This is Masque who belongs to friends of ours in Portland. We actually raised Masque from kittenhood at about three weeks when we found her and her brothers in our backyard. We bottlefed her, and weaned her onto solids, and wiggled the cat toys very gently on the ground so she could attack.
Masque lived with us for several years, but there was a lot of strife in the household by the end. After we got Masque fixed, she decided that she liked humans but she was no longer into the idea of other cats. Her brothers, with whom she had previously been very close, were very confused, and kept trying to play with and cuddle her. She was having none of it, so there were a lot of howling cats dashing around.
Since Masque moved up to Portland from California where we raised her, she’s become a floof. The winter has inspired her coat to become lush.
She runs away from me sometimes when we go to the friends’ house. I tell her that she’s ungrateful. “I raised you from a three-week-old kitten,” I say, and, “I bottle-fed you.”
If I stay long enough, she eventually comes to flop down next to me.
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Transcript
This cartoon has four panels, plus a small “kicker” panel beneath the bottom of the cartoon.
PANEL 1
An older man wearing glasses, sitting behind a desk, is talking to an intense man with a large black beard and wearing a suit jacket but no tie. We’ll call him “Blackbeard.”
GLASSES: We’re dropping your column. Many readers think you’re just too extreme.
BLACKBEARD: I have been silenced!
PANEL 2
Blackbeard is standing on stage behind a lectern, holding a hand high in the air as he declames. There’s a huge audience listening to him.
BLACKBEARD: I have been silenced!
PANEL 3
A newspaper lies on a table, near a coffee mug and a spoon. The newspaper is The Washington Post. A front page story shows a photo of Blackbeard talking, and a headline that says “I Have Been Silenced!”
PANEL 4
We are looking at a flatscreen TV. The TV shows Blackbeard appearing on Fox News. Blackbeard is yelling. An off-camera interviewer speaks.
INTERVIEWER: …here with his new book, “I have been silenced.”
BLACKBEARD: I have been silenced!
KICKER PANEL BELOW BOTTOM OF STRIP
Barry the cartoonist is talking to Blackbeard.
BARRY: It seems–
BLACKBEARD: STOP SILENCING ME!
In my previous post about Junot Díaz, I alluded to an essay I was in the middle of trying to write when I read the Boston Globe article in which he categorically denied the accusations of misogyny and sexual misconduct that have been lodged against him. That denial rendered mostly moot the tack I was taking in the piece, which had been based on the statement Díaz initially released through his agent, at least tacitly confirming that the allegations against him were true. Nonetheless, I think what I was trying to write about is still worth sharing. I’m not interested in debating here whether Díaz is guilty or innocent. If you’re interested, I made my own position clear regarding whom I believe in my earlier post and you can engage that whole debate, if you wish, by reading through the #JunotDiaz hashtag on Twitter.
Many of those responding in the immediate aftermath of the allegations against Díaz took refuge in the idea that “hurt people hurt people.” They wanted an explanation, a way to see him as damaged, and therefore flawed, not as the cynical, manipulative, and predatory hypocrite the accusations made him seem to be. I sympathize with that impulse, but in cases where a man who was violated as a boy becomes a perpetrator (and, yes, I realize Díaz was in this case only an alleged perpetrator), the explanatory power of “hurt people hurt people” actually obscures a very important fact: While many of those who commit sexual violence do have histories of sexual abuse, most boys who have been sexually violated do not go on to commit sexual violence against others.
To elide this fact does at least two objectionable things. First, it implicitly pathologizes what it means to be a male survivor, as if the violations committed against us were a kind of self-replicating virus. Indeed, this myth is sometimes referred to as “The Vampire Myth,” and it is on the list of myths about male survivors that every advocacy organization I know of makes it a point to fight against. The second problem with The Vampire Myth is that it shrouds in its pathologizing logic the fact that men who were sexually violated as boys were still socialized into dominant modes of manhood and masculinity, no differently than other men, including—for those of us who were violated by men—the men who violated us. Whatever else may be true about male survivors, in other words, when we commit sexual violence or act out in misogynistic ways, we are also always doing so as men. To suggest otherwise, to look at that behavior primarily through the ostensibly genderless lens of “hurt people hurt people,” is to imply that sexual violence perpetrated by male survivors has different roots than the same kind of violence when it is committed by other men—as if having been sexually violated somehow removes our gender socialization from us.
Not all men commit sexual violence, obviously, but misogyny and sexual violence are congruent with, do emerge from, the values that are inherent in typical male socialization. This is part of why, as a survivor myself, I resonate with the idea that I might be able to blame any such behavior on my part on the fact of having been violated. It would be nice, and convenient, to turn what the men who violated me did to me into a kind of teleology, the primary cause for which all the sexist, misogynist, and other dysfunctional behavior I’ve engaged in over the course of my life provides the evidence. Indeed, when my understanding of myself as a survivor was still new and raw, I saw myself—I think I needed to see myself—in that way. It helped maintain the integrity of a line I felt compelled to draw, about which I will say more below, between myself and the people who did, or other people who could, violate me. A person’s life, however, is far more complicated than can be explained by any single event, traumatic or otherwise; and so to pretend that the other formative experiences of my life, especially, in this case, my socialization as a man, have been secondary at best in determining how I have behaved as a man would be to pretend they were not formative experiences at all—and that makes absolutely no sense. Continue reading →
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After I posted this cartoon on Twitter, some folks assumed that the Youtuber was a caricature of a vlogger called “The Amazing Atheist.” That wasn’t my intent – I was just trying to draw a cliche of what right-wing vloggers look like – but after reading their tweets, I googled for photos of “The Amazing Atheist,” and damn.
Transcript of cartoon
This cartoon has four main panels, and also a tiny “kicker” panel under the bottom of the cartoon.
PANEL 1
This panel shows two men, in what looks like a kitchen. One is a bald man with glasses and a argyle sweater vest, the other is a man wearing a sleeveless shirt who has a full-sleeve tattoo on his left arm. Tattoo is sitting at a table, with a plate of food and a coffee mug in front of him, watching something on his smartphone. Argyle has his hand on Tattoo’s shoulder, and is leaning over to watch Tattoo’s smartphone.
ARGYLE: Whatcha watching?
TATTOO: Some Youtube guy.
YOUTUBER (speaking on smartphone)L You know what Democrats really want? Socialism!
PANEL 2
A close up of Tattoo’s smartphone. On the phone screen, a video is playing, showing a man yelling at the camera, a forefinger held up in the air.
YOUTUBER: Can you imagine how hard it is to be a cop now?> If you so much as rough up a suspect – BOOM! You’re fired!
PANEL 3
Like panel 2, a close-up on the smartphone. The youtuber looks aggravated and his holding both hands up in a “explaining my point” sort of gesture.
YOUTUBER: You can’t make jokes about anyone anymore! Jews, Blacks, gays, trans, fatties – all off limits!
YOUTUBER: Racism was a problem like a century ago – but that’s all over now!
PANEL 4
Argyle has turned to Tattoo is and is clasping his hands together in front of him, in a begging gesture. Tattoo is amused.
ARGYLE: Can we please move to the American the right thinks we live in?
TATTOO: It does sound wonderful!
SMALL KICKER PANEL BELOW THE BOTTOM OF THE STRIP
Argyle talks to Tattoo; they both look amused.
ARGYLE: Getting in should be easy – I hear they don’t guard the border at all.
Easily Mused: Al Williamson’s “The Success Story”This six-page horror comic, created in the 1960s, is a wonderful tongue-in-cheek response to the longstanding comics tradition of successful cartoonists having work by unaccredited assistants. Also, really beautiful drawings by Al Williamson.
I have no idea if anyone reading this would even want to watch a 40 minute video essay defending Disney’s “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” which is also about the original novel and the way stories are adapted to different times. But I found it very interesting.
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Transcript of Cartoon
This panel has four panels, plus a tiny “kicker” panel below the bottom of the cartoon. Each panel shows a Black woman wearing Saddle Oxford shoes is talking to a white woman with glasses and a pony tail.
PANEL 1
Saddle Shoes is leaning forward to explain something; Glasses rubs her chin thoughtfully and looks up into the air.
SADDLE SHOES: What we need to understand about white fragility is-
GLASSES: The phrase “white fragility” sounds racist to me.
PANEL 2
Saddle Shoes makes a conciliatory gesture, palms up; Glasses makes a “stop!” gesture with both hands, looking testy.
SADDLE SHOES: Sure, whatever.What we need to understand about white privilege is-
GLASSES: I don’t like that term, “white privilege.” Can’t we just say “racism” instead?
PANEL 3
Saddle Shoes, now looking testy herself, keeps trying to explain. Glasses looks angry, her hands on her hips.
SADDLE SHOES: Ooo-kay. What we need to understand about racism is-
GLASSES: The word “racism” is bullying and shuts down conversation!
PANEL 4
Saddle shoes looks annoyed, folding her arms. Glasses looks very pleased, opening her arms in a welcoming gesture.
SADDLE SHOES: I’m getting the impression you’d rather NOT have this conversation.
GLASSES: What a great idea! Let’s do that.
“KICKER” PANEL
The same pair of women. The woman with glasses is talking angrily.
GLASSES: Talking about things I disagree with is divisive!
At the end of every academic year, my union hosts a dinner at which a group of faculty, staff, and administration put on a musical show, the main purpose of which is to poke fun at ourselves. It’s a wonderful reminder that we shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously that we forget who we are, why we do the work we do, or why it matters that we are a union—one that just this year celebrated its 50th anniversary. I’ve been at the college for nearly three decades and I’ve been in every show except one, which I missed because of my wife’s graduation. The script is always original—we base it on the issues we’ve confronted during the year, the national issues that have been impinging on us, and the eternal issues that all teachers and students face—but the songs we sing are spoofs on well-known Broadway melodies, on standards from the American songbook, or popular music.
For the past two years, I have played Donald Trump, and the narrative of our show has been built around the conceit that this best president, with the best ideas, who can make the best deals, and who knows more about everything than anybody else was the best choice to solve the (very real) problems that have been plaguing our college for the past six or seven years. In last year’s show, I sang “I Am The Very Model of a Model College President”—based, of course, on Gilbert and Sullivan’s “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General“—and this year I sang our version of “Just in Time,” by Jule Styne, with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, about how I/Trump arrived just in time to deal with the campus’ most pressing problems. Here’s a montage from this year’s show, in which you can see me briefly in my Trump wig:
As you might imagine—we are an academic union in an agency-fee state—the then-still-not-decided Janus decision figured prominently in our thoughts this year. In my capacity as union secretary, I’d written five posts about the case for our blog, and so I was charged with figuring out how to work the case into the show. The third post in that series, Preparing for Janus: What We’re Up Against, zoomed out to look at the case from a national perspective, and what I learned from researching that post was what I tried to channel as I wrote the monologue that would be spoken by our version of Mark Janus. Now that I’ve read the decision itself, what I wrote seems to me even more apt than it was when I wrote it.
It’s satire, of course, which means it’s unabashedly partisan, so it’s not a fully fleshed-out argument; and, despite what my Mark Janus says, Donald Trump actually has very little to do with how the Janus case ended up before the Supreme Court, though Trump has been very useful to the right wing billionaires and ideologues who’ve been working for at least 15 years to make it happen. Still, I thought the monologue worth sharing:
Hello, my name is Mark Janus. Your new president, Donald Trump, has asked me to speak to you about why it’s so important to make Right-to Work the law of the land. President Trump—successful, self-made man that he is—truly has his finger on our nation’s pulse, and he understands why it’s important for working men and women to be able to find jobs, regardless of whether they get paid fairly, whether their working conditions are safe, whether they can get fired for no other reason than slapping away their boss’ hand when he—or she; have to be careful not to be sexist—started massaging the wrong inner thigh under the table at the company dinner no other employees were invited to…truly, you have no idea how lucky you are to have as your college president a man who really gets it, who will make sure that stuff like fair pay and fair treatment don’t get in the way of your right to work.
So why did he ask me to come here to speak with you? After all, I’m just an average guy from Illinois. Well, I’m also the plaintiff in that Supreme Court case you’ve been hearing so much about. The one where the Court’s going to decide once and for all whether or not average people like us can be forced to pay a union for services that union provides us. I’ll give you an example. I work for the Department of Health Care and Family Services in Illinois, and I’m represented by AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. They negotiated a fair contract. I get paid pretty well for what I do; I have a good benefits package; a path for promotion if I want to take it; a retirement plan. The contract also helps guarantee that my workload stays reasonable, that I have recourse if I’m treated unfairly; and I stand fully behind my right to all of that, and to the union’s role in making sure that contract isn’t violated…and you know what? So does my legal team, and those wonderful Koch brothers, and all those other conservative organizations, who are paying for my legal team. In fact, I don’t know a single person on my side who doesn’t say, “Sure, if there are enough people who want to form a union, they should do so; and if they want to go ahead and negotiate a fair contract for everyone in the bargaining unit, then, hell yes, they should go ahead and do just that. If it makes them happy, it makes us happy.” We just believe that if they’re the ones who want to be a union, they’re the only ones who should have to pay for being a union. That’s what freedom’s all about, isn’t it? Not having to pay for something when you can get it for free.
Here’s another example. When I was hired, even though I said I didn’t want to join the union, the union still deducted from my salary what it calls a “fair share fee.” Yeah, I know, that money is supposed to compensate them for the work they have to do to negotiate for me, to represent me…but do you know what they then had the nerve to ask me to do? Lobby for a soda tax! Can you believe it? First, what the hell does that have to do with education? More than that, though, they put me in the position of having to say no, of having not to show up for that rally or whatever—because, frankly, I think a soda tax is stupid; if people want to get fat on soft drinks, that’s their business—and putting me in that position was just so unfair! What good are all those benefits, who cares about “the work they do on my behalf” if they’re going to treat me like that?
So that’s why I’m here. Because your President Trump knows my name has become synonymous with the kind of freedom of choice you need to polish the jewel this college is, the kind of freedom on which our great country was founded—though if you study ancient Roman mythology, you also know I was named after Janus, the god of beginnings and endings, and so I am asking you to help me make this the beginning of the end of the unions’ left-wing stranglehold on our nation’s politics… (Here, Janus was interrupted by other characters who sang a pro-union song.)
This is Kennedy. She lives with my friend Jenna. Kennedy is quite pretty, and Kennedy is quite aloof. She really likes Jenna. The rest of us are not that interesting. Although, if she is sitting on her scratching post, then she is willing to accept gentle patting, perhaps.
She may have been a rescue from a hoarder’s house, which perhaps explains some of her wariness.
Despite the lack of petting, I realized that Kennedy had decided we were people who belonged to her when my friends fostered another cat. Kennedy became jealous and demanded all the attention. Our attention included.
Kennedy sometimes gets very angry at the downstairs bathroom.
Posted inCats, Living a life|Comments Off on My life in cats: Kennedy
Not because I know him (I don’t); not because his work has been important to me (I have read very little of it); but as a fellow survivor of childhood sexual violence.
In April of this year, when I read “The Silence: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma,” Junot Diaz’ essay in The New Yorker about being raped as an eight-year-old boy, I was filled with such feelings of hope and empathy, of compassion and camaraderie, of solidarity and gratitude, that I immediately sent him an email to say thank you and, since I have been telling my own story publicly for more than a couple of decades now, to offer words of support and encouragement. “As more [survivors tell our stories],” I wrote in the first paragraph,
we not only offer hope to, make it safer for, those of us who have not yet been able to speak out. We also help to define a cultural framework within which to see honestly, and a language with which to talk about accurately, an aspect of all-too-many men’s experience that is profoundly misunderstood…dismissed, denied and/or derided.
I had no idea who monitored the email address I used, or if Díaz would ever read what I wrote, much less respond to it, but I was still happy to have written him. Then, just a few days later, I read the tweet in which Zinzi Clemmons alleged that Díaz had forcibly kissed her:
I read as well the statements by Carmen Maria Machado, Monica Byrne, Alisa Valdes, and others who told stories that not only seemed to shred Díaz’ reputation as an ally to women, specifically women of color, but also placed his New Yorker essay in a much more complicated context. Given my own experience of writing about what the men who violated me did to me, I did not for one moment think—as Clemmons and others suggested—that Díaz had written his essay in order to preempt accusations that he knew were coming. At the same time, however, there was no way to avoid the difficulty inherent in seeing him as both a survivor and a perpetrator, a status he seemed to confirm in the statement he released through his agent:
I take responsibility for my past… That is the reason I made the decision to tell the truth of my rape and its damaging aftermath. This conversation is important and must continue. I am listening to and learning from women’s stories in this essential and overdue cultural movement. We must continue to teach all men about consent and boundaries.
To be honest, I felt like a fool. In writing Díaz, I had without realizing it violated a commitment I made to myself at least three decades ago: Never to stand in solidarity of any kind with anyone who’d done anything like what the men who violated me had done. I didn’t blame myself for this. After all, how could I have known? Nonetheless, a part of me wanted to write Díaz again and take back every word of what my original email had said. Doing that, however, would have meant violating another, equally important commitment I feel obligated to keep: Never to turn my back on a fellow survivor.
How to keep both those commitments with integrity is a question I’ve been trying to write about for the past couple of months. Indeed, I had just finished a draft I was satisfied with when I read—and this is the source of my disappointment—the recent article in The Boston Globe where Díaz categorically denies all the allegations made against him. The denial itself, of course, is deeply problematic, if not entirely unexpected. Díaz, after all, has a lot to lose if he ends up going the way of other high profile men caught out by #MeToo accusations, and I can see how MIT’s decision not to fire him and The Boston Review’s decision to keep him on as fiction editor might encourage him to try to clear his name completely.
What’s disappointing about his denial is the form it takes. Accompanied by his attorney—which means you can guarantee that everything he’s quoted as saying has been carefully and strategically thought through—Díaz does precisely what he was accused of by the people who saw the publication of his New Yorker essay as a cynical and manipulative ploy. He uses his experience of rape and his status as a survivor to garner sympathy for himself. Then he uses that sympathy to stake out a moral high ground, calling into question the character, integrity, and veracity of his accusers—a strategy highly reminiscent of the long-discredited ploy used by defense attorneys to shame and discredit women who testify against the men accused of raping them. Continue reading →
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After Justice Kennedy announced his retirement – within an hour – my twitter feed spat forth, again and again, Bernie fans blaming the loss of the Supreme Court on Hillary supporters (for not voting for Bernie to win the primary), and Hillary supporters blaming Bernie supporters (those who hadn’t voted for Hillary in the general). The tone, on both sides often skewed heavily towards “bitter.”
We are a month shy of two years since Bernie conceded the primary. And we lack a time machine, and cannot know what would have been different if Bernie somehow won the primary. It is time to move forward, and it is infinitely frustrating to me that, even in the face of utter Supreme Court disaster, so much of the base seems unable to. I don’t know the right way forward, but I’m positive that keeping our hands about each other throats’ isn’t it.
Saying this is not saying that neither side has a point. Hillary supporters are right to say that much of the treatment of Clinton stinks of misogyny. And Bernie supporters are right that having the primary election seemingly wrapped up by a powerful party figure long before voting has begun is not healthy for the party. These are ongoing problems that need to be addressed going forward; but whatever forward progress can be made by re-litigating the 2016 primary, has already been made. There’s no more fruit in that tree.
Artwise, I’m very pleased with how this cartoon looks. I think the color and design works well. (Although I might come to hate the art given some time.) A one-panel cartoon can have a more unified design than a multi-panel cartoon can, and it’s fun to be able to play with that.
It was also fun to do “the executioner,” another classic gag-cartoon trope. I don’t know if any executioners ever actually went shirtless, but a lot of cartoonists have drawn them that way over the decades, and I’m happy to feel a part of that tradition.
It’s funny how different gag cartooning is from adventure comics. My first instinct was to put the executioner in the foreground, mostly in silhouette, looming over the main figures on the block. It would have been much more dramatic, and completely wrong for a gag cartoon.
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This is a one-panel cartoon. Two people in modern clothes are on a platform, kneeling across an executioner’s block, their hands tied behind their backs. They are arguing. Nearby, a huge man with a black hood covering his face, and a huge axe, stands at the ready. In front of the platform, a crowd cheers.
MAN: If you Hillarybots had supported Bernie, we wouldn’t be in this situation!
WOMAN: Ha! If you Bernie Bros had supported Hillary, we wouldn’t be in this situation!
At the end of every academic year, my union hosts a dinner at which a group of faculty, staff, and administration put on a musical show, the main purpose of which is to poke fun at ourselves. It’s a wonderful reminder that we shouldn’t take ourselves so seriously that we forget who we are, why we do the work we do, or why it matters that we are a union—one that just this year celebrated its 50th anniversary. I’ve been at the college for nearly three decades and I’ve been in every show except one, which I missed because of my wife’s graduation. The script is always original—we base it on the issues we’ve confronted during the year, the national issues that have been impinging on us, and the eternal issues that all teachers and students face—but the songs we sing are spoofs on well-known Broadway melodies, on standards from the American songbook, or popular music.
It is inevitable that people will detransition – no medical treatment has a 100% satisfaction rate. But 94% of trans…