i’m so sorry someone was sexist with you hun 😞you don’t have to lie, you can tell your experiences here and people will believe you 😊

gailsimone:

This is the weirdest thing about this whole deal.

I told the truth of what happened from the minute I made the first post. I explained over and over that it was no big deal, I just thought it was funny.

And I’ve actually got a huge stack of people explaining to me how it really wasn’t how I said it went down, how it was some other thing that they imagined in their heads. It’s absolutely ridiculous and pretty damn condescending.

Guys, I started in comics when it was one of the WORST periods in history for women’s participation in the mainstream side of this industry. I created the Women In Refrigerators website that I still get hate for almost every day. I have argued with some of the most blatantly goofy and sexist (even misogynist) creators out there, and stood toe-to-toe with them. I didn’t back down, I don’t know HOW to back down on this topic. And that’s been my life for the past twelve years.

I know what sexism in comics looks like. I know better than almost anyone who has lectured me on this could possibly know. I have faced a ton of this shit for real, I know what it looks like.

But I was there, all right? I know the difference between a guy who can’t shut up because he’s super-excited about a movie featuring his favorite hero, and something ugly and mean. 

I don’t like to throw around terms like ‘mansplaining’ and ‘sexist’ because I want them to be used for when they genuinely apply, I don’t want them to lose their meaning. And I don’t want to conflate some small, slightly funny incident where a perfectly nice but VERY EXCITED guy is somehow something it’s not and never was. 

My feeling with this guy at the theater was, if I hadn’t been next in line, he’d have been talking to someone else. 

How this became a meme, I don’t know. I have had a million ACTUAL instances  of ‘mansplaining,’ it happens all the time. I’ve had guys explain Batgirl to me, they explain Wonder Woman, I have several times had people explain the Women In Refrigerators website, which was MY idea and I created. It happens ALL THE TIME.

Why this one time, where that’s not what was happening, caught fire like this, I have no idea. But there are VERY few geek girls who haven’t had this exact situation happen where it’s NOT just some innocent, excited guy in line for a movie. Why didn’t those become a meme?

I have no idea. I only can repeat the truth. All those things that people complained about are legitimate complaints. They happen all the time. But that wasn’t this and I’m not going to pretend otherwise for a convenient narrative.