On Facebook, the excellent cartoonist Tony Harris (whose most famous project is probably that he was the original artist of The Walking Dead) delivers a misogynistic rant, which (translated into Gollum-speak) would be: Female cosplayers! we hates them!
I really want to post about this, but I’m also really pressed for time, so in the meanwhile I’ll recommend Donna Dickens’ post at Buzzfeed translating from Harris into English.
This is especially disappointing since one of the things I’ve liked about Harris’ work is that it seems less sexist than that of many comic book artists. Then again, I’ve been a fan of Dave Sim’s work forever, so I’m used to this sort of cognitive dissonance.
UPDATE: I mixed up Tony Harris with Tony Moore, and thus said Harris was involved on The Walking Dead. Actually, Harris has never worked on The Walking Dead. My bad.
I really don’t know what to make of this whole thing. One big part of it that irritates me is how he and his supporters seem to think that participation in conventions is something a person should have to “earn” by being sufficiently immersed in comics, as though in his eyes the comics scene isn’t unfriendly *enough* to new people. This kind of thing is why I’ve been getting more and more fed up with nerd culture.
Some women want to cosplay to get attention? So what? If you don’t want to see random people doing random shit to get attention, you should stay the hell away from all geeky conventions ever for all time. He’s also totally left out another pretty awful part of the equation: the sheer level of harassment women are enduring if they go to conventions, even without skimpy costumes.
What is it about the comics and videogame ends of nerddom that seem particularly attractive to doucheloaves?
Complaining about cosplayers at a convention strikes me as a bit like complaining that someone wore face-paint and a beer hat to a sporting event.
Except that no one does that, and if they did they probably wouldn’t feel the need to specifically discuss “boobs,” body weight, and naked female flesh in doing so.
The language this guy uses makes it pretty clear that this isn’t about fandom and taste; it’s about ladyparts and how scary they are. Creepy and lame.
Hmm. I have only legacy skin in the game, personally, and that there are apparently a bunch of rules for playing dress-up is news to me. Never a huge fan of dressup; I wanted to build sets. I can be Captain Kirk in a yellow t-shirt, but the main viewer needed to be right.
However, and unexpectedly, I turn out to have an enormous, flaming, to-the-bitter-death interest in all of this, because my daughter (and yes, I should have seen this coming) turned into a Connunist last year and I anticipate an ever-increasing share of my disposable income going for lightsabers, artisanal wool robes that cost our peasant forebears 1 copper piece but are apparently now worth a car payment, forehead modification equipment, and probably DNA transfers to get the proper alien look to eyes/ears/toes/God help us.
So I am competely neutral because I don’t care, and I *care intensely*.
That said, I do not believe that Mr. Douchenozzle intended to say what he has been read as having said, at least not mostly. His rant could certainly have included a smidgen or a fuckton more recognition that, hey, there are like, chicks here, and they can do stuff to. But he does not, as the fisker seems to think, lob his grapeshot cannisters of girls=icky at the entire pink-painted half of the room; no, he elevates the cannon a bit and wheels it 10 degrees to the left to avoid the girls who he thinks are just fine, and aims his barrage at *a certain class of girls*.
I think that absent a deeply compelling and just fuckall-obvious reason to give one group a lower bar or an easier pass – for example, nine-year old girls who attempt to play highly complex multiperson starship simulators for the first time should be encouraged, not yelled at for missing targeting opportunities in the fog of war* – we ought to treat people alike. And I do perceive that there is a group of fan-esque females who, were they male and behaving in isomorphic fashion, would be considered posers and mocked and largely shunned and disregarded – or at the very least, they would not be taken seriously by other fans. (Interesting how fan tolerance often consists of just deciding someone is too dumb to worry about, so there’s no point in worrying about their ‘Twilight’ t-shirt or their Scott Bakula mancrush, and the True Fan smiles indulgently at the Lesser Zergling – “you are unimportant, which is nice, as it means I don’t need to bother with actively hating you”.)
Most of the guys who do start in that place tend to clue up pretty fast. They either find some fandom that really does speak to them beyond “gee, nobody here has even TRIED to pants me today”, or they adapt to the majoritarian social mores a little better, or they get married and start having sex with a woman who has no idea who Kah’less is and furthermore, doesn’t care to be informed and don’t come to cons anymore. They clue up because social/peer pressure is ugly and mean and heartrending, and, sometimes, quite effective. “Nobody pantsed me but when I asked why he was named Dr. Who that one guy looked like he really wanted to – maybe I should figure out what that was about.”
Some of the girls who start in the same awkward maladjustment to the fan milieu also adjust. Some others, it seems from my admittedly quite limited perspective – do not. And I don’t think that the reason for the nonadaptiveness is particularly hard to figure – if you act like an ass and everyone treats you like an ass, you start de-assing, real quick. If you act like an ass and – if not everyone, then at least a fair chunk of people – laugh at your Trek puns and tell you how much you’re rocking that Marina Sirtis ensemble and don’t even get mildly irritated when you say Mariah who? – you’re going to continue in your assdom.
Now, let us assume that (as is of course obvious) that I’m 100% right about everything I just said – Mr. Loafbag is still wrong. He was faced with a crowd of 100 Hitlers and 100 Mussolinis, and he spat at the Hitlers while raining fire from heaven on the lesser evil. Most of the fangirlz he is pissed at don’t know they’re doing anything irritating, or anything that is undermining the community that they think they’ve become a key part of. But most of their valorizing geek coterie knows damn well that a male fan, or a significantly un-conventionally-attractive female fan, would be hurled bodily into the Toddler Room for having the gall to dress as Counselor Troi without even knowing who that was.
So, in my capacity as newly-elected (by God) Pope of Casual Fandom, I forgive the guy 20% for his rant because, in a confused and not very endearingly stupid way, he is on the sniff of a problem. But I 80% do not forgive him, and banish him to the Toddler Room for a year’s worth of conventions, AND he may not read the next Game of Thrones novel for ten years, yes I said ten – because he yelled, and in an asshole way, at people who don’t deserve it, and because his rhetorical and mental carelessness sent a lot of shrapnel into the crowd of females that he claims to be cool with. You know, it isn’t like that girl in the knee-cut body armor (of the wrong faction and house for her katana design – GOD!!!!) wouldn’t be delighted to actually get a backgrounder on the armor heraldry system, or wouldn’t be rather relieved to get a quiet “it’s Marina actually, don’t sweat it” – she knew there was something off about “Mariah”.
Poser girls need mentors, not bombardment. Boys, too.
*Asterisk which despite being off-topic and waaaay down the page will pay off, trust me. After the first r0und, where she watched, the mostly-20s/30s males who were heavily playing the simulator invited Stephanie (9) to be the captain, a role which requires spirit and attention but not utmost knowledge of every rule and mechanic. A good wading-pool introduction, in other words. She did fine, gave some good orders, was quite conscientious about handing out praise and encouragement, kept up with the tactical situation, made some solid judgment calls.
But she won the hearts of those young men forever when the Logistics Officer, who is responsible for what the on-board starbases manufacture as the game runs, asked “Captain, should I begin production on a nuclear warhead?” She swiveled her bellicose little head and said something, this is close but not word perfect, something to the effect of “Commander, that is a stupid question. I WANT YOU TO ALWAYS BE BUILDING A NUKE. WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED THAT NUKES WERE ONE OF THE CHOICES.”
Genocidally murderous space warfare. You see, it can bring us all a little bit closer together.
Robert, I love your daughter. She is adorable and awesome, both.
Grace
(Quietly moves Grace up a few ranks in the lifeboat list of who makes it into the fallout shelter.)
Robert, if your daughter manages not to adopt your utterly irrational views on social justice and Pop Tart flavors, I look forward to the opportunity to cast my ballot for her for President in 2032.
I am sure she will find her own way on most things. However, there are some fundamentals which do not change. Hayeses d0 not stoop to electioneer; it’s conquest or nothing. Therefore, you will bend the knee on her timetable, not yours. I’m pretty sure she will want the Orion fleet in the shipyards by 2030, so I’d look for the 2020s as the most likely setting for the Hour of Regrettable Necessity. Your presumptive loyalty, though greatly degraded by your desire to frame her accession in democratic terms, is noted and I’ll see what I can do about getting you into one of the classier re-education facilities.
I had something to say about being new and not knowing stuff being totally different from being an ass, but then your daughter was cute and awesome, so screw it. I will build that kid a nuke any time.
Cosplayers are fun, and they add a lot of fun to conventions. Agreed, some of them are only there to show off their costuming skills and are not otherwise interested in fandom… but so what? Some people show up at a con and head straight for the dealer’s room to look for rarities all weekend. Some show up for a single hour to meet one TV or movie star they like, get an autograph, and go home. Some camp out in the movie rooms to watch obscure flicks; some hook up and have costumed orgies in the hotel suites. That’s what they get out of the event, and more power to ’em.
The whole POINT of a con is to have some fun doing whatever part of it appeals to you, while others do the same. Nerd hierarchies are silly and demonstrate your own insecurity, nothing more.
I’m trying to think of a time when I’ve heard of someone calling a dude attending a convention a poser.
Then again, I think the concept of posers at conventions is totally ludicrous. Absent the horrific fuckwit who went to Wiscon just to make fun of fat people… I mean, come on, everyone who comes is someone who’s paying money to hang out and have fun. They’re making an effort to be there. Yay!
If they’re posing, what exactly are they posing AS?
I’m sure that you are right, Mandolin; I’ve been to one convention in the last twenty years (and twenty in the five years before that) so my grasp of how the young people these days talk is undoubtedly antediluvian. We said poser in my day (1870-1873) and by it we meant the people who were not in the alpha circle of the local milieu, but thought that they were.
Kelly, yes, I didn’t mean that new and ass were a necessary identity, just that they were often correlates. It’s attitude that largely controls ass, no?
::facepalm::
I am dumbfounded at the sheer amount of STUPID in that post. I could barely even READ the thing, it’s so badly formatted, what with the lack of paragraph breaks (for the Wall of Text effect) and overuse of capital letters.
He’s a bigger dumbass than this guy!