Alas, a Blog | Feminist, anti-racist, pro-fat, plus whatever else we feel like talking about.

Cartoon: 5 Things Congress Says When It Plans To Cut Social Security | Patreon

Posted on August 19, 2023 by Ampersand

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Drawing five random characters (or semi-random, in this case, since they all had to be plausibly the sort of person who could be in Congress and seeking to cut Social Security) is always fun.

In this case, to make them different looking and also for my own entertainment. I used different base shapes for their skulls; panel two guy has a tube-shaped skull, panel three a sphere, panel four a triangle, panel five an oval, and panel six a rectangle. If I don’t think about it I tend to default to giving all characters a spherical head, but it’s nice to switch it up.

The challenge here was drawing the Capitol Building in the background of panel seven. I could have done a more impressive-looking drawing, with less effort, by tracing a photo, but I was determined to draw the building freehand.

I have to confess, the results aren’t my best drawing ever, but I’m pretty confident that it’s recognizably the Capitol Building, or at least recognizably “some big government building,” which is all that’s required for the storytelling to work.

(I do think my ability to draw buildings without relying on tracing has been improving, but it’s a slow process).

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One thing that isn’t in this cartoon, but maybe I’ll do a future cartoon about it, because it really pisses me off:

Politicians can only get away with code phrases for “we want to cut Social Security” – such as “raise the retirement age” – only when news media allows it. And the media shouldn’t allow it, ever, from politicians of either party. These code phrases should be translated to “cutting Social Security,” not five or ten paragraphs deep in the story, but in the headline.

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has seven panels. The first six panels are a two-by-three grid taking up the left half of the cartoon; the seventh panel takes up the entire right half of the cartoon.

PANEL 1

This panel is empty except for the title of the cartoon, printed in large, friendly looking letters.

5 THINGS CONGRESS SAYS WHEN IT PLANS TO CUT SOCIAL SECURITY

PANEL 2

A red haired man wearing a brown suit, and a dark tie with red dots, is speaking directly to the reader, looking a little anxious.

MAN: Cuts? NEVER! We only want to… er… “raise the retirement age.”

PANEL 3

A smiling man, wearing a suit with a red striped tie, worries his hands in front of his chin as he talks to the reader.

MAN: We’ll just take billions out of Social Security funds to play the stock market! What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

PANEL 4

A man with a salesman’s grin, wearing a cream-colored jacket over a light blue shirt and red tie, holds his lapels as he talks to the reader.

MAN: Social Security should “sunset” every five years unless Congress re-passes it. (Sunsets can’t be bad! They’re so pretty!)

PANEL 5

A well-dressed woman wearing a red jacket over a v-neck gray blouse is looking a bit up into the air as she searches for the right word. Her expression is uncertain.

WOMAN: Overhaul! Wait that sounds bad… Reform! No… um…

PANEL 6

An older man, but still quite strong looking, has white hair parted on one side and is wearing a white button down shirt with a black necktie. He has a stern expression as he speaks to the reader.

MAN: Our debt limit plan won’t cut Social Security! It’ll just force Social Security cuts. That’s totally different!

PANEL 7

This panel has a large caption at the top, in the same font as panel one, which says:

1 THING IT NEVER SAYS

The red-haired man from panel two is back, talking directly to the reader and making a chopping motion with one hand. His expression is stern. Behind him we can see the U.S. Capitol Building (although the Statue of Freedom on top of the building has been replaced by a statue of Woodstock from Peanuts).

MAN: We plan to cut Social Security.

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5 Things Congress Says When It Plans To Cut Social Security | Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Economics and the like | Comments Off

Cartoon: The Time Before Gender Ideology

Posted on August 3, 2023 by Ampersand

This cartoon is drawn by my so-frequent-we-call-each-other-comics-spouses collaborator Becky Hawkins, who writes:

This cartoon combines two of my favorite things: period settings and making fun of gender norms!

I had a blast (and took a trip down memory lane) looking for details that would place the reader in each location and time. I remembered a second-grade classmate’s WWF shirt, a Lisa Frank poster, and raiding my mom’s closet for dress-up items. I also remembered that if you’re a kid and don’t know that a slip is underclothing, it looks like a fancy lacy dress.

Here’s a combination of Barry’s script, my commentary, and our gChat conversations:

Panel 1: Colors for 1-3 are in sepia, like century-old photos (unless you don’t like that idea), but fashions and cultural stuff are from the 60s-80s.

I did not like that idea. As the clothing styles of my childhood and teen years swing back into fashion and my eyeballs are confronted with colors that I swear I haven’t seen in decades, I’ve become aware of how strongly colors can evoke a time period. I wanted to lean into that.

Barry’s script didn’t specify that the kids were dressing up in adult clothes, but that’s the activity that came to mind. These could be grandma’s clothes or mom’s pre-motherhood clothes that she doesn’t want to get rid of. Either way, they feel fancy and exotic to the kids. I tried to go hard on 1960s carpeting and wallpaper, and more 1940s with the pillbox hat, gloves, belted dress, and handbag.

From Barry’s script:

Panel 2: A girl being confronted by two other girls. Might be a playground or a park. One of them has a “pac-woman” lunchbox or shirt.
Could also be a sleepover in one of the girls’ bedrooms. (Bringing posters and PJ patterns into play to help date it.)
Surprising but true fact: I was never a little girl! So I’m especially open to suggested rewrites in this panel.

IM exchange between Becky and Barry:

Becky: The sleepover panel in your latest script gets my former girlchild seal of approval 🙃

Barry: Good! I mean, not good in the sense that it sucks that this is a real thing. But you know, good that the script works. :-p

Becky: I still remember some girl I barely know making a big deal that I filled in “Brad Renfro” on a questionnaire in 7th grade 🤷🏻‍♀️😆

Barry: LOL! Panels 1 and 3 are so autobiographical for me!

From Barry’s script:

Panel 3: Roger is a fat boy (age 10 or so) who was just sitting on the ground reading and is now being confronted/surrounded by two or three bully boys. Lunchboxes or tee shirt themes or action figures could include A Team, Knight Rider, smurfs, Bionic Man, E.T. the Fonz, Pac Man or Pac Woman. (In any of panels 1-3, not just this panel). Or any other ideas you have for dating the scenes in panels 1-3.

Barry, thank you for giving me so many ideas that I completely ignored.

Panel 4: Middle-aged crabby man talking to a couple of gender-ambiguous-dressed teens. This panel is in full color, not sepia. One or two of the characters are carrying smartphones.
Setting: Could be a public street. Or a family-Thanksgiving like setting. I’m open to ideas.

I find it funny that the last panel, scripted as the “full color” one, ended up being the least colorful. I didn’t feel like cramming a public street or a Thanksgiving dinner into the panel, so I tried drawing the people in a generic fast food restaurant. I thought about switching it to a mac store, but asked Barry for a suggestion. He suggested a mac store. Done! I think the spare white background provides a good contrast with the other panels.

I hear a lot of complaints that “androgynous fashion” is used to mean “boxy beige and gray clothes for skinny white people.” Also, when you search that term:

The floral romper, bright boots, and pride shirt in panel 4 are in keeping with the clothes I see in Portland and on my corner of the internet these days.

Barry and I had this IM exchange because of the name of the shared Photoshop file:

Barry: I just got a dropbox notice which said “Becky Hawkins changed gender ideology.” 😆

Becky: ROFL… I feel so powerful all of a sudden.

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels, each showing a different scene.

PANEL 1

Three children are playing on the carpeted floor; behind them we can see a wooden dresser, one drawer left open, and wallpaper with a pattern of hearts. There’s a jewelry box open on the floor with them, and they are wearing dresses (and in one case, a slip) over their ordinary clothing, opera gloves, a hat with a veil attached, etc.. Judging by hair length, they are two girls and one boy.

OFF-PANEL ADULT VOICE: Bobby, take that OFF! Dresses are for GIRLS!

PANEL 2

A girl’s bedroom; posters on the wall, a bed with a pink blanket matching the pink phone and lamp on the nightstand, snacks and backpacks lying on the floor. Three girls are on the floor, lying on bedrolls, dressed in sleep clothing (we can see Ariel from The Little Mermaid on the back on one’s shirt, and a rearing unicorn on another‘s). A fourth girl is lying on the bed. The girl on the bed is speaking to one of the girls on a bedroll; the girl on bed is cheerful, the girl on the bedroll looks nervous.

GIRL ON BED: Which boy do you like?

GIRL WITH UNICORN SHIRT: Keep in mind that your answer WILL be dissected by us and you’ll be ostracized if we don’t like it.

PANEL 3

A schoolyard or sports field; green mown grass, bleachers in the background. Three boys, standing, are surrounding and making fun of a fourth boy, who is sitting cross-legged on the ground and holding a book protectively. Two of the bully boys are grinning; a fourth is yelling loudly.

1st BULLY: Roger is weak and bad at sports and he reads a lot.

YELLING BULLY: UNACCEPTABLE! Let’s hit him and tell everyone he’s gay!

PANEL 4

We’re in an Apple Store, or something similar; white walls, widely-spaced counters displaying tablets, phones and laptops. A middle-aged man, scowling, with close-cropped hair and a dark tee shirt, is glowering at a couple of younger people. The two younger people are a bit gender-ambiguous in their dress. One is wearing a newspaper boy style cap with a rainbow-striped crop top shirt, suspenders, and big clunky purple shoes; they’re giving the middle-aged man the finger. The other has long hair, a van dyke beard, and is wearing a green floral jumper.

SCOWLING MAN: There was never any “gender ideology” when I was a kid!

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In The Time Before Gender Ideology Existed | Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics | 1 Comment

Cartoon: The GOP’s Dream Speech

Posted on August 1, 2023 by Ampersand

This cartoon was drawn by frequent collaborator Kevin Moore.

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From a 2022 article in the Pennsylvania News-Standard:

“Critical race theory goes against everything Martin Luther King Jr. taught us, [which is] to not judge others by the color of their skin,” Kevin McCarthy, Republican minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, tweeted in July.

McCarthy’s point – a ludicrous one to attribute to MLK – was that he thinks “Critical Race Theory” is bad. To make his case, he alluded to MLK’s August 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial. More specifically, he was referring to a single sentence of that speech – the only sentence of that speech, or indeed of MLK’s entire career as an orator and writer, that any Republican seems to be familiar with.

According to McCarthy, this is “everything Martin Luther King Jr. taught us.” Which is far from true; it’s just everything that McCarthy wishes to hear.

The same article also quotes Chuck Dickerson, an NAACP member:

“A lot of people tend to focus just on the King who spoke about his dream at the March on Washington in ‘63,” Dickerson said. “They don’t know or don’t like to focus on the King who was speaking out against American imperialism and U.S. involvement in Vietnam by the time he was assassinated in ‘68.”

This is one of several cartoons I’ve done on the subject of how the GOP misuses MLK’s “I Have A Dream” speech while ignoring – or actively erasing – everything else MLK ever said and did. I don’t know why this gets under my skin, but it does, and that’s why I return to it every few years.

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I’m writing this from Ithaca, New York, where I’m visiting with family. Last night we were treated to a truly spectacular thunderstorm, with deep thooms and bright flashes that we almost never get to see in Portland, Oregon.

Nothing makes me feel more cozy than watching a big storm while safely indoors. I was raised mostly in the Northeastern US, and although I love living in Portland, I do miss cool storms.

That’s not relevant to the cartoon, it’s just what’s on my mind as I write this. :-)

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels, plus a tiny fifth “kicker” panel below the bottom of the cartoon.

PANEL 1

Dr Martin Luther King Jr, dressed in a gray 1960s suit with a black tie, stands behind a podium, with an array of microphones positioned to catch his words. Behind him we can see a crowd of Black supporters listening. MLK is holding up a finger to emphasize his point.

Behind him, a white MAGA dude, wearing a polo shirt with a big green stripe, green shorts, and a red MAGA cap, is emerging out of some sort of sci-fi portal hanging in the air. The MAGA dude is holding out a hand in a “STOP!” gesture and has an urgent, wide-eyed expression.

MLK: I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by—

MAGA: STOP! Dr. King, we gotta talk!

PANEL 2

Dr King looks a bit annoyed at the interruption, but remains courteous, speaking softly to the MAGA dude. The MAGA dude, not seeming to notice King’s annoyance, grins hugely and puts a hand on King’s shoulder.

MLK: Er… Excuse me, my friend. I’m giving a speech right now.

MAGA: I know! The 21st century GOP sent me back in a Time Machine to tell you to stop.

PANEL 3

MLK, taken aback, turns to face the MAGA dude. The MAGA dude, still grinning hugely, explains.

MLK: Pardon me?

MAGA: The “character not skin” bit? SUPER DUPER! But you said so many things that aren’t good for us! Like reparations, and socialism, and anti-war. Be a pal and quit?

PANEL 4

MLK is amused, clearly holding back a laugh. The MAGA dude is now the one taken aback.

MLK: So you think I’ll be silent because a white man from the future says my words are inconvenient for him?

MAGA: Uh… Yeah. Why, is that a problem?

TINY KICKER PANEL UNDER THE CARTOON

MLK: You don’t know the first thing about me, do you?

MAGA: Nope! And I’d like to keep it that way!

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The GOP’s Dream Speech | Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Conservative zaniness, right-wingers, etc., Race, racism and related issues, Racism | 4 Comments

Cartoon: Dragscrolling

Posted on July 16, 2023 by Ampersand

First of all, I’m so happy to introduce my new collaborator Nadine Scholtes. Her official bio:

Nadine Scholtes (born 1992) is an illustrator and comic book artist based in Luxembourg. She has been drawing her whole life, but her studies in Art began when she was 16 years old at Lycée des Arts et Métiers, and years later made her bachelor’s degree in Communication Design at Hochschule Trier.

Nadine writes:

I enjoyed drawing the expressions, how she becomes more frustrated by every panel. I chose to draw this comic because it makes my blood boil how people treat and judge lgbtq+ people and you can only imagine how they are at home. And don’t think that animals don’t judge you, my cats do so by my every move.

I love Nadine’s art in this strip – the solid-looking backgrounds, the cat (the CAT!), the believable outfit, and most of all the evolving expressions. Even if I hadn’t written it, this would be a strip I love to look at.

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Does anyone have a good idea for what I should name this strip? My first thought for a title was “Dragscrolling” but is that too obscure? If you have a thought, please leave a comment.

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To be fair, it’s not only anti-queer people who get their time sucked away by doomscrolling. Lots of people do it, from every political group. It gives us a false sense of control, of knowing what’s out there; it gives us a dopamine rush; it gives us a social reward if we’re the first one to report (whatever the outrage is) on our social networks.

But it matters what you’re doomscrolling for. It’s one thing to doomscroll looking for the latest Trump embarrassment; it’s quite another to doomscroll for photos of marginalized groups to mock.

GCs (stands for “gender criticals,” the name TERFs have given themselves) are constantly searching for two things: men in unconvincing drag (even if it’s deliberately unconvincing), and trans women who – at least in the curated photos GCs choose – don’t “pass” as cisgender women. (The GC, of course, don’t distinguish between these two very different things.)

The photos, when found, are circulated on GC social boards and media. Often accompanied, without any conscious irony, by complaints that “they’re shoving their lifestyle down our throats!”

The effect of all this is to prescribe a restrictive idea of gender. Women are only allowed to look a certain way; those who don’t look feminine enough for GCs’ arbitrary standards are mocked and disdained. There’s even been a bunch of times that GCs (and their allies the Christian right) have circulated photos of cis women who aren’t what GCs consider feminine, calling them “men in dresses.”

That this is coming from people who call themselves gender critical is laughable. What they are is gender police.

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has seven panels, all showing the same thing: A woman, seated at a desk in what looks like an apartment, clicking a mouse as she looks at her computer. Her blonde hair is held out of her face by a purple hairband, and she’s wearing a dark blue blouse with pink trim shaped like flower petals, and capri jeans.

PANEL 1

From behind, we see the woman looking at her monitor as she clicks her mouse (SFX: click click click). An orange and white cat sits on the floor, patting her leg with a paw to try and get attention. A window behind her shows daylight.

WOMAN (thought): There’s always a new one up…

PANEL 2

The woman leans her face on one hand, looking a bit frustrated and still manipulating her mouse (SFX: scroll scroll scroll). The cat is climbing up the chair, and the window behind her is getting darker.

WOMAN (thought): Where IS it?

PANEL 3

The woman continues to search (SFX:click scroll click), while the cat sits on the desk, tapping her on her arm with one paw.

WOMAN (thought): C’mon… I’ll find one somewhere.

PANEL 4

The woman leans forward a little, still looking annoyed. The cat, also annoyed, glares at her. It’s even darker outside.

WOMAN (thought): I’ll check the newsgroup.

PANEL 5

The woman rubs a hand through her hair, now looking not just frustrated but a little mad as she keeps searching (SFX: scroll scroll scoll click). Her cat, unnoticed, jumps off the desk.

PANEL 6

The camera zooms in closer as the woman, fully angry now, pounds her fist on the desk. Behind her, we can see that it’s full dark and there are stars in the sky.

PANEL 7

This panel is larger than the other panels. The woman pushes her chair back, pointing a finger at the screen, and yells angrily. In the foreground, the cat walks away but looks back at her resentfully.

WOMAN: AHA! A picture of a MAN in a DRESS! WHY must they SHOVE it in my face?

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Dragscrolling | Barry Deutsch on Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer issues, Transsexual and Transgender related issues | 2 Comments

Cartoon: What I Said CAN’T Be Racist Because…

Posted on July 14, 2023 by Ampersand

This cartoon is drawn by my most frequent collaborator, Becky Hawkins. Becky writes:

Coming up with 8 different character designs is one of the treats and challenges of drawing a cartoon like this. It’s either a fun exercise, or it feels overwhelming and you open and close the file several times over multiple days without making progress because you’re not sure what anyone should look like and facial expressions are hard and all your sketches look bad. (It’s been a tiring month. I may not have been in a great headspace.) Fortunately, deadlines can be very inspirational, and I’m really happy with how the finished cartoon looks!

I try to vary the hairstyles, body shapes, and clothing of each character. When I feel stuck, I scroll Facebook to look for looks that pique my interest. All resemblance between these cartoon characters and persons in my Facebook feed are entirely coincidental and based on me not remembering what contemporary humans look like.

For the chalkboard in panel 2, I looked up stock photos of “complicated math equation” and stitched together the parts that looked the coolest. I also added a big R for “racist.”

I was originally planning to save time by limiting the color palette to two colors, like in another cartoon I drew, “Things To Stop Saying To Autistic People.” But I didn’t think the panel with blackface would read clearly without a more realistic coloring style. So I used another trick for a slightly less limited palette: color in a few things, then look for where to reuse those colors. I started with the orange jumpsuit, banana, and makeup. Those colors could show up in other people’s hair, the professor’s elbow patches, and the halo. I’d imagined the jewelry in panel 1 as turquoise, so I used that color for the jewelry and some of the backgrounds. When I used the exact same blue, orange, and yellow in every panel, it looked a little flat. So I desaturated the color on the backgrounds and added a different blue to the palette. If you’ve read this far, thanks for getting into the weeds with me!

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Of course, it’s totally possible to deny that a statement is racist in a meaningful way. For example, “when I said I don’t trust people like them, I was referring to bowlers. That some of them are Latinx isn’t relevant.”

But it’s all too common to refute criticisms of what someone did or said with defenses based on who the person is. “What I said can’t be racist, because [I have a Black friend.] The part in brackets is irrelevant to whether or not what was said was racist.

People with Black friends can say racist things. Even Black people can say racist things. In general, the way to figure out if a statement is racist is to examine the statement, not to examine the speaker.

Not every panel in this cartoon is an example of this sort of logical fallacy, but most of them are. And all of them are examples of people switching the subject from what was said, to talking about themselves. And although the cartoon exaggerates, this sort of thing is really really common in real life. (And even more common on Twitter).

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has eight panels, each of which shows a single white person speaking directly to the reader. An additional ninth panel – the center panel of the grid – has nothing in it but a large caption, written in a distorted font. The caption says:

WHAT I SAID CAN’T BE RACIST BECAUSE

PANEL 1

A fashionable looking woman, with an undercut hairstyle, cats eye glasses and a septum piercing, waves a hand dismissively.

WOMAN: Liberals can’t be racist. Everyone knows that.

PANEL 2

A man dressed like an academic, including a bow tie and a jacket with elbow patches, is standing in front of a blackboard, pointing to the blackboard with a, er, pointer. The blackboard is covered with complicated looking math equations, and at the bottom there’s a simple drawing of the academic’s face, and a drawing of a devil face, with a not equal sign (“≠”) between the two faces.

MAN: Because racists are bad bad people, and I’m a good person. Q.E.D.!

PANEL 3

A red-haired man, wearing a collared shirt with a nametag, points to himself. He has a pleased and proud expression. There’s a footnote at the bottom of the panel.

MAN: I’ve got a Black friend!*

FOOTNOTE: *work acquaintance

PANEL 4

A good-looking man in his twenties, wearing an open plaid shirt over a white t shirt, is speaking to us.

MAN: I’m not white! Family legend says that great great great Grandma was an Indian!

PANEL 5

This is the central panel. It has nothing in it but the words “WHAT I SAID CAN’T BE RACIST BECAUSE” in large distressed letters.

PANEL 6

A man talks to us, wearing blackface makeup and holding a banana. He’s shrugging.

MAN: I was only joking! That makes it okay!

PANEL 7

A blonde woman holding a drink makes the “come here” gesture towards people who are out of panel.

WOMAN: I adopted three children of color! THREE!

WOMAN: Prop, Shield and Excuse, come here so I can show these folks.

PANEL 8

A woman speaks to us. She looks as if she’s about to cry, and is holding a handkerchief in one hand.

WOMAN: If you say something I said is racist I might start crying and no one wants that.

PANEL 9

A person (could be either female or male) closes their eyes and holds their hands in front of them, as if praying. They are wearing blue robes. There is a halo shining out from behind their head, drawn as if in stained glass.

PERSON: My intentions were pure.

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Racism | 41 Comments

Cartoon: Believing (Some) Women

Posted on June 20, 2023 by Ampersand

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This comic was drawn by a new collaborator, Kelly Lawrence. Kelly says:

My name’s Kelly, and I’m a comic artist and illustrator based in the Pacific Northwest. I love to use bold line and color, and I’m always excited to work with a subject matter that uplifts others.

I was drawn to this cartoon because I’m a firm supporter of sex workers and oppose how exclusive some feminists are about what women deserve to be respected. All women deserve to be listened to.

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As Kelly says, “some” feminists. That’s important – a strip like this isn’t meant as a knock on feminism in general, just anti-sex-worker feminism, or SWERFs (like TERFs, but with “sex worker” replacing “trans” in the acronym).

It’s curious that – in my anecdotal experience – most SWERFs are TERFs. There’s a horseshoe effect going on, in which the most (allegedly) radical feminists have wound up preaching the same sexual ethics as conservative Christians. Both SWERFs and conservative Christians frame sex workers as women who are victims, and if many sex workers don’t see themselves as victimized, it means they don’t know their own minds.

In an academic paper, feminist economist Victoria Bateman wrote about how SWERF thinking replicates “the cult of female modesty.”

Contrary to radical feminism, I will argue that it is society’s division of women into “good girls” and “whores”, where “whores” are deemed as undeserving of respect, which can often be found at the root of society-wide mistreatment of women. The radical feminist ambition—which seeks to abolish sex work—conspires in such thinking, fuelling “whore” stigma by suggesting that sex work is wrong, that no woman in her “right mind” would choose to do it (hence all sex workers can be cast as “victims”), and that sex workers are the (albeit unwilling) cause of the sins men inflict on other women. Rather than challenging the “cult of female modesty”, feminists conspire in its teaching.

If you have time and interest, the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (ICRSE), a sex-worker-led umbrella group of various sex workers rights organizations in thirty-five countries, has published a terrific overview of the relationship between sex work and feminism. (It’s thirty pages long, a little dry and academic but totally readable). Like virtually all sex worker rights organizations, ICRSE advocates for decriminalization and ending stigma.

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each of the panel shows two young women in an outdoor area with trees and a paved walking path – maybe a college quad.

One woman, standing behind the table, holds a megaphone and is speaking out to the world in general. She has neck-length hair, fashionably choppy, and is wearing a blue hoodie over jeans and a gray shirt. (I’ll call her “HOODIE”.) Her table is surrounded by banners saying “real men don’t buy women” and “sex work is violence against women”; her table has stacks of pamphlets, as well as a thermos and some pens, and a little pop-up sign which says “prostitution is rape.” (Nice detail work from Kelly!).

The other woman is walking past in the first panel. She has her hair in a high ponytail, is wearing jeans and a pink t shirt, and is carrying a small purse. (I’ll call her “PONYTAIL.”)

PANEL 1

Hoodie is talking with conviction into her megaphone, throwing a fist into the air. Ponytail is walking by.

HOODIE (loudly): WE MUST ALWAYS BELIEVE WOMEN!

PANEL 2

Ponytail’s attention has been drawn, and she pauses and turns to face Hoodie.

HOODIE (loudly): WE MUST ALWAYS LISTEN TO WOMEN!

PANEL 3

Hoodie continues shouting with her megaphone, looking even more passionate. Ponytail, excited by what she’s hearing, holds her hands up and speaks to Hoodie.

HOODIE (loudly): BELIEVING WOMEN AND LISTENING TO WOMEN… THAT’S THE ESSENCE OF FEMINISM!

PONYTAIL: Yes! Exactly!

PANEL 4

Hoodie has swung her megaphone around and is yelling through it, right into Ponytail’s face; Ponytail winces back, looking surprised and annoyed.

PONYTAIL: I’m a sex worker and–

HOODIE (loudly): NOT WOMEN LIKE YOU.

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Believing (Some) Women on Patreon

Posted in Uncategorized | 20 Comments

Cartoon: How Sanctions Usually Work

Posted on June 1, 2023 by Ampersand

This cartoon is by me and Kevin Moore.

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Kevin writes:

Any time I can draw over-the-top, absurd violence with satiric intent is fun for me. I don’t like guns or violence in real life, but in fiction it can be silly or dramatic (or both), and maybe a little cathartic. The violence of governments is harder to exaggerate, because we take so much for granted yet there is so much more than we realize. The sanctions issue is a good example: the focus of discussion and media coverage is on the will of regimes and individual leaders, but the people themselves are ignored despite their suffering. We don’t measure it and we don’t want it to complicate our good intentions.

I don’t think sanctions are absolutely necessary or unnecessary— but beyond apartheid South Africa in the 80s and possibly the BDS movement, it’s hard to think of sanctions that have been effective. Russia does not seem deterred in its war against Ukraine, no matter how many sanctions the west imposes. Iran may have felt pressure by sanctions to join the treaty with the US under Obama, but after Trump scrapped it, I doubt they’ll bend to that kind of pressure again— not so long as the US can’t be trusted to hold up it’s end of the deal. Nonetheless our foreign policy will continue to rely on sanctions, because elites are oblivious (as always) and they don’t want to lose any tools they have.

I love the energy of Kevin’s cartooning here (panel two is my favorite). And I never could have drawn that gun so well!

I should mention that the funniest thing in this comic strip – the decapitated head saying “oh you shouldn’t have” – was made up by Kevin.

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Professor Francisco Rodríguez, in his paper “The Human Consequences of Economic Sanctions,” writes:

The evidence surveyed in this paper shows that economic sanctions are associated with declines in living standards and severely impact the most vulnerable groups in target countries. It is hard to think of other cases of policy interventions that continue to be pursued despite the accumulation of a similar array of evidence of their adverse effects on vulnerable populations. This is perhaps even more surprising in light of the extremely spotty record of economic sanctions in terms of achieving their intended objectives of inducing changes in the conduct of targeted states.

And blogger Daniel Larison writes:

Sanctions advocates often present using this weapon as a peaceful alternative to war rather than acknowledging that it is a different form of warfare, and they do this to make an indiscriminate and cruel policy seem humane by comparison. The illusion that economic warfare is a humane option makes it much easier for politicians and policymakers to endorse it, and the fact that the costs are borne by people in the targeted country makes it politically safe for them to support.

Unfortunately, sanctions seem to be an everlasting, untouchable policy in the U.S., supported by elites of both major parties. But we have to hope for change, and sheesh is this post a bummer.

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When I posted this cartoon on Patreon, I was taken aback to be accused of supporting Russia in Ukraine.

But being anti-Putin – to be clear, I loathe Putin & his government – doesn’t obligate me to support ineffective and inhumane policies.

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on over 20 countries since 1998; studies have shown that sanctions are ineffective at creating regime change (and are in fact counterproductive), and harm the worst-off people in the targeted countries, not the rich and powerful.

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each of the panels shows an Uncle Sam type figure – actually just a really muscular bald guy wearing a tight t-shirt and a tall stovepipe hat, decorated in an American flag motif. The t-shirt has an eagle design, similar to the eagle design on the official Great Seal of the U.S.A., on front, and a eagle-plus-stars-and-bars design on the back. Sam is holding what Kevin described to me as “a mashup of different hand held Gatling guns I found on a google image search. I went with what looked the most ridiculous.”

Uncle Sam is standing on a small hill. Across a field from the hill, Sam is facing a wealthy-looking man in a suit. The wealthy guy has well-cut black hair and a large mustache.

On the field between Sam and the Mustache dude is a crowd of ordinary citizens, men, women, and children.

PANEL 1

Sam, standing on the hill, is yelling at Mustache Dude. The people standing between Sam and Mustache Dude look around nervously.

SAM: Do what I want you to do OR ELSE!

MUSTACHE: Ha! Do your worst!

PANEL 2

A closer shot of Sam, macho scowl in place, as he points his gatling gun and blasts it. There are lots of ejected bullet casings flying through the air and a huge sound effect that says “BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA.”

SAM: Have some broad economic sanctions! BAM!

PANEL 3

A shot from behind Sam; he is continuing to fire the gun. We can see a bit of the terrified crowd between Sam and Mustache Dude. Mustache Dude is shaking a fist in the air and yelling back at Sam.

SAM: Give up or I’ll sanction you some more!

MUSTACHE: Screw you! We will never give in! NEVER!

PANEL 4

Sam is standing in the field, smiling, surrounded by bleeding corpses. Sam is holding up a decapitated head, smiling at it as he talks to it. In the background, we can see Mustache Dude across the field, completely unhurt, grinning with his arms folded.

SAM: Remember, I’m doing this to help YOU.

DECAPITATED HEAD (small): oh you shouldn’t have.

MUSTACHE: Sanction me some more! I DOUBLE DARE you!

LARGE CAPTION PRINTED ALONG THE BOTTOM OF THE CARTOON: How Sanctions Usually Work.

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This cartoon on Patreon

Posted in Cartooning & comics, International issues | 36 Comments

Cartoon: The Party of Small Government

Posted on May 27, 2023 by Ampersand

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This cartoon is drawn by Becky Hawkins.

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Each month brings new horrifying news of GOP-controlled state governments banning books and health care they don’t like. And we can (and should) argue against them on these issues, but at the same time, I’m not convinced the arguments matter. The GOP does these things because they have the power to, not because they have persuasive arguments.

For those of us outside of red states, it’s hard to know how to respond. I’m writing this on April 30, 2023. Tomorrow, the Oregon House of Representatives has scheduled “a Special Order of Business” for HB2002, a bill to expand and protect both reproductive and gender-affirming health care, for Oregonians and for people who come to Oregon. As far as I can tell, HB2002 is on track to become law.

Is that enough? No. But it’ll help some people, at least. “Maybe it’ll help some people at least” is so unsatisfying but some days it seems like all we’ve got.

In USA Today, Marc Ramirez wrote:

…an onslaught of legislation and rhetoric targeting transgender youth in recent years has prompted parents of transgender kids to ponder similar choices. Advocates say some have uprooted lives in states like Texas, Arizona, Alabama and Arkansas to find refuge in states they feel offer safer climates.

More than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in 2022, according to Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. Most aim to restrict the rights of trans people, largely trans youths’ abilities to participate in sports or receive gender-affirming care.

“This is a crisis,” said Kim Shappley, another former Texas resident parent who left the state with her transgender child this summer. “We have political refugees in the U.S., leaving with whatever they can fit in their car.”

Trans rights – and the ability for my trans friends to live their lives fairly openly and get the care they need – have advanced so much in my lifetime. I guess backlash was always inevitable, but that doesn’t mitigate the awfulness.

Abortion rights, of course, have been on the verge for decades. Now that Roe has been overturned, it’s like the sword of Damocles we’ve been waiting for has finally fallen. And when it fell it severed the country in two. The divide between blue and red states isn’t anything new, of course, but it seems that more and more very basic rights – the rights to control your own body – are depending on what state people happen to live in.

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When I wrote this cartoon, I remember being certain that it absolutely needed to be laid out as a stack of vertical panels, rather than our usual two-by-two grid.

I wish I had written down why, because now I don’t have the faintest idea why I thought that. Doing it this way really made it a pain to post on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.

I wasn’t originally thinking of this as a Becky strip, but I’m glad I offered it to her. As well as being a good use of her facility for drawing different environments, there’s humor in the way she laid out the strip that I just love. The gratuitous manhandling of doctors in panels one and three especially cracks me up.

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels. Each of the panels shows the same central character, a large white man – I’ll call him Big Man – with neatly combed brown hair, wearing a business suit with a red tie. When I say he’s “large,” I don’t mean he’s fat; I mean he’s powerfully built and about ten feet tall, looming high over all regular humans around him.

PANEL 1

We are in a standard doctor’s examination room, with all the usual accouterments. The large man has placed himself between a family (mom, dad, young teen) and a doctor. He’s pointing sternly at the teen, and facing that way, while his other hand is encompassing the doctor’s face as he pushes her back. The family looks horrified.

BIG MAN: No “gender affirming” care for YOU!

PANEL 2

We are in a school library; there are bookshelves and green beanbag chairs and a mural of green trees and sunshine covering one wall. A librarian sits at a desk, apparently interrupted in handing a book to a child. The Big Man, smugly smirking, is plucking the book away in his enormous hand, even as the child fruitlessly tries to grab it.

BIG MAN: Reading books? Not on MY watch!

PANEL 3

We’re now in the waiting room of a hospital or a large clinic. There’s uncomfortable looking plastic chairs, generic art on the walls, a receptionist at a desk, and a rope indicating where people can wait in line. In front of all that, Big Man has physically picked up a doctor by the scruff of his white doctor’s jacket, and is holding the doctor away from a teenage girl. With his other hand, he’s sticking his pointer finger into the girl’s face, as he talks to her with some anger.

BIG MAN: And I say you ARE going to have a baby!

PANEL 4

The Big Man is sitting in a room, with big patriotic red-white-and-blue banners hanging on the wall behind him. He’s sitting on a pile of people; if we look closely, we can see that these are all the people he’s been abusing in panels one through three. He’s smiling as he speaks, one hand waving grandly.

BIG MAN: We are so PROUD to be the party of SMALL GOVERNMENT!

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This cartoon on Patreon

Posted in Abortion & reproductive rights, Cartooning & comics, Conservative zaniness, right-wingers, etc., Homophobic zaniness/more LGBTQ issues, Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer issues, Transsexual and Transgender related issues | 3 Comments

Cartoon: The Transphobe Bait and Switch (aka The Transphobe Motte and Bailey)

Posted on May 25, 2023 by Ampersand

If you want to help us keep making these cartoons, my Patreon’s right here! And thanks.

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There’s this trick that transphobes – especially ultra “respectable” transphobes like J.K. Rowling – love to pull. They’ll say something enraging, over-the-top, and unquestionably vicious and bigoted. Or, if they’re more respectable (again, like J.K. Rowling), they’ll wait for some other transphobe to say something gross.

Inevitably, some trans people get angry. They’d have to be saints not to. And as soon as the bait is taken, the switch is pulled – “You see? You see? These awful trans people are mad just because someone said biology is real!”

Although I’ve edited for space and for making the words flow as dialog, the horrible things the fictional transphobe in my cartoon says are closely based on real things that well-known transphobes have said in real life. (I’ll post receipts at the bottom of this post).

Panel one’s dialog is based on things that Garnham Linehan, a former very successful Brit-com creator who is now a full-time anti-trans activist, has said.

Panel two’s dialog is taken near verbatim from Matt Walsh’s anti-trans documentary – a documentary which J.K. Rowling has praised.

Panel three’s dialog is a near verbatim quote from the late anti-trans activist Magdalen Berns. J.K. Rowling publicly supported Berns, which made trans activists and activists angry. Later, Rowling dishonestly claimed the anger was over Berns being “a great believer in the importance of biological sex who didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises,” whitewashing how disgusting what Berns actually said was.

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I hesitated over publishing this cartoon, because the dialog is so nasty. I went ahead because I decided that this is part of what transphobes like Linehan, Walsh and Rowling depend on – that the worst things they say (or, in Rowling’s case, defend) will rarely be repeated, published, or attributed to them, because they are so horrible that no decent person wants to repeat it.

This lets them shamelessly play-act at being moderate, reasonable, and not at all hateful, even as they paint trans activists as being angry for no good reason.

A big nod to Natalie Wynn’s excellent video essay The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling for inspiring this cartoon.

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels, plus a little “content warning” panel above the top of the cartoon.

The little content warning panel shows a cartoon of Barry the cartoonist speaking directly to the reader.

CAPTION: Content Warning!

BARRY: This cartoon’s dialog is based on some hateful things respected real-life transphobes have said. Seriously, what’s wrong with these people?

PANEL ONE

Panels one through four show three people talking and walking through a park. From left to right, there’s a redheaded woman in a black skirt; a man with messy black hair wearing a plaid shirt; and a woman with long black hair, wearing a t-shirt with a drawing of the planet Saturn on it.

In panel one, REDHEAD looks smug; PLAID is yelling at SATURN, raising his hands in the air; and SATURN is walking away from the other two, looking irritated.

(Chicken fat watch: They’re walking near a stream, and a scuba diver and a fish are each sticking their heads out of the stream to watch. In the background, Walt from the comic strip “Gasoline Alley” is looking at a piece of paper.)

PLAID: The trans movement is one of the most evil movements in history! Puberty blockers are like Nazis experimenting on children in concentration camps!

PANEL TWO

A close-up of PLAID shows him yelling and waving his fists in the air.

PLAID: You’re child abusers! You prey upon impressionable children and indoctrinate them into your insane ideological cult. You are poison!

PANEL THREE

The “camera” pulls back out. REDHEAD continues looking smugly satisfied. PLAID is so angry that he’s pulling his own hair. SATURN has come to a stop, angered by what PLAID is saying.

(Chicken fat watch: Behind a bush in the foreground, Bert and Ernie are chatting with each other).

PLAID: Trans people are fucking blackface. You’re men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women. Fuck you, you pathetic, sick, fuck!

PANEL FOUR

REDHEAD and PLAID have turned and are now walking away from SATURN, who is well in the background, furious, swearing and giving them the finger. REDHEAD is talking cheerfully as she texts on her phone; PLAID is no longer yelling, but still looks angry.

(Chicken fat watch: A couple of huge worms are sticking their heads out of holes in the ground. One is looking wide-eyed at the characters, the other is grinning at the readers.)

REDHEAD: I’m telling people that trans activists are mad because you believe in biological sex.

PLAID: I was being so reasonable! “She” only got mad because she hates women.

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SOURCES

Panel 1:

“One of the most evil movements in history.” –Graham Linehan, responding to images of random trans activists with violent slogans like “Kill Terfs.” I don’t approve of slogans calling for violence – but you can find unrepresentative, marginal people in ANY movement saying disgusting things. I wouldn’t have bothered making this cartoon except that the people I’m criticizing aren’t random or marginal people; people like Graham Linehan and Matt Walsh are famous and have tons of followers.

“Graham Linehan compares doctors treating trans kids to Nazi experiments in concentration camps” –Pink News, February 11 2020.

Panel 2:

“During his speech, which he later featured in his film What is a Woman?, [Matt] Walsh said: ‘You are all child abusers. You prey upon impressionable children and indoctrinate them into your insane ideological cult, a cult which holds many fanatical views but none so deranged as the idea that boys are girls and girls are boys.'”

On Twitter, J.K. Rowling praised that same film, telling Walsh “your film did a good job exposing the incoherence of gender identity theory and some of the harms it’s done.”

Panel 3

On June 9, 2018, Magdalen Berns tweeted regarding trans women: “You are fucking blackface actors. You aren’t women. You’re men who get sexual kicks from being treated like women. Fuck you and your dirty fucking perversions. Our oppression isn’t a fetish you pathetic, sick, fuck.” The tweet was later taken down, but not until after it had been widely screencapped and quoted.

PANEL 4

J.K. Rowling later downplayed why trans people and allies had been angry at Bern, writing “However, as Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises, dots were joined in the heads of twitter trans activists, and the level of social media abuse increased.”

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This cartoon on Patreon

Posted in Bigotry & Prejudice, Cartooning & comics, Transsexual and Transgender related issues | 7 Comments

Cartoon: Media-Man To The Rescue!

Posted on May 24, 2023 by Ampersand

If you like these cartoons, consider supporting the Patreon! A $2 pledge makes a big difference.

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Hi! Sorry for the long pause in cartoons – I pulled a muscle in my right shoulder (I’m right-handed) and could barely move it for about a month. Even once I could move it, I didn’t draw until the shoulder was completely better, because I was worried I could cause a setback.

Also, I avoiding typing much, and honestly my concentration while all that was going on was not the best. No drawing, no writing, no Beat Saber – it was a very boring month for me, and I don’t recommend the experience, one star review on Yelp.

Everyone I talked about my shoulder issue to asked the same question – “what happened? What did you do?” And the frustrating truth is, I have no idea. Maybe I just slept on it wrong? If my shoulder would only speak clearly and tell me what it is I did, I’d try not to do it again, but it just has terrible communication skills.

This is, at least, an advantage of me charging per cartoon rather than per month – none of you were charged for March, since I didn’t post any cartoons. Let’s hope this month is better! (I mean, it’s already better, because here I am, posting a new cartoon.)

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Judd Legum in The Guardian writes a tale of two crimes:

In the United States, only certain types of theft are newsworthy.

For example, on 14 June 2021, a reporter for KGO-TV in San Francisco tweeted a cellphone video of a man in Walgreens filling a garbage bag with stolen items and riding his bicycle out of the store. According to San Francisco’s crime database, the value of the merchandise stolen in the incident was between $200 and $950.

According to an analysis by Fair, a media watchdog, this single incident generated 309 stories between 14 June and 12 July…. The theft has been covered in a slew of major publications including the New York Times, USA Today and CNN.

Just a few months earlier, in November 2020, Walgreens paid a $4.5m settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit alleging that it stole wages from thousands of its employees in California between 2010 and 2017…. So this is a story of a corporation that stole millions of dollars from its own employees. How much news coverage did it generate? There was a single 221-word story in Bloomberg Law, an industry publication. And that’s it.

Media considers white-collar crime – no matter how consequential – boring and unreportable. Meanwhile, crimes like shoplifting and fare-jumping are endlessly fascinating to reporters and editors.

The result of this is a pattern in which crimes typically committed by rich people are barely acknowledged, no matter how many millions are involved, while crimes typically committed by poor people are put in the spotlight. The media paints a very deceptive picture, and unfortunately, many Americans are fooled.

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The main character of this cartoon was so much fun to draw! I don’t get to draw superhero bodies that often, and it’s a fun challenge. And I think the TV-screen head is visually striking and hilarious (although who knows if any of you will agree). I wouldn’t be surprised to see this character show up again.

The one thing that disappointed me is that there were no close-ups, so I couldn’t do any chyron gags (the lettering would have been too tiny to be read). Another reason to bring this character design back!

When I did my first pass at penciling the superhero character, I tried drawing him with carefully rendered and specific muscles. You know – like a superhero. But he looked weird and stiff, especially in the panels where he’s interacting with other characters. On the next pass I tried to make him smoother and cartoonier, with big swooping lines, and I was much happier with the results.

I really dreaded drawing a cityscape at first, because I was planning to draw the buildings realistically (why is that always my first impulse), and that sounded boring. Eventually I jettisoned that entire approach and instead tried to draw the city in a fun, jazzy style. There are definitely a zillion cartoonists who draw better cityscapes than me, but I had fun.

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has five panels, plus an extra tiny “kicker” panel below the bottom of the strip.

PANEL 1

A superhero – in a classic blue-and-red outfit, a bit like Superman’s – is flying over a city, his arms extended in front of him. But instead of a head, he has a big flatscreen TV on top of his neck. The TV screen is showing a head-and-shoulders shot of a news anchorman type, wearing a brown suit and tie.

This character is Media-Man.

MEDIA-MAN (here and also in all the other panels, Media-Man speaks from the TV screen): Bored bored bored… If only there were some crime I could report!

PANEL 2

Media-Man looks downward, excited and glad, as a voice calls out from below.

VOICE: Media-Man! Help! I’m being robbed!

MEDIA-MAN: Yay!

PANEL 3

Media-Man is coming down for a landing on a sidewalk. Two women are on the sidewalk looking up at him. One of them is wearing a red tank top, a skirt, and sneakers. The other, who looks annoyed, is dressed more expensively, in a suit and heels.

TANK TOP: Media-Man! Thank god you’re here! My boss is refusing to pay me for all the hours I worked!

PANEL 4

Media-Man, an annoyed expression on his TV screen, holds up a palm in a “don’t bother me with this” gesture. The woman in the tank top is bewildered by Media-Man’s indifference, while the woman in the suit looks pleased.

MEDIA-MAN: Wage theft? Boring! I’m not gonna report on that!

TANK TOP: But– Wage theft costs $15 billion a year?

PANEL 5

Media-Man is once again flying high above a city. He looks bored, and is yawning, with one hand held over the mouth area on his TV screen. The voices of unseen people are coming up from below, but Media-Man pays them no attention.

VOICES (there are four voices, and they all say the same thing): Help! Wage theft!