Richmond, Virginia continued

I enjoy this one in particular.

(he probably was lying)

I agree, such broad strokes are never accurate. I do feel that way about some women, but I also feel completely the opposite about others… and everywhere else in between.

“Every man hates and fears women”?
“You can’t be honest in front of a woman”?
“It’s obvious [Crumb] has a very high regard for women”?

I call buuuuuuuulllllllshit on all three of those statements, and everyone here and elsewhere who’s agreeing with them. If you’re finding yourself letting any of those three phrases come out of your mouth and thinking they’re true, you might be due for a bout of hard thinking on how YOU, PERSONALLY feel about women. Especially if you’re a dude.

Sure, hiding behind wack, pre-critical generalizations of how an ENTIRE GENDER feels about the ENTIRE OTHER GENDER is such a handy way to keep our own latent misogyny afloat. Sure, our culture not only encourages this, but pretty much outright mandates it, and we can always use that as an excuse too. Sure, comics in particular — even “indie” comics — have always been a vast whiteboy’s club house, a safe haven where all the frustrated virgins are invited to stroke off and/or burn effigies over this mysterious female species that somehow just stubbonly refuses to resemble the two-dimensional fantasy cutouts we’ve begged them to be (“Why can’t more girls be like Matter-Transformer Lass?”).

But does all that mean we’re ALLOWED to continue being monsters out there in the real, adult world, OUTSIDE of the comics bubble, where women are people and not just variations on Kitty Pryde, Angelfood McSpade, and/or your mother? Of course not. If you really hate and fear women, it’s time to admit you personally have some issues to deal with, and start growing the fuck up. Jesus, seriously people.

R. Crumb is a beautiful draftsman and sometimes an eloquent polemicist, but his take on women (not to mention, say, blacks or asians) are for the most part fucking gruesome. That’s his problem, and he’s admitted as much in his work (and has graciously allowed us to rubberneck the train wreck that is his psyche). But when he starts talking like his neuroses are part of the Y chromosome itself — and then I watch as the fanboys begin to nod and shrug and AGREE with him — then things have seriously gone pear-shaped. Check yourselves.

And I don’t buy his whole “it’s only lines on paper!” (aka his “j/k”!) excuse — that’s not only a cop-out, it’s a flip insult to the legitimacy of comics as a medium. I mean, let the guy draw what he draws, whatever — but let’s at least have the courage to call him on it when he’s talking a bunch of hateful, backwards nonsense.

I mean, it what it is. Which is, frequently, just (masterfully rendered) stroke material for a certain dude who happens to think women function primarily as furniture to rub one out on. I’m not quite ready to let that set the bar for males everywhere. And I’m so, so tired of having that be the norm within “comix” circles, which make so many radical postures but so often turn out to be the same status quo prejudices packaged for the same white, straight, male, middle-class, apolitical audience.

Ah, maybe this is all being too hard on him. I guess Crumb is just an artifact from a far-gone, slightly less-enlightened time. And hey, it’s only comics, right? We shouldn’t take any of it too SERIOUSLY or anything, right? Whiz Bang Pow for kids! etc…

I suppose both Crumb and I should speak for ourselves. Who are we to say what anyone else feels?