2023-09-04 22:06:46
“Nobody should give up anything for something like that, parity should be something normal. But as the patio is, I think that the most honest thing to do with my colleagues, myself and the Spanish comic is to step aside”. With these words, David Rubín explained on his social networks the reason why he has decided to give up the three nominations received at the Critics’ Awards granted by the Dolmen publishing house. The three categories in which he was eligible for the award (Best Work, Best Script and Best National Drawing) are dominated by men. In the complete list of finalists, only three of the 43 candidacies correspond to women.
Those selected were announced last Friday. The comic book author, responsible for titles such as El fuego, El circo del desaliento and El héroe, made his decision public this Monday after, as he explained to this newspaper, “thinking about it a lot.” “From the beginning I was excited, but as time went by I noticed that something was not going well,” he adds.
“Even so, the solution is not for me to resign or for all the nominated men to resign,” he points out, making it clear that what the absence of fellow finalists shows is “the lack of awareness of those who have decided on the nominations”, since they did not “go off the alarm when they saw that there was no parity”. The jury was made up of 70 people; only 14 of them women.
Rubín’s decision and its repercussion –accumulates more than 800 reposts and 2,100 ‘likes’ on Twitter– are showing, once again, the lack of visibility of the authors.
Some illustrators and cartoonists from the Colectivo Autoras de Cómic, such as Carla Berrocal or Susanna Martín, have criticized the way in which Rubín has made his resignation visible and the impact it has had when they have been “fighting for years” without getting that “case”, he affirms to elDiario.es the comic book author Carla Berrocal. “It seems very heavy to me that a guy has to come and give up an award to see that there is machismo in the comic,” she says. “By publishing that he is rejecting his three nominations, what he is doing is making a very big echo of his action,” criticizes Martín. The authors would have preferred the resignation to have been made “in silence”. “He is taking up even more space”, explains Susanna Martín.
“The world of comics is very masculinized, with a lot of testosterone and cronies clapping each other. In between we are elbowing ourselves to stick our heads out as we can,” adds Martín, who is uncomfortable being given “medals” for resignation but he also understands that his action serves to “focus” and “point”.
Rubín shares that Astiberri Ediciones, the publisher responsible for El fuego, his nominated work, has supported him in his decision: “It seems perfect to them.” Dolmen, responsible for the prizes that he will deliver at the Villa de Avilés International Comic Conference in mid-September, has not contacted him.
The director of Dolmen, Vicente García, explains to elDiario.es that the jury for the prizes awarded by his editorial is “impartial” and that it does not intervene in their decisions when it comes to deciding the finalists. “We do not guide one side or the other. We count the votes that are cast by men and women. What do we do if what comes out later comes out?” He says.
However, the jury is not equal but is made up of 80% men. “The jury is open. There is no woman who requests to be part and who is not,” defends the editor about a prize that has been awarded for 23 years. In the last three editions of the awards, six of the 27 prizes awarded have gone to authors (22%).
García has also criticized Rubín’s decision: “Everyone has the right to give up what they want, but there is a bit of posturing behind all this.” “There are other ways to fight for this type of rights that are more than deserved. I find it unfortunate that this type of thing is used for its own purposes,” he adds. He also criticizes that the author has not “wet” on his Twitter account to indicate “who he would have removed from the list of finalists and with what names he would have replaced them.” The editor warns that, due to the deadlines they manage, there is no longer “an option” to include three new names in the applications that remain empty. Voting closes this Wednesday and the prizes and diplomas are delivered next week. “The people of the jury have chosen that work [de David Rubín] as nominated. If she wins, I deduce that she won’t pick up the prize and that’s it,” she clarifies.
“We have been in the 21st century for 23 years and I believe that prejudices must be shaken and everyone is clear that it is not correct to leave aside and make invisible the work of many authors who, in recent years, have signed some of the best works in the world. Spanish comic”, highlighted Rubín in his statement. Speaking to this newspaper, he gives as an example María Medem, the creator of Por culpa de una flor, one of the most outstanding works this year. “I know that with this personal decision I will not change the panorama much, but I feel better carrying it out and it is always a grain of sand to continue paving the way towards equality,” she wrote below.
“I cannot guarantee that the gaps that I leave will be occupied by women, but I can at least make this problem visible and show that we must be more alert with this type of thing. It can happen to all of us. At first I did not see anything strange , but as soon as we start to distance ourselves and see each other from the sidelines, you realize what things are wrong”, he highlights.
Rubín warns that his action is “a band-aid to cover a hole through which liters of water are entering. It’s not worth it with this.” And he insists on the importance that it is the juries –and those who choose them– who must be aware of the alarming context: “The solution to the problem does not lie with the nominees, but with the conscience of the people who choose them”. “Many aunts are fed up that the nominees are always guys who reward each other,” Carla Berrocal says in this regard.
Susanna Martín contributes that inequality does not only affect the awards and mentions the lack of parity in the round tables as another of the most bloody points. “The authors are applying a lot of pressure, but the field is not suitable for us,” she criticizes while sharing that the consequences of the “complaints” that fall on them are very different from those of their male colleagues, as is the case with Rubin. “He denounces from the privilege, nothing is going to happen to him, they are congratulating him, they are not going to stop publishing. We do not have that social protection,” she declares.
“You earn antipathy. They are power bars and what you generate for being a ‘feminazi’ is that nobody talks about your comic. We put a lot of the body. You pay dearly when you make visible and make machismo known all the time within the comic. It’s hard. You get tired of exposing yourself”, acknowledges Carla Berrocal about how this masculinized environment works: “It’s like preaching in the desert sometimes.”
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