I'm pretty new to Instagram, and still in the process of locking down who can send me messages. Which a charming person has taken advantage of, to send me a message outright stating that I have had sexual congress with every editor I have ever spoken to at Marvel.
(They didn't use a term as polite and bloodless as "sexual congress," but as several of those same editors follow me here, I don't want to share the actual language used.)
Even setting aside the logistical impossibility of it all--we only see each other at big cons like SDCC and NYCC, where trust me, no one has TIME for a career-advancing orgy--this sort of offensive bullshit is part and parcel of being a woman in a creative field.
Almost every woman I know, regardless of perceived attractiveness, has been accused of sleeping our way into success at least once. Because it's not about sexual desirability. It's about power.
If I got everything I have through being Best At Blowjobs, and not through any actual talent at all, then I'm not a threat. Eventually I'll stop putting out, and then all my opportunities will go away.
But if I'm talented, we start getting into what I call "catch-twenty-two misogyny." Did women only develop talent in the last twenty years? If yes, what's in the water? If no, why were we so underrepresented in SF, in comics, in all these spaces?
Maybe, if it's not about sex, if women have always been talented enough to do this work, maybe, just maybe, some of the people making hiring decisions--people who are personal heroes to some of us--were MISOGYNISTS.
Imagine! How can that be! How can these men who we admire, lions of our genre, creators of our favorite worlds and characters, have been MISOGYNISTS? Much easier to believe talented women are either new or fictional, and we're back to blowjobs.
Please believe me when I say that no one likes to be sexually objectified, but there have been things I really wanted in life that I didn't get, and if it had been as easy to go "suck your dick to get to write ____" as these people seem to think, I'd have used a lot of mouthwash.
It is, and never has been, that easy. Sexual predators exist. Casting couches exist. I'm not denying that at all. But that isn't the universal way the world works, and some of us are just out here busting our tails, WITHOUT fucking anybody.
(Plus it would be stupid to bang your editor. They can't show favoritism, so you're not gaining anything, and if they break up with you, your book could get canceled. I have been called many things. But I'm not that kind of stupid.)
Also, if you're reading this, Instagram asshole, you put way more thought into what sexual positions my Marvel editors favor than anyone who isn't dating one of them should. Maybe get a better hobby.
