Janelle Asselin is a normal woman who loves
comics just as much as the next person and has for many years worked in the
Batman office at DC comics as well as worked with many top comic talents. Janelle’s
career for the past five years has been around the study of broadening comic
readerships to a more diverse audience so why would she not be able to critique
an issue? Asselin was more than qualified to write about the Teen Titans issue
#1 cover and how it portrayed Wonder Girl and her other female comrades as
having “zero-gravity” breast. When the
article about Teen Titans ran, it created a world wind response that was misogynistic
to Janelle questioning herself and who she thought she was.
Janelle was
called a feminist but in the language that made it a dirty word and there would
be many variations of this called out to her such as “feminazi”, she was
accused of trying to make superhero comics something they are not. Now some of
the feedback she got was even from a professional comic named Brett Booth, who
even though he did not draw the cover, took personal offense to her accusation
of the over sexualization of teen girls and viewed what she said as an attack
on the true artist. Asselin has heard this all before, like “you can’t trust a
girl in comics” or “she doesn’t know what she is talking about” many of these things
have been said to her face and either way the main theme of this is how
women do not have any view or knowledge in comics, or how they should be portrayed because obviously women don’t know what
their bodies should look like… huh isn’t that strange? A woman not knowing possibly nothing about how her body look, well
I mean it totally makes sense (not
really, it’s messed up). But let’s keeping going with the story to understand how
this is going to get even more messed up…
At the same
time of the release of the article, Asselin posted a survey about sexual
harassment in comics. The reason why she wanted to do this is because she has
experienced it in the work force just like countless other women and some men
as well. Asselin has been trying, like many others, to bring awareness about
how this industry is traditionally oriented around men, like gaming. However,
since this post was a little after her ordeal with the Teen Titans cover, some
decided to anonymously state all the nasty things that they wanted to do to
her. One of them went to the extremes of stating how “I can’t wait to rape you”
or “were going to F*** you until you bleed feminazi.” Her reactions to the rape
threats were at first calm because she was like “so im starting something now”
she was actually realizing how much of a revolution she could be starting with
this post and she started to delete the less creative ones. It started to occur
to her that she could track these people down so she mentioned the rape threats
on Twitter. Her post about her
harassment reach father than she anticipated, but she was getting the word out
about how her experiences in comics the women also get rape threats. Asselin
knows that her story like many others has resonated with comic pros and
fans.
“Many, many people are fed up with the fact
that women can’t state an opinion without getting threatened with rape. If
you’re not threatened with rape, you’re told you’re not qualified, you’re not good
enough, and you’re not welcome here.”
Many men
who heard about the harassment wanted her to prove it because they thought she
was doing it for attention, others thought that it was getting away from the discussion
which was the idea of superhero breast. Asselin often gets asked about why she still
stays in comics and its because of how there are still so many great comics out
there and she still enjoys the opening of a new comic. Asselin still loves editing
and taking about comics, she knows that young woman are becoming the
fastest-growing demographic so why shouldn’t we be represented in comics properly.
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