RCDart

About

RCDart is the artist name of Rory Cummings-Dise, an agender fan artist best known for controversial depictions of gender-swapped characters that they insist are transgender. In early January of 2018, their drawing of Finn from the 2010s Star Wars films also generated controversy, as people accused it of promoting racial stereotypes.

History

Cummings-Dise began on Twitter in July of 2012.^[1] Their first tweet links to a now-deactivated DeviantArt profile, suggesting that they were active there before joining Twitter. They began posting on Tumblr on November 2nd, 2014 (first post shown below).^[2]

They continued posting on Tumblr until December of 2016. In March of 2016, they announced that they had been accepted into art school Cal Arts, which is notable as many found that their art grew significantly worse after attending art school.^[3]

Trans Fetishization Controversy

In 2016, Cummings-Dise drew the ire of Tumblr users for their depictions of Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, as a trans man. Specifically, their depictions of Captain America emphasized his breasts and feminine hips, which Tumblr users, specifically trans men, found untrue to the trans male experience. In March of 2016, Cummings-Dise posted drawings of Captain America^[5] (drawings shown below). In that post, Cummings-Dise wrote, "i actually hc steve to get top surgery pretty early on, but also, If He Didn’t, i only think he’d wear a binder like 10% of the time he’s concious bc fuck dat shit he’s in the future and buff he doesnt need to hide his tits."

Tumblr user nitrosplicer^[4] criticized that post in October of 2016, saying that the post was fetishistic of trans men (quote excerpted below).

This art of a trans steve showing off his “tits” is honestly pretty fetishizing of the trans experience. I’m not the only one who’s felt a rush of inexplicable dysphoria over having this post cross my dashboard: I’ve spoken to other trans men who share my opinion of rcdart’s trans steve…. The fact that rcdart chooses to draw him as a pinup, in poses that emphasize his breasts and hips, only seem to add insult to injury. Their assertions that they don’t think he’d wear a binder specifically to show off his breasts is fetishistic.

Cummings-Dise also ran a NSFW porn blog that has since been deleted where the fetishization was more egregious. Tumblr user kayvsworld^[6] explained the problem thusly in December of 2016:

Ok, so, all of their regular art of steve had him post-op or binding and talking about feeling dysphoric about his chest…had him muscular and looking like a Regular Reasonably-Proportioned Person…..and then all of their porn art focused on giving him exaggerated breasts and huge thighs and big lips and eyelashes and soft arms and a tiny waist and other exaggerated “feminine” proportions. Exclusively for porn. There’s a difference between appreciation and fetishization, and this was a lot closer to the latter… There was also the matter of the noticeable difference between how they drew cis girls and trans girls. Their trans girls were all huge and muscular with strong jaws and other “masculine” traits, whereas cis girls weren’t nearly as exaggerated (and also their body types were much less stylized than steve’s, which, yikes). They repeatedly exaggerated their trans characters into gross caricatures in ways that were very very different to how they represented cis characters.

In October of 2016, a thread devoted to RCDart was started on Kiwi Farms and generated 146 pages of comments.^[7] There, their artwork and ego on Twitter was criticized (examples shown below).

Finn Illustration Controversy

In early January 2018, Cummings-Dise posted an illustration of Finn from the 2010s Star Wars films, depicting him with glasses (shown below).^[8]

However, the characteristics of Finn, particularly his giant lips, were widely accused as being racist, with many noting similarities with stereotypical depictions of black people found in cartoons from the 1930s and 1940s.Twitter users posted comparisons between Cummings-Dise's drawing and such cartoons (examples shown below).

Cummings-Dise's tweet has since been deleted. On January 7th, they apologized for the drawing.^[9]

Search Interest

External References