Hate Halts Cartoonist from visiting Halifax

the December King

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Read this just today, the creator of the comic Assigned Male was planning a stop in Nova Scotia as part of her latest book launch, received a ton of threats, and subsequently decided not to visit Halifax.

Although I don't really like the comic, I just wanted to say that I'm pretty disgusted by this behavior. Halifax has always seemed far more inclusive to me than other places I've been (which, admittedly, has been relatively few).

I don't want to think of this as online harassment necessarily from locals here... nonetheless, it's still deplorable, and a shame as well.
 

Zontar

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On the one hand, if it's true then that's too bad. Guy has serious problems so dealing with that on top of it really isn't something that's warranted.

On the other hand, given what I've seen him call "harassment", I'm 50/50 on it actually being the case.
 

Silvanus

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inu-kun said:
Looking at a few strips, it's kinda like religeous zealots being hated back. A person who's sole act is to make moralizing bad points facing shit and the only real option is to feel neutral about it.
First instinct is to criticise the comic, and ignore the threats the writer received, which are the topic of the thread. Nice.

inu-kun said:
Also both are anti science:
http://assignedmale.tumblr.com/page/5
That's not "anti-science".

I really do tire with people using fallacious and shallow understandings of biology in order to pass judgement on this issue.
 

Zontar

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Silvanus said:
That's not "anti-science".
There's literally an issue (or whatever you call those one page updates) where the claim that being biological parents isn't depended on a man and a woman being involved. Without artificial means being implied (which doesn't actually detract from the fact you need a man and a woman to provide material for it).

Calling Assigned Make anti-science is a pretty accurate description, though I'd say the other messages such as the authoritarianism and the fact it can't even get its own message straight at times (given how it regularly contradicts itself) is far more egregious since no one cares that a poorly made comic has bad science in it.
 

Silvanus

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Zontar said:
There's literally an issue (or whatever you call those one page updates) where the claim that being biological parents isn't depended on a man and a woman being involved. Without artificial means being implied (which doesn't actually detract from the fact you need a man and a woman to provide material for it).
Can you share that page? I was speaking specifically about the page (or issue, or what-have-you) that inu-kun posted.

Zontar said:
Calling Assigned Make anti-science is a pretty accurate description, though I'd say the other messages such as the authoritarianism and the fact it can't even get its own message straight at times (given how it regularly contradicts itself) is far more egregious since no one cares that a poorly made comic has bad science in it.
I'd appreciate examples. I do not trust that your description matches reality, frankly.
 

K12

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inu-kun said:
Looking at a few strips, it's kinda like religeous zealots being hated back. A person who's sole act is to make moralizing bad points facing shit and the only real option is to feel neutral about it.

Also both are anti science:
http://assignedmale.tumblr.com/page/5
The linked strip isn't anti-science at all.

Unless you commit the age-old conflation between sex and gender and ignore people who are intersex/ hermaphrodites (who always seem to get ignored in this topic for some reason) and ignore people who have changed their sex so that their genitals match with their gender (but obviously haven't changed their genetics)

The overall comic and author may well be anti-science as far as I know (literally never heard about it before today) but you have to stretch a bit to make that conclusion based on just this strip. If there are more and better examples then feel free to post them.

... I have a feeling this thread is going to go well.
 

Saelune

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Zontar said:
On the one hand, if it's true then that's too bad. Guy has serious problems so dealing with that on top of it really isn't something that's warranted.

On the other hand, given what I've seen him call "harassment", I'm 50/50 on it actually being the case.
She.
 

Saelune

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Even Canada has right-wing bigoted idiots who dont understand anything. That this is a problem only in the US is short sighted.
 

09philj

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inu-kun said:
Looking at a few strips, it's kinda like religeous zealots being hated back. A person who's sole act is to make moralizing bad points facing shit and the only real option is to feel neutral about it.

Also both are anti science:
http://assignedmale.tumblr.com/page/5
You don't know shit about biology. Biology is not my preferred area, but even I know that the assembly of a human according to DNA is just an instruction manual that isn't necessarily followed exactly. Biology, especially genetics and psychology, would be really fucking complicated even if it worked properly. As should be fairly evident, in reality it's not exactly reliable, and indeed we'd all be at the bottom of the sea reproducing by cell division if it was.
 

Tsun Tzu

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"I'm not letting them bring me down."

*Proceeds to cancel event, blaming them.*

That'll show 'em!
 

kitsunefather

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I think, without trying to start anything, that showing examples of the harassment would make those who are less sympathetic moreso, and silence people who question whether the harassment and threats received were of a nature that would lead to cancelling an event. Because, in the absence of evidence, my first instinct is to notice what great publicity this is for her book.

And yes, I know that's cynical. Again, in the absence of evidence, I assume dishonesty.
 

cthulhuspawn82

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I cant draw conclusions about groups of people based on anonymous internet attacks. Considering the ever growing prevalence of "fake hate crimes", I cant assume whether someone posting a death threat on a the Facebook page of a Trans cartoonist is a trans-phobic conservative or someone trying to villainize that group with a false flag.

I put fake hate crimes in quotation because its still a hate crime even if the person doing it is setting up a false flag. The people making such threats are despicable, regardless of their motivation. We just cant make assumptions about who exactly those people are.
 

Zontar

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BreakfastMan said:
Literally none of that is anti-science.
"Reproduction happens without the help of heterosexuality"

I'm sorry, I must have missed the breakthrough in reproduction where humans suddenly stopped needing a man and a woman to accomplish it.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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Zontar said:
BreakfastMan said:
Literally none of that is anti-science.
"Reproduction happens without the help of heterosexuality"

I'm sorry, I must have missed the breakthrough in reproduction where humans suddenly stopped needing a man and a woman to accomplish it.
Yeah, you're missing the bit where a woman can have a penis and a dude can have a vagina.
 

Zontar

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altnameJag said:
Zontar said:
BreakfastMan said:
Literally none of that is anti-science.
"Reproduction happens without the help of heterosexuality"

I'm sorry, I must have missed the breakthrough in reproduction where humans suddenly stopped needing a man and a woman to accomplish it.
Yeah, you're missing the bit where a woman can have a penis and a dude can have a vagina.
But that's a hermaphrodite, not a woman with a penis or a man with a vagina.

But I guess my 5 year old biology text book is out of date, didn't take the social science invasion of the real sciences into account.
 

PsychedelicDiamond

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While the author of that comic comes off as, excuse my french, a bit of a sanctimonious *****, I don't think she or her views are dangerous or morally reprehensible enough to bully her out of visiting a city. There are people with genuinely dangerous views that shouldn't be tolerated and she's not one of them. All she ever did was make a shitty, moralizing comic. And they're not even really bad morals, mostly, they're just delivered badly.