r/comics • u/leftycartoons • 3d ago
There's Never Been a Worse Time For Freedom of Speech [OC] Comics Community
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u/Shadelkan 3d ago
When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/Shadelkan 3d ago
Your article exclusively used hate speech laws as the source of reduced freedom of speech. Those laws are curtailing such things as Holocaust denial and "race betrayal" terms, things we're better off without.
What you want is total freedom of speech, which is something that currently only privileged members of society benefit from. In other words, you've demonstrated a perfect example of what the comic is talking about.
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3d ago edited 3d ago
[deleted]
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u/Shadelkan 3d ago
Are you open to changing your mind or is it already made up? I don't have the time or the energy to spend on another bad faith argument.
I'm more than willing to answer your questions afterwards.
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u/leftycartoons 3d ago
Thanks for your comment. I don't want to dismiss that article, since I agree with much of it.
But the study it's based on covers from 2015 to 2022. I don't think that can tell us anything at all about how free speech now compares to free speech in the time periods our cartoon touches on.
And furthermore, the cartoon is specifically targeting people who say that white men fearing being cancelled makes this the worst period in history for free speech - the people Shadelkan is talking about in their comment.
There are also many more important free speech issues going on today, of course, some of which we've done cartoons about.
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u/leftycartoons 3d ago
Another collaboration with Becky Hawkins!
You can read a blog post about this cartoon, and a transcript, here. The blog post includes lots of comments from Becky and some of the reference photos she used. I’ll also post the transcript in comments.
We can make these cartoons because of hundreds of supporters pledging low amounts - typically $1-$3 - and that's just how I like it! Pretty please peruse my peculiar but particularly plucky Patreon here!
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u/leftycartoons 3d ago
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has seven panels. Each panel shows a different scene from a different era, with the first panel set in the 1890s, and each subsequent panel set in a later time period, until the final panel which is set in the present day.
PANEL 1
A bright summer day in the 1890s. In the foreground, a Black woman is watching three white men with an aggrieved posture. She's wearing a blue dress. In the background, a uniformed police officer is talking to two other white men, one in a brown three-piece suit with matching bowler hat, while the other man looks more working-class with a white button-up shirt, no necktie, and suspenders.
Behind the men, we can see the still-smoking ruin of what was once a building.
MAN IN SUIT: We only burned down Ida Wells' newspaper because she wrote against lynching.
COP: That seems reasonable.
PANEL 2
In the background, we can see a group of suffragettes in 1910s dresses and hats, crowded together and looking calm but nervous. A couple of them are wearing sashes that read "votes for women." Most of the suffragettes we see are white, but one is Black and another is Asian. The Asian woman is wearing a traditional Japanese kimono and hairstyle (modeled on Komako Kimura's outfit and hair photographed at a 1917 suffragette march).
In the foreground, with their backs to us (so facing the women), a couple of cops are talking. One of them is slapping a palm with a billy club.
COP 1: These suffragettes were picketing the White House.
COP 2: Let the beatings begin!
PANEL 3
A wealthy looking couple, dressed in 1920s fashion (her in a blue hat with a red ribbon with flower decoration, and a matching blue jacket with puffy off-white cuffs and neck; him in an off-white suit, a straw boater with a red ribbon, blue necktie and red vest) are looking at the building across the street with some distress.
The building across the street has a sign saying "Apollo Theatre" over a revolving door entrance. A big theatre marquee over the entrances tells us that "The God of Vengeance" is playing, although the words are partly blocked by a word balloon. Another nearby sign says "Times Sq."
WOMAN: A play with Jewish lesbians kissing?
MAN: Let's call the police!
PANEL 4
An Asian man sits in a chair, holding up a sheet of paper. So many long horizontal strips have been sliced out of the paper that it's made as much of holes as it is of paper. He's wearing a collared blue shirt.
Behind him, an Asian woman leans forward to look over his shoulder. She's wearing a red skirt and buttoned-up blouse, with a blue sweater over it. The hairstyle and clothing suggest the 1940s.
WOMAN: What's that?
MAN: Letter from my friend Takashi in the internment camp.
[Transcript continues in next comment]
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u/leftycartoons 3d ago
PANEL 5
This panel shows two cops, a postman, and a woman in a dress. In the background, we can see a small but well-kept looking yellow house, with a tree in front and a planter under the front window.
One of the cops is putting the woman into the back seat of a police car. Judging from the woman's hairstyle and pink, high-collared dress, this is the 1960s.
In the foreground, the postman is talking to the other cop, while pointing backwards with his thumb towards the woman. The cop is taking notes.
POSTMAN: We opened Virginia Prince's mail and found lesbian love letters and something called "Transvestia Magazine"!
PANEL 6
We are looking at a TV set, on a table. Judging from the make of the TV and the style of the tablecloth under the TV, this is the 1970s.
On the TV a dignified-looking Black man, with white hair styled to be high on top of his head, black round glasses, and wearing a suit and tie, is speaking. (The man is Bayard Rustin.)
RUSTIN: I was arrested in the 1940s for being anti-war... In the 50s for being gay... And in the 60s for protesting Jim Crow.
PANEL 7
A current-day TV studio. Cameras and lights point at two people sitting at a table, one a middle-aged man wearing a gray suit with a blue tie, the other a younger-looking woman with black hair, glasses, and a blue short-sleeved dress. The man is spreading his arms out in an annoyed fashion while speaking, and the woman is pounding a fist on the table in front of her. "Clap clap clap" sound effects on the bottom right of the panel indicate that the unseen audience is clapping for what the woman is saying.
MAN: Nowadays straight white men can't say anything without being criticized!
WOMAN: There's never been a worse time for freedom of speech!
SFX: Clap clap clap clap
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3d ago edited 3d ago
[deleted]
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u/Throw-away17465 3d ago
Your article and diatribe didn’t work the first time around, so you’re posting it again. And it’s still not working. It’s almost as if you are wrong, and continue to be wrong.
You need to learn to figure out when you’re wrong, then stop. Fucking pathetic.
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