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Damn, what is that fallacy called? I’m sure there must be a name for it, I’ve seen it before. That sort of idea that “you’re angry, so your argument is invalid.”
To be fair, he also is using logical fallacies in his argument, specifically there’s Argument ad hominem, argument from (personal) incredulity, and appeal to the stone. If I knew how to link I would, so here’s the gist:
Ad Hominem – Evading Joyce’s point with subtle attacks about her anger
(Personal) Incredulity – I don’t believe it could happen therefore it’s false/unjustified.
Appeal to the Stone – Dismissing a claim as absurd without proof of its absurdity.
Absolutely. His argument (well, he’s not really making an argument, but the thing he’s doing that resembles an argument) is ridiculously, blatantly fallacious, and Joyce’s family really needs to get themselves schoolfed on some Aristotle.
No, he’s making an argument. He is 100% trying to convince Joyce of something. He provided the comment about anger as a way to try and counter her statement.
It’s extremely fallacious arguing, but it’s still arguing.
Oh wait the one in this strip is the Moral High Ground fallacy, through the medium of Tone Policing, John is attempting to make himself look good to win the argument.
I’ve found that being right is no good if you can’t get people to stick around and listen to you. I think Joyce is totally in the right here, and I’m on her side– but sadly, the world isn’t an idyllic place where the people in the right always get to be heard.
I agree Inkblot. That’s a lesson that took me years to learn. Controlling your (very appropriate) anger is extremely difficult, but it can be necessary if you want certain people on your side.
I’m lucky to have a dad that discussed difficult subjects that we often disagreed about openly, calmly. He would frequently say (and still does) “okay, you’re getting really upset about this. Let’s change the subject and come back to it another time” which can be enraging, but the thing is, he doesn’t use it to shut me down. He actually has no qualms about discussing the same subject again when we’re both feeling more level-headed.
When I was Joyce’s age and younger, I frequently got angry with Dad because he thought my gay friends were bad influences. Or that it was fine to be gay, but not fine to “act on those urges and feelings.” I’d get so angry that I’d end up screaming and fighting the urge to throw anything within reach.
As we discussed this more and more, though, I got better at controlling my temper, expressing my own views and at least appearing calm and level-headed. By the time I was 20, I’d convinced dad that being gay was not a sin (and that even if it is, that’s between that person, their god, and no one else.). By the time I was 25 I’d convinced him that allowing straight people to get “married” and same-sex couples to have “civil unions” was tantamount to modern-day segregation (in that “separate but equal is inherently unequal”).
When I was about 27 or 28, discussions between us had convinced him that same-sex couples deserved completely equal marriage rights and all that went with it, and he advocated for it within our very Conservative family and celebrated with me last year when the ruling was made.
It can be very useful to be able to control that anger and express yourself calmly.
All that said, I don’t think this is the time for that lesson for Joyce. She needs her family to stop shutting her down and actually listen to her. She’s feeling traumatized and going through a grieving process to deal with that trauma and the loss of who she was. And that’s being combined with her anger over Ross’ actions, her mother’s behavior toward Becky, and her family’s treatment of Dorothy, Becky and Joyce’s new life overall. She needs a safe place and safe people to express that anger with and to help her cope.
While actually running away from the whole issue, which didn’t register with him much at all in lieu of Joyce’s inconvenient, embarrassing display of emotion.
A lot of people wouldn’t have the strength/patience to manage what was essentially a near-decade campaign that completely changed someone’s opinion on homosexuality. I fully understand people who can’t face that, but I’m hella impressed that you did. Well done!
Thank you, Liam. I’m very proud of my dad. When most people in his generation narrow their views as they age, he broadened his. He a compasionate person that truly wants equality for everyone. I just couldn’t bring myself to write him off as a lost cause. So I kept talking to him about it, eventually learning to speak calmly rather than blowing up like I wanted to. Like I really, really wanted to.
Joyce’s dad reminds me of my dad, honestly. We’d have a big discussion and maybe get a little mad at each other. Then two days, a week, a month later he’d tell me “you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said about x. And, I see your point. I think you’re absolutely right.”
It’s a good feeling to hear that. I definitely identified with her in her conversation with her dad on the way home.
@Annie What Joyce wants and needs, she may never be able to get. In my experience, extend across those I know and have encountered, people would rather abandon their family altogether, in favor of maintaining their pride and prejudice. I mean, the sins, not the book.
The book also, maybe, people are pretty silly in their priorities.
Anyway, as Willis’s handling of Becky’s dad shows, he’s not hesitant to adhere to real world predictability in such matters, so this may turn out to create a schism in Joyce’s family- much like it does for a great many people in real life.
Given that your interpretation of Joyce’s dad seems spot on, he’s likely to be the one who ends up getting caught in the middle of it all- he doesn’t seem the sort who’d abandon Joyce, or even Jocelyn. He seems to have too much affection and dutifulness toward his children to give up on them altogether, or to outright hate them for something like that [even if his response may be rather less than positive at first].
Desires to support both sides and to keep the family held together over holding on to pettyness and hate..
This could get rather the ugly situation for him. :/
Anyway, kudos to your dad. Giving up something like that is like confronting a deep addiction. It takes dedication, a willingess to confront your flaws, and a desire to improve yourself for those you care about.
Also, if I am remembering tumblr posts properly, given Willis’ own life, and that Joyce’s journey is somewhat reflective of Willis’… I believe you are correct in your suspicion that a schism in the family is coming somewhere down the road.
This is more than tone policing. It’s emotional invalidation. John isn’t just telling Joyce to “calm down”. He’s telling he she has no right to be angry in the first place.
I’m frankly surprised the guy didn’t use the phrase “female hysteria”… though he clearly demonstrated that he was thinking in such a blindly illogical direction about Joyce’s bearing and demeanor in this conversation.
It’s folks like him who give disciplined conflict avoidance a bad name. And by “folks like him”, I suppose I mean bigots.
I wonder where he’ll be when the intolerance of intolerance catches up with him?
I think it has more to do with a flaky attempt to deny strong emotophobia than committing to any kind of bigotry.
Ross spoke like a ye olden days Puritan Preacher to cover up being a selfish, unsuccessful, glorified man-baby still trying to emulate the ‘cool kids’ who used to torture him for falling shorter of the ‘All-American’ ideal than average due to a low IQ and being a runt (none of that is confirmable, but he sure painted that kind of picture, damn…) at the expense of his adult life and everyone else in it.
John’s pretenses of maturity here serve to downplay what looked to me, since they arrived at the restaurant, as a man suffering from disruptive levels emotophobia and in complete denial about it.
I thought gaslighting was changing things about the physical area the victim is in to slowly erode the victim’s sanity, not just blatantly ignoring parts of events to minimize the emotional response as “extreme”
You don’t have to actually change the physical world. However you convince the target that their perception was wrong qualifies. Having people who should know better back your version of events and not the targets would work, for example.
I guess it’s a bit of a stretch here, but trying to twist the target’s understanding of what happened, so that Toedad really wasn’t doing anything that bad is at least along the same lines.
“If you are angry/emotional, then your argument is invalid.”
There is no correlation between those two clauses. It’s ad hominem, a fallacy of irrelevance, attacking the credibility of the person instead of the credibility of their argument.
It’s based on something that is relevant though. The idea that, “If you are angry/emotional, then your ability to act logically is impaired.” I’d say that that is likely to be true, but assuming that it /must/ be true is also a fallacy, an appeal to probability.
There is that “whoever loses their temper first, loses the argument” homily. Which we all know is BS, especially when dealing with the ideology indoctrinated.
Indeed. It’s a hallmark of identity politics in the modern age that stretches from the playground to the media, and it really needs to pack its bags and leave. It has overstayed its welcome and needs to leave before it takes up permanent residence in the US and in global culture at large.
He’s victim-blaming, yet at the same time he has no logical defense for his position. Instead he goes on the offensive, using emotional blackmail and character attacks in an attempt to shut Joyce down. This is pretty much what Carol did to her.
He may only have a skewed version of the story to work from, but even if Joyce were calm enough to be worth listening to (in his mind), he probably wouldn’t be receptive to the truth.
So much for the ‘Brown siblings get more indoctrinated the younger they are’ theory.
A few (cerebral) Christians have extremely patronizing attitudes towards other Christians who do “un-Christian” things with intent – in other words, who embrace “heresy”.
In this case, John seriously doubts the rightness of Joyce’s actions; but Joyce insists on her rightness unapologetically. Furthermore, she expresses anger. Open expression of anger has quite limited legitimate usages according to many varieties of Christianity; outside of that, it might even be regarded as sinful.
His calmness seems to be a display of contempt. I’ve experienced similar myself.
Didn’t seem all that concerned with Joyce’s actions or why she would feel the desire to do or think such things. Came off like he was more bothered by all the scary intemperance that came with it, like that was a greater concern.
Seriously, Joyce almost *threatened* him a panel or two back, and he was bothered enough by how he noticed she sounded angry when she said it to *treat that part like it was the only thing wrong about the threat*.
Doubtful he gave so much thought on whether or not Joyce was being Unchristian in her actions once he saw that there was anger behind it.
I get that you’re not exactly defending him, but it’s worth pointing out that being calm does not make a person correct, morally or factually.
Is Joyce presenting the best form of her position? Not really, no, but in her defense, this is the first time she’s ever been confronted with a situation where she clearly sees where right and wrong lie and her family does not unanimously agree with her. To add to that, she is trying to deal with the very difficult realization that at least some of the things she was taught to believe as absolute, literally god-given truth, are also wrong (and also slowly coming to wonder how much else of her bedrock principles are in the same boat and she just hasn’t seen them yet). Dealing with all of that, on top of the very real trauma she has so recently endured, and her fear for her friend, and it’s hardly surprising she’s having trouble keeping her emotions in check.
The fact that her older brother fails to see any of that, if anything, makes him more wrong still for expecting her to NOT be angry. His lack of empathy, inability to recognize the threat she endured as real, and attempt to police her demeanor are all part and parcel of that. He’s not more credible because he’s calm – he’s just being a dick and hiding behind condescension.
Going home and talking to mom, who will now have back up on the whole “Joyce needs to come home from college because it’s making her less holy” thing, instead of “my daughter/my sister just went through something horrible and traumatic and needs a safe space” that Joyce’s dad seams to understand.
Anybody else hoping for a divorce where her dad still supports her at college?
They probably will separate someday, but it’s unlikely we’ll see it in DoA unless it’s the world’s fastest divorce outside Hollywood. (Freshman year has about 20 real-world years left in it at the comic’s current pace.)
If ‘the Jordan situation’ cracked their marriage, Joyce is a wedge making that crack wider. She’s exposing an irreconcilable difference in how Hank and Carol want to treat their children.
you know I kind of liked John at first cause he seemed so stable… now fuck him, fuck his wife who married this asshole and fuck his beliefs. Joyce has a right to be angry and trying to down grade her feelings makes him an ass. I am extra sensitive to this because I had a neighbor who was my age, race, and gender murders 3 doors down form me once and I know how scary it is to have your mortality brought into focus. SHE IS ALLOWED TO BE ANGRY!!!!
to be fair to the heretofore unseen Christi, they’re newlyweds–who knows if she got to see this side of him before marrying him (countless victims of domestic abuse will (or SHOULD) attest to their abusers hiding their asshole sides very well)
But she is likely indoctrinated to the same beliefs as him. Raised in a similar way. My money is on his wife believing that John is in the right here. That Joyce shouldn’t be so angry and unreasonable because she has nothing to be angry and unreasonable about. Also that women should strive to always be happy and content with their lives and not stress out the men in their lives by yelling at them, nagging, etc. Because it’s only men who deal with the really stressful, difficult things in life.
(Also, fuck that mentality. I was raised with it to a degree. I’ve dealt with depression and anxiety since I was young and those “lessons” made it SO much worse.)
Oddly (or not), finding out that he was a missionary was a first red flag for me. He makes a living out of trying to force his religion and faith onto other people and treating third world countries as if they need to be saved from themselves instead of supporting them to help themselves?
Missionary work is based on colonisation and racism, and even if it’s well intentioned, it does strike as something only people who think they have a moral high ground would do.
(Do pardon if what I’m writing is confusing and so. English is my fourth language and I normally don’t talk about these subjects in it)
We have missionaries right here in the U.S. The Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses go door to door trying to convert people. So not all missionary work is based on colonialism and racism. That said, if he’s an overseas missionary (which it sounds like he is) then he’s probably part of that tradition.
That’s not missionary work; the Jehovah’s Witnesses are just proselytizing and evangelical behavior. But you’re right that there have been missionaries in the U.S.—out west, for the Native American Indians—and they most certainly were racist and colonizing, just as Nymphie says.
Also, settler colonization is an ongoing process, not a single event. The Christians in the US who evangelize are absolutely connected to racism and colonization.
When I was a kid, I didn’t not understand missionary work or evangelism at all. I was always told that a person that’s never heard the word of God, if he dies, especially if he is a child, he will likely enter heaven. Because it’s not his fault that the Word has not reached him.
But I also knew that if someone came to me and said “I believe in this other god. You must believe in him too or you will be doomed after you die” I’d immediately dismiss them and their religion.
So, I figured that by evangelizing and doing missionary work people were dooming more of the people they encountered, who may have had a free ticket to heaven before.
I grew up around many large missions left over from when the Spanish conquistadors came here. I was always in awe of the architecture, art work (painted ceilings, rose windows, relief sculptures. Beautiful stuff!), and the historical significance (when you grow up in the shadow of the Alamo, it’s inevitable), but they also made me sad because they represented how many people I thought the missionaries doomed to hell by telling them to turn away from the gods they were raised to believe in and follow the Abrahamic god.
(To be clear, I’m an atheist now, but grew up in a mostly evangelical Christian family and considered myself a Christian until adulthood.)
Strictly speaking, we shouldn’t diss his wife sight unseen. He might’ve hidden his more assholeish tendencies from her, or she might’ve come from a family that was equally or more horrible so she doesn’t realize she should have better standards. Give her a chance to call him an asshat and seek divorce before criticizing her.
I wanted to dismiss her just based off her name. You know “aww gawd. Her name is Christi. We know what kind of family she comes from.”
That was for about two seconds before I thumped myself in the head because my given name is very similar. In fact my childhood nickname was the same as hers. Just spelled differently. I just forgot because I really HATE using that name.
“You other kids all suck and won’t play baseball the way *I* want to play baseball so I’m taking my bat and my ball and I’m going home! Now you can’t play without me. Nyeah. “
… this is pretty much what I do. Am I extremely angry at everything? CLEAN AGGRESSIVELY. Slam trash in that trash can! Scrub with the fury of a thousand suns! Let the lid of the washing machine slam closed instead of lowering it quietly!
Yeah, but walking away when his little sister tells him she feared for her life is incredibly shitty. He does know Ross had a rifle pointed at her, right?
Yeah, I’m wondering why everybody is saying John’s the ‘favourite’. The closest that anyone in the story has come to saying that is Hank saying he ‘turned out ok’. That’s not ‘favourite’, that’s ‘liked’.
Well, if past in-comic comments are any indication, Jordan’s pretty much actively attempted to escape his more religious parents after ‘they squeezed too hard’. If I remember correctly, he’s also the one in Afghanistan.
But I agree; Jordan’s probably gonna be pretty relaxed and cool.
All we know from the in-universe conversation is that Jordan is the ‘black sheep’, probably a rebellion because of being pushed too hard by his parents (Hank seems much more trustworthy than Carol), and however that manifested, it kept him from attending Family Day.
We don’t know if their parents disowned him, if he split, if his rebellion landed him in jail, or what.
Eeeeh. I’ve met some people that I would categorize as absolutely worthless, dispicable human beings. I don’t know that John actually qualifies, but I disagree with the “no one is garbage” sentiment.
The word we were all looking for is ‘prickmuffin’. We didn’t know we needed that word until we found it, and then we knew it’s what we always wanted, all along.
He’s dismissive of someone else’s legitimate concerns. He doesn’t treat Joyce’s pain or trauma as being serious or valid and that sort of response from someone that you think you can trust can actually contribute to PTSD. My family never took my sexual abuse seriously, and that might have led to self destructive behaviors and self perception on my part.
If not emotional abuse, it is at least emotional neglect.
Just wait until nighttime, douse the house in gasoline and burn them all Joyce. You can write some crazy message about escaping the sinfull world, it’ll all fit.
I completely agree. My favorite for most likely scenario is he had a period of cognitive dissonance similar to what Joyce is having now, what they’ve been taught through religion isn’t matching real life, and got excommunicated from the family because of it, but Carol told Jocelyne and Joyce (possibly John) that it was all him. Possibly with some kind of threat to leave his siblings out of it or face some kind of consequence.
It honestly does, when you just want to smash something but everything within reach is either too expensive to replace or belongs to someone who hasn’t wronged you in any way.
But I’m happy for the times I’ve had the feel of concern for property. When that feel wasn’t strong enough, I had to replace my broken phone :/ That sucks a lot more than not being able to smash things when you want to.
One time in college my pals and I went into the basement of our dorm with a huge pile of empty soda cans, and a baseball bat, and just smashed the hell out of them. It cost nothing, and was very satisfying, I recommend it.
Yeah! I recently demo-ed an old wooden deck for a job. Being able to attack something with a crowbar is pretty great! And all the more great because I could do it for work/fun, and not because I felt like I was going to explode if I didn’t break something.
Some high school seniors near me had a fundraising with an old car and a baseball bat. Three swings for I think it was either a buck or five bucks.
I had to change a flat right beside them; they let me take a couple swings for free after out of sympathy. Sadly, the windows were already all smashed out but it was still fun.
I think they did pretty good out of it, too. Pretty ingenious way to raise money, heh. They were outside a local strip mall, so a high-traffic area.
I know! Poor girl. I’m willing to bet that this feels a lot more personal for her than it does for anyone else in the family, except Joyce. Also “come along, I’ll take you home”. What a prickmuffin.
Didn’t Joyce just drive over there herself? I don’t see why she couldn’t stay and talk things out, which is something Joyce definitely needs from her family right now
Eh, she could stop John on the way out and suggest that she might be able to calm Joyce down if she stays. That doesn’t involve taking sides, and it lets her hang around to show support and comfort.
Luckily, Jocelyne appears in quite a few upcoming preview panels with Joyce and Becky, so there’s a good chance she’ll find a way out leaving tomorrow or the next day.
Same. Poor Jocelyne, she just wants no fighting. -.-
And also probably a name and gender presentation that make her feel comfortable and herself, but she’ll totally settle for no fighting.
Jocelyne’s in a terrible spot. She WANTS to stay and help Becky and help Joyce andshow her support and get everything out on the table… But if she does that, she’s revealing to John that she’s more okay with what Joyce just said than she’s supposed to be, and is going to have to explain herself, either now or later, and can she do that without saying something she can’t take back?
On the other hand, if she goes with John, he’s going to expect her to commiserate with him about what Joyce just did and what she’s becoming and so forth, and can Jocelyne make it through such a conversation without breaking cover and again saying something she can’t take back?
They also knew how to make poetry interesting and that a lawyer scares off ghosts. Plus, remarkably good regarding women’s rights (reasonable divorce laws, allowed to work in most non-combat jobs). I’d say remarkably good for their times, but since we’re discussing this below a comic about fundies, my head would explode from sheer incorrectness if I did that.
Actually, Norse women were also allowed ‘combat jobs’. A lot of the more recent finds of warrior burial sites are for women. A paper about 2 years back suggested that a lot of the older finds strongly under-reported the amount of women involved in combat because it was often assumed that anyone buried with a sword was a man, whereas recent findings show that this assumption does not at all hold true.
Perhaps unsurprising given the valkyerie thing in the mythos and all that, but you know.
PS: I’d cite you the source but I forgot the name of the authors < . <
There indeed was a lot of underreporting of women in graves with weapons, and misidentifying them as male, but unfortunately that doesn’t translate into proof women were warriors. These people were in mostly peaceful colonists and we don’t know if the people buried with weapons actually fought with them.
We don’t yet know whether Norse women fought or not, in truth. What needs to be done is an osteoarchaeological analysis of the bones of armed women they found, to see if any of them actually have the kinds of healed wounds associated with warriors. Then we’ll be sure.
In the meantime, there’s no literary evidence outside of (fictional) sagas, but further east we do have the Byzantine historian Johannes Skylitzes, who describes female warriors among the (related) Kievan Rus.
This is a fantastic thread. I’ve had Vikings on the mind a lot lately (I do a Norse persona for a couple historical reenactment societies); I’m in Nova Scotia and we have the only confirmed Norse settlement in the New World right next door in Newfoundland, in L’anse aux Meadows (which we visited in 2014; it was really cool). But! Recently I discovered that they may have found another Norse camp in Baffin island (the site was discovered in 2012 but the lead scientist was fired for being too “bossy” and “outspoken” [which I can’t help but think may not have been an issue if she wasn’t a woman; but it was the Harper government so it may be political politics rather than gender politics involved here; he fired a lot of scientists for saying stuff he didn’t want them to, mostly about the environment], and she wasn’t given access to her research and materials, unusually); and they’ve just found what appears to be a THIRD settlement just across the water from me, somewhere in southwest Newfoundland! (L’anse aux Meadows is on the northeastern tip). They’re going to start digging this summer. And maybe this find will help restart the Baffin Island exploration!
As a scandinavian, I’m pretty fond of Vikings too Disclaimer though – A LOT of what we think we know about vikings are national romantic drivel made up during the 19th century, OR deviated from not-really contemporary sources who mostly got it wrong in hilarious ways.
(my favorit is ibn Fadlan, a historian from Baghdad who spent a lot of his time with the Rus people being horrified by their complete lack of basic hygiene).
Yeah, she does a good job helping as good as she can, but this is exactly the sort of situation she dreaded back at family day. Getting caught in a confrontation and saying one thing too many…
Anxiety freeze mode: Not a fun thing at all. Especially when you know full well and with good reason that leaving it is likely to end in your life and safety being jeopardized.
I really wish she wasn’t so scared, because I think if she went ahead and said, “Wait a minute, bro, I’m not done here yet – Hey, Joyce, mind if I catch a ride home with you?” she’d actually be pretty likely to get away with it. Jocelyne has so many things to be terrified of, but I don’t think any of those threats are immediately imminent.
Or maybe it’s just because that’s gonna be a really terrifyingly silent car ride with John if she doesn’t split now.
Wait, I actually want to expand on this so somebody can tell me if I’m full of bullshit. These are the reasons I think Jocelyne staying with Joyce is a viable option that is unlikely to cause further conflict or out her.
1) As much as Jocelyne is not male, John perceives her as male, so all the way he casually employs misogyny to invalidate Joyce would not be employed on Jocelyne.
2) Beyond the more general invisibility of Jocelyne trans-ness, Josh and the rest of the Browns are eager to perceive things in a way that’s favourable and unchallenging to them. They’ve already had enough trouble with Joyce and her vocal rejection of values they take for granted, they’ll be unlikely to search out more trouble. So long as Jocelyne appears conforming and doesn’t go out of her way to rock the boat, they are likely to take what’s presented to them at face value.
3) In accordance with the above, so long as Jocelyne is calm and vague and practices a little finesse, she can easily spin this in a way that gives John the impression that she has the patience and tolerance to weather Joyce’s “unreasonableness”, and maybe even the ability to nudge Joyce back on the “right track”, and gives Joyce the impression that she rightfully prioritises Joyce and Becky’s safety over casual bigotry – something that will placate both parties. It’s not exactly the most noble of courses, but I think it’s safe enough.
In contrast, being in a car alone with John, where he’s likely to rant about how wrong Joyce is and don’t-you-agree?, is a dangerous situation. It’s reactive instead of proactive, and puts Jocelyne’s personal opinions under fire – such that she must agree enthusiastically with hateful rhetoric, or end up under scrutiny herself.
This is what my sense of preservation tells me, but I may be full of it, what do you guys think?
I could only find one good reason for Joycelyn to stay with Snidely
Whipjohn, the Douchinator .
Jocelyn is needed with John to be Joyce’s advoate, when they both go from here to spy on her to Joyces mom.
I think Snuidsely basically confessed in the next-last-panel this lunch date was a ruse , and john was there to get evidence for mom to justify her already made decsion ( which we already know ) to pull Joyce from college.
The Douchinator is threatening Joyce, confessing, and retroactively blaming Joyce for his prior and future betrayals . Its victim-blaming on top of victim-blaming on top of Victim-blaming.
I think you have solid points, but Jocelyne is frozen in fear. She just saw exactly how conditional is their family’s support, “I don’t like what my little sister has become” and walking out. Too scared to strategize, gotta shrink.
You just know there’s someone making a vine of this with the title ‘Crazy bongo loses it.’ Then again, it is a religious town so they might title it B-Word.
I was halfway wondering if the last couple of days were some elaborate test, and that he was finally going to say something like, “Thank goodness; I’m glad to see that you’re reacting appropriately when pressed.” I guess not.
Yeah, that’s my point. How the Brown parents feel about their children doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about the actual child; only about how good they are at putting on a persona, be it true or false, that their parents like.
Oh no. Here we go~ Another person thinking that because Joyce is changing that it’s a bad thing. I understand it’s shocking for them, but for Joyce she’s dealing with a lot at once. :/ oh boy.
Change is the great constant of the universe! But those fools thing they can control it with a few prayers and a meaningless Bible… They’re delusional and Joyce is the one who is being reasonable.
It’s pretty meaningful to all of the Browns and Becky. It’s just they’re just hiding behind its words without analysis or even really caring about them. “Whatever we believe is in it.” Which Joyce pointed out in her Biblical scholar phase.
That’s because Willis has admitted giving kids their oppiste gendered parents eyes and same gender’s hair. Joss having blue eyes was foreshadowing no one picked up on.
Yeah, it’s pretty rare in this comic for a father figure to come out anywhere near ‘the range of a decent human being.’ At this rate, Mr. Keener will turn out to be a professional kitten mauler or something.
Oh, OF COURSE that’s his full name. (Though, if your proposal goes through, no more nickname for me. I’d rather be pretentious that associated with this wanker.)
Isn’t John its own name, not short for anything? A Jonathan would use “Jon” as the diminutive. Generally.
More specifically here, there is a John in the Bible, but I can recall no Jonathans.
(Do there be a Joyce?)
God i hate people like that. I appreciate the value of calm discourse as the next guy, but the idea that a person’s become irrational because they’re expressing emotions is ridiculous.
And if you aren’t a member of the group being discussed, along any vector. Any commonality with any part of the subject group renders your opinion irrelevant due to “bias.”
Scientists have actually seen that people with damaged emotions. (Which typically occurs through brain damage) are actually worse at making logical decisions. Emotions are an integral part of the decision-making process because they help us know how much we should value things.
For example they ran the experiment by putting both the emotionless and controls through a chess game. The emotionless subjects made horrible decisions in choosing which pieces were worth sacrificing. Even when they knew a numerical value for each piece, it was still difficult for them to not give up pieces for comparatively smaller gains.
Turns out that you can’t just tell someone to value something, even as a chess player, if they don’t have an emotion to associate with them. We don’t want to sacrifice our Rook for a Knight because we attach a feeling of loss, anxiety and frustration towards losing a more valuable piece. Without those emotions we just see a set of carved pieces and are told how they move, but we don’t know why we should really care about winning or losing pieces and the game.
This …actually resonates a lot for me, oddly enough. I could never get the hang of chess, mostly because I was too reticent to sacrifice any of my pieces. (Which I guess is actually the opposite of this study? Welp.)
Well, that went a lot better than I thought it would. Well done Joyce, now help Jocelyne help Becky. Then listen and talk to Jocelyne and Becky, they can probably help you too. There is some big trauma you aren’t mentioning.
There is certainly conflict there, hopefully John will get an earful from his sibling on the way home. Only reason I can see for Jocelyn not staying to hang with Joyce and Becky.
I want that to happen but I don’t think Jocelyne is as strong as Joyce and she probably just wants this to all blow over as quickly as possible so she can get back to her life asap
Yeah, I agree. We really need to see more of Jocelyne.
Problem is, I do not think Joyce is the best equipped personto help Becky. Jocelyne might be, John probably is, if he “approved” which I guess is a metaphor for something distasteful.
So who can hel Becky? Dina? She doesn’t like or trust Dorothy. Sarah would need convincing. Someone suggested Leslie yesterday, for Joyce. She might be the ideal person to help both Joyce and Becky.
I don’t think it’s so much that Jocelyne is not as strong as Joyce, so much as she has spent a lot more time living in fear than Joyce.
By which I mean: Most adult-transitioned trans folk I know tell me they started seriously thinking about transitioning a good decade or more before they actually did it. Jocelyne has been living in terror of her ‘secret’ being discovered for at least that long, possibly longer (using me as an example on the bi and autistic fronts since I can’t really separate each from the other: I knew there was something different about me in a way society hated looooong before I had the language to express it or the knowledge to be able to put my finger on it. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t feel alienated, and I think I was seven? Maybe eight? Anyway, I was in early third grade and I was young for the grade when I realized consciously there was something fundamentally very different between me and my age-peers. I didn’t learn that bisexuality even was a thing until my late teens, and I didn’t learn I was autistic until my mid 20s, but looong before then, I was living in terror that people would wake up and realize what I was and hate me for it. I would not be surprised if this was Jocelyne’s experience, too, only with gender instead of sexual orientation and neurodevelopmental disability).
For Joyce, the kind of terror she’s felt in the past few months is a new and overwhelming experience. For Jocelyne, it’s Tuesday.
But terror chips away and wears at you, and the longer you live with it and bow to it, the harder it is to be brave. And consider also that Jocelyne genuinely has more to lose. Straight/cis allies are rarely murdered for being allies. Corrective rape and murder for Jocelyne and Becky, on the other hand, is an ever-present worry. Joyce is scared of losing her family and the things she’s built her life towards, and that’s valid and understandable. Jocelyne and Becky have all that to lose, plus their bodily autonomy, their safety, and their lives. I am not at all surprised that Joyce is the one standing up and doing the angry bellowing while Jocelyne and Becky both have different forms of freeze response.
I don’t think Jocelyne is about to tell anyone off. She does not like conflict, and fears it because it directly threatens her closet and her safety. I think she will hide within herself as much as she possibly can on the ride home, look out the window, try not to cry. That’s what I would do.
I think Joyce needs to get herself help first before trying to help others. She’s been through sever traumatic experiences and has yet to unload all of the emotions that have spawned from them.
She isn’t using Becky’s problems. She’s using -her- problems. They were both threatened at gunpoint. She thought she was going to die, then she thought her best friend was gone forever, then she almost watched somebody else die because she asked them to intervene. Then, after all of that, she got to experience the super awesome pleasure of finding out that her family, who she trusted unconditionally, not only was not entirely on her side, but is partially made up of people who are kinda on -Ross’s- side.
She’s a bundle of raw nerves right now, and is rapidly starting to feel like she has no allies at home.
Becky’s loss of her previous life comes off as someone who escaped from a prison. She was living a repressed lie of a life that she seems to be overjoyed to be free of. She has a lot of logistical problems, but she’s emotionally equipped to tackle them. Joyce, on the other hand, has had her worldview destroyed and her safety net yanked out from under her. Her unshakable faith in the authority figures in her life has been rocked to the core, and her mom is looking more and more like a Toedad waiting to happen than would have even seemed conceivable to her before.
yes, she is using Becky as the conduit for her problems. Joyce does not get upset over and still relies on her family supporting her. She is using their attitude to Becky to vent her anger, rather than channel her energies into helping her much more needing of support friend. Joyce is not even opening up about her real traumas, both of which inspire PTSD in a lot of survivors.
Joyce needs help and she is using Becky’s situation to deflect that need.
Yes, she needs help, as does Becky. But she’s not going to get it here. She’s not going to get it from her family. She has to get through this weekend and away from them.
So what should she be doing right here and now? Other than being calm and reasonable like John wants her to be.
Joyce’s problem in the short term is that, unlike Becky and Jocelyne, because her childhood was relatively trauma free she lacks the skills to cope with a horribly dysfunctional family now that she’s in conflict with them. She can’t bottle up her anger, because she’s never needed to. She doesn’t have the emotional armor, so every betrayal hurts.
Mind you, that comes at the price of deep long term damage that’ll take years of therapy to process, but it gets you through the immediate situation.
But forget the long term plans, what good does Joyce not getting angry do Becky now? What good does Joyce not defending Becky or her own actions do? It wasn’t going to be possible to have that discussion with John without basically admitting he was right and that she shouldn’t have punched Ross and … I don’t even know where to go with that.
In some ways, the best most practical thing she could do is knuckle under, pretend to be the good little girl they know, walking the fine line of not quite giving up on Becky, just to get through the weekend without more conflict so she can be sure to get back to school. Which is a very real threat right now.
But that’s not Joyce. That’s never been Joyce. Even before the PTSD and her current anger issues, she’s always been an open book. She’s always had a fierce sense of justice – sometimes misdirected, but she’s never been able to be quiet when she recognizes something wrong. She’s not just using Becky as an excuse to vent. She really is passionate about defending Becky.
Also, Becky is NOT emotionally equipped to handle her problems. She is NOT handling her problems. She is terrified and alone, pay more attention to those cutaways of her face.
If everyone admitted they had problems and got professional help, there would be no help because all of the the psychiatrists would have cashed in and moved to the Bahamas by now.
On the upside, dude’s not real so you can’t punch him in the face or drop a bus on him from orbit. But you can REALLY want to. Like HOLY DANG do I super want to be the one to drop a bus on him from orbit.
Which is fine because I’m not doing it and it’s not as if I view that as a valid reaction to real world problems, but for ones involving fictional people over whom I have no control, this impossible variety of violence is pretty fine because it’s impossible.
Amusing. I brought that subject up with a co-worker who was turning 65 in a few days. “Well, we could have your parade around the office and we’ll spank you, just like in elementary school.” He was amused by the offer, but declined.
Joyce should point out that she totally stole the parental units’ SUV, so Jon’s not the only one who can give Jos a ride home or possibly someplace sane.
Unfortunately, not returning it means getting the police after her. My sister was threatened with grand theft auto when all she did was drive around the parking lot and down a block or two.
Granted, my parents aren’t bongos, so they didn’t let that happen. The cop threatened it, as she was driving with her permit but without an adult present.
We don’t know how long the drive is, or if Jocelyne left any personal belongings in John’s car, or if she can even process that quickly in the middle of a stressful situation.
I know that feeling Joyce has. It’s the same feeling that is keeping me from being the only one out of my siblings to not smash a hole in a wall. And the feeling of wanting to comes up a lot lately.
There’s still time, and I hope like FUCK she keys that assholes car. He is a douche-nozzle toolbag dipshit who really needs to be punched in his big, stupid, passive aggressive face.
Joyce’s criticism is so accurate and jarring that I suspect John is acting like this because it’s easier to criticize HOW Joyce is arguing than actually considering her argument (which he would need to do to counter it). It’s too painful and true that he’s just deflecting so he doesn’t have to think on it too much.
The thing is, he’s taking Jocelyn home. Which means that Joss can say the same things that Joyce just yelled during the ride home. And since Joss will be speaking reasonably, John might actually listen to what was said, as opposed to how it was said the first time.
The problem is that Joss will get the credit and not Joyce.
Assuming Joss says anything. Her heart’s clearly in the right place, but she seems very conflict-averse. It might depend on how she reads John’s attitude in the car. And even then, he ignore her and could come back with “Oh, don’t you start too.”
Jocelyne’s stepping into a live minefield if she speaks up, unfortunately. Appearing to support Joyce and Becky too strongly, especially when it means siding against the “good” family line, is a very real threat to her own safety.
She’s probably going to be up all night drafting the pefect argument in her head, wishing she’d spoken up, fantasizing about a world in which that would have ended well.
Honestly, I’m actually mad at Jocylene right now. Joyce and Becky need more support than a quiet “I’m on your side, really, I’m just not going to say or do anything where someone might see!”
John is a shit person who I would literally cry no tears if he was 1) real and 2) died horribly but that’s what I expect from this family so
Yeah, she’s clearly in Survival Mode. Once you’ve been in that state for long enough it’s hard to leave, especially since the kind of pressure that keeps you in Survival Mode for long enough means that leaving it for one thing could lead to the rest exploding out after it.
Yeah. I disagree with what she is doing, but completely understand it as well.
My family is very Christian. Not dangerously so like the Browns are depicted, but enough that it would be a huge pile of drama if parts of it knew that I was bi.
And I don’t bother to tell them. I don’t actively hide it, I just don’t talk to family that much, and no one has ever asked.
But at the same time, every time I’ve heard one of my family members say something bigoted, I’ve stood up to it and said that that was NOT OK, and that I am NOT cool with that kind of talk or thought.
See, that’s the thing. I’m not asking Jocelyne to say that she’d prefer to be called by her real name and tell John that if he has a problem with LGBT people he has a problem with her. I know that won’t end well.
I am asking her to show support for her sister and her nearly-kidnapped best friend. And if that entails a certain amount of risk, well, Joyce risked a run at someone she knew was carrying a hunting rifle for Becky. I’d like to think that Joss can risk a heated argument for Joyce.
It is unfortunate that she didn’t/doesn’t speak up, but hating someone for being too afraid to do the right thing is not the proper response. Joyce taking on huge risks is nice of her, but not a reason to demand similar (if lesser) sacrifices from others as well.
(Also, you are mistaken if you think speaking up would risk just one heated argument. This is about a fundamental breach between Joyce and the family’s views. If Jocelyne openly takes a side here, she actually risks alienating herself from the rest of the family.)
I realize that she’s financially dependent on her family because lol freelance writer. But fuck them. Seriously, fuck them. They deserve the most agonizing pain.
Carol and John suck, yeah, but it’s REALLY, really hard to sever ties with even one family member. Even if you know that they are objectively Bad For Your Wellbeing, even if you AREN’T in a position where you’re dependent on them, cutting people out of your life that you have been brought up to love unconditionally and who society repeatedly and insistently tells you you should love unconditionally and if you don’t even if they have made it clear they aren’t good for you and won’t accept you, well, are you sure that isn’t something YOU’RE doing wrong?
That shit is HARD. Jocelyne’s not financially ready for that yet, and she’s probably not emotionally ready for it either. I’m certain Joyce isn’t at that stage yet, either, and that before she goes back to college there’s going to have to be SOME kind of reconciliation move on her part that’s going to hurt like hell but keep her in college and in the family for a bit longer.
Depends on how you define ‘act on those fantasies’. I never watched my Mom die due to a self-inflicted cooking accident, then check her pulse to make sure it had stopped before calling 911 in fake tears – oh, thinking about that little scenario kept me from killing myself through high school – but I did tell her that what she did and was doing to other people was unacceptable, had her storm off in tears saying ‘You’re not my son!’ (well, yeah, duh, that’s pretty accurate), and was homeless for a while, sleeping on the couch of my old common room in college.
It’s not just financial dependence here. If she comes out in the heat of an argument, there’s a good chance she’d be in physical danger. Disowning/loss of financial support would probably be her best case scenario.
Remember how the reason Becky ran away was because Ross was going to put her in reparative therapy? Now remember how Carol literally sided with Ross? How do you think she’d react if she found out one of her ‘favourite sons’ was actually a daughter? (Hint: badly. Very badly.)
Now thinking about that, can you be sure that you would speak up in Joss’s position? I know I can’t.
Jocelyne’s already in a tight spot with the whole trans thing. Remember what she said to Ethan back at freshman family weekend? She’s worried about familial confrontation because she doesn’t want to say something she can’t take back, such as accidentally coming out to a family she knows will disown her.
She’s got her own safety as an LGBTQ+ person to look out for as well, and it’s unfair to expect-slash-demand her to put that on the line, especially when John and Carol have both proven t be close-minded, bigoted assholes.
I know she has her own safety to look out for. Trust me, I am acutely aware of what it’s like being a trans person with a bigoted mother who occasionally talks about how it would be sweet if LGBTQ people died. But I fought against her when she’d say something like that, and I think it’s real shitty of Jocelyne to hang her sister and her best friend out to dry like that.
Jocelyne’s parents don’t deserve her love. Both of them. Now, sure, Jocelyne can be dependent on them. But let’s not pretend that they’ve done anything to earn the slightest iota of care.
Agreed. I can see Hank potentially learning to be a not-shitty human being one day, but probably not until AFTER he realizes he’s become estranged from three out of four children because he wasn’t willing to accept them as they are and goes “You know, the common factor here is me and maybe I should consider changing that.” Until that point, Jocelyne owes them jackshit.
Unfortunately, it’s really hard to realize that point. (Trust me, my mom and her half-siblings STILL have some really complicated emotions about a man they pretty much all agree they are better off without and want nowhere near their children. Emotional abuse can be really hard to shake.)
And even then, Jocelyne will still owe him jackshit and the onus will be totally on Hank proving he CAN be a not-shitty human being and even then Joss is not required to forgive him for the damage done. Forgot to add that.
John is Jocelyne’s ride — although Joyce and Beckie have a car at their disposal, so it’s not that crucial a deal; he could always hook a ride with them. So it’s probably more along the lines of what ozaline is saying. Considering what she’s still hiding, Jocelyne knows better than to rock the boat any further.
I’m a little disappointed in Joss, but I also completely understand her, here. She’s deeply closeted, and I suspect highly conflict-averse even without that. Standing up to John would risk ‘saying something [she] can’t take back’ as she put it when she was talking to Ethan at Family Day.
Yeah, there’s a time and a place, and this aint it. It’s like when all the people in the comments were hoping Joss would come out as trans in this scene. Like, it’d be nice for Joyce and Becky to see the truth! But with John right there and Joyce still being kind of an unknown, Jocelyn has no real reason to out herself when it could be more harmful than helpful. For the same reason, she’s hesitant about fighting John on this. Were she not having to hide this part of herself, defending her sister would be more plausible.
The thing of it is, Joss is in a really difficult place. Being too overtly supportive could risk her safety, or at the very least her continued relationship with her parents. I don’t blame her for hesitating.
She may also simply have absolutely no idea how to go about it. I was painfully, PAINFULLY shy and meek as a kid, and as dearly as I would have loved to have stood up for my hypothetical sister Joyce in such a situation, I honestly wouldn’t have known how to do it. It’s all very well to say she should do it, but knowing how to speak up (and finding not just the courage, but the ability to do so–I couldn’t even speak up to say I hadn’t gotten a handout that had been passed around) can be another kettle of fish entirely.
I simply was never taught how to stand up for myself. All I was taught was how to sit down and shut up. :/ Jocelyn may be in a similar position, even without the added issue of her own safety if she does.
We can tell from one of the Patreon strips that she’s had some level of awareness that’s she’s a girl since before Joyce was born, though she probably couldn’t put it into words until years later. In a family and culture that is so focused on gender conformation and proper gender roles. She already has a lifetime of practice and reinforcement of hiding and repressing everything and avoiding conflict, deflecting suspicion. That’s really hard to overcome. Courage or not. You’ve got to overcome decades of survival instinct.
She hasn’t come across as particularly shy or meek. She gave her token of support to Becky earlier and also tried to both deflect John and give more practical support, but that kinda backfired.
Mostly I think she’s afraid if she gets into the argument, she’ll let her repressed anger out and let something out she won’t be able to take back. She said as much to Ethan back when she first showed up.
Oh, so kind of like Jocelyne needed support from her family her entire life and got misgendered and told she was wrong/sinful instead? That kind of support?
The idea that Jocelyne is wrong for not being able to instantly argue for LGBT rights after a lifetime of suppressing it for her own safety is just so awful I don’t even have words for it.
Living in a small town in Indiana, I can confirm that you really do need a car, as public transportation basically doesn’t exist, sidewalks are not a given (and some people will get really angry and threatening if you walk on their lawn, whereas drivers will come close to clipping you if you’re on the side of the road), and there is a desperate lack of crosswalks. Oh, and once every few years you get to hear about a motorist running down a cyclist and leaving them for dead.
I mean, ‘one property/house one care’ has been necessary or incredibly life-improving everywhere I’ve lived. Canada and the US are pretty spread out, especially in more rural communities.
I have no problem with “one property/family, one car” … maybe even two. But “one family, four licensed drivers, four cars plus an RV” is a little bit much in my book. And that doesn’t even take into account my “up with bicycles, down with (most) cars” mindset.
Depends how many of them are working. And what schedules/public transport is like.
In the immediate case, Jocelyne lives alone and lacks a car most likely because she’s trying to survive as a freelance writer – ie she’s broke.
Not living at home for obvious reasons.
Hopefully she’s in a large enough town that she’s got access to basic necessities in walking distance.
When I still lived at home, there were six licensed drivers in my house. My dad, my stepmother, myself, and my three siblings. Therefore, we had six cars. There is no public transportation in my hometown.
1 and 2. My dad and stepmother had jobs separately. They got off work at different times. My dad’s job required him to be able to drive anywhere in town at any time. He was also on call, which meant at any point in time he could have to leave and wouldn’t know when he would be back.
3. My brother’s job was mostly graveyard shifts in the next town.
4. My sister was in college in a town half an hour away.
5. I was in high school and had a job. No one’s schedule would allow them to leave work to give me a ride. I was also chauffeur to my stepbrothers.
6. My younger sister, as part of the custody arrangement, spent half her time with my dad and half her time with my mom(who lived an hour away). She needed a vehicle to travel that distance, as everyone else had jobs and commitments that prevented a daily two hour round trip, as she was in school.
I agree with both of you, when I grew up we needed 3 cars and were aided by having a 4th, and it’s still like it at that house (a van (driven by everyone, needed by mom for biking and dad for transporting parts for work, a car because my mom works elsewhere, my brother’s car because he too works elsewhere, and my dad’s truck which was unlicensed most of the year, but needed for camping and occasionally for moving stuff for his work, and was the second car before we had the car and brother car). I never drove and moved to a city with moderate transit and so on as soon as I was 18, or we easily could have had a fifth for me to drive to uni.
They actually also had/have excess cars (two collectables (one pre-marriage and one built by my dad) and my brother bought two cars for bringing to a drifting course), which I agree is excessive but whatever, it’s rural, they have the space to have them, it’s a hobby, and mostly I don’t care that much.
My husband and I have two, although I still don’t drive. A car, for commuting and daily driving, and a truck (usually unlicensed now that we have a car) for 4x4ing and more importantly moving furniture, tools, and other large/heavy stuff, which seems to happen a lot for us?
I’m not really sure you get how hard any alternate transit is for some people/places. All but one of the places I’ve lived have required a car to get to work/school (too far to bike, shoddy or zero public transit), and as soon as one person is on a different schedule or working in a different direction, that’s another car.
Talking about Josh/Jocelyne is something I would like to do more of. Which means seeing more of them. I dislike using the gender neutral pronouns though. It would be nice if we could learn more about their transition and where they see themselves within it. I dislike making assumptions with things I don’t actually understand.
So yeah, open up Jocelyne, it will make the non transperson feel more comfotable
I’m pretty sure the score is jut that Jocelyn is a girl and uses she/her. Unfortunately, no one knows because bigotry so everyone still defaults to he/him.
I can’t say I blame Jocelyne for not opening up. Her sister demonstrates that she’s upset about her family minimizing an awful thing that happened to her and her best friend, and her older brother walks away rather than concede that he might even be a little bit in the wrong. I think her fears of a permanent rift with her family seem pretty damn well founded.
Also I think Jocelyne uses female pronouns exclusively. (Or would if she were given the freedom to be herself. Obviously this isn’t said in the comic but I think Willis might have said this somewhere?)
I believe Word of God is that Jocelyne is a transwoman, Joyce’s sister. She identifies as a Jocelyne Brown in her writing online, and, if her preferences were known to others in her life, would like to use she/her/hers.
also Jocelyn is definitely closeted, at least to her family, and is probably straight (ie, she likes men) judging by her flirtation with Ethan and her line of “I’m not actually gay”, though she could be bi or something else.
I appreciate that you’re trying to be sensitive here, but degendering her when she’s explicitly word of god confirmed to be a woman is kind of rude in itself.
Not really, depends who you ask, most days. I already said I avoid using pronouns when referring to Jocelyne for just that reason. It isn’t the fictional character I am worried about offending, it is getting into discussions like this on the internet.
The thing is that an unwillingness to respect the gender of someone in a comic tends to speak largely of one’s ability to respect the gender and pronouns in real life.
Regardless of that, it’s weird and pointless other than for invalidating gender- I doubt you casually call Joe or Danny she, nor Joyce or Dorothy he.
It isn’t something you do to avoid offense, it’s something that is a basic part of treating people decently and referring to them accurately.
So, yeah, it is definitely inappropriate to degender her when you know how to correctly gender her, especially with it repeatedly confirmed in comics.
Like Shiro, I get that it’s an attempt at being neutral and sensitive, but since you outright disagreed with that, I really think you need to hear more.
If this is rampant with spelling errors, my apologies. Phone before bed is not the best typing platform
Yes, it can be polite to avoid pronouns when you don’t know them about a character or person, but when the person’s preferred pronouns and name are known and you side with neutral pronouns, it can feel like those preferred pronouns or names are considered fake or worthless.
It’s like if someone mistook a friend for a different person. Say, a friend named Hank that they mistook for their friend John. So Hank says, hey, actually, I’m Hank. And so the person continues referring to them as John or said Hank/John or the like. Hank would feel actively dismissed. Because they were being ignored.
As such, it’s typically seen as at least a sign of unsafety that makes a trans person less willing to put themselves out there and offer education, because they don’t trust they’ll be fully heard.
And please don’t let this serve as discouragement from asking and please let me know if you have any specific questions regarding trans people, pronouns, or other stuff like that.
Actually, your source of Jocelyne being, “word of God, a woman” would be hugely appreciated. I only read the comic, if Willis has said this elsewhere it would make me very happy indeed.
joss is a trans lady, so the default is she/her. using they for a binary trans person can actually be very hurtful, and when done while knowing their gender, is considered misgendering. (of course, there are some binary trans people who accept other pronouns, but i think they’re in the minority.)
I read something new every day on pronouns and gender identity. Last article I read said that there was a movement to avoid gender identity in pronouns altogether. As a result. I avoid pronouns altogether, when no preference has been addressed.
Younare right though, all the women I know prefer she/her, regardless of [see, I have no idea how to finish that sentence].
See, I was similarly in Jocelyn’s position. I’m a trans woman who grew up with a very religious family, and the past 3 years living with them suuuucked because I knew I was trans and I knew coming out as a whole would be bad, baaaad- and Jocelyn basically has… well, probably a worse situation than I do. Anyway, so I had to deal with them constantly referring to me by my legal name and what gender is on my birth certificate. But, as you can see, I go by Amber. I haven’t started transitioning yet (but I did get scheduled for HRT recently, finally!) but my girlfriend, roommates, and friends all call me Amber. At my job interview the other day, I told the manager and MIT that they could call me Amber. Transitioning doesn’t really define gender identity. It didn’t matter 3 years ago when I wasn’t anywhere close to getting on HRT- I wanted people to use she/her pronouns for me. I’m not on HRT, and yet the receptionist at the doctor’s office asked me what my preferred name is. Getting on HRT doesn’t magically transform your thought process over time, it’s just a means of changing your body to suit your identity. It’s not like, “Okay, now that the estrogen is pumping through me, now I’m a girl!” What really matters is what *I* know and am confident in what my identity is. And in the case of Jocelyn, we know via Word of Willis that Jocelyn identifies by that name and as female, and that’s all you really need to know for her.
I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m condescending or anything- I’ve been where you are. It can be a somewhat tricky topic but it does feel like people tend to think it’s more complicated than it actually is.
Thank you for sharing! It can be somewhat intimidating for cis-folks to ask about trans* issues, because we know we’re probably going to screw something up while learning, and we legit don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. I sure appreciate here on the comments, lots of transpeople are very generous with their diverse experiences.
I likewise didn’t pick up on the fact that she was trans when I first was binging the comic. But I didn’t need to know about the Word of God on the subject to find out. Everyone in the comments has been referring to her as female. People say you can’t call her Josh(ua). It’s been pretty clear that she’s a trans women for quite a while.
In this sort of thing, that will get you quite far. Pay attention to what other people who do know about these sorts say. You learn a lot more about how to interact with in real life than you would by reading books and stuff.
1. Who reads the comments? There are people like you here.
2. Go be condescending somewhere else.
3. No one questioned Jocelyn being trans. Duh. Read the comments.
Woah, Skizz, I think you read trlkly’s comment a lot differently than I did… Obviously I’m not inside either of your brains, but from here their suggestion didn’t seem condescending, it seemed like trlkly was trying to give you a tool for guessing from context in order to answer your question about which pronouns to use for Jocelyne.
Yeah. I specifically had to rewrite that comment three times because I was trying not to come off as condescending or overly critical. That’s why I specifically explained it in terms of what I did, and how I figured it out.
I’m honestly not sure how I could have given you the information without it coming across as condescending. Would you mind giving some advice?
We have Jocelyne’s word that ‘Josh’ is the favourite, though we know from the overheard convo between Hank and Carol that they consider John to have turned out the right way as well. We know that the younger siblings are all quite a bit younger than John; I think Jocelyne (second oldest) was still a pretty little kid when baby-of-the-family Joyce came along, while John’s something like 15 years older than Joyce. John’s sufficiently older that he may not factor into her estimations of ‘favourite sibling’. But I dunno.
Is that where you kick him in the butt, and then you kick him again?
I mean, I don’t really want to unleash the deluge of violence against characters, because it makes some commenters very uncomfortable, but surely just kicking him the butt is okay.
Welp, toss that Brown sibling into the shitpile, then. I didn’t exactly have high hopes for him (and if I was it was more for Joyce’s sake than anything; girl needs some more emotional support from her family than just Hank’s “yeah Ross was a dick”), but damn, that’s just. Damn.
“I WAS SCARED FOR MY LIFE AND THE LIFE OF MY BEST FRIEND OF COURSE I’M UPSET.” “Ugh, be reasonable</i.."
Fuckin' A. I have never wanted to kick a fictional character in his fictional dick more.
I feel you, Joyce. I’d want to throw furniture around too.
Oh and hey John. It’s me again. You don’t get to decide that because your sister is extremely angry and bitter, she has changed in a wrong way and needs to be, what’s that word, “recentered”? No. Nope. Nooooope.
Becky loudly makes a Hitler joke. Fandom reaction: “Becky is loud in the restaurant and makes a public accusation of bigotry. Becky is bad. No like Becky.”
Joyce even more loudly, and entirely seriously, makes a public accusation of bigotry. Fandom reaction? “Go Joyce! Joyce is awesome!”
Also important to take into account what the audience knew then vs what we know now, had we known John was awful when Becky made the hitler joke the reaction likely would have been different
Nah. Because Jocelyne, who, as a translady, would be on the Nazi kill list, was also included in that Nazi joke. And Becky had no way to know that, but, hey, that’s why you don’t go around loudly implying people are Nazis for no good reason.
Joyce, on the other hand, is just calling bigotry bigotry.
Except making a Hitler joke isn’t exactly a public accusation of bigotry, but rather being pretty insensitive. Joyce literally just said that her family are bigots.
This. Becky made an inappropriate joke because she was uncomfortable. Joyce called her brother a bigot because he refuses to see why Ross pointing a gun at Joyce and Becky was wrong. It’s a tad different.
Becky went home to the family that had been kinder to her than her own family. Already severely shaken, and yet maintaining her chipper attitude through the whole thing. And Joyce’s mother quite intentionally tried to shame Becky, both in private and at the dinner table.
We saw Becky’s reaction there. Wit. Sarcasm. Deflection. That’s what she was doing with the Nazi joke.
I’d be shocked if she wasn’t every bit as angry as Joyce. But Joyce still believes in her family. She still believes in all of it. Every betrayal, by her mother, and now by John, is devastating to her, because IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THAT WAY. So her anger is shocked. Raw. Honest.
Becky knows better. She knows fundamentalists like Carol and John are scum, and even Hank is struggling not to judge. She doesn’t expect John to be any different than he is. So she’s sarcastic. She’s witty. It allows her to keep smiling through the anger. To keep being cheerful through the anger.
Since coming out as a lesbian, Becky’s barely exhibited any sadness or anger at all… except in private, quiet moments when no one is watching. She’s internalizing and repressing all of it.
She must be screaming inside.
So when she makes a Nazi joke at John’s expense (and it is John’s expense, Jocelyn gets in on it), that’s her version of BECAUSE I AM.
I had this talk a million times in the comments under the joke and the strip after, so I won’t rehash everything that was said there here, but I will acknowledge what you’re dying so you don’t think I’m ignoring you.
You gave reasons as to why Becky said what she said, and those are valid and probably correct! They’re not excuses. Loudly mentioning nazis in a public place as an act of defiance is not really ok. So, no, not go Becky. Go in a different direction Becky. Away from lines that make patrons and readers alike uncomfortable.
Ah yes. Telling the wronged that, above all, they should be polite. A theme I hear often, generally directed at any form of protest, no matter how benign.
Wouldn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. It would be even better if she slipped quietly back into the closet, where her presence wouldn’t disturb anyone at all. That way her father might not have become so “uncomfortable” that he hunted her with a shotgun. That way the Browns would not have been so “uncomfortable” that they were forced to reveal their bigotry.
That way the readers would not have been so “uncomfortable” that they might be reminded Jews weren’t the only ones killed during the Holocaust. Homosexuals didn’t fare well either. That way the readers would not have been so “uncomfortable” that they might have to deal with their own thoughts and feelings toward a young lesbian whose life has been blasted out from under her.
By all means, let not the suffering of the oppressed be so apparent and raw as to make us UNCOMFORTABLE.
Why can’t she be more like Jocelyn, who would never make anyone UNCOMFORTABLE. As she slinks behind John, clearly torn up inside, but unable to act for fear of making someone UNCOMFORTABLE.
Not a dig at Jocelyn, by the way. She’s got every reason to fear making her bigoted family UNCOMFORTABLE. But rather, a dig at people who think Becky should be as concerned with the comfort of bigots as Jocelyn is forced to be.
This came as a surprise, but let’s back up the truck a little bit. I’m sorry if what i said upset you, I really am, but i don’t think we’re in entire disagreement here. I dont condone what John is doing, nor do i think Becky needs to be polite while dealing with people like John. I don’t.
I’m all for Becky being assertive and aggressive in order to feel better and to fight off people like john, whether he becomes uncomfortable or not. Go for it! Joyce is doing it here and you won’t find me telling her that her reaction isn’t warranted. If becky was having the same reaction, I’d be rooting for her just the same (despite me not liking her as a character as much, it’s a gutsy move worthy of respect either way).
I understand that you view Becky’s joke as somewhat of an equivalent, it being a cut that isn’t as loud as Joyce’s, but maybe one that would be just as unsettling. That’s where we disagree. I think it was used for Becky to cope, a joke like she often makes in order to calm herself and ease some of her internal tension. Trouble is, this joke is offensive to some.
There were real people in these comments talking about how the joke didn’t sift well with them, some of them jewish, some of them blonde/blue-eyed, feeling somewhat betrayed that a character they liked would crack a joke about something that’s still tender. Then, when people jumped down their throats, telling them that they were wrong to be offended, I commented on their side, citing that a character’s right to crack jokes about genocidal maniacs does not outweigh real people’s comfort reading what should be something that provides escapism.
Willis himself said in this blog post http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/141942653372/willis-youre-usually-so-good-about-things-was that what Becky did wasn’t meant to be morally-righteous. It was a nazi joke, through and through. She had reasons to make it, because she obviously doesn’t agree with what they did! That doesn’t necessarily make it ok for her to do it.
I’m sorry if my comment upset you, the last thing I want to do is fight more people here about Becky, to the point where I’ve been trying my best to comment in a more constructive way in order to be a more positive member of the community.
I’m not here to fight about Becky, or whether it’s ok for only jewish people to make these jokes, or if anyone who was targeted is allowed to, or any of that. I didn’t like it, many other readers didn’t like it, we weren’t meant to like it.
I hope this long response better illustrates where I’m coming from so we can come to a resolution.
i kind of appreciate the point, but i think a significant factor is that becky made a nazi joke. like, that was definitely the thing that upset me and at least a few others
Well, that’s because Joyce’s accusation is completely valid. John has downplayed what she and Becky went through and basically said that Becky being homeless was her own fault for being gay. He’s telling Joyce to calm down because he doesn’t want to hear what she has to say, when what she has to say is a valid expression of anger. He and Joyce’s parents (well, her mom, at least) seem to be on Becky’s dad’s side and have little sympathy for Becky, blaming her for being gay.
Also, while Becky’s joke was insensitive, it was a joke. It may not have been a good joke, but it’s not really comparable to Joyce rightfully expressing her pain and anger and being shut down.
Becky didn’t make any accusation of bigotry. She made a joke that was in quite poor taste. I love Becky, but it would have been nice if she hadn’t said it.
It would also be nice if Joyce would calm down, wouldn’t it?
Except it wouldn’t. Because Joyce’s anger is justified. And Becky’s anger, repressed and displaying itself through her wit and sarcasm, is likewise justified.
Nobody said Becky needs to be calm and docile, merely that it’s possible to be rightfully angry and still hurt people in undeserved ways with expressions of that anger.
Though now that you put it that way, that stereotype does exist for a reason. Light skinned, blue-eyed guy being a bigot? Sounds like Becky’s description was more accurate than she realized.
If you think noting bigotry is an accusation, you’re likely not overburdened with real problems.
Hint: Being “accused” of bigotry will never, even in error, affect you half as much as actually experiencing bigotry. Never. No, not even then.
It is quite literally a fake worry and I’m perpetually annoyed by those who pretend otherwise, because I’ve had the life shattering hell of bigotry both personal and societal, ripping away my family, tearing apart a long running relationship, costing me work, sanity, and nearly driving me to the streets.
Someone who thinks it “costs” them to not be a tone-policing asshole or be called out on their shit or have to avoid using slurs to refer to people is someone who doesn’t know what the fuck they are talking about.
And Joyce. I’m saying they BOTH deserve fandom support, rather than almost everyone bashing Becky because she doesn’t act like, as Carla would say, “That Perfect Girl.”
As people have said before about the members of the Brown family, it’s the eyes, and John doesn’t have the big blue soulful eyes, so I was just sort of waiting for this.
Doesn’t stop me from being pissed off, because I’ve been the Joyce here before. Haven’t we all been in Joyce’s place here before?
It’s actually not that. The eyes thing is actually due to Willis’s character design method. Basically, everyone in the comic has the hair color of their same sex parent and the eye color of their opposite sex parent. Jocelyne’s hair and eye color are a subtle cue about her being transgender, while John’s hair and eye color mean absolutely nothing.
Oh, THAT’S what people are doing when they say I’m too upset and need to calm down, causing me to get more upset and eventually unable to form a coherent argument as my emotions lead to a mental overload
I would argue that pointing out someone’s anger and inviting them to calm down is in fact perfectly okay… so long as it’s not used to silence them. Honestly, arguing with an angry person is unpleasant for everyone involved, and anger can in fact prevent one from thinking rationally. That said, while anger makes a person more likely to use invalid arguments, it does not in itself make arguments invalid. Using a person’s anger as an excuse to dismiss their arguments (as John clearly does here) is wrong. Simply inviting someone to calm down a little is not.
I’ve never seen ‘calm down’ actually calm somebody down.
Better choices, depending on the person, include: “I hear you,” “That sounds super frustrating,” “Yes, that is important, justasec though, shouting scares me” and, best of all, repeating back what they said verbatim. That last one always feels like it’s going to be totally weird and lengthy, but then it isn’t, it’s super helpful to proving to the person that they are heard. Pro-tip!
Yeah, just anything that opens up to a discussion. Something that says “I understand you’re angry but let us discuss this anger in a calm fashion” without saying all that.
Saying “Calm down” has maybe Never worked. In the history of conversation. Something like “I hear you, it IS terrible… but you don’t have to yell. I’m sitting right here,” often WILL work.
But really, you’re saying the exact same thing with a different tone. In both cases, you’re inviting the person to calm down, only in the second option you’re trying to do it in a way the person’s more likely to respond to. Basically, you’re changing the way you’re phrasing your thoughts because you’re expecting the other person to tone police you.
No. You aren’t. Calm down is a command. It is not an invitation. And it contains absolutely no claim of understanding. It shows no compassion.
And that’s not what tone policing is. Tone policing is saying “because you are angry, you are wrong.” The only way you can tone police yourself is if you got some serious self-hatred going on. I’m pretty sure Amber does it to herself all the time.
And it is such a common one if you argue with men, honestly. Can’t tell you how many times I have absolutely calmly replied to utter shit with a point by point shut down (one nontheless less vehement or long as their thing) and been told ‘Calm down!’ often followed by an implication that I would see they were right if I weren’t so emotional (because nigh-robotic = emotional).
It’s also worth noting that one of those refers to emotions (“what you are feeling is wrong, please stop”) whereas the other refers to actions (“the way you are expressing your emotions is making me uncomfortable, please find another way”). One is infinitely more actionable than the other.
The correct response is not “you need to control your anger”, the correct response is “I realize that I did something wrong by provoking your anger and would like to take it back and correct it.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy a cup of lemonade if you buy a box of my delicious Girl Scout cookies. Do we have a deal?”
“Are they made from real Girl Scouts?
Jesus fucking Christ John you are an asshole to the ninth degree, not to mention one of the worst older brothers in existence. I dearly hope the other Brown siblings aren’t as much of a dismissive asshole as you.
Anyone else get the feeling the plan was for John and “Josh” to get Joyce alone so she could hear from her siblings how toedad was doing the right thing? Between Joyce caring more about Becky than her fundie upbringing and Jocelyne not being anything like her parents and brother think, this was probably the only possible outcome of this meeting.
Did Carol even know this was happening? Joyce stole the family car.
…okay, granted, they were awake at the time and cars aren’t exactly quiet, but still. You would think that if they were aware they would’ve called her themselves.
I think what Nemirthel is suggesting is that Carol decided that Joyce is already upset at her mom and has already shown she’s willing to stand up to her parents, so she’s not listening to ‘reason’ because her emotions are in the way.
So instead of trying to confront Joyce again she asked if John and Jocelyne could talk to her because she figured then Joyce wouldn’t be as defensive. Plus, John tried to get Joyce to come without Becky (to which Joyce responded that Becky is family), again because Becky being around must be interfering and turning her against the family.
(Carol did know, John asked if their parents had told Joyce about meeting him and Jocelyne for lunch).
Oh, and Joyce was screening her phone for calls from her mom, so Carol wouldn’t have been wrong if she decided Joyce would be more likely to listen to siblings instead.
Of course it was. It was also part of the plan to soft sell Joyce on their mother’s plan to get her to drop out of that awful secular college that’s turning her away from Jesus. They were there to give her the swindle and make it look like it was her decision in the end. They’d even pray over it together.
Two things fret me at this point – 1) Jocelyne looks actively sick about this whole situation, there’s going to be a major issue around her – probably soon; and 2) Now that Carol’s “Plan A” has failed, what horrible tactic is she going to try as a backup?
Yeah, and now I’m really worried that since John has said the same thing, that he’ll verify to his mother that “yes, she does need to leave that school it’s *changed* her” and with that extra confirmation Carol will go ahead with removing her from school. I really feel like we’re going to see Joyce fighting to stay at IU coming up soon, which sounds absolutely terrifying.
I think the original intent was just catching up with their sister without their parents around. Behaving differently around different social combinations is a thing, right? It can’t just be me. I mean, my base personality doesn’t change or anything, but some topics are taboo with my dad/stepmom that aren’t with my mom (I would say “and vice versa” but she and I can talk about almost anything lol), so I tend to bite my tongue more when it comes to them.
Annnyway, getting back to the comic, I was going to suggest that they wanted to see how the last few weeks/months had treated Joyce, but clearly john isn’t interested in his baby sister having learned that there are things in the world that anger her and that it’s OK to express that anger.
I’m really hoping joss shoots her a quick text offering to listen with an open heart, so she knows at least one of her sibs aren’t close-minded.
I’ve had it ringing in my head, every time he’s jerkier, the car conversation. ‘We’re foing for lunch. Mom told you about that, right?’ (on mobile, can’t get the page, but that’s at least 80% correct.)
Joyce has every right to be angry and upset but she also needs to talk about her anger unfortunately the people who are supposed to be there for her, her family, are too absorbed in themselves to care. Her mother is a self righteous witch, her father is too timid to speak up and voice his opinions, John is too ignorant and self absorbed in his life to really listen to what Joyce is saying and Jocelyne, bless her soul because I know she wants do right by Joyce, but she’s doesn’t want to draw attention to herself so she doesn’t speak up for her sister. It’s sad when you can’t rely on your family.
He’s literally the worst! Like, indefensible! Everyone in the comments who want to “wait and see” STOP. It’s clear at this point that he knows he’s wrong but just doesn’t give a shit. I never thought I’d see him walk out, as if HE should be offended when his sister a lost died. The worst part is that every time I want to write it off as, “Nah, Willis is playing this guy up for Drama, people aren’t this unreasonable.” one of you will come along and explain how something similar happened to you. And I can’t decide if that’s more saddening or infuriating.
Seriously, many of us who were saying this a while ago could /feel it coming/ because we have had to learn to detect this to Survive.
The fact that a good half of the comments were “I don’t wanna judge too quickly, maybe it’s a misunderstanding” (in an arc titled “when god closes the door”)….. y’all maybe see how we felt a little like Joyce here, a little “you’re being too harsh and extreme and unreasonable”?
Joyce should have hit him where it hurt. She should have called him a Fake Christian for turning his back on his family. There are a lot of things she could have said, but in the heat of the moment, I am not surprised she didn’t.
What would be the point? Pouring oil on the fire has never accomplished anything. If all you can do is insult someone, no matter how much they deserve it, you’re better off just walking away.
Yes and no. For someone stubborn that wouldn’t do anything. But when Joyce called out her parents for their mistreatment of Dorothy, citing that Jesus wouldn’t have wanted/supported mistreating others, Joyce’s dad reconsidered his stance. It doesn’t have to be petty if what you’re saying is accurate.
But that’s not what Just Me was suggesting. They were suggesting that Joyce should have called him a Fake Christian not in an attempt to invite him to reconsider his stance, but because it would “hit him where it hurt.” That would serve absolutely no purpose. If she started acting that way… well, that would make John entirely justified in walking away here.
Honestly, considering Joyce said she thought she was going to die, and John’s reaction was to walk away dismissing her, I don’t think she could have said anything to actually get his attention. He’s in a mode where he thinks of her as a hysterical woman and that nothing she has to say is valid.
Is anyone else really hoping the person she was texting is Ruth, so John can lose femurs? I mean, it is a long shot, with Ruth being Ruth, and having Billie and Mary issues, but come on.
Given what we’ve seen when we cut away to Ruth and Carla it seems unlikely Ruth is doing anything but lying in bed with the curtains closed and something over her eyes.
Here’s hoping Josh dies horribly in the next panel. Come on Davis, you can do it! Just tweak the next few upcoming strips! You know how satisfying it would be for everyone!
Yeaaahhh…I was really trying to have your back John…I actually legitimately was but nope. You had to piss it away. Oh well there’ll be more lost causes to try and fight.
Yeah, but you’re not a fundamentalist douchebag who’s invested in minimizing what happened to her and enforcing the ‘proper’ behaviour of a ‘good, godly woman’.
You know… I’m wondering if at some point in all this, Joyce is going to let it slip to her family about the sexual assault attempt. She purposefully didn’t tell them because she knew they’d take her out of college.
But at some point in all this, it may all be blowing up, and it will end up coming out.
That would be a mistake because her family would just assume that Joyces “outbursts” are all to do with that incident and nothing to do with her Mom and brother being completely hypocritical bigots
Yeah, because obviously she seduced him and is just lying about the rest. Theb she ASSAULTED him! So people wouldn’t find out! (/sarcasm, noted because holy shit there are some awful, though temporary, commenters sometimes)
All of this. A family that victim blames her about nearly being murdered will definitely not hesitate to victim blame her for nearly being raped. Especially since all of society is only too happy to help on the victim-blaming for that.
It’s not hard to imagine how their response would begin. “What were you doing going to a party? You know unwholesome things happen at parties.” If Joyce is lucky they won’t pull out the really big guns of victim blaming, like asking what she was wearing, or what she might have done to “lead him on.”
I’ve seen people argue that a woman in jeans and a t-shirt was dressed in a way that was “asking for it”, and flat out mean it. They’d probably argue the turtleneck must have been too tight without breaking their victim-blaming stride.
Shouting always makes people look guilty. I still happily remember when I got my brother grounded by calmly lieing while he shouted the truth… I’m probably a horrible person.
I’d say John is confirmed as a total pig, but pigs are cute and intelligent animals that actually make for good companions.
There’s no excuse for his behavior. The suggestion that he just doesn’t know what really happen doesn’t fly now, because if he actually gave a damn and was just misinformed, then he’d care about the emotional state she’s in instead of stomping off because she’s not acting pleasant.
I think the stomping off is more of an excuse. Joyce just dropped three facts: almost died, Becky kidnapped, family making excuses for it. They are indisputable. With John siding with the excuse-makers, the ONLY rebuttal he has is to criticize how Joyce is arguing rather than the argument itself, because regardless of the excuses, it’s pretty hard to argue facts. And they are hard facts to swallow. So he objects to her emotions and uses it as his out so he doesn’t have to think about it too carefully.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Similar to how Walky was in denial and dismissing Sal’s argument over their mom’s racism and favoritism, I think the only way John will face those facts is if he were witnessing it firsthand.
Also, Panel 2 is where Joyce gets it for real, what we’ve talked about before, the whole “your life is worth less than my sense of self-righteousness” axis of hell that all of this follows nearly all of the time.
You want to know what’s a good example of a bad brother? Walking out on your younger sister when she’s finally unloading and opening up about being stressed out and deciding not to talk it out with her when you have the given opportunity. Just taking her out of school and not bringing it up again won’t solve shit especially since the problem that’s stressing her out didn’t come from school but from her own freaking family.
Ohhhh, this fucking argument makes me see red. You can be calm about it because you have no skin in the game, you colossal jerkwad, you can afford to be all sanctimonious and “calm down”. And yeah, I am very well acquainted with the “I want to throw something but that would be actually violent and I’m better than that” response.
Poor Jocelyne, too. I can’t imagine how knotted up she must be over this one. I hope she gets screentime to talk it out soon.
See also, why I flat-out refuse to discuss issues of bigotry with philosophers and philosophy majors. Nice of you to navel gaze about the philosophical theory of the ethics of protest (that always seems to rest on the conclusion that people bucking the status quo are wrong), jackass, but down here in the real world this stuff that is happening actually hurts my friends and family who have neither the time nor the emotional resources to devote to reading a 20,000 word essay about your navel gazing as you do that philosophy thing of “The more words I throw at it and the more arcane and dehumanizing language I use, the more right I am and if you can’t see it, it’s because you don’t understand Philosophy, not because I don’t understand the issues at play because not having all the facts is apparently irrelevant in philosophy.”
(I have had almost that exact argument used on me by more than one actual philosophy professors, so don’t “no true philosopher” about it to me. Self-identified philosophers are jackasses who are more concerned with feeling comfortable and correct in their ivory tower than actually understanding what’s going on. John would be great at that)
Don’t feel too sad. He most certainly would’ve been a homophobic ass if he’d been allowed to. You just didn’t count on Joyce stopping him before that happened.
I see a lot of people call him a prick muffin and after a 3 day bender of watching Bojack Horseman i can only relate it to a pet name for a daughter or a euphemism for vagina.
John is a little bit right. Joyce has a lot to be upset about, and she is justified in those feelings and justified in wanting to express them. But there isn’t much point in making a public scene like that. Nor will vitriol sway any opinions. One must make the effort to be diplomatic if they want to debate something honestly.
No. John isn’t trying to debate. He’s not engaging in good faith, and he has no interest in a discussion. He just wanted to speak down to Becky and he started condescending and tone-policing when Joyce called him out on it.
Nonsense. I mean, sure, Joyce maintains that Becky is quote-unquote “human” and that she quote-unquote “deserves to live”, but have we truly debated that in the civil emotionless regard of our robot overlords?
Who is to say what is right or wrong, who did or did not have a gun pointed at her face and fired and who is or isn’t being an incredible victim-blaming tone-policing pile of scum.
After all, debating people’s humanity and dismissing their lived experiences has never led to bad ends reinforcing bigotry and creating endless bad laws that leads to increased harassment and physical harm, right?
Bob save us from Debate Club escapees who think “everything is a debate” and that one’s life experiences can be dismissed if they aren’t “diplomatic” enough.
Yes however he is doing it the wrong way. Demanding instead of asking, and being unwilling to hear her out. He doesn’t want to hear from this broken Joyce he wants to hear from his perfect baby sister. And for that he is in the wrong. Rather than shun her anger he should be accepting of it but he should also be asking why and trying to find a solution to her anger, which is a symptom of her fear that all her beliefs she once held dear are wrong. This is not the way to deal with this situation from John or Joyce. Though in Joyce’s defense I find her reactions quite justifiable.
Someone goes through that, almost dies, realizes they have been complicit in hate alll their lives and that their own family is more concerned with preservation of the bigoted positions than even considering reality, the onus is NOT on them to adhere to some nebulous idea of respectable and civil debate.
Joyce is hurt. John willfully hurt her more. She reacted. The blame falls entirely on John for being hurtful, not on Joyce for defending herself against him.
I don’t care what your belief system is, if someone points a gun at your sibling and you are not AT LEAST AS MAD, IF NOT MORE MAD ABOUT IT TGAB THEY ARE, you are fucked up.
Okay, throw everything I said yesterday out the window, John is an ass. Though I understand his concern he is expressing it in the completely worst way. Instead of trying to command her to settle down he could’ve politely asked her to calm down and discuss all the reasons shes so angry. While the events of the last few weeks have been the final blows to Joyce’s view of her family and worldview. Lets not forget the memories of the assault at the beginning of the semester, as well as her families reaction to Dorothy as well during parent weekend. The problem is nobody else in her family eally knows everything that has happened to her this semester. I was hoping John was just inadvertently being as ass but I hate this holier than thou attitude he’s displaying. I may be a believer myself but I realize that acting like some perfect human who has everything figured out is the wrong way to go, because I’m not and I don’t and i fuck up all the time. We all fuck up sometimes, that’s what makes us human. But
He does not have any concern about Joyce the person to begin with, so there’s nothing there to understand. He’s only concerned with how the family should be Perfect in the Eyes of God. It’s not about humans, all about the religion. He’s pretty much the same as Toedad in that regards.
If he had any concern about Joyce whatsoever, he would -not- f.ex. though of Joyce punching Toedad as more extreme than Toedad’s actions to begin with.
I find it really hard to not relate to John right now. I mean, his position is wrong, but his reaction is exactly what I do. I can’t do aggressive conflict, I can’t do yelling. Whenever I got mad at home, I would lose. So whenever I get in a disagreement, I always end up staying really calm and isolating myself emotionally. If John came from a household where getting angry only made them punish you worse for being wrong as opposed to making people listen to your point, getting up and leaving is a natural reaction.
John isn’t leaving because he can’t handle noisy conflict. He’s leaving because he has literally no other way to preserve his superiority in the face of Joyce’s indisputable truth than by deflecting attention to her tone and condescending to her because of it.
Exactly. John would’ve left even if Joyce had just explained her position calmly and rationally. He is not leaving because of Joyces tone, but because he refuses to tolerate her not sharing his worldview anymore.
“Sure, your best friend was kidnapped and you almost died, but you’re RAISING YOUR VOICE IN A PUBLIC PLACE YOUNG LADY AND THAT’S JUST INEXCUSABLE! I will now take my leave and bid you good day!”
“Josh” is irritatingly spineless. All things considered, that should probably have been expected. But it it only became irritating with firsthand experience.
I’m hoping Joss thinks of that. Whether sje says she’s staying with Joyce or just ‘no, been a while since I was here, I wanna walk around town. I’ll get myself home later.’
(I also don’t think she’s spineless. She already tried to diffuse the situation a couple times. Self preservation matters, not to mention that John is giving her a taste of what will happen if she comes out)
I wouldn’t call her spineless considering that she’s a victim in this too and not just a bystander? She has essentially everything to lose from her family as well.
I… really, really want to just skip to the part where everyone either figures out they’re being utter dicks and fixes it, or gets cast aside by those who do figure it out. But… reading this is also really, really painful. Hitting way close to home… I’m not really sure I can keep reading without it basically just being a daily update to my depression…
You are definitely not alone in this. Lots of people are here in doses that they have chosen carefully for themselves, like weekly or monthly when they want an update that might hit them so hard in the feels.
If you ever prefer to take a break, now or in the future, for your own happiness, it’s cool and we’ll still be here when you get back. <3
It’s an unfortunate part of our world that people tend to equate being emotional to being unreasonable.
I’m sure no one has really told this to you in your life, so I guess I’ll say this: it’s okay to feel like crap sometimes. Hell, if your life sucks enough, it’s okay to feel like crap a lot. Being sad, or angry, or afraid, are all perfectly reasonable things to feel under the right circumstances. Anyone who tries to delegitimize your feelings, who tries to tell you to calm down without trying to understand why you’re feeling the way you feel, isn’t interested in helping you deal with your problems; instead, they just want you to stop making their life more inconvenient.
That being said, it’s okay if the comic is hitting a bit too close to home. Davis is exceptionally skilled at hitting people right in the feels, and if you’re already in a vulnerable emotional state, this sort of thing might not help. Then again, I personally find it helps to know there’s someone out there who’s dealt with the same shit I have, so different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
Damn it. Can’t win all of them over. Putting the Browns along a spectrum for acceptance, from Joss to Carol, with Hank in the middle, I was hoping for between Joss and Hank, not within throwing distance of Carol.
Every day (in universe), Joyce grows. But she’s a main character. But the Browns? Exist to challenge and contrast her. In the end, she’ll be a better person for this.
Drama tag? Prepulled. Looking to feel good? Go somewhere else. Looking to feel, and gain insight to not only the human condition, but yourself? Pull up a chair. I do not damn you, Willis. I thank you, for putting a piece of yourself into this comic. This comic lives because of your soul, and the growth and pains you have felt and fought your life.
I keep forgetting their last name, so when I see it, I think of the Cleveland Browns. As far as acceptance goes, I think they get points for dumping Johnny Manziel and giving Robert Griffin another chance.
And there it is … that predictable reaction I’ve been waiting to see for the last two panels. Any response other than Joyce knuckling down and quietly returning to the fold was going to be an unacceptable response for John.
He had no intention of actually talking to Joyce from the moment she told him that Becky would also be present. This entire meeting has confirmed for him that Joyce needs an intervention before she’s completely lost to Satan’s Lies(tm). Their mother will be so pleased to learn that her judgement was righteous, and now she can justify her own extreme steps to “save” Joyce.
What is John’s deal? I mean WTF? He seems to act like this is over someone getting dumped or something petty, what joyce and becky went through was not petty it was a big crazy wtf situation that is affecting everyone but Joyce’s family, they act like its nothing!
Yes but you see all that drama could have been avoided if Joyce had done the reasonable Christian thing and turned Becky over to her father. [/sarcasm]
His culture works with one hard and fast rule of morality. Those within are good. That which contradicts the party line is evil.
If he’s to accept that someone, motivated from his culture’s party line, could do evil, he’d have to doubt that single hard and fast rule of tribal goodness. Just getting Joyce to do that has months in the comic.
“You guys are being assholes and acting as if what happened to my friend and I mean nothing.”
“I’m not taking part in this conversation, good bye sis.”
He pretty much proved her point by just DROPPING the discussion and WALKING AWAY. Yet again, he is disregarding what happened to her. And of course we’ve got some good old fashioned ‘I don’t like what you’re becoming, that college is changing you’. I don’t doubt that John is sincerely ‘worried’ about Joyce. But he’s being an asshole. A biiiiiig asshole.
To be fair, they usually do. But John is not being either of those things. And if he is going to claim that this is Becky’s own fault for being a lesbian, based on the evidence of a book he genuinely believes was created from divine magic, he can’t really claim the intellectual high ground.
Also, you can be logical and still not be a condescending douchebag to someone you know is going through emotional trauma, and in all likelihood PTSD.
Damn. Another one of my few hopes regarding the rest of Joyce’s family crushed. Also, another jerk character that looks eerily like a family member. With the same name this time too…
I like how “college” changed her for the worse and not tramatic ordeal caused by a person from her home town. Too much diversity is bad because someone may shoot you to “recenter” you.
Yeah, at this point ToeDad is basically going… “um, remember me? Looks like a toe, Gun to the face? Give me some credit here.”
John: “You were only a symptom of a deeper change that had to do with going to college.”
Carol: “You poor man, one must understand what you have been going through.”
John’s probably heard many a tale of a good Christian (the kind that he would recognize as a Christian, anyway) going off to College only to come back having doubted the obvious truth of things like the literal 6 day Creation and even considering that Christianity, itself, might not be the truest of the true (assuming they even acknowledge that there’s a difference).
He likely also knows that trauma, like someone pointing a gun at you, is *supposed* to bring someone closer to God, like how that liberal blogger in God’s Not Dead converted when she found out she had cancer.
Therefore, obviously, the problem is College, not any kind of trauma. That’s not according to script at all.
Hes an insincere weasel, dont give him any credit.
He was sent here to spy on Joyce, gain her confidence and use it against her.
John is moms spy and she wants reasons to pull Joyce out of college.
John has screwed up and telegraphed this fact. He is just more victim-blaming.
And he is threatening Joyce, and then saying your negative reaction justifies why I set this lunch up to betray You.
Patriarchy! For when you absolutely MUST ignore a woman’s opinion over night!
But don’t take it from us, listen to our endorsements:
John from La Porte: Patriarchy allowed me to dismiss my sister’s experiences of nearly being murdered from a member of our church while still pretending to be the good guy. Thanks, Patriarchy!
Yes, Patriarchy for all your “being an ass” needs. Now in new victim-blaming favor!
John follows the patriarchal script of how an older brother is supposed to behave against a younger sister when she is not following the script of how SHE is supposed to behave, complete with well documented techniques for belittling and diminishing.
And that’s the thing – John behaves like he does because he is EXPECTED to do that. He has been trained and rewarded his entire life to play the role of the Big Brother and Rational Man Who Can Put Irrational Women In Line when Needed.
When he after just a few lines of dialoge realised he was out of his depth (he never got around to say anything USEFUL about becky’s situation, did he?) he stopped trying to advice and feel back to tone policing. That is basically the prime directive of being a man in a patriarchy – make sure every discussion is on Your Terms. If you can’t do that, change the discussion to something that you CAN force to be on your terms.
Oh boy howdy, I get this sort of tone-policing from my own parents and they’re not even awful fundies or anything, in fact they’re quite cool. I guess this sort of thing (argue about things calmly, if you get emotional you are not being rational) is very VERY culturally ingrained.
If anybody here gets the chance, read Descartes’ Error, it’s a book in which a neurobiologist argues that this idea that detaching emotion from an idea makes it more “pure” or more rational is a fallacy. I guess this sort of thing borders of the philosophical (what is a true rational, empirical idea?) but it’s interesting to think about why our society decided that emotions are irrational.
well in all honesty rationality is about seperating bias from understanding, and emotional bias is a big factor in that, if you are strongly emotionaly in support of one argument, you probably won’t be able to deal with differing perspectives that might under other circumstances create a cleared understanding… however it is also biased to dismiss an arguement because of the emotional state of another person, just because they are emotional doesn’t mean they don’t understand the arguments.
More importantly, sometimes people are emotional for a very good reason. And it’s helpful to try to understand that emotion, to try and grasp why they’re so emotional, than to dismiss it as a temper tantrum.
very true, though yours is more centered on the topic at hand, where as i was just spouting stuff off lol
The reason someone is emotional might very well be more important then whether their argument is supported, if someones mental health is at stake, i would say that people should try to understand their emotions even if they disagree with their points. I would say this comic really portrays a brother who needs to be more of a brother and less of an authority figure or whatever he is trying to be. he needs to understand her regardless of whether he agrees with her.
When someone has suffered inequity, injustice, or wrongdoing, it is downright inhuman to expect them to be without emotion or view them as less trustworthy, valid, or unbiased because of it.
In fact, when we favor the least emotional in the room, we frequently favor the most privileged with the least skin in the game, and thus the most likely to rule unfairly in favor of their own privilege.
In a discussion on race, the racist who reveals in an unjust state of affairs will often be the least “emotional”. Treating them as impartial is how we get to states of affair like now where endless streams of unarmed men are gunned down by cops and white guys who dream of being cops with no consequences or signs of stopping.
Valuing the hurt of those directly affected, empathizing and hearing their pain for the first time is how things change and improve for the better.
And we see it here. Joyce is not the one who is refusing to see the perspective of her brother. Oh so logical John is.
Not a thing I would recommend anyone ever do as an adult because adult consequences are at hing, but once when I was a teenager, I smacked someone in the face for pulling that shit at me (he’d been sexually harassing me and groping me on a regular basis with increasing frequency and severity for months and finally I blew up at him whereupon he started doing the you’re emotional therefore wrong bullshit and at the time I had serious anger management issues so I hit him), and when he bellowed at me for it, I asked him why he couldn’t discuss the fact that I hit him in a “calm” and “reasonable” manner, informed him that the next time his hand touched my ass, I’d break it, and left.
And because sexism in schools is a thing, I got suspended for hitting him and a lecture on “appropriate” attire for school even though I was following the dress code and maybe was a bit more conservative than the dress code required, and he didn’t even get a warning for groping me or sexually harassing me.
After trying to get the school to do something about him for months failed, hitting him and then threatening to break his hand the next time he touched me worked, and he never groped me again. Story of my childhood – authorities refuse to do anything until I engage in violence to get out of an unbearable situation which I’d exhausted all non-violent avenues to attempt resolution for, I get punished for violence and am told to trust the authorities to do their jobs.
Yeah, authorities at most schools rarely intervene for that type of bullshit, but are fast to respond when the victim fights back. It’s really gross and for what it’s worth I’m proud of childhood you for putting that sexual assaulting little weasel in his place.
sounds like a good read! i’ve always been puzzled by the tendency of some societies to create a dichotomy of “emotion” and “reason”, wherein the two are mutually exclusive. i mean, it’s never been that clear for me when it comes to separating emotions from thoughts… and i’m a deeply emotional person, so if i have a thought, it’s probably going to carry with it emotion.
It’s gendered as an excuse to dismiss the openings of women. The stereotype goes that men are rational and women are emotional, so whatever a woman says, in whatever tone, can be dismissed as emotional, whereas whatever a man says, in whatever tone, can be heralded as rational even if it is awash in emotions and sputtering nonsense.
It’s also a way to minimize the voices of those most affected by oppression. Either discuss your injustice civilly with no emotion (thus revealing its no big deal and there’s no real hurt) or betray your “bias” and inability to be “reasonable”.
An excuse for continuing the status quo and ignoring that emotions are a key part of not only our humanity, but our ability to reason.
My Mom does this because bad experiences taught her that someone yelling at them => spousal abuse. So the dumb version of this that filters into my life is “Mom is a jerk about shit (imagine lie John, only I have to deal with her all the damn time) until I can’t stand it and scream at her. Then she says I’m acting like an abuser.”
My parents now regret sending me to college, because separating from me made mom literally suicidal.
(In fact, from now on I’ll be calling him Bizarro John Brown. You have to say the whole thing, like A Tribe Called Quest or The Self-Styled Scourge of the Underworld.)
I’m gonna be that guy… I could totally avoid being that guy… but I think I should…
This is only one conversation… don’t get me wrong I’m not saying he’s right to do this… I have been in the exact situation joyce is in and I know it sucks because you literally can’t reason with someone because they refuse to listen to you when your the slightest bit emotional and even when you calm down, they still don’t believe you untill you drop the discussion entirely… T_T
but when I have been in those situations it wasn’t with a bad person, it was usually with someone who either doesen’t want to deal with drama, or honestly believed themselves to be in the right regardless of my emotional state. basically he would disagree with her either way, but her being angry makes him feel uncomfortable… yes he is a jerk about it… (I would say dick but I learned the hard way not to use gendered insults around here) but in situations where the subject matter isn’t controversial, and where there is no excess drama he MIGHT (emphasis on the might) not come off as a total asshat…
I do think he’s a jerk in this situation, but I have only a first impression to go on and considering the religious beliefs his family was taught and the controversial subject matter, its not suprising how he reacted.
also yes I’m sure willis will make it more obvious that John is always a jerk, and has always been one making all my points invalid… gotta push that narrative, just figured I’d sortta get my thoughts out while i can…
I see your point, but there’s a pretty big difference between “Joyce, I see you’re angry, but let’s all just calm down and talk about this, OK?” and “Okay, you’re angry and therefore totally irrational, I’m going to totally blow you off.” Plus, that last little aside there about Joyce needing to be ‘recentered’ really seals it for me- the implication that her anger has to be something that COLLEGE did to her, that she can’t POSSIBLY have legitimate, rational expressions of anger, just because it doesn’t conform to his image of a sweet, Christian little sister… ugh.
yeah dismissal of an argument on a factor other then the arguement itself is irrational and he defiantly needs to realize that his attitude here is just as bad if not worse then Joyce’s. I think its just to easy for some people to not realize how irrational they are when they can project that onto whoever they are talking to instead.
I think your error is in seeing John as sincere. i think your interpration of Johns final line is the impression he is trying to giving.
He got into this trouble by victim-blaming and then tone-policing after it angered Joyce.
Thats exactly whats happening here, again.
Whats actually happening is He is threatening Joyce.
and then he is Blaming Joyce for his threats.
He’s screwed up though. This is John being emotional and hiding it.
Hes basically admitted this whole meeting was a ruse, a setup their mother to try to gather evidence to convince their father to pull Joyce from college.
He was spying on her, and now hes just told Joyce whats he is going to report.
Okay, but the point is that in 100% of the situations we have seen him in, he’s come off a total waste of carbon. Until that stops being true, people are going to be a wee tad pissed at him.
true, I think he is trying to be polite but is pretty much a (is douche gendered…?) jerk so far. I don’t really see Willis making him much more sympathetic unless the thus far unshown wife thing turns out to mean anything but at least we can compare his level of jerkyness to the likes of Mary and Ross to at least see that it’s sorta on a spectrum, I just really hope he learns from this when Joyce finally gets it through his thick head that her life was threatened by Ross and his dismissal of it is hurting her.
John hasn’t raised his voice, or gotten even slightly sharp with Joyce. 100% of the time we’ve seen him, he has been calm. He’s been a jerk in maybe half of the strips we’ve seen him. We have significantly more evidence that he is an emotional pacifist and a non-confrontational kind of Christian than anything else.
Tone policing and ad-hominem by emotion are a tricky subject. Nothing Joyce is saying is incorrect, but I’m pretty sure that nobody likes dealing with angry people who are barely containing violence. I am a straight white male, who is not really normally a target of tone-policing, but given that I’m 6’3″, if I get angry, dealing with that is all that people are concerned about until I am no longer angry, regardless with what I have to say.
Fundamentally, John’s extremely level-headed sister (who was previously quite like him, I’ll bet) suddenly went from trying to order off the children’s menu to shouting at him. He is definitely clueless and biased enough that he didn’t understand why she was so angry, but honestly, I don’t fault him for being confused by a completely new personality in his sister, nor for removing himself from a hostile situation.
He’s a bigot, definitely. THAT makes him a dick. Not because he’s confused about his sister’s change in personality. Not because he isn’t used to, and doesn’t seem like he can handle, a very angry person. Not because he removed himself from a hostile situation.
Those are all reasonable actions, separate from his character, and I hope you wouldn’t hold any of the above against someone who is your ally instead of your enemy. Don’t let your (entirely justified) reasons for disliking John make the rest of his actions suspect by association.
What gets me is, even if he genuinely is just weirded out by Joyce suddenly getting incredibly angry (I don’t think that’s the only issue here, but just for the sake of argument)…why is his reaction to be condescending, dismissive, and rude? I mean when I make someone justifiably angry, my first reaction is to figure out what I did wrong and make amends.
And honestly, I don’t get this “but he might have good traits too!” argument people are pulling. Okay, sure? No one thinks he’s Snidely Whiplash. But right now he’s being a grade A jerkface, so people dislike him.
Btw, a 6’3″ male getting angry is way more dangerous than a small teenage girl getting angry, especially when she’s directing it at the former.
Wait, what? I don’t think he has good traits too. The best possible trait he might have is that HE isn’t going to get angry.
He’s condescending because it’s his little sister (gender doesn’t matter, my little brother can confirm), he’s dismissive because he’s disengaging and in shock, and he’s not really that rude. Clueless, insensitive, but not really rude.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that because he’s worse than you, THAT alone makes him a bad person. Besides, you inserted that “justifiably”, and I think it’s pretty clear that John doesn’t think it’s justified.
He is not a good character, but I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to jump on the hate-band-wagon. I dislike him exactly in proportion to his portrayed faults, rather than painting every single aspect of his character in the worst possible light.
In the highly unlikely event I did hurt someone, while it would be worse than if a woman did the same, either way significant physical pain could be inflicted on the victim. If it’s acceptable to end discussion until I’m calm, then it’s acceptable to do the same for Joyce. I’ve never punched anyone in my life – Joyce punched a man out days ago, and was talking about earlier in the same conversation.
Don’t you dare imply that men getting physically abused by women isn’t a problem, or that men should be expected to engage in risky situations that women don’t.
…I wasn’t planning on it? I’ll thank you not to put words in my mouth. I said in the occasion that a large man gets angry at a smaller woman (thinking John and Joyce), it is typically more dangerous than the other way around. In the example you’re using of Joyce punching a guy out, he was still the much more dangerous party, what with him having a GUN and all. Which she was making clear. So…the implication that John had reason to be scared she’d do the same to him is frankly ridiculous.
How do you define “dangerous”? Do you think that an angry woman is incapable of seriously injuring what appears to be a rather slight man? Joyce now has a record for successfully violent acts, so I’d say that *discounting* motivations, she is dangerous if she wants to be.
You are dismissing her capacity for violence because she is female – that makes her weaker, not ineffectual.
Is there a minimum danger threshold at which it stops being acceptable to fear for your wellbeing? Can you be 100% sure that the line is the same for everyone, and must always fall between me and Joyce?
If you think that I need to be calmed down, but Joyce does not, then you are implicitly endorsing sexist ideologies, minimizing the issue of female-on-male domestic abuse, and honestly just doing a poor job of applying the same judgement criteria in the two cases.
Now, that was all ignoring motive. You want to talk motive? From John’s small-minded perspective, his normally very calm sister has become angry enough that her eyes changed color, currently has a cast because she punched out a friend of the family, and appears to be very angry with him personally.
Now, John not realizing that the above is an incomplete description of events is on him. He clearly did not think through what Joyce just said to him, or is possibly one of those Christian pacifists who wants you to just turn the other cheek, and the idea of violence and anger is abhorrent on a deontological level, regardless of circumstances.
But I digress – setting aside your personal distaste for John, can you honestly not see why he might be concerned for his own well-being? At all?
If you honestly don’t, I think you are not sufficiently detached from either your personal opinions on John, or from the traditional gender role of men as brave and stoic.
I…what? I don’t even know where to start with this.
Where are you getting that John is in any way concerned for his personal well-being? He’s not displaying any flavor of concern or fear or anything like that, and is in fact continuing to antagonize her. No fearful body language, nothing. Frankly it looks like you’re just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, because aside from punching a guy who (again) had just tried to shoot her and her best friend, there is no indication of violence from Joyce whatsoever.
And calling me sexist and minimizing abuse for saying that as a rule, men are more dangerous to women than women are to men? Fucking laughable. I can’t even engage with you properly, this is just…what?
John hasn’t shown much reaction to anything, so his lack of reaction doesn’t count as much evidence for me.
Honestly, that’s not even the issue. He is removing himself from a situation with an angry person. See the other people below who were saying that Joyce is not level-headed and has been violent previously.
I want to make it clear: I do not like John as a person. I would not anything like him if I was in that situation. I think that his motivations stink, his actions stink,, his reactions stink. None of that changes the fact that he is performing a de-escalatory act, and given what we know of him, it’s probably the best we can expect.
By all means, give him shit for being unwilling to listen to Joyce, but don’t give him shit for leaving.
It’s not because you said men were more dangerous than women. I agree with that statement. It’s because you used that as justification for why Joyce wasn’t a threat to John. Two parties can be mutually threatening – Joyce can be a danger to John even as John is a larger danger to Joyce, if both were fighting at peak physical capacity.
It’s sexist because your immediate reaction to “women can be dangerous too” (when a woman appears to be the more dangerous of the two) was to immediately downplay and deny the danger. Women are allowed to get upset about sexism for far less, and are generally right to.
No. No, Shiro did not do that at all. What they said is that a big person has a huge advantage over a small person when it comes to physical abuse, and that per definition, this is more dangerous. This is also known as the reason that all combat sports has different weight classes. Yes, Shiro also used male and female, because the tendencies are that males are bigger.
The rest of your post is pretty much just also what Shiro said: An attempt to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. Anything to make John not look like the complete asshole that he actually is, eh?
And no, Joyce does not need to be calmed down. She is completely in the right for getting upset at her shithead brother. You are being upset that we won’t let your excuses on behalf of said shithead brother fly. Completely different scenarios.
And the women in the middle east have it far worse than any feminist in America, but that doesn’t stop that from being a shitty argument, does it?
You and Shiro are using the comparative danger of an equally violent man and woman to mask the actual discussion about the absolute danger of an angry woman with a precedent for violence, and a calmer man, who, to the best of our knowledge, does not.
“Anything to make John not look like the complete asshole that he actually is, eh?”
Well gee, thanks. Glad to know the ad-hominem brigade showed up. I don’t like John. I don’t enjoy defending him. But I don’t like this lynch mob philosophy either. I’m not saying he has good traits – pacifism is generally holier-art-thou, but his actions thus far have been limited to poor tact, a lack of empathy, and an unwillingness to stay in what was (regardless of who was in the right) a hostile situation.
Maybe all of those traits remind you all of people who have umpteen other horrible flaws. Maybe you’re right – I expect you are – but the flaws John has been shown to have don’t seem to me to be proportional to the level of vitriol he’s been receiving.
I’m disappointed that my difference in opinion naturally means that I am a John-supporter, and that I am part of the problem, and umpteen other things. My arguments have been straw-manned, distorted, ignored, and just generally shat upon from height because I have the audacity to urge for a more moderate (but certainly not favorable!) opinion.
I am sorry that so many of you have been dealt with so unfavorably in life that your perceptions of the world are this narrowed and hardened. Perhaps I’m just naive.
Obviously, this is not a kind comments section for dissenting voices and conscientious objectors. I’ll try to remember that. Echo on, my wonderful tumblr chamber.
As an aside, the “he might have good traits too” counter is completely irrelevant and distracts from what the character is doing now, which is, as you said, being a grade A jerkface. I suppose it gets used because those people feel like John is a relatable character. Nobody likes when a relatable character gets criticized.
Stop looking for ways to excuse bad behavior and pretend it is good behavior. John did not merely leave a hostile situation. He deliberately tried to shame her for being upset. He showed a complete lack of compassion and empathy for his sister who had been through a traumatic experience. He showed a complete lack of empathy for the sister’s friend who went through a whole lot more.
Joyce was doing nothing more than yelling. John did not show the slightest sign of being afraid of her. He was not leaving a hostile situation. He was using Joyce’s anger as an excuse to not actually deal with the shitty things he was doing.
I do not understand this desire to sugarcoat what happened as a way to defend someone. The type of spin you are putting on this is the type that politicians use. It’s complete and utter bullshit.
I’ll go one further and say that John intentionally created the hostile situation once he realized Joyce was not going to demurely bow her head like a good little doll for Jesus.
From the moment Joyce insisted on Becky coming, John has been antagonizing her. Intentionally. He wanted her to blow up at him so he could guilt her about her emotions and seem to take the high road. It’s an emotional abuser’s playbook, through and through.
Not Emotional Pacifist. Toxic Passive-Aggressive Douchbag.
Joyce was NOT his “level-headed sister” . ( That would actually be Joycelyn. )
Nowhere has Joyce EVER shied away from a fight, or her beliefs. Even when they were horrible.
Johns “level headed sister” wakes people early in the morning, without consent; She insticntively smashed a glass on a would-be rapists face.
( Highly appropriate but more reactive than reasoned out ) .
She punched her first date in the face for merely looking at the waitress — the first weekend of school. Not level-headed.
Wait, You just used Joyce as being unstable in your later comment.
Thats contradictory.
You cant use Joyce’s former supposed stability and her instability to both justify John assholishness. Those are literally opposites. They both cant be true. Thats not just moving-the-goalposts fallacy. Thats claiming both opposite goalposts to justify an argument.
And that later part about ‘If you disagree me and dont side with a threatening douchebag in comic, you are justfying all abusers IRL when they are female’is toxic and totally obnoxious. You are domestic-violence washing your opinions.
If you like Snidely WhipJohn just be a man and own up to it.
You are assumign Johns after-the-fact justifcations are sincere, when the author has given reasons to think otherwise.
John is actually confessing to Joyce and threatening her.
He had this conclusion BEFOREHAND. His mom gave it to him.
John was sent to betray Joyce. Hes a Judas.
The thing is that he doesn’t have to be the jerk. I don’t mean he doesn’t have to do all of this. I mean he doesn’t have to be an evil person in order to do this, in order to do this evil.
That’s the nature of this strain of Christianity.
That’s why the colleges that promise your child will come out with exactly the same beliefs that they went in with. That’s why the view of moral purity as that of never interacting with the wrong people. That’s why the push to keep children protected from the outside world rather than teaching them to interact with it. We generally call it “purity culture” when we’re talking about this culture’s treatment of sexuality, but it’s there throughout.
He doesn’t have to be evil. He’s just been made into the hand of it, because, even if he can imagine that morality can work any other way, he’d have to pay so much, both socially and in terms of his own identity, to do so.
I seriously wonder that too. Or if she had become aware of the situation during the events rather than afterwards, when Joyce was not in any risk any longer.
…I’m not convinced I would like the answer to those questions.
Nah come one, of course she wouldn’t blame the victim of a shooting fo…
She would, wouldn’t she?
Yeah…
…sorry, need to find something relatively cheap that I am legally allowed to throw.
The last thing to do to calm someone down is to say they need to calm down. Always backfires. You being calm gives you the moral high ground? Nope, makes you an aggravating douchenuzzle.
Of course we don’t know yet where this is going, but John’s behaviour is low and condescending and avoiding any responsibility.
John’s behaviour looks the same as so many bigots do, calmy speaking out their bigotry and righteously thinking they are right, because others get angry about it.
Yeah, wasn’t this the entire point of the “Dead Parrot” sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus? The guy who looks reasonable, the store owner, is either lying through his teeth or completely bonkers, while the guy who is flipping his lid, the customer, is the one who is actually reasonable.
Because remember kids, sometimes screaming your head off is the rational response to your situation.
Eh, that’s true for most languages, I think. Death and sex tend to be the two biggest sources of euphemisms, although the latter category can fluctuate in size depending on whether you include things related to, say, menstruation or menopause.
John is a selfish jerk, one of those hateful “dick-taters” who does not want to be bothered with anybody’s feelings, no matter how justified. Walking out on Joyce and not even bothering to understand what happened and how much it hurt both her and Becky is totally typical for this kind of controlling narcissist. My family did this all the time and then I married a man who did the same thing. Finally I woke up to what was happening and I decided to leave. I thought it would be painful, but I immediately felt so much better.
I am afraid the Browns are going to pull Joyce out of school and try to fix her, stuff her back into the bottle they kept her in. It won’t work.
I hope Joss will reach out to Joyce and Becky, but she may be too scared to do so.
Oh, it’s far worse than that. His entire culture is set in that kind of egotism. He doesn’t know how to interact with the possibility that his own culture has done anything wrong.
I’m not going to go so far as to say that John is as much of a victim as anybody else in this scenario. He’s demonstrably not. But, he is a victim and doesn’t know that he’s sacrificing his relationship with a close family friend, right now his sister, and, unbeknownst to him, another sibling on an altar of his culture’s Orwellian control.
This isn’t to make you sympathize with him or forgive him. That same culture that has made him the victim is one that he is currently supporting. At least as much as he is victim, he is villain in this. For all that there is a boot on a head for eternity, his head being one of the heads under the boot doesn’t stop him from putting his foot in the boot on someone else’s head.
But, if we’re going to hate him, let’s hate him for exactly the right reasons.
And now the continuation of Jocelyne’s badass demon fighting adventures. (which will no be written in novel format, as writing in script like that is very annoying)
“five bullets left”Jocelyne thought, “hopefully Becky can take care of Joyce, I have a job to get to.” She walked for a little while, before coming across a small brick house, a small garden with tomatoes was at the front and a windmill spun in the wind. She walked up and knocked on the door. After a few seconds a little old lady entered, she was small, and wore a cloth dress and bonnet.
“Hello?” Inquired the little old lady
“You requested my services?” Replied Jocelyne.
“Oh yes you must be the exorcist!, Come in Come in!” The little old lady mentioned inside, Jocelyne mentioned thanks and looked around the house, filled with old pictures and flowery wallpaper. It had a certain smell, like dust mixed with heavy perfume.
“So….” Jocelyne asked, “when did you start having trouble?”
“It was about a year ago, some time after my husbands death”, the lady explained. “I began hearing noises and swore objects were moving around, at first I thought I was just getting old, but last month a wailing gust of wind came through, and I could swear I heard my husbands voice in it.” Jocelyne stared looking around the room, she kneeled by a large window, and ran her hand on the frame. “What are you doing?” the lady asked.
“Looking for traces of ectoplasm, if you do have a ghost, he would have left traces” Jocelyne explained. “Wait? Why would your husband haunt you? Did you guys not get along”
“Oh no, we got along perfectly well, he was a sweet man” the lady replied.
“Then why would he….” A large gust of wind blew through the room nearly knocking them both over.
“Did you have any enemies?!” Jocelyne yelled over the wind.
“Well there is old man Johnson, but he died somewhere last year, he always did want this old place, never got it though!” The lady said.
Jocelyne grimaced, this could be harder then she thought.
“I get it now” She said, pulling her gun out of her coat, “Your husband wasn’t trying to hurt you, he was trying to protect you!”
General McPentagon: *Peeks up over bunker edge* “No boom?”
Joyce: *Throws crumpled up menu, hits general in faace*: “TAKE THIS, TOXIC CULTURE OF MY UPBRINGING.
General McPentagon: Aaaaack.
Seriously? John got away without being hit in the face? That’s much more self control than I would have expected from Joyce at this point.
Okay, on top of everything else… “Come along, Josh”?!?!
Beyond the homophobia, the condescension, and the act (albeit unwitting) of making the closeted trans woman incredibly uncomfortable, it looks like John is invoking a deeply bullshit sibling power dynamic, possibly to regain some control after his “conversation” with Joyce. Yes, go ahead and talk to your second-youngest sibling like she’s your faithful dog or your obedient ward. Go step on a rusty rake, John.
I don’t think there’s a whole lot of room between her and Jordan or Jordan and Joyce, but she’s the oldest of the grouped siblings. (With John being something of a massive outlier…both in age and being a ‘good Christian’, at this point…)
Don’t like what your little sister has become? A woman with a mind and a desire to use it? Boo-fucking-hoo, you worthless twat. Go skydiving and land anus first on the nearest rusty pitchfork, please. Jocelyn, you don’t need to follow him.
“Why all those things Joyce said make our family sound like a real bunch of douchewaffles. That surely can’t be right. I know our family is good people, and that I am a good person, ergo, Joyce is clearly being emotional and unreasonable! Flawless reasoning John!”
I know how Joyce feels here. I got into an argument with my mother earlier and it ended with me slamming my bedroom door. She then decided to tell my father a very one-sided story of the argument loud enough I could hear and it.. Ugh I don’t need to vent here. Suffice to say the recent strips have hit a little extremely close to home.
They might have done better to sit in a different booth after all. Then again, I’m sure this was coming either way.
Considering that Joyce is home this weekend because Ross threatened her with a gun, any familial response less than, “I’m so glad to see you’re safe!” complete with teary-eyed hugs is unfathomable to me. My siblings don’t even like me, and I’m sure I would get hugs and/or promises that if Ross somehow made it out of jail, he would be going right back into the hospital. Even disregarding the bigoted asshole side of things, John is really dropping the ball as an older brother.
So I think Joyce’s family is going through a huge grieving phase. As far as the 5 stages of grief goes, John is currently deep in denial; he refuses to listen and dismisses Joyce and Becky’s problems. The same goes for Joyce’s mom, who seeks to put the blame on Becky instead of the real problem, Ross.
Joyce’s dad seems to be further along, trying to reach out to Joyce and hear her story rather than keeping it at arm’s length; I suspect that he’s already gone through the anger phase off-screen.
Joss seems more within the depression/acceptance stage, where although she feels helpless right now, she’s willing to offer some actual help to Becky, which is something Becky needs the most right now.
It’ll be interesting to watch how they all progress, and whether or not John will make his way through all 5 stages and have a change of heart on the situation.
Well, the whole “5 stages of denial” turned out to be pretty much not very true at all. It just sounded right, and was then somehow pronounced to the world without actually doing some proper studies on it. When they finally did, the studies did not agree.
Is it fair to say that tone policing, when applied here, is a combination of an ad hominem attack, an argument from authority, a straw man, an argument by laziness, confirmation bias (you know John was primed for this), and probably other fallacies I haven’t thought of yet?
Tone policing is really kind of a fallacy all its own. An “appeal to tonality,” you might say, grounded in the idea that displays of emotion are inherently irrational, and the only way to have an actual reasoned debate is with a detached, deliberately neutral tone.
Which, of course, ignores the idea that, sometimes, you have a damn good reason to be emotional. In this case, for example, what is the socially acceptable response to being threatened and having your friend kidnapped? Because if Joyce were as detached and reasonable-sounding as her brother wants her to be, she’d probably be a clinical psychopath.
John has already lost the argument, which was not about Becky. It was about whether he could give emotional support to a family member who was in a life-threatening situation. Joyce’s anger, which he is dismissing as essentially a childish tantrum, is a direct response to that, and to the fact that (most of) her family is turning away from her when she needs them most.
It doesn’t help that there are sections in the Bible that say that it’s better to turn away from family members if they don’t believe what you’ve been taught. In fact, the language is actually quite a bit meaner than that, something along the lines of driving them away or even killing them, I don’t quite remember which.
John may be being a good Christian by acting like this, but he’s being an absolutely awful brother.
I’m rather sure there are some lines in the old testament stating this, though I never got the hang of it how people reconcile this kind of shit with things Jeses (supposedly) taught.
Speaking of which, I listened to a children’s book on the Bible and historical science yesterday. Incidentally, the first part of the audio book explained how the perception of reality and the concepts used to explain it develope in children from say 3 to 12.
As it was a children’s audiobook, they were not bringing references, unfortunately. They explained that most of the history of Israel before the fall of Jerusalem was written by someone after the fact, around 600BC, who was trying to make sense of it. And his explanation was that the people of Israel must have sinned, else god would have protected Jerusalem. So he interpreted one king who actually gave the am longer period of peace by having lots of trade with assyria as one of the roots of the fall, because trade implies having cultural ideas imported as well “just like having Burger King and McDonald’s in each town” is a result of Germany’s strong trade links to the US.
But, yeah, I know, he was inspired so it must be literal truth….
“I’m rather sure there are some lines in the old testament stating this, though I never got the hang of it how people reconcile this kind of shit with things Jeses (supposedly) taught.”
Nope, it was Jesus saying it. Loving him is more important than loving your family:
Matthew, 10:37: He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
So yes, John is in fact being -very- Christian right now.
I distinctyl remember reading the complete Bible – when I was 14 or so. Seem like I ignored the parts I didn’t like.
But how is the quote relevant to the situation? Joyce is angry and her brother told her to not be angry – the question whether Joyce loves Jesus never came up and I’m rather sure she still does. She’s just rather unsure about what it actually means for her.
You know, I have been around for people when they have wanted to vent about stuff, no matter what it was. I figure anger is a poison best purged. However, I have had people treat me like John. “Boy, are you angry, and look how messed up you are.” That kind of stuff. Its a crappy power play.
John is being completely reasonable. Totally and completely reasonable. Look how reasonable he’s being, not even raising his voice and such like his unreasonable sibling. Very reasonable!
“…still have concern for other people’s property” Hilarious and a good way to show how despite all that’s happened Joyce is still basically a saint. Man though this trip home is not going well for her.
This is what I don’t understand about Religion. It is so much like brainwashing, and when they see their washing is drying then it is time for her to come home again.
I personally am glad to see her standing up to these bigots. The mom doesn’t blame the gunman, but the daughter the gun was point at. Josh is blaming Joyce because she has emotions now. Fundamentalists make no sense logically.
I think the key problem in this case is that they have Expectations about how the world is going to run and the world isn’t matching their expectations. They don’t know how to process that, and they lack the integrity to do an honest analysis of how their world view is wrong, so instead they will criticize and blame whatever inconsistency is making itself known at the moment.
For John, that inconsistency with his notion of how things should work is Joyce being angry, swearing, and having a cast from punching someone out. I went back and reread the whole scene, and his relationship with Joyce was initially quite friendly. Things went afoul when he noticed Joyce’s injury and then tried to offer sage-advice-from-a-pedestal about what Becky was doing wrong. He’s confused by why his dispensed wisdom on these subjects is not recognized as such, and since he is unwilling to consider that he’s actually being a buffoon, the problem is Joyce (and Becky) for not being rational enough to recognize his wisdom for what it is.
(I… still don’t know if there’s a religious element to this. On the one hand, there’s no overt doctrinal justifications currently in play, and if religion’s been brought into the argument at all it’s been in only the most obscure of ways. On the other hand, there’s certainly there’s enough room for fundamentalist bigotry to generate this kind of dismissive, blame-the-victim dynamic. On the third hand, that’s not the only possible place this can come from, and John could well have been jerk-faced without it. On the fourth hand, I appear to be a mutant.)
For Carol, the inconsistency is the much larger confusion of how Dear Old Neighborly Fellow Church-Goer could point a gun at her daughter. The inconsistency she’s focused on his how Becky didn’t turn into the straight cis woman she was supposed to be. Joyce Does Not Approve, and since Carol isn’t willing to consider that she’s in the wrong (the Bible agrees with her, after all!), Joyce becomes another inconsistency.
Things keep Not Behaving Appropriately, and the squeeky wheel is what gets blamed.
So, every proof that the world outside isn’t as squeaky clean as what is presented must be fiercely fought against (whether it be ideas of women working outside the home, gays not being Satan, or creationism not being literal truth), denied, or rejected as deliberate Satanic lies.
And this is reinforced with the notion that every doubt isn’t just a doubt, but a literal sign that Satan is infecting your soul and denying you your eternal reward in Heaven, and there is strong incentive to scream away every doubt, reject every twinge of empathy, and refuse ever to change to new information.
After all, your very soul is in danger and what’s more, you’ve sacrificed for this all being true. Denying yourself sex and joy and fulfilling relationships, pushing away good friendships, possibly even rejecting your own kids or family members when they didn’t fit in the proper boxes. Admitting that those are sunk costs is hard for anyone and harder the more life you waste to what eventually turns out to be a lie. So you fight even harder to believe that what is left is true.
It turns a religion into a stone around one’s neck, dragging one down to the depths of hardening one’s heart to a family member nearly being murdered, viewing it as a greater sin to be angry than to kidnap someone, and thinking the moral choice is to reject any kid who isn’t 100% cis and straight.
It’s a hard thing to escape and it makes Joyce’s stance in these last week+ in comic a truly amazing and special thing.
In her worldview, she is literally risking her soul, literally risking Hell because she cannot refuse to do what is actually right for those she cares about. And that is also why her faith in this incarnation cannot long survive this strain.
Sidenote that yeah, this is very much Fundamentalism, but not “religion” in the general sense (welcoming congregations and religious pluralism are all super cool and existing things I was soooo glad to find after leaving fundamentalism).
Thought earlier that the “he went to public school” thing implied at least some amount of disconnect from the religious hardline and that he was just being thoughtless, but looks like he had this axe to grind from the beginning after all.
I guess throw him in the garbage with the rest of ’em
I think that was Hank doing ‘John went to public school, and he came out fine, so will Joyce’ in response to Carol wanting to pull her from school. So basically the opposite direction. (Carol argues back that it was a long time ago, likely implying that public school is even more heathen than it used to be, so Joyce needs to leave )
That has some inference obviously but is how I read it.
I’m sure commenters can explain how this encounter is steeped in patriarchy, again, but I’m feeling too snarky right now. I mean, haven’t we been over this, please read the last few days of comments alongside some feminism 101, I can’t actually tell whether this is really in question?
Now everyone ready to make the same bullshit argument can fucking read this instead of penning their clueless “why is everyone being so mean to John, he didn’t do anything wrong” whines.
It amazes me how David is able to write such despicable people like Blaine, Toedad, Ryan-the-would-be-rapist, Mrs Brown, and now John Brown. It physically hurts me to “hear” these people talk.
(Then again, I’m such a wimp, I can’t even play the Dark Side in the Knight’s of the Old Republic games)
David’s written “bad” people before DoA, but they’ve mostly been buffoons; cartoonish villains played mostly for a joke: Faz, Galasso, Sydney Yus, the Aliens. Even Head Alien was mostly cartoonish, though he’s done some truly evil things: killing Sal’s adopted parents & murdering so many SEMME agents during the Year Zero storyline. But even then, the audience was never truly repelled by him.
No, I don’t think a character was truly reviled until Bart O’Ryan appeared on the scene. (Potential Spoiler for new It’s Walky! readers: you’d think that the commander of the “Britjas” or the green-eyed LT would also be reviled, and while the green-eyed one was hated, I’m not sure it reached Bart levels of hatred.)
But now, in Dumbing of Age, David has shown real range at getting into the heads of bad people, and not only conveying their twisted outlook of life onto the page, but at times trying to show us their perspective on things, even though they’re wrong. After all: most villains don’t *think* they’re a villain; in their minds, they’re all the heroes of their own stories.
I just don’t know how David is able to write these vile people without pulling his brain out through his nostrils and soaking it in bleach every night. ::shudder::
I commend him for it though, as much as I’ve loved his art over the past decade, his writing is stellar and I believe it’s *that* which brings people back every night. (well, that and his legendary update schedule)
He’s often mentioned his fundie upbringing, and that Joyce is often autobiographical… Strong possibility that he’s writing the Browns from a mix of real people in his life.
Yes, I almost mentioned that aspect, but forgot to. he’s experienced the “outlook on life” some of these people have, but not others. (I don’t know that he’s met anyone like Blaine, for example, or had someone point a rifle at him while kidnapping his best friend)
But to dive back into those horrors to give them to fictional characters would seem a painful and emotionally draining experience to me. I don’t know… maybe it’s actually cathartic? A way of purging it from his psyche.
Maaaan, Becky tries to calm Joyce down. This is how she expected her weekend to go and John doesn’t disappoint. And poor, poor Jocelyne, caught between her siblings, desperately trying to give Joyce and Becky whatever little support she can without making her own position unbearable.
Im hoping Jocelyne straightens her spine and stands by his sister.
I dont see the point of standing with John— unless its to stop his plans of sabotaging Joyce’s life .
I’m hoping she finds herself in a secure enough position to do that before the end of the comic. As it is, if and when she comes out, she’ll probably be losing 2/5 of her family at the very least. Very possibly more.
The point of following John out is to avoid conflict and to preserve her closet/safety, unfortunately. Check out Tan’s explanation, way above on this page.
YES, yes I did mean “stands by her sister”
( Sorry anybody , who read that and is Trans. Its honestly a typo )
Thank-you.
I even thought thought that when i wrote it.
Dammit, I even changed my original comment, which I thought it was insensitive.
( the original Courage-linked anatomy-part wasnt spine )
I read Tan’s explanation, and it didnt ring true for me.
Tan could be right.
Ive been reading Jocelyn as safely and securely straight/cis appearing.
But we honestly might not have enough pages with her for me to make that judgment. Im going by just a few , and extrapolating.
We know that Joycelyn is her parents fav. And this is only because she’s closeted. Not just as Trans, but giving her full opinions about them and the world. Her Playfully teasing Joyce ( parents weekend) also read to me as brotherish-appearing.
I also think she could safely stay with Joyce out of concern, without in anyway threatening her appearance of being a man. If anything, Johns actions arent very manly.
Joycelyn could say: “You go ahead bro, i think Joyce needs a brother more than you do right now”
Hi-Fiving Becky for coming out as a lesbian, seems much more risky to me than acting like a protective big brother.
I’m not Blaming Joycelyn for anything here. I just hope shes acting pragmatically to help Joyce and Checkmate Douche-john, and not just leaving to avoid conflict.
John is the person who is awful here. But for Joyces sake I hate for it to look like Joycelyn is backing him up.
It’s less “siding with john” and more “not saying things she can’t take back”. She just got a vivid demonstration of how family reacts to people being “out of line”. Her life could very quickly get very hard if family finds out she’s trans.
Yup, her life will essentially be over as it exists now when she comes out. Her parents will not support her and will disown her, her brother at the least will abandon her and see it her “just” punishment. She will be on her own without a safety net. I know from experience that’s a rough patch and there’s no shame in her trying to hold the pieces together long enough to build up just a little bit of a shelter for when the inevitable hits.
Also, good catch on the Becky trying to calm Joyce in the last panel and I think you’re absolutely right there. Becky sees it as her job to protect Joyce from her family and the same fate she suffered. She’s scared, she’s hurting, part of her is probably even proud, but damnitt she promised to be the support and lightning rod and she is gonna do it as best she can.
Rule of Drama makes me think that regardless on her desire to stay hidden from her parent’s eye, Joss is gonna get outed very soon. It’ll be a mixed bag, since it’ll be cathartic for the truth to come out, but also lead to a very traumatic experience since it’ll probably come out during the part where Joss stands up in Joyce’s corner, showing the cost of doing what should be done.
It does seem to be a narratively poignant moment for her to come out or be outed in. And sadly, that might be the thing that would save Joyce’s bacon as that would be a “family crisis” that would distract them from Joyce’s support of “deviant” lesbians.
Yeah, I’m kind of wondering if that’s where this is going. Especially if Joyce reacts badly, which she likely will at first. Might be enough to let her go back to school.
Right now, I’m having a lot of trouble seeing how this ends without them trying to pull Joyce out of college. I guess the other option is Hank pulling rank and being willing to deal with the open rift between him and Carol.
Oh… The idea of Hank using those sexist conventions to keep Joyce in school… That doesn’t sit too well. Especially since I can totally see it happening.
I think Jocelyne is going to need to have a sit-down, heart-to-heart talk with Joyce about picking battles and being tactical.
Not because Joyce is doing anything WRONG, but because there’s a smart way to do it and a dumb way to do it, and learning the difference fast might be the key to Joyce staying in college.
… also, Jocelyn should make clear that she is Not With John.
Unfortunately, there are no battles to fight because no one is taking Joyce seriously. At this point, almost everyone has made up their mind on what really happened, and no one is open to new, conflicting information.
The only way I can see Joyce getting through to them is with something big and emotionally-driven.
She already did. And I’m not so sure she’s as enamored of that method as she is completely petrified of the future she knows will erupt when she can no longer politely swallow every dagger blow to her young trans heart.
The fact that there are so many cases of “religious reprogramming” for children who do not fit the mindset of their bigoted parents’ just makes me fear even more for the characters now. Joyce’s mother is clearly not above it with wanting to take her out of the college that’s changing her (though it can be argued that she may wish for her safety since the gunman thing as well) – something that’s already been established… and now John’s defaulting to “this college is changing you” as well as the whole “I don’t like who my sister has become.”
I know they’re fictional characters but they feel like real people because we’ve all known people like this. Heaven help them when they meet their makers and are cast out for being closet minded idiots.
I sit here, fearful that Joyce will be forced to leave the college, though at this rate, I see her running like Becky as well. This is totally babies.
I just realized Joyce totally swore in front of John too. Another tick on the “my sister is not the mindless bible thumper” for his fuel. I can only hope he doesn’t bring it to the mother, but he probably will.
Yeah, it’s a not so subtle threat to Joyce to bully her back into line. And it’s why this weekend, if she can survive it and get back to campus without losing her college and the support network that goes with it, might be the last that she can look at her family with anything approaching respect and unguarded love.
Because they are now very much threats to her well-being. Dangerous, dangerous threats.
Agreed. I know they’re fictional characters, but reading this terrifies me for them because of the very real implications of it happening “in real life.”
“Oh yeah, he committed multiple felonies motivated by bigotry and diseased theology, but it came from a good place. If you can’t see that and remain rational about it, well I guess you have some growing up to do…”
And just like that, any chance where John would be a decent person if he knew more of the details of what went down, disappears like a fart in the wind. I kind of hoped, and wondered like many if he got an edited version (even though what he was saying prior about her emotions was still kind of bs)- but nah. Like he doesn’t even pause to look conflicted before he says these disgraceful, dismissive things. He is so /sure/. He’s bought the spiel, and he 100% believes and morally thinks it’s right. Like I feel somehow that Joyce even when she first moved to college and before she changed for the better would look somewhat uncomfortable with saying such things to a person. Hell I have trouble with even that Joyce saying that even then- she’s seen people angry/upset before and while she’s said creepy things like ‘godpertunity’ it’s not like this somehow. Joyce prior to college wasn’t really a good person thanks to her toxic beliefs but she had the potential and building blocks to be. John from what we can gather does not have these.
He has access to all the information and he’s still awful anyway. No pause, no look to the side- no nothing.
Yikes for Jocelyn, this is like a taster of what will happen if she ever comes out too almost. Like she’ll have Joyce most likely (granted not everyone who is cool with lesbians would be for trans women, so Jocelyn might not feel 100% sure) but like… yeah.
I can’t blame Jocelyn for not speaking up for her little sister somehow. She’s probably scared out of her dang mind.
The difference between John and Joyce is they were both raised and bathed in poison, but when Joyce got an up and close look at the hurt her ideology was causing, she recoiled in fear.
When Joyce poured out her reality to John, he did not. Instead he double-downed on his ideology and flat-out rejected it to “keep his soul pure”.
It’s what makes Joyce a good person with a long hole to climb out of and what makes John a complete scum sucker.
And yeah, Jocelyne is terrified. She just got a sneak preview of what her brother will say about her and those who come to her defense when she finally has enough and comes out.
Ugh, I can’t even imagine. It was tough enough coming out to a transphobic family and being fundie adjacent. I can’t even fully appreciate how horrifying it must be for her growing up all her life knowing her family will see her as a literal demon when she comes out.
Wow! John is running away! Because that’s what this is: He hasn’t got any (reasonable) response or counterpoint so, rather than admit that Joyce has a point, he’s metaphorically flipping the table and running away!
He is! He’s desperately clinging on to the semblance of moral and logical superiority, but he has zero response for what Joyce is saying right now.
It’s incredibly difficult for bigoted people to face their own bigotry because that involves facing that they were “the bad guy” (much like how Joyce was called out by Roz). That little hesitation of John’s when he said Becky should have thought about her situation “before…” tells me he detected the massive flaw in his own moral reasoning and Inner Autopilot kicked in as a self-preserving mechanism, taking him back to the safe zone where he can be the righteously concerned older brother and Joyce must be the tantrum-throwing little sister. This is completely a defensive move which frustratingly manages to also be offensive. I’m counting it as a victory for Joyce and hope she can keep hitting where it hurts, stripping away all their inbuilt bullshit defences one Brown at a time.
To me, that cut off “… before…” meant that John realised he was about to claim that Becky had somehow knowingly triggered the sequence of events leading up to Ross’s arrest. The fact that he cut himself off means that he knows that is logically and morally unjustifiable and this is one of the reasons he’s escalating with Joyce: He hates this realisation and he’s lashing out at Joyce hoping that she’ll do something to let him pin his sense of guilt on her.
Bear in mind, the deflection is more complex than an ideological threat. The only time John’s expression hasn’t looked strained since this scene began was while he was scowling, and there’s an awful lot of the latter. He’s not just changing the subject to her anger to avoid a difficult subject. He’s mad about something too, and it’s probably not about what most people think. The conversation hinting that he’s hiding something about his marriage may be foreshadowing for that, but it may be a herring as well.
HUGE kudos to John for being the first person to talk to Joyce about her anger though. Shame it was just a method of lashing out and avoiding his and her actual problems, rather than addressing them.
I think what he’s angry about is fairly obviously that he’s been called out by his younger sister. And he deserves no Kudos he’s going out of his way to dismiss her.
He’s been raised in an incredibly sexist theology where every man in the community basically gets a live in sex maid who has no say in anything important, is blamed for everything he does wrong, and whose only ambitions are to be docile servants who “serve him as one would serve God”.
Additionally, he’s an older brother who’s practically old enough to be a parent of all the younger Browns, and so with that has probably felt entitled to an adults treatment by them all his life. After all, one of the commandments is to “honor they father and mother”.
The idea of his little baby sister not only being rightfully angry at him, but refusing to back down when told of her “place” and her role is not only enough to incense him, but is borderline unthinkable.
A toaster does not sass back and claim to be angry at the person demanding toast. And the fact that Joyce shows no signs of being pushed into her proper role as chastised sister tsked tsked over her loose morals in supporting her gay friend is an indignity John refuses to accept.
He’s not mad about something else and displacing it on Joyce. He’s mad about Joyce daring to defy him. Because sexists of John’s mold really can’t handle women daring to defy them.
I…would not congratulate him on “talk[ing] about her anger” like this. Typically the way to do that is not to deliberately make the person in question MORE angry.
I have legitimately exploded on assholes who’ve tried to “talk about anger” in this manner. I have a short fuse with sexist assholes who think it’s a woman’s place to be meek and mild and tolerate their bullshit without question.
And I’m the worst type of woman to those types, because I don’t even tolerate the usual outs for bad behavior, because I had no tolerance for it back when I thought I was a guy and I see no reason to start now.
No, talking to someone is an attempt to understand or help them. Here it was purely for the criticism because it was making him uncomfortable and he wanted everything to be normal.
Considering what happened to her and that Joyce is his little sister, that’s lame.
PSA: if you would support a relative coming out as LGBTQ+, or if you know for a fact which relatives are cool, find an excuse to tell of said coolness to everyone in your family. Coming out is hard and it’d be great if your family members already knew who some allies were. Friends too, why not. Chances are it’s relevant to somebody you know.
Piecemeal coming out is a good way to do it, but it’s risky. One bad family member can mean coming out to everyone and not on your terms or with your ability to frame it in a way that is accurate to your experiences.
Friends are a great start. And having a good safety plan is key. It’s far more freeing to come out, to not be living with that fear where the worst case scenario is what feels true every second, but do it in a manner that has you feeling the safest.
And fully echoing the sad face for sad, scared Jocelyne.
I think Leorale also meant so that if you come out at once, you have an idea who will be safe or potentially safe to turn to if things go south. Regarding piecemeal or not with family I mean.
I mean it either way, whichever coming out strategy a person chooses as best for them/their situation — nuke the closet, piecemeal/stages… heck, even if their strategy is telling Gossipy Aunt Doris (unusual for obvious drawbacks, but handy in specific safe/huge families). Whatever the situation and strategy, it’s better for anyone to know they have support and from whom, rather than having to sleuth it out themselves during a stressful time.
Stakes are lower for those already out, and way lower for allies, this is info we can gather without risk and brag about, just in case it is very useful intelligence for somebody who isn’t out to us yet.
PS. When I say “this is info we can gather… and brag about” I mean the info of who is a solid ally, not who is coming out. I am def not advocating becoming Gossipy Aunt Doris oneself.
Augh, I’m still writing in an unclear manner, so PPS: I was directing my PSA towards potential supporters (already-out people, and allies), not towards currently-closeted people (who can’t always collect/spread the Who Is Supportive tally without risk to their personal safety).
I get this a lot from Prime. He’s always like “I’m right because I don’t kill my soldiers with a fusion cannon when they displease me.” And I’m like “I’m not wrong for wanting to bring order and discipline to this scrap heap.”
John is very much a person who doesn’t realize how much he can have the privilege of not facing things like Becky, Jocelyne or even Joyce has too. Denial is probably an easy road, but on the hand at this point I pity him more than I hate him, because I think the rare thing right now is recognizing that there still many injustices in the world and that sometimes you privilege from them even unconciosly.
He was raised in a fundamentalist enviroment, I am not surprised he is the way he is, and going against what you have been thought is probably the extraordinary in this cases…
I hate him because I’ve encountered too many people who’ve wrapped themselves in a cocoon of their own privilege and refused to even listen to the possibility of error. Joyce spells out what is upsetting her and he can’t even pretend to value it because his privilege and the “sanctity” of his worldview matter far more to him than recognizing the humanity or the realness of struggle of anyone else.
He’s the type of missionary who looks at a starving village and sees a bunch of lazy wretches who will learn the value of good work once they stray from their heathenness and join the Church. A truly dangerous piece of work.
FUDGE YOU JOHN! FUDGE YOU STRAIGHT TO ACH-EE-DOUBLE HOCKEY STICKS, YOU GODDAMN PIECE OF FUDGE!
… Sorry, just way too many encounters with irredeemably smug dismissive shits like John in my life to vomit out before I can even start. But seriously, for all the people who were defending him over the last several days, this is the piece of shit you were defending. He’s not a good person, he’s an irredeemable vomit bucket given human form.
Panel 1: FUDGE YOU! Okay, sorry, but wow, gotta “love” the raw douchiness of just double-downing on the tone-policing like, oh, was my snide dismissal of the veracity of your emotions not working to “teach you your place” before, well, let me just up that with yet another appeal to “social propriety” while I continue to be a smug sexist piece of shit.
Panel 2: Oh, man, so much here. Joyce calling all this bullshit social passive-aggression from her mom and brother what it is: bigotry. Joyce laying down the context of John and her mom’s casual dismissals of what she suffered. And pointing out the inconvenient reality they are wanting to erase in favor of the ideology of looking down on Joyce for being “angry” and inviting “bad influences” into the family.
It’s the whole background context that makes John and Carol’s actions so monstrous. Not once have they bothered to show any sympathy or concern for their sister or her friend. Any sign of humanity towards what they suffered, because to do so would require them to recognize the same problem Joyce did.
That the monster who nearly killed their family member and her friend was not some “swarthy foreigny type” but someone who was considered a very pious member of the very religion they consider to be the moral arbiters of all that is righteous. And his motivation was the same thing preached every Sunday, tucked into every sermon on the “evils” of homosexuality and whatnot.
By their religion, Toedad did nothing wrong and while they can hem and haw about him “getting carried away”, neither of them, can actually condemn his actions and show genuine empathy for the queer girl, because to do so is a “sin” in their twisted theology.
And not just her, but Joyce as well. Neither has noted what she has suffered. Neither has shown their concern for her welfare to her face. Neither has said unconditionally that what happened to her was wrong. Both instead chewing her out either to her face or behind her back for daring to be angry, daring to stand up for her friend, daring to be upset that a man from her home town, sold to be the safest person she could be around, nearly shot her to death simply for standing up for her best friend since childhood.
Ideology trumping humanity, every time.
Panel 3: Oh, those are familiar tactics. When I finally blew up at my family, they did the same thing minus the walking out. Making it all about the “tone” of my angry defense of my humanity, refusing to hear any of what I was actually saying, so that they could play the poor victims to my “irrational” anger and my “inability to be calm”.
It’s a common tactic of abusers, make the righteous and fully justified explosion of anger, the appeal for humanity into a breach of social protocol and something that the victimized should apologize for. The tone argument taken to its natural extremes.
And the worst part is the second half of his spiel. It’s not a threat of reparative therapy per se, but it is WAY closer than it has any right to be. It’s a threat that if she doesn’t climb back into her box “willingly” there will be social consequences and that she “should” be taken from a place that is her main form of support to a place where they won’t even acknowledge that she was nearly murdered so that she can have her “disrespect” “fixed”.
It’s a chilling cowardly threat of a statement and given my background, I’m not sure I could hate him much more than that short of him pulling out a varmint rifle.
Panel 4: And a command to Jocelyne, not even a “Jocelyne, I’m going home if you still want a ride”, but an order. He is so used to getting his way since he is older and a male, so used to the entitlement of rule, that he doesn’t even fully view his other sister as a full human being, just yet another pawn in the stage show of “look how pious and high-minded I am being”.
It’s disgusting even before you think of how much it must sting Jocelyne to be ordered by her dead name, while pretending to be something she isn’t, to abandon the only people who might support her when she snaps and outs herself in favor of retreating with a brother who will surely see her as a “thing” deserving of the “cost” of being a queer person.
Because the only other out is to out herself and say goodbye to all of her family outside maybe Joyce and Jordan forever. Yeah, I would not want to be in Jocelyne’s shoes.
Panel 5: And you see that in her fear and discomfort as she walks out with him. Just, so much sympathy for how shitty Jocelyne’s position is.
Also, AH JOYCE! So proud of how far she has grown from the person begging Becky not to come out to anyone. And just full of furious righteousness in every sense.
This is quickly turning out to be another Jorda” situation with people taking sides. John is quickly adding Joyce to the “lost” column. Now the battle is about “Josh”.
On your analysis of panel 4: I think the way he’s treating Joss is interesting, because you think he’d treat a fellow “male” like more of an equal, age notwithstanding. John might already unconsciously be viewing his “brother” as a girl, given if his view of women as being “docile” and “submissive”.
Showing empathy to “degenerates” is one of Jocelyne’s “many bad habits” in his eyes and one of the reasons that the family is “always worried” about “(incorrect pronoun’s) path in life”.
Meanwhile, in the dorms, Sierra buys a Dr. Pepper and is genuinely happy.
I do not envy Willis sifting through the comments after his birthday. This storyline goes until july? It’s really good but upsetting that might mean a break for me.
This is the breaking point for me. There is value in being relatively calm when talking things out. There really is. Political correctness exists to facilitate discussion and enlightenment, for we are wiser when we hear perspectives outside our own.
But that involves staying there through the heat. Chiding your family to be calm has no value if you’re just going to walk away when you don’t like the atmosphere. John is showing commitment to calm for the sake of calm over spending time with family after they’ve gone through a near-death experience.
His priorities, not just politically but in his personal life, are messed up.
OMG. I just now figured out why Joss texted Ethan a link rather than tell him right out. It’s the exact same conflict avoidance strategy! Sure, you’d think that a gay guy would understand, but, just in case, let it be something he finds out on his own. It’s not like there haven’t been fights between the LGBs and the Ts. She might have trusted him not to out her, but that doesn’t mean he might not say something somewhat hurtful.
And that does make me wonder if she’ll go back with John, but be texting both Joyce and Becky while she’s there.
Thanks for pointing that out, Trlkly. Occurs to me now why most of my trans friends have come out to me passively in stages, like by changing the pronouns on their facebook pages and seeing who noticed or by presenting more and more as their actual gender and seeing who stuck around.
… whiiiich tells me I probably need to be more public in meatspace about my support for trans people.
God, and the way he says “Come along” to Jocelyne…. feels so infantilizing…
That with the way he’s treating Joyce and his utter disregard for Becky (he only spoke to her after she asked for the SSN) and his echoing Carol makes me believe this is not just an unfortunate reaction to Joyce’s behavioral shift.
Yup, it’s just this gross pile of completely invalidating everything about her based on her gender and age. It’s common, sadly, but it’s still just completely gross to see and experience.
No you are right.
Johns reaction was pre-planed and premeditated. His confession here ( and it is a confession of his true intentions ) is actually just more victim-blaming, but to Joyce.
Hes Blaiming her for having a negative reaction to justified trauma.
and hes blaming Joyce for his planned and future betrayal.
I still think that John actually isn’t being particularly unreasonable here. I think from his perspective, he accidentally said something against someone that he didn’t invite to lunch being there, and his little sister went off like she never has before because of it.
Of course, even if it isn’t totally awful, he still left his angry little sister alone, when a better big brother probably would have tried to help her calm down and feel better. But, I think his perspective is being ignored by many, and even if normally it’s over-represented, the comments section don’t have to swing to the other side.
He’s being a sexist asshole and not very subtle about it. And there has been no end of apologies and “well maybe he doesn’t mean it in the way that those uppity social justice types are seeing” bullshittery for days now.
His perspective is not being “ignored by many”. His perspective is he’s an asshole who is exploiting societal sexism to try and bully his little sister and invalidate the very legitimate anger she feels about someone openly and very deliberately minimizing and ignoring the fact that she was nearly murdered and all her family can care about is that she’s not hating the lesbian enough.
So, sorry, but respectfully disagree in the strongest of terms.
“No end”? That seems kind of harsh. I didn’t actually count, but sentiment seems to be running about (oh hell, I’ll make up something) 98.6% anti-John. Mr. Willis deliberately encouraged the hope that John wouldn’t turn out to be a total butthole like his mother, only to crush that hope with the last two episodes.
New hope: maybe nobody’s met Christi because she’s already left him.
I’m not sure how Willis “deliberately encouraged the hope”. His very first conversation tried to exclude Becky from lunch and he’s just escalated ever since.
That in itself wouldn’t have been conclusive, but it was a big warning sign that a lot of people picked up on.
There’s been a pretty dense run of apologetics for the last several days in the comment threads including a lot of queer people and women noting the problematic behavior and red flags getting “well, actually”ed about how they are actually being super unfair to John who hasn’t done anything yet and it’s a sign of our lack of empathy, blah blah.
Things seem to be finding their own level now, but it’s still been a thing.
But hey! This time he didn’t actually have to pull a gun out to convince people. Progress, right?
Not that there aren’t a few holdouts still, but mostly they’ve come around.
And people? Can we not do this next time? Can we just listen to the people who’ve been there telling us this is dangerous?
“Mr. Willis deliberately encouraged the hope that John wouldn’t turn out to be a total butthole like his ”
Only, and I mean ONLY if you are in a super-privileged position yourself. Every single comment I’ve seen from anyone self-proclaimed LBTQ (and for that matter, most selfproclaimed women, cis or otherwise) has time and again tried to tell people like you about all the -red flags- of the conversation. Because they have lived through those red flags so many times, and they knew exactly what was coming. And look at this, they turned out to be 100% right! HOW SHOCKING!
It’s not their fault that you clearly refused to listen them. But it does say quite a lot about you that you did.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that he actually isn’t a horrible homophobic fuckface. Let’s say he accidentally said something insensitive that he doesn’t actually believe.
He is still in the wrong for acting like Joyce is soooooooo fucking unreasonable for getting mad over it, as if she’s not allowed to have emotions or thoughts of her own.
Pretty much this. I don’t think John was wrong for wanting it to be a “family-only” lunch. I know that if my sister had just been through a traumatic event and this was the first time I was seeing her since it had happened, I’d want it to be a private affair, not something that outsiders see (even if the person in question is someone I’ve known for years).
I also don’t think that John’s wrong for wanting to discuss what happened in a calm and measured fashion. Some people (like myself) simply hate raised voices and heated exchanges. We just can’t handle it and tend to withdraw when it happens. (You probably know the type. The ones who, when they’re in an argument, prefer to leave the room rather than shout back.) It’s not that we don’t want to resolve the argument or whatever caused it; it’s just that furious shouting is not the way you’ll get results with us.
Where John is at fault is for not understanding that Joyce has perfectly valid reasons to be angry and distressed, and for basically dismissing her concerns instead of trying to understand where she’s coming from. Instead, he should said something like “I know you’re angry and frustrated. That’s perfectly normal and understandable. Just please don’t direct that anger at me. I want to try and help you, help Becky find some solutions for how to move forward. If you need some time to vent, throw things, scream at someone, sure thing. Just not at me, please.”
If John had simply tried thinking up of some different approaches for getting Becky her SSN (for instance, I’m sure there must be backup plans for people who’ve lost theirs or who, for some reason, never got one in the first place. There has to be a government department they can speak to for assistance), I think this might have turned out so much better.
Except none of that has anything to do with his motivation. He never had any intent of helping.
If my sister had been through a traumatic experience, I might want family time without strangers – but if she wanted to bring the person who’d been through the traumatic experience with her and who it was even more focused on? Damn straight she’s welcome.
But again, this wasn’t about helping Joyce through her reaction to the trauma. We see that when the first comment about it is telling her punching Toedad was extreme. Then he proceeds to attack Becky and from then on in it’s all tone policing. Not “I can’t handle raised voices and furious exchanges.” Watch his expression and body language. He’s not distressed or upset by this. He’s calm and controlled. And completely dismissive.
There’s no way this meeting was going to go well because he wasn’t going to let listen to anything Joyce had to say.
She could be reasonable and agree with him or get angry and prove she wasn’t reasonable.
Not Victim-Blame Joyce for being angry at a justified trauma! She laid it put and he triples-down assholitude.
You are bending over backward to give someone the ‘benefit of the doubt’ ( perhaps a charitable attitude, only 2 days ago ). In law thats called reasonable doubt.
But you are doing this after we have ‘Moral-Certitude Beyond Reasonable Doubt’ . Thats the standard to convict in a court of law.
We have moral certitude beyond a reasonable doubt that hes a Passive-Aggressive Douchbag.
In this conversation hes sided with a gunman against his own sister and best friend multiple times.
Now he is literally threatening his fuck up his sisters life because she didn’t like that.
He sided multiple times with a gunman; then he threatened his own sister. This is not a good person.
NO, he didnt leave his little sister alone. Hes too much of weak shmucksauce to aplogize when hes called out on toxic Judas bullshit, so he slinks away like a coward, Blames Joyce for his betrayal ( to their mother ) and steals away Joyceln , joyce’s emotional support. Cuz he cant bare slinking away alone.
This is not a strong or honorable man.
This is Snidely WhipJohn, the Douchinator. Fuck him, I hope he chokes on a macaroni and cheese and dies.
Remember that time when Joyce said that she was almost murdered by their Christian neighbor, and said she was upset because her family defended the attacker, and then John basically called her a baby and basically didn’t give a fuck?
Yeah no John is pretty much indefensible. Like, there are no other interpretations, and I’m not even really exaggerating.
“You’re angry so I don’t have to listen to your views or opinion as you are clearly not speaking rationally, I will only talk to you again when you are less emotional about it”
I both hate and love that John went down this road, I obviously hate it for the obvious reason of wow John is being a dick, but I do love that Willis touched onto this sort of behaviour. I see this happening a lot, especially when directed at women, and its usually along the lines of “well you’re being far too hysterical, jeez calm down,” which is just another way of getting women to keep quiet, know their place etcetc.
Not that I think this is what John is knowingly trying to do here, I don’t think most guys (and girls too) who use this kind of shit really think to themselves “wow this woman is getting angry about this topic let me just get them to shut up by pointing out their anger because women shouldnt get angry hur hur” but for the longest time, and still now to an extent – women were supposed to be those quiet, obliging wives who don’t have their own opinions let alone their own emotions on things. And still now to an extent as there is ALWAYS ALWAYS backlash whenever a woman says something controversial and far more often compared to when a guy says something controversial.
This has kind of gotten away from me a bit, but these topics hit me quite a lot. I hate people like John who don’t even try to see things from another point of view as they are so adamant that theyre right (im the oldest, plus a guy, so must mean im right about everything!!) and just dismiss other peoples experiences and emotions because heaven forbid they can’t talk in a calm tone about something upsetting, and therefore can’t have that opinion validated. uhgh.
Yup. If there’s one thing Willis does better than almost anyone else writing webcomics, it’s perfectly capturing the daily nuisances of being a marginalized group member. He just really does such a good job showing things like the open dismissal of women’s anger, the casual homophobia of fundie groups, or things like Mary’s transphobic bullying.
They hit hard and true, because they are absolutely true to life and most people just avoid the topic entirely despite it being absolutely common in life.
I don’t think it’s “knowingly” as such. But then I don’t think much of what people do is really done knowingly. He doesn’t actually think it out, but he’s following a script he’s been taught and long internalized about arguing with women. And it’s actually worse than you portray it because it starts with “Provoke them into anger, then point out their anger and dismiss them because of it.”
I have a rather strong feeling that the defenders of John’s behaviour are the people that do behave like this themselves a lot. But they don’t wish to think of themselves as bad persons —and this at least is understandable, because “nobody” wants to do that*— and now they have to try to rewrite exactly what it was John actually did, so that they don’t have to confront their own behaviour and realise what it is they’re actually doing.
*Note that I said “wants to do that”. I know that some people do think of themselves as bad, but even then, they probably wish they didn’t think like that.
Josh. You shoudl take the car ride with your sister instead. She needs someone in the family willing to reach out before she annixes you with the rest of them.
I wish John had finished his point about more thinking ahead, a few strip ago, instead of switching the subject to Joyce’s anger. I mean, not that it can be addressed, but finding back Becky’s social number really need to be done.
“before you came out as a lesbian and ruined your relationship with your Dad.”
“before you decided to stray from God and lead my sister away too.”
“before you put your dad in jail.”
I honestly don’t think his “thinking ahead” point would’ve helped. There is no finish to that sentence that isn’t going to put blame on Becky.
Honestly, none of those sentence came to my head when I read John’s line. Motly because of the grammar, because if this is what he was going to say, he would have said “maybe you should HAVE think of these things”, for your suppositions to work out in his sentence. He is talking in present tense, meaning he is not talking about action she did in the past, but is actually talking about what Becky can do now.
I was thinking he was going to say “Before rushing your decision without knowing what actual option still exist for you”. Though that doesn’t soun in his character, he would have say it otherwise or would have said something I can’t think of myself.
But the fact that he used present tense indicate he wasn’t referring to Becky’s past action, unless I get my reading all wrong.
It’s not what he would have said, but it is pretty much what he would have implied. Because that’s exactly what Becky would have had to do beforehand: Research what you need to do to build up your life if you get outed as a lesbian in a homophobic community and your own father kidnaps you at gunpoint.
And before you retort with “Well, maybe she should have learned about it on general principles just in case of disaster or the likes”
Well, the thing here is, she grew up in the kind of household where a girl/woman was simply expected to do what she was told. She did not have a phone, she did not have internet. For crying out loud, she was not allowed to watch Disney movies because they’re not Christian enough. There’s a strip about it and all*.
There is no reason to expect that Becky would or should have learned these things, because there’s no reason to assume that Toedad would have let her.
And John certainly knows how women are meant to be raised in his church group, so I’m not even giving him the benefit of the doubt to just not realise this. Or rather, if he genuinely doesn’t understand the implications of his treatment of Becky, then he is so completely and utterly clueless, that he never should have opened his mouth to begin with now, should he?
So clueless dolt that still thinking his opinions is more important than anyone else’s; or straight up victim-blaming Becky for everything. Your choice. (Not really. He’s genuinely victim-blaming Becky.)
* Here’s the strip: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/backlog/ See the “punchline”. It looks so silly, doesn’t it? No, it doesn’t. That’s Becky’s and Joyce’s reality (and also the reality of a lot of real life kids out there). They are honestly that sheltered in life. Apart from being extremely foreshadowing about Toedad’s upcoming appearance, it’s intensely chilling in itself, now that we realise the full depth of what it really means.
“And before you retort with “Well, maybe she should have learned about it on general principles just in case of disaster or the likes” ”
No, I would have actually have said, she should have started researched about that the moment she was on her own, or, to be more reasonable, the moment she actually had some time to rest (i.e. after her father got arrested). Then again, seeing what is the next comic,now, I don’t think John would have given helpful advice anymore.
Becky’s attitude to run forward and only deal with logistic issues when they slap her in the face is something she should stop doing as soon as possible. I mean, she has been slapped in the face enough as it is.
Part of the dissonance here is that it’s been a year and half for us since Becky showed up on the run (October 2014). It’s been just over a week for them.
Becky’s actually doing pretty well, despite the trauma and crises.
“Before you ask my sibling to help you commit fraud.” Could have been a perfectly legit ending HAD JOHN NOT KILLED THE HOPE OF GOODWILL I HAD TWO STRIPS AGO.
I might be reading that wrong, but Jocelyne seemed actually ready to give Becky her social number (though, of course, I am not sure of it), because she is nice like that, but that would have put both of them in legal trouble.
When I read that first, my perception was that John saw that coming too and didn’t want Joyce to entangle herself in legal trouble out of her soft heart. From what I was seeing, it was a big brother protecting his familly, but I could get all that all wrong.
Jocelyne’s exact words “I … advise you to … not?”
I read that as a bit taken aback by the request and not at all going to agree. Probably more by the realization of how desperate Becky was and that she probably didn’t even know how serious what she was asking was.
Jocelyne was all “I can help you, I can give advice, and give my info as reference if you need it. No, better not that”
John was all “Don’t do that! Just go and get it, it should be written somewhere, you should have it already before you…”
Saying “it should be already done before!” isn’t as useful to Becky right now as “let me help you, what do you need?”
Shoot, in Indiana to don’t even have to conceal anything. You* can openly adjust your holster right before you walk in to a gas station, just because you can.**
Man, that reminds me of my father. “If you shout, you lost the conversation”. Last time we had that (a few years ago!) i told him off, as i finally realized that if i’m angry and emotional, of course i’m going to talk loudly, emotionally and angrily!
Also urgh having respect for people’s property (including your own) when you just want to wreck stuff.
I wish Jocelyne could spend some time with them without John.
Oh look, John’s using Joyce’s anger to avoid addressing the possibility that there might be bigotry within his own community and himself. I know, at least on some level, how Joyce is feeling, as I’ve been in her position myself, albeit in less extreme circumstances.
I was at a bible study group about a year ago, and this guy started talking about the influence the media has on the world, and started ranting about “The Imitation Game” and how it was an example of “the homosexual agenda” because it “got us to sympathise with Alan Turing because he was a homosexual”. Which, well, betrays a severe lack of critical reading capabilities (apparently we’re meant to sympathise with Turing because he’s gay, not because of the bigotry he faced and the torturous therapy he was put through). And it left me barely coherent with rage. There were a few moments where I was quiet, and tried to process what I’d heard, and there was no response from the rest of the group, save for sage nods and a woman saying “Yeah, it’s important to be aware of messages in the media…”. At which point I exploded. I was shaking with anger, and was barely coherent but was starting to say how ridiculous the idea that there’s a “homosexual agenda” is when gay representation in the media is still frequently censored or playing up to the same tired stereotypes. And then the guy who was leading the session said “I don’t mean to shut you down, because I know this is important to you, but we should probably start praying now.” Like hell was he not shutting me down. Apparently, there was time to discuss the “evils of the homosexual agenda”, but not to break down why it was ridiculous that Christians claim such a thing exists. To this day, thinking about the way I was shut down that evening makes me so angry.
More recently, a friend of mine shared this post on facebook: http://www.thekevingarcia.com/my-identity-in-christ-includes-my-sexual-orientation/. There was a comment on the post from another member of the bible study group, who took issue with the post because apparently, the author of the article wanting to, but deciding not to, “tear a hole in [the] white-girl theology” of a woman who subjected him to a classic microaggression somehow makes him “just as offensive as he is accusing her of being”. Which just, said member of the bible study group was just tone policing Garcia (the man who wrote the article). Saying that a gay man feeling angry at experiencing a microaggression is being as bigoted as the woman who directed the microaggression at him is such blatant victim blaming and tone policing. I tried to debate the issue with the guy from my bible study, not bringing up the possibility that being gay wasn’t a sin (because that was clearly a step too far), but just trying to suggest that maybe the nature of privilege means there’s no reasonable way to suggest Garcia was being as offensive as the woman. And to suggest that it was important to listen to the stories gay Christians tell about their experiences in the church, instead of finding reasons to dismiss them. I couldn’t get through. And that’s when I realised that the people from that bible study group weren’t worth engaging with.
I don’t hang out or keep in contact with those people any more.
It’s a common tactic that’s only getting more common as certain bigoted Christian groups are relying more and more on faux-victimhood to pretend their bigotry isn’t what it is. Oh, are you talking about what it’s like to be the group we’re casually hating?
Well, then you’re just being bigoted and attacking our faith all out of the blue rather than just staying in the closet and quietly accepting our awfulness as gospel.
“OK, John. This is it. You know from mum that Joyce is way out of line, but she might still listen to you. She agreed to lunch so you have one shot. If you just get her to listen to you you might be able to help her come back to jesus (instead of following the path of a sinful lesbian). Come on, John. You are a man of God. You are a trained missionary, you are her older brother. You can do this.”
(…)
“Whaaaaaa, my little sister yelled at me. No one said she was going to yell at me.”
Like, even if you buy into Johns world view you can’t be very impressed by his performance in the battle for Joyce’s soul.
Not going to comment on John, would be nothing but inchoate rage.
Not going to comment on Jocelyne, the unfortunate reality of her situation has been eloquently covered in other comments far better than I could ever say.
But Joyce? Oh, Joyce. Glad to see you have come this far from the start of DoA. Also, advice: If Jordan lives anywhere near, it may be worthwhile to spend the rest of the weekend there. If the unpersoning the Brown family has visited upon him is any indication, he has a decent head on his shoulders.
Do you know what altered my impression of John? The fact that he made it abundantly clear that:
(a) He knew that Ross had threatened her life;
(b) He didn’t consider this to be something about which she should feel angry.
I’m getting the impression that the goal of this lunch was to get Joyce’s apology for siding with Becky over Ross and for daring to raise her hand against a man in violence. The level of total empathy failure on display is so horrifying that I find myself struggling to believe it could happen in real life. If my baby sister told me that our long-term neighbour had waved a gun in her face, you would have needed a Jaws of Life to get her out of my hug! You’d also need armed bodyguards from stopping me doing something stupidly short-sighted to the gunman. Yet, John’s first instinct seemed to be to scold Joyce for being angry and having a violent episode against the person who had threatened her life. That requires a kind of cold indifference that makes me wonder just how much hate and moral chauvanism is poured from the pulpit of their church every weekend.
I’ve had it happen to me. I lost my temper and started shouting at the dinner table on the topic of that fucking rape prevention advice and how advice of the “If you don’t want to be raped…” variety is victim blaming bullshit, as is “Just stand up and say no” type shit, pulling from my own first-hand experiences.
I got “I am not responsible for every imagined message you perceive in what I’m saying” – “Imagined message” my fucking ass, you are literally implying that if someone doesn’t follow your jillion and one impossible to follow and often self-contradictory (take a cab but don’t ride with strangers, frex) rules, they want to be raped – and got needled and passive aggressived at until I blew up and then they basically pulled a John.
But yeah. If you’re the victim of a crime based in bigotry, people will be falling all over themselves to excuse your attacker and blame you.
Pretty much, victim-blaming is very easy to acquire, sad to say.
And I think you’re on to something, Ben. He at the very least expected her to pretend that what happened didn’t and have no protective instincts towards Becky and for her to leave her in the car so they could have a civil lunch where they pretend she doesn’t exist.
Denialists are weird and seem to think it’s a neutral request to conform your entire life towards their denialism.
In my efforts to find hope in people, I will now abandon John and move my hope to Youth Pastor Powers. I hope that he is a new YP and I hope that Carol really hates him because he is an okay guy.
I still have hope for Jonathan. He IS going back to India, after all, and I have high hopes of him catching dysenterie (spelling? someone correct me, plaease) and diarrhea and having a shitty ti- ahahahahah, who am I kidding? Christian missionaries don’t get any of the health problem of those heathen local populations because of god’s protection (and not because they don’t live in those populations bad conditions, no sir, all god).
I don’t know if it has been pointed out yet, but using “You’re angry therefore you’re wrong” in an argument is an example of “ad hoc ergo propter hoc”. Basically “this therefore because of this”, trying to prove that event A causes event B because of the order of occurrence. He is saying that whatever point that she could make is because she is angry, not because they are valid.
Post hoc, not ad hoc. ‘After this, therefor caused by this’.
An ad hoc is pretty much necessarily a propter hoc, since it refers to something created for a specific purpose – ad hoc, ergo propter hoc would literally mean ‘to this purpose, therefor because of this purpose’, which is a tautology, not a fallacy.
It’s not a case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, either, in this case – Joyce isn’t wrong, therefor her anger can’t be caused by wrongness, or vice versa.
What John’s doing is a tone argument, which is basically a form of ad hominem.
Ouch. Today’s strip hits a little close to home for me. Goddamnit, John.
I really hope Joss gets to talk more with Joyce this weekend. Joyce really needs some sympathy right about now, and Joss may have some ideas about resources to help Becky.
The thing I hate about this particular sexist and logical fallacy is how hard it is to combat in the moment.
Reign in your anger gives them points by making it seem they were right about your anger being an irrational over-reaction.
Blowing up more (as Joyce did) gives them the opening to condescendingly “take the high road” and leave the conversation, claiming victory.
And it’s really not possible to try for some sort of middle ground (at least for me).
Add in social sexism, and it’s a really difficult bit of sophistry to counter. And all the douchnozzle doing it needs to do is realize you’re upset and keep passive-aggressively dismissing it and needling you as John did, in hopes that you’ll lose your temper.
And it plays into all sorts of emotionally abusive tactics – invalidation, as John did in the past few comments (invalidating Becky’s stress over the SSN situation), dismissal (John’s “extreme reaction” comment, which dismissed the idea that Joyce was right to be angry, and his refusal to acknowledge she and Becky have both been traumatized), emotional blackmail (refusing brotherly affection until she gets back into her place, holding the threat of family exile like Jordan over her head unless she gets “recentered” – which is what he’s done by implication), and of course gaslighting (the “extreme reaction” thing and his continued attempts to make excuses for Toedad’s actions and minimize the harm caused by and danger of the situation Joyce was put in less than a week prior).
Would having another person intervene in defense of Joyce help? Because that’s how I would go about things. If John refuses to listen, have another person insist that they listen; it doesn’t matter who the person is, as long as they fulfill the “requirement” that John sets by remaining calm while being firm about him staying to listen. I think that by doing this, it would ultimately counter the fallacy and put the burden on John to make the willful decision to refuse or accept.
Fuck this. I didn’t think I’d need to come back to that because I thought finally David might give us some highs after the past couple week’s panels have been cringe worthy, but nope, we’re still gotta have a “fuck this” because apparently having some sort of happiness is impossible for this comic.
If all this comic is gonna turn into is a bunch of build up to a payoff without executing the payoff, than it’s gonna become harder and harder to read.
Seriously, I like the daily update, but come the fuck on. This is becoming cringe worthy just on pretense of not seeing Joyce and the gang be shown to be RIGHT on anything. We’ve got a bunch from the Toedad camp but nothing from Joyce’s to show that she’s been RIGHT in what she did. I mean, sure, we KNOW she is, but the comic hasn’t given us anything.
Hey Joyce, I bet Jonathan has stuff. Like, heavy stuff. That you can throw. Preferably at him. Like his car. You don’t need to have concern for his property, Joyce.
I’m particularly fond of the “I don’t like what my little sister has become” line.” How dare you have an identity and be a person, Joyce? Bad Joyce! You must conform to your brother’s wishes, at least until you get married, at which point you don’t have to do that if it would clash with your husband’s wishes.
Oh, did I say fond? I’m sorry, I meant “you should get run over by a bus in short order.”
Bonus dislike points for Christi, who married this asshole. She hasn’t shown up yet and I already loathe her.
Judas gets an undeserved bad rap. He was just doing what Jesus told him to. A more apt comparison would be… Paul? Is it Paul that’s the misogynist asshole who thinks sex is bad and girls are icky? I’m not really into christian mythology.
Or the faked letters written in Paul’s name. Though I’ll be honest, I’m not really into researching this in particular detail, considering that it doesn’t really change anything about the general level of sexistness of the bible as a whole; and in any case, why should we have to care about that book to begin with?
So yeah, let’s just say Paul’s the asshole. Or at least one of them.
The Epistles that are disputed to have been written by Paul are the more misogynist ones, the ones about how Virginity is best aren’t disputed.
This is further complicated by the concept of divine inspiration, where regardless the misogynist epistles are considered divinely inspired and I die a little inside every time I think about it.
Sort of undeserved? I mean yeah it would’ve been someone else if it wasn’t him, but even earlier in the Gospels he wasn’t quite as “Good-aligned” as the rest of the apostles.
Effectively the entirety of the lead up to the Passion is “Someone has to be the bad guy, now who’s it going to be.”
Ehh, J. is in the closet, wouldn’t want to out anyone by accident. Not that J.’s parents read the comment section, but I can understand being in that habit.
Excuse you. Do you have any idea how hard it can be to come out? Her family in particular is almost certain to react horribly. “Standing up” to them may sound all great and everything, but she could get herself lectured into tears, horribly triggered, in deep shit with her parents and brother, and there wouldn’t be any taking it back.
Also, referring to her as her incorrect name and pronouns and her gender as “that thing” that she “has” is disrespectful. She is a transgender female. That’s the terminology.
Which has been made very apparent by her family’s sympathy with a shooter, and specifically one in a similar position to them (and I doubt they even acknowledge the kidnapping as such).
Also she might not be finished bailing stuff out of the parental home. She’s presumably been moved out a while, but her room is still set up and may still have photos, keepsakes, etc.
On a slightly different slant inspired by that:
Joyce, take your brothers half completed words to heart. Plan first. Make sure you’ve got your SSN & birth certificate before you next leave the house. You might well need them. Along with anything in your room you’re not willing to leave behind.
Like Joss, my family knows little about me, and as such we have a fairly neutral relationship, but I did this on my first or second visit home and absolutely recommend it.
Another thing for Joyce would be if she needs her SSN or similar, will they give it when she calls or fuck around trying to find a way to submit it themselves, or what? I needed mine for paperwork, and ended up having to take it because my parents kept fucking me over by putting off paperwork and not getting necessary info to me (mostly/probably unintentionally at the time, but my mom is super passive aggressive so who knows?), so I dug up my hard copies of everything when I was next home (didn’t help with paperwork, but at least I could say ‘I’m sorry, my parents haven’t done their segment’). I regretted it in ways, because their home was a lot more stable and less likely to have them disappear (I moved every year for three years), but I need them.
Regardless, any time after this visit, if Joyce discovers her parents won’t send her info/legal copies/etc, it’ll be a lot harder for her to get to them, even if she returns.
That’s understandable, but I think most everyone knows about Joc, and I think it’d be best to err on the side of spoiling things in order to avoid misgendering her.
Thanks for this response. Sorry if I sounded a bit harsh.
Some awkward Jocelyne disdain going on in this thread… I feel for Jocelyne (and Joyce). This family dynamic is depressingly similar to my own. For those who don’t understand why Jocelyne isn’t standing up to John – it’s really hard to do that when you’re financially dependent on your abusers. Even when you’re an adult. She’s not dependent on John specifically, but John seems to report dutifully to their parents and she’s dependent on them right now.
As someone who has called out her own parents on their bigotry and emotional abuse, I can say that there’s that one fight or moment where it’d be magical if your family either said “Gosh, you’re right, we’re sorry” or your siblings said “Mom, Dad, she’s right, you’re being unreasonable” and you move forward as a family trying to do better for each other. Unfortunately magic doesn’t exist in the real world and that’s not what happens and you have to deal with it. If you’re lucky, you at least know that the family members who agree with you, will continue to support your decisions, even if they can’t do so openly at the moment.
I actually really relate to Jocelyne right now because I’m also trans, I’m hugely submissive towards my parents who didn’t react well when I tried telling them I had gender dysphoria, and since I’m both in college and hugely dependent on them, cutting ties with them while still being able to afford an independent life would be near impossible.
That is an incredibly difficult situation to be in and I can only partially imagine what you’re going through. I send my best wishes to you-you will get through it.
…and she can’t even THINK about talking about being attacked at a party for Christ’s sake… oh no, THAT would cement her never being ALLOWED to leave the house, ever, again. It’s families like this that make the world what it is today, by the way, whether the family is white bread Christian in Kansas, or Middle Eastern Muslim….
She needs to get herself and Becky back in the car and drive back to College tonight… right fucking now… let the family figure out how to retrieve the car, or Becky can use her bed, because she’ll be hiding somewhere else.
I think you’re giving the Browns too much credit there. See, as a not completely shitty person, your instinct to someone being sexually assaulted is to protect her, even if that protection would be in itself terrible.
But these are the Browns, and if real-life Brown-likes reaction to sexual assaults has taught us anything, is that odds are Joyce would be sent to a “good christian college” so that they could teach her to be a godly woman that wouldn’t tempt good men (Ryan was a pastor’s son; how could he NOT be good?) into sinning. Bad Joyce! Bad!
So, one, he is married (to Christi, who we haven’t met but who’s been mentioned)
But two, I’m kinda cringing at equating “unmarried” with “cruddy little sad-sack” — like, aromantic, asexual, and/or unpartnered people aren’t automatically pathetic douchenozzles.
As much as I feel Joyce’s righteous fury and total frustration at the attitude John’s using to shut out Joyce’s point….
Poor Joss. Her face in that last panel is so conflicted. I can’t tell if she’s frightened by what this outburst means for her, concerned for Joyce, just conflict avoidant, or all of the above.
As mentioned above, Joss didn’t even come out face-to-face with Ethan; but instead through texting. -That- is how much of a risk it feels like for her. She has to guard herself to a level that that would give Becky “guarding all non-happy emotions from coming out through jokes” MacIntyre pause.
Am I the only one who thinks that main situation aside, it’s rude to call Jocelyn by Josh? Or does Jocelyn’s family not know that (or acknowledge it)? Was that an extra sprinkling of rude?
They don’t know. Jocelyn (not illogically, given the way they’ve acted) probably doesn’t feel comfortable coming out to her family.
Given the way most of them have reacted to Joyce’s tolerance for her long-time best friend coming out as gay, that conclusion is not only reasonable, it’s unlikely to change anytime soon.
(quiet noises about how “psychotic” is a medical diagnosis that really doesn’t involve violence against others, and that people who experience psychosis are far more likely to be targeted by violence annnd killed, and that conflating mental illness with bigotry just lets bigots off the hook and helps demonize and institutionalize mentally ill people further)
As somebody with a friend who often pulls this shit I completely empathize with Joyce here, anger doesn’t make an argument less valid and John’s an arse.
In and of itself no, anger does make it harder to form coherent thoughts… but Joyce seems to be unimpeded at this moment and thus this is a double-douche move.
RAGE.
Sing, Goddess, the rage of Hank Brown’s child, Joyce.
Emerging from her cognitive dissonance,
When the Truth, she found, was lies.
And all the love They preached,
Was an ideology of hate,
a technology of oppression.
How did it begin?
When did turquoise-eyed Joyce
First see the cracks in the facade,
Which for 18 years she’d accepted at face value.
(With apologies to many authors)
I don’t know if any of you are familiar with the Baldur’s Gate series, but recently (as in, last week) an expansion (Siege of Dragonspear) came out. I haven’t played it yet, but apparently there’s a major uproar about a transgender character in it. The critics range from “eeew, trans people” to “this character is too on the nose and stereotypical and therefore bad.”
Since the commentariat here is mostly comprised of people whose opinion I can respect (i.e., they’re not utter assholes), anyone who played the game and/or is familiar with the character in question care to comment on the issue?
Closer to a remaster than a remake, they weren’t allowed to change old content in the Enhanced Editions. Siege of Dragonspear is a whole new game in between 1 and 2.
-The DLC, apparently, wasn’t very good in general, so there’s a lot of people arguing past eachother and not listening.
-The argument that really stymies me is that since Mizhena wasn’t depicted as trans until now, and not doing a specifically trans storyline about it, makes it not count somehow. There’s no reason why it can’t be, of course, but making it so every instance of a trans character has to be ‘justified’ more than anyone else’s doesn’t strike me as great either.
-It’s weird in-context because the setting itself has (pretty much forever) featured the ability to physically change your biological sex as a given. It makes trans issues a touch tougher to discuss in-setting.
Gonna ask a question, trying not to make it offensive (so if you are, assume it was a fail at that rather than intentionally yanking your chain):
How much of the “gosh you’re loud, don’t be mad in *public* for Pete’s sake, well if that’s how it’s gonna be, I guess I’m gonna have to leave” thing is a Midwestern thing?
I mean, where I’m from, the fight would have continued. Even if it meant long-term sniping that would put Bosnia to shame. None of this ‘make a pronouncement and flounce out’ business.
We get that on the west coast too it goes along with the “Politeness thing” People can say anything they want to you in a pleasant cheerful tone.
“It’s really too bad you can’t just lose some weight” Is considered polite even though they just insulted you. People can continually bash on you and insult you but if they do it “politetly” they are considered in the right.
It’s a bullshit attempt at being right. It’s why I don’t like politeness and I don’t assume the person speaking calmly is right in fact usually the calmlly speaking person is wrong.
That’s not really what’s going on here though. It’s not really a “I don’t want to fight in public” thing, it’s an “I’m using your anger as an excuse to dismiss your argument and I’m leaving as a way of declaring victory” thing. I win because I’m above your childish tantrums and female hysterics.
It being it public has nothing to do with it.
I know the thing you’re talking about and I’ve seen it both ways – the keep the fights at home and the go at it in public versions. This is different and it’s pretty much universal.
@Briny: Re Bosnia, I have a sister-in-law who lost most of her male family to genocide during the Bosnian War, so unless you mean literal sniping in your family, comparing it to Bosnia … not so much? How about, instead: “would put George and Martha to shame” (or, “George and Martha ain’t in it”).
Scrolling through the comments on this, i’m loving how accepting the people who read this comic are. Hell, it’s been so long that i actually forgot about jocelyne. I really hope that nothing happens to out her in this arc, because im honestly afraid of another ross situation with joyce’s mom. I was lucky, my family accepted me for who i am without question, but the browns? At the very least they’d cut off all contact.
First of all, congrats on having a great family that’s there for you!
Secondly… Well, what you said. Although as I’ve said before and will say again: I do not think I have the right to accept LGBQT people for what they are, because I think that implies having a right to not accepting them for what they are; and I should not have that right. It’s as if I should have the choice to accept people differently colored than me, or left-handed people; or whatever else that says nothing, nothing at all about whether or not they’re actually good people.
And in my world, the only real sin is to think of and treat other people as things.
John (the comic character, not the commenter) is a huuuuuge sinner.
Is it weird that I find this infinitely more infuriating what John is doing here? At least when say Joyce’s mom is arguing, you know she believes what she’s saying and is trying to defend a point even if she is wrong. John is being so dismissive and isn’t listening. And at no point has he even admitted that she has a right to be upset – it’s been “you SEEM so angry” as if she can just switch it off.
Yeah: he hasn’t said one word, not a single word which acknowledges or even hints at anything going on EXCEPT Joyce doing a good impression of Johnny Storm (“Flame On!) for no reason whatsoever. Not. A. Single. Word.
Yeah, I’m with you on this one. It’s emphasizing form over content- he’s being an idiot, but he’s doing it “right”, she’s in the right but isn’t performing it in the right key, so she’s doing it “wrong”.
Dude’s pathetic. Just totally stupid. How can he not be concerned with his sister’s well being. No compassion. No empathy. Do I know anyone like this if I was in Joyce’s shoes? Dear Lord, I pray I don’t.
The conversation didn’t go the way he and Mommy Dearest rehearsed it. They both expected Joyce to kowtow at his male command. They don’t realize that the Joyce they sent to college will never come back.
A normal person would not assume that John thinks that he’s right just because he’s not yelling. I wouldn’t want to have a conversation with someone who is so visibly agitated either, because it won’t get anywhere.
1) Actually, a normal person would – or at least would be more likely to. There’s a good deal of research supporting this. Especially when it’s a woman yelling and the man being calm and superficially reasonable.
That’s why this tactic works.
Now a hypothetical purely rational person would not, but then that’s not a normal person.
2) Willis wrote that. Do you think he is wrong about his characters and their motivations? Even if it wasn’t actually true, it can still be John’s theory and thus his motivation.
If my little sister were that upset, I’d want to know why. Also, I learned a long time ago that telling an upset woman that she’s too emotional, and that she should calm down, is not going to end well. If a woman’s upset, just shut up and listen, she needs to vent. If John’s married and doesn’t know this it means one of two things. Either his wife is very subservient and is bottling things up (a very very bad situation), or she’s still training him.
If a young family member of mine told me about an incident in which she said she was afraid she was going to die and her friend was kidnapped I would very much like to know what happened
Er, I’ve had multiple dudes tell me yelling or visibly getting angry makes me wrong, and heard accounts of the same from many, many women. It’s a Thing.
Oh, and John? It doesn’t matter whether or not you “like” what your lil’ sister has become. She is not a possession. No one has to act the way YOU want them to, whether you’re related to them or not. She’s a person reacting to horrible things, and if it makes you uncomfortable, then how does she feel? Maybe you *should* be more uncomfortable.
Does anyone else get the feeling that John had already decided the hows and whys of the conversation and that nothing Joyce was going to say was going to change what he’d already decided?
Or am I just projecting the smug condensing vibe I get from him onto my own older brother…? (Not a fundie but just as arrogant)
I guess I could see him already having the anger speech prepared. But I don’t think he even cared enough about Becky to have planned how the whole thing started. Remember, she wasn’t supposed to be there.
But I would guess that the entire meeting was planned, and that the anger thing wasn’t really in his cards. I have a feeling he’s made these types of comments before, and it just came naturally. He’s too arrogant to think he’d need to plan for her not listening to him.
Agreed. It wasn’t that planned out. This is just how John reacts to women challenging him (At least younger related ones.) Dismissive, condescending and when that pisses them off, he can blame them for being to angry to discuss things with. No need to plan that, it’s just the default approach.
Whether there was actually a plan between him and Carol to try to nudge Joyce back into line or something, I don’t know. He could have just wanted to see his sister and make sure she was okay like a normal person would, just with a weird definition of okay that doesn’t include defending lesbians and unrepentantly punching elders.
No, it’s possible he was just going a “brotherly” thing (as he sees it)… I think if he was in cahoots with Ma on this, specifically, then we wouldn’t leave the conversation so easily. He’d have stayed and probably gotten even more insulting. (Just my opinion, though)
But I do think a Joyce-family intervention is coming, with all of them ganging up on her. They seem the type that would do this for thinking her faith is failing. (As opposed to the normal reasons interventions happen… because the person is destructively addicted to drugs/alcohol/gambling/etc)
Yeah, I’ve seen that before, but looking at it again:
Tone Policing + Gaslighting – It’s really hard to continue this conversation given your out-of-proportion anger.
“Wasn’t that an extreme reaction?”
And oh god this:
Tone Policing + Paternalism – Why don’t you calm down so we can discuss this like adults?
The whole thing just screams paternalism, which is understandable in a way, since he’s the older brother and that’s probably been his role with Joyce her whole life, but contrast it with Hank earlier.
I want to give her a hug. I have been in this situation before (when other people would dismiss an argument simply because of how it was expressed) and it is never ever a pleasant time.
Poor thing. Never have I felt this much empathy for the well-being of a fictional character.
She hasn’t quite left yet, and she seems to be being pulled both ways. I’m still holding out hope she thinks of something that gives her an excuse. Even if it’s something as passive as “I’m really hungry, and I was looking forward to eating here again. I’ll catch a ride home.”
[POSSIBLE SPOILERS?]
Plus someone said that she appears to be in the same room as the other girls in some of the previews for soon-to-come comics.
ah, today’s comic…. it reminds me of the members of my family that are all sweetness and light even when saying the most dreadfully hateful things about my (lack of) religion, my sexual orientation, etc, and react to even the slightest shred of responding anger from me with (maybe feigned? maybe not? i don’t actually know) bewilderment and dismay, because how were they supposed to know it would make me upset, and don’t i know they’re praying for me? as though that would absolve them of it all, and invalidate my feelings. they’re praying for me (and don’t you love the condescending way that’s always said?) and thus they cannot possibly be wrong. and the implication is that if only i were as devout as them i would understand how utterly misguided i was, and how petty and undeserved my anger. it’s maybe not exactly what joyce is going through, but it’s close enough for me to have a visceral reaction to today’s strip, because i know that feeling – of having your very real pain tossed aside because you’re not living up to unfair and lopsided standards of what you “ought” to be feeling, thinking, or doing.
i really feel for joyce here, because in addition to all the completely justified rage she’s feeling, she (unlike me) is still trying desperately to salvage her faith, and her family (the most immediate representation of that faith she’s ever had) is making that exceptionally difficult. it’s going to get worse before it gets better. i hope she comes out of it at least kind of alright
To a friend which recently “discovered Jesus” and was becoming a bit like what you describe, my other friend told sternly : “You know, religion is like a penis. It’s perfectly okay to have one, but not to shove it in someone’s face.” Apparently she calmed down. But she caught her early, the habit wasn’t too deep.
“Well, if you can’t respond to a traumatic, life-threatening experience without being justifiably angry, then I guess there’s just no talking to you, is there?”
My mother and sister like to shout over anybody else who dares speak.
(Don’t take this to mean that yelling back at them is cool. That is very not allowed.)
They definitely don’t think speaking calmly makes you more right. How can you be right when they’re the only ones anybody can hear? Flawless logic.
So your family participates in “Shoutiest wins” debate without the ‘fun’ of having escalating volume on both sides. That’s frankly worse than “Shoutiest wins.”
Not Jocelyn. If he (yes, in this case HE) goes down this road, there is no Jocelyn. It’s not safe to be Jocelyn , or even talk about the possibility of being Jocelyn, around John.
It’s really not cool to misgender a trans person because you disagree with them. It already sucks enough to be misgendered when closeted.
I get the point you’re trying to say, that if Joss sticks with the bulk of her family she can never live openly as Joss, which is unfortunately true. But I disagree this is THE defining moment. Even if I’m… sorta confident the Browns wouldn’t hurt Jocelyn physically if she came out, I am also fairly confident they’d kick her out, cut off any financial support, and make ‘therapy’ a condition of a continued relationship, but not in any way that would actually help her.
Given how fragile the family has been shown to be when faced with dissent, I’d say it’s fair to say Jocelyn would be at risk of punishment just for siding with Joyce where John could see, even though she clearly agrees with Joyce.
Can someone link me to the episode when we learn that Jocelyn(Joshua) is trans? I can’t remember when it was or that we even knew that??
How could I miss that hum
What I don’t understand is why nobody has punched John in the face yet. It’s right there, it’s eminently punchable, why is everyone dragging their feet? Jocelyn, you’re with him now! Just ball your hand up into a fist, draw it back and swing! Bloody his nose, shatter his sense of inviolability, make him cry for mommy! Hurt him!
I kept hoping for SOMETHING to be better, for him to listen, buuut nope.
This familiar, familiar tune.
At least Joyce makes me smile, because she spells out loud what this makes me think too. Being an actually well-behaved good person backfires when you are angry XD
Again, I realize John’s being insensitive about the situation and that he really should be listening to Joyce more, but I don’t really blame him for it here. She’s making a scene and not trying to talk it out level-headed, just throwing out insults. I apologize if this makes me sound like an emotionless asshole, but generally when you want someone to understand what you’re going through you don’t yell at their faces and constantly insult them.
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John taking his ball and going home
not ordering from the children’s menu = CONFIRMED
You’re psychic!
Hmm after john is gone she could still order from the children’s menu
John is not God, no matter what he seems to think.
So God would still witness her ordering from the children’s menu.
I am worrying that they can’t order anything because they don’t have any money with them. Becky doesn’t, would Joyce?
They might as well order something any way. It won’t matter after the police come to arrest them for stealing her parents car.
and because he’s calm, it show’s that he:
a) is a good person
b) is right in this exchange
c) doesn’t care as much as joyce about all this stuff
…d) is jocelyne’s ride home
Damn, what is that fallacy called? I’m sure there must be a name for it, I’ve seen it before. That sort of idea that “you’re angry, so your argument is invalid.”
Tone policing?
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking of. It’s not a fallacy, per se, but it’s some bullshit.
To be fair, he also is using logical fallacies in his argument, specifically there’s Argument ad hominem, argument from (personal) incredulity, and appeal to the stone. If I knew how to link I would, so here’s the gist:
Ad Hominem – Evading Joyce’s point with subtle attacks about her anger
(Personal) Incredulity – I don’t believe it could happen therefore it’s false/unjustified.
Appeal to the Stone – Dismissing a claim as absurd without proof of its absurdity.
Absolutely. His argument (well, he’s not really making an argument, but the thing he’s doing that resembles an argument) is ridiculously, blatantly fallacious, and Joyce’s family really needs to get themselves schoolfed on some Aristotle.
As if they would ever, he was a “filthy pagan”
No, he’s making an argument. He is 100% trying to convince Joyce of something. He provided the comment about anger as a way to try and counter her statement.
It’s extremely fallacious arguing, but it’s still arguing.
Oh wait the one in this strip is the Moral High Ground fallacy, through the medium of Tone Policing, John is attempting to make himself look good to win the argument.
I’ve found that being right is no good if you can’t get people to stick around and listen to you. I think Joyce is totally in the right here, and I’m on her side– but sadly, the world isn’t an idyllic place where the people in the right always get to be heard.
I agree Inkblot. That’s a lesson that took me years to learn. Controlling your (very appropriate) anger is extremely difficult, but it can be necessary if you want certain people on your side.
I’m lucky to have a dad that discussed difficult subjects that we often disagreed about openly, calmly. He would frequently say (and still does) “okay, you’re getting really upset about this. Let’s change the subject and come back to it another time” which can be enraging, but the thing is, he doesn’t use it to shut me down. He actually has no qualms about discussing the same subject again when we’re both feeling more level-headed.
When I was Joyce’s age and younger, I frequently got angry with Dad because he thought my gay friends were bad influences. Or that it was fine to be gay, but not fine to “act on those urges and feelings.” I’d get so angry that I’d end up screaming and fighting the urge to throw anything within reach.
As we discussed this more and more, though, I got better at controlling my temper, expressing my own views and at least appearing calm and level-headed. By the time I was 20, I’d convinced dad that being gay was not a sin (and that even if it is, that’s between that person, their god, and no one else.). By the time I was 25 I’d convinced him that allowing straight people to get “married” and same-sex couples to have “civil unions” was tantamount to modern-day segregation (in that “separate but equal is inherently unequal”).
When I was about 27 or 28, discussions between us had convinced him that same-sex couples deserved completely equal marriage rights and all that went with it, and he advocated for it within our very Conservative family and celebrated with me last year when the ruling was made.
It can be very useful to be able to control that anger and express yourself calmly.
All that said, I don’t think this is the time for that lesson for Joyce. She needs her family to stop shutting her down and actually listen to her. She’s feeling traumatized and going through a grieving process to deal with that trauma and the loss of who she was. And that’s being combined with her anger over Ross’ actions, her mother’s behavior toward Becky, and her family’s treatment of Dorothy, Becky and Joyce’s new life overall. She needs a safe place and safe people to express that anger with and to help her cope.
While actually running away from the whole issue, which didn’t register with him much at all in lieu of Joyce’s inconvenient, embarrassing display of emotion.
@Annie
A lot of people wouldn’t have the strength/patience to manage what was essentially a near-decade campaign that completely changed someone’s opinion on homosexuality. I fully understand people who can’t face that, but I’m hella impressed that you did. Well done!
Thank you, Liam. I’m very proud of my dad. When most people in his generation narrow their views as they age, he broadened his. He a compasionate person that truly wants equality for everyone. I just couldn’t bring myself to write him off as a lost cause. So I kept talking to him about it, eventually learning to speak calmly rather than blowing up like I wanted to. Like I really, really wanted to.
Joyce’s dad reminds me of my dad, honestly. We’d have a big discussion and maybe get a little mad at each other. Then two days, a week, a month later he’d tell me “you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said about x. And, I see your point. I think you’re absolutely right.”
It’s a good feeling to hear that. I definitely identified with her in her conversation with her dad on the way home.
@Annie What Joyce wants and needs, she may never be able to get. In my experience, extend across those I know and have encountered, people would rather abandon their family altogether, in favor of maintaining their pride and prejudice. I mean, the sins, not the book.
The book also, maybe, people are pretty silly in their priorities.
Anyway, as Willis’s handling of Becky’s dad shows, he’s not hesitant to adhere to real world predictability in such matters, so this may turn out to create a schism in Joyce’s family- much like it does for a great many people in real life.
Given that your interpretation of Joyce’s dad seems spot on, he’s likely to be the one who ends up getting caught in the middle of it all- he doesn’t seem the sort who’d abandon Joyce, or even Jocelyn. He seems to have too much affection and dutifulness toward his children to give up on them altogether, or to outright hate them for something like that [even if his response may be rather less than positive at first].
Desires to support both sides and to keep the family held together over holding on to pettyness and hate..
This could get rather the ugly situation for him. :/
Anyway, kudos to your dad. Giving up something like that is like confronting a deep addiction. It takes dedication, a willingess to confront your flaws, and a desire to improve yourself for those you care about.
Big hug next time you see him, okay?
Also, if I am remembering tumblr posts properly, given Willis’ own life, and that Joyce’s journey is somewhat reflective of Willis’… I believe you are correct in your suspicion that a schism in the family is coming somewhere down the road.
This is more than tone policing. It’s emotional invalidation. John isn’t just telling Joyce to “calm down”. He’s telling he she has no right to be angry in the first place.
What better way to rationalize possible denial about neurosis with dealing with people…
I’m frankly surprised the guy didn’t use the phrase “female hysteria”… though he clearly demonstrated that he was thinking in such a blindly illogical direction about Joyce’s bearing and demeanor in this conversation.
It’s folks like him who give disciplined conflict avoidance a bad name. And by “folks like him”, I suppose I mean bigots.
I wonder where he’ll be when the intolerance of intolerance catches up with him?
^ this
“gdi joyce your uterus started flying around again”
I think it has more to do with a flaky attempt to deny strong emotophobia than committing to any kind of bigotry.
Ross spoke like a ye olden days Puritan Preacher to cover up being a selfish, unsuccessful, glorified man-baby still trying to emulate the ‘cool kids’ who used to torture him for falling shorter of the ‘All-American’ ideal than average due to a low IQ and being a runt (none of that is confirmable, but he sure painted that kind of picture, damn…) at the expense of his adult life and everyone else in it.
John’s pretenses of maturity here serve to downplay what looked to me, since they arrived at the restaurant, as a man suffering from disruptive levels emotophobia and in complete denial about it.
I prefer the term gaslighting.
Also appropriate. Although, John’s execution a such an act of manipulation is pathetically poor.
It’s gaslighting (“Don’t you think that was an extreme reaction”) plus tone policing plus a whole ton of condescension.
I thought gaslighting was changing things about the physical area the victim is in to slowly erode the victim’s sanity, not just blatantly ignoring parts of events to minimize the emotional response as “extreme”
You don’t have to actually change the physical world. However you convince the target that their perception was wrong qualifies. Having people who should know better back your version of events and not the targets would work, for example.
I guess it’s a bit of a stretch here, but trying to twist the target’s understanding of what happened, so that Toedad really wasn’t doing anything that bad is at least along the same lines.
“If you are angry/emotional, then your argument is invalid.”
There is no correlation between those two clauses. It’s ad hominem, a fallacy of irrelevance, attacking the credibility of the person instead of the credibility of their argument.
It’s based on something that is relevant though. The idea that, “If you are angry/emotional, then your ability to act logically is impaired.” I’d say that that is likely to be true, but assuming that it /must/ be true is also a fallacy, an appeal to probability.
Oops, too late! Kudos to Harvey Janus!
There is that “whoever loses their temper first, loses the argument” homily. Which we all know is BS, especially when dealing with the ideology indoctrinated.
Indeed. It’s a hallmark of identity politics in the modern age that stretches from the playground to the media, and it really needs to pack its bags and leave. It has overstayed its welcome and needs to leave before it takes up permanent residence in the US and in global culture at large.
I think it’s an Ad Hominem Argument cause he’s essentially saying her argument is invalid due to her character (or anger in this case).
He’s victim-blaming, yet at the same time he has no logical defense for his position. Instead he goes on the offensive, using emotional blackmail and character attacks in an attempt to shut Joyce down. This is pretty much what Carol did to her.
He may only have a skewed version of the story to work from, but even if Joyce were calm enough to be worth listening to (in his mind), he probably wouldn’t be receptive to the truth.
So much for the ‘Brown siblings get more indoctrinated the younger they are’ theory.
Wasn’t that theory out the window when Jordan was mentioned as being “Too Jordan” to go to Freshman Family Weekend?
And victim-blaming is one form of Argument Ad Hominem (Attacking the person not the argument)
I believe the term you’re looking for is Argumentum ad Umadbroium.
hah! that went way over my head. i actually googled it before i noticed what you did with ‘umadbro’
e) doesn’t fully understand the situation.
f) you see kay
…sorry
Tell him he may.
You don’t have to shout when you’re mouthing the words of the hegemony, to the tune of the dominant ideology. #lipsync
A few (cerebral) Christians have extremely patronizing attitudes towards other Christians who do “un-Christian” things with intent – in other words, who embrace “heresy”.
In this case, John seriously doubts the rightness of Joyce’s actions; but Joyce insists on her rightness unapologetically. Furthermore, she expresses anger. Open expression of anger has quite limited legitimate usages according to many varieties of Christianity; outside of that, it might even be regarded as sinful.
His calmness seems to be a display of contempt. I’ve experienced similar myself.
Didn’t seem all that concerned with Joyce’s actions or why she would feel the desire to do or think such things. Came off like he was more bothered by all the scary intemperance that came with it, like that was a greater concern.
Seriously, Joyce almost *threatened* him a panel or two back, and he was bothered enough by how he noticed she sounded angry when she said it to *treat that part like it was the only thing wrong about the threat*.
Doubtful he gave so much thought on whether or not Joyce was being Unchristian in her actions once he saw that there was anger behind it.
I get that you’re not exactly defending him, but it’s worth pointing out that being calm does not make a person correct, morally or factually.
Is Joyce presenting the best form of her position? Not really, no, but in her defense, this is the first time she’s ever been confronted with a situation where she clearly sees where right and wrong lie and her family does not unanimously agree with her. To add to that, she is trying to deal with the very difficult realization that at least some of the things she was taught to believe as absolute, literally god-given truth, are also wrong (and also slowly coming to wonder how much else of her bedrock principles are in the same boat and she just hasn’t seen them yet). Dealing with all of that, on top of the very real trauma she has so recently endured, and her fear for her friend, and it’s hardly surprising she’s having trouble keeping her emotions in check.
The fact that her older brother fails to see any of that, if anything, makes him more wrong still for expecting her to NOT be angry. His lack of empathy, inability to recognize the threat she endured as real, and attempt to police her demeanor are all part and parcel of that. He’s not more credible because he’s calm – he’s just being a dick and hiding behind condescension.
I don’t know why, but I read all his lines in Frank Grimes’ voice…
Huh. That makes sense.
Right?
Who is Frank Grimes?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer's_Enemy
Going home and talking to mom, who will now have back up on the whole “Joyce needs to come home from college because it’s making her less holy” thing, instead of “my daughter/my sister just went through something horrible and traumatic and needs a safe space” that Joyce’s dad seams to understand.
Anybody else hoping for a divorce where her dad still supports her at college?
They probably will separate someday, but it’s unlikely we’ll see it in DoA unless it’s the world’s fastest divorce outside Hollywood. (Freshman year has about 20 real-world years left in it at the comic’s current pace.)
If ‘the Jordan situation’ cracked their marriage, Joyce is a wedge making that crack wider. She’s exposing an irreconcilable difference in how Hank and Carol want to treat their children.
you know I kind of liked John at first cause he seemed so stable… now fuck him, fuck his wife who married this asshole and fuck his beliefs. Joyce has a right to be angry and trying to down grade her feelings makes him an ass. I am extra sensitive to this because I had a neighbor who was my age, race, and gender murders 3 doors down form me once and I know how scary it is to have your mortality brought into focus. SHE IS ALLOWED TO BE ANGRY!!!!
to be fair to the heretofore unseen Christi, they’re newlyweds–who knows if she got to see this side of him before marrying him (countless victims of domestic abuse will (or SHOULD) attest to their abusers hiding their asshole sides very well)
and by “newlyweds” I mean w/in the last year-ish
also we just heard about it, and even Joyce hasn’t met her yet
Chances are no one else in the family has….Probably how John likes it. Christi may feel the same way too.
But she is likely indoctrinated to the same beliefs as him. Raised in a similar way. My money is on his wife believing that John is in the right here. That Joyce shouldn’t be so angry and unreasonable because she has nothing to be angry and unreasonable about. Also that women should strive to always be happy and content with their lives and not stress out the men in their lives by yelling at them, nagging, etc. Because it’s only men who deal with the really stressful, difficult things in life.
(Also, fuck that mentality. I was raised with it to a degree. I’ve dealt with depression and anxiety since I was young and those “lessons” made it SO much worse.)
Oddly (or not), finding out that he was a missionary was a first red flag for me. He makes a living out of trying to force his religion and faith onto other people and treating third world countries as if they need to be saved from themselves instead of supporting them to help themselves?
Missionary work is based on colonisation and racism, and even if it’s well intentioned, it does strike as something only people who think they have a moral high ground would do.
(Do pardon if what I’m writing is confusing and so. English is my fourth language and I normally don’t talk about these subjects in it)
We have missionaries right here in the U.S. The Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses go door to door trying to convert people. So not all missionary work is based on colonialism and racism. That said, if he’s an overseas missionary (which it sounds like he is) then he’s probably part of that tradition.
That’s not missionary work; the Jehovah’s Witnesses are just proselytizing and evangelical behavior. But you’re right that there have been missionaries in the U.S.—out west, for the Native American Indians—and they most certainly were racist and colonizing, just as Nymphie says.
You want to talk about colonization and missionaries, you haven’t even touched the subject until you discuss the Jesuits.
Also, settler colonization is an ongoing process, not a single event. The Christians in the US who evangelize are absolutely connected to racism and colonization.
I mean he’s a missionary in INDIA. Sounds pretty Colonial to me.
Not confusing at all!
When I was a kid, I didn’t not understand missionary work or evangelism at all. I was always told that a person that’s never heard the word of God, if he dies, especially if he is a child, he will likely enter heaven. Because it’s not his fault that the Word has not reached him.
But I also knew that if someone came to me and said “I believe in this other god. You must believe in him too or you will be doomed after you die” I’d immediately dismiss them and their religion.
So, I figured that by evangelizing and doing missionary work people were dooming more of the people they encountered, who may have had a free ticket to heaven before.
I grew up around many large missions left over from when the Spanish conquistadors came here. I was always in awe of the architecture, art work (painted ceilings, rose windows, relief sculptures. Beautiful stuff!), and the historical significance (when you grow up in the shadow of the Alamo, it’s inevitable), but they also made me sad because they represented how many people I thought the missionaries doomed to hell by telling them to turn away from the gods they were raised to believe in and follow the Abrahamic god.
(To be clear, I’m an atheist now, but grew up in a mostly evangelical Christian family and considered myself a Christian until adulthood.)
Just thought it was worth mentioning, I know people who can’t make points nearly that clearly in English, and they don’t speak ANY other language.
It’s also a convenient excuse to move as far away from his family as possible while working at a gratifying job with no chance of failure. That too.
Strictly speaking, we shouldn’t diss his wife sight unseen. He might’ve hidden his more assholeish tendencies from her, or she might’ve come from a family that was equally or more horrible so she doesn’t realize she should have better standards. Give her a chance to call him an asshat and seek divorce before criticizing her.
I wanted to dismiss her just based off her name. You know “aww gawd. Her name is Christi. We know what kind of family she comes from.”
That was for about two seconds before I thumped myself in the head because my given name is very similar. In fact my childhood nickname was the same as hers. Just spelled differently. I just forgot because I really HATE using that name.
His “ball”? Is this like a unibrow? Or a cyclops? Do cyclopes have unibrows in general? They have only one eyeball but what about other balls?
“You other kids all suck and won’t play baseball the way *I* want to play baseball so I’m taking my bat and my ball and I’m going home! Now you can’t play without me. Nyeah.
“
nah, I’m pretty sure he only has one gonad. too
One of my best friends has only one gonad and he greatly resents being associated with a homophobic butt-opening.
look, not all one-armed men are associated with killing Richard Kimble’s wife
anyway the one gonad could easily be post-this-entire-forum-kicking-him-in-the-unmentionables
joyce has gone Yang!
Like I said yesterday!
Doom Reigns.
Well shit, nevermind then.
Thanks for the Latverian weather update.
JOYCE SMASH
Joyce would make an excellent Hulk.
“JOYCE WANT SMASH, BUT TOO CONSCIENTIOUS A CITIZEN!”
haha ‘JOYCE MAD BECAUSE RELIGIOUS UPBRINGING CONFLICT WITH BELIEF IN INNATE GOODNESS OF HUMANITY’
“JOYCE ONLY PAWN, IN GAME OF LIFE.”
Dorothy: “Joyce, how do you deal with your insensitive relatives? Don’t they make you angry?”
Joyce: “That’s my secret, Dotty. I’m always angry.”
At this rate that line’s going to join the Bison quote in the filter….
Which Bison line?
‘For me, it was the second day of the week, the one named for the Norse God Tyr, although using a different variant of it.’
It was discussed (amongs all the other words that are filtered) in this thread.
(see comment from Orion Fury, 1:07 am).
Fun times.
He’s really more of a rook…
Like.
Throw trash nobody cares about that.
I could actually see her going around furiously picking up trash from empty tables and slamming it into the garbage can.
The serving staff appreciate it so much they cut her in on tips and ask if she’d like to pick up a few shifts.
… this is pretty much what I do. Am I extremely angry at everything? CLEAN AGGRESSIVELY. Slam trash in that trash can! Scrub with the fury of a thousand suns! Let the lid of the washing machine slam closed instead of lowering it quietly!
She graciously gives the job offer to Becky.
She would but John just left.
#rekt
But Mary and Roz are back at the collage.
I’m sure Roz has a wonderful collage of genitalia, but I sort of doubt that Mary wants to hang around it for very long.
Hey now, hey now! That’s somebody else’s treasure, right there!
Nah, only one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I’ve never met him, and it’s statistically unlikely that he’s in the restaurant.
*plays some Bob Marley & The Wailers from the jukebox*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybmPHD7FPcQ <- Simmer Down
Not 7 “Whats new Pussycat” in a row?
We’d have to follow up with “It’s not Unusual” to enable the full effect.
When it comes to Tom Jones I’m on strike like Thunderball.
Well, I guess it’s safe to say John’s shit.
Yeah, he’s a total prickmuffin.
A Sodomuffin?
Are you kidding? John is probably the sort of person who calls people ‘sodomites’ and means it.
total cockwaffle
total douchecake
total assdonut
total jerkpie
ballcroissant
dickcannoli
schlubbienenstich
http://48bfc51361a55a01a028-17b283ac00835b5ced4db83c898330a1.r33.cf1.rackcdn.com/1645453_bf454b58_m.jpeg <- Now I'll never see the billboards that have THIS on them the same way again.
Asstard!
Fuckwhistle
Douchecanoe
Aren’t assdonuts already a thing?
I am partial to “douchenozzle” myself.
Douchecanoe
Shitweasel
cockwomble
Shitbiscuit
Crapbasket
Bileclog.
This one has my vote
I was really hoping he’d be an ok guy, too :<
Ditto. What a goshdarn disappointment.
Yes, there was a lot of that going around here. Me too. Not so much any more.
Yeah, he doesn’t seem *actively* evil… he’s just an insensitive, narrow-minded tool.
Yeah, but walking away when his little sister tells him she feared for her life is incredibly shitty. He does know Ross had a rifle pointed at her, right?
On the bright side, if this is what the Browns’ golden boy is like, then Jordan must be, like, the chillest dude who ever lived.
Didn’t Joss say she was the favorite?
Yeah, I suppose so.
Yeah, I’m wondering why everybody is saying John’s the ‘favourite’. The closest that anyone in the story has come to saying that is Hank saying he ‘turned out ok’. That’s not ‘favourite’, that’s ‘liked’.
Well, if past in-comic comments are any indication, Jordan’s pretty much actively attempted to escape his more religious parents after ‘they squeezed too hard’. If I remember correctly, he’s also the one in Afghanistan.
But I agree; Jordan’s probably gonna be pretty relaxed and cool.
We have no idea where Jordan is. You must be thinking of Danny’s brother.
Crap, yeah.
Sorry folks, I done goofed.
All we know from the in-universe conversation is that Jordan is the ‘black sheep’, probably a rebellion because of being pushed too hard by his parents (Hank seems much more trustworthy than Carol), and however that manifested, it kept him from attending Family Day.
We don’t know if their parents disowned him, if he split, if his rebellion landed him in jail, or what.
My personal theory is that he’s concerted to a church that’s too prejudiced and intolerant for the Browns to accept.
Either that or he’s making his living as a webcomic creator and Internet Pornlord. This is supposed to based on Willis’s family, right?
That would be “converted”, of course.
Wankstain
John is a garbage person CONFIRMED.
No one is a garbage person. He is simply a person who has made a mistake.
A garbage mistake?
A huuuuge garbage mistake. As well as having a garbage mental framework that he really ought to take a look at.
Eeeeh. I’ve met some people that I would categorize as absolutely worthless, dispicable human beings. I don’t know that John actually qualifies, but I disagree with the “no one is garbage” sentiment.
What John’s doing isn’t exactly impossible for anyone else, but ‘a mistake’ is seriously underestimating the number of errors he is making rn.
Well, John’s… I can’t put a finger on it, but I strongly, strongly dislike him and he makes me very uncomfortable.
The word you’re looking for is ‘prickmuffin.’
The word we were all looking for is ‘prickmuffin’. We didn’t know we needed that word until we found it, and then we knew it’s what we always wanted, all along.
It’s the Batman of words!
I am vengeance. I am the night. I am… PRICKMUFFIN.
I’m not sure what it means, actually. Under the right circumstances…
Sometimes, when a loves baked good very very much, there is s special hug
That is supposed to say:
‘sometimes when A MAN …
loves a baked good very very much, there is a special hug
….
Huzzah!
He’s dismissive of someone else’s legitimate concerns. He doesn’t treat Joyce’s pain or trauma as being serious or valid and that sort of response from someone that you think you can trust can actually contribute to PTSD. My family never took my sexual abuse seriously, and that might have led to self destructive behaviors and self perception on my part.
If not emotional abuse, it is at least emotional neglect.
Just wait until nighttime, douse the house in gasoline and burn them all Joyce. You can write some crazy message about escaping the sinfull world, it’ll all fit.
What? No, that’s horrible! What if the fire spreads to the homes of non-asshole neighbors?
Or Becky’s father’s house! Her social security card will be destroyed!
Now, now… Evil begets more evil.
Still fun, though.
So, I’m guessing the as-yet-unseen fourth sibling will be bringing some extra wrinkles to this little family drama…
I completely agree. My favorite for most likely scenario is he had a period of cognitive dissonance similar to what Joyce is having now, what they’ve been taught through religion isn’t matching real life, and got excommunicated from the family because of it, but Carol told Jocelyne and Joyce (possibly John) that it was all him. Possibly with some kind of threat to leave his siblings out of it or face some kind of consequence.
Ooooh noooo this feel is the worst feel
So frustrating auugghh
The feel of having concern for other people’s property? Yeah! That sucks!
:p
It honestly does, when you just want to smash something but everything within reach is either too expensive to replace or belongs to someone who hasn’t wronged you in any way.
Been there.
But I’m happy for the times I’ve had the feel of concern for property. When that feel wasn’t strong enough, I had to replace my broken phone :/ That sucks a lot more than not being able to smash things when you want to.
One time in college my pals and I went into the basement of our dorm with a huge pile of empty soda cans, and a baseball bat, and just smashed the hell out of them. It cost nothing, and was very satisfying, I recommend it.
Yeah! I recently demo-ed an old wooden deck for a job. Being able to attack something with a crowbar is pretty great! And all the more great because I could do it for work/fun, and not because I felt like I was going to explode if I didn’t break something.
Nice!
Some high school seniors near me had a fundraising with an old car and a baseball bat. Three swings for I think it was either a buck or five bucks.
I had to change a flat right beside them; they let me take a couple swings for free after out of sympathy. Sadly, the windows were already all smashed out but it was still fun.
I think they did pretty good out of it, too. Pretty ingenious way to raise money, heh. They were outside a local strip mall, so a high-traffic area.
That is a terrific idea. I bet they made so many dollars.
Well now you’re just tempting fate.
it really is it huuuuuuuuurts aaaack
Yikes. And yay!
Yaykes!
I know it’s not the main point of the strip, but I can’t focus on anything other than how scared Jocelyne looks.
THIS.
I know! Poor girl. I’m willing to bet that this feels a lot more personal for her than it does for anyone else in the family, except Joyce. Also “come along, I’ll take you home”. What a prickmuffin.
I really really wanna see Jocelyne stick around, somehow. But she seems a little freaked out to be standing up to John right now…
The curse of being reliant on other people for transportation.
Didn’t Joyce just drive over there herself? I don’t see why she couldn’t stay and talk things out, which is something Joyce definitely needs from her family right now
She’s the peacemaker. ‘Taking sides’ with Joyce and not listening to John would only get her involved in their drama.
Eh, she could stop John on the way out and suggest that she might be able to calm Joyce down if she stays. That doesn’t involve taking sides, and it lets her hang around to show support and comfort.
Joyce doesn’t own her own car, she took her parents’ car, she’s going to have to give it back fairly soon.
Luckily, Jocelyne appears in quite a few upcoming preview panels with Joyce and Becky, so there’s a good chance she’ll find a way out leaving tomorrow or the next day.
*a way out of leaving
TYPOS
HAHA YESSSS
I got that too.
Yeah, that really got my attention too.
Same. Poor Jocelyne, she just wants no fighting. -.-
And also probably a name and gender presentation that make her feel comfortable and herself, but she’ll totally settle for no fighting.
And some quality time with her cool little sis and her friend would be good too.
And some cookies, and time to write. Cookies for Jocelyne every day. And a funny cat. Yay, I like this plan.
I think she already has one.
Excellent.
Jocelyne’s in a terrible spot. She WANTS to stay and help Becky and help Joyce andshow her support and get everything out on the table… But if she does that, she’s revealing to John that she’s more okay with what Joyce just said than she’s supposed to be, and is going to have to explain herself, either now or later, and can she do that without saying something she can’t take back?
On the other hand, if she goes with John, he’s going to expect her to commiserate with him about what Joyce just did and what she’s becoming and so forth, and can Jocelyne make it through such a conversation without breaking cover and again saying something she can’t take back?
Lose/lose.
She’s not even allowed to break into tears from this lose-lose situation (which is what I would do in her position), ’cause men don’t cry.
Screw that rule. The Vikings had it right; if you’re afraid to show your tears you’re a coward.
A lot of us are cowards.
They also had cool fiery funerals. Let’s all be Vikings today.
What the historic source of that?
They also knew how to make poetry interesting and that a lawyer scares off ghosts. Plus, remarkably good regarding women’s rights (reasonable divorce laws, allowed to work in most non-combat jobs). I’d say remarkably good for their times, but since we’re discussing this below a comic about fundies, my head would explode from sheer incorrectness if I did that.
Actually, Norse women were also allowed ‘combat jobs’. A lot of the more recent finds of warrior burial sites are for women. A paper about 2 years back suggested that a lot of the older finds strongly under-reported the amount of women involved in combat because it was often assumed that anyone buried with a sword was a man, whereas recent findings show that this assumption does not at all hold true.
Perhaps unsurprising given the valkyerie thing in the mythos and all that, but you know.
PS: I’d cite you the source but I forgot the name of the authors < . <
Was it this one? http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0254.2011.00323.x/abstract
There indeed was a lot of underreporting of women in graves with weapons, and misidentifying them as male, but unfortunately that doesn’t translate into proof women were warriors. These people were in mostly peaceful colonists and we don’t know if the people buried with weapons actually fought with them.
We don’t yet know whether Norse women fought or not, in truth. What needs to be done is an osteoarchaeological analysis of the bones of armed women they found, to see if any of them actually have the kinds of healed wounds associated with warriors. Then we’ll be sure.
In the meantime, there’s no literary evidence outside of (fictional) sagas, but further east we do have the Byzantine historian Johannes Skylitzes, who describes female warriors among the (related) Kievan Rus.
This is a fantastic thread. I’ve had Vikings on the mind a lot lately (I do a Norse persona for a couple historical reenactment societies); I’m in Nova Scotia and we have the only confirmed Norse settlement in the New World right next door in Newfoundland, in L’anse aux Meadows (which we visited in 2014; it was really cool). But! Recently I discovered that they may have found another Norse camp in Baffin island (the site was discovered in 2012 but the lead scientist was fired for being too “bossy” and “outspoken” [which I can’t help but think may not have been an issue if she wasn’t a woman; but it was the Harper government so it may be political politics rather than gender politics involved here; he fired a lot of scientists for saying stuff he didn’t want them to, mostly about the environment], and she wasn’t given access to her research and materials, unusually); and they’ve just found what appears to be a THIRD settlement just across the water from me, somewhere in southwest Newfoundland! (L’anse aux Meadows is on the northeastern tip). They’re going to start digging this summer. And maybe this find will help restart the Baffin Island exploration!
SO excited about Vikings right now!
Eeee!
As a scandinavian, I’m pretty fond of Vikings too
Disclaimer though – A LOT of what we think we know about vikings are national romantic drivel made up during the 19th century, OR deviated from not-really contemporary sources who mostly got it wrong in hilarious ways.
(my favorit is ibn Fadlan, a historian from Baghdad who spent a lot of his time with the Rus people being horrified by their complete lack of basic hygiene).
Speaking of, this just came by in my feed.
http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/new-evidence-viking-colonization-north-america
I frickin’ love Vikings, and I love everyone on this thread, too, for talking about them.
Now we need someone to draw DOA characters as Vikings.
Also if she doesn’t leave she loses her ride home.
Yeah, she does a good job helping as good as she can, but this is exactly the sort of situation she dreaded back at family day. Getting caught in a confrontation and saying one thing too many…
Anxiety freeze mode: Not a fun thing at all. Especially when you know full well and with good reason that leaving it is likely to end in your life and safety being jeopardized.
I really wish she wasn’t so scared, because I think if she went ahead and said, “Wait a minute, bro, I’m not done here yet – Hey, Joyce, mind if I catch a ride home with you?” she’d actually be pretty likely to get away with it. Jocelyne has so many things to be terrified of, but I don’t think any of those threats are immediately imminent.
Or maybe it’s just because that’s gonna be a really terrifyingly silent car ride with John if she doesn’t split now.
Wait, I actually want to expand on this so somebody can tell me if I’m full of bullshit. These are the reasons I think Jocelyne staying with Joyce is a viable option that is unlikely to cause further conflict or out her.
1) As much as Jocelyne is not male, John perceives her as male, so all the way he casually employs misogyny to invalidate Joyce would not be employed on Jocelyne.
2) Beyond the more general invisibility of Jocelyne trans-ness, Josh and the rest of the Browns are eager to perceive things in a way that’s favourable and unchallenging to them. They’ve already had enough trouble with Joyce and her vocal rejection of values they take for granted, they’ll be unlikely to search out more trouble. So long as Jocelyne appears conforming and doesn’t go out of her way to rock the boat, they are likely to take what’s presented to them at face value.
3) In accordance with the above, so long as Jocelyne is calm and vague and practices a little finesse, she can easily spin this in a way that gives John the impression that she has the patience and tolerance to weather Joyce’s “unreasonableness”, and maybe even the ability to nudge Joyce back on the “right track”, and gives Joyce the impression that she rightfully prioritises Joyce and Becky’s safety over casual bigotry – something that will placate both parties. It’s not exactly the most noble of courses, but I think it’s safe enough.
In contrast, being in a car alone with John, where he’s likely to rant about how wrong Joyce is and don’t-you-agree?, is a dangerous situation. It’s reactive instead of proactive, and puts Jocelyne’s personal opinions under fire – such that she must agree enthusiastically with hateful rhetoric, or end up under scrutiny herself.
This is what my sense of preservation tells me, but I may be full of it, what do you guys think?
Yes I think you are right.
I could only find one good reason for Joycelyn to stay with Snidely
Whipjohn, the Douchinator .
Jocelyn is needed with John to be Joyce’s advoate, when they both go from here to spy on her to Joyces mom.
I think Snuidsely basically confessed in the next-last-panel this lunch date was a ruse , and john was there to get evidence for mom to justify her already made decsion ( which we already know ) to pull Joyce from college.
The Douchinator is threatening Joyce, confessing, and retroactively blaming Joyce for his prior and future betrayals . Its victim-blaming on top of victim-blaming on top of Victim-blaming.
I think you have solid points, but Jocelyne is frozen in fear. She just saw exactly how conditional is their family’s support, “I don’t like what my little sister has become” and walking out. Too scared to strategize, gotta shrink.
You just know there’s someone making a vine of this with the title ‘Crazy bongo loses it.’ Then again, it is a religious town so they might title it B-Word.
Actually, that would be an interesting twist but incorporating it into the plot seems kinda unnecessary.
Oh.
Oh, okay then.
I was really hoping John would be, y’know, cool or something, but I guess not.
I was halfway wondering if the last couple of days were some elaborate test, and that he was finally going to say something like, “Thank goodness; I’m glad to see that you’re reacting appropriately when pressed.” I guess not.
I doubt any child their parents are proud of is going to be worth talking to.
They’re proud of Jocelyne.
I was hoping, and kind of suspecting for Walkyverse reasons, that Jon would be a similar case.
Only because they know nothing about her, so they’re not really.
Yeah, that’s my point. How the Brown parents feel about their children doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about the actual child; only about how good they are at putting on a persona, be it true or false, that their parents like.
They’re proud of “Joshua”. Who doesn’t exist.
Oh no. Here we go~ Another person thinking that because Joyce is changing that it’s a bad thing. I understand it’s shocking for them, but for Joyce she’s dealing with a lot at once. :/ oh boy.
Change is the great constant of the universe! But those fools thing they can control it with a few prayers and a meaningless Bible… They’re delusional and Joyce is the one who is being reasonable.
It’s pretty meaningful to all of the Browns and Becky. It’s just they’re just hiding behind its words without analysis or even really caring about them. “Whatever we believe is in it.” Which Joyce pointed out in her Biblical scholar phase.
Respect for other people’s property is what separates us from the animals.
Naw, I’m pretty sure it’s hats. Animals are terrible at hats.
They know what territory is, though.
Good point. Maybe Joyce will pee across the doorstep of the Round The Clock to mark it as hers. Or maybe that’s more of a Becky thing.
Hats are what separates us from the Free-to-Plays.
Do not start a TF2 flame war, please.
Haha.
Oh.
Okay.
Wow.
So much for “wait and see”.
John is, like, right at Carol’s level now.
He’s pretty clearly his mother’s son, that’s for sure.
I mean, they do have the same eyes, unlike Joyce/Hank/Jocelyn
That’s because Willis has admitted giving kids their oppiste gendered parents eyes and same gender’s hair. Joss having blue eyes was foreshadowing no one picked up on.
He’s the only child Carol speaks of favorably. That should have been the first clue.
Prick. And a muffin.
John has destroyed the last shreds of my “assume new DoA characters are good until proven otherwise” faith :<
Not really. He just wasted no time in proving that, at least in this instance, he is more to be loathed than loved.
Wow, the track record on that has got to be… I mean, if that were a gambling strategy, Willis would have your house by now.
Did you start that after Hank turned out “just inside the range of decent human being.”
Well, even that was more than we expected, so we got way too optimistic.
Yeah, it’s pretty rare in this comic for a father figure to come out anywhere near ‘the range of a decent human being.’ At this rate, Mr. Keener will turn out to be a professional kitten mauler or something.
I don’t know if he’s there yet, he’s being a huge jerk but it’s in a subtler, less aggressive way than Carol.
Hey, Crumplepunch! It’s been a while! We’ve missed you!
Yessss, give in to your anger!
I want to start a petition to make Jonathan Brown stop putting an ‘h’ in his nickname.
I’ll sign it.
Oh, OF COURSE that’s his full name. (Though, if your proposal goes through, no more nickname for me. I’d rather be pretentious that associated with this wanker.)
Isn’t John its own name, not short for anything? A Jonathan would use “Jon” as the diminutive. Generally.
More specifically here, there is a John in the Bible, but I can recall no Jonathans.
(Do there be a Joyce?)
God i hate people like that. I appreciate the value of calm discourse as the next guy, but the idea that a person’s become irrational because they’re expressing emotions is ridiculous.
Your point is only valid if you detach all sympathy and empathy.
Which is preposterous, because Christians love to get hysterical about people doing anything to offend their precious little ideals.
So glad someone else sees it.
I don’t feel alone anymore.
And if you aren’t a member of the group being discussed, along any vector. Any commonality with any part of the subject group renders your opinion irrelevant due to “bias.”
“But isn’t your opposition of my position already a sign of YOUR bias?”
And then the MRA calls you a bongo.
You have just described every parent of every teenager ever.
Exactly. Reason and emotion are not opposites. Her anger, frustration, and fear are central to the freaking topic!
Scientists have actually seen that people with damaged emotions. (Which typically occurs through brain damage) are actually worse at making logical decisions. Emotions are an integral part of the decision-making process because they help us know how much we should value things.
For example they ran the experiment by putting both the emotionless and controls through a chess game. The emotionless subjects made horrible decisions in choosing which pieces were worth sacrificing. Even when they knew a numerical value for each piece, it was still difficult for them to not give up pieces for comparatively smaller gains.
Turns out that you can’t just tell someone to value something, even as a chess player, if they don’t have an emotion to associate with them. We don’t want to sacrifice our Rook for a Knight because we attach a feeling of loss, anxiety and frustration towards losing a more valuable piece. Without those emotions we just see a set of carved pieces and are told how they move, but we don’t know why we should really care about winning or losing pieces and the game.
Those people are almost incapable of making decisions at all, if I recall correctly.
This …actually resonates a lot for me, oddly enough. I could never get the hang of chess, mostly because I was too reticent to sacrifice any of my pieces. (Which I guess is actually the opposite of this study? Welp.)
Well, that went a lot better than I thought it would. Well done Joyce, now help Jocelyne help Becky. Then listen and talk to Jocelyne and Becky, they can probably help you too. There is some big trauma you aren’t mentioning.
By the looks of the last panel I’d suggest the Jocelyne might be the one needing help
There is certainly conflict there, hopefully John will get an earful from his sibling on the way home. Only reason I can see for Jocelyn not staying to hang with Joyce and Becky.
I want that to happen but I don’t think Jocelyne is as strong as Joyce and she probably just wants this to all blow over as quickly as possible so she can get back to her life asap
Yeah, I agree. We really need to see more of Jocelyne.
Problem is, I do not think Joyce is the best equipped personto help Becky. Jocelyne might be, John probably is, if he “approved” which I guess is a metaphor for something distasteful.
So who can hel Becky? Dina? She doesn’t like or trust Dorothy. Sarah would need convincing. Someone suggested Leslie yesterday, for Joyce. She might be the ideal person to help both Joyce and Becky.
Pretty much the only person in comic who even comes close to being equipped to help Becky is Leslie.
I don’t think it’s so much that Jocelyne is not as strong as Joyce, so much as she has spent a lot more time living in fear than Joyce.
By which I mean: Most adult-transitioned trans folk I know tell me they started seriously thinking about transitioning a good decade or more before they actually did it. Jocelyne has been living in terror of her ‘secret’ being discovered for at least that long, possibly longer (using me as an example on the bi and autistic fronts since I can’t really separate each from the other: I knew there was something different about me in a way society hated looooong before I had the language to express it or the knowledge to be able to put my finger on it. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t feel alienated, and I think I was seven? Maybe eight? Anyway, I was in early third grade and I was young for the grade when I realized consciously there was something fundamentally very different between me and my age-peers. I didn’t learn that bisexuality even was a thing until my late teens, and I didn’t learn I was autistic until my mid 20s, but looong before then, I was living in terror that people would wake up and realize what I was and hate me for it. I would not be surprised if this was Jocelyne’s experience, too, only with gender instead of sexual orientation and neurodevelopmental disability).
For Joyce, the kind of terror she’s felt in the past few months is a new and overwhelming experience. For Jocelyne, it’s Tuesday.
But terror chips away and wears at you, and the longer you live with it and bow to it, the harder it is to be brave. And consider also that Jocelyne genuinely has more to lose. Straight/cis allies are rarely murdered for being allies. Corrective rape and murder for Jocelyne and Becky, on the other hand, is an ever-present worry. Joyce is scared of losing her family and the things she’s built her life towards, and that’s valid and understandable. Jocelyne and Becky have all that to lose, plus their bodily autonomy, their safety, and their lives. I am not at all surprised that Joyce is the one standing up and doing the angry bellowing while Jocelyne and Becky both have different forms of freeze response.
I don’t think Jocelyne is about to tell anyone off. She does not like conflict, and fears it because it directly threatens her closet and her safety. I think she will hide within herself as much as she possibly can on the ride home, look out the window, try not to cry. That’s what I would do.
Yeah, you are right Jocelyne has enough burdens to carry already.
I think Joyce needs to get herself help first before trying to help others. She’s been through sever traumatic experiences and has yet to unload all of the emotions that have spawned from them.
Jouce certainly needs help, using Becky’s problems as a conduit for venting her (justifiable) anger isn’t helping anyone.
Certainly not, however it is a start towrmards something better I hope.
She isn’t using Becky’s problems. She’s using -her- problems. They were both threatened at gunpoint. She thought she was going to die, then she thought her best friend was gone forever, then she almost watched somebody else die because she asked them to intervene. Then, after all of that, she got to experience the super awesome pleasure of finding out that her family, who she trusted unconditionally, not only was not entirely on her side, but is partially made up of people who are kinda on -Ross’s- side.
She’s a bundle of raw nerves right now, and is rapidly starting to feel like she has no allies at home.
Becky’s loss of her previous life comes off as someone who escaped from a prison. She was living a repressed lie of a life that she seems to be overjoyed to be free of. She has a lot of logistical problems, but she’s emotionally equipped to tackle them. Joyce, on the other hand, has had her worldview destroyed and her safety net yanked out from under her. Her unshakable faith in the authority figures in her life has been rocked to the core, and her mom is looking more and more like a Toedad waiting to happen than would have even seemed conceivable to her before.
yes, she is using Becky as the conduit for her problems. Joyce does not get upset over and still relies on her family supporting her. She is using their attitude to Becky to vent her anger, rather than channel her energies into helping her much more needing of support friend. Joyce is not even opening up about her real traumas, both of which inspire PTSD in a lot of survivors.
Joyce needs help and she is using Becky’s situation to deflect that need.
Yes, she needs help, as does Becky. But she’s not going to get it here. She’s not going to get it from her family. She has to get through this weekend and away from them.
So what should she be doing right here and now? Other than being calm and reasonable like John wants her to be.
Joyce’s problem in the short term is that, unlike Becky and Jocelyne, because her childhood was relatively trauma free she lacks the skills to cope with a horribly dysfunctional family now that she’s in conflict with them. She can’t bottle up her anger, because she’s never needed to. She doesn’t have the emotional armor, so every betrayal hurts.
Mind you, that comes at the price of deep long term damage that’ll take years of therapy to process, but it gets you through the immediate situation.
But forget the long term plans, what good does Joyce not getting angry do Becky now? What good does Joyce not defending Becky or her own actions do? It wasn’t going to be possible to have that discussion with John without basically admitting he was right and that she shouldn’t have punched Ross and … I don’t even know where to go with that.
In some ways, the best most practical thing she could do is knuckle under, pretend to be the good little girl they know, walking the fine line of not quite giving up on Becky, just to get through the weekend without more conflict so she can be sure to get back to school. Which is a very real threat right now.
But that’s not Joyce. That’s never been Joyce. Even before the PTSD and her current anger issues, she’s always been an open book. She’s always had a fierce sense of justice – sometimes misdirected, but she’s never been able to be quiet when she recognizes something wrong. She’s not just using Becky as an excuse to vent. She really is passionate about defending Becky.
Also, Becky is NOT emotionally equipped to handle her problems. She is NOT handling her problems. She is terrified and alone, pay more attention to those cutaways of her face.
TL:DR
Everybody’s fucked up in some way.
Some psychiatrist is about to make bank.
If everyone admitted they had problems and got professional help, there would be no help because all of the the psychiatrists would have cashed in and moved to the Bahamas by now.
Throw John into his car!
Throw his car into John!
In Soviet Russia car throws you into John or throws John into you.
Really wanna punch John in the face.
John is jerk but violence is not the answer.
…say that to Joyce.
She’s being angry, not violent. That’s part of her point.
true. But I’m just waiting for one of her family members to push her over the line.
Yes it is.
On the upside, dude’s not real so you can’t punch him in the face or drop a bus on him from orbit. But you can REALLY want to. Like HOLY DANG do I super want to be the one to drop a bus on him from orbit.
Which is fine because I’m not doing it and it’s not as if I view that as a valid reaction to real world problems, but for ones involving fictional people over whom I have no control, this impossible variety of violence is pretty fine because it’s impossible.
http://i.imgur.com/5sNE01G.png
Happy Birthday.
May do more if there’s demand but keep in mind I’m a degenerate.
Demand. Just remember “e before i except after Y”.
There’s demand!
Amusing. I brought that subject up with a co-worker who was turning 65 in a few days. “Well, we could have your parade around the office and we’ll spank you, just like in elementary school.” He was amused by the offer, but declined.
http://i.imgur.com/By4b15y.png
Oh… um…. I’ll be in my bunk
That’s one serious case of Butts Disease.
Bump for more?
John makes me angry too.
John would make a good troper.
I can picture him arguing that Mary’s Unintentionally Sympathetic, yeah.
I mean, more the fact that TV Tropes’ forum conduct policy has “politeness trumps not being a jerkwad” coded in, but yeah, also that.
Jocelyne: “Er, he’s my ride. Soooo… bye?”
Joyce should point out that she totally stole the parental units’ SUV, so Jon’s not the only one who can give Jos a ride home or possibly someplace sane.
“Stole” is such a … judgemental word. She ‘borrowed’ it.
“Borrowed” implies that she’s going to return it, and the way things are going that looks increasingly unlikely.
“Commandeered”? “Deputized“?
Unfortunately, not returning it means getting the police after her. My sister was threatened with grand theft auto when all she did was drive around the parking lot and down a block or two.
Granted, my parents aren’t bongos, so they didn’t let that happen. The cop threatened it, as she was driving with her permit but without an adult present.
We don’t know how long the drive is, or if Jocelyne left any personal belongings in John’s car, or if she can even process that quickly in the middle of a stressful situation.
Oh yeah. There’s that flashback to good fundamentalist passive-aggression. Mmmnn, sweet, sweet tone policing and victim blaming.
Whelp. That pretty much settles it. Joyce flat out spelled it out for him, and he dismissed it.
John is, now, and definitively (barring MAJOR apologies and redemption) a complete Douche.
JOCELYNE STAY!!!
Please!
Sit! Good girl.
Go easy on her. Coming out to your bigoted family is not an easy step, and she is not ready.
I know that feeling Joyce has. It’s the same feeling that is keeping me from being the only one out of my siblings to not smash a hole in a wall. And the feeling of wanting to comes up a lot lately.
Yeah, I’ve been in Joyce’s place. Kudos to Joyce for not keying his car.
There’s still time, and I hope like FUCK she keys that assholes car. He is a douche-nozzle toolbag dipshit who really needs to be punched in his big, stupid, passive aggressive face.
Yeah… John can go screw himself.
If I were a cartoon I would buy Joyce and Becky lunch, then would take Becky to the Social Security Office.
But first I would let out all the air of John’s tires.
I’ll run the distraction!
Joyce’s criticism is so accurate and jarring that I suspect John is acting like this because it’s easier to criticize HOW Joyce is arguing than actually considering her argument (which he would need to do to counter it). It’s too painful and true that he’s just deflecting so he doesn’t have to think on it too much.
Really, it’s anything – anything – to disqualify an opposing opinion.
The thing is, he’s taking Jocelyn home. Which means that Joss can say the same things that Joyce just yelled during the ride home. And since Joss will be speaking reasonably, John might actually listen to what was said, as opposed to how it was said the first time.
The problem is that Joss will get the credit and not Joyce.
Assuming Joss says anything. Her heart’s clearly in the right place, but she seems very conflict-averse. It might depend on how she reads John’s attitude in the car. And even then, he ignore her and could come back with “Oh, don’t you start too.”
Jocelyne’s stepping into a live minefield if she speaks up, unfortunately. Appearing to support Joyce and Becky too strongly, especially when it means siding against the “good” family line, is a very real threat to her own safety.
She’s probably going to be up all night drafting the pefect argument in her head, wishing she’d spoken up, fantasizing about a world in which that would have ended well.
Or even more likely, writing about it on her blog.
Which Ethan may be reading. He might be able to mobilize the troops and organize a rescue roadtrip…
She DID ask Becky for a coming-out high-five in front of John, so she’s not totally averse to challenging the Brown standard. Fingers crossed.
I wouldn’t be surprised that is the case, guy has the luxury of denial and facing things that are actually wrong and need fixing isn’t easy.
Honestly, I’m actually mad at Jocylene right now. Joyce and Becky need more support than a quiet “I’m on your side, really, I’m just not going to say or do anything where someone might see!”
John is a shit person who I would literally cry no tears if he was 1) real and 2) died horribly but that’s what I expect from this family so
To be fair when you’re closeted taking a progressive stance around your bigoted family is kinda terrifying in and of itself.
Not saying it wouldn’t be better for her to weigh in, but I do understand why she’s scared too.
Yeah, she’s clearly in Survival Mode. Once you’ve been in that state for long enough it’s hard to leave, especially since the kind of pressure that keeps you in Survival Mode for long enough means that leaving it for one thing could lead to the rest exploding out after it.
Yeah. I disagree with what she is doing, but completely understand it as well.
My family is very Christian. Not dangerously so like the Browns are depicted, but enough that it would be a huge pile of drama if parts of it knew that I was bi.
And I don’t bother to tell them. I don’t actively hide it, I just don’t talk to family that much, and no one has ever asked.
But at the same time, every time I’ve heard one of my family members say something bigoted, I’ve stood up to it and said that that was NOT OK, and that I am NOT cool with that kind of talk or thought.
See, that’s the thing. I’m not asking Jocelyne to say that she’d prefer to be called by her real name and tell John that if he has a problem with LGBT people he has a problem with her. I know that won’t end well.
I am asking her to show support for her sister and her nearly-kidnapped best friend. And if that entails a certain amount of risk, well, Joyce risked a run at someone she knew was carrying a hunting rifle for Becky. I’d like to think that Joss can risk a heated argument for Joyce.
It is unfortunate that she didn’t/doesn’t speak up, but hating someone for being too afraid to do the right thing is not the proper response. Joyce taking on huge risks is nice of her, but not a reason to demand similar (if lesser) sacrifices from others as well.
(Also, you are mistaken if you think speaking up would risk just one heated argument. This is about a fundamental breach between Joyce and the family’s views. If Jocelyne openly takes a side here, she actually risks alienating herself from the rest of the family.)
I’m hoping theres other issues at play for Jocelyne because otherwise yeah she just her sister who obviously needs support
Jocelyne is a closeted trans woman. As far as the rest of the family is concerned, her name’s Joshua.
As she pointed out when we last saw her, if she starts arguing with her family, she might say some things she can’t take back.
I realize that she’s financially dependent on her family because lol freelance writer. But fuck them. Seriously, fuck them. They deserve the most agonizing pain.
Carol and John suck, yeah, but it’s REALLY, really hard to sever ties with even one family member. Even if you know that they are objectively Bad For Your Wellbeing, even if you AREN’T in a position where you’re dependent on them, cutting people out of your life that you have been brought up to love unconditionally and who society repeatedly and insistently tells you you should love unconditionally and if you don’t even if they have made it clear they aren’t good for you and won’t accept you, well, are you sure that isn’t something YOU’RE doing wrong?
That shit is HARD. Jocelyne’s not financially ready for that yet, and she’s probably not emotionally ready for it either. I’m certain Joyce isn’t at that stage yet, either, and that before she goes back to college there’s going to have to be SOME kind of reconciliation move on her part that’s going to hurt like hell but keep her in college and in the family for a bit longer.
I dunno about it being hard. I remember elaborately fantasizing about it all through high school and college. But I guess I’m an odd case.
But did you do it? Did you act on those fantasies? And if so, how long did it take you to get up the nerve to?
That’s the hard part.
Depends on how you define ‘act on those fantasies’. I never watched my Mom die due to a self-inflicted cooking accident, then check her pulse to make sure it had stopped before calling 911 in fake tears – oh, thinking about that little scenario kept me from killing myself through high school – but I did tell her that what she did and was doing to other people was unacceptable, had her storm off in tears saying ‘You’re not my son!’ (well, yeah, duh, that’s pretty accurate), and was homeless for a while, sleeping on the couch of my old common room in college.
It’s not just financial dependence here. If she comes out in the heat of an argument, there’s a good chance she’d be in physical danger. Disowning/loss of financial support would probably be her best case scenario.
Remember how the reason Becky ran away was because Ross was going to put her in reparative therapy? Now remember how Carol literally sided with Ross? How do you think she’d react if she found out one of her ‘favourite sons’ was actually a daughter? (Hint: badly. Very badly.)
Now thinking about that, can you be sure that you would speak up in Joss’s position? I know I can’t.
Jocelyne’s already in a tight spot with the whole trans thing. Remember what she said to Ethan back at freshman family weekend? She’s worried about familial confrontation because she doesn’t want to say something she can’t take back, such as accidentally coming out to a family she knows will disown her.
She’s got her own safety as an LGBTQ+ person to look out for as well, and it’s unfair to expect-slash-demand her to put that on the line, especially when John and Carol have both proven t be close-minded, bigoted assholes.
I know she has her own safety to look out for. Trust me, I am acutely aware of what it’s like being a trans person with a bigoted mother who occasionally talks about how it would be sweet if LGBTQ people died. But I fought against her when she’d say something like that, and I think it’s real shitty of Jocelyne to hang her sister and her best friend out to dry like that.
If you know exactly what it’s like, then it’s even worse that you are apparently incapable of empathy in the situation.
Check your privilege of being able to tell your mom off without being kicked out of the house.
I did tell her off. I was. It was fucking worth it.
Then you didn’t do it every time she said something, now did you?
So because things worked out for you, the high rates of murder, suicide, and homelessness among trans youth suddenly don’t matter?
Well that depends doesn’t it, whs’s more important to Jocelyne…her parents or her sister
But yeah tough call for her
Jocelyne’s parents don’t deserve her love. Both of them. Now, sure, Jocelyne can be dependent on them. But let’s not pretend that they’ve done anything to earn the slightest iota of care.
Agreed. I can see Hank potentially learning to be a not-shitty human being one day, but probably not until AFTER he realizes he’s become estranged from three out of four children because he wasn’t willing to accept them as they are and goes “You know, the common factor here is me and maybe I should consider changing that.” Until that point, Jocelyne owes them jackshit.
Unfortunately, it’s really hard to realize that point. (Trust me, my mom and her half-siblings STILL have some really complicated emotions about a man they pretty much all agree they are better off without and want nowhere near their children. Emotional abuse can be really hard to shake.)
And even then, Jocelyne will still owe him jackshit and the onus will be totally on Hank proving he CAN be a not-shitty human being and even then Joss is not required to forgive him for the damage done. Forgot to add that.
John is Jocelyne’s ride — although Joyce and Beckie have a car at their disposal, so it’s not that crucial a deal; he could always hook a ride with them. So it’s probably more along the lines of what ozaline is saying. Considering what she’s still hiding, Jocelyne knows better than to rock the boat any further.
I’m a little disappointed in Joss, but I also completely understand her, here. She’s deeply closeted, and I suspect highly conflict-averse even without that. Standing up to John would risk ‘saying something [she] can’t take back’ as she put it when she was talking to Ethan at Family Day.
I still have a lot of trouble facing conflict and I blasted out of my closet like a rocket almost 20 years ago.
Time travelling Becky, is that you?
Yeah, there’s a time and a place, and this aint it. It’s like when all the people in the comments were hoping Joss would come out as trans in this scene. Like, it’d be nice for Joyce and Becky to see the truth! But with John right there and Joyce still being kind of an unknown, Jocelyn has no real reason to out herself when it could be more harmful than helpful. For the same reason, she’s hesitant about fighting John on this. Were she not having to hide this part of herself, defending her sister would be more plausible.
The thing of it is, Joss is in a really difficult place. Being too overtly supportive could risk her safety, or at the very least her continued relationship with her parents. I don’t blame her for hesitating.
She may also simply have absolutely no idea how to go about it. I was painfully, PAINFULLY shy and meek as a kid, and as dearly as I would have loved to have stood up for my hypothetical sister Joyce in such a situation, I honestly wouldn’t have known how to do it. It’s all very well to say she should do it, but knowing how to speak up (and finding not just the courage, but the ability to do so–I couldn’t even speak up to say I hadn’t gotten a handout that had been passed around) can be another kettle of fish entirely.
I simply was never taught how to stand up for myself. All I was taught was how to sit down and shut up. :/ Jocelyn may be in a similar position, even without the added issue of her own safety if she does.
We can tell from one of the Patreon strips that she’s had some level of awareness that’s she’s a girl since before Joyce was born, though she probably couldn’t put it into words until years later. In a family and culture that is so focused on gender conformation and proper gender roles. She already has a lifetime of practice and reinforcement of hiding and repressing everything and avoiding conflict, deflecting suspicion. That’s really hard to overcome. Courage or not. You’ve got to overcome decades of survival instinct.
She hasn’t come across as particularly shy or meek. She gave her token of support to Becky earlier and also tried to both deflect John and give more practical support, but that kinda backfired.
Mostly I think she’s afraid if she gets into the argument, she’ll let her repressed anger out and let something out she won’t be able to take back. She said as much to Ethan back when she first showed up.
Joyce and Becky need more support
Oh, so kind of like Jocelyne needed support from her family her entire life and got misgendered and told she was wrong/sinful instead? That kind of support?
The idea that Jocelyne is wrong for not being able to instantly argue for LGBT rights after a lifetime of suppressing it for her own safety is just so awful I don’t even have words for it.
Interesting that Jocelyne needs John to take her home. No car of her own?
Or at least they rode there together today.
Ah, the typical American “one person, one car” mindset.
Given where they live it’s just about a given that Jocelyne needs a vehicle of some sort.
Living in a small town in Indiana, I can confirm that you really do need a car, as public transportation basically doesn’t exist, sidewalks are not a given (and some people will get really angry and threatening if you walk on their lawn, whereas drivers will come close to clipping you if you’re on the side of the road), and there is a desperate lack of crosswalks. Oh, and once every few years you get to hear about a motorist running down a cyclist and leaving them for dead.
I mean, ‘one property/house one care’ has been necessary or incredibly life-improving everywhere I’ve lived. Canada and the US are pretty spread out, especially in more rural communities.
I have no problem with “one property/family, one car” … maybe even two. But “one family, four licensed drivers, four cars plus an RV” is a little bit much in my book. And that doesn’t even take into account my “up with bicycles, down with (most) cars” mindset.
Depends how many of them are working. And what schedules/public transport is like.
In the immediate case, Jocelyne lives alone and lacks a car most likely because she’s trying to survive as a freelance writer – ie she’s broke.
Not living at home for obvious reasons.
Hopefully she’s in a large enough town that she’s got access to basic necessities in walking distance.
Okay, but…
When I still lived at home, there were six licensed drivers in my house. My dad, my stepmother, myself, and my three siblings. Therefore, we had six cars. There is no public transportation in my hometown.
1 and 2. My dad and stepmother had jobs separately. They got off work at different times. My dad’s job required him to be able to drive anywhere in town at any time. He was also on call, which meant at any point in time he could have to leave and wouldn’t know when he would be back.
3. My brother’s job was mostly graveyard shifts in the next town.
4. My sister was in college in a town half an hour away.
5. I was in high school and had a job. No one’s schedule would allow them to leave work to give me a ride. I was also chauffeur to my stepbrothers.
6. My younger sister, as part of the custody arrangement, spent half her time with my dad and half her time with my mom(who lived an hour away). She needed a vehicle to travel that distance, as everyone else had jobs and commitments that prevented a daily two hour round trip, as she was in school.
I agree with both of you, when I grew up we needed 3 cars and were aided by having a 4th, and it’s still like it at that house (a van (driven by everyone, needed by mom for biking and dad for transporting parts for work, a car because my mom works elsewhere, my brother’s car because he too works elsewhere, and my dad’s truck which was unlicensed most of the year, but needed for camping and occasionally for moving stuff for his work, and was the second car before we had the car and brother car). I never drove and moved to a city with moderate transit and so on as soon as I was 18, or we easily could have had a fifth for me to drive to uni.
They actually also had/have excess cars (two collectables (one pre-marriage and one built by my dad) and my brother bought two cars for bringing to a drifting course), which I agree is excessive but whatever, it’s rural, they have the space to have them, it’s a hobby, and mostly I don’t care that much.
My husband and I have two, although I still don’t drive. A car, for commuting and daily driving, and a truck (usually unlicensed now that we have a car) for 4x4ing and more importantly moving furniture, tools, and other large/heavy stuff, which seems to happen a lot for us?
I’m not really sure you get how hard any alternate transit is for some people/places. All but one of the places I’ve lived have required a car to get to work/school (too far to bike, shoddy or zero public transit), and as soon as one person is on a different schedule or working in a different direction, that’s another car.
Jocelyn has stated (in the Freshman Family Weekend strips) that she is a writer, and therefore makes no real money.
Yup today is the day I punch a cartoon.
Only today?
There’s one of the Blaine strips I avoid looking at because it triggers my fight reflex. (I don’t really have an “or flight”.)
Fortunately, Amber punched his face in for me.
What a piece of shit.
Talking about Josh/Jocelyne is something I would like to do more of. Which means seeing more of them. I dislike using the gender neutral pronouns though. It would be nice if we could learn more about their transition and where they see themselves within it. I dislike making assumptions with things I don’t actually understand.
So yeah, open up Jocelyne, it will make the non transperson feel more comfotable
I’m pretty sure the score is jut that Jocelyn is a girl and uses she/her. Unfortunately, no one knows because bigotry so everyone still defaults to he/him.
So far all we know is a URL, unfortunately. Jocelyne is a terrific character and One I would like to see more of.
I can’t say I blame Jocelyne for not opening up. Her sister demonstrates that she’s upset about her family minimizing an awful thing that happened to her and her best friend, and her older brother walks away rather than concede that he might even be a little bit in the wrong. I think her fears of a permanent rift with her family seem pretty damn well founded.
Also I think Jocelyne uses female pronouns exclusively. (Or would if she were given the freedom to be herself. Obviously this isn’t said in the comic but I think Willis might have said this somewhere?)
I believe Word of God is that Jocelyne is a transwoman, Joyce’s sister. She identifies as a Jocelyne Brown in her writing online, and, if her preferences were known to others in her life, would like to use she/her/hers.
also Jocelyn is definitely closeted, at least to her family, and is probably straight (ie, she likes men) judging by her flirtation with Ethan and her line of “I’m not actually gay”, though she could be bi or something else.
Also your PS was funny.
I am missing the reference to “Word of God” where is it from? I could use some enlightening here. Inonly read the comic.
It just means “from the writer/creator directly”. Willis said it at some point.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/writer/
The URL in question.
And the URL leads to, this comic? is @damnyouwillis trying to tell us something?
That’s the one.
Skizz, a text search for “David M Willis” will lead you to a comment where he wrote: “Jocelyn identifies as female”.
I appreciate that you’re trying to be sensitive here, but degendering her when she’s explicitly word of god confirmed to be a woman is kind of rude in itself.
Not really, depends who you ask, most days. I already said I avoid using pronouns when referring to Jocelyne for just that reason. It isn’t the fictional character I am worried about offending, it is getting into discussions like this on the internet.
The thing is that an unwillingness to respect the gender of someone in a comic tends to speak largely of one’s ability to respect the gender and pronouns in real life.
Regardless of that, it’s weird and pointless other than for invalidating gender- I doubt you casually call Joe or Danny she, nor Joyce or Dorothy he.
It isn’t something you do to avoid offense, it’s something that is a basic part of treating people decently and referring to them accurately.
So, yeah, it is definitely inappropriate to degender her when you know how to correctly gender her, especially with it repeatedly confirmed in comics.
Like Shiro, I get that it’s an attempt at being neutral and sensitive, but since you outright disagreed with that, I really think you need to hear more.
If this is rampant with spelling errors, my apologies. Phone before bed is not the best typing platform
Yes, it can be polite to avoid pronouns when you don’t know them about a character or person, but when the person’s preferred pronouns and name are known and you side with neutral pronouns, it can feel like those preferred pronouns or names are considered fake or worthless.
It’s like if someone mistook a friend for a different person. Say, a friend named Hank that they mistook for their friend John. So Hank says, hey, actually, I’m Hank. And so the person continues referring to them as John or said Hank/John or the like. Hank would feel actively dismissed. Because they were being ignored.
As such, it’s typically seen as at least a sign of unsafety that makes a trans person less willing to put themselves out there and offer education, because they don’t trust they’ll be fully heard.
That all being said, to Skizz, I offer these resources, now in comic form:
http://www.robot-hugs.com/mispats/
http://chaoslife.findchaos.com/agender-agenda
http://www.roostertailscomic.com/comic/queer-101-third-edition/
http://rain.thecomicseries.com/comics/801/
http://robothugscomic.tumblr.com/post/97107162945/new-comic-pronouns-right-super-weird-little
And please don’t let this serve as discouragement from asking and please let me know if you have any specific questions regarding trans people, pronouns, or other stuff like that.
Actually, your source of Jocelyne being, “word of God, a woman” would be hugely appreciated. I only read the comic, if Willis has said this elsewhere it would make me very happy indeed.
This conversation was already had on the post where she came out to Ethan. You’ll have to scroll a bit, I can only link the top level comment.
David M Willis
October 14, 2013 at 1:48 am
Jocelyne identifies as female.
Is the source I was looking for.
Here, Willis referring to Jocelyne as her: http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/138285376757/jocelyne-won-this-months-patreon-bonus-strip
Even better, plus, knowing there are Jocelyne bonus strips has just gained Mssr Willis another Patreon supporter. Many points for you and thank you.
joss is a trans lady, so the default is she/her. using they for a binary trans person can actually be very hurtful, and when done while knowing their gender, is considered misgendering. (of course, there are some binary trans people who accept other pronouns, but i think they’re in the minority.)
I read something new every day on pronouns and gender identity. Last article I read said that there was a movement to avoid gender identity in pronouns altogether. As a result. I avoid pronouns altogether, when no preference has been addressed.
Younare right though, all the women I know prefer she/her, regardless of [see, I have no idea how to finish that sentence].
Ooh, ooh, I can do this!
See, I was similarly in Jocelyn’s position. I’m a trans woman who grew up with a very religious family, and the past 3 years living with them suuuucked because I knew I was trans and I knew coming out as a whole would be bad, baaaad- and Jocelyn basically has… well, probably a worse situation than I do. Anyway, so I had to deal with them constantly referring to me by my legal name and what gender is on my birth certificate. But, as you can see, I go by Amber. I haven’t started transitioning yet (but I did get scheduled for HRT recently, finally!) but my girlfriend, roommates, and friends all call me Amber. At my job interview the other day, I told the manager and MIT that they could call me Amber. Transitioning doesn’t really define gender identity. It didn’t matter 3 years ago when I wasn’t anywhere close to getting on HRT- I wanted people to use she/her pronouns for me. I’m not on HRT, and yet the receptionist at the doctor’s office asked me what my preferred name is. Getting on HRT doesn’t magically transform your thought process over time, it’s just a means of changing your body to suit your identity. It’s not like, “Okay, now that the estrogen is pumping through me, now I’m a girl!” What really matters is what *I* know and am confident in what my identity is. And in the case of Jocelyn, we know via Word of Willis that Jocelyn identifies by that name and as female, and that’s all you really need to know for her.
I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m condescending or anything- I’ve been where you are. It can be a somewhat tricky topic but it does feel like people tend to think it’s more complicated than it actually is.
Not condescending at all, thank you for sharing and enlightening me.
Just to be clear, I was not referring to physical transitioning and I had no idea of the meta of David Willis’ statements.
Which probably means I misused the word “transitioning,” I know. Sorry.
Thank you for sharing! It can be somewhat intimidating for cis-folks to ask about trans* issues, because we know we’re probably going to screw something up while learning, and we legit don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. I sure appreciate here on the comments, lots of transpeople are very generous with their diverse experiences.
And also, Yay! for the HRT.
I likewise didn’t pick up on the fact that she was trans when I first was binging the comic. But I didn’t need to know about the Word of God on the subject to find out. Everyone in the comments has been referring to her as female. People say you can’t call her Josh(ua). It’s been pretty clear that she’s a trans women for quite a while.
In this sort of thing, that will get you quite far. Pay attention to what other people who do know about these sorts say. You learn a lot more about how to interact with in real life than you would by reading books and stuff.
1. Who reads the comments? There are people like you here.
2. Go be condescending somewhere else.
3. No one questioned Jocelyn being trans. Duh. Read the comments.
Well, it WAS a pleasant, adult conversation. I’ll sign off until tomorrow’s strip.
Woah, Skizz, I think you read trlkly’s comment a lot differently than I did… Obviously I’m not inside either of your brains, but from here their suggestion didn’t seem condescending, it seemed like trlkly was trying to give you a tool for guessing from context in order to answer your question about which pronouns to use for Jocelyne.
Yeah. I specifically had to rewrite that comment three times because I was trying not to come off as condescending or overly critical. That’s why I specifically explained it in terms of what I did, and how I figured it out.
I’m honestly not sure how I could have given you the information without it coming across as condescending. Would you mind giving some advice?
First off,Someone made this from yesterday. This will be updated sometime soon.
Dumbing of Triangle (Now click on the day): DAY 19
So this was a nice date guys, see u l8r
I like how you made John all smoky after the joyce-beam.
Amazi-Girl is always prepared for anything!
You know… Today, maybe just today, I’ll skip this one.
I’m really surprised John isn’t his parents’ favorite. He seems right up their fuckin’ alley.
(Also, no, Jocelyne, please don’t go with him, nooooo)
We have Jocelyne’s word that ‘Josh’ is the favourite, though we know from the overheard convo between Hank and Carol that they consider John to have turned out the right way as well. We know that the younger siblings are all quite a bit younger than John; I think Jocelyne (second oldest) was still a pretty little kid when baby-of-the-family Joyce came along, while John’s something like 15 years older than Joyce. John’s sufficiently older that he may not factor into her estimations of ‘favourite sibling’. But I dunno.
Maybe even they can pick up on the fact that John is an unempathetic douche, while “Joshua” is sweet and shy and actively kind.
Recentered = Reorogrammed. “I don’t like what you’ve become” = http://i.imgur.com/XL1voxh.jpg
Dagnabbit. That should be “reprogrammed”.
“Rebooted”.
C’mere, Jonathan; I’ll reboot you. No charge.
Is that where you kick him in the butt, and then you kick him again?
I mean, I don’t really want to unleash the deluge of violence against characters, because it makes some commenters very uncomfortable, but surely just kicking him the butt is okay.
Ah.
Welp, toss that Brown sibling into the shitpile, then. I didn’t exactly have high hopes for him (and if I was it was more for Joyce’s sake than anything; girl needs some more emotional support from her family than just Hank’s “yeah Ross was a dick”), but damn, that’s just. Damn.
“I WAS SCARED FOR MY LIFE AND THE LIFE OF MY BEST FRIEND OF COURSE I’M UPSET.” “Ugh, be reasonable</i.."
Fuckin' A. I have never wanted to kick a fictional character in his fictional dick more.
“Junk, junk, bill, junk, postcard from my sister. When did I get a sister?”
I feel you, Joyce. I’d want to throw furniture around too.
Oh and hey John. It’s me again. You don’t get to decide that because your sister is extremely angry and bitter, she has changed in a wrong way and needs to be, what’s that word, “recentered”? No. Nope. Nooooope.
Becky loudly makes a Hitler joke. Fandom reaction: “Becky is loud in the restaurant and makes a public accusation of bigotry. Becky is bad. No like Becky.”
Joyce even more loudly, and entirely seriously, makes a public accusation of bigotry. Fandom reaction? “Go Joyce! Joyce is awesome!”
Hmmmmmmm.
Different situations: Based on looks vs. based on actions.
Also important to take into account what the audience knew then vs what we know now, had we known John was awful when Becky made the hitler joke the reaction likely would have been different
Nah. Because Jocelyne, who, as a translady, would be on the Nazi kill list, was also included in that Nazi joke. And Becky had no way to know that, but, hey, that’s why you don’t go around loudly implying people are Nazis for no good reason.
Joyce, on the other hand, is just calling bigotry bigotry.
Except making a Hitler joke isn’t exactly a public accusation of bigotry, but rather being pretty insensitive. Joyce literally just said that her family are bigots.
This. Becky made an inappropriate joke because she was uncomfortable. Joyce called her brother a bigot because he refuses to see why Ross pointing a gun at Joyce and Becky was wrong. It’s a tad different.
Here’s how I see it.
Becky went home to the family that had been kinder to her than her own family. Already severely shaken, and yet maintaining her chipper attitude through the whole thing. And Joyce’s mother quite intentionally tried to shame Becky, both in private and at the dinner table.
We saw Becky’s reaction there. Wit. Sarcasm. Deflection. That’s what she was doing with the Nazi joke.
I’d be shocked if she wasn’t every bit as angry as Joyce. But Joyce still believes in her family. She still believes in all of it. Every betrayal, by her mother, and now by John, is devastating to her, because IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THAT WAY. So her anger is shocked. Raw. Honest.
Becky knows better. She knows fundamentalists like Carol and John are scum, and even Hank is struggling not to judge. She doesn’t expect John to be any different than he is. So she’s sarcastic. She’s witty. It allows her to keep smiling through the anger. To keep being cheerful through the anger.
Since coming out as a lesbian, Becky’s barely exhibited any sadness or anger at all… except in private, quiet moments when no one is watching. She’s internalizing and repressing all of it.
She must be screaming inside.
So when she makes a Nazi joke at John’s expense (and it is John’s expense, Jocelyn gets in on it), that’s her version of BECAUSE I AM.
GO. BECKY.
I had this talk a million times in the comments under the joke and the strip after, so I won’t rehash everything that was said there here, but I will acknowledge what you’re dying so you don’t think I’m ignoring you.
You gave reasons as to why Becky said what she said, and those are valid and probably correct! They’re not excuses. Loudly mentioning nazis in a public place as an act of defiance is not really ok. So, no, not go Becky. Go in a different direction Becky. Away from lines that make patrons and readers alike uncomfortable.
Ah yes. Telling the wronged that, above all, they should be polite. A theme I hear often, generally directed at any form of protest, no matter how benign.
Wouldn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. It would be even better if she slipped quietly back into the closet, where her presence wouldn’t disturb anyone at all. That way her father might not have become so “uncomfortable” that he hunted her with a shotgun. That way the Browns would not have been so “uncomfortable” that they were forced to reveal their bigotry.
That way the readers would not have been so “uncomfortable” that they might be reminded Jews weren’t the only ones killed during the Holocaust. Homosexuals didn’t fare well either. That way the readers would not have been so “uncomfortable” that they might have to deal with their own thoughts and feelings toward a young lesbian whose life has been blasted out from under her.
By all means, let not the suffering of the oppressed be so apparent and raw as to make us UNCOMFORTABLE.
Why can’t she be more like Jocelyn, who would never make anyone UNCOMFORTABLE. As she slinks behind John, clearly torn up inside, but unable to act for fear of making someone UNCOMFORTABLE.
Not a dig at Jocelyn, by the way. She’s got every reason to fear making her bigoted family UNCOMFORTABLE. But rather, a dig at people who think Becky should be as concerned with the comfort of bigots as Jocelyn is forced to be.
This came as a surprise, but let’s back up the truck a little bit. I’m sorry if what i said upset you, I really am, but i don’t think we’re in entire disagreement here. I dont condone what John is doing, nor do i think Becky needs to be polite while dealing with people like John. I don’t.
I’m all for Becky being assertive and aggressive in order to feel better and to fight off people like john, whether he becomes uncomfortable or not. Go for it! Joyce is doing it here and you won’t find me telling her that her reaction isn’t warranted. If becky was having the same reaction, I’d be rooting for her just the same (despite me not liking her as a character as much, it’s a gutsy move worthy of respect either way).
I understand that you view Becky’s joke as somewhat of an equivalent, it being a cut that isn’t as loud as Joyce’s, but maybe one that would be just as unsettling. That’s where we disagree. I think it was used for Becky to cope, a joke like she often makes in order to calm herself and ease some of her internal tension. Trouble is, this joke is offensive to some.
There were real people in these comments talking about how the joke didn’t sift well with them, some of them jewish, some of them blonde/blue-eyed, feeling somewhat betrayed that a character they liked would crack a joke about something that’s still tender. Then, when people jumped down their throats, telling them that they were wrong to be offended, I commented on their side, citing that a character’s right to crack jokes about genocidal maniacs does not outweigh real people’s comfort reading what should be something that provides escapism.
Willis himself said in this blog post http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/141942653372/willis-youre-usually-so-good-about-things-was that what Becky did wasn’t meant to be morally-righteous. It was a nazi joke, through and through. She had reasons to make it, because she obviously doesn’t agree with what they did! That doesn’t necessarily make it ok for her to do it.
I’m sorry if my comment upset you, the last thing I want to do is fight more people here about Becky, to the point where I’ve been trying my best to comment in a more constructive way in order to be a more positive member of the community.
I’m not here to fight about Becky, or whether it’s ok for only jewish people to make these jokes, or if anyone who was targeted is allowed to, or any of that. I didn’t like it, many other readers didn’t like it, we weren’t meant to like it.
I hope this long response better illustrates where I’m coming from so we can come to a resolution.
Sigh. Not a shotgun. Don’t make me do this again…
Thank you. Thank you so much. You get it.
i kind of appreciate the point, but i think a significant factor is that becky made a nazi joke. like, that was definitely the thing that upset me and at least a few others
Well, that’s because Joyce’s accusation is completely valid. John has downplayed what she and Becky went through and basically said that Becky being homeless was her own fault for being gay. He’s telling Joyce to calm down because he doesn’t want to hear what she has to say, when what she has to say is a valid expression of anger. He and Joyce’s parents (well, her mom, at least) seem to be on Becky’s dad’s side and have little sympathy for Becky, blaming her for being gay.
Also, while Becky’s joke was insensitive, it was a joke. It may not have been a good joke, but it’s not really comparable to Joyce rightfully expressing her pain and anger and being shut down.
Becky didn’t make any accusation of bigotry. She made a joke that was in quite poor taste. I love Becky, but it would have been nice if she hadn’t said it.
It would also be nice if Joyce would calm down, wouldn’t it?
Except it wouldn’t. Because Joyce’s anger is justified. And Becky’s anger, repressed and displaying itself through her wit and sarcasm, is likewise justified.
It would be nice if Becky had made a different joke. I’m all for jokes, and I’m all for Becky. It just wasn’t a good joke.
Nobody said Becky needs to be calm and docile, merely that it’s possible to be rightfully angry and still hurt people in undeserved ways with expressions of that anger.
Equating people with Nazis based on physical appearance isn’t the same at all as calling people out on the bigotry they’re displaying.
Though now that you put it that way, that stereotype does exist for a reason. Light skinned, blue-eyed guy being a bigot? Sounds like Becky’s description was more accurate than she realized.
If you think noting bigotry is an accusation, you’re likely not overburdened with real problems.
Hint: Being “accused” of bigotry will never, even in error, affect you half as much as actually experiencing bigotry. Never. No, not even then.
It is quite literally a fake worry and I’m perpetually annoyed by those who pretend otherwise, because I’ve had the life shattering hell of bigotry both personal and societal, ripping away my family, tearing apart a long running relationship, costing me work, sanity, and nearly driving me to the streets.
Someone who thinks it “costs” them to not be a tone-policing asshole or be called out on their shit or have to avoid using slurs to refer to people is someone who doesn’t know what the fuck they are talking about.
For the record, my comment was in SUPPORT of Becky.
And Joyce. I’m saying they BOTH deserve fandom support, rather than almost everyone bashing Becky because she doesn’t act like, as Carla would say, “That Perfect Girl.”
Oh, my mistake, I completely misread that.
Also, reposting for context: Willis’ reply on tumblr when asked about the Nazi joke.
The problem with the Hitler joke was NOT the public accusation of bigotry. It was the part where it used Hitler to make jokes.
As people have said before about the members of the Brown family, it’s the eyes, and John doesn’t have the big blue soulful eyes, so I was just sort of waiting for this.
Doesn’t stop me from being pissed off, because I’ve been the Joyce here before. Haven’t we all been in Joyce’s place here before?
It’s actually not that. The eyes thing is actually due to Willis’s character design method. Basically, everyone in the comic has the hair color of their same sex parent and the eye color of their opposite sex parent. Jocelyne’s hair and eye color are a subtle cue about her being transgender, while John’s hair and eye color mean absolutely nothing.
All the time. It’s why I dislike having long conversations with my dad.
He is horrible! Seriously. Just can’t even.
God damn tone policing.
http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/12/tone-policing-and-privilege/
Oh, THAT’S what people are doing when they say I’m too upset and need to calm down, causing me to get more upset and eventually unable to form a coherent argument as my emotions lead to a mental overload
Glad to know there’s a term for it
I would argue that pointing out someone’s anger and inviting them to calm down is in fact perfectly okay… so long as it’s not used to silence them. Honestly, arguing with an angry person is unpleasant for everyone involved, and anger can in fact prevent one from thinking rationally. That said, while anger makes a person more likely to use invalid arguments, it does not in itself make arguments invalid. Using a person’s anger as an excuse to dismiss their arguments (as John clearly does here) is wrong. Simply inviting someone to calm down a little is not.
This
I agree. Instead of demanding she calm down and invitation to discuss the anger would have been more appropriate.
But dammit John you had to fuck it up by being an ass.
I’ve never seen ‘calm down’ actually calm somebody down.
Better choices, depending on the person, include: “I hear you,” “That sounds super frustrating,” “Yes, that is important, justasec though, shouting scares me” and, best of all, repeating back what they said verbatim. That last one always feels like it’s going to be totally weird and lengthy, but then it isn’t, it’s super helpful to proving to the person that they are heard. Pro-tip!
Yeah, just anything that opens up to a discussion. Something that says “I understand you’re angry but let us discuss this anger in a calm fashion” without saying all that.
Saying “Calm down” has maybe Never worked. In the history of conversation. Something like “I hear you, it IS terrible… but you don’t have to yell. I’m sitting right here,” often WILL work.
But really, you’re saying the exact same thing with a different tone. In both cases, you’re inviting the person to calm down, only in the second option you’re trying to do it in a way the person’s more likely to respond to. Basically, you’re changing the way you’re phrasing your thoughts because you’re expecting the other person to tone police you.
No. You aren’t. Calm down is a command. It is not an invitation. And it contains absolutely no claim of understanding. It shows no compassion.
And that’s not what tone policing is. Tone policing is saying “because you are angry, you are wrong.” The only way you can tone police yourself is if you got some serious self-hatred going on. I’m pretty sure Amber does it to herself all the time.
And it is such a common one if you argue with men, honestly. Can’t tell you how many times I have absolutely calmly replied to utter shit with a point by point shut down (one nontheless less vehement or long as their thing) and been told ‘Calm down!’ often followed by an implication that I would see they were right if I weren’t so emotional (because nigh-robotic = emotional).
This.
Same arguments made in the same tone, before and after revealing I was a woman get vastly different responses on that exact axis.
“Calm down” is the eternal signal of a douchebag who has well and truly bought the scam that “men are logical and women are emotional”.
I’m am so sorry, that is awful.
It’s also worth noting that one of those refers to emotions (“what you are feeling is wrong, please stop”) whereas the other refers to actions (“the way you are expressing your emotions is making me uncomfortable, please find another way”). One is infinitely more actionable than the other.
The correct response is not “you need to control your anger”, the correct response is “I realize that I did something wrong by provoking your anger and would like to take it back and correct it.”
A K A
“I’m sorry!”
Woman at the next table over: “I’ll have what she’s having.”
“There’s three women at the table, which one?”
“The small angry one.”
“Children nuggets it is.”
… They serve children nuggets?
Cannibalism is way worse than yelling, John, and you support them. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
“Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy a cup of lemonade if you buy a box of my delicious Girl Scout cookies. Do we have a deal?”
“Are they made from real Girl Scouts?
CHILDREN nuggets? Oh my goodness…
Jesus fucking Christ John you are an asshole to the ninth degree, not to mention one of the worst older brothers in existence. I dearly hope the other Brown siblings aren’t as much of a dismissive asshole as you.
Is that shading on Jonathan’s face supposed to be a 5 o’clock shadow?
Nah, the tinted visor of his Stormtrooper of God helmet covers the top half of his face, so he gets weird tan lines.
Anyone else get the feeling the plan was for John and “Josh” to get Joyce alone so she could hear from her siblings how toedad was doing the right thing? Between Joyce caring more about Becky than her fundie upbringing and Jocelyne not being anything like her parents and brother think, this was probably the only possible outcome of this meeting.
Aw man, now I’m imagining Ms. Brown as a little Christian housewife Emperor Palpatine.
Did Carol even know this was happening? Joyce stole the family car.
…okay, granted, they were awake at the time and cars aren’t exactly quiet, but still. You would think that if they were aware they would’ve called her themselves.
I think what Nemirthel is suggesting is that Carol decided that Joyce is already upset at her mom and has already shown she’s willing to stand up to her parents, so she’s not listening to ‘reason’ because her emotions are in the way.
So instead of trying to confront Joyce again she asked if John and Jocelyne could talk to her because she figured then Joyce wouldn’t be as defensive. Plus, John tried to get Joyce to come without Becky (to which Joyce responded that Becky is family), again because Becky being around must be interfering and turning her against the family.
(Carol did know, John asked if their parents had told Joyce about meeting him and Jocelyne for lunch).
Oh, and Joyce was screening her phone for calls from her mom, so Carol wouldn’t have been wrong if she decided Joyce would be more likely to listen to siblings instead.
Of course it was. It was also part of the plan to soft sell Joyce on their mother’s plan to get her to drop out of that awful secular college that’s turning her away from Jesus. They were there to give her the swindle and make it look like it was her decision in the end. They’d even pray over it together.
Two things fret me at this point – 1) Jocelyne looks actively sick about this whole situation, there’s going to be a major issue around her – probably soon; and 2) Now that Carol’s “Plan A” has failed, what horrible tactic is she going to try as a backup?
No subterfuge, just straight out removing her from College or if Joyce doesn’t play ball then stopping paying the bills
That’d be my guess, she seems like an ends justifies the means type
Yeah, and now I’m really worried that since John has said the same thing, that he’ll verify to his mother that “yes, she does need to leave that school it’s *changed* her” and with that extra confirmation Carol will go ahead with removing her from school. I really feel like we’re going to see Joyce fighting to stay at IU coming up soon, which sounds absolutely terrifying.
I think the original intent was just catching up with their sister without their parents around. Behaving differently around different social combinations is a thing, right? It can’t just be me. I mean, my base personality doesn’t change or anything, but some topics are taboo with my dad/stepmom that aren’t with my mom (I would say “and vice versa” but she and I can talk about almost anything lol), so I tend to bite my tongue more when it comes to them.
Annnyway, getting back to the comic, I was going to suggest that they wanted to see how the last few weeks/months had treated Joyce, but clearly john isn’t interested in his baby sister having learned that there are things in the world that anger her and that it’s OK to express that anger.
I’m really hoping joss shoots her a quick text offering to listen with an open heart, so she knows at least one of her sibs aren’t close-minded.
I’ve had it ringing in my head, every time he’s jerkier, the car conversation. ‘We’re foing for lunch. Mom told you about that, right?’ (on mobile, can’t get the page, but that’s at least 80% correct.)
Yep.
And that’s why coming along with Joyce was an awesome supportive selfless decision of Becky
If I had a eollar for everytime that feeling hit me, I’d have enough money to pay for all the stuff that got broken when I threw it.
Joyce has every right to be angry and upset but she also needs to talk about her anger unfortunately the people who are supposed to be there for her, her family, are too absorbed in themselves to care. Her mother is a self righteous witch, her father is too timid to speak up and voice his opinions, John is too ignorant and self absorbed in his life to really listen to what Joyce is saying and Jocelyne, bless her soul because I know she wants do right by Joyce, but she’s doesn’t want to draw attention to herself so she doesn’t speak up for her sister. It’s sad when you can’t rely on your family.
Not sure how differently Joyce herself would have reacted, though, if she hadn’t actually been through all this herself.
This is true. It just makes me angry that family can be the ones to hurt you. Everyone has a different experience but it still sucks for Joyce.
Screw you, John!
Why throw things when you can use a Toedad punching bag instead?
He’s literally the worst! Like, indefensible! Everyone in the comments who want to “wait and see” STOP. It’s clear at this point that he knows he’s wrong but just doesn’t give a shit. I never thought I’d see him walk out, as if HE should be offended when his sister a lost died. The worst part is that every time I want to write it off as, “Nah, Willis is playing this guy up for Drama, people aren’t this unreasonable.” one of you will come along and explain how something similar happened to you. And I can’t decide if that’s more saddening or infuriating.
*hug* Thank you for this.
*hugs back*
Seriously, many of us who were saying this a while ago could /feel it coming/ because we have had to learn to detect this to Survive.
The fact that a good half of the comments were “I don’t wanna judge too quickly, maybe it’s a misunderstanding” (in an arc titled “when god closes the door”)….. y’all maybe see how we felt a little like Joyce here, a little “you’re being too harsh and extreme and unreasonable”?
hugs, man. >:(
Spoiler: Under this very comment, people are still defending John as if he’s not ok with Sister-murder
Joyce should have hit him where it hurt. She should have called him a Fake Christian for turning his back on his family. There are a lot of things she could have said, but in the heat of the moment, I am not surprised she didn’t.
What would be the point? Pouring oil on the fire has never accomplished anything. If all you can do is insult someone, no matter how much they deserve it, you’re better off just walking away.
Yes and no. For someone stubborn that wouldn’t do anything. But when Joyce called out her parents for their mistreatment of Dorothy, citing that Jesus wouldn’t have wanted/supported mistreating others, Joyce’s dad reconsidered his stance. It doesn’t have to be petty if what you’re saying is accurate.
But that’s not what Just Me was suggesting. They were suggesting that Joyce should have called him a Fake Christian not in an attempt to invite him to reconsider his stance, but because it would “hit him where it hurt.” That would serve absolutely no purpose. If she started acting that way… well, that would make John entirely justified in walking away here.
Maybe to get his attention? Stop him from leaving and force him to talk to her? Long shot, but it does work sometimes.
Honestly, considering Joyce said she thought she was going to die, and John’s reaction was to walk away dismissing her, I don’t think she could have said anything to actually get his attention. He’s in a mode where he thinks of her as a hysterical woman and that nothing she has to say is valid.
Yeahhh, you’re not wrong.
Is anyone else really hoping the person she was texting is Ruth, so John can lose femurs? I mean, it is a long shot, with Ruth being Ruth, and having Billie and Mary issues, but come on.
Given what we’ve seen when we cut away to Ruth and Carla it seems unlikely Ruth is doing anything but lying in bed with the curtains closed and something over her eyes.
And eating racism cookies.
John is officially a douch!
Goddammit, John. I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you’re just a dick.
… yeah. I don’t think Jocelyn even wants to go with that assbutt. She knows she can’t say a single thing now.
And now I’m fucking angry too. Goddamnit Willis.
Here’s hoping Josh dies horribly in the next panel. Come on Davis, you can do it! Just tweak the next few upcoming strips! You know how satisfying it would be for everyone!
God, I hope not. Josh is Jocelyne’s… what’s the word? Official name?
Birth name.
Birth name? Presently-legal name?
Yeah, not sure. Would it be assigned name? We use assigned gender, so.
I believe people have been referring to Joshua as her dead name.
I actually wasn’t sure if that applied until she came out. Though I guess she is essentially out to us (through Ethan).
Phil, did you mean Jon? Or are you just bating the commenters?
(psst! you mean John, right?)
I’m not sure who Davis is, either, unless they’ve confused this with Garfield.
hissss
Yeaaahhh…I was really trying to have your back John…I actually legitimately was but nope. You had to piss it away. Oh well there’ll be more lost causes to try and fight.
She seems pretty reasonable to me, considering what she and her best friend went through.
Yeah, but you’re not a fundamentalist douchebag who’s invested in minimizing what happened to her and enforcing the ‘proper’ behaviour of a ‘good, godly woman’.
You know… I’m wondering if at some point in all this, Joyce is going to let it slip to her family about the sexual assault attempt. She purposefully didn’t tell them because she knew they’d take her out of college.
But at some point in all this, it may all be blowing up, and it will end up coming out.
That would be a mistake because her family would just assume that Joyces “outbursts” are all to do with that incident and nothing to do with her Mom and brother being completely hypocritical bigots
and then they’d take her out of college
They might even put the blame of that situation on joyce some how
“So you went to a *party*? Where there was *alcohol*? And un-Christian men?”
(and the CHRISTIAN man who assaulted her, but that is an irrelevant detail)
Yeah, because obviously she seduced him and is just lying about the rest. Theb she ASSAULTED him! So people wouldn’t find out! (/sarcasm, noted because holy shit there are some awful, though temporary, commenters sometimes)
All of this. A family that victim blames her about nearly being murdered will definitely not hesitate to victim blame her for nearly being raped. Especially since all of society is only too happy to help on the victim-blaming for that.
It’s not hard to imagine how their response would begin. “What were you doing going to a party? You know unwholesome things happen at parties.” If Joyce is lucky they won’t pull out the really big guns of victim blaming, like asking what she was wearing, or what she might have done to “lead him on.”
‘What were you wearing’ is disgusting garbage but I have to adnit that I giggled at the thought of her saying ‘a turtleneck.’
I’ve seen people argue that a woman in jeans and a t-shirt was dressed in a way that was “asking for it”, and flat out mean it. They’d probably argue the turtleneck must have been too tight without breaking their victim-blaming stride.
“You turned down the affections of a boy who invited you to play board games? Where have I gone wrong in showing you what’s right?”
“…and, a pastor’s son at that! Such a nice boy!”
Shouting always makes people look guilty. I still happily remember when I got my brother grounded by calmly lieing while he shouted the truth… I’m probably a horrible person.
Damn it, John.
Exactly.
All my my hope for him yesterday has gone straight out the window…
I’d say John is confirmed as a total pig, but pigs are cute and intelligent animals that actually make for good companions.
There’s no excuse for his behavior. The suggestion that he just doesn’t know what really happen doesn’t fly now, because if he actually gave a damn and was just misinformed, then he’d care about the emotional state she’s in instead of stomping off because she’s not acting pleasant.
I think the stomping off is more of an excuse. Joyce just dropped three facts: almost died, Becky kidnapped, family making excuses for it. They are indisputable. With John siding with the excuse-makers, the ONLY rebuttal he has is to criticize how Joyce is arguing rather than the argument itself, because regardless of the excuses, it’s pretty hard to argue facts. And they are hard facts to swallow. So he objects to her emotions and uses it as his out so he doesn’t have to think about it too carefully.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Similar to how Walky was in denial and dismissing Sal’s argument over their mom’s racism and favoritism, I think the only way John will face those facts is if he were witnessing it firsthand.
Pigs also happily eat people. I think it fits. >_>
Also, Panel 2 is where Joyce gets it for real, what we’ve talked about before, the whole “your life is worth less than my sense of self-righteousness” axis of hell that all of this follows nearly all of the time.
You want to know what’s a good example of a bad brother? Walking out on your younger sister when she’s finally unloading and opening up about being stressed out and deciding not to talk it out with her when you have the given opportunity. Just taking her out of school and not bringing it up again won’t solve shit especially since the problem that’s stressing her out didn’t come from school but from her own freaking family.
Way to be sympathetic, John. Christi is one lucky lady.
Since we’ve yet to see her, she may consider herself to be lucky.
Ohhhh, this fucking argument makes me see red. You can be calm about it because you have no skin in the game, you colossal jerkwad, you can afford to be all sanctimonious and “calm down”. And yeah, I am very well acquainted with the “I want to throw something but that would be actually violent and I’m better than that” response.
Poor Jocelyne, too. I can’t imagine how knotted up she must be over this one. I hope she gets screentime to talk it out soon.
All of this.
It’s easy to be “calm” and “reasonable” if you literally do not care about the humanity of the participants and have nothing to lose either way.
It’s a convenient philosophy for shit weasels who don’t want to honestly engage their own privilege or the active harm their ideologies cause people.
See also, why I flat-out refuse to discuss issues of bigotry with philosophers and philosophy majors. Nice of you to navel gaze about the philosophical theory of the ethics of protest (that always seems to rest on the conclusion that people bucking the status quo are wrong), jackass, but down here in the real world this stuff that is happening actually hurts my friends and family who have neither the time nor the emotional resources to devote to reading a 20,000 word essay about your navel gazing as you do that philosophy thing of “The more words I throw at it and the more arcane and dehumanizing language I use, the more right I am and if you can’t see it, it’s because you don’t understand Philosophy, not because I don’t understand the issues at play because not having all the facts is apparently irrelevant in philosophy.”
(I have had almost that exact argument used on me by more than one actual philosophy professors, so don’t “no true philosopher” about it to me. Self-identified philosophers are jackasses who are more concerned with feeling comfortable and correct in their ivory tower than actually understanding what’s going on. John would be great at that)
I can so identify with this.
I actually got a bit of a rep back in college for my refusal to treat devil’s advocacy of the status quo as a neutral stance.
But yeah, if one’s philosophical model can’t withstand the harsh reality of people’s actual lives, it wasn’t a good model to begin with.
I originally thought he was being a homophobic ass, but no, sexist ass it is.
Eh. little of both.
No need to be limiting, he can be both.
http://www.reactiongifs.com/good-2/
Don’t feel too sad. He most certainly would’ve been a homophobic ass if he’d been allowed to. You just didn’t count on Joyce stopping him before that happened.
Remember two days ago when we thought he was gay or in an interfaith marriage or something?
I mean maybe that’s still the case, but sheesh. You sure brought yourself down, John.
“Anger is an appropriate response to injustice.”
Here’s a testimony for you Brown family:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wKcHMJlE7OM
If this comment section has likes I would like this several times.
*had, apologies.
I see a lot of people call him a prick muffin and after a 3 day bender of watching Bojack Horseman i can only relate it to a pet name for a daughter or a euphemism for vagina.
John is a little bit right. Joyce has a lot to be upset about, and she is justified in those feelings and justified in wanting to express them. But there isn’t much point in making a public scene like that. Nor will vitriol sway any opinions. One must make the effort to be diplomatic if they want to debate something honestly.
No. John isn’t trying to debate. He’s not engaging in good faith, and he has no interest in a discussion. He just wanted to speak down to Becky and he started condescending and tone-policing when Joyce called him out on it.
And how is she supposed to get to work through her anger, and make a reasoned, diplomatic appeal, when her own family won’t listen and help her heal?
…but this isn’t a debate. The things Joyce are saying are objectively true and not up for discussion.
*Joyce IS saying
gfdi me
Nonsense. I mean, sure, Joyce maintains that Becky is quote-unquote “human” and that she quote-unquote “deserves to live”, but have we truly debated that in the civil emotionless regard of our robot overlords?
Who is to say what is right or wrong, who did or did not have a gun pointed at her face and fired and who is or isn’t being an incredible victim-blaming tone-policing pile of scum.
After all, debating people’s humanity and dismissing their lived experiences has never led to bad ends reinforcing bigotry and creating endless bad laws that leads to increased harassment and physical harm, right?
Bob save us from Debate Club escapees who think “everything is a debate” and that one’s life experiences can be dismissed if they aren’t “diplomatic” enough.
Yes however he is doing it the wrong way. Demanding instead of asking, and being unwilling to hear her out. He doesn’t want to hear from this broken Joyce he wants to hear from his perfect baby sister. And for that he is in the wrong. Rather than shun her anger he should be accepting of it but he should also be asking why and trying to find a solution to her anger, which is a symptom of her fear that all her beliefs she once held dear are wrong. This is not the way to deal with this situation from John or Joyce. Though in Joyce’s defense I find her reactions quite justifiable.
Someone goes through that, almost dies, realizes they have been complicit in hate alll their lives and that their own family is more concerned with preservation of the bigoted positions than even considering reality, the onus is NOT on them to adhere to some nebulous idea of respectable and civil debate.
Screw that.
Joyce is hurt. John willfully hurt her more. She reacted. The blame falls entirely on John for being hurtful, not on Joyce for defending herself against him.
When you intentionally provoke someone just so you can further upset and control them, you’re not the good guy, even if they’re the louder one.
John as a real life Internet Troll, confimed. ” Why are you reacting to my offensive, patronizing bullshit so strongly? U mad, sis?”
Would anyone still like to argue that John isn’t an asshole? I offer that now is the time to say so.
John’s a perfectly nice guy. The shape-shifting alien that took his place after the mission trip is a big jerk
That would be an amazing plot twist. All the mean characters in DoA aren’t human, they’re evil shape-shifting aliens.
Sorry we let that Faceless get away. We’ve been hunting it for weeks.
Judging by this comment section, more than one person. Incredible.
Victim-blaming. Victim-blaming never changes. (/Ron Perlman Voice)
way to not be emotionally supportive, john.
I don’t care what your belief system is, if someone points a gun at your sibling and you are not AT LEAST AS MAD, IF NOT MORE MAD ABOUT IT TGAB THEY ARE, you are fucked up.
or, you know more mad at the person with the gun than the person with the gun in the face… but that’s victim blaming for you.
Well, I mean theoretically, if, say, your sibling were breaking into someone’s house, and the owner caught them and pointed a gun at them…
yeah this highly hypothetical situation is as relevant to the situation at hand as Australian weather facts
I wonder if something like this is the reason John’s wife is “away overseas”.
Okay, throw everything I said yesterday out the window, John is an ass. Though I understand his concern he is expressing it in the completely worst way. Instead of trying to command her to settle down he could’ve politely asked her to calm down and discuss all the reasons shes so angry. While the events of the last few weeks have been the final blows to Joyce’s view of her family and worldview. Lets not forget the memories of the assault at the beginning of the semester, as well as her families reaction to Dorothy as well during parent weekend. The problem is nobody else in her family eally knows everything that has happened to her this semester. I was hoping John was just inadvertently being as ass but I hate this holier than thou attitude he’s displaying. I may be a believer myself but I realize that acting like some perfect human who has everything figured out is the wrong way to go, because I’m not and I don’t and i fuck up all the time. We all fuck up sometimes, that’s what makes us human. But
He does not have any concern about Joyce the person to begin with, so there’s nothing there to understand. He’s only concerned with how the family should be Perfect in the Eyes of God. It’s not about humans, all about the religion. He’s pretty much the same as Toedad in that regards.
If he had any concern about Joyce whatsoever, he would -not- f.ex. though of Joyce punching Toedad as more extreme than Toedad’s actions to begin with.
I find it really hard to not relate to John right now. I mean, his position is wrong, but his reaction is exactly what I do. I can’t do aggressive conflict, I can’t do yelling. Whenever I got mad at home, I would lose. So whenever I get in a disagreement, I always end up staying really calm and isolating myself emotionally. If John came from a household where getting angry only made them punish you worse for being wrong as opposed to making people listen to your point, getting up and leaving is a natural reaction.
John isn’t leaving because he can’t handle noisy conflict. He’s leaving because he has literally no other way to preserve his superiority in the face of Joyce’s indisputable truth than by deflecting attention to her tone and condescending to her because of it.
Exactly. John would’ve left even if Joyce had just explained her position calmly and rationally. He is not leaving because of Joyces tone, but because he refuses to tolerate her not sharing his worldview anymore.
The correct response in this situation is “I’m sorry!” and waiting for Joyce to yell herself out.
You either aren’t reading the tone here well or are an asshole.
“Sure, your best friend was kidnapped and you almost died, but you’re RAISING YOUR VOICE IN A PUBLIC PLACE YOUNG LADY AND THAT’S JUST INEXCUSABLE! I will now take my leave and bid you good day!”
“Josh” is irritatingly spineless. All things considered, that should probably have been expected. But it it only became irritating with firsthand experience.
She rode here with John and may not have a ride home if she pisses him off.
Joyce does have a car.
I’m hoping Joss thinks of that. Whether sje says she’s staying with Joyce or just ‘no, been a while since I was here, I wanna walk around town. I’ll get myself home later.’
(I also don’t think she’s spineless. She already tried to diffuse the situation a couple times. Self preservation matters, not to mention that John is giving her a taste of what will happen if she comes out)
I wouldn’t call her spineless considering that she’s a victim in this too and not just a bystander? She has essentially everything to lose from her family as well.
I… really, really want to just skip to the part where everyone either figures out they’re being utter dicks and fixes it, or gets cast aside by those who do figure it out. But… reading this is also really, really painful. Hitting way close to home… I’m not really sure I can keep reading without it basically just being a daily update to my depression…
No one will blame you for taking a break.
You are definitely not alone in this. Lots of people are here in doses that they have chosen carefully for themselves, like weekly or monthly when they want an update that might hit them so hard in the feels.
If you ever prefer to take a break, now or in the future, for your own happiness, it’s cool and we’ll still be here when you get back. <3
It’s an unfortunate part of our world that people tend to equate being emotional to being unreasonable.
I’m sure no one has really told this to you in your life, so I guess I’ll say this: it’s okay to feel like crap sometimes. Hell, if your life sucks enough, it’s okay to feel like crap a lot. Being sad, or angry, or afraid, are all perfectly reasonable things to feel under the right circumstances. Anyone who tries to delegitimize your feelings, who tries to tell you to calm down without trying to understand why you’re feeling the way you feel, isn’t interested in helping you deal with your problems; instead, they just want you to stop making their life more inconvenient.
That being said, it’s okay if the comic is hitting a bit too close to home. Davis is exceptionally skilled at hitting people right in the feels, and if you’re already in a vulnerable emotional state, this sort of thing might not help. Then again, I personally find it helps to know there’s someone out there who’s dealt with the same shit I have, so different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
Thank you guys
Damn it. Can’t win all of them over. Putting the Browns along a spectrum for acceptance, from Joss to Carol, with Hank in the middle, I was hoping for between Joss and Hank, not within throwing distance of Carol.
Every day (in universe), Joyce grows. But she’s a main character. But the Browns? Exist to challenge and contrast her. In the end, she’ll be a better person for this.
Drama tag? Prepulled. Looking to feel good? Go somewhere else. Looking to feel, and gain insight to not only the human condition, but yourself? Pull up a chair. I do not damn you, Willis. I thank you, for putting a piece of yourself into this comic. This comic lives because of your soul, and the growth and pains you have felt and fought your life.
I keep forgetting their last name, so when I see it, I think of the Cleveland Browns. As far as acceptance goes, I think they get points for dumping Johnny Manziel and giving Robert Griffin another chance.
And there it is … that predictable reaction I’ve been waiting to see for the last two panels. Any response other than Joyce knuckling down and quietly returning to the fold was going to be an unacceptable response for John.
He had no intention of actually talking to Joyce from the moment she told him that Becky would also be present. This entire meeting has confirmed for him that Joyce needs an intervention before she’s completely lost to Satan’s Lies(tm). Their mother will be so pleased to learn that her judgement was righteous, and now she can justify her own extreme steps to “save” Joyce.
What is John’s deal? I mean WTF? He seems to act like this is over someone getting dumped or something petty, what joyce and becky went through was not petty it was a big crazy wtf situation that is affecting everyone but Joyce’s family, they act like its nothing!
Yes but you see all that drama could have been avoided if Joyce had done the reasonable Christian thing and turned Becky over to her father. [/sarcasm]
Yeah, but try to get him to acknowledge that.
His culture works with one hard and fast rule of morality. Those within are good. That which contradicts the party line is evil.
If he’s to accept that someone, motivated from his culture’s party line, could do evil, he’d have to doubt that single hard and fast rule of tribal goodness. Just getting Joyce to do that has months in the comic.
Yeah, I think I’ll take back my defending of John. He ain’t trying to be reasonable, he’s being kind of a dick.
You gave him the benefit of doubt, he used it in a…. less than stellar way.
“You guys are being assholes and acting as if what happened to my friend and I mean nothing.”
“I’m not taking part in this conversation, good bye sis.”
He pretty much proved her point by just DROPPING the discussion and WALKING AWAY. Yet again, he is disregarding what happened to her. And of course we’ve got some good old fashioned ‘I don’t like what you’re becoming, that college is changing you’. I don’t doubt that John is sincerely ‘worried’ about Joyce. But he’s being an asshole. A biiiiiig asshole.
See also: every person that says someone needs to be “more logical” or “more rational”.
To be fair, they usually do. But John is not being either of those things. And if he is going to claim that this is Becky’s own fault for being a lesbian, based on the evidence of a book he genuinely believes was created from divine magic, he can’t really claim the intellectual high ground.
Also, you can be logical and still not be a condescending douchebag to someone you know is going through emotional trauma, and in all likelihood PTSD.
Damn. Another one of my few hopes regarding the rest of Joyce’s family crushed. Also, another jerk character that looks eerily like a family member. With the same name this time too…
My father was Wiccan, not Christian, but hoo boy am I flashing back to his condescending patriarchal bullshit with John.
Reminds me of that one comic ( http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/578/682/575.jpg ) where an “SJW” is “being unreasonable” towards Adolf Hitler, who is clearly the more rational of the two.
This is my new favorite auto-correct.
SJW!
SJWSJWSJW
Social Justice Warrior
Ess Jay Double-Yu
SJW
(in that last one, the “W” stands for wizard)
That autocorrect is bongo-ing!
I like how “college” changed her for the worse and not tramatic ordeal caused by a person from her home town. Too much diversity is bad because someone may shoot you to “recenter” you.
Yeah, at this point ToeDad is basically going… “um, remember me? Looks like a toe, Gun to the face? Give me some credit here.”
John: “You were only a symptom of a deeper change that had to do with going to college.”
Carol: “You poor man, one must understand what you have been going through.”
John’s probably heard many a tale of a good Christian (the kind that he would recognize as a Christian, anyway) going off to College only to come back having doubted the obvious truth of things like the literal 6 day Creation and even considering that Christianity, itself, might not be the truest of the true (assuming they even acknowledge that there’s a difference).
He likely also knows that trauma, like someone pointing a gun at you, is *supposed* to bring someone closer to God, like how that liberal blogger in God’s Not Dead converted when she found out she had cancer.
Therefore, obviously, the problem is College, not any kind of trauma. That’s not according to script at all.
Hes an insincere weasel, dont give him any credit.
He was sent here to spy on Joyce, gain her confidence and use it against her.
John is moms spy and she wants reasons to pull Joyce out of college.
John has screwed up and telegraphed this fact. He is just more victim-blaming.
And he is threatening Joyce, and then saying your negative reaction justifies why I set this lunch up to betray You.
Okay, wow.
Even after yesterday’s strip I was open to the possibility that he might still be a surprise not so bad guy after all. But this? …wow.
Wow, that encounter dripped with patriarchy . . .
patriarchy – making everything worse since forever. Now with extra John.
Patriarchy! For when you absolutely MUST ignore a woman’s opinion over night!
But don’t take it from us, listen to our endorsements:
John from La Porte: Patriarchy allowed me to dismiss my sister’s experiences of nearly being murdered from a member of our church while still pretending to be the good guy. Thanks, Patriarchy!
Yes, Patriarchy for all your “being an ass” needs. Now in new victim-blaming favor!
None of that had anything to do with that…
I am reading your comment in Johns passive-aggressive headvoice.
John follows the patriarchal script of how an older brother is supposed to behave against a younger sister when she is not following the script of how SHE is supposed to behave, complete with well documented techniques for belittling and diminishing.
And that’s the thing – John behaves like he does because he is EXPECTED to do that. He has been trained and rewarded his entire life to play the role of the Big Brother and Rational Man Who Can Put Irrational Women In Line when Needed.
When he after just a few lines of dialoge realised he was out of his depth (he never got around to say anything USEFUL about becky’s situation, did he?) he stopped trying to advice and feel back to tone policing. That is basically the prime directive of being a man in a patriarchy – make sure every discussion is on Your Terms. If you can’t do that, change the discussion to something that you CAN force to be on your terms.
Oh boy howdy, I get this sort of tone-policing from my own parents and they’re not even awful fundies or anything, in fact they’re quite cool. I guess this sort of thing (argue about things calmly, if you get emotional you are not being rational) is very VERY culturally ingrained.
If anybody here gets the chance, read Descartes’ Error, it’s a book in which a neurobiologist argues that this idea that detaching emotion from an idea makes it more “pure” or more rational is a fallacy. I guess this sort of thing borders of the philosophical (what is a true rational, empirical idea?) but it’s interesting to think about why our society decided that emotions are irrational.
well in all honesty rationality is about seperating bias from understanding, and emotional bias is a big factor in that, if you are strongly emotionaly in support of one argument, you probably won’t be able to deal with differing perspectives that might under other circumstances create a cleared understanding… however it is also biased to dismiss an arguement because of the emotional state of another person, just because they are emotional doesn’t mean they don’t understand the arguments.
More importantly, sometimes people are emotional for a very good reason. And it’s helpful to try to understand that emotion, to try and grasp why they’re so emotional, than to dismiss it as a temper tantrum.
very true, though yours is more centered on the topic at hand, where as i was just spouting stuff off lol
The reason someone is emotional might very well be more important then whether their argument is supported, if someones mental health is at stake, i would say that people should try to understand their emotions even if they disagree with their points. I would say this comic really portrays a brother who needs to be more of a brother and less of an authority figure or whatever he is trying to be. he needs to understand her regardless of whether he agrees with her.
This.
When someone has suffered inequity, injustice, or wrongdoing, it is downright inhuman to expect them to be without emotion or view them as less trustworthy, valid, or unbiased because of it.
In fact, when we favor the least emotional in the room, we frequently favor the most privileged with the least skin in the game, and thus the most likely to rule unfairly in favor of their own privilege.
In a discussion on race, the racist who reveals in an unjust state of affairs will often be the least “emotional”. Treating them as impartial is how we get to states of affair like now where endless streams of unarmed men are gunned down by cops and white guys who dream of being cops with no consequences or signs of stopping.
Valuing the hurt of those directly affected, empathizing and hearing their pain for the first time is how things change and improve for the better.
And we see it here. Joyce is not the one who is refusing to see the perspective of her brother. Oh so logical John is.
Not a thing I would recommend anyone ever do as an adult because adult consequences are at hing, but once when I was a teenager, I smacked someone in the face for pulling that shit at me (he’d been sexually harassing me and groping me on a regular basis with increasing frequency and severity for months and finally I blew up at him whereupon he started doing the you’re emotional therefore wrong bullshit and at the time I had serious anger management issues so I hit him), and when he bellowed at me for it, I asked him why he couldn’t discuss the fact that I hit him in a “calm” and “reasonable” manner, informed him that the next time his hand touched my ass, I’d break it, and left.
And because sexism in schools is a thing, I got suspended for hitting him and a lecture on “appropriate” attire for school even though I was following the dress code and maybe was a bit more conservative than the dress code required, and he didn’t even get a warning for groping me or sexually harassing me.
After trying to get the school to do something about him for months failed, hitting him and then threatening to break his hand the next time he touched me worked, and he never groped me again. Story of my childhood – authorities refuse to do anything until I engage in violence to get out of an unbearable situation which I’d exhausted all non-violent avenues to attempt resolution for, I get punished for violence and am told to trust the authorities to do their jobs.
Yeah, authorities at most schools rarely intervene for that type of bullshit, but are fast to respond when the victim fights back. It’s really gross and for what it’s worth I’m proud of childhood you for putting that sexual assaulting little weasel in his place.
sounds like a good read! i’ve always been puzzled by the tendency of some societies to create a dichotomy of “emotion” and “reason”, wherein the two are mutually exclusive. i mean, it’s never been that clear for me when it comes to separating emotions from thoughts… and i’m a deeply emotional person, so if i have a thought, it’s probably going to carry with it emotion.
It’s gendered as an excuse to dismiss the openings of women. The stereotype goes that men are rational and women are emotional, so whatever a woman says, in whatever tone, can be dismissed as emotional, whereas whatever a man says, in whatever tone, can be heralded as rational even if it is awash in emotions and sputtering nonsense.
It’s also a way to minimize the voices of those most affected by oppression. Either discuss your injustice civilly with no emotion (thus revealing its no big deal and there’s no real hurt) or betray your “bias” and inability to be “reasonable”.
An excuse for continuing the status quo and ignoring that emotions are a key part of not only our humanity, but our ability to reason.
My Mom does this because bad experiences taught her that someone yelling at them => spousal abuse. So the dumb version of this that filters into my life is “Mom is a jerk about shit (imagine lie John, only I have to deal with her all the damn time) until I can’t stand it and scream at her. Then she says I’m acting like an abuser.”
My parents now regret sending me to college, because separating from me made mom literally suicidal.
So much fucking bullshit.
Gosh, that sounds truly shitty, I’m sorry. I hope the situation gets better for you and your mother!
oooff, feel this too hard. All the less-shitty-vibes being directed your way right now.
John acts like a comment section troll who climbed up into the comic. Let’s see if he comes back after just saying that he’s not coming back.
“This conversation has become uncivil, so I’m ending it now. But first I’m going to say that everything about you is wrong and needs to change.”
Oh my Bob, he is, he is.
He just needs to yell at Becky for wasting $20 on a haircut and he’ll fully fit the mold.
And it just occured to me that his full name is John Brown and he is some kind of bizarro mirror version of the real thing.
(In fact, from now on I’ll be calling him Bizarro John Brown. You have to say the whole thing, like A Tribe Called Quest or The Self-Styled Scourge of the Underworld.)
Speaking of John Brown…
http://i.imgur.com/ryV4dKf.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/5gPQSZ4.jpg
Spotted the time traveler!
THERE YOU ARE! YOU’VE EVADED THE LAW TOO LONG, YOU DEPRAVED PERVERTER OF CAUSALITY!
I’m gonna be that guy… I could totally avoid being that guy… but I think I should…
This is only one conversation… don’t get me wrong I’m not saying he’s right to do this… I have been in the exact situation joyce is in and I know it sucks because you literally can’t reason with someone because they refuse to listen to you when your the slightest bit emotional and even when you calm down, they still don’t believe you untill you drop the discussion entirely… T_T
but when I have been in those situations it wasn’t with a bad person, it was usually with someone who either doesen’t want to deal with drama, or honestly believed themselves to be in the right regardless of my emotional state. basically he would disagree with her either way, but her being angry makes him feel uncomfortable… yes he is a jerk about it… (I would say dick but I learned the hard way not to use gendered insults around here) but in situations where the subject matter isn’t controversial, and where there is no excess drama he MIGHT (emphasis on the might) not come off as a total asshat…
I do think he’s a jerk in this situation, but I have only a first impression to go on and considering the religious beliefs his family was taught and the controversial subject matter, its not suprising how he reacted.
also yes I’m sure willis will make it more obvious that John is always a jerk, and has always been one making all my points invalid… gotta push that narrative, just figured I’d sortta get my thoughts out while i can…
I see your point, but there’s a pretty big difference between “Joyce, I see you’re angry, but let’s all just calm down and talk about this, OK?” and “Okay, you’re angry and therefore totally irrational, I’m going to totally blow you off.” Plus, that last little aside there about Joyce needing to be ‘recentered’ really seals it for me- the implication that her anger has to be something that COLLEGE did to her, that she can’t POSSIBLY have legitimate, rational expressions of anger, just because it doesn’t conform to his image of a sweet, Christian little sister… ugh.
yeah dismissal of an argument on a factor other then the arguement itself is irrational and he defiantly needs to realize that his attitude here is just as bad if not worse then Joyce’s. I think its just to easy for some people to not realize how irrational they are when they can project that onto whoever they are talking to instead.
I think your error is in seeing John as sincere. i think your interpration of Johns final line is the impression he is trying to giving.
He got into this trouble by victim-blaming and then tone-policing after it angered Joyce.
Thats exactly whats happening here, again.
Whats actually happening is He is threatening Joyce.
and then he is Blaming Joyce for his threats.
He’s screwed up though. This is John being emotional and hiding it.
Hes basically admitted this whole meeting was a ruse, a setup their mother to try to gather evidence to convince their father to pull Joyce from college.
He was spying on her, and now hes just told Joyce whats he is going to report.
Okay, but the point is that in 100% of the situations we have seen him in, he’s come off a total waste of carbon. Until that stops being true, people are going to be a wee tad pissed at him.
true, I think he is trying to be polite but is pretty much a (is douche gendered…?) jerk so far. I don’t really see Willis making him much more sympathetic unless the thus far unshown wife thing turns out to mean anything but at least we can compare his level of jerkyness to the likes of Mary and Ross to at least see that it’s sorta on a spectrum, I just really hope he learns from this when Joyce finally gets it through his thick head that her life was threatened by Ross and his dismissal of it is hurting her.
I’m going to agree with Doctor Smart here.
John hasn’t raised his voice, or gotten even slightly sharp with Joyce. 100% of the time we’ve seen him, he has been calm. He’s been a jerk in maybe half of the strips we’ve seen him. We have significantly more evidence that he is an emotional pacifist and a non-confrontational kind of Christian than anything else.
Tone policing and ad-hominem by emotion are a tricky subject. Nothing Joyce is saying is incorrect, but I’m pretty sure that nobody likes dealing with angry people who are barely containing violence. I am a straight white male, who is not really normally a target of tone-policing, but given that I’m 6’3″, if I get angry, dealing with that is all that people are concerned about until I am no longer angry, regardless with what I have to say.
Fundamentally, John’s extremely level-headed sister (who was previously quite like him, I’ll bet) suddenly went from trying to order off the children’s menu to shouting at him. He is definitely clueless and biased enough that he didn’t understand why she was so angry, but honestly, I don’t fault him for being confused by a completely new personality in his sister, nor for removing himself from a hostile situation.
He’s a bigot, definitely. THAT makes him a dick. Not because he’s confused about his sister’s change in personality. Not because he isn’t used to, and doesn’t seem like he can handle, a very angry person. Not because he removed himself from a hostile situation.
Those are all reasonable actions, separate from his character, and I hope you wouldn’t hold any of the above against someone who is your ally instead of your enemy. Don’t let your (entirely justified) reasons for disliking John make the rest of his actions suspect by association.
What gets me is, even if he genuinely is just weirded out by Joyce suddenly getting incredibly angry (I don’t think that’s the only issue here, but just for the sake of argument)…why is his reaction to be condescending, dismissive, and rude? I mean when I make someone justifiably angry, my first reaction is to figure out what I did wrong and make amends.
And honestly, I don’t get this “but he might have good traits too!” argument people are pulling. Okay, sure? No one thinks he’s Snidely Whiplash. But right now he’s being a grade A jerkface, so people dislike him.
Btw, a 6’3″ male getting angry is way more dangerous than a small teenage girl getting angry, especially when she’s directing it at the former.
Wait, what? I don’t think he has good traits too. The best possible trait he might have is that HE isn’t going to get angry.
He’s condescending because it’s his little sister (gender doesn’t matter, my little brother can confirm), he’s dismissive because he’s disengaging and in shock, and he’s not really that rude. Clueless, insensitive, but not really rude.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that because he’s worse than you, THAT alone makes him a bad person. Besides, you inserted that “justifiably”, and I think it’s pretty clear that John doesn’t think it’s justified.
He is not a good character, but I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to jump on the hate-band-wagon. I dislike him exactly in proportion to his portrayed faults, rather than painting every single aspect of his character in the worst possible light.
In the highly unlikely event I did hurt someone, while it would be worse than if a woman did the same, either way significant physical pain could be inflicted on the victim. If it’s acceptable to end discussion until I’m calm, then it’s acceptable to do the same for Joyce. I’ve never punched anyone in my life – Joyce punched a man out days ago, and was talking about earlier in the same conversation.
Don’t you dare imply that men getting physically abused by women isn’t a problem, or that men should be expected to engage in risky situations that women don’t.
…I wasn’t planning on it? I’ll thank you not to put words in my mouth. I said in the occasion that a large man gets angry at a smaller woman (thinking John and Joyce), it is typically more dangerous than the other way around. In the example you’re using of Joyce punching a guy out, he was still the much more dangerous party, what with him having a GUN and all. Which she was making clear. So…the implication that John had reason to be scared she’d do the same to him is frankly ridiculous.
Ugh. Implicitly, you just did.
How do you define “dangerous”? Do you think that an angry woman is incapable of seriously injuring what appears to be a rather slight man? Joyce now has a record for successfully violent acts, so I’d say that *discounting* motivations, she is dangerous if she wants to be.
You are dismissing her capacity for violence because she is female – that makes her weaker, not ineffectual.
Is there a minimum danger threshold at which it stops being acceptable to fear for your wellbeing? Can you be 100% sure that the line is the same for everyone, and must always fall between me and Joyce?
If you think that I need to be calmed down, but Joyce does not, then you are implicitly endorsing sexist ideologies, minimizing the issue of female-on-male domestic abuse, and honestly just doing a poor job of applying the same judgement criteria in the two cases.
Now, that was all ignoring motive. You want to talk motive? From John’s small-minded perspective, his normally very calm sister has become angry enough that her eyes changed color, currently has a cast because she punched out a friend of the family, and appears to be very angry with him personally.
Now, John not realizing that the above is an incomplete description of events is on him. He clearly did not think through what Joyce just said to him, or is possibly one of those Christian pacifists who wants you to just turn the other cheek, and the idea of violence and anger is abhorrent on a deontological level, regardless of circumstances.
But I digress – setting aside your personal distaste for John, can you honestly not see why he might be concerned for his own well-being? At all?
If you honestly don’t, I think you are not sufficiently detached from either your personal opinions on John, or from the traditional gender role of men as brave and stoic.
I…what? I don’t even know where to start with this.
Where are you getting that John is in any way concerned for his personal well-being? He’s not displaying any flavor of concern or fear or anything like that, and is in fact continuing to antagonize her. No fearful body language, nothing. Frankly it looks like you’re just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, because aside from punching a guy who (again) had just tried to shoot her and her best friend, there is no indication of violence from Joyce whatsoever.
And calling me sexist and minimizing abuse for saying that as a rule, men are more dangerous to women than women are to men? Fucking laughable. I can’t even engage with you properly, this is just…what?
all of this
John hasn’t shown much reaction to anything, so his lack of reaction doesn’t count as much evidence for me.
Honestly, that’s not even the issue. He is removing himself from a situation with an angry person. See the other people below who were saying that Joyce is not level-headed and has been violent previously.
I want to make it clear: I do not like John as a person. I would not anything like him if I was in that situation. I think that his motivations stink, his actions stink,, his reactions stink. None of that changes the fact that he is performing a de-escalatory act, and given what we know of him, it’s probably the best we can expect.
By all means, give him shit for being unwilling to listen to Joyce, but don’t give him shit for leaving.
It’s not because you said men were more dangerous than women. I agree with that statement. It’s because you used that as justification for why Joyce wasn’t a threat to John. Two parties can be mutually threatening – Joyce can be a danger to John even as John is a larger danger to Joyce, if both were fighting at peak physical capacity.
It’s sexist because your immediate reaction to “women can be dangerous too” (when a woman appears to be the more dangerous of the two) was to immediately downplay and deny the danger. Women are allowed to get upset about sexism for far less, and are generally right to.
“Ugh. Implicitly, you just did.”
No. No, Shiro did not do that at all. What they said is that a big person has a huge advantage over a small person when it comes to physical abuse, and that per definition, this is more dangerous. This is also known as the reason that all combat sports has different weight classes. Yes, Shiro also used male and female, because the tendencies are that males are bigger.
The rest of your post is pretty much just also what Shiro said: An attempt to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. Anything to make John not look like the complete asshole that he actually is, eh?
And no, Joyce does not need to be calmed down. She is completely in the right for getting upset at her shithead brother. You are being upset that we won’t let your excuses on behalf of said shithead brother fly. Completely different scenarios.
And the women in the middle east have it far worse than any feminist in America, but that doesn’t stop that from being a shitty argument, does it?
You and Shiro are using the comparative danger of an equally violent man and woman to mask the actual discussion about the absolute danger of an angry woman with a precedent for violence, and a calmer man, who, to the best of our knowledge, does not.
“Anything to make John not look like the complete asshole that he actually is, eh?”
Well gee, thanks. Glad to know the ad-hominem brigade showed up. I don’t like John. I don’t enjoy defending him. But I don’t like this lynch mob philosophy either. I’m not saying he has good traits – pacifism is generally holier-art-thou, but his actions thus far have been limited to poor tact, a lack of empathy, and an unwillingness to stay in what was (regardless of who was in the right) a hostile situation.
Maybe all of those traits remind you all of people who have umpteen other horrible flaws. Maybe you’re right – I expect you are – but the flaws John has been shown to have don’t seem to me to be proportional to the level of vitriol he’s been receiving.
I’m disappointed that my difference in opinion naturally means that I am a John-supporter, and that I am part of the problem, and umpteen other things. My arguments have been straw-manned, distorted, ignored, and just generally shat upon from height because I have the audacity to urge for a more moderate (but certainly not favorable!) opinion.
I am sorry that so many of you have been dealt with so unfavorably in life that your perceptions of the world are this narrowed and hardened. Perhaps I’m just naive.
Obviously, this is not a kind comments section for dissenting voices and conscientious objectors. I’ll try to remember that. Echo on, my wonderful tumblr chamber.
As an aside, the “he might have good traits too” counter is completely irrelevant and distracts from what the character is doing now, which is, as you said, being a grade A jerkface. I suppose it gets used because those people feel like John is a relatable character. Nobody likes when a relatable character gets criticized.
Sorry Shiro,
but you are wrong here
I DO THINK he’s Snidely Whiplash.
My new nickname for him is Snidely Whipjohn. So thanks
Stop looking for ways to excuse bad behavior and pretend it is good behavior. John did not merely leave a hostile situation. He deliberately tried to shame her for being upset. He showed a complete lack of compassion and empathy for his sister who had been through a traumatic experience. He showed a complete lack of empathy for the sister’s friend who went through a whole lot more.
Joyce was doing nothing more than yelling. John did not show the slightest sign of being afraid of her. He was not leaving a hostile situation. He was using Joyce’s anger as an excuse to not actually deal with the shitty things he was doing.
I do not understand this desire to sugarcoat what happened as a way to defend someone. The type of spin you are putting on this is the type that politicians use. It’s complete and utter bullshit.
I’ll go one further and say that John intentionally created the hostile situation once he realized Joyce was not going to demurely bow her head like a good little doll for Jesus.
From the moment Joyce insisted on Becky coming, John has been antagonizing her. Intentionally. He wanted her to blow up at him so he could guilt her about her emotions and seem to take the high road. It’s an emotional abuser’s playbook, through and through.
You are wrong, because your premises are wrong.
Not Emotional Pacifist. Toxic Passive-Aggressive Douchbag.
Joyce was NOT his “level-headed sister” . ( That would actually be Joycelyn. )
Nowhere has Joyce EVER shied away from a fight, or her beliefs. Even when they were horrible.
Johns “level headed sister” wakes people early in the morning, without consent; She insticntively smashed a glass on a would-be rapists face.
( Highly appropriate but more reactive than reasoned out ) .
She punched her first date in the face for merely looking at the waitress — the first weekend of school. Not level-headed.
Wait, You just used Joyce as being unstable in your later comment.
Thats contradictory.
You cant use Joyce’s former supposed stability and her instability to both justify John assholishness. Those are literally opposites. They both cant be true. Thats not just moving-the-goalposts fallacy. Thats claiming both opposite goalposts to justify an argument.
And that later part about ‘If you disagree me and dont side with a threatening douchebag in comic, you are justfying all abusers IRL when they are female’is toxic and totally obnoxious. You are domestic-violence washing your opinions.
If you like Snidely WhipJohn just be a man and own up to it.
You are assumign Johns after-the-fact justifcations are sincere, when the author has given reasons to think otherwise.
John is actually confessing to Joyce and threatening her.
He had this conclusion BEFOREHAND. His mom gave it to him.
John was sent to betray Joyce. Hes a Judas.
The thing is that he doesn’t have to be the jerk. I don’t mean he doesn’t have to do all of this. I mean he doesn’t have to be an evil person in order to do this, in order to do this evil.
That’s the nature of this strain of Christianity.
That’s why the colleges that promise your child will come out with exactly the same beliefs that they went in with. That’s why the view of moral purity as that of never interacting with the wrong people. That’s why the push to keep children protected from the outside world rather than teaching them to interact with it. We generally call it “purity culture” when we’re talking about this culture’s treatment of sexuality, but it’s there throughout.
He doesn’t have to be evil. He’s just been made into the hand of it, because, even if he can imagine that morality can work any other way, he’d have to pay so much, both socially and in terms of his own identity, to do so.
Fuck you, John.
Here’s a question would Joyce’s mom still be defending Ross if he did shoot Joyce ? I want this question to be answered.
I seriously wonder that too. Or if she had become aware of the situation during the events rather than afterwards, when Joyce was not in any risk any longer.
…I’m not convinced I would like the answer to those questions.
She would blame Becky. In doing so, yes, she would defend Ross, or at least excusing him, because that way her worldview isn’t shattered.
Nah come one, of course she wouldn’t blame the victim of a shooting fo…
She would, wouldn’t she?
Yeah…
…sorry, need to find something relatively cheap that I am legally allowed to throw.
The last thing to do to calm someone down is to say they need to calm down. Always backfires. You being calm gives you the moral high ground? Nope, makes you an aggravating douchenuzzle.
Of course we don’t know yet where this is going, but John’s behaviour is low and condescending and avoiding any responsibility.
John’s behaviour looks the same as so many bigots do, calmy speaking out their bigotry and righteously thinking they are right, because others get angry about it.
Yeah, wasn’t this the entire point of the “Dead Parrot” sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus? The guy who looks reasonable, the store owner, is either lying through his teeth or completely bonkers, while the guy who is flipping his lid, the customer, is the one who is actually reasonable.
Because remember kids, sometimes screaming your head off is the rational response to your situation.
That, and to lampoon the ridiculous number of euphemisms for death the English language possesses.
Eh, that’s true for most languages, I think. Death and sex tend to be the two biggest sources of euphemisms, although the latter category can fluctuate in size depending on whether you include things related to, say, menstruation or menopause.
And a surprisingly large overlap…
“I died three times tonight” said the girl with a smile that would might be surprising out of context.
La petit morte!
And it gets even more confusing if this is the woman saying it.
I am going to steal that last sentence and make it my Skype status or something.
John is a selfish jerk, one of those hateful “dick-taters” who does not want to be bothered with anybody’s feelings, no matter how justified. Walking out on Joyce and not even bothering to understand what happened and how much it hurt both her and Becky is totally typical for this kind of controlling narcissist. My family did this all the time and then I married a man who did the same thing. Finally I woke up to what was happening and I decided to leave. I thought it would be painful, but I immediately felt so much better.
I am afraid the Browns are going to pull Joyce out of school and try to fix her, stuff her back into the bottle they kept her in. It won’t work.
I hope Joss will reach out to Joyce and Becky, but she may be too scared to do so.
Oh, it’s far worse than that. His entire culture is set in that kind of egotism. He doesn’t know how to interact with the possibility that his own culture has done anything wrong.
I’m not going to go so far as to say that John is as much of a victim as anybody else in this scenario. He’s demonstrably not. But, he is a victim and doesn’t know that he’s sacrificing his relationship with a close family friend, right now his sister, and, unbeknownst to him, another sibling on an altar of his culture’s Orwellian control.
This isn’t to make you sympathize with him or forgive him. That same culture that has made him the victim is one that he is currently supporting. At least as much as he is victim, he is villain in this. For all that there is a boot on a head for eternity, his head being one of the heads under the boot doesn’t stop him from putting his foot in the boot on someone else’s head.
But, if we’re going to hate him, let’s hate him for exactly the right reasons.
And now the continuation of Jocelyne’s badass demon fighting adventures. (which will no be written in novel format, as writing in script like that is very annoying)
“five bullets left”Jocelyne thought, “hopefully Becky can take care of Joyce, I have a job to get to.” She walked for a little while, before coming across a small brick house, a small garden with tomatoes was at the front and a windmill spun in the wind. She walked up and knocked on the door. After a few seconds a little old lady entered, she was small, and wore a cloth dress and bonnet.
“Hello?” Inquired the little old lady
“You requested my services?” Replied Jocelyne.
“Oh yes you must be the exorcist!, Come in Come in!” The little old lady mentioned inside, Jocelyne mentioned thanks and looked around the house, filled with old pictures and flowery wallpaper. It had a certain smell, like dust mixed with heavy perfume.
“So….” Jocelyne asked, “when did you start having trouble?”
“It was about a year ago, some time after my husbands death”, the lady explained. “I began hearing noises and swore objects were moving around, at first I thought I was just getting old, but last month a wailing gust of wind came through, and I could swear I heard my husbands voice in it.” Jocelyne stared looking around the room, she kneeled by a large window, and ran her hand on the frame. “What are you doing?” the lady asked.
“Looking for traces of ectoplasm, if you do have a ghost, he would have left traces” Jocelyne explained. “Wait? Why would your husband haunt you? Did you guys not get along”
“Oh no, we got along perfectly well, he was a sweet man” the lady replied.
“Then why would he….” A large gust of wind blew through the room nearly knocking them both over.
“Did you have any enemies?!” Jocelyne yelled over the wind.
“Well there is old man Johnson, but he died somewhere last year, he always did want this old place, never got it though!” The lady said.
Jocelyne grimaced, this could be harder then she thought.
“I get it now” She said, pulling her gun out of her coat, “Your husband wasn’t trying to hurt you, he was trying to protect you!”
To be continued next strip…
General McPentagon: *Peeks up over bunker edge* “No boom?”
Joyce: *Throws crumpled up menu, hits general in faace*: “TAKE THIS, TOXIC CULTURE OF MY UPBRINGING.
General McPentagon: Aaaaack.
Seriously? John got away without being hit in the face? That’s much more self control than I would have expected from Joyce at this point.
If she’s with it enough not to damage other people’s property, she ain’t gonna lose it so much that she re-damages her hand on another asshole’s face.
Also, maybe family just barely gets a pass when it comes to the punching. But not the red eyes. Every jackass gets the red eyes.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There’s always a boom tomorrow.
What?
Look, somebody’s got to have some damn perspective around here!
Okay, on top of everything else… “Come along, Josh”?!?!
Beyond the homophobia, the condescension, and the act (albeit unwitting) of making the closeted trans woman incredibly uncomfortable, it looks like John is invoking a deeply bullshit sibling power dynamic, possibly to regain some control after his “conversation” with Joyce. Yes, go ahead and talk to your second-youngest sibling like she’s your faithful dog or your obedient ward. Go step on a rusty rake, John.
Jocelyne is the second oldest of Joyce’s siblings, making her the eldest of John’s.
I don’t think there’s a whole lot of room between her and Jordan or Jordan and Joyce, but she’s the oldest of the grouped siblings. (With John being something of a massive outlier…both in age and being a ‘good Christian’, at this point…)
Well, at least Joyce has managed to finally call out her family on their shit.
Don’t like what your little sister has become? A woman with a mind and a desire to use it? Boo-fucking-hoo, you worthless twat. Go skydiving and land anus first on the nearest rusty pitchfork, please. Jocelyn, you don’t need to follow him.
This comment is beautiful and very cathartic to read. Thank you
“Why all those things Joyce said make our family sound like a real bunch of douchewaffles. That surely can’t be right. I know our family is good people, and that I am a good person, ergo, Joyce is clearly being emotional and unreasonable! Flawless reasoning John!”
-John’s train of logic.
There should be a sign in front of their house. “CAUTION: Beware of resident vulgaritypastries
I know how Joyce feels here. I got into an argument with my mother earlier and it ended with me slamming my bedroom door. She then decided to tell my father a very one-sided story of the argument loud enough I could hear and it.. Ugh I don’t need to vent here. Suffice to say the recent strips have hit
a littleextremely close to home.An important part of becoming an adult is realizing that no one ever really stops being children, not even your parents.
I suppose.
John doesn’t like what his little sister has become? Odd. I quite like what she’s becoming and I’m applauding her loudly.
And that’s the exact reason he doesn’t like it.
But I’m right with you on the applause.
They might have done better to sit in a different booth after all. Then again, I’m sure this was coming either way.
Considering that Joyce is home this weekend because Ross threatened her with a gun, any familial response less than, “I’m so glad to see you’re safe!” complete with teary-eyed hugs is unfathomable to me. My siblings don’t even like me, and I’m sure I would get hugs and/or promises that if Ross somehow made it out of jail, he would be going right back into the hospital. Even disregarding the bigoted asshole side of things, John is really dropping the ball as an older brother.
John is just like “you thought you were gonna die and becky was kidnapped? lmao who cares not me calm down and hate gay people again.”
at least in my mind.
lmao this is exactly what I was thinking the whole time, thank you for summing it up exactly how i summed it up to a friend.
So I think Joyce’s family is going through a huge grieving phase. As far as the 5 stages of grief goes, John is currently deep in denial; he refuses to listen and dismisses Joyce and Becky’s problems. The same goes for Joyce’s mom, who seeks to put the blame on Becky instead of the real problem, Ross.
Joyce’s dad seems to be further along, trying to reach out to Joyce and hear her story rather than keeping it at arm’s length; I suspect that he’s already gone through the anger phase off-screen.
Joss seems more within the depression/acceptance stage, where although she feels helpless right now, she’s willing to offer some actual help to Becky, which is something Becky needs the most right now.
It’ll be interesting to watch how they all progress, and whether or not John will make his way through all 5 stages and have a change of heart on the situation.
Well, the whole “5 stages of denial” turned out to be pretty much not very true at all. It just sounded right, and was then somehow pronounced to the world without actually doing some proper studies on it. When they finally did, the studies did not agree.
Now Joyce, don’t throw things. Punching John in the face is much more effective. Punching him hard. Repeatedly. Multiple times.
Unfortunately, her hand is already broken from punching someone in the face.
She’s got another hand!
But I think they’re going to church tomorrow. She may need to save it for someone even more deserving.
And then get pulled out of college forever.
Getting that violent with her own family will not solve problems, even if they deserve a few punches.
Well, that went well.
Is it fair to say that tone policing, when applied here, is a combination of an ad hominem attack, an argument from authority, a straw man, an argument by laziness, confirmation bias (you know John was primed for this), and probably other fallacies I haven’t thought of yet?
Tone policing is really kind of a fallacy all its own. An “appeal to tonality,” you might say, grounded in the idea that displays of emotion are inherently irrational, and the only way to have an actual reasoned debate is with a detached, deliberately neutral tone.
Which, of course, ignores the idea that, sometimes, you have a damn good reason to be emotional. In this case, for example, what is the socially acceptable response to being threatened and having your friend kidnapped? Because if Joyce were as detached and reasonable-sounding as her brother wants her to be, she’d probably be a clinical psychopath.
Thanks. Given John’s lack of empathy for his own sister, I’m not sure that he’s not along the psychopath continuum himself.
Wanting to throw things but not wanting to disrespect people’s property is a very real conundrum in the human condition.
It is also precisely the reason baseball was invented.
Ah, that’s right, I used my other email before. I forgot which one I used. Now I know. I’ll stick with this one moving forward, I think.
“come along josh” yeuch
Ah, tone policing. The ultimate argument of people who want to seem reasonable and right, but deep down know they don’t have a leg to stand on.
John has already lost the argument, which was not about Becky. It was about whether he could give emotional support to a family member who was in a life-threatening situation. Joyce’s anger, which he is dismissing as essentially a childish tantrum, is a direct response to that, and to the fact that (most of) her family is turning away from her when she needs them most.
It doesn’t help that there are sections in the Bible that say that it’s better to turn away from family members if they don’t believe what you’ve been taught. In fact, the language is actually quite a bit meaner than that, something along the lines of driving them away or even killing them, I don’t quite remember which.
John may be being a good Christian by acting like this, but he’s being an absolutely awful brother.
I’m rather sure there are some lines in the old testament stating this, though I never got the hang of it how people reconcile this kind of shit with things Jeses (supposedly) taught.
Speaking of which, I listened to a children’s book on the Bible and historical science yesterday. Incidentally, the first part of the audio book explained how the perception of reality and the concepts used to explain it develope in children from say 3 to 12.
As it was a children’s audiobook, they were not bringing references, unfortunately. They explained that most of the history of Israel before the fall of Jerusalem was written by someone after the fact, around 600BC, who was trying to make sense of it. And his explanation was that the people of Israel must have sinned, else god would have protected Jerusalem. So he interpreted one king who actually gave the am longer period of peace by having lots of trade with assyria as one of the roots of the fall, because trade implies having cultural ideas imported as well “just like having Burger King and McDonald’s in each town” is a result of Germany’s strong trade links to the US.
But, yeah, I know, he was inspired so it must be literal truth….
“I’m rather sure there are some lines in the old testament stating this, though I never got the hang of it how people reconcile this kind of shit with things Jeses (supposedly) taught.”
Nope, it was Jesus saying it. Loving him is more important than loving your family:
Matthew, 10:37: He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
So yes, John is in fact being -very- Christian right now.
I distinctyl remember reading the complete Bible – when I was 14 or so. Seem like I ignored the parts I didn’t like.
But how is the quote relevant to the situation? Joyce is angry and her brother told her to not be angry – the question whether Joyce loves Jesus never came up and I’m rather sure she still does. She’s just rather unsure about what it actually means for her.
You know, I have been around for people when they have wanted to vent about stuff, no matter what it was. I figure anger is a poison best purged. However, I have had people treat me like John. “Boy, are you angry, and look how messed up you are.” That kind of stuff. Its a crappy power play.
This. So much this.
John is being completely reasonable. Totally and completely reasonable. Look how reasonable he’s being, not even raising his voice and such like his unreasonable sibling. Very reasonable!
“…still have concern for other people’s property” Hilarious and a good way to show how despite all that’s happened Joyce is still basically a saint.
Man though this trip home is not going well for her.
This is what I don’t understand about Religion. It is so much like brainwashing, and when they see their washing is drying then it is time for her to come home again.
I personally am glad to see her standing up to these bigots. The mom doesn’t blame the gunman, but the daughter the gun was point at. Josh is blaming Joyce because she has emotions now. Fundamentalists make no sense logically.
I think the key problem in this case is that they have Expectations about how the world is going to run and the world isn’t matching their expectations. They don’t know how to process that, and they lack the integrity to do an honest analysis of how their world view is wrong, so instead they will criticize and blame whatever inconsistency is making itself known at the moment.
For John, that inconsistency with his notion of how things should work is Joyce being angry, swearing, and having a cast from punching someone out. I went back and reread the whole scene, and his relationship with Joyce was initially quite friendly. Things went afoul when he noticed Joyce’s injury and then tried to offer sage-advice-from-a-pedestal about what Becky was doing wrong. He’s confused by why his dispensed wisdom on these subjects is not recognized as such, and since he is unwilling to consider that he’s actually being a buffoon, the problem is Joyce (and Becky) for not being rational enough to recognize his wisdom for what it is.
(I… still don’t know if there’s a religious element to this. On the one hand, there’s no overt doctrinal justifications currently in play, and if religion’s been brought into the argument at all it’s been in only the most obscure of ways. On the other hand, there’s certainly there’s enough room for fundamentalist bigotry to generate this kind of dismissive, blame-the-victim dynamic. On the third hand, that’s not the only possible place this can come from, and John could well have been jerk-faced without it. On the fourth hand, I appear to be a mutant.)
For Carol, the inconsistency is the much larger confusion of how Dear Old Neighborly Fellow Church-Goer could point a gun at her daughter. The inconsistency she’s focused on his how Becky didn’t turn into the straight cis woman she was supposed to be. Joyce Does Not Approve, and since Carol isn’t willing to consider that she’s in the wrong (the Bible agrees with her, after all!), Joyce becomes another inconsistency.
Things keep Not Behaving Appropriately, and the squeeky wheel is what gets blamed.
That’s my take on it, anyway.
That is a very good explanation on this. +1.
That’s part of it. The other part of it is the all-or-nothing.
Literalist fundamental beliefs like the type Joyce was raised in is based on the idea of everything they were sold being true (because it is the inerrant word of God) or nothing being true:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/originalsin/
So, every proof that the world outside isn’t as squeaky clean as what is presented must be fiercely fought against (whether it be ideas of women working outside the home, gays not being Satan, or creationism not being literal truth), denied, or rejected as deliberate Satanic lies.
And this is reinforced with the notion that every doubt isn’t just a doubt, but a literal sign that Satan is infecting your soul and denying you your eternal reward in Heaven, and there is strong incentive to scream away every doubt, reject every twinge of empathy, and refuse ever to change to new information.
After all, your very soul is in danger and what’s more, you’ve sacrificed for this all being true. Denying yourself sex and joy and fulfilling relationships, pushing away good friendships, possibly even rejecting your own kids or family members when they didn’t fit in the proper boxes. Admitting that those are sunk costs is hard for anyone and harder the more life you waste to what eventually turns out to be a lie. So you fight even harder to believe that what is left is true.
It turns a religion into a stone around one’s neck, dragging one down to the depths of hardening one’s heart to a family member nearly being murdered, viewing it as a greater sin to be angry than to kidnap someone, and thinking the moral choice is to reject any kid who isn’t 100% cis and straight.
It’s a hard thing to escape and it makes Joyce’s stance in these last week+ in comic a truly amazing and special thing.
In her worldview, she is literally risking her soul, literally risking Hell because she cannot refuse to do what is actually right for those she cares about. And that is also why her faith in this incarnation cannot long survive this strain.
^^^^^^ super well-said, thank you.
Sidenote that yeah, this is very much Fundamentalism, but not “religion” in the general sense (welcoming congregations and religious pluralism are all super cool and existing things I was soooo glad to find after leaving fundamentalism).
OK, so today’s strip proves that John’s acting like a dich isn’t based on Carol-induced misinformation.
Nobody likes you John, go away. But leave Joss here, we like Joss.
*dick, not dich. Damn typos.
Put.. John…In a ditch? Put John in a ditch. Okay, but only because you said so!
I was gonna say, John certainly isn’t acting like me.
No I’m pretty sure he’s about has nice as a hole in the ground. Maybe we can leave him in one.
Thought earlier that the “he went to public school” thing implied at least some amount of disconnect from the religious hardline and that he was just being thoughtless, but looks like he had this axe to grind from the beginning after all.
I guess throw him in the garbage with the rest of ’em
I think that was Hank doing ‘John went to public school, and he came out fine, so will Joyce’ in response to Carol wanting to pull her from school. So basically the opposite direction. (Carol argues back that it was a long time ago, likely implying that public school is even more heathen than it used to be, so Joyce needs to leave )
That has some inference obviously but is how I read it.
The answer is simple, Joyce. Throw it ON THE GROOOUND.
She doesn’t have anything expendable of her own to throw, is the problem.
Your sister is not a part of their Cis-Tem!
I’m sure commenters can explain how this encounter is steeped in patriarchy, again, but I’m feeling too snarky right now. I mean, haven’t we been over this, please read the last few days of comments alongside some feminism 101, I can’t actually tell whether this is really in question?
Woo, replying to deleted posts. Thank you again for moderating, Willis.
Heh. But fuck it, I also love rising to requests of this nature so, why tone policing is bullshit resource:
http://groupthink.kinja.com/on-tone-policing-why-its-bullshit-and-why-you-need-to-1148310719
Now everyone ready to make the same bullshit argument can fucking read this instead of penning their clueless “why is everyone being so mean to John, he didn’t do anything wrong” whines.
Man, Joyce right now is me after any given conversation with my parents.
Something tells me that Josh may be feeling her argument a little close to home…
Such Wow. Much Dickhead. So Rotten.
It amazes me how David is able to write such despicable people like Blaine, Toedad, Ryan-the-would-be-rapist, Mrs Brown, and now John Brown. It physically hurts me to “hear” these people talk.
(Then again, I’m such a wimp, I can’t even play the Dark Side in the Knight’s of the Old Republic games)
David’s written “bad” people before DoA, but they’ve mostly been buffoons; cartoonish villains played mostly for a joke: Faz, Galasso, Sydney Yus, the Aliens. Even Head Alien was mostly cartoonish, though he’s done some truly evil things: killing Sal’s adopted parents & murdering so many SEMME agents during the Year Zero storyline. But even then, the audience was never truly repelled by him.
No, I don’t think a character was truly reviled until Bart O’Ryan appeared on the scene. (Potential Spoiler for new It’s Walky! readers: you’d think that the commander of the “Britjas” or the green-eyed LT would also be reviled, and while the green-eyed one was hated, I’m not sure it reached Bart levels of hatred.)
But now, in Dumbing of Age, David has shown real range at getting into the heads of bad people, and not only conveying their twisted outlook of life onto the page, but at times trying to show us their perspective on things, even though they’re wrong. After all: most villains don’t *think* they’re a villain; in their minds, they’re all the heroes of their own stories.
I just don’t know how David is able to write these vile people without pulling his brain out through his nostrils and soaking it in bleach every night. ::shudder::
I commend him for it though, as much as I’ve loved his art over the past decade, his writing is stellar and I believe it’s *that* which brings people back every night. (well, that and his legendary update schedule)
He’s often mentioned his fundie upbringing, and that Joyce is often autobiographical… Strong possibility that he’s writing the Browns from a mix of real people in his life.
Yes, I almost mentioned that aspect, but forgot to. he’s experienced the “outlook on life” some of these people have, but not others. (I don’t know that he’s met anyone like Blaine, for example, or had someone point a rifle at him while kidnapping his best friend)
But to dive back into those horrors to give them to fictional characters would seem a painful and emotionally draining experience to me. I don’t know… maybe it’s actually cathartic? A way of purging it from his psyche.
Maaaan, Becky tries to calm Joyce down. This is how she expected her weekend to go and John doesn’t disappoint. And poor, poor Jocelyne, caught between her siblings, desperately trying to give Joyce and Becky whatever little support she can without making her own position unbearable.
Im hoping Jocelyne straightens her spine and stands by his sister.
I dont see the point of standing with John— unless its to stop his plans of sabotaging Joyce’s life .
I’m hoping she finds herself in a secure enough position to do that before the end of the comic. As it is, if and when she comes out, she’ll probably be losing 2/5 of her family at the very least. Very possibly more.
I’m hoping Joycelyn comes out this weekend.
This scene reminded me why I thought this weekend would be
8-9 months in real time , of fundie torture.
I’m sure you meant standing by her sister.
The point of following John out is to avoid conflict and to preserve her closet/safety, unfortunately. Check out Tan’s explanation, way above on this page.
YES, yes I did mean “stands by her sister”
( Sorry anybody , who read that and is Trans. Its honestly a typo )
Thank-you.
I even thought thought that when i wrote it.
Dammit, I even changed my original comment, which I thought it was insensitive.
( the original Courage-linked anatomy-part wasnt spine )
I read Tan’s explanation, and it didnt ring true for me.
Tan could be right.
Ive been reading Jocelyn as safely and securely straight/cis appearing.
But we honestly might not have enough pages with her for me to make that judgment. Im going by just a few , and extrapolating.
We know that Joycelyn is her parents fav. And this is only because she’s closeted. Not just as Trans, but giving her full opinions about them and the world. Her Playfully teasing Joyce ( parents weekend) also read to me as brotherish-appearing.
I also think she could safely stay with Joyce out of concern, without in anyway threatening her appearance of being a man. If anything, Johns actions arent very manly.
Joycelyn could say: “You go ahead bro, i think Joyce needs a brother more than you do right now”
Hi-Fiving Becky for coming out as a lesbian, seems much more risky to me than acting like a protective big brother.
I’m not Blaming Joycelyn for anything here. I just hope shes acting pragmatically to help Joyce and Checkmate Douche-john, and not just leaving to avoid conflict.
John is the person who is awful here. But for Joyces sake I hate for it to look like Joycelyn is backing him up.
It’s less “siding with john” and more “not saying things she can’t take back”. She just got a vivid demonstration of how family reacts to people being “out of line”. Her life could very quickly get very hard if family finds out she’s trans.
Yup, her life will essentially be over as it exists now when she comes out. Her parents will not support her and will disown her, her brother at the least will abandon her and see it her “just” punishment. She will be on her own without a safety net. I know from experience that’s a rough patch and there’s no shame in her trying to hold the pieces together long enough to build up just a little bit of a shelter for when the inevitable hits.
Also, good catch on the Becky trying to calm Joyce in the last panel and I think you’re absolutely right there. Becky sees it as her job to protect Joyce from her family and the same fate she suffered. She’s scared, she’s hurting, part of her is probably even proud, but damnitt she promised to be the support and lightning rod and she is gonna do it as best she can.
Rule of Drama makes me think that regardless on her desire to stay hidden from her parent’s eye, Joss is gonna get outed very soon. It’ll be a mixed bag, since it’ll be cathartic for the truth to come out, but also lead to a very traumatic experience since it’ll probably come out during the part where Joss stands up in Joyce’s corner, showing the cost of doing what should be done.
It does seem to be a narratively poignant moment for her to come out or be outed in. And sadly, that might be the thing that would save Joyce’s bacon as that would be a “family crisis” that would distract them from Joyce’s support of “deviant” lesbians.
Yeah, I’m kind of wondering if that’s where this is going. Especially if Joyce reacts badly, which she likely will at first. Might be enough to let her go back to school.
Right now, I’m having a lot of trouble seeing how this ends without them trying to pull Joyce out of college. I guess the other option is Hank pulling rank and being willing to deal with the open rift between him and Carol.
Oh… The idea of Hank using those sexist conventions to keep Joyce in school… That doesn’t sit too well. Especially since I can totally see it happening.
I think Jocelyne is going to need to have a sit-down, heart-to-heart talk with Joyce about picking battles and being tactical.
Not because Joyce is doing anything WRONG, but because there’s a smart way to do it and a dumb way to do it, and learning the difference fast might be the key to Joyce staying in college.
… also, Jocelyn should make clear that she is Not With John.
Unfortunately, there are no battles to fight because no one is taking Joyce seriously. At this point, almost everyone has made up their mind on what really happened, and no one is open to new, conflicting information.
The only way I can see Joyce getting through to them is with something big and emotionally-driven.
She already did. And I’m not so sure she’s as enamored of that method as she is completely petrified of the future she knows will erupt when she can no longer politely swallow every dagger blow to her young trans heart.
The most hurtful thing is that just because Joyce is defending Becky, Jocelyne still can’t be sure that Joyce will defend her.
The fact that there are so many cases of “religious reprogramming” for children who do not fit the mindset of their bigoted parents’ just makes me fear even more for the characters now. Joyce’s mother is clearly not above it with wanting to take her out of the college that’s changing her (though it can be argued that she may wish for her safety since the gunman thing as well) – something that’s already been established… and now John’s defaulting to “this college is changing you” as well as the whole “I don’t like who my sister has become.”
I know they’re fictional characters but they feel like real people because we’ve all known people like this. Heaven help them when they meet their makers and are cast out for being closet minded idiots.
I sit here, fearful that Joyce will be forced to leave the college, though at this rate, I see her running like Becky as well. This is totally babies.
I just realized Joyce totally swore in front of John too. Another tick on the “my sister is not the mindless bible thumper” for his fuel. I can only hope he doesn’t bring it to the mother, but he probably will.
I think her descriptor of them is very accurate, though — they are goddamned, indeed.
Jocelyn at least has the excuse of being terrified herself. Not admirable, but at least understandable.
I would agree with this.
Yeah, it’s a not so subtle threat to Joyce to bully her back into line. And it’s why this weekend, if she can survive it and get back to campus without losing her college and the support network that goes with it, might be the last that she can look at her family with anything approaching respect and unguarded love.
Because they are now very much threats to her well-being. Dangerous, dangerous threats.
Agreed. I know they’re fictional characters, but reading this terrifies me for them because of the very real implications of it happening “in real life.”
Mainly because I know it has.
Ironically, if she took Joyce out of college for “safety” reasons, Joyce’s mom would HAVE to acknowledge the incident with Ross.
This is also a good point and one that I don’t think Joyce’s mother would be willing to do. If she’d manage it, it’d be under delusions.
“Oh yeah, he committed multiple felonies motivated by bigotry and diseased theology, but it came from a good place. If you can’t see that and remain rational about it, well I guess you have some growing up to do…”
Awful. Ten years gulag.
And just like that, any chance where John would be a decent person if he knew more of the details of what went down, disappears like a fart in the wind. I kind of hoped, and wondered like many if he got an edited version (even though what he was saying prior about her emotions was still kind of bs)- but nah. Like he doesn’t even pause to look conflicted before he says these disgraceful, dismissive things. He is so /sure/. He’s bought the spiel, and he 100% believes and morally thinks it’s right. Like I feel somehow that Joyce even when she first moved to college and before she changed for the better would look somewhat uncomfortable with saying such things to a person. Hell I have trouble with even that Joyce saying that even then- she’s seen people angry/upset before and while she’s said creepy things like ‘godpertunity’ it’s not like this somehow. Joyce prior to college wasn’t really a good person thanks to her toxic beliefs but she had the potential and building blocks to be. John from what we can gather does not have these.
He has access to all the information and he’s still awful anyway. No pause, no look to the side- no nothing.
Yikes for Jocelyn, this is like a taster of what will happen if she ever comes out too almost. Like she’ll have Joyce most likely (granted not everyone who is cool with lesbians would be for trans women, so Jocelyn might not feel 100% sure) but like… yeah.
I can’t blame Jocelyn for not speaking up for her little sister somehow. She’s probably scared out of her dang mind.
The difference between John and Joyce is they were both raised and bathed in poison, but when Joyce got an up and close look at the hurt her ideology was causing, she recoiled in fear.
When Joyce poured out her reality to John, he did not. Instead he double-downed on his ideology and flat-out rejected it to “keep his soul pure”.
It’s what makes Joyce a good person with a long hole to climb out of and what makes John a complete scum sucker.
And yeah, Jocelyne is terrified. She just got a sneak preview of what her brother will say about her and those who come to her defense when she finally has enough and comes out.
Ugh, I can’t even imagine. It was tough enough coming out to a transphobic family and being fundie adjacent. I can’t even fully appreciate how horrifying it must be for her growing up all her life knowing her family will see her as a literal demon when she comes out.
ugh, crying…. people will just walk away from you…
Wow! John is running away! Because that’s what this is: He hasn’t got any (reasonable) response or counterpoint so, rather than admit that Joyce has a point, he’s metaphorically flipping the table and running away!
He’s not running away, he’s bravely marching onward to future victories!
He is! He’s desperately clinging on to the semblance of moral and logical superiority, but he has zero response for what Joyce is saying right now.
It’s incredibly difficult for bigoted people to face their own bigotry because that involves facing that they were “the bad guy” (much like how Joyce was called out by Roz). That little hesitation of John’s when he said Becky should have thought about her situation “before…” tells me he detected the massive flaw in his own moral reasoning and Inner Autopilot kicked in as a self-preserving mechanism, taking him back to the safe zone where he can be the righteously concerned older brother and Joyce must be the tantrum-throwing little sister. This is completely a defensive move which frustratingly manages to also be offensive. I’m counting it as a victory for Joyce and hope she can keep hitting where it hurts, stripping away all their inbuilt bullshit defences one Brown at a time.
To me, that cut off “… before…” meant that John realised he was about to claim that Becky had somehow knowingly triggered the sequence of events leading up to Ross’s arrest. The fact that he cut himself off means that he knows that is logically and morally unjustifiable and this is one of the reasons he’s escalating with Joyce: He hates this realisation and he’s lashing out at Joyce hoping that she’ll do something to let him pin his sense of guilt on her.
Yep, same
“Keep a calm face, but flee at a reasonable pace.”
-Cowards Handbook, pg 12
‘s
KICK HIS ASS JOYCE.
Bear in mind, the deflection is more complex than an ideological threat. The only time John’s expression hasn’t looked strained since this scene began was while he was scowling, and there’s an awful lot of the latter. He’s not just changing the subject to her anger to avoid a difficult subject. He’s mad about something too, and it’s probably not about what most people think. The conversation hinting that he’s hiding something about his marriage may be foreshadowing for that, but it may be a herring as well.
HUGE kudos to John for being the first person to talk to Joyce about her anger though. Shame it was just a method of lashing out and avoiding his and her actual problems, rather than addressing them.
You may be onto something here. What was the original conversation supposed to be about?
I’m puzzled as well. John baffles me.
As in, WHY would Joyce call him when she “calm down”. Because I don’t get why they were getting together in the first place.
I think what he’s angry about is fairly obviously that he’s been called out by his younger sister. And he deserves no Kudos he’s going out of his way to dismiss her.
Also again: John does not deserve the benefit of the doubt because he won’t give it his own little sister.
This.
He’s been raised in an incredibly sexist theology where every man in the community basically gets a live in sex maid who has no say in anything important, is blamed for everything he does wrong, and whose only ambitions are to be docile servants who “serve him as one would serve God”.
Additionally, he’s an older brother who’s practically old enough to be a parent of all the younger Browns, and so with that has probably felt entitled to an adults treatment by them all his life. After all, one of the commandments is to “honor they father and mother”.
The idea of his little baby sister not only being rightfully angry at him, but refusing to back down when told of her “place” and her role is not only enough to incense him, but is borderline unthinkable.
A toaster does not sass back and claim to be angry at the person demanding toast. And the fact that Joyce shows no signs of being pushed into her proper role as chastised sister tsked tsked over her loose morals in supporting her gay friend is an indignity John refuses to accept.
He’s not mad about something else and displacing it on Joyce. He’s mad about Joyce daring to defy him. Because sexists of John’s mold really can’t handle women daring to defy them.
I…would not congratulate him on “talk[ing] about her anger” like this. Typically the way to do that is not to deliberately make the person in question MORE angry.
I have legitimately exploded on assholes who’ve tried to “talk about anger” in this manner. I have a short fuse with sexist assholes who think it’s a woman’s place to be meek and mild and tolerate their bullshit without question.
And I’m the worst type of woman to those types, because I don’t even tolerate the usual outs for bad behavior, because I had no tolerance for it back when I thought I was a guy and I see no reason to start now.
Good ♥ I appreciate that there are fearless ladies like you out there to kick dudebro ass. I try, but don’t always succeed.
No, talking to someone is an attempt to understand or help them. Here it was purely for the criticism because it was making him uncomfortable and he wanted everything to be normal.
Considering what happened to her and that Joyce is his little sister, that’s lame.
PSA: if you would support a relative coming out as LGBTQ+, or if you know for a fact which relatives are cool, find an excuse to tell of said coolness to everyone in your family. Coming out is hard and it’d be great if your family members already knew who some allies were. Friends too, why not. Chances are it’s relevant to somebody you know.
I mention this because, dang, Jocelyne looks so scared and upset.
Piecemeal coming out is a good way to do it, but it’s risky. One bad family member can mean coming out to everyone and not on your terms or with your ability to frame it in a way that is accurate to your experiences.
Friends are a great start. And having a good safety plan is key. It’s far more freeing to come out, to not be living with that fear where the worst case scenario is what feels true every second, but do it in a manner that has you feeling the safest.
And fully echoing the sad face for sad, scared Jocelyne.
I think Leorale also meant so that if you come out at once, you have an idea who will be safe or potentially safe to turn to if things go south. Regarding piecemeal or not with family I mean.
I mean it either way, whichever coming out strategy a person chooses as best for them/their situation — nuke the closet, piecemeal/stages… heck, even if their strategy is telling Gossipy Aunt Doris (unusual for obvious drawbacks, but handy in specific safe/huge families). Whatever the situation and strategy, it’s better for anyone to know they have support and from whom, rather than having to sleuth it out themselves during a stressful time.
Stakes are lower for those already out, and way lower for allies, this is info we can gather without risk and brag about, just in case it is very useful intelligence for somebody who isn’t out to us yet.
PS. When I say “this is info we can gather… and brag about” I mean the info of who is a solid ally, not who is coming out. I am def not advocating becoming Gossipy Aunt Doris oneself.
Augh, I’m still writing in an unclear manner, so PPS: I was directing my PSA towards potential supporters (already-out people, and allies), not towards currently-closeted people (who can’t always collect/spread the Who Is Supportive tally without risk to their personal safety).
Very much in support of all of that!
I get this a lot from Prime. He’s always like “I’m right because I don’t kill my soldiers with a fusion cannon when they displease me.” And I’m like “I’m not wrong for wanting to bring order and discipline to this scrap heap.”
To be fair, my Lord, there was that time you threw a non-flyer from your ship.
…i miss that guy
I mention this because, dang, Jocelyne looks so scared and upset. -.-
Grah, meant as a reply, please delete, and bedtime for me.
John is very much a person who doesn’t realize how much he can have the privilege of not facing things like Becky, Jocelyne or even Joyce has too. Denial is probably an easy road, but on the hand at this point I pity him more than I hate him, because I think the rare thing right now is recognizing that there still many injustices in the world and that sometimes you privilege from them even unconciosly.
He was raised in a fundamentalist enviroment, I am not surprised he is the way he is, and going against what you have been thought is probably the extraordinary in this cases…
I hate him because I’ve encountered too many people who’ve wrapped themselves in a cocoon of their own privilege and refused to even listen to the possibility of error. Joyce spells out what is upsetting her and he can’t even pretend to value it because his privilege and the “sanctity” of his worldview matter far more to him than recognizing the humanity or the realness of struggle of anyone else.
He’s the type of missionary who looks at a starving village and sees a bunch of lazy wretches who will learn the value of good work once they stray from their heathenness and join the Church. A truly dangerous piece of work.
Comic Analysis…
FUDGE YOU JOHN! FUDGE YOU STRAIGHT TO ACH-EE-DOUBLE HOCKEY STICKS, YOU GODDAMN PIECE OF FUDGE!
… Sorry, just way too many encounters with irredeemably smug dismissive shits like John in my life to vomit out before I can even start. But seriously, for all the people who were defending him over the last several days, this is the piece of shit you were defending. He’s not a good person, he’s an irredeemable vomit bucket given human form.
Panel 1: FUDGE YOU! Okay, sorry, but wow, gotta “love” the raw douchiness of just double-downing on the tone-policing like, oh, was my snide dismissal of the veracity of your emotions not working to “teach you your place” before, well, let me just up that with yet another appeal to “social propriety” while I continue to be a smug sexist piece of shit.
Panel 2: Oh, man, so much here. Joyce calling all this bullshit social passive-aggression from her mom and brother what it is: bigotry. Joyce laying down the context of John and her mom’s casual dismissals of what she suffered. And pointing out the inconvenient reality they are wanting to erase in favor of the ideology of looking down on Joyce for being “angry” and inviting “bad influences” into the family.
It’s the whole background context that makes John and Carol’s actions so monstrous. Not once have they bothered to show any sympathy or concern for their sister or her friend. Any sign of humanity towards what they suffered, because to do so would require them to recognize the same problem Joyce did.
That the monster who nearly killed their family member and her friend was not some “swarthy foreigny type” but someone who was considered a very pious member of the very religion they consider to be the moral arbiters of all that is righteous. And his motivation was the same thing preached every Sunday, tucked into every sermon on the “evils” of homosexuality and whatnot.
By their religion, Toedad did nothing wrong and while they can hem and haw about him “getting carried away”, neither of them, can actually condemn his actions and show genuine empathy for the queer girl, because to do so is a “sin” in their twisted theology.
And not just her, but Joyce as well. Neither has noted what she has suffered. Neither has shown their concern for her welfare to her face. Neither has said unconditionally that what happened to her was wrong. Both instead chewing her out either to her face or behind her back for daring to be angry, daring to stand up for her friend, daring to be upset that a man from her home town, sold to be the safest person she could be around, nearly shot her to death simply for standing up for her best friend since childhood.
Ideology trumping humanity, every time.
Panel 3: Oh, those are familiar tactics. When I finally blew up at my family, they did the same thing minus the walking out. Making it all about the “tone” of my angry defense of my humanity, refusing to hear any of what I was actually saying, so that they could play the poor victims to my “irrational” anger and my “inability to be calm”.
It’s a common tactic of abusers, make the righteous and fully justified explosion of anger, the appeal for humanity into a breach of social protocol and something that the victimized should apologize for. The tone argument taken to its natural extremes.
And the worst part is the second half of his spiel. It’s not a threat of reparative therapy per se, but it is WAY closer than it has any right to be. It’s a threat that if she doesn’t climb back into her box “willingly” there will be social consequences and that she “should” be taken from a place that is her main form of support to a place where they won’t even acknowledge that she was nearly murdered so that she can have her “disrespect” “fixed”.
It’s a chilling cowardly threat of a statement and given my background, I’m not sure I could hate him much more than that short of him pulling out a varmint rifle.
Panel 4: And a command to Jocelyne, not even a “Jocelyne, I’m going home if you still want a ride”, but an order. He is so used to getting his way since he is older and a male, so used to the entitlement of rule, that he doesn’t even fully view his other sister as a full human being, just yet another pawn in the stage show of “look how pious and high-minded I am being”.
It’s disgusting even before you think of how much it must sting Jocelyne to be ordered by her dead name, while pretending to be something she isn’t, to abandon the only people who might support her when she snaps and outs herself in favor of retreating with a brother who will surely see her as a “thing” deserving of the “cost” of being a queer person.
Because the only other out is to out herself and say goodbye to all of her family outside maybe Joyce and Jordan forever. Yeah, I would not want to be in Jocelyne’s shoes.
Panel 5: And you see that in her fear and discomfort as she walks out with him. Just, so much sympathy for how shitty Jocelyne’s position is.
Also, AH JOYCE! So proud of how far she has grown from the person begging Becky not to come out to anyone. And just full of furious righteousness in every sense.
Also? FUDGE YOU, JOHN!
This is quickly turning out to be another Jorda” situation with people taking sides. John is quickly adding Joyce to the “lost” column. Now the battle is about “Josh”.
Fudge you John indeed.
On your analysis of panel 4: I think the way he’s treating Joss is interesting, because you think he’d treat a fellow “male” like more of an equal, age notwithstanding. John might already unconsciously be viewing his “brother” as a girl, given if his view of women as being “docile” and “submissive”.
I think that he’s expecting ‘Josh’ to be just as offended as he is and thus equally eager to storm out in a self-righteous tantrum.
Which means he ignored Joss’ genuine attempt to help Becky and mediate the situation.
Showing empathy to “degenerates” is one of Jocelyne’s “many bad habits” in his eyes and one of the reasons that the family is “always worried” about “(incorrect pronoun’s) path in life”.
Meanwhile, in the dorms, Sierra buys a Dr. Pepper and is genuinely happy.
I do not envy Willis sifting through the comments after his birthday. This storyline goes until july? It’s really good but upsetting that might mean a break for me.
Agatha takes a walk in the park. Nothing in particular happens but it’s a nice day.
This is the breaking point for me. There is value in being relatively calm when talking things out. There really is. Political correctness exists to facilitate discussion and enlightenment, for we are wiser when we hear perspectives outside our own.
But that involves staying there through the heat. Chiding your family to be calm has no value if you’re just going to walk away when you don’t like the atmosphere. John is showing commitment to calm for the sake of calm over spending time with family after they’ve gone through a near-death experience.
His priorities, not just politically but in his personal life, are messed up.
OMG. I just now figured out why Joss texted Ethan a link rather than tell him right out. It’s the exact same conflict avoidance strategy! Sure, you’d think that a gay guy would understand, but, just in case, let it be something he finds out on his own. It’s not like there haven’t been fights between the LGBs and the Ts. She might have trusted him not to out her, but that doesn’t mean he might not say something somewhat hurtful.
And that does make me wonder if she’ll go back with John, but be texting both Joyce and Becky while she’s there.
Yup, she doesn’t have the strength to be rejected to her face yet.
I have a feeling that that small group of friends Jocelyne mentioned back at Family Freshman Weekend might be the only ones who know the real her.
Thanks for pointing that out, Trlkly. Occurs to me now why most of my trans friends have come out to me passively in stages, like by changing the pronouns on their facebook pages and seeing who noticed or by presenting more and more as their actual gender and seeing who stuck around.
… whiiiich tells me I probably need to be more public in meatspace about my support for trans people.
God, and the way he says “Come along” to Jocelyne…. feels so infantilizing…
That with the way he’s treating Joyce and his utter disregard for Becky (he only spoke to her after she asked for the SSN) and his echoing Carol makes me believe this is not just an unfortunate reaction to Joyce’s behavioral shift.
Yup, it’s just this gross pile of completely invalidating everything about her based on her gender and age. It’s common, sadly, but it’s still just completely gross to see and experience.
No you are right.
Johns reaction was pre-planed and premeditated. His confession here ( and it is a confession of his true intentions ) is actually just more victim-blaming, but to Joyce.
Hes Blaiming her for having a negative reaction to justified trauma.
and hes blaming Joyce for his planned and future betrayal.
Hes saying why he thinks she deserves it.
I still think that John actually isn’t being particularly unreasonable here. I think from his perspective, he accidentally said something against someone that he didn’t invite to lunch being there, and his little sister went off like she never has before because of it.
Of course, even if it isn’t totally awful, he still left his angry little sister alone, when a better big brother probably would have tried to help her calm down and feel better. But, I think his perspective is being ignored by many, and even if normally it’s over-represented, the comments section don’t have to swing to the other side.
He’s being a sexist asshole and not very subtle about it. And there has been no end of apologies and “well maybe he doesn’t mean it in the way that those uppity social justice types are seeing” bullshittery for days now.
His perspective is not being “ignored by many”. His perspective is he’s an asshole who is exploiting societal sexism to try and bully his little sister and invalidate the very legitimate anger she feels about someone openly and very deliberately minimizing and ignoring the fact that she was nearly murdered and all her family can care about is that she’s not hating the lesbian enough.
So, sorry, but respectfully disagree in the strongest of terms.
“No end”? That seems kind of harsh. I didn’t actually count, but sentiment seems to be running about (oh hell, I’ll make up something) 98.6% anti-John. Mr. Willis deliberately encouraged the hope that John wouldn’t turn out to be a total butthole like his mother, only to crush that hope with the last two episodes.
New hope: maybe nobody’s met Christi because she’s already left him.
I’m not sure how Willis “deliberately encouraged the hope”. His very first conversation tried to exclude Becky from lunch and he’s just escalated ever since.
That in itself wouldn’t have been conclusive, but it was a big warning sign that a lot of people picked up on.
There’s been a pretty dense run of apologetics for the last several days in the comment threads including a lot of queer people and women noting the problematic behavior and red flags getting “well, actually”ed about how they are actually being super unfair to John who hasn’t done anything yet and it’s a sign of our lack of empathy, blah blah.
Things seem to be finding their own level now, but it’s still been a thing.
But hey! This time he didn’t actually have to pull a gun out to convince people. Progress, right?
Not that there aren’t a few holdouts still, but mostly they’ve come around.
And people? Can we not do this next time? Can we just listen to the people who’ve been there telling us this is dangerous?
mmmmmmmhm.
Also: John’s perspective is intimately familiar to many of us. We understand it. We’ve considered it.
And we’ve concluded his actions are unjustifiable.
“Mr. Willis deliberately encouraged the hope that John wouldn’t turn out to be a total butthole like his ”
Only, and I mean ONLY if you are in a super-privileged position yourself. Every single comment I’ve seen from anyone self-proclaimed LBTQ (and for that matter, most selfproclaimed women, cis or otherwise) has time and again tried to tell people like you about all the -red flags- of the conversation. Because they have lived through those red flags so many times, and they knew exactly what was coming. And look at this, they turned out to be 100% right! HOW SHOCKING!
It’s not their fault that you clearly refused to listen them. But it does say quite a lot about you that you did.
Peduncle signed on to the whole John is a bongoid thing early, but was merely noting that the only acceptable level of dissent is zero. Best wishes.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that he actually isn’t a horrible homophobic fuckface. Let’s say he accidentally said something insensitive that he doesn’t actually believe.
He is still in the wrong for acting like Joyce is soooooooo fucking unreasonable for getting mad over it, as if she’s not allowed to have emotions or thoughts of her own.
Pretty much this. I don’t think John was wrong for wanting it to be a “family-only” lunch. I know that if my sister had just been through a traumatic event and this was the first time I was seeing her since it had happened, I’d want it to be a private affair, not something that outsiders see (even if the person in question is someone I’ve known for years).
I also don’t think that John’s wrong for wanting to discuss what happened in a calm and measured fashion. Some people (like myself) simply hate raised voices and heated exchanges. We just can’t handle it and tend to withdraw when it happens. (You probably know the type. The ones who, when they’re in an argument, prefer to leave the room rather than shout back.) It’s not that we don’t want to resolve the argument or whatever caused it; it’s just that furious shouting is not the way you’ll get results with us.
Where John is at fault is for not understanding that Joyce has perfectly valid reasons to be angry and distressed, and for basically dismissing her concerns instead of trying to understand where she’s coming from. Instead, he should said something like “I know you’re angry and frustrated. That’s perfectly normal and understandable. Just please don’t direct that anger at me. I want to try and help you, help Becky find some solutions for how to move forward. If you need some time to vent, throw things, scream at someone, sure thing. Just not at me, please.”
If John had simply tried thinking up of some different approaches for getting Becky her SSN (for instance, I’m sure there must be backup plans for people who’ve lost theirs or who, for some reason, never got one in the first place. There has to be a government department they can speak to for assistance), I think this might have turned out so much better.
Except none of that has anything to do with his motivation. He never had any intent of helping.
If my sister had been through a traumatic experience, I might want family time without strangers – but if she wanted to bring the person who’d been through the traumatic experience with her and who it was even more focused on? Damn straight she’s welcome.
But again, this wasn’t about helping Joyce through her reaction to the trauma. We see that when the first comment about it is telling her punching Toedad was extreme. Then he proceeds to attack Becky and from then on in it’s all tone policing. Not “I can’t handle raised voices and furious exchanges.” Watch his expression and body language. He’s not distressed or upset by this. He’s calm and controlled. And completely dismissive.
There’s no way this meeting was going to go well because he wasn’t going to let listen to anything Joyce had to say.
She could be reasonable and agree with him or get angry and prove she wasn’t reasonable.
If you are right then he should have apologized!
Not Victim-Blame Joyce for being angry at a justified trauma! She laid it put and he triples-down assholitude.
You are bending over backward to give someone the ‘benefit of the doubt’ ( perhaps a charitable attitude, only 2 days ago ). In law thats called reasonable doubt.
But you are doing this after we have ‘Moral-Certitude Beyond Reasonable Doubt’ . Thats the standard to convict in a court of law.
We have moral certitude beyond a reasonable doubt that hes a Passive-Aggressive Douchbag.
In this conversation hes sided with a gunman against his own sister and best friend multiple times.
Now he is literally threatening his fuck up his sisters life because she didn’t like that.
He sided multiple times with a gunman; then he threatened his own sister. This is not a good person.
NO, he didnt leave his little sister alone. Hes too much of weak shmucksauce to aplogize when hes called out on toxic Judas bullshit, so he slinks away like a coward, Blames Joyce for his betrayal ( to their mother ) and steals away Joyceln , joyce’s emotional support. Cuz he cant bare slinking away alone.
This is not a strong or honorable man.
This is Snidely WhipJohn, the Douchinator. Fuck him, I hope he chokes on a macaroni and cheese and dies.
Remember that time when Joyce said that she was almost murdered by their Christian neighbor, and said she was upset because her family defended the attacker, and then John basically called her a baby and basically didn’t give a fuck?
Yeah no John is pretty much indefensible. Like, there are no other interpretations, and I’m not even really exaggerating.
John makes me so angry that even I wanna throw things too. This feels really close to home. Aaargh!
Ditto.
*giant death hugs*
“You’re angry so I don’t have to listen to your views or opinion as you are clearly not speaking rationally, I will only talk to you again when you are less emotional about it”
I both hate and love that John went down this road, I obviously hate it for the obvious reason of wow John is being a dick, but I do love that Willis touched onto this sort of behaviour. I see this happening a lot, especially when directed at women, and its usually along the lines of “well you’re being far too hysterical, jeez calm down,” which is just another way of getting women to keep quiet, know their place etcetc.
Not that I think this is what John is knowingly trying to do here, I don’t think most guys (and girls too) who use this kind of shit really think to themselves “wow this woman is getting angry about this topic let me just get them to shut up by pointing out their anger because women shouldnt get angry hur hur” but for the longest time, and still now to an extent – women were supposed to be those quiet, obliging wives who don’t have their own opinions let alone their own emotions on things. And still now to an extent as there is ALWAYS ALWAYS backlash whenever a woman says something controversial and far more often compared to when a guy says something controversial.
This has kind of gotten away from me a bit, but these topics hit me quite a lot. I hate people like John who don’t even try to see things from another point of view as they are so adamant that theyre right (im the oldest, plus a guy, so must mean im right about everything!!) and just dismiss other peoples experiences and emotions because heaven forbid they can’t talk in a calm tone about something upsetting, and therefore can’t have that opinion validated. uhgh.
Yup. If there’s one thing Willis does better than almost anyone else writing webcomics, it’s perfectly capturing the daily nuisances of being a marginalized group member. He just really does such a good job showing things like the open dismissal of women’s anger, the casual homophobia of fundie groups, or things like Mary’s transphobic bullying.
They hit hard and true, because they are absolutely true to life and most people just avoid the topic entirely despite it being absolutely common in life.
I don’t think it’s “knowingly” as such. But then I don’t think much of what people do is really done knowingly. He doesn’t actually think it out, but he’s following a script he’s been taught and long internalized about arguing with women. And it’s actually worse than you portray it because it starts with “Provoke them into anger, then point out their anger and dismiss them because of it.”
I have a rather strong feeling that the defenders of John’s behaviour are the people that do behave like this themselves a lot. But they don’t wish to think of themselves as bad persons —and this at least is understandable, because “nobody” wants to do that*— and now they have to try to rewrite exactly what it was John actually did, so that they don’t have to confront their own behaviour and realise what it is they’re actually doing.
*Note that I said “wants to do that”. I know that some people do think of themselves as bad, but even then, they probably wish they didn’t think like that.
Josh. You shoudl take the car ride with your sister instead. She needs someone in the family willing to reach out before she annixes you with the rest of them.
I wish John had finished his point about more thinking ahead, a few strip ago, instead of switching the subject to Joyce’s anger. I mean, not that it can be addressed, but finding back Becky’s social number really need to be done.
Estimated sentence endings:
“before you came out as a lesbian and ruined your relationship with your Dad.”
“before you decided to stray from God and lead my sister away too.”
“before you put your dad in jail.”
I honestly don’t think his “thinking ahead” point would’ve helped. There is no finish to that sentence that isn’t going to put blame on Becky.
Honestly, none of those sentence came to my head when I read John’s line. Motly because of the grammar, because if this is what he was going to say, he would have said “maybe you should HAVE think of these things”, for your suppositions to work out in his sentence. He is talking in present tense, meaning he is not talking about action she did in the past, but is actually talking about what Becky can do now.
I was thinking he was going to say “Before rushing your decision without knowing what actual option still exist for you”. Though that doesn’t soun in his character, he would have say it otherwise or would have said something I can’t think of myself.
But the fact that he used present tense indicate he wasn’t referring to Becky’s past action, unless I get my reading all wrong.
It’s not what he would have said, but it is pretty much what he would have implied. Because that’s exactly what Becky would have had to do beforehand: Research what you need to do to build up your life if you get outed as a lesbian in a homophobic community and your own father kidnaps you at gunpoint.
And before you retort with “Well, maybe she should have learned about it on general principles just in case of disaster or the likes”
Well, the thing here is, she grew up in the kind of household where a girl/woman was simply expected to do what she was told. She did not have a phone, she did not have internet. For crying out loud, she was not allowed to watch Disney movies because they’re not Christian enough. There’s a strip about it and all*.
There is no reason to expect that Becky would or should have learned these things, because there’s no reason to assume that Toedad would have let her.
And John certainly knows how women are meant to be raised in his church group, so I’m not even giving him the benefit of the doubt to just not realise this. Or rather, if he genuinely doesn’t understand the implications of his treatment of Becky, then he is so completely and utterly clueless, that he never should have opened his mouth to begin with now, should he?
So clueless dolt that still thinking his opinions is more important than anyone else’s; or straight up victim-blaming Becky for everything. Your choice. (Not really. He’s genuinely victim-blaming Becky.)
* Here’s the strip: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/backlog/ See the “punchline”. It looks so silly, doesn’t it? No, it doesn’t. That’s Becky’s and Joyce’s reality (and also the reality of a lot of real life kids out there). They are honestly that sheltered in life. Apart from being extremely foreshadowing about Toedad’s upcoming appearance, it’s intensely chilling in itself, now that we realise the full depth of what it really means.
“And before you retort with “Well, maybe she should have learned about it on general principles just in case of disaster or the likes” ”
No, I would have actually have said, she should have started researched about that the moment she was on her own, or, to be more reasonable, the moment she actually had some time to rest (i.e. after her father got arrested). Then again, seeing what is the next comic,now, I don’t think John would have given helpful advice anymore.
Becky’s attitude to run forward and only deal with logistic issues when they slap her in the face is something she should stop doing as soon as possible. I mean, she has been slapped in the face enough as it is.
Part of the dissonance here is that it’s been a year and half for us since Becky showed up on the run (October 2014). It’s been just over a week for them.
Becky’s actually doing pretty well, despite the trauma and crises.
“Well, the thing here is, she grew up in the kind of household where a girl/woman was simply expected to do what she was told.”
Point taken. I guess it actually make sense.
“Before you ask my sibling to help you commit fraud.” Could have been a perfectly legit ending HAD JOHN NOT KILLED THE HOPE OF GOODWILL I HAD TWO STRIPS AGO.
And I wish he had said nothing on the matter and let Jocelyne keep handling that the way she was.
John has said nothing helpful whatsoever about that. Jocelyne did.
I might be reading that wrong, but Jocelyne seemed actually ready to give Becky her social number (though, of course, I am not sure of it), because she is nice like that, but that would have put both of them in legal trouble.
When I read that first, my perception was that John saw that coming too and didn’t want Joyce to entangle herself in legal trouble out of her soft heart. From what I was seeing, it was a big brother protecting his familly, but I could get all that all wrong.
Jocelyne’s exact words “I … advise you to … not?”
I read that as a bit taken aback by the request and not at all going to agree. Probably more by the realization of how desperate Becky was and that she probably didn’t even know how serious what she was asking was.
Jocelyne was all “I can help you, I can give advice, and give my info as reference if you need it. No, better not that”
John was all “Don’t do that! Just go and get it, it should be written somewhere, you should have it already before you…”
Saying “it should be already done before!” isn’t as useful to Becky right now as “let me help you, what do you need?”
There is one more sibling Joyce could talk with.
Do we know anything about Jordan, besides his name and that he’s cut and run from this toxic environment?
We know that he is Joyce and Becky’s final hope. *Kamen Rider Wizard theme music plays*
I thought there were 5 siblings
Joyce had five brothers in the Walkyverse. Here there’s only three brothers.
Thanks.
i didnt know she lost 2 brothers.
He’s in Afghanistan.
NOPE WAIT NO HE ISN’T SORRY LADS
I want some awesome waitress to give Joyce a nerf ball or something.
Now I’m sad this exchange doesn’t take place at Galassos’.
“I WANT TO THROW SOMETHING”
“Fear not Customer, the mighty Galassos will provide you with explosive citruses!!!”
Galasso would definitely enjoy that outburst, and then try to recruit Joyce XD
But is Indiana a concealed carry state for nerfs, (assuming that the server-walla has the nerds secreted about their person, but ready to hand)?
Shoot, in Indiana to don’t even have to conceal anything. You* can openly adjust your holster right before you walk in to a gas station, just because you can.**
* Assuming you’re white
** True story
Man, that reminds me of my father. “If you shout, you lost the conversation”. Last time we had that (a few years ago!) i told him off, as i finally realized that if i’m angry and emotional, of course i’m going to talk loudly, emotionally and angrily!
Also urgh having respect for people’s property (including your own) when you just want to wreck stuff.
I wish Jocelyne could spend some time with them without John.
I’m not the only one who wants to apply the good old “fill your bones with molten lead” technique to John right now, right?
mmmnope, you’d get no argument from me … need access to a forge? I know a guy …
(Jumps into the comic, gives John a Stone Cold Stunner, jumps out.)
This makes me SO MAD. I have seen my own family and relatives doing this and it pisses me off.
Oh look, John’s using Joyce’s anger to avoid addressing the possibility that there might be bigotry within his own community and himself. I know, at least on some level, how Joyce is feeling, as I’ve been in her position myself, albeit in less extreme circumstances.
I was at a bible study group about a year ago, and this guy started talking about the influence the media has on the world, and started ranting about “The Imitation Game” and how it was an example of “the homosexual agenda” because it “got us to sympathise with Alan Turing because he was a homosexual”. Which, well, betrays a severe lack of critical reading capabilities (apparently we’re meant to sympathise with Turing because he’s gay, not because of the bigotry he faced and the torturous therapy he was put through). And it left me barely coherent with rage. There were a few moments where I was quiet, and tried to process what I’d heard, and there was no response from the rest of the group, save for sage nods and a woman saying “Yeah, it’s important to be aware of messages in the media…”. At which point I exploded. I was shaking with anger, and was barely coherent but was starting to say how ridiculous the idea that there’s a “homosexual agenda” is when gay representation in the media is still frequently censored or playing up to the same tired stereotypes. And then the guy who was leading the session said “I don’t mean to shut you down, because I know this is important to you, but we should probably start praying now.” Like hell was he not shutting me down. Apparently, there was time to discuss the “evils of the homosexual agenda”, but not to break down why it was ridiculous that Christians claim such a thing exists. To this day, thinking about the way I was shut down that evening makes me so angry.
More recently, a friend of mine shared this post on facebook: http://www.thekevingarcia.com/my-identity-in-christ-includes-my-sexual-orientation/. There was a comment on the post from another member of the bible study group, who took issue with the post because apparently, the author of the article wanting to, but deciding not to, “tear a hole in [the] white-girl theology” of a woman who subjected him to a classic microaggression somehow makes him “just as offensive as he is accusing her of being”. Which just, said member of the bible study group was just tone policing Garcia (the man who wrote the article). Saying that a gay man feeling angry at experiencing a microaggression is being as bigoted as the woman who directed the microaggression at him is such blatant victim blaming and tone policing. I tried to debate the issue with the guy from my bible study, not bringing up the possibility that being gay wasn’t a sin (because that was clearly a step too far), but just trying to suggest that maybe the nature of privilege means there’s no reasonable way to suggest Garcia was being as offensive as the woman. And to suggest that it was important to listen to the stories gay Christians tell about their experiences in the church, instead of finding reasons to dismiss them. I couldn’t get through. And that’s when I realised that the people from that bible study group weren’t worth engaging with.
I don’t hang out or keep in contact with those people any more.
It’s a common tactic that’s only getting more common as certain bigoted Christian groups are relying more and more on faux-victimhood to pretend their bigotry isn’t what it is. Oh, are you talking about what it’s like to be the group we’re casually hating?
Well, then you’re just being bigoted and attacking our faith all out of the blue rather than just staying in the closet and quietly accepting our awfulness as gospel.
“OK, John. This is it. You know from mum that Joyce is way out of line, but she might still listen to you. She agreed to lunch so you have one shot. If you just get her to listen to you you might be able to help her come back to jesus (instead of following the path of a sinful lesbian). Come on, John. You are a man of God. You are a trained missionary, you are her older brother. You can do this.”
(…)
“Whaaaaaa, my little sister yelled at me. No one said she was going to yell at me.”
Like, even if you buy into Johns world view you can’t be very impressed by his performance in the battle for Joyce’s soul.
That’s an extremely good point. Even within the confines of his own belief system, he’s really being a shitlord here.
And somehow, some people still think that this is meant to show “reasonable” behaviour. Go figure.
Not going to comment on John, would be nothing but inchoate rage.
Not going to comment on Jocelyne, the unfortunate reality of her situation has been eloquently covered in other comments far better than I could ever say.
But Joyce? Oh, Joyce. Glad to see you have come this far from the start of DoA. Also, advice: If Jordan lives anywhere near, it may be worthwhile to spend the rest of the weekend there. If the unpersoning the Brown family has visited upon him is any indication, he has a decent head on his shoulders.
I’m so proud of Joyce right now. God, she’s come so far. My heart’s breaking for her, but I’m also really proud.
Also I know I’m a bit of a broken record at this point, but oh my god, FUCK YOU JOHN! You SUCK! >:(
I’M GLARING SO HARD WHY IS HE NOT COMBUSTING YET
I can totally related to that last panel
DAMMIT JOHN
Jocelyne, tell him to fuck off.
Called it the moment I saw the guy. Scum of the earth.
Do you know what altered my impression of John? The fact that he made it abundantly clear that:
(a) He knew that Ross had threatened her life;
(b) He didn’t consider this to be something about which she should feel angry.
I’m getting the impression that the goal of this lunch was to get Joyce’s apology for siding with Becky over Ross and for daring to raise her hand against a man in violence. The level of total empathy failure on display is so horrifying that I find myself struggling to believe it could happen in real life. If my baby sister told me that our long-term neighbour had waved a gun in her face, you would have needed a Jaws of Life to get her out of my hug! You’d also need armed bodyguards from stopping me doing something stupidly short-sighted to the gunman. Yet, John’s first instinct seemed to be to scold Joyce for being angry and having a violent episode against the person who had threatened her life. That requires a kind of cold indifference that makes me wonder just how much hate and moral chauvanism is poured from the pulpit of their church every weekend.
I’ve had it happen to me. I lost my temper and started shouting at the dinner table on the topic of that fucking rape prevention advice and how advice of the “If you don’t want to be raped…” variety is victim blaming bullshit, as is “Just stand up and say no” type shit, pulling from my own first-hand experiences.
I got “I am not responsible for every imagined message you perceive in what I’m saying” – “Imagined message” my fucking ass, you are literally implying that if someone doesn’t follow your jillion and one impossible to follow and often self-contradictory (take a cab but don’t ride with strangers, frex) rules, they want to be raped – and got needled and passive aggressived at until I blew up and then they basically pulled a John.
But yeah. If you’re the victim of a crime based in bigotry, people will be falling all over themselves to excuse your attacker and blame you.
Pretty much, victim-blaming is very easy to acquire, sad to say.
And I think you’re on to something, Ben. He at the very least expected her to pretend that what happened didn’t and have no protective instincts towards Becky and for her to leave her in the car so they could have a civil lunch where they pretend she doesn’t exist.
Denialists are weird and seem to think it’s a neutral request to conform your entire life towards their denialism.
In my efforts to find hope in people, I will now abandon John and move my hope to Youth Pastor Powers. I hope that he is a new YP and I hope that Carol really hates him because he is an okay guy.
I still have hope for Jonathan. He IS going back to India, after all, and I have high hopes of him catching dysenterie (spelling? someone correct me, plaease) and diarrhea and having a shitty ti- ahahahahah, who am I kidding? Christian missionaries don’t get any of the health problem of those heathen local populations because of god’s protection (and not because they don’t live in those populations bad conditions, no sir, all god).
*dysentery (since you asked?)
I did, THANK YOU. For some bloody reason, google search auto-complete was refusing to be helpful, and english isn’t my native language.
Ugh John, fuck off. I love you, Joyce. Be as angry as you want to be, you have every right to be. Don’t let the bigots get you down :3
I don’t know if it has been pointed out yet, but using “You’re angry therefore you’re wrong” in an argument is an example of “ad hoc ergo propter hoc”. Basically “this therefore because of this”, trying to prove that event A causes event B because of the order of occurrence. He is saying that whatever point that she could make is because she is angry, not because they are valid.
Post hoc, not ad hoc. ‘After this, therefor caused by this’.
An ad hoc is pretty much necessarily a propter hoc, since it refers to something created for a specific purpose – ad hoc, ergo propter hoc would literally mean ‘to this purpose, therefor because of this purpose’, which is a tautology, not a fallacy.
It’s not a case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, either, in this case – Joyce isn’t wrong, therefor her anger can’t be caused by wrongness, or vice versa.
What John’s doing is a tone argument, which is basically a form of ad hominem.
Ouch. Today’s strip hits a little close to home for me. Goddamnit, John.
I really hope Joss gets to talk more with Joyce this weekend. Joyce really needs some sympathy right about now, and Joss may have some ideas about resources to help Becky.
“get recentered”
…
…
You did NOT just say that.
The thing I hate about this particular sexist and logical fallacy is how hard it is to combat in the moment.
Reign in your anger gives them points by making it seem they were right about your anger being an irrational over-reaction.
Blowing up more (as Joyce did) gives them the opening to condescendingly “take the high road” and leave the conversation, claiming victory.
And it’s really not possible to try for some sort of middle ground (at least for me).
Add in social sexism, and it’s a really difficult bit of sophistry to counter. And all the douchnozzle doing it needs to do is realize you’re upset and keep passive-aggressively dismissing it and needling you as John did, in hopes that you’ll lose your temper.
And it plays into all sorts of emotionally abusive tactics – invalidation, as John did in the past few comments (invalidating Becky’s stress over the SSN situation), dismissal (John’s “extreme reaction” comment, which dismissed the idea that Joyce was right to be angry, and his refusal to acknowledge she and Becky have both been traumatized), emotional blackmail (refusing brotherly affection until she gets back into her place, holding the threat of family exile like Jordan over her head unless she gets “recentered” – which is what he’s done by implication), and of course gaslighting (the “extreme reaction” thing and his continued attempts to make excuses for Toedad’s actions and minimize the harm caused by and danger of the situation Joyce was put in less than a week prior).
Would having another person intervene in defense of Joyce help? Because that’s how I would go about things. If John refuses to listen, have another person insist that they listen; it doesn’t matter who the person is, as long as they fulfill the “requirement” that John sets by remaining calm while being firm about him staying to listen. I think that by doing this, it would ultimately counter the fallacy and put the burden on John to make the willful decision to refuse or accept.
It would have to be a man, or someone John perceives as a man. Otherwise, it would just lead to a “bongos be crazy, am I right?” moment.
Yeah, this. But it can help to have someone jump in on your side.
Fuck this. I didn’t think I’d need to come back to that because I thought finally David might give us some highs after the past couple week’s panels have been cringe worthy, but nope, we’re still gotta have a “fuck this” because apparently having some sort of happiness is impossible for this comic.
I have to agree, if only because the recent Joyce-focused strips are hitting closer and closer to home with me.
If all this comic is gonna turn into is a bunch of build up to a payoff without executing the payoff, than it’s gonna become harder and harder to read.
Seriously, I like the daily update, but come the fuck on. This is becoming cringe worthy just on pretense of not seeing Joyce and the gang be shown to be RIGHT on anything. We’ve got a bunch from the Toedad camp but nothing from Joyce’s to show that she’s been RIGHT in what she did. I mean, sure, we KNOW she is, but the comic hasn’t given us anything.
Such anger. Your position must be totally wrong.
I recommend going back and rereading the Walky verse just before the rain sequence. Or maybe Mike’s romantic arc with a certain scientest.
Hey Joyce, I bet Jonathan has stuff. Like, heavy stuff. That you can throw. Preferably at him. Like his car. You don’t need to have concern for his property, Joyce.
I’m particularly fond of the “I don’t like what my little sister has become” line.” How dare you have an identity and be a person, Joyce? Bad Joyce! You must conform to your brother’s wishes, at least until you get married, at which point you don’t have to do that if it would clash with your husband’s wishes.
Oh, did I say fond? I’m sorry, I meant “you should get run over by a bus in short order.”
Bonus dislike points for Christi, who married this asshole. She hasn’t shown up yet and I already loathe her.
Honestly, I think Christi may be in exile, rather than on a mission. Who keeps their spouse away from their own family?
Honestly, if my family were the Browns, I’d keep anyone I cared about away from them, too.
Oh my fucking god John
Somone insert here a video of Joseph Joestar and one of his “Oh My God!” moments.
Aw, i’m no longer Mary? I don’t like her, but she looked a lot like me at 14.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWreHiN_E-Q
The struggle when you are mad but have morals.
Shame they didn’t make it to the end of the meal. John could’ve picked up the cheque with twenty pieces of silver.
Judas gets an undeserved bad rap. He was just doing what Jesus told him to. A more apt comparison would be… Paul? Is it Paul that’s the misogynist asshole who thinks sex is bad and girls are icky? I’m not really into christian mythology.
Yeah, Paul’s the asshole.
Or the faked letters written in Paul’s name. Though I’ll be honest, I’m not really into researching this in particular detail, considering that it doesn’t really change anything about the general level of sexistness of the bible as a whole; and in any case, why should we have to care about that book to begin with?
So yeah, let’s just say Paul’s the asshole. Or at least one of them.
The Epistles that are disputed to have been written by Paul are the more misogynist ones, the ones about how Virginity is best aren’t disputed.
This is further complicated by the concept of divine inspiration, where regardless the misogynist epistles are considered divinely inspired and I die a little inside every time I think about it.
Sort of undeserved? I mean yeah it would’ve been someone else if it wasn’t him, but even earlier in the Gospels he wasn’t quite as “Good-aligned” as the rest of the apostles.
Effectively the entirety of the lead up to the Passion is “Someone has to be the bad guy, now who’s it going to be.”
They didn’t even make it to the beginning of the meal!
It was all a ploy by Joyce to keep from having to eat the food with gross stuff all over it.
John is a bit of a dick.
I hope Josh grows a spine and stands up to John and the rest of the bigoted family. Remember, he has that
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/writer/
thing.
Just a heads up, but she’s actually Jocelyne and we don’t refer to her as “Josh” or with male pronouns anymore.
Ehh, J. is in the closet, wouldn’t want to out anyone by accident. Not that J.’s parents read the comment section, but I can understand being in that habit.
Excuse you. Do you have any idea how hard it can be to come out? Her family in particular is almost certain to react horribly. “Standing up” to them may sound all great and everything, but she could get herself lectured into tears, horribly triggered, in deep shit with her parents and brother, and there wouldn’t be any taking it back.
Also, referring to her as her incorrect name and pronouns and her gender as “that thing” that she “has” is disrespectful. She is a transgender female. That’s the terminology.
Plus her life could be put in serious danger.
Which has been made very apparent by her family’s sympathy with a shooter, and specifically one in a similar position to them (and I doubt they even acknowledge the kidnapping as such).
Also she might not be finished bailing stuff out of the parental home. She’s presumably been moved out a while, but her room is still set up and may still have photos, keepsakes, etc.
On a slightly different slant inspired by that:
Joyce, take your brothers half completed words to heart. Plan first. Make sure you’ve got your SSN & birth certificate before you next leave the house. You might well need them. Along with anything in your room you’re not willing to leave behind.
Like Joss, my family knows little about me, and as such we have a fairly neutral relationship, but I did this on my first or second visit home and absolutely recommend it.
Another thing for Joyce would be if she needs her SSN or similar, will they give it when she calls or fuck around trying to find a way to submit it themselves, or what? I needed mine for paperwork, and ended up having to take it because my parents kept fucking me over by putting off paperwork and not getting necessary info to me (mostly/probably unintentionally at the time, but my mom is super passive aggressive so who knows?), so I dug up my hard copies of everything when I was next home (didn’t help with paperwork, but at least I could say ‘I’m sorry, my parents haven’t done their segment’). I regretted it in ways, because their home was a lot more stable and less likely to have them disappear (I moved every year for three years), but I need them.
Regardless, any time after this visit, if Joyce discovers her parents won’t send her info/legal copies/etc, it’ll be a lot harder for her to get to them, even if she returns.
You are of course right. I am very sorry, I got my pronouns mixed up, and I will strive to better myself. Mea maxima culpa.
I apologize.
I didn’t mean to be insensitive to trans persons or anyone, merely somewhat coy about what I meant in case someone didn’t want a spoilerish thing.
That’s understandable, but I think most everyone knows about Joc, and I think it’d be best to err on the side of spoiling things in order to avoid misgendering her.
Thanks for this response. Sorry if I sounded a bit harsh.
Wait, so condescension and invalidation don’t calm people down?
As it turns out, not so much!
Who knew?
Some awkward Jocelyne disdain going on in this thread… I feel for Jocelyne (and Joyce). This family dynamic is depressingly similar to my own. For those who don’t understand why Jocelyne isn’t standing up to John – it’s really hard to do that when you’re financially dependent on your abusers. Even when you’re an adult. She’s not dependent on John specifically, but John seems to report dutifully to their parents and she’s dependent on them right now.
As someone who has called out her own parents on their bigotry and emotional abuse, I can say that there’s that one fight or moment where it’d be magical if your family either said “Gosh, you’re right, we’re sorry” or your siblings said “Mom, Dad, she’s right, you’re being unreasonable” and you move forward as a family trying to do better for each other. Unfortunately magic doesn’t exist in the real world and that’s not what happens and you have to deal with it. If you’re lucky, you at least know that the family members who agree with you, will continue to support your decisions, even if they can’t do so openly at the moment.
I actually really relate to Jocelyne right now because I’m also trans, I’m hugely submissive towards my parents who didn’t react well when I tried telling them I had gender dysphoria, and since I’m both in college and hugely dependent on them, cutting ties with them while still being able to afford an independent life would be near impossible.
That is an incredibly difficult situation to be in and I can only partially imagine what you’re going through. I send my best wishes to you-you will get through it.
Joyce in the beginning of DoA was stubborn & stood up to her beliefs. She still is. John’s baby sister hasn’t changed at all.
Where exactly is home for Joss?
…and she can’t even THINK about talking about being attacked at a party for Christ’s sake… oh no, THAT would cement her never being ALLOWED to leave the house, ever, again. It’s families like this that make the world what it is today, by the way, whether the family is white bread Christian in Kansas, or Middle Eastern Muslim….
She needs to get herself and Becky back in the car and drive back to College tonight… right fucking now… let the family figure out how to retrieve the car, or Becky can use her bed, because she’ll be hiding somewhere else.
I think you’re giving the Browns too much credit there. See, as a not completely shitty person, your instinct to someone being sexually assaulted is to protect her, even if that protection would be in itself terrible.
But these are the Browns, and if real-life Brown-likes reaction to sexual assaults has taught us anything, is that odds are Joyce would be sent to a “good christian college” so that they could teach her to be a godly woman that wouldn’t tempt good men (Ryan was a pastor’s son; how could he NOT be good?) into sinning. Bad Joyce! Bad!
The big twist is that John’s not even married is he? He’s just a cruddy little sad-sack like Mary.
So, one, he is married (to Christi, who we haven’t met but who’s been mentioned)
But two, I’m kinda cringing at equating “unmarried” with “cruddy little sad-sack” — like, aromantic, asexual, and/or unpartnered people aren’t automatically pathetic douchenozzles.
As much as I feel Joyce’s righteous fury and total frustration at the attitude John’s using to shut out Joyce’s point….
Poor Joss. Her face in that last panel is so conflicted. I can’t tell if she’s frightened by what this outburst means for her, concerned for Joyce, just conflict avoidant, or all of the above.
As mentioned above, Joss didn’t even come out face-to-face with Ethan; but instead through texting. -That- is how much of a risk it feels like for her. She has to guard herself to a level that that would give Becky “guarding all non-happy emotions from coming out through jokes” MacIntyre pause.
She gave him her card as she was leaving. He figured it out there.
It was a text, sent after she had left:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/writer/
Well huh. Okay.
You win this round.
I’m imagining you saying that with clenched teeth, and already extracting a plan for diabolical revenge.
Mostly because I imagine all people planning diabolical revenge against me sooner or later.
I did consider making it more overtly threatening.
Am I the only one who thinks that main situation aside, it’s rude to call Jocelyn by Josh? Or does Jocelyn’s family not know that (or acknowledge it)? Was that an extra sprinkling of rude?
They don’t know. Jocelyn (not illogically, given the way they’ve acted) probably doesn’t feel comfortable coming out to her family.
Given the way most of them have reacted to Joyce’s tolerance for her long-time best friend coming out as gay, that conclusion is not only reasonable, it’s unlikely to change anytime soon.
Indeed, given how Carol and John seem to be making excuses for Ross’s psychotic episode, she is not without reason to be in fear for her life.
(quiet noises about how “psychotic” is a medical diagnosis that really doesn’t involve violence against others, and that people who experience psychosis are far more likely to be targeted by violence annnd killed, and that conflating mental illness with bigotry just lets bigots off the hook and helps demonize and institutionalize mentally ill people further)
(louder noises about same and how fucked it is that of all things this comment section doesn’t tolerate this is not one)
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/heated/
“I’m their favorite. And precisely because they know the least about me.”
I’d suggest shes also their favourite because he seems less likely to rock the boat
Hm.
I think that I do not like John.
He needs to settle down a bit.
I think he needs to recenter himself.
Doesn’t he realise how angry he sounds?
I don’t like what he’s become.
I don’t like what he’s apparently always been.
He’s just so bitter right now.
Yay. Come along, internets. +1s for all.
He’s just overreacting.
As somebody with a friend who often pulls this shit I completely empathize with Joyce here, anger doesn’t make an argument less valid and John’s an arse.
anger makes a counter argument a moot point because 99.9% of the time the other person is unwilling to listen to you.
What kind of counter argument do you imagine for John here?
The ONLY adequate response would have been “oh, sorry, I fucked up here”
In and of itself no, anger does make it harder to form coherent thoughts… but Joyce seems to be unimpeded at this moment and thus this is a double-douche move.
Here, Joyce, I found you some moneychanger tables to flip. You’re Biblically authorized.
Why does John remind me so much of Percy Weasley?
(and come to think of it, Percy WAS pretty condescending to Hermione when she was outraged about how Crouch treated his House Elf)
I dunno just sayin’
Probably because they are both massive tools, with sticks up their butts.
RAGE.
Sing, Goddess, the rage of Hank Brown’s child, Joyce.
Emerging from her cognitive dissonance,
When the Truth, she found, was lies.
And all the love They preached,
Was an ideology of hate,
a technology of oppression.
How did it begin?
When did turquoise-eyed Joyce
First see the cracks in the facade,
Which for 18 years she’d accepted at face value.
(With apologies to many authors)
Ok:
Sing, Willis, the Rage of Hank’s child, Joyce.
Major off-topicness:
I don’t know if any of you are familiar with the Baldur’s Gate series, but recently (as in, last week) an expansion (Siege of Dragonspear) came out. I haven’t played it yet, but apparently there’s a major uproar about a transgender character in it. The critics range from “eeew, trans people” to “this character is too on the nose and stereotypical and therefore bad.”
Since the commentariat here is mostly comprised of people whose opinion I can respect (i.e., they’re not utter assholes), anyone who played the game and/or is familiar with the character in question care to comment on the issue?
An expansion? Wasn’t that game series released back in the late nineties early 2000s?
It’s a remake that was released in 2012.
Closer to a remaster than a remake, they weren’t allowed to change old content in the Enhanced Editions. Siege of Dragonspear is a whole new game in between 1 and 2.
Wasn’t in on this one but I looked it up.
-The DLC, apparently, wasn’t very good in general, so there’s a lot of people arguing past eachother and not listening.
-The argument that really stymies me is that since Mizhena wasn’t depicted as trans until now, and not doing a specifically trans storyline about it, makes it not count somehow. There’s no reason why it can’t be, of course, but making it so every instance of a trans character has to be ‘justified’ more than anyone else’s doesn’t strike me as great either.
-It’s weird in-context because the setting itself has (pretty much forever) featured the ability to physically change your biological sex as a given. It makes trans issues a touch tougher to discuss in-setting.
Gonna ask a question, trying not to make it offensive (so if you are, assume it was a fail at that rather than intentionally yanking your chain):
How much of the “gosh you’re loud, don’t be mad in *public* for Pete’s sake, well if that’s how it’s gonna be, I guess I’m gonna have to leave” thing is a Midwestern thing?
I mean, where I’m from, the fight would have continued. Even if it meant long-term sniping that would put Bosnia to shame. None of this ‘make a pronouncement and flounce out’ business.
We get that on the west coast too it goes along with the “Politeness thing” People can say anything they want to you in a pleasant cheerful tone.
“It’s really too bad you can’t just lose some weight” Is considered polite even though they just insulted you. People can continually bash on you and insult you but if they do it “politetly” they are considered in the right.
It’s a bullshit attempt at being right. It’s why I don’t like politeness and I don’t assume the person speaking calmly is right in fact usually the calmlly speaking person is wrong.
People that do that are just condecending dick-holes
That’s not really what’s going on here though. It’s not really a “I don’t want to fight in public” thing, it’s an “I’m using your anger as an excuse to dismiss your argument and I’m leaving as a way of declaring victory” thing. I win because I’m above your childish tantrums and female hysterics.
It being it public has nothing to do with it.
I know the thing you’re talking about and I’ve seen it both ways – the keep the fights at home and the go at it in public versions. This is different and it’s pretty much universal.
@Briny: Re Bosnia, I have a sister-in-law who lost most of her male family to genocide during the Bosnian War, so unless you mean literal sniping in your family, comparing it to Bosnia … not so much? How about, instead: “would put George and Martha to shame” (or, “George and Martha ain’t in it”).
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
Scrolling through the comments on this, i’m loving how accepting the people who read this comic are. Hell, it’s been so long that i actually forgot about jocelyne. I really hope that nothing happens to out her in this arc, because im honestly afraid of another ross situation with joyce’s mom. I was lucky, my family accepted me for who i am without question, but the browns? At the very least they’d cut off all contact.
First of all, congrats on having a great family that’s there for you!
Secondly… Well, what you said. Although as I’ve said before and will say again: I do not think I have the right to accept LGBQT people for what they are, because I think that implies having a right to not accepting them for what they are; and I should not have that right. It’s as if I should have the choice to accept people differently colored than me, or left-handed people; or whatever else that says nothing, nothing at all about whether or not they’re actually good people.
And in my world, the only real sin is to think of and treat other people as things.
John (the comic character, not the commenter) is a huuuuuge sinner.
Is it weird that I find this infinitely more infuriating what John is doing here? At least when say Joyce’s mom is arguing, you know she believes what she’s saying and is trying to defend a point even if she is wrong. John is being so dismissive and isn’t listening. And at no point has he even admitted that she has a right to be upset – it’s been “you SEEM so angry” as if she can just switch it off.
Yeah: he hasn’t said one word, not a single word which acknowledges or even hints at anything going on EXCEPT Joyce doing a good impression of Johnny Storm (“Flame On!) for no reason whatsoever. Not. A. Single. Word.
Yeah, I’m with you on this one. It’s emphasizing form over content- he’s being an idiot, but he’s doing it “right”, she’s in the right but isn’t performing it in the right key, so she’s doing it “wrong”.
Dude’s pathetic. Just totally stupid. How can he not be concerned with his sister’s well being. No compassion. No empathy. Do I know anyone like this if I was in Joyce’s shoes? Dear Lord, I pray I don’t.
What a douche
This whole mess is going to get uglier before it gets better… if it even does go anywhere near ‘better’.
JOCELYNE, GO!
USE REVEAL!
“”Um, John, WHY would I want to call YOU when I calm down?”
Dammit John! I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but no, you had to go and disappoint me! ARGH!
“John, wait. I’m calm now. But you’re STILL a bigot. And a hypocrite. And no one to teach anyone about Jesus.”
“Ok, I’ll call you later. But from now on I’m going to call you ‘Saul’, ok? It seems to suit you better … Saul.”
The conversation didn’t go the way he and Mommy Dearest rehearsed it. They both expected Joyce to kowtow at his male command. They don’t realize that the Joyce they sent to college will never come back.
A normal person would not assume that John thinks that he’s right just because he’s not yelling. I wouldn’t want to have a conversation with someone who is so visibly agitated either, because it won’t get anywhere.
1) Actually, a normal person would – or at least would be more likely to. There’s a good deal of research supporting this. Especially when it’s a woman yelling and the man being calm and superficially reasonable.
That’s why this tactic works.
Now a hypothetical purely rational person would not, but then that’s not a normal person.
2) Willis wrote that. Do you think he is wrong about his characters and their motivations? Even if it wasn’t actually true, it can still be John’s theory and thus his motivation.
If my little sister were that upset, I’d want to know why. Also, I learned a long time ago that telling an upset woman that she’s too emotional, and that she should calm down, is not going to end well. If a woman’s upset, just shut up and listen, she needs to vent. If John’s married and doesn’t know this it means one of two things. Either his wife is very subservient and is bottling things up (a very very bad situation), or she’s still training him.
If a young family member of mine told me about an incident in which she said she was afraid she was going to die and her friend was kidnapped I would very much like to know what happened
Er, I’ve had multiple dudes tell me yelling or visibly getting angry makes me wrong, and heard accounts of the same from many, many women. It’s a Thing.
It is very much a thing, sorry breh.
Oh, and John? It doesn’t matter whether or not you “like” what your lil’ sister has become. She is not a possession. No one has to act the way YOU want them to, whether you’re related to them or not. She’s a person reacting to horrible things, and if it makes you uncomfortable, then how does she feel? Maybe you *should* be more uncomfortable.
Does anyone else get the feeling that John had already decided the hows and whys of the conversation and that nothing Joyce was going to say was going to change what he’d already decided?
Or am I just projecting the smug condensing vibe I get from him onto my own older brother…? (Not a fundie but just as arrogant)
I guess I could see him already having the anger speech prepared. But I don’t think he even cared enough about Becky to have planned how the whole thing started. Remember, she wasn’t supposed to be there.
But I would guess that the entire meeting was planned, and that the anger thing wasn’t really in his cards. I have a feeling he’s made these types of comments before, and it just came naturally. He’s too arrogant to think he’d need to plan for her not listening to him.
Agreed. It wasn’t that planned out. This is just how John reacts to women challenging him (At least younger related ones.) Dismissive, condescending and when that pisses them off, he can blame them for being to angry to discuss things with. No need to plan that, it’s just the default approach.
Whether there was actually a plan between him and Carol to try to nudge Joyce back into line or something, I don’t know. He could have just wanted to see his sister and make sure she was okay like a normal person would, just with a weird definition of okay that doesn’t include defending lesbians and unrepentantly punching elders.
No, I think you’re fairly spot on.
Well that sucks for Joyce because if its true then its not something John came up with on his own but rather in cahoots with dear old ma
No, it’s possible he was just going a “brotherly” thing (as he sees it)… I think if he was in cahoots with Ma on this, specifically, then we wouldn’t leave the conversation so easily. He’d have stayed and probably gotten even more insulting. (Just my opinion, though)
But I do think a Joyce-family intervention is coming, with all of them ganging up on her. They seem the type that would do this for thinking her faith is failing. (As opposed to the normal reasons interventions happen… because the person is destructively addicted to drugs/alcohol/gambling/etc)
I’d guess it’ll be something like but plus sized: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/takeittogod/
I hope Jocelyne isn’t going to be looking back at this as the time she should have taken a side.
everything about this man makes me wanna body slam his ass
The centering thing really throws me. That sounds very Buddhist to me. And you couldn’t touch that stuff with a 10-foot poll as a fundie.
Could John have added some Buddhism to his Fundamentalist Christianity, and be even more of a hypocrite?
It’s re-centering in their community.
In his eyes she has drifted too much to the borders; crossing those borders means she is no longer accepted in the community.
“if you are going to Heaven I will definitely go somewhere else!”
Hanna Free
Literally just saw this comic on Tone Policing from Everyday Feminism and immediately thought of this!
http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/12/tone-policing-and-privilege/
Yeah, I’ve seen that before, but looking at it again:
Tone Policing + Gaslighting – It’s really hard to continue this conversation given your out-of-proportion anger.
“Wasn’t that an extreme reaction?”
And oh god this:
Tone Policing + Paternalism – Why don’t you calm down so we can discuss this like adults?
The whole thing just screams paternalism, which is understandable in a way, since he’s the older brother and that’s probably been his role with Joyce her whole life, but contrast it with Hank earlier.
I linked the same article earlier, it’s always worth repeating!
Great minds think alike… and so do ours!
My hands literally twitched as though to strangle.
Well, Joyce has reached her anger breaking point. I think it’s going to be Becky who keeps her from being lost in it though.
You took the words out of my mouth, alt-text. Sarcasm and all.
Oh, no, Joyce…
I want to give her a hug. I have been in this situation before (when other people would dismiss an argument simply because of how it was expressed) and it is never ever a pleasant time.
Poor thing. Never have I felt this much empathy for the well-being of a fictional character.
This is gaslighting.
My asshole cousin is like this. It’s why he’s been disowned.
At least it’s good news that he wasn’t enabled..?
I kinda wish Jocelyn had stayed. Joyce has a car. I feel bad for Jocelyn though, because she must be feeling horrible right now.
And we also see why she’s forced herself into the closet around family.
She hasn’t quite left yet, and she seems to be being pulled both ways. I’m still holding out hope she thinks of something that gives her an excuse. Even if it’s something as passive as “I’m really hungry, and I was looking forward to eating here again. I’ll catch a ride home.”
[POSSIBLE SPOILERS?]
Plus someone said that she appears to be in the same room as the other girls in some of the previews for soon-to-come comics.
And fuck you too John
ah, today’s comic…. it reminds me of the members of my family that are all sweetness and light even when saying the most dreadfully hateful things about my (lack of) religion, my sexual orientation, etc, and react to even the slightest shred of responding anger from me with (maybe feigned? maybe not? i don’t actually know) bewilderment and dismay, because how were they supposed to know it would make me upset, and don’t i know they’re praying for me? as though that would absolve them of it all, and invalidate my feelings. they’re praying for me (and don’t you love the condescending way that’s always said?) and thus they cannot possibly be wrong. and the implication is that if only i were as devout as them i would understand how utterly misguided i was, and how petty and undeserved my anger. it’s maybe not exactly what joyce is going through, but it’s close enough for me to have a visceral reaction to today’s strip, because i know that feeling – of having your very real pain tossed aside because you’re not living up to unfair and lopsided standards of what you “ought” to be feeling, thinking, or doing.
i really feel for joyce here, because in addition to all the completely justified rage she’s feeling, she (unlike me) is still trying desperately to salvage her faith, and her family (the most immediate representation of that faith she’s ever had) is making that exceptionally difficult. it’s going to get worse before it gets better. i hope she comes out of it at least kind of alright
To a friend which recently “discovered Jesus” and was becoming a bit like what you describe, my other friend told sternly : “You know, religion is like a penis. It’s perfectly okay to have one, but not to shove it in someone’s face.” Apparently she calmed down. But she caught her early, the habit wasn’t too deep.
“Well, if you can’t respond to a traumatic, life-threatening experience without being justifiably angry, then I guess there’s just no talking to you, is there?”
Any other response would just be unreasonable, really.
Damn is this current storyline getting painful to read. Its great, just too real to how some people are.
omg that last panel is me. all. the. time. XD
This is me so often. Way too often. Even when it is not really warranted
That alt-text. Omg it was in Joyce’s position so many times. I feel the pain.
Have some internet hugs, if you want them!
Hey, that’s one experience I don’t really share.
My mother and sister like to shout over anybody else who dares speak.
(Don’t take this to mean that yelling back at them is cool. That is very not allowed.)
They definitely don’t think speaking calmly makes you more right. How can you be right when they’re the only ones anybody can hear? Flawless logic.
So your family participates in “Shoutiest wins” debate without the ‘fun’ of having escalating volume on both sides. That’s frankly worse than “Shoutiest wins.”
Have an internet hug.
By imperial decree, I hereby order internet hugs all round!
He’s a dick.
Okay. I really just wanted to be the thousandth post
Curses! One off!
All I can say now is, Jocelyn, you better not walk out that door leaving your sister like this! Time to ‘girl’ up.
Not Jocelyn. If he (yes, in this case HE) goes down this road, there is no Jocelyn. It’s not safe to be Jocelyn , or even talk about the possibility of being Jocelyn, around John.
Just because she has to pretend to be Joshua for the moment around family, doesn’t mean she isn’t actually Jocelyn.
It’s really not cool to misgender a trans person because you disagree with them. It already sucks enough to be misgendered when closeted.
I get the point you’re trying to say, that if Joss sticks with the bulk of her family she can never live openly as Joss, which is unfortunately true. But I disagree this is THE defining moment. Even if I’m… sorta confident the Browns wouldn’t hurt Jocelyn physically if she came out, I am also fairly confident they’d kick her out, cut off any financial support, and make ‘therapy’ a condition of a continued relationship, but not in any way that would actually help her.
Given how fragile the family has been shown to be when faced with dissent, I’d say it’s fair to say Jocelyn would be at risk of punishment just for siding with Joyce where John could see, even though she clearly agrees with Joyce.
Joyce has every right to be angry. John is an asshole.
I am waiting not-so-patiently for the next one
Can someone link me to the episode when we learn that Jocelyn(Joshua) is trans? I can’t remember when it was or that we even knew that??
How could I miss that hum
Here. Not that everyone caught what Willis was throwing, but…
What I don’t understand is why nobody has punched John in the face yet. It’s right there, it’s eminently punchable, why is everyone dragging their feet? Jocelyn, you’re with him now! Just ball your hand up into a fist, draw it back and swing! Bloody his nose, shatter his sense of inviolability, make him cry for mommy! Hurt him!
I learned today that German has a word for that: “Backpfeifengesicht”
Literally “Face in need of a fist.”
Doesn’t roll off the tongue as smoothly as schadenfreude, but maybe it’ll catch on.
Wow.
I kept hoping for SOMETHING to be better, for him to listen, buuut nope.
This familiar, familiar tune.
At least Joyce makes me smile, because she spells out loud what this makes me think too. Being an actually well-behaved good person backfires when you are angry XD
Oh man, Joyce. I feel you. Can’t ever flip tables because the guilt would harsh on my rage.
Again, I realize John’s being insensitive about the situation and that he really should be listening to Joyce more, but I don’t really blame him for it here. She’s making a scene and not trying to talk it out level-headed, just throwing out insults. I apologize if this makes me sound like an emotionless asshole, but generally when you want someone to understand what you’re going through you don’t yell at their faces and constantly insult them.