September 12, 2013 - Actually managed to get this comic done early enough that I can spend time on the blog, and a lot's going on that I've either neglected or failed to see because so much press has been focused on Syria. There's also a recent incident in a community near to me that concerns me greatly. But firstly I wanted to say something about eating disorders as it's an issue facing a significant percentage of the American population, especially the female population. I can't really verify these statistics but here are a bunch of them that are pretty disheartening. The reasons and symptoms related to eating disorders are complex and varied, so Patience isn't really meant to embody all those people (just as she's not meant to embody all rape victims, but I don't think it's unreasonable that both circumstances are unfortunately related in some cases). Patience is just one person struggling, and I wanted to be able to have someone talking about these struggles, and as indicated by the flashback panels this has been somewhat planned for a while, making what were once presented as gag comics extremely uncomfortable and borderline insensitive if you want to go back and reread them. But I think it's important to acknowledge how new information can shape our perspective and changing such comics from something to joke about to something that's a cause for concern was definitely something I was interested in exploring.
Closer to where I live a teenager with "developmental issues" from a neighboring community has gone missing and presumed abducted. It seems inconsistent that this case only seems to be getting local coverage when the Hannah Anderson case got such widespread coverage and yet in both circumstances there's great concern about the parties travelling accross state lines and potentially great distances. Indeed even the identity of this suspect is uncertain and the speculation that this may have stemmed from online interaction is all the more troublesome. Just yesterday a man was sentenced for keeping a "mentally deficient" girl as a sex slave (the fact he only got 20 years for his actions is also pretty concerning considering it means he'd theoretically be released at the age of 66 to potentially do something just as reprehensible again), and it's worth noting the way he lured her in with promises of fulfilling her dreams only to take advantage of her.
It's interesting to read this op-ed that also discusses the prevalence of exploitation specifically in the fashion industry or the recent ruling finding that employers took advantage of strippers at New York based strip clubs (and similar rulings have been made in other cities). The lingering question regarding all of this becomes how do we begin to change society's attitudes that permit this sort of behavior? There's a harshly criticized blogpost that went viral recently (that I'm not going to link to) blaming it all on women being temptresses or not acting responsibly, but I think it has more to do with a failure to encourage people to view men and women as having equal worth. There's a great blogpost here discussing the problems in the tech world discouraging women from being more involved in that field, and lastly because I already mentioned strippers once, so why not mention them again, I find it very interesting the problems Canada (and Ontario specifically) has finding citizens willing to work as strippers, desperately pleading with the government to allow lenient immigration laws to allow women foreign women into the country for the work (in fairness, they have a strong argument in favor of this assuming there truly is no exploitation of such women, as I think making such practices illegal does have the potential of increasing the amount of human trafficking, but I find it somewhat encouraging how uninterested Canadian women are in working in the industry themselves).
Hopefully, this blog's not too disorganized, I was just reading a lot of stuff today (and I didn't even mention that Toys R Us has decided not to codify its toys by gender in the UK (wait, now I did)) and felt like discussing a lot of it. Mostly I just want the poor teenager found, hopefully unharmed.
-D
Closer to where I live a teenager with "developmental issues" from a neighboring community has gone missing and presumed abducted. It seems inconsistent that this case only seems to be getting local coverage when the Hannah Anderson case got such widespread coverage and yet in both circumstances there's great concern about the parties travelling accross state lines and potentially great distances. Indeed even the identity of this suspect is uncertain and the speculation that this may have stemmed from online interaction is all the more troublesome. Just yesterday a man was sentenced for keeping a "mentally deficient" girl as a sex slave (the fact he only got 20 years for his actions is also pretty concerning considering it means he'd theoretically be released at the age of 66 to potentially do something just as reprehensible again), and it's worth noting the way he lured her in with promises of fulfilling her dreams only to take advantage of her.
It's interesting to read this op-ed that also discusses the prevalence of exploitation specifically in the fashion industry or the recent ruling finding that employers took advantage of strippers at New York based strip clubs (and similar rulings have been made in other cities). The lingering question regarding all of this becomes how do we begin to change society's attitudes that permit this sort of behavior? There's a harshly criticized blogpost that went viral recently (that I'm not going to link to) blaming it all on women being temptresses or not acting responsibly, but I think it has more to do with a failure to encourage people to view men and women as having equal worth. There's a great blogpost here discussing the problems in the tech world discouraging women from being more involved in that field, and lastly because I already mentioned strippers once, so why not mention them again, I find it very interesting the problems Canada (and Ontario specifically) has finding citizens willing to work as strippers, desperately pleading with the government to allow lenient immigration laws to allow women foreign women into the country for the work (in fairness, they have a strong argument in favor of this assuming there truly is no exploitation of such women, as I think making such practices illegal does have the potential of increasing the amount of human trafficking, but I find it somewhat encouraging how uninterested Canadian women are in working in the industry themselves).
Hopefully, this blog's not too disorganized, I was just reading a lot of stuff today (and I didn't even mention that Toys R Us has decided not to codify its toys by gender in the UK (wait, now I did)) and felt like discussing a lot of it. Mostly I just want the poor teenager found, hopefully unharmed.
-D
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