Tag: harassment

Mockingbird writer Chelsea Cain, the bestselling author of Heartsick and other thrillers, deleted her Twitter account today after receiving abusive tweets yesterday.   In a now vanished series of tweets (one screencapped above)  Cain noted that she...

The firing of Shelly Bond after more than 20 years of loyal service to DC has had an unintended consequence. Although referencing incidents utterly unrelated to Bond's dismissal, it did stir outrage among those...

UPDATE: Gfrorer's account has been reinstated but I'll leave this up as a cautionary tale. Twitter has had a harassment problem for a long time. Like, a loooooooong time. Something about the impersonal format gives...

At the recently concluded Small Press Expo in Bethesda a very cool thing happened. A bunch of awards were presented to several talented, unique cartoonists who are turning out though provoking, beautifully crafted work, influential work. The winners were all popular and well deserved. And they all happened to be women. It was a thing, for sure, and much talked about. What struck me, first off, was just how strong the work was–Sophie Goldstein's multi leveled future history of a world where having a baby became a rebellious act, Emily Carroll's mastery of horror and structure, Eleanor Davis's powerful examination of self-sabotaging quests for self-esteem in many settings. The other thing that struck me was the contrast with the other conversations I was having at the show. Talking with people I used to work with in the "mainstream" comics industry about the long lists of men who would never have given Goldstein, Carroll or Davis a shot at telling their stories. Because they are women, and those people didn't think women could make good comics.

§ Stan Lee's house is for sale for $3.75 million -- economical.Why is he selling? My first guess would be because he's never there, but perhaps the 91-year-old icon just doesn't have time to...

§ Stan Lee’s house is for sale for $3.75 million — economical.Why is he selling? My first guess would be because he’s never there, but perhaps the 91-year-old icon just doesn’t have time to...

§ Stan Lee’s house is for sale for $3.75 million — economical.Why is he selling? My first guess would be because he’s never there, but perhaps the 91-year-old icon just doesn’t have time to...

Attendees at this year's New York Comic Con are accustomed to giant-sized announcements for the latest entertainment, but this year a new sign greets visitors as they wander around the hype-encrusted Javits Center: branded...

OKAY PEOPLE LISTEN UP, here are two links that show exactly HOW FAR comics have come as an artform; two pieces in the two biggest papers in the two biggest cities in the US which handle the subtleties of two comics beloved among comics insiders with intelligence and nuance.

With the time difference and the fact that Preview Night doesn't start until about 9 PM Eastern Time, there's not a lot to report from Wednesday's news feed. Movie War Update: I'm seeing on Yahoo News...

The issue of harassment at cons isn't going to go away, and seems to get highlighted more each day as women, men, organizers, cosplayers and interne bystanders deal with the growing injection of actual hormonal humans into abstract fan scenarios. When I went to shows as a youngster, I thought of cons as a "safe space" believe it or not. Compared to the rock scene I was involved with, the relatively few women in comics were in a mostly hands off zone, mostly because most congoers were afraid of them, and should anything amiss happen there was a huge crew of friends to back you up. Notice that I just said "COMPARED TO THE ROCK SCENE"; it was far from a paradise of equality, but I felt safer at a comic con than I did at most places.

In the words of NY Times bestselling author Mariah Huehner, "Women don’t exist for you to approve of or to make you feel better about the shitty way the world works. We don’t exist for you at all. We exist for ourselves. And we’re going to keep demanding for our rightful place in the world whether you like it or not."