I think that the feminist women who don’t get offended by what I draw are the ones who have the ability (and desire) to judge everything on its own merits, and not just respond with knee-jerk militantism whenever they come across something that might be objectionable.

Actually, I was rather lukewarm on Hughes before that quote. I find some of his art to be problematic, some of it to not be, and think that some of it would benefit from a few more life-drawing classes.

But, you know, for someone who in the next paragraph goes to insult the intelligence of people who critique his work, Hughes isn’t exactly pulling out an intelligent argument here; in fact, he’s the one having the knee-jerk reaction. There are valid criticisms of his work from a feminist perspective. He draws pin-up art, a style that has a long history with the male gaze and so — even if he were specifically trying to make his art non-objectifying (which I don’t think he is; I think he just draws without thinking about it either way) — eventually he’s going to draw something that is objectifying. It’s just a natural result of the process. And I’m rather surprised that someone who is a popular artist can’t separate the critique of the result from the critique of his person. Heck, I only doodle and even I have gotten enough crits to remove my personal feelings from the matter before publicly shooting my mouth off.

Which brings us to his follow-up:

By all that, I mean that an intelligent person can tell when something has been created to BE offensive, BY offensive hands.

This is exactly why I caution people against insulting the intelligence of others. He’s trying to take the high ground, but he’s fundamentally misunderstanding the perspective of the feminists that he’s trying to critique. Offense isn’t determined by intent, it’s determined by result. There’s even a cliched phrase that conveys that: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Of course, after my intelligence was insulted simply because I refuse to be uncritical of his work, I’m not really sure that I want to continue extending Hughes the benefit of the doubt when it comes to intentions. Anyone who is so afraid of his work being criticized through a feminist lens that he will say that kind of insulting crap is, at best, unprofessional, and at worst uncaring about whether or not some of his work may be contributing negatively to the societal image that we have of women.