Saturday, August 23, 2008

Its a Bird! Its a Butterfly! It's....

Do you know what part tends to trip me up in debates? When people ask the kinds of questions for which the answer is so obvious you've never really thought about why it is, you just want to bang your head against the wall repeatedly that someone felt they had to ask it.

But never fear!

Here to save the day is Girl-Wonder!

No, seriously.

Yes, we all know that TPTB thought that Girl-Wonder was going to crawl back to her little pinkified mini-batcave once her namesake had been resurrected. You'd think they'd have learned by now that if anyone deserves to be shanshued* around here it's the ever-persistent and always optimistic heroines that run Girl-Wonder.

Not content with forcing the big boys to pretend that making feminist comic book fans happy was what they had intended all along, Girl-Wonder has recently turned their attention to the abysmal way in which female fans are often treated at comic book (and other) conventions. Not only have they put together a whole website about it, they have put together one of the most awesomeist FAQs ever:

6. Why do cons need to spell it out that sexual harassment is unacceptable? They don’t tell anyone not to murder someone else on the con floor.

And there aren’t widespread reports of people murdering others, so clearly that’s already understood. But some people seemingly feel that harassment is con-appropriate behavior, and it’s important that cons clearly tell them it’s not.....

7. Why is this even a problem? People should be flattered when someone lets them know they’re sexy.

Harassment isn’t about polite and respectful admiration. Polite and respectful admiration doesn’t tell the admired person how they “should” feel about it.



Tell me again why people say feminists aren't funny? I'd guess that maybe they all just think that one can't be funny and dead serious at the same time; except that then they would have to be completely ignoring the existence and popularity of The Daily Show.

(bonnet tip to hoyden about town)

* not that they need to be, not being vampires and all

4 comments:

KPhoebe said...

Girl-Wonder has recently turned their attention to the abysmal way in which female fans are often treated at comic book (and other) conventions.

Just a quick note to point out that CAHP is gender-neutral (our forerunner, the OSWBEU(and GA) is not). I think that women will most benefit from anti-harassment policies, because women are most often harassed, but men and transpersons and genderqueer persons have also been harassed. We want conventions to be fun for everyone.

Mickle said...

Thanks for the correction.

I had noticed, and liked, that CAHP was gender-neutral, but since it's forerunners as well as the recent controversies have been more female focused for obvious reasons, I slipped up. Sorry.

Ami Angelwings said...

I think that women will most benefit from anti-harassment policies, because women are most often harassed, but men and transpersons and genderqueer persons have also been harassed.

By women did you mean "ciswomen" or are transwomen seperate from "women"? :( I know you didn't mean it, but b/c you were delineating by gender, you implied that transppl are neither men nor women :\

KPhoebe said...

Oh, Ami, I'm sorry! I meant ciswomen. Transwomen are absolutely women, and I'm very sorry that my clumsy phrasing indicated otherwise.