There have been several recent stories of comic book culture winning the ire of portions of its audience for how women are represented, both in the works themselves and by the creators and curators of comics culture at large. DC Comics has had some problems, for example. Todd McFarlane made unfortunate comments about female readers, as well.

Such stories reinforce the already existing perspective that comic book culture is a place for male fantasies to unfold, where stereotypes of women are free to roam the panels, and by extension the minds, of the young boys to which these artists appeal. This has long been a problem for the industry, one that has seen increasing resistance recently. Which is a positive trend. The resistance results from a simple fact: people love comic books. Readers, boys and girls and men and women, want to read-spend their money and their time-with comics. And more and more of these readers want to find artists who are interested in telling stories that reject the dominant view of females in comic-books: secondary characters and sexual objects who are less than whole.

The push-back is positive, and many folks working in comics are providing a richer comic-book experience. One such artist is Brian Michael Bendis.

If you read comics you know Bendis. But if not, he’s the man behind Ultimate Spider-Man, creator of (one my favorites) Jinx, and is currently writing X-Men. He’s been all over Marvel and Image Comics for years, won multiple Eisner Awards, and is generally speaking an excellent and prolific writer and artist. He also runs a tumblr.

On that tumblr he was asked a question regarding the attention female characters and audiences are receiving. Here’s the exchange.

First, from the reader (anonymously):

I understand trying to make comics female friendly, but aren’t you guys worried that you’re going to lose your core audience which is male? In the X-books you’ve had more focus on the likes on these females like jean and kitty while it should be Cyclops who has been the star of the X-Men comics for years. What warrants these characters more page time than him? Jean and kitty are secondary characters. You guys listen too much to women bitching. They cause so much freakin drama in comicdom.

Then, Bendis, in response:

Wow. you are the first person who I am kind of glad asked your question anonymously because I don’t want to know you.
As a reader of my work I want you to listen to me very carefully: you have major major issues. Almost every line of your question reeks of complete misunderstanding of yourself as a man and of women in general.
It’s okay to find yourself more interested in something than others, of course it is, it’s okay to like Cyclops more than Jean Grey, but for you to draw the line at women characters not being interesting to you because you are a man or that you think I am being manipulated by some bitching women is really out there.
And as a reader of the X-Men whose entire philosophy is about tolerance and understanding… you are missing the point.

If it’s important to call out the offenders in the industry, which we seem to be doing too frequently of late, even more important is recognizing the artists who are resisting the impulse to feed the fantasy of the dominating reader. As such, it’s not only a pleasure to see Bendis rejecting, directly and publicly, the desire to minimize females inside and outside of X-Men. It’s also critically important to celebrate the rejection of the entire philosophy that allows for such a perspective.

If you’re reading around the women in X-Men, as Bendis says, ‘you are missing the point.’ And not just of X-Men, but of being a compassionate and decent person.