Found Feminism: Sinfest
Sinfest is one of my favourite webcomics. I can’t quite work out why I haven’t written it up as a Found Feminism before, I guess I just made the assumption that like kittens with captions, everyone already knew about it. The strip has been going for a while, and I love the mix of anti-dinner table talk (politics, sex and religion) with the more winsome or just for gags strips. It’s updated pretty regularly and has a massive archive so I’ve just fixed that question over what you are going to do for the next week – go read!
On the face of it, a drugs-and-porn fuelled pig, bikini devil girls and a lead female character who talks a lot about clothes and boys doesn’t seem like an instant win for Team Bad Rep – but appearances can be deceptive.
Monique (with the awesome purple hair) is a revolutionary and a style guru, whilst still being a well-rounded character. Proving, if more proof were needed – and it sometimes is – that feminism isn’t about wearing dungarees and being angry all the time. It’s a thing that people do, to make other people’s lives better. And it can be light-hearted, well meaning, serious AND funny. With amazing hair.
Sinfest is written and drawn by Tatsuya Ishida, a Japanese American writer/artist who takes pop culture references and uses them to make some really good points about gender politics and American consumer culture and mashes them up into a great read. I distinctly remember following the strip more closely than the American election, especially because Sarah Palin Pig made me cry with laughter. The artwork is wonderful, with some lovely bits of line art. He also does some cute dog and cat jokes as well as some beautiful calligraphy word-to-shape panels. There really is very little not to like.
They’ve really pulled out all the stops with the recent Patriarchy series, which neatly uses the idea of the Matrix to describe living in the “patriarchy” – I’m going to print out copies and hand them out to anyone who asks what this feminism malarky is all about.
- Found Feminism: an ongoing series of images, videos, photos, comics, posters or excerpts – anything really, which shows feminist ideas at work in the everyday world. What’s brightened your day? Share it here – send your finds to [email protected]!
Well there goes all the spare time I didn’t have anyway… Thanks for introducing us!
There are pictures of cats with captions on the internet? Woah.
Not to be that one guy, but I’m just going to give a fair warning… avoid the sinfest forums. They are full of very angry and very young “feminists”. So if you’re looking for intelligent discussion about the comic go to the sinfest Subreddit on Reddit instead.
Nice article, and nice website in general, however I dont know if it was bad timing or what, but the sinfest feminism arc has become…well kind of counter to the whole…feminism isn’t all about dungarees being angry thing considering who Monique has now shaved her hair and wears androgynous clothes and is alot more angry.
Could you do a new review of the comic, now that the comic has done nothing but praise Xanthe, AKA Trike Girl.
It is starting to turn against feminism, but giving it a bad name. Those who don’t already subscribe to omnipresent and all-knowing, “encompasses 99% of men” conspiracy Patriarchy idea are going to be put off by it. They feel like they are being blamed for simply being the wrong gender.
Comic makes no difference between “rapist”, “planning to rape” and “trying to talk with woman”. In comics current form, man merely talking to a woman is not done because he wants to talk with woman or even interact, but because man wants to have sex with woman. No exceptions.
I can only guess that Ishida is having ‘recent convert’ syndrome: consumed with guilt over his former bad behavior, he’s gone way into overcompensation territory, embracing the most radical fringes of feminism that can still be called ‘feminist’ and presenting them as automatically right and true–to the degree that anyone who disagrees with the overbearing zealot Xanthe is easily branded Evil and handily defeated.
Extremism used to be mocked in Sinfest (example: Seymour the sanctimonious religious nut); now, in one very specific area, it’s applauded. This is a humor-killer.