So, what is sexism anyway? The comics industry is taken as sexist by some people. Including me. I think there is active and institutional sexism in the comics industry, but if pressed to identify it...well, I might have a problem pointing it out.
Why?
Well, how can any industry be sexist. There are hiring practices. There is a dearth of women creators as compared to men, but Jeanette Kahn and Karen Berger are in positions of power. One would think they would give as much chance to a woman as a man. I don't know how many women want to write or draw or color or letter, but you can't force them if they don't wanna.
There are the outlets for selling comics. I've heard stories about evil comics stories where women walk in and men scream at them, pointing like Donald Sutherland in the 1978 version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Sadly except for when I bought comics from the original Friendly Frank's comics, just about every stores Ihave bought comics from has been run by women or married men. (Well, 20th Century Five and Dime in Bloomington was run by a colleague, but it was sort of weird for everyone, not just women.)
Then there are the worlds within comics. That's partially a marketing issue, but there is not a lack of female characters. The Marvel mutant titles have a lot of women. It's true that the big deal huge characters are mostly guys, but Lois lane is in Superman. Spiderman has a boatload of women. Batman, well, not so much, but he has a lot of women in somewhat important roles. Catwoman, Spoiler, Poison Ivy, Silver St. Cloud, etc. Archie has Betty and Veronica, Lois, Betty, veronia, and some of the others have all had there own titles at one time or another.
Strips of course have no issues with women that I can see. There are female character, creators and newspaper editors. (In my years in the newspaper business, I worked for exactly one, count'em, one man.
I'm not even going to pretend I know anything definitive about this issue, but since I was defending elmo against a somewhat bizarre charge of sexism, I thought I should try to frame the issue in more specific terms.
Posted by Mike Chary at April 29, 2005 10:12 PM