Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
(CW/TW: Abuse) WCDT strips 3731-3735 (30th April to 4th May 2018)
swapna:
--- Quote from: Morituri on 04 May 2018, 16:42 --- (click to show/hide)There are a lot of people for whom some level of violence is in fact a "normal" part of their relationships. And they're not stockholm-syndrome zombies, they're pretty ordinary people who mostly don't hesitate to reciprocate in kind.
Thing about that is, they aren't trying to actually hurt each other. They don't regard it as traumatic or even problematic. Nobody gets more than a bruise, they're still friends the next day, and they don't consider themselves or their partners to be "abused."
Faye isn't even going that far. Has Faye ever actually injured someone in this comic? I can't recall a single time. In the absence of any indication that anyone has ever been actually physically hurt by her, I don't think I can take her so-called violence as an indication that she's physically abusive.
She makes threats, which is emotionally abusive. But the other hallmarks of emotional abuse aren't there; she doesn't try to drive people away from their other friends nor deprive them of support the way classic abusers like Corpse Witch do. Think of Corpse Witch trying to manipulate Bubbles into never going out, mistrusting all humans, and having no friends beyond the skatepark. THAT is emotional abuse. Faye doesn't reduce anyone's options for dealing with her that way, nor make arbitrary demands that prevent anyone from living a normal life. And nobody's life is reduced to the point where a major part of their reality is just being her victim over and over, which someone has to be trying to do before I'd be willing to even call them a bully. Think of CreepyBot and the delight s/he took in the prospect of deliberately torturing someone reduced to a helpless state, forever. That's a bully. That's not what Faye's doing.
All told, it looks more like she has trouble controlling her temper, in general, than it looks like she's engaging in any kind of calculated abuse, like Hanners' mom or Corpse Witch or bullying, like CreepyBot.
Maybe you're just using these words to refer to different kinds of behavior than everyone else?
Faye needs a better vocabulary for talking about her feelings, better negotiating tactics, more willingness to respect others' boundaries.... but I don't see any support for the idea that she's a 'bully' or a 'thug' or any serious kind of 'abuser.'
--- End quote ---
I just came in here to say exactly that - including the part how some people's friendship is different, has different boundaries, and yes, might include the occasional punch. And no, not just ladies hitting gentlemen, and not always does the other person hit back. And sometimes it leaves a bruise. And yet, those friendships are loving, supportive and nobody considers themselves abused or forces to do something they didn't want to do.
Furthermore, I fully support Faye making it abundantly clear that cleaning up after yourself is not optional. I've lived with roommates straight out of hotel mom way too long for that.
pwhodges:
--- Quote from: swapna on 05 May 2018, 00:19 ---And yet, those friendships are loving, supportive and nobody considers themselves abused or forces to do something they didn't want to do.
--- End quote ---
And yet, and yet... From time to time we observe that the scales may drop from such people's eyes when they realise that they bought some kind of stability which they thought could be called happiness by giving up all the other possibilities for their life; they then discover regret. The cynical might say that is the normal state of marriage. But a change in viewpoint can come from the effect of slow but inexorable changes in the way society as a whole sees relationships. We all hope our choices are for the best by the criteria we are familiar with at the time we make them, but then if things change...
Is it cold in here?:
Global Moderator Comment How is Randy the bandicoot like the Faye argument?Both are eternal.Please respect the thoughts and feelings of people who disagree with you.This is meant for everyone and not just for one person.
(regular user)
My own opinion is that the more realistic the strip gets, the less funny Faye's punches and threats are.
Case:
--- Quote from: Morituri on 04 May 2018, 16:42 ---Faye needs a better vocabulary for talking about her feelings, better negotiating tactics, more willingness to respect others' boundaries.... but I don't see any support for the idea that she's a 'bully' or a 'thug' or any serious kind of 'abuser.'
--- End quote ---
Yeah ... good point. I concur. It's just that her punching is part of a trope that normalizes the violence of bullies and thugs and 'serious kind of abusers'. (Is there a kind that's not serious?) She's not an abuser, but her punching being played for laffs is a teensyweensy part of an abusers camouflage. It's one of the very few things Jeph did less than stellar.
I certainly won't quit QC, and I. Do not. Hate. Faye - but I stopped laughing about Faye's punching a long time ago. (Actually, I never started, but that's another story)
This forum has had epic threads of post after post of Very Decent Human Beings explaining to Akima how they think she's completely right that Firefly is hilariously flawed in the way it deals with Chinese culture ... andcouldwepleasestoptalkingaboutthisandgetbacktoBrowncoatjokes? Human beings busy being very human indeed.
Are we doing a good job right now?
I look at all the good posts on the topic, from all the sharp cookies we have on this board, and the longer I look the antsier I become. Not about what we say - about what we DON'T say. I notice that we make a lot of astute observations about a lot of important stuff, but are we making a simple, affirmative gesture that would signal to the male DV survivors reading this: "I'm with you. You're right, I'm not laughing either"?
And this is a bad look for a board that learned in all the tricks & ways society employs in "Project Displacement - How to completely ignore a problem and shut out everyone affected AND convince yourself you're Doing! Something!". Every second spent explaining our feelings and our perspective is a second someone is waiting for us to acknowledge theirs. It looks as if we're ready to talk about every old thing in the Universe, as long as it allows us to put off acknowledging another human being's pain for five more minutes, or how - God beware! - there might be a bit of a blind spot in our Weltauffassung!, or how our team might not have covered itself in glory dealing with that one in the past ... That's not us. Let's not give this impression.
Let's not give the impression that we're ready to write elegies to defend feminism or the social justice movement against another stupid MRA-provocation meme and not spend a second talking TO a survivor instead of AT them. That's what those memes and provocations were designed for in the first place: To trick us into alienating a survivor. To go all cerebral and start EXPLAINING! FEMINISM! when we should be making an emotional connection. You don't need to be a genius to figure this out. There's no grand strategy behind those memes, and yet they're still kicking our asses all over the place. You don't need to be a genius to learn how play Mom & Dad against each other - toddlers figure out how to do that, just by trial & error and observing closely. And they barely have a theory of mind, let alone a grand societal theory.
Liberals are hilariously bad NOT falling for this trick: A lot of progressives are academy trained. Part of that training is to make going into the abstraction an instinctive move. And going all abstract is one of the oldest, and most effective displacement tactics - it's called rationalization. Maybe we feel just the slightest bit uncomfortable, or out of our depths - for whatever reason - What better way to not confront that than to rationalize?
Guys? Feminism and the social justice movement will survive if we don't defend them for five minutes. Yes, I'm sure of that. In fact, what it might not survive is us not shutting up about it for five minutes.
Not everybody who talks about feeling wary of some aspects or fringe elements of online feminism is an MRA. Some guys might just want vent for bit, want to make their pain and disappointment visible. And they don't have to get it completely right while they vent. Letting them do that, at least for a while, is not going to kill 'the movement'. And it's a good start building trust. Next step would be avoiding our instinct to patiently lecture the audience why the anger of the uninitiated is understandable, but misguided. Every time we do that, Paul Elam orgasms. It makes us look all manners of dumb, of the kind of 'dumb you need a degree for'
P.S.: From this moment forward, I will kill one of these cute kittens every time someone says the words 'patriarchy', 'privilege' or 'this is part of the patriarchy that the modern social justice movement seeks to overcome' while talking about male DV survivors.
Do you have any idea what those words mean to JoeBlow out of Bumbfuck, AZ who doesn't like Paul Elam, but thinks that not everything on AVFM.com is wrong? To Joe, they mean, respectively: "Misandry doesn't exist, because everybody who claims otherwise is misogynist. QED", "Wait until I'm done talking about your problem" and "Male DW survivors should wait until Feminism has finished solving womens' problems. Of course we'll start on the rest right afterwards".
You have been warned - think of the kittens.
Case:
--- Quote from: pecoros7 on 04 May 2018, 10:41 ---The only times I have ever seen "SJWs" resistant to arguments about violence against men by women, it has been when those arguments were raised as an objection to arguments about intimate partner violence against women. As though the existence of violence against men negates the problem of violence against women. It is a rejection of the "whataboutism" used to diminish the significance of an issue.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, about that one ... you remember the #whataboutzemenz - meme? Brilliant idea, that one - if you feel exhausted by a small, but determined clique of MRA's anti-feminists hounding feminist spaces, create a meme that plays on ridicule and male fear of appearing weak, omit any anything that would signal differentiation between bad-faith trolls (whose attacks are virtually unknown to anybody but you and your friends) and every male DV survivor on the planet, aim it at one of the oldest festering wounds that toxic masculinity has struck, and release it into the wild to propagate freely. Beyond your control. Wasn't there something we ...? OHSHIT!
What could possibly go wrong?
Surely everyone will understand you didn't mean to actually ridicule the concerns of male DV survivors in a way guaranteed to put 'that look' on every single male face (The empty-eyes look. The 'you can't hurt me' look. The 'one step further' look).
Then write long articles bemoaning how many people did indeed think this was exactly what you were doing, because the virality of your meme has pretty much erased any possibility you have to clarify your intentions in time. Don't forget to appear as if you think that male DV survivor's concerns are a distracting footnote in the struggle for gender equality, even if you don't think that is the case, but you just had to add that one thought more ...
Do you know that old adage that Feminism has the PR deparment from Hell? Yes. It does.
--- Quote from: pecoros7 on 04 May 2018, 10:41 ---And society's failure to recognize intimate partner violence against men as a problem is not rooted in feminism or the broader social justice movement.
--- End quote ---
That's very true. It's so true that even non-feminist advocates for male DV survivors acknowledge and emphasize this (Yes, unicorns sane men's-issues advocates actually do exist. And no, they don't think much of the MRA, either. But they won't turn away men who are MRA-affine, or are eager to ride to the defence of Feminism in the aftermath of the latest 3rd waver wunderkind's attempts to explain to everyone what they are getting wrong and how Feminism clarifies & addresses the real problemTM .
No, it's not Feminism that taught boys not to cry, and taught them so well that middle-aged men don't notice their major depression until it's almost too late. It's not Feminism that chewed off boys ears about rugged independence until male students have to be taught that it's OK to ask their TA's for help because that's what they are getting paid for. It wasn't Feminism that taught boys that real men are basically statues, and then wondered why legions of men don't have the faintest idea what they are feeling. It wasn't Feminism that did all those things to men - not realizing that this toxic ideal would men practically helpless to defend themselves against abusers, especially female ones, to the point where some don't even realize they are being abused (of the first cohort of British male abuse victims who were given shelter places newly assigned for that purpose by the UK parliament, every single one had been registered by a female friend or family member. Not one of the men had asked for help themselves).
It's just that a goodly chunk of the more visible parts of online feminism, especially the virally savvy parts, is jaw-droppingly excellent at leaving exactly that impression, especially when they set out to dispel that precisely that impression. Cf. everything Lindy West ever wrote for Jezebel, ever, the 'bathing in male tears'-meme, the roaring success that was 'ironic misandry' and ... oh c'mon, were have you been the last four years?
--- Quote from: pecoros7 on 04 May 2018, 10:41 ---That idea falls under "toxic masculinity" that the modern social justice movement seeks to end.
--- End quote ---
I ... would consult a unicorn sane mens' issues advocate (*) for the cases were that isn't the whole truth before I repeated that in certain circles.
(*) Ally Fogg's https://freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat. Don't delve directly into the articles tagged 'feminism', get a feel for the site first. No, he isn't an MRA, and no, he isn't anti-feminist, but ... online Feminism really spends a lot of time sticking its foot in its mouth, and Ally is not its PR-manager. Note of caution: Ally really is that unicorn, but the comments are not a safe space. They're more of a social experiment a la "Take a bunch of semi-domesticated MRA's and Feminists, take away the guns and knives and dig through the rubble for the useful ideas. Don't forget to bring an asbestos suit and shovels. Lots of shovels ..." There's only one rule: Comments solely aimed against either Feminism or MRM as institutions/philosophies are forbidden. It's surprisingly effective - particularly since a lot of MRAs are actually anti-feminist - but there is a chance you'll witness Paul Elam and the WeHuntedTheMammoth-dude slug it out in the comments
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