“But
if we’re going to constantly use mentally ill people to dodge conversations
about gun control, then the very least we owe them is a fucking plan.”
I watched this yesterday and was almost in tears
I’m glad to see folks like John get on their asses for this.
Mental health was originally brought up in the wake of these shootings with good intentions, but gun assholes saw its use as a mere tool of distraction pretty quickly. It’s so fuckin’ gross.
Last weekend, I made public on twitter some emails I had received from an overzealous fan who had been harassing me for a month through email. The response was overwhelming. Publicly discussing sexual harassment (or any form of harassment) is not new, it’s definitely in the current cultural lexicon, but the idea of openly addressing it still seems to shock some people. Women, for the most part, were not shocked, since they’ve been dealing with it their whole life, but many men were, which shows me that the current discussion of sexual harassment is not reaching as far as it should. So I decided to make a post about it, and address some questions I got after I went on twitter. Also, I will not be posting any screen shots of the conversation, like I did on twitter, because I don’t want to give him any more publicity than I already did.
For reference, the focal point of this post is not about the specifics of the emails I received. It is about all sexual harassment. Street calling has long been the bane of my existence, but I will not be directly addressing it, however I certainly do mean for it to be included in the overall discussion. The umbrella under which I’m addressing the situation is this: I’m a female cartoonist who has thousands of readers. I do autobio, which encourages an unusual level of familiarity, and often people get confused about where the line is when they contact me. I understand this, and I am often forgiving of blunders of this nature. On the other hand, because of my work, I deal with more crazy correspondence than the average person. However, women everywhere, regardless of their jobs or social standing, receive some form of sexual harassment on a regular basis. So if you’re reading this and you can’t identify with the particulars, please substitute any woman you know for my situation.
The specifics are this: He sent me over 40 emails, some were seemingly normal, complimentary fan letters, some were just links to youtube videos, one selfie, and some had graphic sexual content, such as describing sex acts he’d like to perform on me, and screenshots of explicit sexting sessions. A polite request to not receive any more emails was ignored. I blocked him, which just means the emails go to spam, they do not bounce back, but they should, so the sender knows they’ve been blocked. Gmail, fix this please!
The day it all blew up was when he ordered a book from me and wrote, “I’d be enchanted if you rubbed your vagina on it.” I immediately canceled and refunded the order. He responded by calling me an idiot, criticizing how I run my career, and claiming nothing he did was harassment. He claimed to know the rules of online sexual harassment, because of course he does.
Since there was no reasoning with a person like that, I decided to make the emails public. The minute I did, he responded to me on twitter, proudly claiming responsibility for them, and published part of an email where he explained that the vagina remark was meant to ‘enlighten’ me, and was not sexual, and saying I should have been flattered by the praise that preceded it. I blocked him immediately, but I continued to address the situation.
While seeing the response this kicked up on twitter, it became apparent that many people, men especially, have no idea this happens to women. They’re not to blame for not knowing. If they’re not exposed to any media on the topic, and/or if they don’t have women in their lives who openly discuss it, it makes sense that they would not know. But on the other hand, it’s 2015, the topic is everywhere, so to not know is to have your head in the sand. (Although not knowing the extremes of public figure harassment is acceptable, since that is not a common aspect of the subject.)
A lot of men responded by asking me if I was okay, which, don’t get me wrong, was sweet and very much appreciated, and I know they were just looking out for me. But it backhandedly proved a level of naivety that women have long since shaken. Women are accustomed to harassment, they already know the person being harassed is okay, and they just commiserate with the frustration. And that’s where people get the “angry feminist” idea, but what’s really happening is that we’ve long ago gone through all the other emotions, and we’re just fucking fed up.
Which brings me to why some people are afraid to address harassment publicly. The idea of the “angry militant feminist” is losing ground, but it definitely still exists. We’re also often accused of overreacting, which is infuriating and demeaning. All of it is infuriating, and sometimes it’s even scary, which is why when women address being harassed, we bring to it all the harassment of the past, and because we keep it all bottled up, it comes out with a lot of emotion and anger. Sometimes it can be overwhelming, but hopefully the message will come through the (totally justifiable) anger.
Another condescension we receive is the claim that we’re generalizing- like saying being called “sweetheart” by an old man at a diner is just as bad as someone cat-calling. But we’re not. While the sweetheart thing might be mildly annoying, we aren’t dumb, we know the difference between an old man who has harmlessly called women sweetheart for 80 years, verses the aggression of a sexual email or remark. However when we address it, some of us lump it all together for the sake of brevity. Also we don’t want to give the impression that there is a level of harassment that is acceptable. So while we’re not trying to fight the old man at the diner, we are hoping that younger men will know better than to use the same terminology their grandparents did.
When you’re reading direct writing from a woman addressing sexual harassment, you’re often seeing a woman who’s at the end of her rope. She’s been pushed over the edge, and has gone public because of it. Unfortunately, that push is often what it takes to get people to talk about harassment. My generation, and the generations before me, grew up being taught to endure harassment quietly, to not provoke the harasser, and to just shrug it off. I’ve been shrugging off email harassment for years, due to this exact line of thinking. In fact, in my early twitter posts, I even apologized for upsetting anyone by making the emails public. It was a throwback to the way I was raised, a victim-blaming subconscious reaction. I had nothing to apologize for, and yet I did, because it is so deeply engrained in my behavior. And that behavior is what I’m trying to change.
Talking openly about harassment is changing the public landscape. It’s enabling young girls to fight back, and to not put up with it and to make it public. However, due to basic biology, women will always be afraid to fight back in some situations. Sometimes fighting back angers the harasser, and sometimes it leads to more harassment. I once confronted a man who was cat-calling me on the street, and his response was to follow me for two blocks, loudly hitting on every girl behind me, to prove his point that cat calling was “complimentary.” So my fighting back led to a wave of harassment, for which I felt erroneously responsible. Situations like that are why women will always be afraid, and that is sad.
I’m not delusional enough to think public discussion of harassment will affect those who are doing the worst harassing. Individuals like that are not mentally stable, and will not respond to reasonable appeal. But the hope is that by making it a bigger topic, we can reach the middle ground- men who accidentally harass women due to ignorance, or just bad judgment.
I sometimes get emails and drawings in which the sentiment expressed is that the sender saw a photo of me in real life and was surprised they were attracted to me. I understand that telling someone you find them pretty is relatively harmless, and sometimes even complimentary, if you know the person. However, being told by strangers that they’re surprised by my face is disheartening. It detracts from my work, and has a subtle demeaning undertone, like they can’t believe a pretty person could make work they like so much, as if someone who spends all their time and energy on faceless creative endeavor should be ugly. In short, it is mostly unnecessary, and occasionally offensive. Hopefully by reading something like this, the next time a guy wants to say that to a woman, he’ll think twice. (I keep saying men vs women, but I mean everyone. Men aren’t doing all the harassing, just the majority of it.)
The bottom line is this: I want public discussion of harassment to encourage women to be more open about it. I want younger women to recognize early on what constitutes as harassment, and to know it’s not their fault. I want the discussion to reach people it previously didn’t, and for them to understand how it feels, and why it’s important to think twice before engaging in what could be perceived as harassment. I want a new generation of women who are emboldened to not put up with this bullshit, who aren’t willing to just quietly endure it, and who aren’t afraid to fight back, and in doing so, will be supported by their community and the public. I want a new generation of men who fully understand why harassment is so damaging, and who treat women with respect. And that goes for everyone. Because of basic human nature, I know these are lofty goals, but this is me doing my part, and hoping you’ll do yours.
Addendum: I tried to address questions I received within this post, but if you have any others, or just general feedback, you can email me at juliajwertz(at)gmail(dot)com.
_____
To support my work, go here, or buy books, photography prints, artwork, bric-a-brac, hand made jewelry, and more on either my website store or Etsy.
The evolution of Scooby Doo animation from 1969 to 2015.
End it all
LET IT DIE
What the fuck happened in 2006
1969-1971: Let’s see if we can make a show on a budget of 3 dollars
1972-1973: Hey! We have a real budget now! Let’s use it to hire movie stars to make cameos!
1988-1991: Let’s give parody and quality animation a whirl
1988-2005: Guys. Guys. Guys. What if… We put actual effort into this?
2002-2005: That was haaaaaaaaard. Let’s just bank off the previous movies.
2006-2008: WHAT THE FUCK IS A SCOOBY
2010-2013: Let’s reinvent ourselves here. Let’s break the mold. Let’s focus on story lines and character development with less focus on the monster of the week and more focus on an over arching story line
2015: Let’s see if we can make a show on a budget of 3 dollars
Back in January, it came to my attention that Madonna’s social media team had been using a series of 3 of images in a campaign on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with her head superimposed on my paintings to promote her new album “Rebel Heart". I’m pretty easy going, and never wanted to make a big stink about things; all I wanted was for this to be fair and civil— everyone in my circle felt I should “sue! Sue her!“, etc” but I didn’t want to make a big stink about things, just because it was a high profile name. But despite my messages / emails to Liz Rosenburg (her agent) commenting on the said social media posts, and the MANY posts of people defending the work / calling her out on it, the messages were overlooked and ignored, and the work was never credited. I’m used to getting the BS line of “we love your work, but unfortunately we don’t have a budget to pay you, but it will be great exposure for you and will get you lots of work as a result!” And while yes, it is flattering to see a world icon use my work, she also has a net worth of close to $800 million, so budget definitely isn’t an issue, and I can honestly say, considering who it is we’re taking about, I would have been MORE than happy to just be credited, and have the exposure a high profile name like Madonna would have provided. I mean, in doing the math, off of Instagram, the images got a collected 145,000 + likes, on Facebook, some 77,000+ likes, and Twitter, about 1,000+reposts. That’s some serious exposure that was leeched from me and my art, and used to promote her agenda. I got caught up with some work, and kind of forgot about the whole thing a few weeks later, and just wrote it off as a ‘’so this one time Madonna used my artwork” experience, y’know, one of those.
NOW (since the Rebel Heart tour kicked off)… I found out the art is being used on her “Rebel Heart” tour from a friend who recognized the work during the show. I’ve seen at least 4 youtube videos that show it, as it’s part of a loop played during her song “Rebel Heart”. Granted it’s a SMALL part of the show, but I was never A.) asked, and B.) COMPLETELY ignored when I called her staff / team out on improper use of my creative property.
I think what I’m upset about through all this is, the whole experience only perpetuates the frustration we artists have of getting ripped off, and taken advantage of. I worked hard to make those paintings, well over 100+ hours put into making them and well, if Madonna can just take them and use them for shameless self promotion, she has no right getting upset / suing people who use her work without asking. You might be Madonna, but BITCH, I’M MAD ON A few different levels. You stole my material, girl.
Tumblr community, can you please share this, and pass it around, in an attempt to highlight her hypocrisy, and speak out for the MANY artists who are taken advantage of, be it knowingly, or unknowingly. Thank you so much!
Hours after today’s massacre in Oregon, President Obama took the podium for the 15th time after a mass shooting. Sounding stern and appearing frustrated, Obama challenged Americans to respond more forcefully to this shooting. His full, impassioned statement is one every American needs to hear.
This weekend I won the Special Award for Humor from the Harveys, a thing I talked about earlier when I was nominated. It’s nice having people realize how special I am and how humor I am, and I truly appreciate everyone who voted for me, but the award, as it stands, doesn’t make a lot of sense.
The fact that I was nominated for a humor award for SEX CRIMINALS without the writer of said series, my beloved chum, Matt Fraction, is wrong. On every level. I pointed this out to the Harvey Awards and told them I wished to have Matt on the ballot with me, or to remove me completely, and they declined to do either.
They said, and I quote; “We believe any collaborative process which the creators believe is equally divided makes this difficult. It’s unfortunate this is not a judgment call for us to make - but it’s not.”
Except for the fact that it is. They created a category designed to highlight individuals, sometimes out of a team, with no recognition of what has been contributed and by whom. The writer of our comic supplies 90% of the humor! This is the Harvey Awards’s category, so the ultimate judgement call is theirs.
Suppose a group of people successfully nominated me for my work on Green Lantern, a comic I’ve never worked on (YET). Would the Harveys simply shrug and go, “Oh well, out of our hands?” Of course not. Because it would be erroneous. Just like nominating me for the humor in Sex Criminals without Matt Fraction is erroneous.
I put forth the idea to the Harveys that the category simply be changed in the future to “Best Humor Publication,” in order to recognize the end result, instead of imagining who contributed what in a team effort. They could do that or just keep the nominations to creators who do all the work on their books, like Ryan Browne or Kate Beaton. They never responded to me, so I’m putting this idea out to you, the people who vote and are voted on. In an industry that daily has to contend with lopsided credits in the media, how can we allow ourselves to contribute to it with this award? Let’s make this category reflect the teams who deserve it.
Until then, I can’t accept the award. I love the people who voted for me, but I can’t abide by the rules set in place to allow such a thing. If, for some reason, it’s already en route to me, I’ll just carve Matt’s name into it and raffle it off for the HERO INITIATIVE.
Anonymous: I'm working a job that I hate. I have more hours coming up and more money, but I am already looking forward to the day I quit. I am using this horrible job to keep me on task to become an artist. I would one day like to work for Laika, but I can't figure out how to craft a skill set that they would want to hire me. How would you advise a youngster craft their path for themselves if they aren't sure of he exact position they want? I just am struggling with patience and focus. Thanks!
Yikes. I’m so sorry your job sounds that awful. It might be just the fact that you aren’t where you want to be yet and I completely understand that. Or your job could really be that bad working in the acid mines being whip cracked by a demented Boss with bad hair. Not sure…..
I have never worked at Laika, I would love to work with them too one day, so I asked someone I know in the industry over there and this was their response:
“I can definitely relate to the questioner , but I’m not sure I have a
good answer on how to get into Laika. My path here has been vastly
different than most everyone else ive taked to. Without a direction to
focus on (regardless of if you want to stay in that position long term)
and the patience and persistence to work hard, network, etc. ( took me
3-5 years of hyper focused applications in costuming and CTN and social
media investment to even get on their radar for rejection notices, let
alone in the door of a completely unrelated department. Now I’m fighting
my way over before I roll off) it comes down to right place right time.
And those purely lucky people usually roll off first and don’t get
asked back because they are hit and miss when it comes to good work/good
to work with. There is no general set of skills. There are no general
positions that overview departments. Everything is highly specific. Just
like all the people who work here, highly individualized.”
Here endeth the quote….
So now that they’ve chimed in, I will add my 2 cents. First, I would spend time asking that question by doing your homework and finding out who runs the department you want to see yourself and emailing them directly as the first step. I have learned in 12 years that portfolio’s is just as illusive as creating a hit show. no one knows and there are millions of people pretending to know. I would say if you Build a portfolio towards what you are passionate about and enjoy doing it, then that’s the win. It’s not pandering, it’s not false, it’s just a window into the artist and what they want to say to the world. Then go to conventions like SDCC, CTN, GDC, etc, or job fairs, etc where they will be would be next. Just flat out ask them what they are after. Shadowmachine works in miniatures too and I would find all the places and ask around.
OK, now that pandering directly to the company you want to work at is out of the way:
For the real meat of the question, finding focus on what you want to do/ position. For that I have jumped from 3D environment artist, to concept artist, to children’s book illustrator, and now jumping onto comics. I chose a field that I thought I wanted, 3D modeller and realized years later it wasn’t what spoke to me, so I just restarted. There isn’t any answer I can give you other than trying and seeing if you enjoy it. If you don’t move on. You will take the experience, understanding, and knowledge and use it down the road so no venture will be lost. It all works to your advantage.
Think about what you want to create at the end of the day
Think about what part of the project you want to be in? (pre-production, production, post production) Each will have positives and negatives.
Think about if you are willing to be stressed and deadline oriented. Will that task still be enjoyable.
figure out the difference of what you truly want to do and where that silly inner ego wants you to be. They are rarely the same.
When you find your answer, Ask yourself, will you be happy doing this if you don’t get into Laika or no one notices? If you answer yes, than that’s what you want to do, despite praise or job.
I don’t have all the answers, I swear I wish I did. But hopefully this gives you an idea of how to start thinking about finding your answer. I’m a big proponent for self realization.
Hey, all. This is a comic I started on 24 Hour Comic Day, but I only managed to complete 12 pages on that day. That makes it a technical failure, but I decided it was worth finishing regardless of that.
I sold copies at APE, but I didn’t anticipate the demand and ran out of them pretty quickly. So, I promised to re-post the mini on tumblr when i got home, and here it is.
Some further reading, if this kinda thing is up your alley.
Patreon is the new kid on the block; not quite up to scratch as of yet, but full of possibilities. Search “comics” to find a number of creators using it to draw a page rate from their fanbase.
I hope someone finds this helpful. I may put a print-rez PDF up for sale, if any interest is expressed.
Why the fuck didn’t they give Sirius Black veritaserum? like they could have asked him whether he was the potters secret keeper or not?! he would say Peter was and BAM! they would know he was innocent. it would have saved them all that azkaban nonsense. on second thought, why bother with trials when veritaserum was a thing? wizards have all these tools and spells but never fucking use them!! the wizarding world is an actual disaster
Hi, I'm Tim Lai! I'm a cartoonist living in Ontario, Canada. I like drawing cute and colourful things. This blog is a hub where you can find all of my Tumblr, DeviantArt, Flickr, Blogspot, and other posts in one place.
About My Work
I write and draw Lemon Inc., a comic about a seven-year-old who wants to be a business tycoon when he grows up. Until then, he runs a lemonade stand. You can read it at www.lemon-inc.com.
I have done some professional web and graphic design work, including designing the website for the webcomic, Just Joel. I'm also a member of the webcomic collective, Ink Bomb Comics.
October 6, 2015 23:34
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