Sinfest

He's just crawling farther and farther up his own asshole, showing us the oddities he discovers in his private little world ...

Is there a message here? It's just so muddled

D'you think he'd snap completely if he realized just how much he and the religious right have in common? This is two steps away from being a better drawn Chick Tract.

...I just noticed: when Tats wants to show a lesbian, he does it more or less accurately (i.e. a normal person who happens to be homosexual), but when it comes to depicting a gay man he falls on ALL the stereotypes: crossdressing, feather boa, thin and slightly femmish look, and I bet that if the comic were to be turned into a cartoon we'd find out that, for example, Francis Sebastian sways around and tasks with a noticeable lisp. You know, the whole nine yards.

I mean, Sinfest has always been using stereotypes, but now that he wants a "socially acceptable comic" they pretty much quck up the message, innit?

He's used "ha ha, look at those men being effeminate" as the entirety of a joke before.

He's putting lesbians on a pedestal as heroes to be admired while he treats gay men as flaming faggots who are supposed to be laughed at.

It's perfectly in line with his radical feminst beliefs. Gay and effeminate men still are men, so they deserve everything coming to them and more.

The stupidest thing of it all is that Tats is simultaneously spouting a message of "toxic masculinity is bad", but also spouts "men acting in non-stereotypical ways should be mocked for being different".

"Submissive pet" (like the Theo / mini-Mouth relationship) seems to be the only type of masculinity that Tats approves of.

Edited by hayate666 on Sep 27th 2019 at 10:35:26 AM

Tats' idea of femininity is lipstick, knitting, cooking, and cleaning. Take note, feminists.

And yeah, you can always tell which men have never lived on their own by how they view cleaning and cooking.

Edited by Redmess on Sep 27th 2019 at 12:57:27 PM

I will say that is a nice Nobra Commander. I can never get his facemask to look right.

There's already a discussion on the Sinfest Forum about what the message for today's comic is supposed to be. (Celina hasn't jumped in yet, but I'm sure she'll be along shortly to tell everyone that they're actually trolls and Tats's message couldn't be clearer and REAL radfems would understand and blah blah blah.)

Honestly, the first thing I thought was that Tats has gotten so desperate to stem the bleeding from his Patreon that he's reaching aaaallll the way back to the style of his early strips like "Blacksploitation Bible" and "Politically Incorrect Power Rangers."

You can almost hear the whining, "Everyone thought I was edgy and cool when I did these, now you HAVE to like me again."

Tatsuya: "Haha! GAY PEOPLE! Amirite?"

For all his bluster on wanting to “eliminate gender,” it is clear that anything out of incredibly rigid gender roles makes Ishida very uncomfortable. His continued use of effeminate men as an inherent punchline really underscores this.

Is GI Joe not absurd enough on its own? I mean it’s the height of “muscle man solve problem with gun.” If you’re a feminist, do you really think that making it more traditionally feminine makes it dumber?

No matter what people here think of feminism at large, Tatsuya Ishida is not a feminist.

The best part of this is that he's just trying to paint "women under attack by trans activists" and somehow he's messing up his message so much that it can fit all ideologies at the same time.

Well, he is a feminist, just a rather outdated one that most modern day feminists find rather sexist (and racist, too).

The reason Tats is uncomfortable with this sort of line blurring between masculine and feminine comes from that outdated mode of feminism, which still relied on a rigidly binary gender system of masculinity and femininity. This is where you get that second wave rejection of the feminine and embracing of the masculine - in the eyes of a second waver, you must choose between one or the other, and since one is considered inferior (thanks to the influence of the patriarchy), women MUST choose to be masculine.

Again, it's not that Tats is not a feminist, it's that he is a hopelessly outdated feminist.

Very interesting points from both of you. In a way I kind of agree with Monkey Frag because I think Tatsuya's belief isn't genuine. I think he is going through the motions to prove he's "a changed man" to win back the love he lost (STILL). So, he is essentially doing to feminism what Slick did in this comic.

https://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2009-10-11

However, he is TRYING to be a genuine believer because he feels that if he does it hard enough she'll come back (which goes to Red Mess' point). If I am correct this would mean that feminism is merely a means to an end for him.

This also ties into Hexopedia's theory that a significant other is driving his actions. His theory is that it is more collaborative while I think it's more out of unrequited love.

Edited by Gibson35 on Sep 27th 2019 at 4:35:18 AM

I'm not going into the "no true feminist" debate, because that is quite the minefield, especially since we don't really know Tats and can't look inside his head at any rate.

I think it is safe to say that he is trying to be a feminist, and that he is getting his ideas of feminism from a rather unenlightened source.

I agree with you that he is trying to be a feminist. I think we just differ in the reasons why we think he's trying to be a feminist. You believe he's trying to be altruistic. I believe he's being selfish and avoiding actual personal change and growth.

Him interacting on Spinster is actually a sign of growth though. Not the best crowd to reduce anxiety, but he's still putting himself out there. Sometimes need necessitates action more than desire. His Patreon showing no signs of increasing is probably forcing him to get out there more.

Edited by Gibson35 on Sep 27th 2019 at 6:11:13 AM

I’m not saying that he’s “not a true” feminist. I’m saying that he’s a man who spends his time denigrating women, constantly draws women being sexually enslaved*, and kicks women off his discussion boards if they don’t bow to his Supreme Male Correctness.

He’s just not a feminist. It’s not as if he’s disagreeing on one or two feminist points. He doesn’t even vaguely resemble one.

• I don’t care if it’s the “bad guys” doing the enslaving, he’s the one who draws it nonstop.

The stuff Tats is putting out on Spinster strikes me as the equivalent of a third-grader's drawing of a stick figure with an ugly face, emitting "stink waves" (labeled as such), and with a big arrow pointing to "TEECHUR" .. but with slightly better art. Not just virtue signalling, but crude virtue signalling —"How do you do, fellow kids?" Desperate and ineffective.

Edited by Hexapodia on Sep 27th 2019 at 9:07:37 AM

https://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2019-09-28

Again where is the lie, especially since Clio is one of the worst of the Sisterhood.

Also, I can't help but think, "Huh, it must be useful for Tat to have a black person he can use as a stand-in for himself to defend his bigotry."

"You can't say I'm bigoted. I have a black character in my comic. You calling me bigoted is like you calling my black character bigoted."

Wat?

Tat must have pretty buff neurons from all those mental gymnastics he does.

Edited by Gibson35 on Sep 27th 2019 at 9:35:39 AM

This is where Tats is really off in the weeds. There's a huge difference between acceptance and showing tolerance for someone's right to simply exist, which is what most human rights concerns, and embracing all ideas as equal, including everything from torture to Female Genital Mutilation as if they are just the same.

One doesn't have to hate a hateful bigot. One can even feel pity for them, but acceptance of a bunch of clowns in Klan robes makes one complicit.

He doesn't seem to understand the difference between someone just wanting to be who they are, unmolested, and some yahoo yelling the N word at strangers from their open car window.

If one is actually going to be an intolerant bigot, one might expect an appropriate reaction, and not expect to be greeted like Rosa Parks.

Edited by Bassweasel on Sep 27th 2019 at 11:01:45 AM

Tats, the African American community has long, LONG standing issues when it comes to LGBT. You're SO CLOSE to actually having an accurate point pertaining to reality here, and you dodged it like you were in the matrix.

Well, I wouldn't say tolerance is that positive, anyway. Tolerance is generally reserved for things you find annoying, don't care for, or outright hate, but have to put up with because of personal or social circumstances. You tolerate a bad boss because he pays you. You wouldn't tolerate a bad friend the same way, though.

And no one wants to be on the receiving end of being tolerated.

Tolerance is one of those really insidious, poisonous concepts that sound nice and progressive, but can cover up a lot of bigotry and mistrust. It's right up there with pity.

Edited by Redmess on Sep 28th 2019 at 12:08:13 PM

...I can imagine Tats' reaction to the average person's comments... "Well, there's no joke today, but at least it's truth in advertising." "But... but it's not it! They're drones! They're evil! They're saying that Clio is a hateful bigot and therefore she isn't!" "Tats, she went around doxxing people, stealing and fucking everyone up for her cause." "...BUT SHE'S BLACK!"

Today's comic is amazingly funny, but not in the way Tats probably intends it.

The Patriarchy as always makes the best points. Tolerance indeed should be limited towards hateful bigots and be saved for people who aren't harming anyone with them being different. Can't we just replace the Strawman Has a Point page with a link to the Sinfest archives since the Sisterhood showed up?

Tats is really trying hard to make it look like Black Xanthe is the victim here, but given her history with actions like this she's the perfect example of someone whose beliefs are harmful to others and shouldn't be tolerated.

Tats is a poor example of a progressive / or "moderate" feminist, but he's a perfect example of a regressive sex-negative trans-exclusionary radical feminist. If you ever want to see some talking examples and cringe, try looking up some video's about political lesbianism or about TERF. The blatant hypocrisy and double standards are a trademark of that brand of feminism. Tats just takes it to the next level, because usually it isn't a male talking about this. Tats is like a black KKK member or a Nazi who is an openly practising Jew. He's a walking contradiction simply by subscribing to those beliefs.

Tats really is giving feminism a bad name.

It's like with religion. There's the ones who just believe something, live their lives accordingly and try to make see people their way in a socially acceptable manner. Then there's the radical ones blowing themselves or other people up over it and wondering why people don't see the same way as they do.

Edited by hayate666 on Sep 28th 2019 at 12:47:38 PM

Yup. Tat, everyone is agreeing with the people you think you’re portraying as bad guys.