New York Times Refuses To Print #YesAllWomen Comic By Michael Kupperman And David Rees
The newspaper comics page often has a surprising amount of political (and simply depressing) content in its colorful panels, but a comic about the feminist #YesAllWomen hashtag and "men's rights activists" by Get Your War On's David Rees and Tales Designed to Thrizzle's Michael Kupperman proved to be too much for the New York Times editorial page.
The specific strip, titled "Testosterone Entitlement Theatre Presents The Man-Babies in 'Hashtag Harassment'" depicts two men's rights activists as babies saying they're being persecuted by pro-feminist Twitter conversations. Kupperman posted the full comic on his blog, and you can see it below.
Kupperman added that the Times deemed the strip "too sensitive" to print. He also wrote:
I disagree very strongly with that decision, because I feel David was making a point that deserves to be made. So I went ahead and completed the script as written; here it is, see for yourselves.
Kupperman and Rees have been producing their biweekly comic "See Something, Say Something" for the Times since January.
Perhaps the abundant urine in the comic was the breaking point for the Times, but surely the paper knew what it was getting when it hired comics creators and humorists in the vein Rees and Kupperman. More likely, the paper wanted to avoid online hate and the certain flood of email they'd receive from men's rights activists. MRA is categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Nonetheless, one has to wonder whether an editorial or a Maureen Dowd column that compared people upset about the #YesAllWomen message -- which started in the wake of the shootings in Santa Barbara, California, by a frequent visitor to men's rights message boards -- to babies would have made it into the paper. Odds are it would have.