Mindy Newell: Duck And Cover
What is it about some men? Did Mommy keep obsessive charts about their every urination and bowel movement during toilet training, marking down the time and size and color and form? Or did Mommy skip the toilet training altogether and they went to kindergarten still wearing diapers? Did Daddy take little Tommy into the shower and soap the penis just a little too much? Was Uncle Ernie just a little too friendly? Did Great-aunt Myrtle catch little Hank masturbating in the bathroom while drooling over the Playmate of the Month?
What is it about some men who feel the need to piss and shit on any woman who dares to display talent, smarts, ability, and imagination?
Why do they do this?
Last week, here at ComixMix, Sara Raasch wrote about the latest attack on a woman who works in comics. This woman dares to display talent, smarts, ability, and imagination. Her name is Kelly Sue DeConnick and she is the writer of Captain Marvel, Avengers Assemble, Ghost, Sif, Captain America and the Secret Avengers, just to mention a few. She was attacked on Tom Brevooort’s Tumblr site, New Brevoort Formspring in a statement by “Anonymous.” His thesis is that Kelly only got to write for Marvel and Dark Horse because she is married to the guy who writes Fantastic Four and Hawkeye. (Kelly’s response is on her own Tumblr site, Digital Baubles. Neil Gaiman also posted it on his Tumblr site, and several others did so, as well.)
The women in this industry respond to this crap in several ways – laughter, anger, ignoring the attack, blogging about it, writing columns about it, and sometimes taking the pusillanimous putz head-on (even notifying the police, in one case), depending on their mood and general disposition.
I got hit with this stuff, too, back in the day when I was writing in the industry. Someone accused me of getting assignments by “strutting the hallways in fish-net stockings and fuck-me pumps.” I was once told by someone at Marvel that, when I started working there as an assistant editor, it was assumed by most that I had been, uh, “especially nice” to Tom DeFalco, who was then Marvel’s editor-in chief.
I started working at DC in 1983 – thirty years ago!!!!
I was hired by Marvel in 1990 – 23 years ago!!!!!
You’d think by now, 50 years since Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was published, that the guano would have stopped falling from the sky onto our heads.
You’d think, right?
Wednesday, May 29, 2013. The Fox Business channel. Lou Dobbs Tonight.
Erick Erickson of www.Redstate.com appears along with FOX newsman Juan Williams to discuss a just-released Pew Study that found that mothers are now the primary breadwinners in 40% of American households. Lou Dobbs finds this “troubling.” Juan Williams thinks “something is going terribly wrong in American society.” And Erickson says:
“I’m so used to liberals telling conservatives that they’re anti-science. But liberals who defend this and say it is not a bad thing are very anti-science. When you look at biology – when you look at the natural world – the roles of a male and a female in society and in other animals, the male typically is the dominant role. The female, it’s not antithesis, or it’s not competing, it’s a complementary role. We as people in a smart society have lost the ability to have complementary relationships in nuclear families, and it is tearing us apart. Having mom as primary bread winner is bad for kids and bad for marriage.”
And the shit just keeps on coming.
TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten
TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis
There’s this eternal fear that the dumb ol’ girls are gonna come in and change stuff. Like adding a lace trim to Hawkeye’s outfit, or telling Captain America that stripes make him look fat. It may come from too many re-watchings of the Little Rascals.
In all fairness, the stripes do make Cap look a little on the pudgy side.
The point that these folks seem to miss is that in many of those households THERE IS NO man in the picture, as breadwinner or any other form of support. And then there’s cases like my little sister, who has worked plenty of blue collar jobs but still finds guys so lazy as to make me look like Ozymandias. If there is ever an example of a woman seriously making more than a man in a relationship, it’s because the man isn’t doing anything at all, but too many conservatives just do not get that.
As a male – even though it always seems as if i use female avatars – i am revolted and disgusted by that sort of thing.
As a male in a household where the female is the sole breadwinner (as in job – i’m on Social Security) i laugh in thier faces.
(And fart in their general direction)
As the son of a brilliant copywriter and ad producer, who never made as much in the industry as males with less talent … i cry.
As BD said when the female soldier undergoing therapy for the aftereffects of sexual assault asked him why he was apologising as a Captain in the US Army, since he wasn’t involved in any way:
I apologise on behalf of my gender … because women are owed an apology.
Just want to say that I know that most men–at least the ones that I’m friendly with–are not Cro-Magnon’s, as Dean referred to them. And for all I know, ANONYMOUS could be a woman (though I think the odds are against it.)
I just can’t stand the calls of nepotism that seem to attack more women than men.
I also don’t think there’s anything that wrong with nepotism–it can help to know someone who can help you to get your foot in the door. BUT you’d had better be ready to show that you are capable of doing the job as well or better than the person who didn’t have anybody helping them to get hired…ANY job.
It’s when a person gets hired BECAUSE of nepotism, and is UNABLE to perform his or her duties, and yet IS KEPT ON THE PAYROLL, which really drives me nuts. And I’m sure we could all cite examples of that.