Shades After 067
Oh Poof, time to join the cuddles.
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Poof is all like “Your belly is mine now.” Poof don’t care. Poof takes what he wants. That Poof is kind of a badass.
We need a “Like” function for comments like these.
second
+7, and another for the Claire picture. Hannah is currently sitting at a solid 10 points for this comment! ^.^
Make it 11
Is there a way to subscribe to this comic via. RSS?
Yes, the RSS link is below the comments, on the same line as the copyright notice.
Dude, Anwar is saying ALL THE RIGHT THINGS.
Now I want a boyfriend like Anwar ♥ヮ♥
Okay, now that I’m done gushing…
Does Chris have access to his children? He shouldn’t have to pay child support if he doesn’t have access to his children.
At least in the US, child support is not at all tied to visitation rights. Even a parent deemed unfit to be around the children by the court (as those of us who don’t fit into the mainstream have often been) is still legally obligated to provide financial support for the child. While I hate seeing that particular rule being used to hurt parents who aren’t actually unfit, just not mainstream, in most cases, this is used to protect the kids’ best interests. Oftentimes, the child support that required by court order is one of the only things keeping children and their mother from needing to go back to their abusive father, for example. I’ve seen it abused too, as close as in my own brother’s life, but there are very good reasons why a parent should still have to support their children while not being allowed access to them.
We actually don’t now much about his divorce yet.
Well said JustSayin, 100% agreed.
Yeah, my brother only sees his son two weeks in the year, yet his ex has him paying for private school, baseball uniforms, and music lessons. Meanwhile he has lost his house, his car, another house, and his current wife lost her sons to their bio-father after their dad pointed out that my brother could not support 3 kids on his income and thus won prime custody. And the hellbitch still tried to increase the child support because she wants their son to go to summer camp. She honestly can’t stand the kid and dumps him with her mother or in any extended camp/club/etc she can…she’s always been like that; even when they were married, she couldn’t be with the kid alone for more than 2 hours without bursting into tears of frustration and drugging the kid on Ritalin until he puked blood. And it’s not that she can’t afford to raise the kid on her income. Her family is VERY well off. Good news to that story: when she went back to court to demand the increased child support, the judge was shocked my brother never reported his financial hardships and loss of jobs, house, car, etc., and his child support was cut by half to adjust for his new wages. Thanks to that, his current wife is seeking to regain her sons, and greedy Hellbitch has to pay for summer camp out of her own goddamn satin-lined pocket.
/end rant, apology for venting
See, it’s all the above crap here that drives me to be an MRA. Thank you for all your testimonies.
Yeah, please don’t be an MRA. I could say more, a LOT more, but I’ll leave it at that
Seconded!
Thirded.
Not sure how many people you need to say this, Gray Phantom, but you seem like a pretty awesome person. Fighting for equal treatment for all is something that feminists have been doing for … a long time. Sexism hurts everyone, not just women, not just men. Please give feminism a chance.
I have experienced bigotry and sexism in the LGBT community, the circus community, but most of all from feminists. In my anecdotal experience, feminists are violent, bigoted, dangerous people.
Speaking as a queer man of color, I’ve yet to receive any bigotry at all from any MRA. Naturally, I’m more inclined to the label of MRA than that of feminist.
I have/had my issues with feminism too (although I’d never heard of MRA before and for the most part I’d just label myself as ‘for equality’). For me it’s mostly come from the way a particular middle-class Western viewpoint dominates discussions of feminism. Feminists in the States talk about ‘rape culture’ and….well I grew up in an affluent family in the Middle East and if I feel that that kind of comparison cuts me out of the conversation then I can’t imagine how much it ostracises people from that area who weren’t so lucky.
I think any large political movement aimed at improving things for a broad group of people, winning them rights etc is likely to fail some of them. Or plain not understand them. I guess the best we can do is try and get as wide a range of people talking as possible and try to do what benefits the most people. And accept that everything can always be better and we should try to make it better.
In some places that means talking about offensive language. In others it means building toilets.
That is fair reason and I’m sorry you’ve experienced that.
I am a feminist and I hope you’ve not experienced those from me, but if you have please call me out so I can improve.
For Nestor Notabilis (the comment nesting has stopped).
Feminists in the states are fighting a problem that exists in the states. You’re correct that it would be a bad thing to try to use that same fight in other places where other things are needed more. But, rape culture is a serious problem here. Its something that needs to be talked about if we’re to have any hope of improving the situation. Part of that culture is punishing women who talk about it, so the women who talk about it have to be ready for a fight whenever they do. I… god. An ex-coworker of mine had gamer gaters go after her when she talked about how some VPs at the company sexually harassed her. Its… really bad. The cops told her to just take down her entire online presence, because its her speech or her physical safety and she has to pick one. It is forcing people out of work where I am, and then punishing them for trying to help those who remain.
I don’t think anyone is trying to cut you out of the picture. As you say, its impossible for a movement to focus on everyone. I personally feel a little left behind by the LBGT movement in the states, that asked the “T” part to help with marriage equality and then left us behind on issues like being legally allowed to use a public restroom. But, their success has helped us indirectly; once the marriage issue seemed publicly resolved, a lot of politicians against gay marriage seemed hesitant to stand up against bathroom use, and its helped.
So, yeah, keep fighting for equal rights. :) It will help everyone.
I’ve dealt with plenty of bigotry and worse from people who label themselves feminists too, but I also know that the loud, violent and hateful of them are the minority. I would like to think, based on what you’re saying, that the same holds true for MRAs, but that’s not been my experience. In fact, my only experience of MRAs has been the mirror opposition of the absolute worst feminists and SJWs (as in, just as bad, just in the opposite direction.) They’re the sorts making death threats over “gamergate” and telling women they should be barefoot in the kitchen and dismissing rape victims unless they were a perfect saint who dressed like a Sunday morning Baptist church choir girl, never drank or partied and never dared even think about wanting sex. I know not all MRAs are like that simply because, if they were, you wouldn’t be one of them (I mean, I’ve read enough of your comments here to know you’re not one of those asshats.) Still, that’s been my only exposure to them.
Of course, most of my exposure to SJWs has just as bad.
I think most reasonable minded folk could do without any of the labels and just agree that we should all be treated equal and decently but our world is a very divisive place where you’re expected to pick black or white regardless.
@JustSayin:
re: my only experience of MRAs has been the mirror opposition of the absolute worst feminists and SJWs (as in, just as bad, just in the opposite direction.) They’re the sorts making death threats over “gamergate”
I believe you are mistaken. Gamers can be very violent, bigoted people. Sexism, ableism, racism, I’m a gamer and I’ve seen all these things in gaming culture. But I’ve been an MRA for years and I’ve yet to see any overt bigotry in the manosphere. I won’t believe it until I see direct confirmation.
To specify: gamers and MRA’s are not the same thing. You can be a gamer, and not an MRA.
I’ve seen this sort of confusion before. I’ve never heard of pick-up artists outside of the movie Hitch until a certain shooter killed 4 men and 2 women. He was falsely called an MRA, which was an outright lie. He was a pick-up artist.
I believe it’s a similar case here. I believe that it was some gamers who acted in immature and horrid ways, not MRA’s.
You say that he was falsely called an MRA, but are you saying that the media labeled him that way or that he did, because while I’m well aware not all gamers are MRAs, I am speaking of those who specifically identify themselves as such. While I’m sure a group shouldn’t be judged by everyone who identifies themselves by that label and odds are, I’m only seeing the most extreme of the bunch because my only interactions with them have been online (where filters are dropped and people feel free to say things they’d never have the guts to say to someone’s face) that’s still been my experience. People who label themselves as MRA who are sexist, bigoted folks who (just like some of the more extreme feminists and SJWs) feel the only way to get their “equality” is at the expense of anyone who isn’t like them.
JustSayin:
re: “but are you saying that the media labeled him that way or that he did…(?)”
He wrote a 140 page manifesto, but never once brought up men’s rights. He was never subscribed to any men’s rights channels, nor had any accounts on any men’s rights forums. It’s very possible he never knew about men’s rights, and thus he was not an MRA.
This is a subject I have a great deal of knowledge of, as well as access to resources for.
I don’t want to talk about this in the comments section anymore, as we’ve veered far off the topic of the comic. Anyone who has any sincere questions please e-mail me at phantomgray2 at hotmail with “MRA Questions” in the subject line.
I hope you don’t mind my replying here Fish, the comments have gone weird.
I understand that rape culture is a problem in the States, and I don’t want to underplay how much of a problem it is or that it’s an awful one to have to deal with. I don’t want to silence anyone either. But the people I hear talking about this talk as though they think it’s the only problem in the world. And that does cut people out of the conversation.
The harassment and silencing of women in the West that called ‘rape culture’, it’s horrible, it’s a problem I don’t deny this. But back ‘home’…I’ve heard stories about men climbing over 12 ft walls in order to attempt to rape women in private swimming pools get off on the grounds that the women, whilest behind 12ft walls in a private building, were not properly covered up. That is in accordance with the law. Then there’s the father who got away with beating his four year old daughter to death, partially on the grounds that he suspected she wasn’t a virgin. That is in accordance with the law. When I was 12 police stopped fire crews accessing a burning school on the grounds it was a girls school and the children wouldn’t be covered. That’s within the law. If you try and support or assist a woman in a physically abusive marriage, you get arrested. That’s the law-
I’m sorry if I come across angry, or uncaring, or dismissive of your problems. I don’t want to dismiss anyone’s suffering and I *do* care about the problems people in other parts of the world face. But….how can you call what happens in America ‘rape culture’ compared to this? How is using that language not cutting large swathes of Asia and Africa out of the conversation?
Well, apart from anything else, what should the United States call it instead? It is rape, and it is a cultural undertone which is influencing many people’s perspectives negatively. In fact, part of the reason that it’s called rape ‘culture’ is because it’s nothing to do with legalities – in many cases, acts committed due to rape culture are entirely illegal, even if they are swept under the carpet. I don’t understand how this is dismissive of other countries, for whom I would probably use much stronger language than ‘rape culture’ to describe what goes down.
I mean… Here’s the thing with discussing what happens in other countries: I am not immediately affected by it, and nor do I talk to many people who are immediately affected by it, so my discussion of the matter would be a) very uneducated, and b) not at all helpful. In fact, in the past when I’ve seen countries get involved with other countries’ political matters there is often considerable backlash, because as outsiders, many foreigners don’t understand the nuances of the situation (just look at the Kony debacle, and opinions on hijabs and feminism). I have concern for these issues, but really, I feel as if the best I can do is listen when I am talking to someone who is involved in the matter, and offer moral support to back them up however they choose to fight the good fight. I’m always glad to do either, and if I’m invited to join a discussion, I’m definitely going to be interested.
However, not only do I have more understanding of the situation in my own country due to experience, but I also have significantly more influence. Politicians care about my opinions because I am voting for them, and while convincing people that ‘there are rape problems in other countries’ makes for nice discussion, ‘there are rape problems in this country’ offers far more room for challenging relevant perspectives, tacking the negative attitudes my peers may have, and supporting sufferers. So yes, when I discuss feminism I focus specifically on western issues – because world feminism is a huge category which I could not (and should not) possibly attempt to cover in its entirety. Since the majority of people on English-speaking websites are from western countries, and those are often the biggest forums of discussion, conversations about feminism inevitably show a lot of bias towards these countries.
I can understand why it’s frustrating; this is all very easy for me to say given that I come from a country which gets the focus. I agree that people should be aware that western feminism is not applicable worldwide, and there is definitely a case to be made for clarifying which subcategory of feminism is being discussed in any given case (e.g. western feminism, asian feminism, islamic feminism). However, I got the impression that you believed discussion needed to be more universalized, and I personally disagree. Much like GSRM, feminism covers a HUGE range of experiences – for example, even though someone who is from a sexual minority may have common roots with someone who is from a gender minority, the two will still be fighting very different fights – and trying to tackle all of them at once often means that smaller populations are consistently overlooked, like how Fish described their experiences as a ‘T’ in LGBT+. So instead, I personally think that feminism should mean that we have each other’s backs. I might not be discussing the issues that happen in your country with my peers as much, but when you talk I should be listening, when you succeed I should be celebrating, and when you battle I should respect the approach you have chosen to take. That’s how I see it.
I understand what you’re saying Xavier, especially when it comes to influencing and changing things. Practically speaking I don’t live there anymore and I couldn’t change anything if I did.
I don’t know what else you should/could call it. But I know that words matter. And that phrase says to me that I am not welcome, that I am not part of this discussion, that my experiences are less important. And if it says that to me, when I’m from a very good background, then I think it’s likely you’re marginalising the most vulnerable people. In your country and outside it.
You’re the dominant voice in any discussion and I don’t think your wording is not respectful to the rest of the world.
I think I’m bowing out now. You’ve all been polite and I appreciate the attempt but I am sick beyond words of having to try and explain this to other people all the time.
Nestor Notabilis, Thank you for replying and sharing your experience with me. You don’t come across as angry or dismissive at all to me, if that’s any consolation.
I appreciate your trying to explain, and really empathize with getting sick of trying to explain anymore. I have been there. I … spend most of my time in that feeling.
The situation you describe is clearly an intensely worse situation. Thank you for sharing your perspectives. Sorry that your perspective gets spoken and heard less often; in my experience that makes the burden of explaining it all the heavier.
Hey, Nestor. I’m an American woman raised by Liberian parents. My parents had to leave Liberia because of a war there. My mom started a foundation to help women in post-war Liberia because they suffer the most (over 90% of them were raped during the war and girls as young as 11 are still getting pregnant because of rape/young marriages). She does it because she was born and raised there. She knows how the culture works and how people live their lives there. I am a feminist and I work to fight for causes in both countries. Hoeever, I wouldn’t want a woman whose never even heard of Liberia to start protesting for rights over there. I think change had to come from within. Even in India, some women had to resort to murder to keep a rape gang from growing in their town. Early American feminism was messy, scary and deadly, and doesn’t get even half of the respect it deserves. I hope that doesn’t come off as isolationist or something, but I think those who live in/understand the system on an intimate level are the ones best equipped to fight it. We are aware of problems overseas, but if you really think about all the problems out there to be fixed, it can get really overwhelming.
While there are plenty of stories like that on both sides, MRAs and SJWs just make things worse by polarizing the issue. Most people have enough common sense to look at a situation like that and say it’s clearly unfair without having to go to one extreme or the other.
Fortunately, for all of us, judges are getting better. There are still areas where a father is far less likely to get custody, even when better off than the mother, but there are more and more areas where custody gets shared and the law is enforced as written, not just as the judge pleases. As the law is written, both biological parents have an obligation to financially support the child they made and, though the parent with primary custody tends to do a lot more of the supporting in things like a house (which they’d already have) or food (which is much easier to do per person with a larger household), in most areas, father who aren’t granted custody, still pay far less than half the child’s expenses. There are of course, huge exceptions, especially once expensive lawyers get thrown in, but for the average divorced/split up parents, the court is more likely to give mom custody and less likely to make dad pay for half the cost of raising the child. It’s not fair to either side, but it is improving.
Be an HRA instead – a HUMAN right’s activist. The whole MRA thing is a complaint that because women have equal rights, some men don’t get what they want. Those men still have equal rights as well. What they want is generally not something they have a right to.
Child support and child visitation is very very much a case by case thing. (Worse, divorce or even just separation, when kids are involved, almost never has a win-win solution. Few parents want to go long stretches without seeing their kids or pay more for something than it would cost if they were still together. Supporting two households is expensive.)
With divorce, it tends to be every case on its merits. For instance, our family receives child support until the end of university with no visitation rights. And thank God as well, I remember my siblings and I hating the courts for forcing us to visit our Dad (we’d try and run away from his house every time). Eventually, the court ruling got changed after five years of constant complaining on our part but never being taken seriously because we were just kids.
As far as the financial side goes, my Mum had to give up a career on the same level as my Dad’s to have kids and hasn’t been able to go back in at anywhere near to the same level. As much as I hate to admit it, without his money, we’d really struggle. As it is, we still have to speak to him on the phone every so often “to keep Dad sweet so he’ll carry on paying” (never mind that he should have to do so because of a court order). He tries to find loopholes in the court order wherever possible to get out of paying and has withheld money as blackmail before (that’s probably the mildest intimidation tactic he’s used). It’s horrible being reliant upon someone vile for help, but sometimes it’s necessary and I’m just glad we don’t have to visit him anymore.
Obviously, not everyone’s case is the same, and I can understand some believing in abuse of the justice system (in Chris’s case it certainly seems to have been unjustified), but I know that it’s the right thing for our family and that to use blanket disapproval for such practice really isn’t the right idea.
We currently dont know what his relationship with his children is like. I could have sworn their approximate ages were mentioned before (I’m mobile and at work so I can’t go huting for the page).
The children in question could very well be old enough to choose when to visit Chris, or choose not to visit at all.
I actually look forward to the possibility of seeing Chris’ children.
When my aunt divorced her abusive husband (which involved taking her kids and running away while he wasn’t home for fear of physical violence), she was completely, utterly financially ruined. Without financial help from both her ex and my parents, she wouldn’t be able to provide basic necessities for her family. The ass still has visitation rights, and emotionally abuses both his children whenever her sees them. Apparently, the court was afraid that because she was a scientist she would be cold with the children. A good old fashioned case of sexism right there, and a good example of how families can require both financial support and physical separation from one of the parents.
I’m… I’m mildly perturbed/happy. They sound like myself and my boyfriend. Communication all the way.
ANWAR IS LEARNING! OH, HAPPY DAY!
*the happiest of happy dances*
Poor Chris, though. His situation is crazy shitty and I’m sorry that even the slightest bit of self-expression is snubbed out at his workplace. At least he and Anwar are talking about it so that they understand each other’s POV.
I’ll just leave this here… http://ink-clown.tumblr.com/post/114464117528/chris-from-shades-of-a-of-the-fabulous-and-super
*runs away*
*clicks on link*
HOLY CRAP YES!! :DDDD
Anwar not letting the man keep him from pampering his boyfriend
I wonder how it would feel to have Poof leap on your chest. I guess Anwar is taking it pretty well!
These two… give me such a warm glowy feeling inside. ^_^