them or in seeking our retribution/justice. They are the Joker in the Killing Joke.
So what’s my point? Am I reading too much into this? Well it’s art, I’m allowed. Whether or not my interpretation is the artist’s intent is irrelevant: it’s evocative, it’s troubling, it prompted me to discuss it, it made me contemplate the world in which I exist and as a result has inspired me to create my own art…to help me express my desire to do something positive but also vent my frustrated feeling of impotence in actually being effective.
That is art.
On the comic cover, and the source…
I honestly think that, if The Killing Joke were placed in a vacuum, it could be seen as a quality piece of work. The problem is that it’s inescapable to see how it pretty much codified the mentality that leads to Women in Refrigerators as a trope. This causes the core conceit–the examination of the Joker’s internal workings–to be lost in the noise and sensationalism.
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/03/18/albuquerque-was-asked-to-make-batgirl-cover-more-extreme/ It gets worse.
@because reasons, I don’t post here much, but I just wanted to offer my support, and a few suggestions I’ve found useful when discussing these things with my boyfriend:
First, give him the definition of feminism (seems like you’ve already done that), and ask him to consider how much of his hostility towards it comes from personal experiences, and how much is from other dudes badmouthing it. Acknowledge that people are diverse, and that there’s bound to be feminists who’re also horrible people, but stretch the fact that a lot of ideas about feminism are constructed and exagerated by anti-feminists and often repeated uncritically (including false-flag operations like #endfathersday). Try to focus more on the general idea of distinguishing between anti-feminist rhetoric and actual feminism, rather than trying to get him to agree with all things feminist.
Secondly, explain that a lot, probably a majority, of Batgirl fans don’t like what The Killing Joke did to the character (and neither does the creator Allan Moore, who acknowledged that it was a mistake). Clarify that it’s not about being against depictions of violence or edginess in comic books, but that this specific instance grated a lot of people the wrong way because it a) turned Batgirl from a hero to a victim, b) sexualised her victimisation, and c) reduced her from a character in her own right to a prop in the male characters’ story. Especially because there are already relatively few prominent female superheroes, and female characters in superhero comics are so often used as eye-candy and damsels in distress. The current run of Batgirl has all been about putting TKJ behind her, going for a more light-hearted and empowering tone, and many fans are simply done with TKJ references.
And third, point out that male anti-feminist comic book fans are not exactly above getting offended and complaining about the treatment of male characters (e.g. One More Day, or a woman picking up Thor’s hammer), and wanting it reversed. The phrase “nerdrage” wasn’t inspired by women. Also, no one was physically or legally prevented from printing the cover and no one (except the people who expressed their dislike) was threatened over it, the artist simply agreed with the critics about the cover being a bad idea, which is his prerogative. Don’t expect or demand your boyfriend to agree about the criticism, just get him to accept that “This is a terrible portrayal of the character and it’s a stupid idea to print it” is a common complaint from comic book fans of all sexes and political orientations, and it doesn’t suddenly turn into censorship just because the just because the complainers are women and feminists.
Tl;dr: It usually works better to change the overall narrative and rules of the conversation – i.e. getting him to agree to treat non-feminist claims about feminism with a bit of scepticism, acknowledge that there can be reasons to be opposed to TKJ references that aren’t about hypersensitivity and offendedness over sex and violence in general, and that expressing criticism of comic books is not censorship but the use free speech. The biggest fight is rarely to get anyone to agree with feminist ideas, it’s getting them to acknowledge feminists’ right to express criticism like everyone else without threats or accusations of censorship.
Charles RB,
Thanks. I had a look at that and was fine til I saw this:
He was doing great right up to there.
Both sides have childish tantrums? This is only about differing opinions? Does he think he had to close his Twitter account over a difference of opinion? So death and rape threats are merely childish tantrums and what are feminists doing that he’s calling a tantrum? Saying maybe there could be less misogyny in a comic marketed to teen girls? That’s a tantrum?
He’s playing down harassment and straight up lying about the response to it. Maybe he just worded it badly like he did before when it sounded as if he was being harassed by SJWs.
@Lea “He was doing great right up to there. ”
I also got the sense he implied women are a minority, it always kind of irks me when people do that. Though maybe he meant women’re a minority in comics specifically, dunno.
@because reasons: I feel that way sometimes with my brother– he’s a quality human being, but sometimes he says flippant things about “feminists” that take me by surprise. After I (and my sister and my brother-in-law) started more vocally identifying as feminists, he seemed to quiet down and maybe get a little more introspective about what feminism means in real life versus what people say about it on gaming forums. Nowadays, he’s more likely to say something that surprises me in the opposite direction– like when he complained of Mystique’s frequent nudity in the X-Men movies bringing a weird, hypersexual vibe to a film that doesn’t need it, and suffers for it. So, I guess tl;dr version: people grow, and change, and learn, and they can surprise you!
This whole Batgirl cover thing reminds me of the “Caucasian” joke in Homestuck and its subsequent removal. The author wrote a joke that wasn’t intended to be racist, but could be read that way, and he later took it down. A lot of nasty fans got angry that the “shrieking SJWs” had forced the author to censor himself, and used the event as an excuse to harass Homestuck fans who had previously criticized the comic’s treatment of race or who were POC themselves.
Then the comic’s author, in a post that sadly doesn’t exist anymore, rounded up a large sample of the terrible, threatening, hateful things these folks were saying to the critics, and announced in no uncertain terms that it was *these* things that made him decide to remove the joke, not the original criticism from the racial angle. I can’t remember the exact words, but he said something along the lines of, “You need to take a good long look at your life choices when the people you’re defending are ashamed to be defended by you.” Man, I’ve never wanted to applaud somebody so hard as I did then.
I’m giving him a bit of leeway in the interview simply because it’s pretty clear he’s speaking not in his native language.
He’s not being perfect, but he’s also not writing an essay or blog post here, either; he’s speaking in response to questions. I’d put more onus for the bad bits on the interviewer, here, who doesn’t follow up and press for clarification on the ‘two sides’ comments.
Oh dear. Ethicsing in comics intensifies.
http://valeriedorazio.com/post/113900980107/are-you-going-to-cry-little-girl
http://www.themarysue.com/valerie-dorazio-online-harassment-chris-sims/
This hits uncomfortably close to home, since I used to read Chris Sims’ blog for the hilarious reviews of Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose comic (of “Your vagina is haunted!” meme fame), because ZOMG if there’s a comic that deserves a rich ragging, it is that one. (If you google the comic book, FYI, the comic is like “usual” misogyny in comics times 9001, just so that you can brace for it.)
And I remember the incident mentioned — the review of the Punisher comic “Butterfly” — and mostly reading the review in a superficial manner and feeling a notch oogy about it, didn’t pay much attention to the comments included.
I think Sims has to do better than just apologizing, now.
@because reasons – I just recently found out that some fellow student organization members have dudebro mentalities about certain topics. One doesn’t understand why people argue for diverse representation of different (body) types of women in video games, one doesn’t like it when white superheroes are cast as POC in movie adaptations (but doesn’t complain when the reverse happens), and the worst one is the one that apparently has victim blaming tendencies. It all kind of blew up on Facebook where I and some of the other girls in the org explained to them our POVs about aforementioned topics.
I don’t know if they took anything away from the discussion tbh, but I hope they at least realized that their friends are disappointed in them.
@Lea: “Does he think he had to close his Twitter account over a difference of opinion?”
Albuquerque didn’t shut his twitter down AFAIK, you might be confusing him with Erik Larson? It was DC who implied he’d been harassed too, not him.
http://ivynoelle.tumblr.com/post/113955702783/dear-comics-a-little-less-anger-a-little-more
I just saw a really sad (but also kind of good?) input on this and I thought it’d be best to share.
@ Because Reasons: I understand what is like when someone close to you makes a statement that is so jarring. As others have said, none of us are perfect and if he is willing to listen that is a great place to start. I really became active as a feminist in the last year when GG happened. My husband has made some surprising comments that show the latent misogyny in society. I have been pushing back slowly but surely. Privledge by its very nature is invisible (my husband is an upper middle class, cis, heterosexual, white man) so I think it just doesn’t occur to people until someone brings it up and presents it to them. I have been gaming since I was eight and despite the fact that the misogyny in gaming is pretty in your face I didn’t even notice it until I started watching Ms. Sarkessian’s videos. We all need people who lead different lives to open our eyes to our own privledge.
If he is willing to listen, you can Start the conversation. Best of luck.
@AB, Swales, Bear, Kestrel and everyone else:
Thank you so much for your feedback and insights! It’s been very helpful in both understanding WHY an otherwise “good” man would have these opinions and HOW I can help educate him. I’m much less freaked out by our conversation after reading all of your awesome responses. 🙂
Just wanted to add that I did give him a basic definition of feminism and emphasized that there are asshats within ANY group, but the main point of this whole mess is that people have to be allowed to voice their concerns and criticism without fear of threats and harassment. I told him it was the artist’s choice to take down the image, which he still blames on censorship and pointed out the reasons I have read (mainly from here) as to why legit fans of the comic took offense to it. When I said one reason was that in TKJ, she was sexually assaulted (or the attack was sexualized…not sure which) and that fans didn’t need a reminder of how awful that was, he just claimed that there was no sexual assault. So, that was troubling but since I don’t follow the comic I had no argument to make.
Anyway, I think moving forward the best thing I can do is follow the advice I’ve gotten here: try to focus on the difference between stereotypical manosphere portrayals of “feminism” and actual feminism, make it known that I am, in fact, a feminist (knowing someone he loves uses that term may help him make a better association), and continue to challenge his notions of toxic masculinity and misogyny.
Thanks again all!!
Oh, want even more fun? Check out the Gamergater reaction to a joke at their expense in the newest release of Loki: Agent of Asgard
http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2zkpxx/unconfirmed_offically_at_this_time_comicgate/?limit=500
That was so predictable. (There was (is?) such a thread on /co/ too.) I think I know what to do now:
*Gets her green-gold-black ceremonial robe. Lights the (scented) candles.*
TROLLING FOR THE TROLL GOD! FLAMES FOR THE FLAME WARS!
Loki, god of trolls and fangirls, who’s worshiped (or just shipped) in the reblogs of tumblr and revered by trolls trolling trolls in the deepest imageboards! Take these threads of dudebro rage as burnt offering!
*Scatters the ashes in the four virtual winds.*
Hmmm… Misses something…
*Adds some bacon to the sacrifice*
PERFECT!