Ugly American # 20: Crunching Gender-kvetching

One of the things that is guaranteed to get my blood pressure spiking is the monthly Gender-crunching report over at Bleeding Cool. Some cat named Tim Hanley has decided that it is worth the time and effort to catalog everything that Marvel and DC are publishing, and figure out how many of the creators involved have a uterus. The question is…why?

Well, here’s Hanley’s answer:

“Women account for half of all human beings on the planet, but in terms of making comic books they are seriously under-represented. This shouldn’t be a shocking piece of information to anyone…we all know that comics are a male-dominated industry. But we know this anecdotally, not with solid numbers behind it or breakdowns of what women are doing where. Thus, this women in comics statistics project.”

Hmmm. Hanley is only half playing fair there, methinks. On the plus side, he’s not perpetrating any farcical objectivity. “We all know” the game is rigged and that the males are on top. Gender-crunching isn’t an investigation where Hanley wonders what he’ll discover. It’s numerical propaganda. Why tell us what we already know? One wonders what the point of the exercise is.

Except…we all know that, too. The point is activism and indictment, and that’s not plainly stated, but it’s there. Of course, it doesn’t have to be stated. In fact, it’s the unstated that roots the deepest. The current cultural narrative we have about gender works like this:

• Males are bad
• White males are really bad. (not super bad like James Brown, which is good, but despicable/immoral)
• Rich White Males are the author of all human evil (that would be the owners of Warner Bros and Disney, for those scoring at home)

So if the roster demographics at Marvel and DC don’t line up with the population at large, well, then that’s got to be part of a diabolical plot. Duh, they’re evil! And that’s why Hanley uses the words “seriously under-represented”, and that’s why he uses the term “male-dominated”. It’s not an accident. A variance can be random, but a serious under-representation cannot. Dominance implies aggression. He’s counting the numbers to call out the Big 2 for their gender transgressions, or at least what Hanley (and the Soft & Fuzzy Bunnies) perceive as transgressions.

And that’s fine, by the way. Like most of the Bunnies’ most annoying and destructive behavior, it comes from a good place. They would like to see more women in comics, and I’m happily on board with that. Hanley’s results seem to indicate that women comprise about 11% of Marvel and DCs creative teams. That’s a rough but useful figure, you can certainly hit gender-crunching if you want more specifics. And those figures do seem a little odd at first blush, I’ll grant you.

But on the flip side, there are all kinds of groups under-represented or not represented at all. The latest figures I could find on the US census indicate that Asians are 10.4% of the general population, but I can count the number of Asian comic creators I’m aware of on one hand. And I’m assuming things, of course, as I count. I think Tan Eng Huat is Asian, but for all I really know, the guy is Bolivian. And there’s another under-representation – how many Bolivian creators are being denied their place in comics by the dastardly Big Two? Sheesh, how many conspiracies are these guys doing right now?

Also, I see almost no ninjas in comics. Seriously, seriously under-represented. There’s just Jeff Parker. Don’t buy into that “aw shucks” southern bit, folks. Right now Jeff Parker has infiltrated the Russian consulate, and there aren’t even any Russians any more. That’s how good he is. But still, he’s the only ninja. The horror

Imagine this scenario:

A packet arrives on an editor’s desk at DC. He (or maybe she, since the editor job seems to be more readily available to women) looks at a pitch for a Red Tornado ongoing, and word has come down the pipe that Didio really wants the Tornado in the next wave. The take is strong, the direction is clear, even the supporting cast are distinct and compelling. There are four pages of preview artwork - the storytelling is impeccable and the action pops. This could work!

“If only this wasn’t pitched by skirts, I’d do it in a heartbeat!” He (or maybe she) throws the Golden Pitch into the wastebasket.

Does that sound even remotely plausible to you? Because it sounds like bullshit to me.

Think about Marvel for a few moments. I know it’s painful, but do it. Do you think they’d pass up making a nickel over a little vagina? No way. If Marvel could make a nickel bashing kitten skulls with cricket bats….you’d better get a helmet for Mr. Mittens, because Tom Brevoort is coming. That’s the reality I understand.

DC takes the worst of the gender lashings, but that makes even less sense to me. Was the ship largely guided by Jennette Kahn, Diane Nelson, and Karen Berger really female unfriendly? Or maybe it was that noted misogynist Paul Levitz? I suppose Geoff Johns, Jim Lee, and Dan Didio distributed that email declaring the New 52 a “cocks only” club. Oh wait, that email doesn’t exist. Nope, none of that makes a lick of sense to me. Who is it exactly keeping women from working at DC?

Folks with really spooky memories will recall that I asked Sheriff Mark Waid that very question when he appeared on Where Monsters Dwell. He said that it was too strong to suggest that women were “barred” from working in comics, but that he knew of editors more comfortable working with men. Sheriff Waid would not name names, though. Nobody does.

I think it’s weird that nobody can point out a problem editor or executive, especially these days when kids are telling so many tales out of school as they leave. Surely somebody would have pulled a Roberson and blew a whistle by now? I suppose that the prospect of confrontation will make some uncomfortable, and the spectre of rescinded future work will scare others into silence.

But really, it isn’t 1955 any more. Outing a misogynist is more likely to be greeted with obligatory golf-clapping then ostracization (somewhere Dave Sim is nodding, and doesn’t know why). In any case, wouldn’t it be worth it to build a better industry? I think the support is there for that sort of thing, it’s a progressive’s world at this point. (somewhere Orson Scott Card is grimacing and doesn’t know why).

But no, there is no bogeyman to be found, and I think the most likely reason for that is… there simply isn’t one. But don’t take my word for it, because I’m not there at DC. Judd Winnick is there. And this is what he had to say on the latest episode of Word Balloon right around the 35 minute mark:

And there was some kerfuffle going on, and not necessarily wrong, about the lack of women writers we have at DC, which is still going on.
And I will say this, and you know we’ve talked about it internally, that it isn’t for..you know, it isn’t like…{laughs} let me put it this way…
If there was a male writer and a female writer, and they’re both of equal talent, and they’re both putting in good pitches and they’re interesting, you don’t think DC, at this - you know at ANY point would say:
“No, we’re going to hire her, because man, we need some more women writers and some women energy in here and like, you know, this dude’s good, but, you know, maybe not right now.”
They would jump at the chance to have, like, a really strong female writer, and I’m not saying there aren’t female writers, I guess I’m saying more to the point – if women are interested in writing superhero comics, get in there! Just push as hard as you can to get into DC because they really do want you, and many of us want to read you. It’s, it’s, and I’m really, I’m really not even talking out of my ass, I’m not even speculating. I’m talking about actual conversations with people who would do the hiring and firing. They would love strong women to come in who want to write strong characters. They really would!

I was going to clean out all the little imperfections in Winnick’s speech patterns to make it look better in text form, but I decided to leave them in because I think they tell an important story about how desperately uncomfortable he was addressing the truth of the matter. Why? Because it goes against the culture’s narrative grain.

Look, Winnick is a Bunny. Big time. If you want to hear the golf-clapping at the end of your sentence, you need to stick to the script – men bad, white male corporation bad, women oppressed, boycott, twitter, picket, the end. You don’t get points in the Bunny Briar for facing the reality that there are likely no hobgoblins at DC looking to keep the fairer sex down. I give him massive credit for that. If you listen to the interview, he really struggled internally to spit that out.

Why is that? Why does it feel so dangerous to admit that maybe things aren’t so bad after all? Why do we recoil at the thought that maybe the comics world is populated mostly by people who are happy to work with women and want them to succeed in order to produce the best product? Shouldn’t that be cause for celebration?

I think the reason why we prickle at acknowledging real progress is complicated. There is a lot of currency in victimhood these days. Success brings derision, not praise in 2013. If you want status now, you have to be oppressed. These are the bizarre times we live in. But more than that, there is a sense that if the culture ever relaxes in its diligence against sexism, the males will instantly pounce on the opportunity and it will be barefoot and pregnant for the next couple of centuries.

So rather than assess the culture reasonably, we lock ourselves into “ism” (sexism, racism, ageism) mode whether the shoe actually fits or not, because the alternative is to hand the world back to the “ists”. That fear is absurd, of course.

It’s absurd, but it’s very real. You’ll notice that Winnick’s opener absolutely contradicts everything that follows it. He leads by saying that the “kerfuffle” over DC not hiring women is not necessarily wrong. He then spends the rest of his time on the subject explaining how that charge is absolutely wrong. DC is in fact tripping over itself to bring in female talent. Winnick is in a tough spot where culturally he must state that DC is sexist, because if he doesn’t, he must turn in his Bunny card and (in his mind) promote sexism. Except in his experience, there is no sexism there – and you can listen to his brain break as he tries to articulate that.

There are consequences for this madness, folks. I don’t know that I have a satisfactory explanation for why there are so few women creating comics and attempting to get into comics. I do know that if I were a woman and interested, but once a month some asshole showed me a chart explaining that I have no chance…that wouldn’t exactly invite me in. You can’t make comics if you never try.

I find no evidence, anecdotal or otherwise that women aren’t working in comics because of something systemic directed at them specifically. And let’s be real here; the deck is stacked against everybody. The old saw is that nobody breaks into funnybooks the same way, because once that method is revealed they plug the whole. There are a lot of talented people out there, and not very many jobs at the Big Two to go around. In order to get in, you have to beat the best in the world. You know, no pressure.

If the comics punditsphere were actually interested in creating opportunities for women, they’d spend less time making depressing pie charts and more time advertising the Winnick Plan:

Get in there! DC wants you, and we want to read you!

I don’t see that happening. The only place you’re ever going to hear about that Winnick quote is the original podcast and the Ugly American. Truth isn’t nearly as sexy as putting on your Pharisee robes and showing everyone what a Not-Sexist you are. My theory is that you’ll get more traction telling women the truth about how in demand they are, instead of painting them as eternal victims. My theories aren’t popular in the comics punditsphere, though.

And hey, if I’ve got it wrong, you can always correct me by commenting below….