Friday 12 December 2014

Dave Sim: Misogynist Guru Of Self-Publishers

The Comics Journal #174 (February 1995)
Art by Bill Willingham
DAVE SIM:
(as quoted in Now I'll Ask You One with David Branstetter, July 2011)
I think the question boils down to: I’m not a feminist but I don’t believe that that makes me a misogynist. I think women should be treated equally but I don’t think men and women are equal. I think men are men and they’re good at that and women are women and they’re good at that. I don’t think men make good women and I don’t think women make good men. There are, no question, very feminine men and very masculine women, but it’s such a small percentage of the population that I don’t think it materially affects the central reality.

I think too many women, as an example, get away with murdering their children. I think anyone -- man or woman -- who murders a child should be treated equally. To me, that’s justice. Why we, as a society, don’t treat male and female child murderers the same is beyond me. Same as I have no problems with female cops and female soldiers as long as they can do the same job a man can do: lift the same weight, hit the same high standards. Otherwise you’re just giving a job that a really competent man could to a less competent person. That’s not treating people equally. Set the standards, stick with them and whoever can hit the highest standard gets the job. I don’t see how you can call that misogyny. I don’t hate women who take jobs away from men who are better suited. I just think the best person should get the job. What's hate got to do with that? I don’t hate women who get away with murdering their kids. But I don’t think they should get away with murdering their kids BECAUSE they’re women. What's hate got to do with that?


Dave Sim at The Spirits of Independence 1995: Austin, Texas 
Photo by John Christian

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dave addressed the charge of misogyny in the "Now I'll Ask You One" that was linked to a few posts ago. He said, "When slavery was first being challenged, there were very few people who spoke up and very few who persevered in trying to change it."

Dave equates himself with abolitionists, and his "struggle" (which consisted entirely of writing illogical screeds and then withdrawing from society in pique when his views weren't universally accepted) with the struggle against owning people as property. Yet he thinks it proper that women should be owned as property by their fathers until they are owned as property by their husbands. There's a bit of cognitive dissonance there.

-- Damian T. Lloyd, acp

Unknown said...

Well, so-called "feminism" (or, as I prefer to call it, "bimbocracy") finally "jumped the shirt" this year (Matt Taylor reference, of course). With "Big Red," "Ban 'bossy,'" GamerGate, cereal box mascots, the dirty-mouthed Disney princesses, and all the rest, it looks as though they're finally trying to get us to call them out so they can finally admit it's been a sick joke all along.
Now that the world is finally beginning to catch on, Mr. Sim's pioneering of anti-feminism and sort-of martyrdom will one day be greatly appreciated.