Yet another woman has been driven off Twitter by misogynistic fanboy bullies angry that she had invaded their putatively male turf. This time, the arena is comics, and the woman in question is writer Chelsea Cain, a bestselling novelist who brought her feminist sensibility to the Marvel comic book series Mockingbird, which recently came to an end after eight issues.
Cain deleted her account on Twitter yesterday, after a series of tweets aimed at the misogyny that’s still rife in the comics world.
Cain’s resignation from Twitter prompted a flood of support, on Twitter and elsewhere, from fans and others troubled by misogyny online.
Her detractors responded by declaring that it was all a big hoax — that she’d made up the misogynistic harassment she claimed she’d gotten. And also that she sucked and feminism sucked and that it was a terrible thing that she and other feminists were ruining comics and that no, the harassment of her, which didn’t exist, had nothing to do with sexism, it was just because she sucked.
https://twitter.com/Taenner4Brump/status/791479331499315200
Still waiting for that overwhelming evidence. You know, that thing you bring to the cops when you're threatened/abused.#StandwithChelseaCain
— Tony (@PrimitivPatriot) October 27, 2016
https://twitter.com/ArchaicHipster/status/791549249976733696
https://twitter.com/MusouTensei82/status/791471542379089921
I dont #StandWithChelseaCain because there's no proof her harassment. Her comic sucked and she deleted her account due to her not accepting.
— Deadaccount (@smokedout5021) October 27, 2016
I don't #StandWithChelseaCain because everything Feminism touches turns to shit #MockingBird pic.twitter.com/eVNp3PJaF1
— BoneMan (@Bonefingerz) October 27, 2016
https://twitter.com/ZekeWars010/status/791440270885650432
To those who tweet "#StandwithChelseaCain:" #Mockingbird's failure and cancellation had nothing to do w/ sexism.https://t.co/OJImn4XmsQ pic.twitter.com/qVJJAKDH67
— Captain Hat (@CaptHat211) October 27, 2016
https://twitter.com/JamieAgathaRose/status/791585788320296960
https://twitter.com/Outlawdriver_72/status/791515636878807040
Gosh, what a shock to find Donald Trump fans mixed up in all of this.
EDIT: As several people have mentioned, Mockingbird Vol. 1: I Can Explain is currently the #1 seller in Marvel Comics & Graphic Novels on Amazon.
H/T — Thanks to everyone who brought my attention to this as well as to CBR.com and Willamette Week for screencapping and posting the screenshots of Cain’s tweets.
Meanwhile, the trade paperback version of the comic is sitting at #1 on Amazon’s comic sales.
Assholes don’t believe woman when she says she was harassed, so they harass her. In other news, water is wet.
Gee, that looks like a good comic, I should pick that one up.
What harassment? I don’t see any harassment? Stop making up crap etc etc [insert more harassment here] etc.
@Scildfreja: I should see if it’s in any of my local comic shops.
This is from that last issue without comment…
http://namakajiri.net/pics/nonfree/s_d/mockingbird_08_mercorgis.jpeg
Apparently jpeg isn’t an extension that embeds, but if I did it right that picture has mercorgis.
So, does this guy just go around kicking everyone in their respective baby-making parts in the name of equality? Must be real fun at parties.
@Malitia
Are those…are those mermaid corgis?
Maybe he means ‘the same as all those other feminist [slur] I hate’?
@Handsome “Punkle Stan” Jack
Yes. But the picture is from scans_daily so I’ve no clue how that happened. I only know that apparently that happened. ^^;
They are from a separate reality from us. In their world, empathy simply doesn’t exist. It’s not merely that they lack empathy, but the concept is so utterly foreign to them that logical statements built with empathetic premises confound and confuse them.
They’ve invaded our world, and they look like us, but they aren’t like us.
Another great sequence from the last issue
@Malitia
The fact that mermaid corgis are in it automatically qualifies it for the World Fantasy Award. Not that it can now because prissy fuckers got offended after Sandman won it that one time but still.
“Give us proof that you were harassed”, demand harassing sexist assholes, generating all the proof she could need as they go. Irony, thy name is somebody I’m about to call for Twitter to ban, on the grounds that they do nothing for the world anyway, they just sit around on their saggy butts and kvetch about how everything women create is “contrived and poorly written”, because FEMINISM. Fuckheads.
Just bought one of her thrillers, looking forward to reading it.
Thanks for the recommendation
It’s unlikely she could’ve offered any proof that would’ve satisfied them, and I can’t say I blame her for declining to offer any on Twitter.
I guess “look at your own damn tweets, bozo”, said to an actual harasser, isn’t considered proof of harassment.
LOL at that second tweet about evidence and the cops. Twitter randos aren’t cops, and even if she’d shown however many gigabytes of evidence she’d have if she’d wanted to bother with it, the randos, the twitter PTB and the cops all wouldn’t have done shit.
Well, I hadn’t heard about or was interested in Mockingbird, but I certainly am now. I’m assuming that this applies to plenty of other non-misogynists as well. Great job, douchebags.
I must admit, not being someone who follows Marvel closely (my blog is somewhat DC/Indy/UK biased) I hadn’t heard of this. Now I intend to pick it up. I’ve been reading comics for over 30 years and it still saddens me how hostile it is as a community to women artists and writers.
It hurts to see piece of crap like this eager to drag my beloved comic book genre back into the fucking sea.
Comics should be allowed to grow and expand and change and flourish; not be trapped in a box like some neglected pet that eventually dies from starvation.
Someone once said about steampunk that there should be black-steampunk, East Asian-steampunk, punk-steampunk, goth-steampunk and every kind of steampunk under the sun.
I feel the same should go for literary genres, comics and video games just to name a few.
There will be no better way to kill the industry than to stifle creativity, kill new ideas and keep on the same fucking treadmill of cliches.
This gamergate celebration of mediocrity and racism really pisses me off. And all the other isms these losers hold dear. There’s too many to count.
I haven’t picked up a comic book since I was 14 and even I’m tempted to stop at the nerd shop on my way home and buy the entire run.
Oh look, one of them is so ignorant that he can’t spell harassment. No, wait, I see what he did. HERassment. Funny and clever. By which, I mean neither.
ETA And I’m losing my touch, because I only just noticed HER-ASSment. Lawks, how we laughed! (Again, not)
Re: 2nd Corporal Hat’s nonsense
Contrived and poorly written means nothing vis a vis failure. Transformers movies, exhibit A. Also, how is ‘As soon as I make as much as your father’ poorly written? That’s fantastic writing! I disagree with objectivism and can still appreciate the themes and dialogue and story and whatnot of Incredibles. But remember, it’s us who’re unreasonable, irrational, hiveminded haters of Free Speech
@Dan
‘Black Steampunk’ sounds really cool. All the leather and gears and such with African/Caribbean influences? Awesome…
@AlanSmithee
It’s shit like this that got me to the cinema (in a very long time, as I’m cash strapped) to see Ghostbusters. Also the reason I prioritised Mad Max: Fury Road when it came out on DVD. For both of which I’m most grateful. Maybe I should start picking artworks to devour on the basis of how hated they are by the manosphere.