"The women of Bikini Kill let guitarist Billy Karren be in their feminist punk band, but only if he's willing to just "do some shit." Being a feminist dude is like that. We may ask you to "do some shit" for the band, but you don't get to be Kathleen Hannah."--@heatherurehere


Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Gender in Comics: How Soft is Your World?

I was probably one of the last people to discover A Softer World, an interesting 'comic' that utilizes pictures of the real world, but sticks to a three-panel daily comic form. Usually the third panel has some sort of turn-around in thought. Mostly they are charming, funny, and full of bleak humor--and the bleakness is certainly part of the humor. One often finds oneself thinking, "Ouch!" while chuckling all the same. For a good example, check out this one. But sometimes, not so much. After reading through a bunch of their archives, I've found way too many references to violence against women than one would have expected from such a witty source.

As is par for the course with a lot of the comics I detail here, I actually really like this comic, generally. So, once again, this is tough love.

There Is Always More 'Humor' About Stalking, It Seems
Am I an old feminist curmudgeon? Perhaps. But this sort of thing still doesn't touch my funny bone at all:


I Said Peanuts
Poisoning Somebody? Not funny. Thinking About Poisoning Somebody? Funny...?


See What I Did There?
Another reference to domestic violence that's not really happening, so it can be funny, right?


The Cat's Out of the Bag, Hopefully
And finally, just out and out 'humorous' misogyny!
Because fantasizing about killing all of your ex-girlfriends and then playing video games is hilarious.

4 comments:

acorben said...

I agree; the frequency of violent images in that strip is really uncomfortable. The title of your post reminded me of a old column called Bizarre Breasts in a webzine called Sequential Tart. One representative sample:
www.sequentialtart.com/archive/apr00/bb_0400.shtml

Unknown said...

Here's a comic that actually makes a good feminist point:

http://xkcd.com/385/

Unknown said...

These are funny exactly because they are disturbing. I do not think it possible to find some of these funny if you wouldn't find them disturbing if they were real. Think slapstick. Only updated for a desensitized crowd.

Amy said...

i'm sorry but i find the pretentiousness of their own works "A Softer World is a comic that was created by Emily Horne and Joey Comeau so that people would recognize them as important artistic geniuses" as rediculous and there are many people who create such things and say their work is impotant to society when society would lose nothing from it being absent.