Jesus and the Mythicists

When it comes to the story of Jesus Christ, the one thing that pretty much everybody agrees on is that he was, in fact, a historical figure just like Julius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, and Captain America. Not everybody believes that he walked on water, rose from the dead, cursed a fig tree that was out of season, etc., but the one thing that we can all count on is that he really was a real guy who was crucified under the authority of Pontius Pilate. Everybody from Christians to Muslims to agnostics to atheists will agree on that. After all, there were people who wrote about him during the time in which he lived. We have some first-hand accounts of his existence and teachings.

Okay, no we don't exactly have that. Tacitus wrote about him, but he was born about twenty years Jesus was supposedly killed. As for the Gospels, we don't know who wrote them, (the naming of them after the apostles is church tradition, as the Gospels themselves don't identify the authors) and they were all written down in another language and in another part of the world at least a generation after the death of Jesus.

Yeah...BUT STILL. Most historians agree that Jesus was a real guy. That's undisputed.

Actually, it is disputed.

I recently read David Fitzgerald's Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show That Jesus Never Existed. Another prominent "mythicist" (the word used to describe scholars who insist that Jesus was purely mythological) is Richard Carrier, and he has a book that's coming out soon on the issue, but I've heard some of his speeches and debates.

What do I think? I think that these guys sound pretty convincing.

However, and this is a big however, a lot of things can sound convincing and yet turn out to be total bullcrap. Before I did some more reading on climate change, the "skeptics" ("deniers" is a better term) sounded pretty convincing to me as well. Now, I didn't just fall off the Historical Jesus Turnip Truck. I've done a fair amount of reading on this subject, from several books by John Dominic Crossan to Reza Aslan's recent book, Zealot. These guys are honest enough to say that there's no evidence to take the Gospels literally, but they're both pretty adamant that there's no question that Jesus existed as a human being.

It's also important to point out the burden of proof issue. It's really hard to prove that something or somebody didn't exist. No matter what guys like Fitzgerald and Carrier might be able to present, at best they can show that it was extremely unlikely that Jesus ever existed. Personally, I've always been of the mind that Jesus could very well have existed in the same sense that Achilles existed. It started with an actual guy (or maybe even an amalgam of a few different guys) and then grew in the telling. But hey, I've only read a few books. I'm definitely not a qualified Bible scholar.

Still, I find this fascinating, and I'll probably check out Carrier's new book once it's on Audible. I can't really summarize what Fitzgerald's points were, aside from the bits about how we have no eyewitness testimony to Jesus's existence despite the fact that it all took place in a part of the world where there were enough literate people writing stuff down to make it strange that nobody wrote about it. (But again, that doesn't prove it didn't happen.) A lot of it has to do with what Paul wrote and what he curiously leaves out that shows up in the Gospels. Don't go picking that apart as an argument though - read his book if you care enough and pick that apart.

I haven't spent a lot of time looking into this, but I did check out some counter-arguments to the mythicist idea. From what I've seen, I'm not getting a lot of substance. The main argument seems to be: "The majority of scholars agree that Jesus was a real person." Yeah, sure, that should make you at least seriously consider the idea, but if that's the ONLY rebuttal you have, it's not a very good one - in fact, it's essentially a combination of the Argument from Authority coupled with the Argument from Popularity fallacies.

So, I have no definite take. Seems to me that the mythicists have a tall order on their hands, and they're going to have to bring a lot to the table to make their point. As of right now, I don't feel smart enough on the issue to give any definitive statement as to whether Jesus was a real person or not. The best that I can give you as to my opinion is as follows:

It certainly seems possible that Jesus never existed.

So, I guess I'm Hispanic

Great-grandfather Julio Castro

I was filling out some sort of questionnaire not too long ago, and it asked me my ethnic group. When I was younger, I'd take a stand on this and check the "decline to comment" box. After all, isn't there just one race? The human race? Why must they tear us apart with these race-obsessed questions?

Nowadays, I just kinda shrug my shoulders and think, "Yeah, I'll fill it out."

The box that I check is the one marked "Hispanic". Why do I do this? Well, 'cause I'm Hispanic. My great-grandparents, Julio and Teodora Castro, came to America from Spain. Their daughter, my grandmother, was 100% Spanish, which makes me 25% Spanish. That's Spanish enough to be Hispanic.

Still, I feel kinda funny checking off that box. I look like Joe White Guy. Isn't Hispanic something else? When I hear the word, I think of folks from Mexico, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, etc. While I realize that those are different cultures, and you always run into trouble when you go grouping large numbers of people into categories, they seem to have some commonalities which I do not. I mean, Benicio del Toro is Puerto Rican, but he played a Mexican cop in Traffic. Nobody would believe it if they hired me to play a Mexican cop. (And yes, I know that there are plenty of fair-skinned Mexicans out there. You know what kind of crap they often have to hear? "You don't LOOK Mexican!")

Great-grandmother Teodora Castro

Before I go any further, let me just make it clear: I have no problem being Hispanic. It's not that I'm saying that I don't want anything to do with the people I've mentioned before. I'm just saying that I feel as connected to them as I do Chinese people. They're not any better or worse than any other group; I'm just not in that group.

I'm pretty sure that for the longest time, whenever I would actually identify what ethnic group I'm in, I'd never check "Hispanic" even though my dad had told me that's what I was. It's not that I doubted him, but see my reasons above for why I didn't feel right about identifying myself this way. I finally started doing it consistently when filling out the last U.S. Census form, where it clearly stated that "of Spanish descent" was part of the description for Hispanic.

Great-great-grandmother
Maria Sanchez Romero

While I'd be a fool to say that I know what it's like to have darker skin and "look Hispanic", I do try my best to pay attention to people. I've heard many of my students, for instance, tell me stories about how people will ask them if they're "legal" or assume that they're all Mexican even when they explain that they're Salvadoran. (My favorite story involves somebody asking "What part of Mexico is El Salvador?") Also, there's often an assumption that they weren't born in this country. I've also heard complaints of people speaking to them in Spanish, assuming that they know the language even when they don't! (Mainly because their family has been in the United States for generations.)

I realize that there's a lot more to Hispanic/Latino culture than how some white people treat them like crap, but I feel like a bit of a phony by telling people I'm Hispanic. It's not like I know what any of those things are like.

But hey, maybe some Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Salvadorans, Panamanians, etc. are reading this blog and thinking to themselves, "What's the big deal? You're Hispanic. Who cares if you look like you could be the spokesman for Gringos United?"

Your logic is useless!

If you've just learned about logical fallacies, you're probably feeling pretty confident that you know how to deconstruct an argument and demonstrate when somebody's reasoning is faulty. Whether it's the post hoc ergo propter hoc, the no true Scotsman, the argument from ignorance, or any of the various other common fallacies that people make on a daily basis, you're ready to get to the truth of the matter.

There's a bit of a problem though.

You're assuming that everybody either knows about logical fallacies or, more importantly, cares about them.

When I first started getting really into skepticism, I would read various debates on usenet, and the skeptics would often point out the fallacies that were being committed by the paranormal advocates. I'm not some rube who's impressed by somebody simply naming off a fallacy, mind you. What convinced me was that they'd not only name them, but they'd explain them and show how the supposed reasoning that the other person was using didn't work by applying it to another example. In other words, my opinions started to change because I was already a pretty logical person, and even more significant, I valued logic.

Obviously, not everybody knows all the logical fallacies by heart, so simply saying to somebody: "You're making a strawman!" isn't going to get you anywhere if they don't know what that means. If the person is reasonable though, then you can correct this by explaining what that means and exactly how they're using it. This might get you somewhere, especially if you're clear that just because a person makes a fallacy, that doesn't mean that he or she is wrong. After all, you can have bad reasons for believing things that are true. If I said that the sun was going to rise tomorrow because it was the will of the monster who lives in my closet, I'd be right about the sun coming up, but I'd be wrong about the reason why.

Still, you might find yourself a bit annoyed, as even this isn't a sure-fire way to go about things. Some of the problems you might encounter include:

1. The other person thinks you're playing some kind of clever word game. I've been accused of  using "rhetoric" instead of making a point, and another person said that I was using words that are impressive in a debate class but don't mean anything in the "real world". Another person once referred to this as being my own personal method of analyzing things. That's very flattering, but I can't take credit for logic.

2. The other person will think that multiple examples of the same fallacy will eventually equal a truth. I get this a lot with "God of the Gaps" style arguments and anecdotes. You can point out that they're making a fallacy, but then they'll give you ten more of the same fallacy. When you take the time to point out that each one on the list is making the same bad bit of reasoning, they act like you're just being stubborn and "nothing will convince you".

3. They think that logic is subjective. I once had a guy tell me that he was using his own logic to reach his conclusions. I can't even...

4. Sometimes the most frustrating of all is a person who knows just enough to be dangerous. They'll throw out the terms without being able to explain how the argument fits the fallacy, or they'll just say, "No, I'm not doing that".

So, you know logic? Good for you. Before you go throwing it around, it's probably best to see if you and the person with an opposite point of view can agree to the rules before you start playing the game though.

Feel free to attack my beliefs

One of my greatest failings at communicating with others is that I often forget how much of a sense of identity comes with a person's beliefs. I personally feel like all of my beliefs are in a "this is what I think is right until new evidence changes my mind" holding pattern, but not everybody else is like that. Sometimes even implying that somebody might believe the wrong thing is enough for them to get really defensive. Shoot, sometimes even implying that somebody else might be wrong about their beliefs is enough to get people upset.

To be clear, I'm not talking about attacking an individual by insulting them. I don't think that a person is stupid when they believe things that I don't believe - in fact, I often think that some of them are smarter than me. That's why I'd never call a person stupid for being a Christian, Muslim, tarot card reader, alleged alien abductee, etc. I'm not so dense that I don't empathize with why that would upset people. I don't like being called stupid (or any other names) either, and I know that as an atheist, it can be annoying when believers will resort to calling me things like "sad", "lost" or "demon possessed".  (Okay, the last one is too silly to actually upset me.) There really isn't any place for personal attacks in civilized conversation.

I'm also not talking about misrepresenting a particular group of people or making hasty generalizations about them. I'm aware that not all Christians, for instance, are homophobic bigots, and I don't assume that one is when I meet him or her. I obviously don't like that either. The closest thing to this which I relate to is the notion that comic book fans are all socially awkward or dimwitted. (These being stereotypes that the media has perpetuated, although that seems to be changing.) I'm neither, and I find that to be the opposite of most comic fans I know. (Especially the notion that people read comics because they're not smart enough to read "regular" books - if anything, the comic book fans that I know tend to be more well-read than your average person.)

Related to this, I think that I'm pretty good at avoiding strawmen. I really don't care if anybody disagrees with one of my positions, but I get incredibly upset when somebody mischaracterizes what my position is. If I had a dime for every time I've had to listen to some nonsense about how atheists believe that "nothing created nothing" or "everything's a coincidence" I'd have enough dimes to stuff into a sock so I can hit those people over the head and knock them out.

Aside from that, I don't really give a crap about my "beliefs". I got into a conversation about somebody regarding evolution recently, and he told me that one's stance and interpretation of it depended on what one's beliefs were. Maybe that's true for him, but it's not true for me. Who cares what I "believe" about evolution? What do the facts say? I can believe that I descended directly from my dog, and even if that provided me with a ton of comfort and filled me with joy, it wouldn't have any bearing on reality.

I also had a conversation with somebody regarding "psychics" who supposedly talk to the dead (using the same method that cold readers, who admittedly have no supernatural powers, use). Basically, one particularly famous one has been pretty thoroughly debunked, and the other person just didn't want to hear it because she believed in the afterlife. I tried to point out that the afterlife being real and that psychic being a fraud could both very well be true, which seemed to make a bit of a difference. Still, she said that her problem was that the article that debunked the psychic was "attacking her beliefs" which is what upset her.

I didn't say it, but I felt like asking: "Don't you want to know if this is all bullcrap?"

And that's what seems to be the issue here, which I have a hard time understanding. I'm not so sure that people WANT to know if what they believe is true or not. What they want is to believe what they believe. In the case of religion, I can understand this because it often comes with an entire identity and abandoning the belief potentially means leaving behind your entire social circle and maybe even your family. But stuff like psychics? 9/11 conspiracies? Chemtrails? Why hold so desperately on to those? I just don't get it.

I remember having a Facebook conversation with some believers not too long ago where I shared a link about the God helmet. Essentially, the device was able to create experiences in people that were indistinguishable from supernatural experiences. In other words, it was evidence that interactions with God, ghosts, aliens, etc. were something that the brain can create and make them seem very real. What an amazing discovery this device could be! But how did the believers react? More than one of them said that they "didn't want to know" if this stuff was all in their heads. Facts be damned, they were gonna believe what they want to believe.

But check this out! Here's an example of me revising my beliefs right as I'm writing this blog! I couldn't recall the precise details (or the name) of the God helmet experiment, even though I've brought it up in conversations with religious people since originally reading about it. From what I understood, it was another piece of evidence against religious/supernatural belief. However, when I looked it up again to provide a link for this blog post, I learned that the results were unable to be replicated by other scientists.

I'm still going to refer to the God helmet in discussions with believers in order to have one more point to help me win the debate. Wait...what? NO! NO! NO! NO! I'm never going to use that example again because it turned out to be WRONG! Yes, I believe something and now I'm admitting that it was wrong. I don't feel dumb. If anything, I feel slightly smarter. Am I the only one who feels slightly euphoric when I learn that I was mistaken about something? Seriously, I do. I now know something I didn't know before.

I've written before how I don't care when religious believers try to convert me. If they're right, then I want to know it, but I'm kinda getting to the point where I'm tired of arguments and just want some evidence already (or a good reason why I shouldn't care about evidence). I don't feel threatened when somebody tells me that my beliefs are wrong. Instead, I want to challenge them to convince me of it, and if their arguments suck, I won't be shy about letting them know.

It was Matt Dillahunty who put this all so succinctly: "I want to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible." I think that's a good motivation, as I don't know what's to gain by believing in things that aren't true, yet I can think of plenty of reasons that it can harm people. I could be wrong, but it strikes me that too many people would rather say: "I want to believe the things that I believe."

I don't understand that, but I'm trying to be sensitive to it. I predict that I will encounter much failure in these efforts in the future, but maybe I'll finally find the right approach.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - movie review

My three-year-old son's favorite movie is Planet of the Apes. Never mind the fact that he's never seen it, but if you ask him to name his favorite film, that's the name he gives. (This all might change, as I just bought the original series on Blu-Ray for a paltry $20.) This has nothing to do with my review, but I wanted to work that in here somehow.

I'm too young myself to have seen any of the original films in the theater. (I think that the last one came out the year I was born.) However, I remember one of the local channels showing one of the films every day for a week straight. I vividly recall the classic ending to the first one, with Charlton Heston declaring "Damn you! Damn you all to hell!" as he discovered the movie's twist ending.

I have hazier memories of the sequels, but I remember liking them. Hopefully when I revisit them on Blu-Ray, I won't have my memories sullied. (I have recently rewatched the original. Is it dated? Yes. But I was surprised at how enjoyable it still was. No doubt it has to do with the simple fact that it's a good story.

Like many others, I saw Tim Burton's reboot, but I was pretty disappointed in that. It probably would have been better if Mark Wahlberg acted like Dirk Diggler meeting the ape-filled planet, but alas that was not to be. I do remember that it looked really cool - especially how they did the apes. Beyond that, it was a bit of a bore.

When I heard about the new reboot, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I basically just rolled my eyes, figuring that it was about time that they just went ahead and buried this pathetic franchise. When I saw the previews, I thought to myself, "This might not be bad." When I read the reviews, I figured it would be a good excuse to go see a movie by myself. It turned out to be much better than it had any right to be, and I even wound up buying it when it came out on Blu-Ray.

I was cautiously optimistic when it came to this current sequel, and it looks like my optimism has been rewarded. While it's not as much of a surprise as the first one has to how good it is, it still holds up really well and keeps everything that worked well about the last one while still moving the story forward. The story, in a nutshell, is that humanity is on its last legs, and a pocket of human civilization runs into conflict with Caesar's ape society. Ultimately, it comes down to war, and notions of tribalism are put to the test. (There's that concept of tribalism sneaking its way into my blog again.) Basically, are humans good or bad? What about apes? Maybe it's just as complex of an idea when it comes to apes, especially if they wind up becoming as smart as us.

Like any good piece of entertainment, whether it's drama or sci-fi, it only works if it gives you characters that you can care about. This movie does a good job with that, although you might make the argument that you wind up caring more about the apes than the humans. That's okay though, because as humans ourselves, we're likely to already be predisposed to root for our fellow homo sapiens sapiens.

Maybe it's just the science enthusiast in me, but these movies really make me think and marvel at the fact that apes are our cousins. Actually, we ARE apes! I've done a bit of reading on primates and morality, and it's amazing how much there still is to discover about our distant relatives, and it really makes me wonder whether we can justify treating them the way we have in the past. Anyway, a movie like this gets me thinking about these real-life concerns, which is what I think a good piece of science fiction is supposed to do.

It looks like the reviews have been pretty good for this one, and I'm not surprised. It doesn't just work on the dramatic level, as the action scenes are all really engaging as well. Hopefully they'll keep hitting the right notes, as no doubt this is a series that will continue. And I hope that they can come up with an interesting twist when it comes to those astronauts returning to Earth.

The coincidental correlation

Source: Fallacy-a-Day Podcast

I guess that I must be doing a series of posts on logical fallacies, as I've already covered the No True Scotsman, and the Argument from Ignorance. Today I feel the need to write about the Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, or Coincidental Correlation, as a number of conversations that I've engaged in lately have left me frustrated with people not recognizing this particular bit of faulty reasoning.

Like most fallacies, it's not too hard to see why people engage in it. We humans are pattern seeking animals, which is something that saved our lives when we discovered the pattern that the big hairy things with sharp teeth regarded us as lunch rather than good friends. Unfortunately, we sometimes see patterns that aren't really patterns at all. Take a look at the clouds sometime. See that rabbit? Yeah, you ain't seeing a rabbit. Your brain is trying to make sense of random data is all.

The "post hoc" argument consists of attributing something to an event that preceded it. For instance, I once had a headache and then I had a bowl of Cap'n Crunch cereal. Shortly after I finished it, my headache was gone. Therefore, eating Cap'n Crunch cures headaches, right? Umm...no.

Making these conclusions isn't always a fallacy. When your cat scratches your arm and you bleed, it's perfectly logical to conclude that a cat scratch can make you bleed. The difference between that and the Cap'n Crunch example is that you can explain the mechanism of how a cat's claws cuts through your skin. There is no equivalent to the Capn' Crunch scenario. Plus, there are several other factors that can go into a headache going away - one of which may have been that I was simply dehydrated and the milk took care of the problem. I could have had a glass of water and achieved the same result. (And sometimes headaches just go away on their own and it's best to just say that you don't know why it did.)

When considering whether you're engaging in this fallacy or not, it's best to step back and consider all the other factors that could be going on with the situation in question. In other words, step outside of yourself and realize that your personal experience may not represent the bigger picture.

For instance, where I see this fallacy used the most often is with the hysteria over vaccinations. People point to their children showing signs of autism shortly after receiving their vaccinations. Also, you'll hear stories of kids getting really sick shortly after their vaccines. Then you'll get numerous stories of these vaccines supposedly being the cause of the various ailments. While it is true that vaccines aren't completely free of side-effects, it's not logical to attribute every negative thing that happens after one to the vaccination.

In the case of autism supposedly being the cause, the age that kids receive their vaccines (two years old) is also the age where one would expect to first see signs of autism. Another important thing to consider is what happens when you flip this idea around? Think of how many millions of kids get vaccinated and DON'T have autism. Why not say that vaccines prevent autism, but there's a low failure rate and some of them become autistic anyway? After all, there are kids who haven't been vaccinated who have autism.

Of course, what I just wrote is a logical fallacy, and nobody is even trying to make the claim that vaccines prevent autism. (Most likely because nobody gets hysterical when a negative reaction DOESN'T happen.) However, it's the same argument, only it's backed up with better numbers than the "vaccines cause autism" side. In other words, it's illogical, but it's even less illogical than those who would get you in a panic over vaccines.

Regarding the kids who get sick after their vaccines, again, there are potential side-effects (although it's safe to say that none of them are as bad as the potential side effects of whooping cough, measles, etc.) but the thing is this, KIDS GET SICK. And they get sick for a number of reasons. We don't always know why, but grasping at the easiest answer doesn't mean you've found THE answer. What's wrong with just saying, "I don't know what happened?"

And again, step outside yourself. What if you not only have a personal experience where your kid suffered a negative reaction but what if you also knew somebody else who did? What if you ten people? A hundred? A thousand? Well, what's that compared to the entire world population that's been vaccinated? Nothing, really. Now, if we were getting reports all over the world where pretty much every kid was suffering from serious negative side-effects right after being vaccinated, then we'd have something. But as of right now, you're still at a level with my Captain Crunch example, and coming up with more fallacies won't suddenly turn your fallacy into a truth.

My son had some respiratory problems before he turned one. He doesn't seem to be showing any signs of them now. What was the cause? What was the solution? I don't know, and pretending to know would be disingenuous, even though I could probably come up with all sorts of reasons.

It must have been all of those Disney princess movies I let him watch. (Which also explains why he loves dance class so much.)

Cool chicks dig comics

I'm forty years old, and I've been reading comic books since I was twelve. When I started reading them, I only had a handful of friends who read them as well. When I got into middle school, I quickly realized that I should have kept it a secret, as a lot of kids made fun of me for it. I remember a group of kids following me around the campus jeering "Lance likes comic books!" I also remember that I got a T-shirt with Wolverine on it, and I didn't really tell anybody what it was, although a few of them knew. (Can you even imagine such a thing nowadays? A bunch of middle schoolers NOT recognizing Wolverine?)

Things were better in high school, and even though I remember a few kids making fun of it (but with far less acrimony) some of those same kids would ask me when I was bringing in the new issue of various titles so they could read them during study session. Still, I was a bit of an odd-man out, as I was the only kid who consistently wore T-shirts with characters like Spider-Man, The Punisher, and the X-Men. I recall one time when one of the skaters, a group that prided themselves on individuality and nonconformity, asked me, "Don't you have any normal shirts?" in the same tone of voice that most people would say, "Haven't you learned to stop shitting yourself?"

Ckaka Cumberbatch

Sure, there was the big Batman craze when Tim Burton's movie came out, and every person and their monkey's grandmother wore a Batman T-shirt, but that was more of a fad than anything. One time, a kid came up to me, hoping to get the better of me, and told me while I was wearing a Spidey shirt that "Spider-Man sucks, Batman rules". I then asked him what city Batman lives in, and he was unable to answer. Then I pointed out that he was a poser, which is one of the worst things a person can be in high school. (At least, when I went to high school.)

Through college, I somehow lucked out to have a roommate who read as voraciously as I did, so we'd always have stuff to talk about. Aside from that, I didn't know too many people who read comic books, and when I tried to tell people about them, they probably saw me as a little bit eccentric. I majored in creative writing, and I worked on writing superhero stories. Pretty much nobody understood what I was trying to do. They figured that I was either trying to do something like the 1960s Batman show or I'd get lumped in with all of the fantasy nerds who were writing ripoffs of Lord of the Rings. (Not that there's anything wrong with fantasy nerds, mind you.)

Valerie Perez

One thing's for damned sure, through all these years, I didn't know any females who were into comic books. Maybe I'd see that elusive lady picking up the latest issue of Sandman, and I'd see a few at the conventions. (I also seem to recall that my local comic book store had a girl working there, and she seemed really well-versed in what was going on, so if she wasn't a fan, she was really good at pretending to be one.) I'm not exactly one who hides his likes and dislikes from the world, and I think it was probably safe to say that plenty of girls and women thought of me as being some kind of oddball for being so into them. (I even remember my aunt asking me when I was going to stop reading comic books and get into girls - as though those two things can't exist simultaneously.)

I would sometimes try and tell my female friends about them, and their reactions ranged from mild curiosity to "let's kick the leper out". I remember in college showing one friend a copy of Strangers in Paradise. I even got her to read the first few pages, and when I described the story, she said it sounded like a good story, but she just wasn't interested in it because it was a comic book. I asked her if she'd watch it if I was describing a movie, and she said she'd probably check it out. But sequential art? Nuh uh. Ain't gonnna happen.

Riddle

Obviously, not all women reacted negatively. I actually managed to fool one of them into marrying me, and she actually did read many issues of Strangers in Paradise at that. Plus, she goes to almost all of the superhero movies with me, and she's even liked a few of them to see more than once. So, my wife is definitely not a hater.

So generally speaking, it always struck me that comic books are a guy's thing, and every now and then a girl sneaks in and hangs out with us goobers. But just like every guy who gets to be my age, I have started to notice that the world is changing, and things might not quite be the way I thought they were. And this is all a very cool thing.

I'm a high school English teacher, and I always manage to sneak in a week-long lesson on comic books and superheroes toward the end of the year. A lot of kids really seem to like it, and that's all they seem to remember about my class. (Hey! We did Hamlet too, dammit! It wasn't all Batman!) Now, this might be my cloudy memory, but I've been doing this for about ten years now, and the way I remember it, it was mostly the boys who were into the lesson, with maybe a few girls enjoying it as well. I would have the occasional complainer, and that complainer was always inevitably a female student. They would act like I was burdening them, and the only way to convince them to shut their traps was by telling them that I could find a suitable replacement story out of the literature book for them to do instead - ya know, something like Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland.

I don't really see this anymore, and the girls seem to be just as interested in it as the guys. In fact, if I think of
recent students who were enthused about it, only girls are coming to mind. Also, I have noticed that I see a lot more women at the comic book store than I had before. And I don't see them picking up some obscure title that's skewed toward them. I see a lot of them reading the same stuff as me. I even quizzed one of my female students who was wearing a T-shirt with Nightwing's emblem on it. She knew her stuff, and I told her that she could just stay home as I was going to give her an A no matter what. (Administrators from my district: that was a joke.)

(Begin crotchety old man voice.) Another thing that's different from back when I started reading comic books and attending comic book conventions is this whole cosplay thing! Don't get me wrong, people have always dressed up for comic book conventions, but now you see cosplayers on the guest list of comic book conventions! (At least, that's what you have at the Big Wow! Comicfest in San Jose.) Obviously, there are more than a few men who do this, but more than half of them are women, and I'm gonna talk about them because I'm hella hetero and that's kinda the point of this blog entry.

Wonder Woman by Cliff Chiang

As I already mentioned, there have always been people who dressed up for conventions. Some of them would go all-out and create some really cool stuff. Some of them would wear stuff that looked like what my three-year-old son would have come up with had he worked off of plans that my dog drew up. A lot of people would ask me, derisively, if I dressed up for the comic book conventions. When I'd say that I didn't (Let's just say that the only character for whom I have the proper figure is maybe the Kingpin of Crime) they would tease me and go, "Come on! You know you do!" Yeah, 'cause I just don't want people to know that I'm a nerd.

I never quite understood why people would make fun of those who dress up for conventions - especially those who put a lot of time and effort into their costumes. "Hey! You're doing something creative with your time! And then you make people happy by posing for pictures with them! Get a life!" Anyway, I hear a lot fewer of these sorts of derisive comments nowadays, no doubt because of how it's become a hobby unto itself. (The fact that a lot of them women cosplayers happen to be really pretty probably doesn't hurt. And yeah, the dudes are fairly handsome. I'll give them that. It helps.)

Harley Quinn by Amanda Conner

I've heard a bit of criticism from some comic book fans who say that the female cosplayers aren't really fans and they just go to the conventions for attention or whatever. Let me just state my personal opinion on this issue: I DON'T CARE. Whether they're actually reading Wonder Woman comic books when they decide to dress up as Wonder Woman or not doesn't matter one bit to me. One way or the other, they are creating positive attention toward a hobby that I love, and that makes them cool in my book. Besides, what's gotta be wrong with you when pretty women are dressing up and you've gotta find fault with that?

Whether these female cosplayers are "true fans" or not, the numbers seem to be confirming my suspicions that more and more women are discovering what's so cool about comic books. I've seen the percentage of female fans as high as 45% with a brief bit of internet sleuthing. Also, Eric Stephenson, publisher of Image Comics, believes that women are the fastest growing reader demographic right now.

I think that this is great, and hopefully this will help make comic books better all around. I've never vocally complained about how women are depicted in comic books, but I've always understood much of the criticism. Personally, I think that sometimes it can be over-the-top when it's pointed out that the women all have idealized bodies, mainly because the men do as well. That's just the nature of the beast. However, there are some artists who take these idealized women and pose them as though they're preparing for a porn shoot. That kind of a thing I think we can do without. Plus, there seems to be more artists out there who can draw some cool female heroes who look attractive despite not having double D's. (Cliff Chiang's Wonder Woman, for instance, looks beautiful and athletic but not so top-heavy that you wonder how she's not falling over all the time.

Susie Giroux - a friend of mine

I'm not a fan of diversity for the sake of diversity, but this changing demographic seems to be evolving organically, and that's a great thing. With changing readership, we can hopefully see more women on the creative end as well - as there are some real talents out there. Amanda Conner, for instance, is not just one of the best cover artists around nowadays, but for my money, she's one of the best visual storytellers as well.

So, if you're female and you've never given comics a try, well, there's nothing about you being female that should stop you from reading them. If you want some recommendations, I've written about some before, and I plan on doing so again soon. If you're looking for cool comics with female leads, there are a lot coming out there that are pretty damned good, including: Black Widow, Elektra, and Ms. Marvel. Of course, I recommend those to my male friends as well.

The ladies love comics!

Forgive me if this post has had the hint of "I was into this cool thing before everybody else was", but I was into this cool thing before everybody else was.