Unless you’re a comic book fan, you probably don’t know who David Sims is. Sims is the creator of the long running independent comic book, Cerebus. At a time when comic books were still dominated by the super hero genre, Sims launched his independent, black and white book that proved there was a market for comic books beyond big breasted women and supercharged characters. Unfortunately, Sims is also a subscriber to an extremely noxious form of traditionalist anti-feminism.
Sims recently expounded on his views in a lengthy copyright-free essay which was published online by Comics Journal. The essay, Tangent, is one long misogynist screed against women (the essay is so bizarre that it is very understandable why Carol West, and administrative assistant at the company Sims set up to publish Cerebus quit, according to Sims’ account, after typing in a draft of the first two parts of the essay).
Sims writes in the sort of broad generalizations to which only true believers can subscribe. To Sims, for example, it is a simple, obvious fact that “women are emotion-based beings,” from which it clearly follows that “any female-centered or female-originated political movement – more precisely, “political” “movement” – will lack sound intellectual footing.”
This site often challenges the claims made by feminists. For Sims, this is a waste of time — in his mind, he need only point out that the claims are made by women which proves that, regardless of whether or not the claims are true, they cannot be based on any “sound intellectual footing.”
Sims’ version of traditionalist anti-feminism is extreme even for this position, but he is not that far from more widely read advocates of this position such as George Gilder. Sims seem to think his version of anti-feminism is the wave of the future, but fortunately his views (and that of other traditionalist anti-feminists) are really nothing more than the last gasp of a philosophy of women that is as wholly irrational and wrong as anything coming out from the worst radical feminists in academia.
Source:
Tangent. David Sims, Comics Journal, March 16, 2001.
Jesus, do you know how much credibility it sucks out of your post when you can’t even spell the guy’s name right?
Oh man, you’re right. This post is a classic example of the Bingo Was His Name-o Fallacy. I completely forgot that we judge the veracity of arguments based on whether or not a person’s name is spelled correctly. Thank goodness the Internet is filled with skilled logicians such as yourself to point this out and keep bloggers honest.
My hat goes off to you, sir!
@Brian Carnell:
Sarcasm does absolute zero to support the “veractiy” of an argument; nor is there any lack of it on the internet, is there?
Why on Earth should anyone put any weight whatsoever into the claims this author has made when they can’t even be bothered to get the name of the person they’re attacking right? We’re not talking typos here—we’re talking REPEATEDLY getting the name of the SUBJECT of your attack wrong throughout the article—INCLUDING in the title. That level of sloppiness hardly gives anyone any reason to put any trust in the “veracity” of your argument. For instance, it hardly gives one confidence that you’ve given due weight to the subtleties of wording in the subject’s original argument before rebutting it if you can’t even be bothered to pay attention to a “tiny detail” like a PERSON’S NAME (especially when that person is as well-known in his community as Sim).
Now you can rebut *that*, or you could resort once again to pointless, empty (and far too easy) sarcasm—or, most likely, you’ll just pretend you never read this and pass it silently by. Which ever way, after witnessing the sloppiness of your original post, and the complete and utter emptiness of your reply, I’m pretty much convinced that you have *nothing of value* to say.
Funny, because I do think Sim’s writing and “thinking” on the subject of feminism are extremely wrongheaded (to be far too charitably polite about it). I’m certainly not on Sim’s side, but given your combination of sloppiness and pointless sarcasm, and the fact that you don’t even care that you made a mistake, I sure ain’t on your side, either.