Thursday, September 24, 2009

Roberta Gregory, Feminism and Me



I first encountered the comics of Roberta Gregory when I picked up a couple issues of an underground comic book with the descriptive title, TITS AND CLITS at a convention circa 1978. With that title, I just knew it had to be "good." Boy was I disappointed. Why, the stories were all about WOMEN! Women's issues, women's lives, women's troubles, women's pain, women's passions, women's feelings. Why...this was...FEMINISM! Looking back I think it was chance encounters like these in my formative years (I would have been still less than 20) that tempered my sexism to the point where I have now long considered myself a bit of a feminist. I have actually contributed to NOW, the National Organization for Women. (FOR women, not OF women so...)
Fine, those of you who know me realize that I can be as sexist as the next guy sometimes. Chalk it up to a hormonal thing. Still, most of my closest friends in adulthood have been women and I have been told I have a better understanding of women than most males. (My comment is always "If a man truly understands women, the first thing he will tell you is that women can never truly be understood...nor should they be.") What does all of this have to do with Roberta Gregory, who went on to fame as creator of BITCHY BITCH? Over the years since, I would catch her work from time to time and was always reminded of my discovery of her. A little bit ago Roberta Gregory friended me on Facebook, some 30 years after I furtively purchased copies of TITS AND CLITS and scurried back to my hotel room hoping for a few--shall we say--interesting moments alone only to find instead the unexpected beginnings of enlightenment. It's an interesting world in which we find ourselves. Check out Ms. Gregory's website at:
http://www.robertagregory.com/index.html

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