Overthinking Things

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When You Think Deeply, You Think Alone. When You Don’t Think, The Whole World Doesn’t Think With You

Hello, my name is Erica Friedman and this is my obligatory wankery self-introductory post here on Hooded Utilitarian..

I originally began to overthink anime and manga in 2002, and now Noah has given me the opportunity to overthink comics  as part of the team here on HU.  Who among us would pass up the chance to overthink comic books, cartoons and related stuff? And with a pre-existing audience to boot?  In the blogosphere building an audience is the hard part.  Any schmuck can build a blog – getting other people to care about it is work.

So you’re probably wondering what I’m going to bring to the HU table.  Well, I think I’m here to provide a unique perspective.

I’m not just here as a woman or feminist or a lesbian.  I’ve always been pretty bad at being a good female comics reader (my collection started in 1972 long before “female readers” were a thing) and I’m a terrible lesbian (I hate cats and Ellen Degeneres and have completely forgotten to run out and buy Batwoman, whoops.)  I’ve been in the industry as a publisher of Yuri manga since 2003, and have been writing stories of and articles about lesbian themes in comics for many years.  I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler. My perspective is uniquely mine.

Frankly, there’s no such thing as the “female perspective” or the “lesbian perspective” anyway.  Summing up the thoughts of 51% of the world’s population (or the miniscule portion thereof that reads comics) isn’t really doable.  As for representing lesbians, I can clearly remember a day on a mailing list I *own* when a member replied to a post I had made about what lesbians want in manga with something like, “I am also a lesbian and I have never agreed with a word you said and you do not speak for me.”

Therefore, when I write about perspective here, I’m basically speaking for no one but myself – and not for myself of the future or past, only the myself that is right now.  So, here’s my perspective right now:

My perspective is that I do not read comics like most women, nor do I read comics the same way men do just because I’m a lesbian.  I don’t like big breasted female characters with tiny waists AND I don’t like sunken-chested, sparkly lads, but I do like strong women.  I have this utterly weird belief that comics don’t owe us reality in situation, but they do owe us realistic portraits of people acting consistently within the rules of the world portrayed in the story.  My perspective is that comics don’t have to condescend to women or minorities and the fact that they still do is everyone’s fault – publishers, writers, artists and readers.  It’s my perspective that the Internet may have killed the comics industry, but it is has saved sequential art.  It’s my perspective that overthinking things is the third best thing about comics, after creating them and enjoying them.   It’s my perspective that the best reason to be involved in comics is to meet the obscure, unknown,  independent artists who are reinventing the wheel every time they create a work from scratch.

And it is my perspective that I will have a great deal of fun here overthinking things in the months to come.  Thank you Noah and thank you HU audience.  I look forward to working with you!

Erica Friedman is the President of Yuricon & ALC Publishing. She blogs about Yuri in anime and manga at Okazu.

45 thoughts on “Overthinking Things”

  1. Hey Erica! Welcome aboard!

    I wonder — I understand what you’re saying in terms of only speaking for yourself. At the same time, when you say something like “My perspective is that comics don’t have to condescend to women or minorities and the fact that they still do is everyone’s fault” (which I agree with) — it seems like to make that statement you have to be assuming at least some commonality of perspective among the folks being condescended to, yes? Otherwise, how could you tell they were being condescended to, since every individual would have to decide for him or herself whether, she (or he) was being condescended to.

    I guess the point for me is that society does treat people in groups in various ways (for marketing purposes, for example) and as a result people in different groups often have some common experiences (if only the experience of being marketed to in a certain way, whether they like it or not.) I guess it just in general makes sense to me to say something like “super-hero comics are not especially friendly to women’s perspectives”, even if, obviously, there are lots of women who read super-hero comics and some women (they must be out there somewhere) who would no doubt defend the super-hero genre from charges of sexism.

  3. Hi Noah –

    That’s an excellent point. There’s two answers (or none, depending on your perspective) to that. One answer is that there are dozens, if not hundreds of women and minority writers, critics, readers and creators who have noted the ongoing condescension in comics and to a certain extent I am riding on all their outrage when I make that statement.

    The second answer is that, of course *I* consider my perspective to be the right one, regardless if anyone else agrees with me and *I* think comics are still condescending to women and minorities. ;-)

    The “none” perspective is that people only draw and publishers only publish what will sell, so it’s not “condescending” it’s the majority rule…. Conveniently, I have my next column all lined up to address that!

    I forgot to add that it’s also my perspective that I am a human and therefore am a bundle of inconsistencies and mutually exclusive opinions that will shift and change for just about any reason at all. :-) So good luck on pinning me to any wall and forcing me to defend a single thing I say. LOL

    Cheers,

    Erica

  5. Hey Erica. Not so much trying to pin you down as interested in your response.

    It’s interesting that you feel the comics are condescending. Super-hero comics often seem less condescending to women and more just uninterested. That is, women’s magazines can seem condescending in that (some of them) are directly addressing women, who they seem to believe are idiots. American comics don’t seem to even recognize that women exist as possible readers, oftentimes. Though you may be talking more about manga, where things are obviously a good bit different….

  6. I’m actually talking more about American comics. Because they really don’t have a place for women readers (or creators, editors, publishers, despite women’s presence in the industry for decades) there really is a lot of “unintentional” condescension. One day, I’ll turn my laser eyes on girls’ comics and manga where the condescension is intentional. That’s a different thing entirely.

  7. Hi Erica!

    Welcome!

    I’m interested in the idea of condescension, too. My experience of American comics (which isn’t terribly broad, but is deep in feeling) has more been than women aren’t condescended to as much as treated as sex-objects or ignored. I’m curious what you meant by it, or how you see it.

    Also, yuri! Yay! There’s never enough good yuri.

    I’m looking forward to your columns hereabouts!

  8. Thanks for the kind words and support vommarlowe! You and Noah are right and by pointing that out, you’ve already changed my perspective and that of next month’s post, so thank you both!

    I will clarify that I’m using “condescension,” as a short-hand for ” women are treated as sex objects or ignored,” as opposed to assigning some kind of malice aforethought to creators/publishers, etc.

  9. “Sex objects or ignored” is about right — though sometimes, if they try hard enough, it can be both!

    I guess I see condescension as more “treated as a child” often with specific educational/moral motives…books about how to catch a man or romances which treat their main characters as idiots (Janet Evanovich comes to mind)….

  10. I can see that, Noah. It’s what I call in my head “WEtv stories” because so often entertainment for straight women seem to rely on (and encourage) the vapid helplessness of their female protagonists. I’ve never been able to understand why that appeals to women.

  11. Well, you know, folks (men and women) like to be taken care of. There’s a fair amount of genre fiction in which men get beat up/schooled/whatever by strong women too, so it’s not like it’s an interest/kink/desire relegated to only one gender (though it works itself out differently in works directed at men and women, usually.)

  12. Erica–

    I’m sure your take on things will be appreciated, at least on my end. I’ve been frequently at odds with feminist criticism and its exponents since my days in academia. I look forward to seeing where we agree and disagree, and I hope our consensuses and disputes prove enlightening for us and others.

    The one thing that threw me off in the above piece is that your view of comics seems to be exclusively defined by manga and contemporary superhero comics. I’d be very interested in reading your opinions of women cartoonists such as Alison Bechdel, Marjane Satrapi, and Jessica Abel. I’d also be curious about your take on non-(or less conspicuously) sexist male creators such as Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Daniel Clowes, and the Hernandezes.

  13. Hello Robert – Actually, I’m glad to say that you’re not right at all in your assumption. My actual interest and sympathies lie rather with independent comics and independent manga artists rather than with superhero or mainstream manga. And at Okazu I have talked about many of the women you mention above, and many others you haven’t.

    I *was* primarily referring to American superhero comics when I say that there is still a great deal of condescension, yes, but my own opinion of comics is not only informed by that or by manga.

    I cannot summarize my opinions of all, or even some of the artists you mention, because my opinions are rarely that simple. And some of them I do not have any opinion of whatsoever. Perhaps in the days to come I’ll cover some of that…and why. :-) I look forward to the ongoing conversation!

  15. Erica–

    I’m glad I’m wrong, and I look forward to the reading.

    The artists I mentioned were brought up as suggestions for future posts, and I hope you consider the ones you haven’t already written about for that treatment.

    I’m very eager to read comics criticism from a feminist perspective (idiosyncratic as yours may be). If your point of view is even somewhat in accord with academic feminism, you and I will have a lot to discuss.

    Here’s to you and me as friendly antagonists.

    Thanks for the link, Noah.

  16. We write from an academic feminist perspective here all the time Robert!

    EricB’s swamp thing post was totally academic feminist; so was my hawk woman/adam strange post. Caro’s post on the Bun Field was certainly informed by feminist concerns.

    I mean, I’m certain Erica will talk about feminism, but it’s not like she has to go it alone or anything….

    I’m wondering which academic feminists you’ve disliked or disagreed with in particular? There’s kind of a lot of different feminist approaches….

  17. Robert – Since I pay not the slightest bit of attention to feminism, academic or not, but rely mostly on my own desire to not be demeaned or denied, any similarities with academic feminism will be coincidental. You can let me know when you find any.

    I can see that we *are* going to be antagonists if you consider Alan Moore to be non-sexist, since I definitely do not agree (hating everyone equally isn’t actually being non-sexist and his male characters aren’t raped for our entertainment.) But friendly, yes, please. I like to respect my antagonists in the morning!

  18. Alan Moore tries pretty hard to not be sexist. I don’t know any of his female characters that are raped for our entertainment…? Are you thinking of the Silk Spectre in Watchmen? That’s presented as pretty clearly negative and unpleasant, I though…and the Comedian is actually abused in a scene with sexual connotations immediately following. I can’t actually think of a rape qua rape in Lost Girls…everyone pretty much consents to everything in that…. The closest thing is the Batgirl sexualized shooting in Killing Joke…but Moore’s actually repudiated that. And he certainly isn’t a misanthrope; he has affection for lots of his characters….

    I’m really interested in academic feminism, Robert, even if Erica isn’t…. This post for example.

  19. Well, off the top of my head, I have substantial disagreements with Kate Millett, Mary Daly, Adrienne Rich, Alice Walker, Judith Butler, Shulamith Firestone, Helene Cixous, and Luce Irigray. I should probably throw in Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, too, although I’m not as antagonistic towards them as I am with the others.

    A good deal of my antipathy also comes from the assumptions of academic feminists that come across in conversation. Many of them are completely oblivious to the degree their perspective is shaped by class assumptions–they view their bourgeois values as universal. I also cannot stand the way “patriarchy” is used as an object-trope for misandry. If I sense that feminist-style arguments are being used as camouflage for misandrist attitudes, my back gets up very quickly. And then there’s the whole intolerance for disagreement that struck me as ubiquitous.

    I didn’t mean to say there wasn’t academic-feminist criticism of comics, and certainly Noah and Eric B’s Swamp Thing pieces qualify. I didn’t have a negative reaction to either of those, by the way; they’re fair, thoughtful analyses. I passed on reading Caro’s piece on Bun Field, mainly because I hadn’t read it, and since the art didn’t appeal to me, I didn’t expect that to change.

  20. Noah – I don’t see it. Showing us a rape, then telling us “this is bad” doesn’t actually mitigate the fact that you thought it expedient to put it in the first place. Once again back to WEtv-type stories, 105 minutes of violence against women does not actually make the 15 minutes of retribution worth it.

    Robert – Adrienne Rich? Gilbert and Gubar? That’s pretty old school. I didn’t agree much with them either when I was in college, but still understood that it was important for them to say what they were saying. None of the people I know who are actually feminists bandy about patriarchy, except to be purposefully snarky. Mostly – and here’s where we are truly transgressive – we talk about *women* and their accomplishments.

  21. My piece on Bun Field needs a rewrite before anybody reads it again. Or for the first time. :)

    Or at least an editing pass: there’s a place in the middle where I think a paragraph got dropped or something ’cause I reread it once and thought “really, that makes no sense.”

    If I remember correctly, though, I didn’t actually get to a feminist argument: I got to “I don’t really see any way here that it matters that this was written by a woman.”

    Welcome, Erica!

  23. Erica, we can agree to disagree I suppose. The rape isn’t shown in an especially exploitative fashion, and it’s very important to the story — it’s not just thrown in gratuitously, it didn’t seem to me, anyway, and it affects everybody involved for the rest of their lives, more or less. I mean, I think it’s a reasonable position to just not want to see rape at all in your fiction. I think Moore makes a real effort to handle it with respect though — and he certainly doesn’t hate Sally Jupiter, I don’t think.

    I wrote about his treatment of Laurie here if you’re interested in a more sustained defense of the gender politics of Watchmen.

    And Moore does rape male characters for our enjoyment, actually — the Invisible Man gets raped extremely gratuitously in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (though of course you can’t exactly see it, but it’s pretty explicit nonetheless.)

    Robert, feminism has some problems with class issues — but a lot of class analysis is really, really awful on gender relations, so it balances out to a fair extent.

    I love Kate Millett and Shulamith Firestone — but they and all the folks you mention are way second wave. There’s lots of academic feminism that doesn’t look much like that, as Erica says. From a queer/trans theory perspective with a lot of interesting things to say about feminism, you could try Julia Serrano, who’s really smart and thoughtful and generally great. Eve Sedgwick’s awfully smart too, and not at all opposed to men — in fact, her books are mostly about how feminism can help men, in a lot of ways. I was just thinking about Linda Williams’ great book about pornography recently, which takes porn to task in a lot of ways for its sexism, but which is also more or less written explicitly in opposition to Andrea Dworkin anti-porn feminism (I’m a big fan of Dworkin too, but I’m sure you hate her.)

    Caro, I think thinking about whether or not it matters that a woman wrote the Bun Field is a feminist question — but maybe that’s just me.

  24. A lot of my knowledge of feminist criticism comes from what I was exposed to in the late ’90s and early ’00s, so if one faults my view of the major writers as out-of-date, it’s a criticism I certainly accept. Gilbert-Gubar, as I recall, were seen as dated, but still crucial.

    However, I don’t see the changes in attitude among the academics of my acquaintance, more than a few of whom have come along since my own time in academia. I include online acquaintances in that characterization, too, such as Historiann or Echidne of the Snakes. (Google them for their Web sites.) In general, I have to say there seems to be far less interest in women’s achievements than in how they’re oppressed–and many of the arguments regarding the latter seem rather fatuous.

    I’m not familiar with Julia Serrano or Linda Williams. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick is someone I associate with queer theory, which I tend to see as distinct from feminist criticism. I also know she had no prejudicial attitudes towards men, and since she was personally very gracious towards me back in the day, I’ll always have a favorable view of her.

    Andrea Dworkin?!? Oh, Noah, say it isn’t so! God, could R. Fiore have been right about you?

    On an outside contentious area, I refuse to accept Barbara Gordon as definitive proof that Moore is misogynist. That’s in a minor story that everyone would have forgotten about had it not been for the strength of Brian Bolland’s art. To argue that Moore is misogynist, I have to ask that trends be highlighted across his large body of work. I just don’t see it. It would have been nice if he’d decided the hell with the idea after his editor said, “Go ahead–cripple the bitch,” but no one’s perfect. Also, the character wasn’t raped. Shot, yes. Crippled, yes. Sexually humiliated, yes. But raped, no.

    By the way, I hate that story, too. Those interested in reading my thoughts can click here.

  26. Eve Sedgwick is queer theory — but the theory is about how homosocial bonds between men are essential to patriarchy and to the oppression of women. It’s very much a feminist theory.

    Andrea Dworkin is great. Free speech sorts (like Fiore) think she’s the devil…but you know, free-speech-will-save-us-all folks deserve the occasional kick in the ass, which Dworkin was happy to provide. She’s super-smart, she hates hippies for basically all the right reasons, and she’s really mean-spirited and pessimistic, which I think feminism could maybe use more of post third wave. I’m not anti-porn myself, and I’m sure she’d find most of what I’ve written in my life repulsive and intolerable, but I respect the hell out of her.

  27. With Dworkin, I just see a lot of this whiny, scab-picking, oppression-in-the-ground-she-walks on-and-air-she-breathes attitude that I detest more than anything else upon purported feminists.

    She was also quite pro-censorship when it came to things she didn’t like, and that makes her an enemy in neon as far as I’m concerned.

    Her view that heterosexual sex is by definition rape qualifies her as a crank in the extreme. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts.

  28. She never said heterosexual sex is rape. It’s a caricature of her viewpoint. Said viewpoint being: sexual desire and imagination are implicated in power dynamics which oppress women. I think that’s true, and something that basically nobody wants to hear about (at least on the left), and she deserves props for having the courage to say it.

    Also, she was never whiny. She was enraged. There’s a significant difference.

    As far as censorship…censorship just isn’t killing babies to me. In fact, I think most everyone agrees that there should be some censorship; the question then becomes where you draw the line. Her take was different than mine, but I don’t think that means that everything she said or thought is therefore radioactive.

    I mean, have you read anything by her? “Right Wing Women” is the one I generally recommend. The whole book is essentially an exercise in sympathizing with her opponents, the very thing that she’s not supposed to be able to do if you believe in her caricature. It’s great.

  29. Hey…and not to cut you off, Robert, but…if you want to continue this, could you email me? I’m happy to natter on about second-wave feminism for as long as anyone wants to listen to me, but I fear we’ve seriously derailed Erica’s first thread as it is….

  30. Oh, but watching threads take on a life of their is half the fun.

    I’ll throw one last reply up, and if you want to e-mail me about it later, fine.

    I’ve read Dworkin’s Intercourse and her Meese Commission testimony, as well as interviews here and there.

    I don’t think the “all intercourse is rape” characterization is an unfair caricature of either her or Catherine MacKinnon’s views. I really don’t know how you can go through Intercourse or Toward a Feminist Theory of the State and not come away with that interpretation. I’ll grant neither says it in terms that stark, but given what they do say, I think it was incumbent upon them to categorically state that wasn’t what they meant, and explain why. I think they both later claimed that wasn’t their intent becuase they realized after the fact how badly thay had undermined themselves with readers and the press. It was damage control.

  32. To go back a ways in the thread … it caught my attention when Erica said mainstream comics “condescend” to women, and then I was bit let down when she said she meant more that the comics either ignore women or else just show them off for their bodies.

    My reason is that the superhero comics I’ve seen often make a fuss about the women heroes being savvy, tough, etc., but the women are still afterthoughts to the action and also have to show all that skin. I figure “condescending” is a pretty good label for that combination.

  34. Noah–

    The next time you bring up Dworkin, I’ll be sure to do that!

    It has been quite some time since I checked into her material. I’ll go back and look at it. Perhaps my 40-year-old self will have a different take on her than my twentysomething self did.

  35. I agree with Robert in the entertainment value of watching comments threads take on a life of their own, fwiw. I feel as if I have really arrived if you’re all talking without me.

    Tom – I’m not really sure why you feel that those are different things, they seem the same to me, just described with (very slightly) different words.

    Women being treated like sex objects sounds remarkably like “hav[ing] to show skin” and otherwise being ignored is, at least to my mind, awfully similar to “being afterthoughts to the action.”

    Same thoughts, different words. None of them mine – Noah’s, then yours. MY words were “comics condescend” and perhaps I’ll stick with those, because that’s what I actually believe and you can fill in your definition of “condescension” as you see fit.

  38. I think I see what Tom’s getting at: the condescension comes from a kind of “lip service” to not ignoring women and treating them only as sex objects; that’s the business about “the fuss about the women heroes being savvy, tough, etc.” “Ignoring women” would be not making that fuss at all, maybe?

    Such lip service is condescending in the same way any tokenism is condescending. I think the difference may be how women characters are represented — to male audiences — versus whether women are targeted as a worthwhile audience demographic in their own right.

    Tokenism on behalf of the audience feels condescending to me, whereas just depicting a lot of skin for male readers’ pleasure is more objectifying.

    Not that objectification and condescension are unrelated, but they’re not exactly the same thing. I mean, theoretically, you could objectify a woman so totally that you weren’t condescending to her because she had completely lost any personhood altogether and you can’t condescend to a thing…like women in stereotypical porn films: I don’t know that I’d describe porn (in general) as condescending to women…

  39. Hey Noah, btw, you got a reference for Dworkin on hippies? I need to read that…

  40. She generally sneers pretty thoroughly at the sexual revolution. “Right Wing Women” is the place to look. I quote some important bits in this essay.

    Empirically speaking, sexual liberation was practiced by women on a wide scale in the sixties and it did not work: that is, it did not free women. Its purpose — it turned out — was to free men to use women without bourgeois constraints, and in that it was successful. (91)

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