Pity poor comic blogger Valerie D’Orazio… her existence is one of perpetual torment, as she is by turns ignored, abused, and attacked by everyone she encounters. Her crime? Being more perceptive, sympathetic, and intelligent than everyone else.
Or that seems to be how she interprets her situation, anyway.
Take her recent encounter with the big meanie hordes of free thought, for example, wherein she reacts to the news that an Australian man has been convicted of possession of child pornography. The porn in question? Cartoon images of The Simpsons kids having sex.
To be fair, Val was initially restrained, talking about shades of gray and the complicated nature of the issue. However, when it became clear that many commenters disapproved of the prosecution, she dispensed with any hint of moderation. Which would have been fine, had she not immediately began personalizing folks’ opinions and getting defensive.
Her follow-up poured on the self-imposed alienation. She began by bemoaning the existence of a “quaint aesthetic bubble” occupied by proponents of free speech, and followed that condescension with accusations of, well… condescension. Her closing thought was a professed fear of how free speech advocates are intolerant of dissent, her own in particular.
Of course, there are multiple problems with this:
(1) She claims that those within The Bubble are extremists who just don’t understand or respect the values and priorities of the mainstream, with which she professes kinship. So basically, she contends that The Bubble is occupied by a group of minority dissenters who are busy defending the most marginalized of individuals from majority intolerance, and in doing so are, um… oppressing the majority? Making the mainstream feel like outsiders? Being big ol’ doodie heads? It’s unclear.
(2) No one (that I could spot) in the discussion had suggested that her opinions were unwelcome in the communicative flow. What she chose to interpret as intolerance of her opinion was what the rest of us call disagreement. People argued against her position, and to Val, this seems to mean that they wanted to silence her.
(3) For someone with such deep, heart-felt concerns about being silenced, she was pretty quick to announce that the conversation was over, no one would ever change her mind, and her ball was on its way home.
But the bit that finally inspired this post was her third entry on the topic. I figured there was no point in trying to respond to her directly in her comments, so I decided to throw my response up here.
I find it very, very interesting that for the last two years, I’ve been patted on the back and lauded in many circles for my stance on sexist and sexually violent comic book material — but have recently slammed for a similar stance against illustrated child porn.
Val, there’s nothing similar about those situations. In the case of your efforts to tame sexism in the comics industry, your arguments have pushed for voluntary changes in attitudes, habits, and perceptions. In the Simpsons porn matter, on the other hand, you’re arguing in favor of criminal prosecution of someone who possesses a GIF of Bart fucking Lisa. The former is a request made of an industry… the latter, a desire to leverage a government’s most dangerous power over the citizenry.
Anyway, you may think that I don’t sympathize with people who feel their rights to free speech are systematically and daily curtailed. Forced to submit to Groupthink. Bedeviled by the horrors of Doublespeak. Afraid to speak one’s mind, for fear of swift censor by self-appointed arbiters of What Is Right, forced to fit a rigid and unbending dogma. Oh, but I do.
I’m glad you’re such a fan of douchey sarcasm, ’cause it gives me the excuse to spew the following:
Of course, Val. Because people disagreeing with you on the blog you control is exactly like some dude being branded a criminal by his own government. All those questions and rebuttals that are under the absolute control of your moderation queue? Compared to that, a $3,000 fine, a criminal record, and being dragged through the court system is petty bullshit.
I am ever so sympathetic to your plight.