Posted in: Comics | Tagged: the valkyries, valkyries

Women's Comic Book Retail Group The Valkyries Disbands Following Diversity Crisis

The Valkyries, the retailer organization with a mission of supporting women in comics retail, will disband, the group announced on Twitter Thursday. Founded in 2013, The Valkyries leadership have determined that it is failing in its mission due to a lack of support for marginalized women, according to the statement.

https://twitter.com/lcsvalkyries/status/1037734035638902784?s=21

The full text of the statement can be read below:

The mission statement of The Valkyries since its foundation almost six years ago has always been to support women in comic book retail. When an organization stops supporting marginalized women, it is failing at supporting women. Because this has become the case for The Valkyries, it is time for the group to be disbanded.

This has not been an easy decision to make, however the current and former administrator group feels it is the right move when the organization is doing harm by failing at its stated purpose.

When the Valkyries was founded in 2013, it was unique. Online comic book retail support organizations were few and exclusionary. Online professional organizations to support women in comics and marginalized communities in comics were rare. Ten women formed the group to network and to support each other. As an organization, we advocated for positive, more inclusive industry change.

Over the years, the group grew from ten to six hundred and stagnant leadership allowed positive industry change to stop being a priority. For years the admins have asked for new volunteers to take on the responsibility of group administrators, but those calls have largely gone unanswered or have been answered exclusively by white women who would not be able to address the problem of marginalized members being ignored. We mention this to explain why the group admins do not see the situation as a solvable problem. We take responsibility for allowing the group to fail its members, particularly people of color and otherwise marginalized members. For this we are deeply sorry.

These days, the social media landscape for retailer professional support and women in comics is much broader. We hope this enables former members of The Valkyries to continue being active and supported in other online communities, and that if they wish, former members will feel empowered to create new communities to meet their needs.

The decision to disband follows the publication on comics newsletter The Mnt's website of an editorial by Jazmine Joyner titled "How White Feminism Drove Me Out Of The Valkyries," which was widely shared, its experienced affirmed by other past members on Twitter. The article was originally published in The Mnt's December 2017 print newsletter. The statement announcing the group's disbanding is the first tweet sent out on their account since Joyner's article was published on August 29th, when they posted the following statement:

https://twitter.com/LCSValkyries/status/1034932048220307462

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