[downer99]

Woah! So wait. Dave Sim is a misogynist? Like, a card-carrying member of the Misogynist party?

THE Dave Sim, creator of the Cerebus comic book?

How do you kick off an article with a bold statement like that, and not include at least a link to an interview or something? Is he like, the founder of some kind of Men's Rights Advocacy group or something? Does he run a political action committee?

Is he quoted anywhere as explicitly stating anything like:

  Hello, my name is Dave Sim, and I hate women. Yes, all of
  them, and as a general rule. You may know me as auhor of 
  the independently published comic book, Cerebus. At this
  time, I'd like to go on the record about my opinion of 
  women: I hate them. Make no mistake. Much like racists 
  hate other races, my hatred of women is similarly general, 
  and all-encompassing. To reiterate, I, Dave Sim, am a 
  self-proclaimed misogynist.

Like, really? He's simply a misogynist, and it's a bald fact?

[pessimizer]

Pretty much, yeah. Except a lot longer. He's a fascinating person.

[lotsofmangos]

Have you read his stuff on women? I like Cerebus, but he definitely has issues with women.

"Emotion, whatever the Female Void would have you believe, is not a more Exalted State than is Thought. In point of fact, I think Emotion is animalistic, serpent-brain stuff. Animals do not Think, but I am reasonably certain that they have Emotions. 'Eating this makes me Happy.' 'When my fur is all wet and I am cold, it makes me Sad." "Ooo! Puppies!' 'It makes me Excited to Chase the Ball!' Reason, as any husband can tell you, doesn't stand a chance in an argument with Emotion... this was the fundamental reason, I believe, that women were denied the vote for so long."

"Behind this...lies the Greater Void, the Omnivorous Engine which drives every... institutionalised waste of human time and energy, which drives, in point of fact, our entire degraded society. The wife and kids."

"In one of those Poor Us studies for which the Emotional Female Void is notorious, it was pointed out that after a divorce, the average male standard of living rises... the average female standard of living drops... I think the...explanation is that the excision of a five-to-six- foot leech from the surface of a human body is going to have more of its own blood in its own veins. Unless the leech finds another body, it is going to go hungry."

"In labouring to fill the insatiable Void Need for material possessions at home, his time and his energy and his spirit disappear into the Vaginal Bottom Line of the workplace."

"The Male Light and the Female Void: Seminal Energy and Omnivorous Parasite."

"If you look at her and see anything besides emptiness, fear and emotional hunger, you are looking at the parts of yourself which have been consumed to that point."

"It wouldn't be that big a stretch to categorize my writing as Hate Literature against women . . . in this Fascistic Feminist country"

[downer99]

Well! Those certainly are some, eh... curious... statements, aren't they?

I never read Cerebus cover-to-cover, because, well, it's freaking huge. I've only perused a couple of volumes, in particular, the first and last volumes.

I'm reading his wikipedia article now. I never realized he'd become mired in a controversy and gained such a weird reputation. He doesn't seem to self-identify as misogynistic though.

[egypturnash]

Reads.

You want to get Reads, and make yourself sit back and read all the lengthy text passages.

You'll find the crazy laid out pretty plainly there.

And then you get to decide how to reconcile the facts that (a) Sim is batshit misogynistic and (b) Sim is a total master of the form of Comics, who did some amazing things in it.

(I'm a lady who makes comics and learnt a fuckton from Cerebus. I am pretty glad "Reads" was serialized while I wasn't hitting comics shops regularly, and I didn't get the collections in order, so I could see some of the amazing techniques he played with later before realizing this was not a man whose work I wanted to support any more.)

[lotsofmangos]

He self identifies as being a defender of The Truth against a feminist dictatorship that invents things like child poverty.

For him to identify as misogynist would require him to accept a world-view where viewing women as unthinking beasts was hateful, rather than being a divine message from the true god Elohim about that female trickster Yahweh.

Personally I just think he went crazy with hate over his ex-wife.

[downer99]

It's tough in a court of public opinion, though. Especially when it comes to artistic works of fiction as interpretted by adversarial critics. Some of this is just so much gossip. Such is the life of the cartoonist who courts controversial topics, I suppose.

If the guy tries to explain himself, and only comes across as even more batshit insane, then I suppose that's his own tough luck (...or grand design, if that's what suits him). At any rate, when a person winds up in a hole, it's usually best to stop digging. From the sound of things, it seems entirely possible that he probably doesn't even really care, either way, anymore.

[babyturtle]

he doesnt have issues with women... he sees them clearly as they are.

[egypturnash]

I bet you get all the female voids sucking your male light with lines like that.

[lotsofmangos]

You been told to tidy your room again then?