Dave Sim’s Bizarre TOS Agreement

What would you do if critics repeatedly chided you as a “misogynist”? Dave Sim, Cerebus creator and publisher of one of the longest running independent comics of all time, decided the best way to handle such a situation was to send out a form letter requiring anyone who wished to correspond with him to fill out and return with a note saying “I don’t believe that Dave Sim is a misogynist.”. “If you aren’t willing to extend that minimal courtesy to me,” he states “then I would respectfully ask that you not attempt to contact me in the future.”

You can read a scan of the original letter on the fantastic Inkstuds Blog, or hear their recent (and relatively rant free) interview with Dave here.

Sim, who often refers to women as “Emotional Female Void” and men as “Rational Male Light”, feels his reputation as a misogynist is ill deserved. In his letter Dave asks “What sort of friends and fans allow a friend or the person they are a fan of to be called the lowest, subhuman form of life in our society with impunity?”. The Dave Sim Misogyny Page is chock full of his quotes on gender and Heidi McDonald has an interesting piece on the subject in The Beat.

Recently Sim, who apparently favors good old pen and paper to computers, spent 100 Hours On the Internet to promote his new book Glamourpuss. Of course he was dogged with questions regarding his point of views on the opposite gender, which is no surprise given that Glamourpuss appears to be a parody of a women’s fashion magazine.

Although I am not willing to on the record and state that I feel Dave Sim is not a Misogynist, I will state that a terms of service of correspondence is a great idea! As a matter of fact, I have decided to enact my own Doctor Popular TOS on this very blog; by commenting, reading, hearing about, or in anyway thinking about Doctor Popular or DocPop.org, the user is hearby stating that they agree that “Doc Pop is the awesomest guy on the internet!”.