Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: comic harassment, Comics, entertainment, JL8, yale stewart

Yale Stewart – No, It's Not Over

Published Thu, 21 Aug 2014 12:00:16 -0500

Last updated Wed, 17 Jun 2020 12:21:17 -0500

So, yesterday, we published an article about comic creator and children's book author Yale Stewart, after he made an apologetic statement regarding intimate photos he sent of himself to certain women in or related to the comic industry.

Naturally there was considerable comment and discussion. Including Valerie D'Orazio's collection of comments. posted for reaction, headlined "silence is consent".

6. "Not a single time did you come out and point fingers at the women who you were involved in relationships with , blaming them for sending you mixed signals and misleading you."

Stewart followed up on his statement, writing,

I'd like to take a moment to thank everyone who has come out to support me today. It doesn't change what I did, but it does mean a lot to know that people are willing to believe me when I say this whole thing was one big mistake, and I'm truly remorseful.

However, and MOST importantly: I am the ONLY PARTY who should be receiving ANY blame in this matter. I am the one who sent pictures to women who didn't wish to receive them. The only reason I've mentioned that it was a misunderstanding is because I certainly don't want people to think this is something I would do had I known it would offend the involved parties. The fact that it was a misunderstanding DOES NOT belittle the severity of what I've done.

I'm seeing people arguing that "silence is consent," or "they had it coming," or something of this nature. While I appreciate that you're trying to defend me/stand up for me, this is not the way to do it. Those are both very dangerous mentalities that a great deal of sexual harassment/assault stem from, so please refrain from making such statements.

As Comics Alliance's Betty Felon posted, not everything Yale has done has been quite so apologetic. She also states,

For the record: I did not personally receive dick pics from Yale, but I know the victims who did receive photos. I tweeted about it with other people who were aware of the situation and that's why I received this unsettling message from Yale after he received harassing phone calls.

One repeated response regarding yesterday's statement is that, rather than these pics being sent to two women that Yale was in a sexual relationship with, he sent them to other women as well, who were not in any such a relationship at all.

Yale says:

'Not remembering' probably isn't the right term. 'Unaware of' may be more appropriate. As I've stated, I had absolutely no Idea that the women currently in question were uncomfortable with my behavior, because I thought that given our relationship, it was acceptable. Obviously I was wrong.

What I'm saying is that I don't deny having similar relationships with women, and that there's a possibility this same thing has happened with other people, which is to say that I engaged in sending explicit photos under the pretense that it was consensual when in fact it was not. The women whom I've contacted so far have all assured me that they felt no lines were crossed, but perhaps there's someone I don't remember for any number of reasons.

I also saw that you brought up when I messaged [REDACTED]. I messaged [REDACTED] and asked her what I asked her because the accusations I was seeing EXPLICITLY stated that this was an issue involving women within the industry. I simply don't know or have even interacted with that many women in the industry, so I was wondering if perhaps she (being one of the few I know/knew) were the victim in question. At that time, I talked to [REDACTED] VERY frequently and considered her a close friend. It occurred to me that there was an off-chance that I was engaging in some overtly sexual conversation with someone else on Facebook while I was also conversing with her, and perhaps in haste I sent the wrong message through the wrong conversation window.

Which isn't far from "Sorry, I slipped and sent you a dick pic." Tom Spurgeon knows how this will go.

The next step, one supposes, would be a public vetting of that information, whether all of these things are true and whether that depiction encompasses everything involved. We'll see. If he's not being truthful here, he deserves everything that will come to him. My guess is that the first target of this attention will be the number of women that have received dick pics from this guy; he just sounds like he could be fudging there. It should also be pretty easy to ascertain if he was in a relationship with the women who got these pictures.

So no, this seems far from over… Here's Josh Adams' take.