[a sign reads FEMINIST CONFERENCE next to a closed door, a blue character shrugs and says…]
I don’t care
[next to the same door, the sign now says RESTRICTED FEMINIST CONFERENCE WOMEN ONLY, there are now four blue characters desperately banging on the door, one is reduced to tears on the floor, they are shouting]
DISCRIMINATION
SO UNFAIR!!!
LET US IINN!!
MISANDRY
Fair assessment. I deleted that comment and another similar one, my bad, I can keep it civil. However, I would like to remind you that until very recently this community was entirely unmoderated, and that slinging insults at reactionaries / sexist / racist folks was the only way to make them go away. I can adjust that behavior now that the place is (hopefully) properly moderated, but it’s a different request from the “you are unwelcome here” that your colleague opened with.
My comics are satirical. The point of satire is that it should sting when it hits the correct notes. If you think social/political satire doesn’t belong in this community, then you should add it to the rules. It’s different from ragebait : satire is meant to make people think about preconceptions they have, about topics they don’t usually question, by presenting them under a different light that exposes the fundamental hypocrisy behind that situation. Ragebait is just stuff made to piss people off for fun. I don’t do such content.
I am in good terms with the mods of r/comics. We have regular conversations, and never once have they accused my content of being ragebait, complained that I was uncivil (although to be fair the place is actually moderated so I don’t have to lunge at bigots over there), or complained that my comics aren’t comics. Quite the opposite actually, they enjoy that I (and others) act as a magnet for bigots, it helps them get rid of those people.
They locked the thread because it was attracting an overwhelming number of men’s right activists, much more than usual, probably a raid from a third party community. It wasn’t because they had any issue with the content of the comic or with the discourse that was happening under it (actually there was some pretty good discourse regarding transphobia if the comic is seen under a specific prism that I didn’t take into account, which is healthy and important discourse).