The comics industry has been undergoing some growing pains. I don’t know how else to put it. The industry has a long tradition of being a boys’ arena, and its relationship to female characters, audiences, and artists has always been complicated. To say the least.

One of the voices forcing these growing pains is Tess Fowler, artist and tweeter extraordinaire, who recently relayed a story about an industry male (later IDed as Brian Wood) trying to use his position in comics for less than savory purposes. Read my interview with Fowler for more on that, and her activity fighting back against the sexist and misogynistic culture in comics.

But today brought another industry voice into the conversation, that of G. Willow Wilson (writer of the forthcoming Ms. Marvel). Wilson, who dresses like a “strabismic nun with possible terrorist connections”, blogged about the accusations by Fowler, and the “very fraught” issue of gender in comics. Wilson owns that she’s never had a negative encounter in the comics industry of the kind that Fowler recounts. Still, she says, “nearly every other woman I’ve met in the industry seems to have horror stories about creepy run-ins with male colleagues and creators.”

As The Stake’s been following this issue closely for some time, I wanted to give Wilson’s post a spot in our own conversation about gender in comics. Picking up in the middle, here’s G. Willow Wilson:

Where are these future female creators today?

You have never heard of them.

They were tricked. The casting couch doesn’t work. It was never intended to work. It was a hoax all along. But the great tragedy is that so many women were led to believe that they had to use sex and/or sexuality to make any professional headway. (Pun unin…okay whatever.) They were led to believe that the traditional routes to success (hard work, networking, talent) were literally closed to them.

This is what makes misogyny so pernicious: the tropes are so ingrained that they get buy-in from women themselves. If it was just a matter of naming and isolating the perpetrators of bad behavior, this would be a simple thing. But it’s not enough to remove skeevy guys and lecherous professional favor-traders from the con floors. We also have to remove them from our own inner monologues, from our own sense of self-worth. We have to stop telling ourselves that this is just the way the world works, because it isn’t.

There is nothing a man has to offer a woman professionally that can’t be discussed in a public place. Nothing. If he leads you to believe that you must sleep with him, flirt with him, or be with him behind a locked hotel room door in order to climb the professional ladder, he is lying. If I, the strabismic nun, can sit here waving my 2 Eisner nominations and World Fantasy Award, and be as weird looking and overclothed as I am, then lady, there is nothing you can’t do. On your own terms, by your own merits. Wearing what you like, when you like. End of speech.