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The Latest From The Perpetually Aggrieved

The Latest From The Perpetually Aggrieved

Last updated on: June 10, 2015 at 11:24 am by Thomas L. McDonald

The Latest From The Perpetually Aggrieved 2015-06-10T11:24:15-04:00 Thomas L. McDonald

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You won’t believe what has the Social Justice Warriors of geekdom riled up this time.

DC Comics was tweeting answers to fan questions in a chat about Bizarro, a DC villain who’s Superman’s opposite. Some SJW asked what they always ask now about everything: will people of color be included? Because nothing’s more important to a story about a comic-relief Superman villain than making sure they hit their quota of designated minorities.

Bizarro is grey, so I hope you’re counting him. (1/2) @HeathCorson #BizarroChat https://t.co/H0995tuyxu

— DC Comics (@DCComics) June 5, 2015

Note that this message was “1/2” and that “2/2” said

.@FemmesinFridges And yes, as we criss-cross the DCU we’ll feature a whole mess of folks. (2/2) @HeathCorson #BizarroChat

— DC Comics (@DCComics) June 5, 2015

Obviously, it was a flip joke, not a statement. That didn’t stop the editor of the SJW’s leading feminist geek-rage site The Mary Sue from jumping down their throat like she was a schoolmarm chiding a kindergartner for saying a naughty word.

.@DCComics No. Please consider what you said here. https://t.co/hCJpuyvmvv

— Jill Pantozzi (@JillPantozzi) June 8, 2015

Think of the mind that would say something like that, and phrase it that way: “No. Please consider what you said here.” She’s addressing a professional adult working in an industry she claims to love. Does she think the person on the other end of the Twitter account is ignorant? Racist? Hateful? Does intent even matter? Or does she just think it’s her duty to help whoever tweeted (probably a white straight male: figures!) check his privilege?

The Mary Sue even misrepresented it in a post. The way the post is written makes it look like the second part of DC’s answer was in response to her chiding (coming “later” with a “sincere clarification”), when in fact it was actually the second part of a single message posted less than a minute after the quip about Bizarro being gray. Pantozzi’s outrage didn’t come until three days later.

Although humor has never been part of the SJW skill set, their “I’m offended” meter is calibrated to a fare-thee-well. Sez Mary Sue:

Although I appreciate Corson eventually answering seriously and understand that the initial tweet was “just as a joke” (and that the pressure of Twitter Q&As doesn’t necessarily foster thoughtful responses from creators), equating Bizarro with people of color does not reflect well on DC’s recent self-proclaimed diversity.

Earlier this month DC launched DCYou, an ad campaign with an emphasis on diversity in post-Convergence titles; and although simple acknowledgement of the need for representation was refreshing, critics pointed out that the creators and characters highlighted by DCYou were still overwhelmingly white and male.

For many, the campaign seemed to be DC touting itself as diverse without really considering why representation is important or how to diversify characters positively, and the “what about Bizarro??!!!” joke just lends weight to those concerns

Art by Ed McGuinness, from Wikimedia Commons.

Every time I read one of these grindingly obnoxious PC spews I think, “There are actually people out there who think and write like this.” Do they even listen to themselves? I took my daughter and her friends to Comic Con and we sat through a Hayley Atwell (Agent Carter) talk in which one drippy female SJW after another came up to the microphone and asked endless variations on the “when will you be introducing more POCs/LGBTs to the show?” question.

I’m old enough to remember when women wouldn’t touch geek culture. I’m glad more of them seem to be enjoying it now, but apparently some of them didn’t like the culture they found. They want it to be something else, and a loud minority is coming to light entertainment with all their politicized social-engineering baggage. They think the largely liberal creators of pop entertainment are insufficiently socially conscious and have no desire of their own to diversify the stories they tell without constant hectoring.

Most of this is being perpetrated by white middle-class feminists and their beta-male allies. (What percentage of the Mary Sue staff are people of color, I wonder? Looks pretty white to me. That matters a lot, doesn’t it?) They have the fervor of a religious zealot and the certainty that right-thinking people will cheer them on, while those who don’t are just haters, and thus unpeople. “Watch what you say” is the softest tyranny, but the most insidious and destructive.

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