Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/13/comic-industry-women-speak-out.html
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For a minute, I thought it was Warren Ellis of the Bad Seeds. Phew.
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Never heard of this guy and wish that I never had.
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It’s amazing how often powerful men (and sometimes women) write off this kind behavior as being sexually edgy. No. It’s just getting your kicks and lying to people to do it. It’s not challenging mainstream sexual mores, it’s doing what many powerful people before you have done, which is using people.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with an open relationship or polyamory. But if you’re lying to anyone you’re involved with, then all you’re doing is hurting others. 
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He’s written some great comics and really good storylines. It was a shame that Iron Man 3 butchered the Extremis storyline.
I will never understand assholes like this and why they abuse their positions of power.
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He’s written some very good comics and worked with some excellent artists. And created lots of things that wouldn’t otherwise exist, instead of just producing more mainstream superhero books for the big two, which was probably an option. I’m incredibly disappointed that he’s turned out to be abusive, because his work includes some of my favourite things.
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Because they live in a society that encourages them to do so. 
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Some days I really do feel like the only one on this planet with a dick who hasn’t spent their whole life (or ay part of it!) trying to leverage every possible situation in favor of getting that dick played with.
Am I truly the only one left who finds coerced consent so distinctly unappealing?
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Because if you get to be a powerful person you have to use people, that means not mistreatment or exploitation, at least not in all aspects. But it’s more make other people happy to do thinks that at the end are helping both of them.
An artist will like to be a Pygmalion to his Galatea, and this could be going to cause misjudgments.
These women aren’t statues or objects to be molded. Perhaps understanding that might have helped Ellis avoid this pattern of behaviour.
ETA: And to be clear, I have no issue with that combination of mentoring and sex as long as there’s meaningful consent, as long as the more powerful party isn’t abusing their position, and as long as everyone’s up-front about what’s going on. From what these women are saying, Ellis failed on those last two counts again and again.
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You are not alone. I live with a lovely, be-dicked human who finds all this behavior equally disturbing.
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These women were being used and lied to, and our society encourages that. That doesn’t make it remotely moral, ethical, or wise.
Being USED means being treated like an object and dehumanized. It’s the, like definition of the term… There is no excuse for him lying to these women. None.
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You know what? Just burn it all down. I’m tired of it.
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Also:
So Mindysan33 is full of shit, except that she’s right?
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I’ve been feeling the same way lately. I learned a great German word that sums it up: Weltschmerz.
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Except not everyone in positions of power does such things - and there are different ways of thinking about power, and we can even come up with new ones, because we have done so already. We have to stop assuming that it’s just human nature and actively work to improve how we treat others. The whole point of being human is that your conscious of yourself and your actions, and have the power to improve yourself and the society around you.
And yes, men are actively encouraged to treat women in a particular way (and powerful people in general). The fact that this sort of abuse happens DOES NOT MEAN IT HAS TO. We can make things better. Or we can just give the fuck up and go back a society where women have no rights, because apparently that’s easier than men actually treating us like people…
No. Fuck that. Work to improve it. You don’t get to destroy the world because YOUR tired, because you share it with 7 billion other souls. Me and lots of us are fucking tired of having to tell people we’re human, too, but we do it every fucking day, because we refuse to give into that narrative of it’s pointless. It’s not.
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I think it is more accurate to say “You get to be a powerful person by using people.”
Some are very good at doing it with those people’s consent - through ethical and moral means. In that sense it’s not so much “use” as it is “collaborate with”.
Others take shortcuts to get “consent” or whatever the word is for doing something against your will because it will help you later, get you money, etc. They leave a trail of human wreckage in their wake, and usually get away with it because we idolize and fetishize these powerful people.
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No. The fact that someone is in a position to have power over your career makes it exploitable. There is no 100% way of ensuring consent is uncoerced.
There is a reason it’s codified in so many professions.
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Yep. If there is a policy, rule, or even a law against something, that likely means there was an actual problem at hand that needed correcting.
But at the end of the day, we need to better socialize people to not abuse positions of power, especially men.
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