Just so we're real, REAL clear on the concept here:
YOUR COMFORT ZONE: is not this blog. If it bothers you, ask youself why, don't tell me to shut up, or even tone it down.
BITCH: I am, and I get to.
WHY: I'm not doing this so I can sell books. I'm doing this because it needs to be done, it's needed doing for a long time, and there's no reason why I shouldn't.
BADLY: is I will take any well-intended advice to "calm down", "move on", "let it go".
VICTIM: Is what I'd be if I was still in comics and saying all this stuff.
SMACK UPSIDE DEH HEAD: Is what I give myself for trying to convince Paul Riddell to go back to writing. I had no business doing that, I was a jackass. I plead good intentions. I'm glad he's forgiven me.

Onward.
I have been in a pissy mood since a same-day registrant without a real name posted to the comments thread of What a Girl Wants #15:
"...and yet here you are, further propogating the falsehoods by NOT taking down everything you wrote, or retracting (which someone on Colleen's blog suggested you do) but by remaining silent...which leads people to believe that you are still correct about all this, when you aren't. [Lea here to point out Ronee has information Colleen doesn't.] So unless you want to point out things that Colleen said that you feel are wrong, thereby pointing everyone FURTHER into the direction of who this person is and what really happened, and jeopardizing the whole entire case, now is a good time to be quiet, thinks I."

Man, that honked me off.

Scott Beiser, someone I used to share studio space with back in teh EIGHTIES, and have known off and on since then, said in the comments thread of What a Girl Wants #15 at Buzzscope:

"Lea's [strategy] seems to be to withdraw, partially anyway, from the comics community, so as to avoid the things which offend her. This might be the best strategy for Lea, but maybe not for some/many/most other women."

You misreprent my strategy as avoiding what offends me. Your phrasing, in fact, offends the shit out of me.

It's beyond not reading books that aren't for me, or passing on conventions because I'm tired of traveling to what Carla Speed McNeil calls the "world's largest optical migraine", or staying out of shitty retail stores. I tried all that shit.

The comics culture as it is doesn't just offend.
It demeans, depresses, and annoys the shit out of. The dominant culture in my avocation, comics, is one of "boy's club." The ads on comics sites, the news coverage, the magazines, they ignore women.

Women's work is undervalued, even if she can, like Ginger, dance backwards in high heels until her feet bleed. Award nominations and award wins show this. (And this is from someone who's won one and been nominated individually and as a contributor.) Guest lists for cons demonstrate this. Observe the tokenism in those lists. it looks as if most cons would rather have a grade z male artist before a popular female who's main sin is being a webcartoonist. (I'm not talking about myself, thanks.)
"Best of" lists remind of this. Comics "news" coverage applauds the man who creates the soap opera, and ignores the woman who did. The man who does something new will be the first who did it, regadless of how many women beat him to it.
Even in tangentally-related comics coverage, take a look at a list of "comics chicks will like". Good luck finding a woman-created comic in most of those articles. You'll see a lot cape titles, and the balance made of of the Usual Suspects, all male.

In the Boy's Club, there is only the Only Girl in the Room. If you're that girl, it's great. You begin to believe there's parity, until you're turfed for the new Only Girl in the Room. Then you believe your sisters again, too bad you pissed them off so bad by not getting what they were telling you because you didn't want to believe your reign was finite. Then, though, you can say they all turned their backs on you. That always sounds better than admitting you might have, maybe, dismissed them as jealous or unimportant. I am reminded of the Robin Williams joke "I clawed my way to the middle, and fucked it back down."

Then there's physical gropings, face-to-face dismissals, having male (and female) professionals repeatedly stand you up for apointments at shows, having dudes suggest a man could really help make your work accessible, having the men side up with each other (even when you have PROOF one of them had sided with you at one point), the dismissal of ideas as "girly", and a thousand small cruel cuts that add up to an awful gut wound you're holding the edges of with both hands and antidepressants.

That's NOT fucking avoiding offense.
I can just walk through San Diego blindfolded for that, avoid most online comics sites, and stay out of 99% of comics shops. What you said is like telling some biddy with a political agenda who doesn't like "Desperate Housewives" to turn off her fucking TV. But she doesn't need her TV to make a living in what she was trained for.
I needed comics, because that's what I trained for. And now I don't.

That's not avoidance. It's survival. You wouldn't tell a gal being abused to stay with the shithead because lots of women are abused, happens all the time, some women get killed even, what about the children (books) and what will you do if there's no male presence in your life?

And, Scott, since I'm in a fightin' mood, who are you to say what some/many/most women need?

What if half the women working in comics just...walked away? Bye-bye to comics' top colorists, writers, and artists. Bye-bye to editors, competent assistants, and bookkeepers. Bye to the lady who fills orders, the gals who run the exceptional comics stores.

Comics would be at home alone with a frozen TV dinner and no idea how to microwave it. (Comics doesn't know the instructions are on the end flap.) After a few hours of Spike TV, and some quality time in the square office with Miss February, it'd get pretty damn old.

And I'd laugh.

EDIT: Original comment at Buzzscope deleted.