 Comic fail fail: Feminism fail
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Sep. 29th, 2009 @ 04:30 pm 
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Oh, Shakesville. So often good, sometimes so very, very wrong.
Comic fail.
Summary: xkcd comic features guy imagining that if he tells a girl her netbook is cute, she'll react angrily, announce it to everyone on the train, and they'll all agree he's creepy and tell the world. Meanwhile, girl wistfully blogs that the cute boy on the train still isn't talking to her.
Shakesville commenter, backed up by Liss, rants about how xkcd is totally getting it wrong, about how it's basically endorsing the assumption that women are always open to sexual advances: I feel like if xkcd dude, or any of the dudes who hit on me while I'm assuming my blank face of public transportation, considered the possibility that I was a doctor, or a lawyer, or, basically, a human being of any importance beyond a personalized fuck-hole for their enjoyment, they wouldn't feel like it's appropriate to interrupt me in the middle of my fucking commute in order solicit sex.
Except that if that's what someone thought, would it really be your *computer* they were complimenting? "Hey, cute netbook," isn't soliciting sex, it's soliciting conversation.
And I realised that the biggest reason this made me very, very angry is that it's deeply, profoundly and viciously sexist. Liss claims they're just teasing out the implicit narrative of the comic; well, the implicit narrative of the reaction is that men are sex-obsessed predators, incapable of attempting to talk to a woman they don't know unless they want to fuck her.
Bullshit.
I've had men on public transport compliment my laptop, or ask a question about it, or about my camera. If I didn't feel like talking, I brushed them off; if I did, I talked to them, and we had a chat about whatever it was, and maybe the chat wandered on to other topics, and at NO POINT was there any suggestion that they wanted sex. It's just a conversation.
And the assumption that's problematic is not that men always have the right to hit on women - which they don't, but the comic doesn't say that they do, so it's NOT IN PLAY. The assumption coming out here is that women should somehow have the right to have no-one ever talk to them, at all, unless they expressly wish it, and you know what?
If that's your attitude, go move to a fucking cave and take up life as a hermit, because that is not how life amongst the human race works.
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YESYESYESYESYES.
Not to mention, how else are people (be they heterosexual, bisexual or homoesexual) supposed to meet one another if they don't talk to each other?
Talking does NOT immediately equate to hitting on, EVEN IF the primary reason Person A is talking to Person B is because they find them attractive. In my mind, there are specific behaviors involved when it comes to being "hit on" and just talking isn't one of them.
Yeah, I dunno. I agree with your point about the blogged response, which strikes a ridiculously exaggerated tone for attention. "Personalized fuck-hole for their enjoyment," really: that's drawing a very long bow in relation to the comic, as well as men in general.
But I'm not a fan of xkcd and one of the reasons is that I find it far too cosy with its target audience. It certainly works hard to confirm, validate and compliment geeks in a way that starts to irk me very early in the piece.
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| From: | ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) rainbow |
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| Date: |
September 29th, 2009 05:26 pm (UTC) |
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O.O
Gosh, yes, I've never in my life enjoyed chatting with a stranger that I didn't want to sleep with! Except, you know, USUALLY that's exactly the case, that I enjoy chatting with random strangers over random things without any interest in doing anything other than chat.
Back in the mid 80s I worked in the engineering dept of a local utility. There was one female engineer in the dept, about 15 years my senior, and 4 men plus the manager, and me, the temp admin asst.
Female Engineer warned me in all seriousness to watch out for Engineer X and be sure to never be alone in the office with him, because he was constantly hitting on her.
And I looked at her in absolute confusion for a couple minutes before gently telling her that seemed unlikely as he was gay and out.
(I didn't point out that he was flamboyently, out and proud, scream it from the rooftops gay, in a long-term committed relationship with his partner, quite ill with AIDS, and a sweet, sweet man who was one of the least threatening men I'd ever worked with. Everyone else in the office knew why he was out sick so often; F-E had no idea when I asked her why she thought he was gone so often.)
To her, him just talking to her and smiling at her = him hitting on her, so absolutely that any other interpretation was hard for her to accept. To her, men definitely were sex-obsessed predators.
Is Liss the same woman who wrote about the men in her life repeatedly hurting and devaluing her, but she felt saying anything would "ruin things" and make everything her fault?
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| From: | sqbr |
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| Date: |
September 30th, 2009 12:28 am (UTC) |
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I dunno, at first I agreed with your interpretation but having read someone on my reading circle's issues with the comic(*) I agree with their opinion that while the basic premise is sound, and while I don't think there's anything wrong in principle with guys trying to chat up cute girls on the subway, having him be afraid specifically of being treated like a creepy sex predator (rather than an ugly loser or whatever) ties into some dodgy Nice Guy crap.
(Which is to say, I think both you and Shakesville are wrong in part, thus the icon :))
(*)Which I'm not linking to since they said they were getting really upset arguing about it and there's always the danger that someone would follow from your comments to bug them
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| From: | sami |
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September 30th, 2009 01:18 am (UTC) |
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Right, except, no, because when one is afraid that others will place the worst possible interpretation on our motives, that doesn't actually relate very much to what our motives *actually* are; also, seriously, his thought was to *compliment her computer*, which, I don't CARE if ultimately he wanted to ask her out, that's just *not* an opening line which counts as offensive.
It's like... ultimately, there is a point at which yes, in fact, a man does have a right to approach a woman, even if he's attracted to her, because people have a right to TALK TO OTHER HUMAN BEINGS IN PUBLIC, and what you have here is the exact problem playing out.
Because here, you have a comic representing a guy thinking about making an innocuous remark to approach a woman, and being afraid that terrible interpretations will be placed upon his motives - and oh, look, people are doing exactly that in reaction to the comic, and what the hell. His point, proven, and yet somehow this STILL counts against him.
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| From: | sqbr |
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October 3rd, 2009 05:10 am (UTC) |
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Nnng..I dunno. I certainly agree that the character isn't at fault. And what issues there are with the comic are ambiguous enough that I'm willing to give Randall Munroe the benefit of the doubt. But I don't think it's totally off-base to interpret the comic as having the moral that men shouldn't worry about coming across as creepy. I don't think that's the only interpretation, but I think it makes a certain amount of sense. I can't be bothered defending it very strongly though, since it's not my interpretation :)
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