Here’s a weird fact:

Apparently, on Sunday, “17 cartoonists will join up their child characters to highlight April as Sexual Violence Awareness and National Child Abuse Prevention Month. On this day, Teresa Dowlatshahi’s Frog Applause will offer some sobering real-life statistics about abuse written in between the guest child characters.”

Yeeks. I look forward to seeing how this plays out, but I have mixed feelings. On one hand, it’s great to see comic strips trying to address child abuse directly, when so much of the time I find myself wanting to post strips here as illustrations of abuse. On the other hand, just on the face of it, writing statistics in between children sounds creepy and I can’t put my finger on why. It will depend a lot on what the rest of the strip involves, clearly. Mainly – still pending what the strip really does – I am not a fan of the “informing people through statistics” style of anti-abuse activism. Abuse is deeply personal and widely felt, and I think we’ve passed the time when just telling people how much it happens (never mind how underreported many of those statistics are) is helpful.

Okay: I think it still starts conversations and opens people’s eyes, and probably helps a lot of people stop minimizing their own abuse or think that it is so rare as to be insignificant. I just want more more more! I have very high standards for the world….

Here, for your enjoyment, is a comic strip that has (to the best of my analytical abilities) NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH ABUSE. (this took some effort to find….)