I think we’re letting Dave’s own PR get in the way of his work, which, in my opinion, should stand alone, without being judged on the ethics of what Dave may have said outside the book. Now, that said, Dave chose to make his viewpoints part of the Cerebus storyline, most notably in “Reads,” which I took to be a rather juvenile stab at being provocative, although there was an almost desperate undertone to the narrative. In Dave’s characters, he seems to strive to present a resonating sympathy that makes his characters so wonderful, so that even when they do horrible things, there is an implicit understanding between reader and character. When Dave steps outside his characters, his views, usually filtered through a character, becomes shockingly unrefined, unbridled, unfiltered and unsympathetic. They are violent challenges: a challenge to prove his theories wrong, a challenge to not be offended by what he says, and, quite plainly a challenge for someone to punish him for what he obviously (whether he admits it or not) feels are outbursts of naughty behaviour (he has goaded feminists on the whole to imprison or execute him for voicing his opinions.)
I believe, and I do, that Dave’s work needs to be appreciated outside of his personal views, especially when they present little interference to his body of work as a whole. If you can stop your knee-jerk reactions to inflammatory propoganda, his work speaks for itself, and also illuminates much “self commentary” that artists are incapable of leaving out of their work. If each character in Cerebus, and I believe this is true of every artists’ work, is a self-portrait of a section of a self-portrait, we can gather that not only does Dave have “mother issues,” he also struggles with some sort of problem with homosexuality, an intense dislike of his own femininity or female-like traits, severe trust issues, and the usual brand of misogyny that men who have gone through unpleasant divorces always seem to exhibit.
Is he a misogynist? Most people say yes. But, I ask, is misogyny in mind or behaviour? It seems a great many people who know or have known or have spent any time around Dave describe him as a likable guy. Then again, just because a person may harbour an intense and ugly hatred of someone or something doesn’t mean they run around with hairy palms acting like Mr. Hyde. My personal definition of misogyny is intense *envy* of femininity and resentment at the power it holds. Dave seems to really like feminine women, and perhaps all this excess aggression, validated with his schitzoid theories, is a very frustrated attempt to deal with his inability to come to terms with this. Then again, there is the phenomena of the unself-actualized homosexual who cannot help but be frustrated by women because he is in fact in unconciously competing with them for the affections of another man, and Dave’s rants could possibly be a very complicated exorcism borne of a semi-genius, theorizing noodling brain.
Again, which ever it is, whatever the reasons, Dave’s misogyny, or lack-there-of, is not a reason to discredit or dismiss his work. Operating under that premise, we’d have to discredit Martin Luther King, Jr.’s work because he was a womanizer, or reject automobiles because Henry Ford was an anit-semite, or the Constitution because the Founding Father’s were whore-mongering slave owners.
Your thoughts?

Being anti feminist doesn’t make one anti women. I don’t believe Dave is anti women, more accurately he is opposed to the outlandish and silly beliefs of hardcore lefist feminists.

What makes Dave anti women is actually his applying his feelings toward one woman, his x wife, on a broad scale to women in general.

You go through a messy, hurtful divorce and then use the mass media at your disposal to adress the way it has made you feel and suddenly you hate women. I’m sure dave felt like he had had his lifesblood sucked out of him when the split occurred and that was what he was refrencing.

Frame his words in that context and maybe there will be some understanding. Most likely not. Most likely the continued marginallizing of Dave Sim will go on and I will be summarily thrashed for still respecting the man and his work AND having the BALLS to state it.

Dave is guilty of one thing, having conservative views in a field that is dominated by liberals and liberal thinking.

“I Will Not Debate Haters On The Internet. I Will Not Debate Haters On The Internet. I Will Not Debate Haters On The Internet. I Will Not Debate Haters On The Internet.”

There. I feel better already…

Dave Sim is over 50 years old. Unless he lives to be over 100 (doubtful, cigarette smoking twit that he was), he’s only got twenty or so years left in him. Less, if we’re lucky.

By the way: great essay, Heidi.

By the way: great essay, Heidi.

Sim, on the other hand, is saying and publishing these pernicious things toward the end of his life and seems to have cemented them in his twisted thoughts. As with Will Eisner refusing to apologize for his painfully racist character Ebony White, Sim seems bound to death to adhere to his own filthy and poisonous ideas.