NYT Rejects Comic About #Yesallwomen

[The Rogue Wolf]

It's a poor attempt at making a good point, honestly. It's about as subtle as a baseball bat to the nose, it flatly denigrates an entire side of a discussion, and the artwork itself is inconsistent and... well, ugly in a number of ways. It looks like it was thrown together in a rush to capitalize on the issue.

If it attacked the #yesallwomen movement like this, people from Hell to Helsinki would be demanding the artist's metaphorical balls on a plate.

 

[Eri]

The whole hashtag campaign is dumb. Men are assaulted, killed, raped every day by men and women alike. Women are not alone in this, nor do they even bear the brunt of it. Men are far more disposable in every society than females.

 

[Alleged_Alec]

In other news: the sky is blue, the grass is green and the sun will come up tomorrow morning. Both sides of this argument are bile filled assholes doing nothing but calling each other names.

To be fair, that's not true, in the same way there are also teenaged atheists who are not rabid Dawkins fans* who badly phrase the teleological argument and then declare victory before the opposing party has said a word. And yes, there are good points to be made on both sides of this debate, but the level-headed people are (as always) lost beneath waves of verbal diarrhoea by semi-sapient assclowns.

 

[DirgeNovak]

I'm pretty sure it wasn't rejected because it's about #YesAllWomen. I was probably rejected because... well... it's not a very good comic.

 

[Spartan448]

While I don't agree with the reason for the rejection of the comic, that doesn't necessarily mean it should be allowed in. This comic not only looks and reads like shit, it barely makes a rational point. If the point you are trying to make is that misogynists are all immature, irrational assholes, then there are ways to accomplish that task without seeming like an immature, irrational asshole who also lacks an inability to draw or phrase sentences properly.

I agree that the people the comic was satirizing are not good people, and that immature baby is an accurate description of these people, but at the same time, you also have to acknowledge that an unfortunately large number of these people are also surprisingly intelligent, and are actually capable of forming grammatically correct sentences. The 1st panel on the second line is especially inappropriate if your goal is to satirize a group without people also associating you with the archetypes you are trying to describe a group with.

 

[Areloch]

I'm all for the IDEA behind #yesallwomen

But can we agree that hashtag awareness campaigns(and trying to raise properly articulated and argued points on twitter in general) are bad ways to go?

It reaches a lot of people, sure, but it's far to easy to misunderstand the idea of the supposed campaign when your biggest connector is some vague hashtag with an ocean of posts attached to it.

We've been seeing a lot of it where someone will argue a point about something(like that community manager that got fired for being pro-privacy) but because twitter is an abysmal platform to actual convey complex or intricate ideals, everyone misunderstands and misreads the posts and the entire debate instantly goes to crap.

Of course, even if we stopped using twitter for complex societal issue campaigns and used a better platform, I don't think it'd have saved this comic from being complete and utter trash.

 

[Kmadden2004]

Is that what the comic usually looks like, or did they deliberately make it in MS Paint to make it look more juvenile?

 

[Delance]

No one should assume that this comic was rejected because of politics, given how terrible it is.

 

[Artemicion]

The comic is trying way too hard to make a point, therefore becoming obvious flamebait, and doesn't have a punchline, instead relying on the extremely old and unfunny joke of depicting adults as babies or children. That's a better reason to reject it than "sensitivity".

I'm all for women standing up against people such as the shooter, but not like this.

 

[Arawn]

The comic itself isn't horrible. Yes, artistically one could complain, but that's hardly the point. I think they refused to post the comic due to the replies more than anything else. It's just like that Critical Miss comic about Evangelion (sp) or the WGDF. People were enraged. Even if the author/writer makes a valid point it's lose behind the presentation. Calling those that oppose whiny babies is hardly a way to start any civilized discussion. Not that one could expect one when pertaining to this subject. I can't say how it could have been done better. I'm sure the paper saw the possible fallout and figured it wasn't worth it.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

This comic pretty much has the quality of a youtube comment being typed in all caps, and frankly isn't going to make anyone who is anti-this message think anything about their position.

 

[Agayek]

There's a reason we as a gender have a higher pain tolerance than you...it's the only way we survive all the punching and kicking.

You realize that this has been empirically proven to be false, right? In fact, women have the higher pain tolerance, on average.

I'm not gonna comment on the rest of what you said, mostly because I agree with some parts and disagree with others, but I couldn't stop myself from pointing that much out.

 

[SKBPinkie]

Kinda reminds me a lot of that one comic made on this website. Can't argue with someone? No problem - strawman to the rescue!

Let's make any and all opposition seem like the most despicable people on the planet. Yay!

Seriously, though - this stuff should be properly and calmly discussed. Being a moron and shouting about it won't help and a comic that claims to be satirical doesn't either. It just raises tensions on both sides without actually solving anything.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Are we sure it was rejected because it was controversial and not that the comic was just shit? Because after reading it I'd go with the latter.

 

[Sylocat]

Brevity is the soul of wit. I like the message/point/whatever of the comic, but you could take out half the panels and the comic would still communicate the same point. Only it'd be funnier for not dragging the joke out for so long.

Oh, and the art is terrible, but that guy's art is always terrible and the NYT never had a problem with that before, so not much ground for an objection there.

 

[Ninmecu]

There's a reason we as a gender have a higher pain tolerance than you...it's the only way we survive all the punching and kicking.

You realize that this has been empirically proven to be false, right? In fact, women have the higher pain tolerance, on average.

I'm not gonna comment on the rest of what you said, mostly because I agree with some parts and disagree with others, but I couldn't stop myself from pointing that much out.

I was actually curious about this myself, but a quick google search brings up several articles that disagree with you.

 

[Riotguards]

i feel that many feminist, not all but a good few are using misogyny as an excuse to push an agenda on a tragedy that wouldn't have occurred if this person didn't get the mental help he needed as well as the many others who failed to stop him before (fact that his parents reported him and the police, knowing he had guns just pushed it under the rug is insane)

yes i agree he outright declares himself as a misogynist but he also hated men as much as women simply for not being virgins, he also regarded himself above humans, even calling himself a god further showing that he simply was not mentally well

i'm not excusing his actions at all and he should pay the price for what he did but as we all know just because one person who was addicted to call of duty and goes onto a shooting rampage doesn't automatically prove any points other than said person had some deep seated issues

i personally blame the many people who failed him, lets face it, he showed many signs of mental illness yet (as far as i know it) only his parents followed up with any action to confront this behaviour

I was actually curious about this myself, but a quick google search brings up several articles that disagree with you.

different people have different pain tolerance, that being said i'd say men are more tolerant towards pain than women simply because of the role men have played in society

mainly men doing a good deal of hard labour compared to women, although this is wrong in some societies but its generally men doing the hard work in history but i could be wrong about this

 

[JMac85]

I'm reminded of that Saturday Night Live skit not too long ago about those "mens rights activists" losers. In it, there's a group of women sitting in a living room. One of them brought her boyfriend, who was said to be an MRA by her girlfriend who had no idea what it meant. The other women did, and spent the entire skit calling him out for being a pig.

It wasn't funny or witty, it was literally just berating a strawman. That's not effective satire. While this comic illustrates the moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy of those who backlash at feminism, it doesn't do so in a very clever way.

 

[weirdee]

I don't have an issue with the hashtag. What I have issue with, is the ignorance presented by several of the people who used said hashtag, claiming that the man-child in question was purely a misogynist. Fact is, he hated women for not being sexually subservient towards him and he hated men who he deemed to be more successful than him. Want to know how far that hatred goes? I'm an impoverished native american Canadian, I lost my virginity with a 8/10 red head goth chick at 14. Based on that second bit, he would have hated me with the same deep seeded despair that he hated the women he wanted to bone. Because I've been with a woman, I'd qualify as more successful than he in his own eyes, despite being in a much better socio-economic position. But the thing that really gets me is the man was deranged, had severe issues and needed some serious help. But there are many amongst those who used the hashtag that were simply abusing it for the sake of being misandrist pigs and pushing their own agenda, the comic in question sidesteps the entire issue and makes it seem as though we, as males, have absolutely no reason to be annoyed or bothered by some of the comments that were being made and aimed at us simply for being born male.

I think the fact that he went to go shoot a sorority first rather than a fraternity undermines your argument.

Is it true that misandrists exist? Yes. Is it true that some of them have been reaching a bit when they pin this hashtag to some overblown world views? Yes. Is this a bad comic for various reasons? Yes.

Should we be using these individuals as the standard to ignore the actual viewpoint that most users of the hashtag have been actually expressing? Is the opinion that men who have had sex with women are ruining it for men who haven't also directly stemming from the same source (placing men in the dominant role as a societal norm) that this viewpoint claims? I'll let you answer those ones yourself.

Are you a MRA member? No? Then why do you think this comic represents you? Are you feeling slightly guilty because you had to refer to the first woman that you had sex with in the terms of a character sheet instead of just saying you lost your virginity as if you had to prove that it happened, and perhaps that you refer to it as "losing your virginity" instead of just saying the first time you had sex? Do you see how easy it is to let societal norms shape the way you think, and perhaps that it is affecting your arguments?

 

[Cecilo]

There's a reason we as a gender have a higher pain tolerance than you...it's the only way we survive all the punching and kicking.

You realize that this has been empirically proven to be false, right? In fact, women have the higher pain tolerance, on average.

I'm not gonna comment on the rest of what you said, mostly because I agree with some parts and disagree with others, but I couldn't stop myself from pointing that much out.

From the quick research I have done. I have found nothing that states that Women have a higher pain tolerance, just that women report more pain then men on average.

If anything if that is true I would still say Men have the better fate. If it is true that women experience more pain than men on average, it would show a difference in "Design" Of each gender. Men are made to feel pain, but be able to suppress it to get stuff done. Where as it would if true show women are made to feel more pain, to get away from it, or to solve whatever is causing pain.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97662