More Bleeding Cool Coverage Over Incidents Within The Industry & Fandoms

Bleeding Cool has a follow up on their previous coverage of the Wood-Fowler incident with more stories from across the industry of experiences about sexual harassment.  Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool fame also does what can be considered an act of solemn support while reaching out to make all us males of the industry and fandom reflect on our behaviors and how they can be seen.

He states:

There used to be a woman tangentially related to the comics industry who I saw at comic conventions decades ago and I clearly had a thing for. I told myself that circumstances just didn’t work out over the years and we never got together, but it got me thinking – what exactly did I do? How far did I push? Am I another story? So I’ve in got touch, to find out exactly how much of a dick I was, and to apologise if I need to. I’ve also checked in with other women over the years, and I don’t seem to have anything to worry about. So far.

But it might not be such a bad thing if a number of men in comics just had a think about their behaviour over the years. You never know what might tumble out. And circumstances might warrant an apology and a reappraisal of one’s own actions. Everyone is the hero of their story and willing to use whatever justifications to maintain that myth. And, in the comics industry, we’re all the superhero of our own story. Maybe it’s time we started behaving like it.

And the future fear of being exposed for some, may not be such a bad thing.

Earlier this year, I had done an inventory over myself as well because of some rather confusing circumstances.  There being only one I haven't been able to hear back from directly to know her opinion on this matter.  Save for her, I know where I stand on my own actions.

We men like to make excuses for our actions.  Men blame how others twist what may have been said or actions misread, but it's never that simple.  The simple truth is if we made someone uncomfortable by our words, that's on us for not making it clear.  I was lucky in the majority of the inventory over myself.  The majority of my romantic interludes have been initiated by the other party.  There's only one that's still hard for me to grasp at all.  That story though is being saved for another day as it's probably the most complicated aspect of my life that's also hard for me to fathom let alone make sense of what it is & all that it entails.  So I'm trying my best not to over think it until I can speak directly with her to hear what she has to say.  It by far is probably the most complicated thing ever in my life though.  That I can say with certainty.  She's also the one I owe the most gratitude to though as she's been the biggest blessing in my life even during the most chaotic of times.  The person that's saved me the times I needed it most even when I was being difficult and didn't want to be.