Who
is... Donna Barr? Donna
Barr has been drawing since 1954, writing since 1962, published since 1986,
and publishing since 1996.
She has a Bachelors' Degree in German, and
is a veteran of the United States Army (1970-1973).
Readers worldwide
follower her THE DESERT PEACH, STINZ, BOSOM ENEMIES, HADER
AND THE COLONEL, among others.
She is recognized by her peers as
a pioneer in the field of drawn books and their use in new technologies of distribution
and reproduction. She is a contributor to the world's largest webcomics site,
moderntales.com, and its affiliate
sites.
She achieved her lifetime career goal in 2004 when her life's
work -- past, present and future -- has been accepted as part of the San Diego
State University's Library's Special Collection, and will be available to students
and professors for research, and to the public for exhibits.
She can
be emailed at barr at stinz dot com (remove spam barriers). She answers. Keep
the sentences short.
Creepy Christians (And other Middle Eastern Sun-God Worshipers) By Donna Barr
You people probably wonder why I keep smacking on the Christians, when this is supposed to be a kinda-sorta column about commie books.
Is there ANY way those people don’t butt into a writer’s live? Or, even more so, an artist’s?
And I should point out that I’m not nuts about any religion that staggered half-fainting from thirst and brain-boil from the deserts of the Middle East. You know who you are – all of you that spent all your time watching goats getting your brain baked by the blazing star and having absolutely nothing else to do except make sure the women stayed in the tents where no one could see them (or maybe, considering the weather out there, maybe that was something the women pulled to stay in the shade. Like they’re always the cooks, and never at the feasts – how better to get all the good bits and send out the heads and eyeballs? And convince the Lords of the Deserts that THOSE are the good bits?).
If the Judeo-Christo-Islamic God isn’t the full desert sun burning like an all-seeing all-accusing all-punishing father eye down upon the brain-pans of the would-be faithful, then you tell me what it is. Why else would their particular Giant Magic Sky Fairy be the way He is? Jealous, unforgiving, nosey, vengeful and punishing with fire – if that’s not a full-noon hour in the Sinai or the Arabian deserts then I don’t know what. My colleague Kjartan tells me the Icelandic Hell is freezing cold and icy. We worship what we hate and fear. Gods all started as demons, after all. I guess we’re just all trying to keep Daddy from hitting us again. It’s all about the abuse. Christianity’s attempt to have something humane lost big-time when it wandered through Egypt and replaced its mouthy sarcastic Joshua ben Josef with the God of The Deserts, Set, and finished its prayers with a salutation to the sun-god – Amen. Victims of geography, all of these people.
Which is why I have no patience with these gnawing, angry, woman-hating Gods of Nothing.
I grew up in the woods.
You ask the forest for food, it shows you mushrooms or trout. You want water, there’s a whole bush of red huckleberries – like tiny tender canteens of lemonade – even if you want it out of season. You want shelter, there are branches or tip-toe trees. Kindling? Firewood? All there for you. You might as well be in a convenience store. And people wonder why I hug trees. How else would I treat something that is as generous and giving as a good parent should be? I spent years’ worth of time at the top of a 100-foot cedar, rain or shine, storm or bright, just dreaming and composing as a kid. I didn’t fear lightning because we didn’t get it where I’m from.
I did climb that tree really quickly because I could always feel that northwest version of the Boogeyman, Cannibal Woman, right there in the woods whoofing bear-like for child-flesh (such a support to a mother who didn’t want her kids to wander), but I never saw her. Maybe because I got to the top of the tree so fast.
The world was wide-open beaches and howling cliffs and seagulls to mediate upon, in their sacred parabolas of flight. What’s stained glass to a seaside sunset but a weak imitation?
So you can see that, for me, the idea of religions in their dinky buildings, that prefer men in all things -- it all seemed awfully silly and limited and -- well, as a girl child, not so good for me. These religions all want to burn me at the stake or stone me to death or make me wear funny clothes or force me to breed and nothing else -- even to the point of denying me all possibility of supporting myself. All religions are to me as the Nazis are to the Jews.
And don’t be telling me I’m just worshiping in a bigger temple. I have no priests to tell me how to talk to whatever’s out there. I run no rituals. And the more science digs up the mathematical basis of the universe, the more fascinated I am with the idea that it all came together like a batch of Lincoln Logs, piece by parasitic accidental sorted-out piece. I’m too geeky to bother with gods.
Right now I’m part of a project (or will be until I finally piss off the editor so bad she pulls a Girlamatic on me – I’m confusing everybody on the list by saying that an editor shouldn’t get CREDIT – he or she should get a DISCLAIMER) that wants me, as part of the project, to explain why I, as an agnostic or atheist, am able to remain a decent human being.
(That project’s working out, by the way. We doin’ good).
First of all, I don’t even define myself as an atheist or agnostic. To do that, you’d have to think about it. I don’t bother with it. It’s not important to me.
And:
Why should I, as a decent human being, explain why I am a decent human being, to the narrow-minded, the prejudiced, the cruel, the greedy, the hypocritical – the definitions of all organized religions?
Why are they not explaining THEIR evil to ME?
I’m WAAAAiting… see the foot tapping? Well?
And now we are going to have an example of the practices of particularly Creepy Christians. One of my readers said I could use our email conversation if I didn’t say who it was.
THANK YOU.
It starts with a Guestpage letter:
“Wow! I followed the link from tooluser.com and am really impressed with the detail of your website. I’d like to tell you how much I appreciate Stinz and Desert Peach. The stories seem fresh every time I read them, with characters I have grown to love, as well as intelligence and humour that is so hard to find in adult graphics. Keep up the good work!”
That was a couple years ago. I contacted said reader and said thanks. All happy. Then, just recently, I got this from said reader:
“You’re not going to believe what I’m about to ask you, but I would appreciate it if you could please take my entry out of your stinz.com guestbook. I still love your books (Stinz especially), but I had a problem with one of my freelance clients because of the guestbook entry.
He googled my name, and clicked on the first link, which is to your guestbook. Unfortunately, he is one of those holier-than-thou types and was scandalized that I like to read ‘dirty gay comics’. I don’t care if I ever get any more business from him, since he seems to be a class-1 jerk, but I don’t want to have to deal with this again.”
See? This is what I mean. One of my readers, minding his/her own business, enjoying him/herself. And this foul religious nutcase, completely ignoring the rights of a freelance worker, wanting to bash in the door of this person’s intellectual bedroom to make sure the missionary position is the only one that gets promoted.
My answer (more or less):
“What a lousy guy. Please -- I need to know who he is so I never work for him by accident. And I would like to warn everybody I know about him. I have a column at www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/engine where I expose cruelty like this. Help me protect other people from this abuser.”
Wow! Thanks for the quick response. He’s just a little client- little work, little mind, and I have better things to do than work for him if he’s a homophobe.
Then there’s a snip here, because it gets a little too personal, with geography and all. But I’ll include:
“ I have more important ways to spend my time defending the rights of human beings than getting into telephone arguments with racist clients. I just won’t work for them anymore.
However, I do need money to live, and I was uncomfortable talking with this guy- there wasn’t any way I was going to change his opinions, he wanted to just dump all over me. Thanks for taking the posting down, so I don’t have to deal with jerks like this anymore.”
This is what organized religions do. Infringe, infringe, infringe. They never stop pushing, undercutting, attacking. They are like cockroaches, breeding, spreading the filth of control over other people’s lives. And they think they have the right to turn everybody into ignorant, frightened serfs, so they can get their power and their money.
Which is why none of us can ever take down our defenses or cease to fight against them. I don’t like living in a walled city, but what are you going to do, with crusaders at the gates? All of them champing to wade in your blood up to their knees? And brag about it afterwards? They always want a pariah group so they can frighten and ultimately control the rest of us. In the US, we let the drug users and the homeless go down into the gulag – but the gays are refusing to be encamped. And that’s what they want to do with the gays – put them in camps. Let ‘em try to deny that all they want. They want gay people out of our society – and there is always the Christian itch to string barbed wire. Go look at what they did to the American great plains.
And why, when they ask me why I’m an atheist or an agnostic – which is just their way of saying Inhuman and open for their attacks – I would like to, right here and now, tell them to all go back to their mental deserts and let their gods/demons/magic daddy fairies fuck them right in their shell-likes.
And if they come into my woods again, I hope Cannibal Woman gets them and juliennes their livers. With a nice Chianti.
(Next time we examine an extremely bend-over-backwards or just bend-over content contract that SDCC sent to all exhibitors, demanding all sorts of Community Standards hoops be jumped through.
I will be describing – and thereby warning my own readers – of the actions I will FORCED to take with any minor without adult or parental supervision who approaches my exhibit.
I have to take this troublesome and unpleasant action to protect myself and my business. I don’t want to take it – but I have no choice.
