“what kinda dictionaries are you reading? proper nouns ‘n what not”
The New Century Dictionary (1946 edition) has an index of geographical names at the end so India and Indiana do indeed appear next to each other in that dictionary. Page 2647, I think.
The out of date college dictionary I read cover to cover for no good reason when I was about ten had proper nouns, a list of prefixes and suffixes, four alphabets and a whole page about semicolons. I didn’t really take the last one to heart, but that’s beside the point.
all the dictionaries i read at school had all the rude words underlined until i got to secondary school, then they were highlighted in pink or bright yellow
No, she couldn’t have. As much as I love Jocelyne, she is still a propagator of the infallible patriarchy. It’s how she was raised, not her fault, and she can try to break it, but for now she has shown me she is more or less part of it.
Literally everyone is raised to be a propagator of patriarchy. Everyone. The implication that Jocelyne does so more than Joyce does (who just yesterday was laying down concepts of a woman’s role in marriage that are patriarchal to the core, and bucked Dorothy’s suggestion that it could be otherwise) by lieu of having been assigned a male gender at birth is kinda gross? Unless you meant something else by this and I’m misreading you, but that’s sort of the implication I’m getting. Sorry in advance if I’m misinterpreting.
Oh, no, sorry. My fault, I should have been clearer, and you’re right, Joyce is terrible with that stuff, obviously (she’s growing but not great). At least she’s trying (she had to have a lesbian best friend and be held up for it to happen), I don’t see any of that from Jocelyne until now.
It is about gender, but not what Jocelyne was assigned at birth. I meant that there is no way she could’ve stood up to her brother because as a woman that would help further deconstruct it as Joyce was doing. Plus she’s been uber passive at all points before this, in part due to hiding sure, but you can’t tell me none of it is due to this. She didn’t help her sister because she’s scared and “it isn’t her place, she isn’t allowed to disagree.” She hid behind her menu, knowing full well her sister is right.
If any of this came across as close-minded or misinformed, I apologize. and please inform me where I’m wrong or if I made fallacies.
I don’t agree at all that there was “no way she could’ve”, because she is absolutely capable. I’m not even going to try to respond to the bit about “because as a woman that would help further deconstruct it as Joyce was doing,” because to be frank, I don’t understand what you meant by it at all.
I think Jocelyne is scared. But she’s not scared that it isn’t her place. She’s scared about what will happen if she begins to fight back against her family. She is stuck in an incredibly toxic situation. I’m not sure what she has in terms of resources for getting away from them, her own money, etc., but regardless of whether she could cut off ties with them or not, it’s a really hard situation that she’s in. As she once said to Ethan, she’s afraid she’ll say some things she can’t ever take back. Of course, in this strip, it seems like she may finally have had enough.
“She hid behind her menu, knowing full well her sister is right.” This makes it sound like she was ashamed or felt at fault because of what Joyce was saying, and I don’t think that’s the case. I think she hid because, as I said before, she is worried about what will happen when conflict breaks out. She tried to divert the conversation to protect Joyce and Becky and to avoid the conflict, but I don’t think she in any way wants to silence what they have to say.
Your opinion definitely makes more sense, and helps me understand why so many are mad at me. You are totally right, and now I see where I was making connections that aren’t strong at all frankly. I do get how it should be read as her trying to avoid conflict until now. That has just never been my strong suit, as you can tell with this thread.
This is how debates should be. It’s nice to see people explaining themselves without resorting to thinly veiled attacks and actually listening to responses rather than just getting defensive.
The sad thing is how often things go the other way instead 🙁
I just don’t understand what you’re getting at. Yes, it would be completely out of character for Joss right now to have said this in front of Joyce. Yes, it would have been a bad idea for her to do it, given how John was acting, since at least part of what John was doing was trying to save face.
Yeah, maybe she has internalized some of the female gender roles of being passive, maybe even pursuing them because she’s female and that’s how women are “supposed” to act. And, yeah, she probably was raised to believe in the whole familial hierarchy where the bigger brother (as long as he’s a Christian) is an authority.
But it seems a bit simplistic to put it down to upholding the patriarchy. Especially when that’s a common refrain of the anti-trans feminists.
(They think trans people are upholding the patriarchy by claiming to have an innate gender.)
Are the feminist that oppose trans people because of the concept of innate gender? I always read the argument as “trans people were encourage to transition by (certain parts of) society because if they transition, they don’t threaten the traditional gender roles.” An either conform or transition- approach by society which puts more pressure on women who do stuff traditionally not supposed to be done by women.
Nothing to be sorry for! Language is strange and imperfect, it’s friggin’ difficult trying to get the full scope of thought across and misunderstandings spring from that. If anything I’m sorry for drawing an incorrect conclusion!
It’s true! women are women are women regardless if they’re cis or not. Trans women get an even shorter end of the stick than cis women do because transmisogyny is like regular misogyny… but super-charged.
I don’t get why you’re saying this. Yes, we’re probably all propagators of the patriarchy to a degree, so you’re right in that sense. But why on earth are you zeroing in on Jocelyne? She is a member of a demographic that suffers the worst from the patriarchy and from the gender binary itself.
So why didn’t Jocelyne say this in the restaurant? She was afraid. And if that’s true, why is she saying it now? Because people aren’t automatons that say exactly the right thing at any given moment. It’s hard to make the right decision in a tense moment. It’s hardly ever done by anyone, imo. It’s really, really difficult.
Excuse me? Are you forgetting that she is trans existing in a trans-unfriendly space? Did you know trans people are often murdered in these spaces? Let me give an incredible “fuck you” for accusing Joss of being a part of something that would literally murder her if she went up against it.
Holy shit you’re right. I did definitely deserve that, I hope what I said explains my view for everyone else, but actually yeah.
I was just too hopeful in thinking maybe they could be like Joyce, and once someone close has these issues with oppression they could change, but they aren’t…
Sorry
I do think the fact she’s being forced to be silent instead of supporting Becky is something like a special torture for Josie. She wants to help and be supportive but it could very well be physically dangerous. Not to mention financially if they’re struggling. Which makes it no less like a punch in the gut.
Jocelyne is /likely/ pretty appraised on this stuff seeing as she’s young and in the modern era (and Gay males still have pride of place in queer networks, so what Becky’s gone through shouldn’t be unheard of for her). She’s scared because she has cause to be.
Oh yeah, very much ditto on that. Including the almost dying part. Jocelyne will have a tough fucking road ahead and that’s a major part of why she’s scared. The other part is that she is incensed by it all, but she knows if she gives in to that anger she risks outting herself and that’s the ballgame.
Hell, I’d say it’s guaranteed that she’s stewing in anger all the time, especially with family. When you’re a girl, but everyone thinks you’re a boy and thus you’ll fully agree with their ultra toxic masculinity and sexist views of women, it’s hard not to be.
It’s like having a front row seat to the partiarchy’s worst showing.
It really doesn’t ‘help to be heavily armed’. Then you’re an extremist and it’s okay to kill you anyway. And you kinda have to sleep, and aren’t omniscient besides.
so you’re saying that, on pain of death, she’s upholding a part of the patriarchy?
Look, part of the point of saying things like “EVERYONE is sexist” or “Everyone is racist” is that, you know, we actually mean them, rather than using them as a shibboleth. Jocelyne is both victim and inadvertent, unwilling supporter. It /is/ fucked up to go after her more for it than the gal we know is way more gung ho on supporting patriarchy as a rule, but she DID just allow patriarchy to continue by inaction. I’m not going to get MAD about it, because yeah, even without the fear of death (Which is completely a legit fear for her), she’s still ultimately afraid (of a dozen other terrible things), but that doesn’t change that Joyce just suffered directly from patriarchy, and Jocelyne didn’t try to stop it.
Whether you agree or disagree, whether patriarchy hurts or helps you, makes no fucking difference. Did you support it through your action, or your inaction? If so, what you did is sexist. If that hurts you, well, it’s kind of immaterial to that question. “Is what you did something I should be angry with you about” is not actually the same question as “Is what you did sexist”
I really, really, REALLY don’t need any fucking Brave Defenders who will deny my agency, or people who want to strip the complexities of life away. These things are hard and life sucks. Sometimes you don’t get a good choice – you just have to choose shitty options. Jocelyne’s choices suck – let John abuse the patriarchy to hurt Joyce, or open herself up to abuse for opposing him publicly. I *respect* her decision, but I’m not going to deny what it did.
Considering I don’t identify as a feminist that would be bad. Also wasn’t trying to say that, but obviously I don’t know how to voice my opinions correctly, I apologize.
Jocelyne is being *far* more effective talking to John one on one. That is, this way she has a chance of having a positive effect. If she’d spoken up in front of the evil sinner, she would have had no chance to do anything except undermine her own credibility in John’s eyes. Especially since she wouldn’t have been able to get the dig in about the fancy car bought by the poor for his use. I’ve had some second thoughts about something I said about John never seeing someone else’s problems as his own because of his missionary status, but if he’s driving that car around without guilt, he’s either an entirely thoughtless bastard or a sociopath. I’m hoping for thoughtless bastard, as that leaves some room for growth.
I think she may be forced to find a new ride home, depending whether John continues doubling down (likely) or not (in which case, he instead wants to try to prove he is a) a good christian and b) using the car well by getting Joss home.)
If only there was someone else there with a car.
Someone who’s also her family.
Someone who’s much safer for her to be around.
Someone she desperately wants to support.
Yeah, because Joss carpet-bombing her relationship with her entire family and hometown before she is established in life as a safe and assured independent, and doing so in such a way that would likely also guarantee her sister’s relationship with the family is destroyed, which would cost said sister her free college education from said family, is an absolutely sane and rational decision. Beyond that, you know how awful a position Becky is in right now? I can almost guarantee that at this early point in her college life, her adult life, Joyce’s parents could immediately leave her in the same position just by disowning her, let alone actively making it difficult for her to get what she needs to establish herself in life in the many ways that Toedad has for Becky?
Oh, not to mention that despite their despicable collection of human failings, Joss probably still loves at least some of her family, and knows that an explosive fucking drama bomb of in-fighting with unrepentant sinners will cost said family their entire social standing in their lifelong hometown, their very important positions in their church, even her older brother’s entire career and adult life up to this point. All of that could be gone in months or even weeks if this situation were to blow up into something that makes public record, or even generates the right rumours. I bet that Joss is plenty aware what most of the town is talking about related to this situation, and I bet it isn’t good. People can have genuinely shitty parents and any way Joss chooses to deal with that problem would be completely justified, but it’s entirely her choice to play this situation out how she thinks will keep everyone safer, or happier.
Joss is a meek person, but a calculating one, and she hopefully has some kind of long-term plan for gently making a clean break. Fuck, as meek as she has been shown to be, maybe she currently plans to stay closeted indefinitely – and that is absolutely a valid choice, despite the fact that it’s tragic and would make us all feel very sad, and possibly even make some people here outright hate her like she is some kind of traitor to trans* people. But undermining 25+ years of careful balancing to try to set herself up for a position where she could possibly live her life safely and happily by escalating a situation which may blow over with sufficient damage control and siding with her sister when she knows full well the family can’t possibly respect her as a sensible adult with meaningful agency is highly unlikely to help her sister or Becky, and will possibly destroy her own life in the process.
We would all love to see Joss take the warrior angle on this. It would be immediate, vindicating, and a beautiful symbolic and literal moment. But, the consequences are levels of dire that perhaps some people who haven’t experienced this sort of situation will find it difficult to comprehend. Even knowing of how dire they are, some in such a situation would choose to accept those consequences, and while that would be brave as hell for Joss to do, that does not make it the right choice, or the best choice, but simply the most honest and most satisfying. Once again, we know nothing about Joss’ long-term plan, and very little about her in general; we’re being clearly shown what Joss would like to do and projecting our desires to see her gain all the self-actualizing she would gain from finally getting to live true to who she is, and what she believes in, but with her upbringing this kind of dramatic moment is, if nothing else, not something she would ever just “jump into” the way that, say, Becky has.
But if anyone doubts the stakes here, please consider this and think about it in terms of precisely why Joss would want to see this blow over instead of come to a head; Joss is a member of the LGBQT community, and a member of the fundamentalist community, so she therefore knows well the dangers of being associated with the former and the reactionary attitudes of the latter. These girls are in a small American town that is predominantly fundamentalist, where their family is a well-known, well-respected, well-connected fixture of the community, and the young patriarch of the family is the local goddamned minister. Just think about what such a family could possibly do to solve the problem of a trouble-making, defiant, embarrassment of a daughter. Just think about the fact that this family is politically connected in the town’s hierarchy due to how deeply and thoroughly they are involved with the church, and that the vast majority of citizens and authority figures share their moral sensibilities. What if Joyce’s family decided that saving face with their community was worth more than their daughter’s safety, or even her life? Honour killings are a real thing, and not many questions would ever be asked if she were to suddenly disappear and never come back. Joyce is not in the same position as Joss to understand how much danger she may actually be putting herself in, so it’s great to see her react to all this in a way that mirrors our own frustration and disgust. But in Joss’ mind, I’m sure she’s trying to find a way to keep her sister from obliterating her current, privileged position in life for a simple moral victory that Joyce will be in a much safer position to assume after enacting a long-term plan.
Maybe I’m being excessively pessimistic, protective, or even paranoid with the extent to which I believe the danger could escalate in this situation. But not only is that level of discrepancy absolutely called for by those who are trapped in such situations, it suits the thinking of somebody brought up in such a hostile environment. John nailed the attitude of these people perfectly in his shut-down to Becky: People get what they deserve, and because you chose to do wrong, you should have expected all of the consequences that befell you and accept them as God’s will, and summary punishment for your wrongs. Even if you take the God parts out of it, this style of thinking often leads to that sort of never-ending forward-thinking and meticulous planning for the simple fact that you have internalized all outcomes as your direct responsibility and hold yourself fully accountable for ensuring that nothing bad ever happens.
I could have ascribed far too much thought into Joss’ motivations, but if nothing else, any and all deviations from her script with her family have a chance of raising suspicions she doesn’t want raised. If you think being a lesbian sympathizer isn’t going to go over well with the conservative establishment of a small town, think about the amount of immediate danger Joss would be in if she were ever outed before she has made a safe, clean break from the entire town? Being a gay ally is one thing, but a trans* person, in a place like that, from a family like that? She wouldn’t just be at risk from her family, anybody in that place might try to seriously hurt her. It could end up with a full-on lynch mob. Joss is meek, and scared, and is therefore understandably careful with how she handles her affairs, and if anybody is judging her for that they are seriously off their mark.
I do wish I was a bit nicer in retrospect, but I also wanted to be off-putting to try to highlight the actual gravity of this scenario, which might be lost on some people.
She could however fake it. Stay and talk to Joyce & Becky under the guise of “getting her to calm down”. And then try to make it clear to Joyce that while she supports her, it’s really best for both to try to stay low key.
If only because a long car ride with John and/or talking to Mom in this state might be even more dangerous.
This is what I’ve been hoping (or she at least keeps it under the implication of ‘that car is unchristian’ and not an unplanned ‘I’m an LGBQXYZ too, you snot’ no matter how satisfying it would be)
Yep.
She’s accusing John of being a hypocritical asshole without peeping a word in support of LGBT+ cause. She’s not breaking her relationship with her entire family but just leaving him and going to Joyce. Her secret is still safe.
What I want Jocelyne to say”Forget about Becky for a minute. A man we have known or who life came to our sister’s school. Aimed a gun at her and her best friend. FIRED that gun into the air. Kidnapped her best friend at gun point from right next to her and after a series of very dangerous actions one of the only things our sister could do about all of this is hit the man who did all of this before he was arrested. Then instead of getting comfort and support from her family after a newer life ending event her family keeps focusing on one aspect of one of the victims and essentially siding with the man who could have and seemed willing to SHOOT AND KILLED HER. You say she needs to calm down but maybe…. you should be thinking about her and not Becky and getting angry.” Not going to happen but I can wish.
And once more Fuck you John DIAF and I know we haven’t meet her but your wife must be a moron to marry you.
I think John’s feeling a little grab in the ol hypocrite jeans, as he sort of left the “T” out of the LGBQXYZ alphabet-soup there. Probably would have earned himself a clout in the ear if he’d put it in there, though, considering close company.
Kept thinking about that yesterday. How hypocritical John and his mother have been. “We support Ross because he is a part of our religious community.” Isn’t Joyce also a member of your religious community? As well as a member of your family?
Yep. That’s probably what they’re afraid of facing psychologically. I mean, I don’t think Carol liked Ross *either.* She just wasn’t going to let that stand in the way of never being wrong.
holy crap, is this a thing that happens?! I mean when i was a kid and was part of a christian (catholic) community we pitched in and bought our priest a car but that was a separate thing from the charity donations and he’d been a art of the community for decades at that point. is John even a pastor? or is he just a missionary? I admit i’m fuzzy on how it works in Protestant communities. I’m only catholic anymore when my grandma asks.
He probably works for one of those super-douchy tv churches that sends people envelopes asking them to “plant a seed”. Jocelyne didn’t necessarily misspeak when she said “tithings from the poor”.
Yeah, I had automatically read it as for at first (‘cos that’s how my church works and how any sane system would be set up), but I caught it on the second read. It literally hadn’t occurred to me because what the ever-living fuck.
That’s some televangelist / talk radio host level shit there, John.
No, he’s a missionary in India, I suspect Jocelyne’s statement was basically correct. That money was supposed to come from the poor, to support a church, and he took it.
I mean, probably legally, and probably on the grounds of ‘I didn’t need ALL of this money to set up a church in India, it’s cheap there”. Either way, whatever EXACT mechanism he used, there’s still no legitimate method for a missionary pastor to have a mustang that isn’t “I married into wealth” (Not actually impossible.)
People buying themselves private jets with the donations they get from the poor, sick and elderly is a thing (justified by them NEEDING a private jet to preach, somehow), so someone getting a car out of the same folks isn’t that surprising.
There is a looong history of (presumably not exclusively) American preachers getting rich off of donations, particularly among televised preachers (televangelists). Many American preachers don’t belong to any denomination and are beholden to no one.
There is also a belief among many American eVANGELICALS THAT caps lock is the devil- material success correlates with god’s approval of you; essentially the poor wouldn’t be poor if they didn’t deserve it, and the same for the rich.
It’s not a new or unknown phenomenon by any means. Now enjoy a topical rock song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MixVbumoDWU
I don’t think Hank has literally done much that would take him out of the “we should hate him without compassion or mercy” bubble, but he seems to be written distinctly more moderate than the rest of the family in a pointed way that suggests to me in a meta-narrative way that Willis could actually plan for him to, in the long run, come around to reason and recognize that he is on the wrong side of his family for his own interpretation of Jesus’ teachings, similar to how Joyce has. The mother is unsalvageable, John is unsalvageable, but maybe there is hope for dear old dad to be a decent human being.
“Go ahead and try to hit us if you’re able
Can’t you see that our sisterhood is stable?
You can tsk and preach and scoff and threaten hellfire,
But we’ll knock you down with all the force of God’s ire”
“And you’re not gonna snark at us two together,
We are gonna stay like this forever.
If you preach us apart, we’ll just quip back better,
And we’ll always be twice the human you are.”
They’re only quality blows if she actually got through John’s armor. I perceive it’s within the parameters of possibility, plausibility, and perhaps probability that John’s perpetually, permanently unperturbed by people pointing out his putridness.
It’s a design choice I appreciate for a variety of reasons. Partly because my sister & I got our father’s blue-gray eyes and my brothers got my mom’s dark brown eyes. Partly because it helps make it so children don’t just look like clones of their same-sex parent in simple art styles. And partly for that great nod to Joc’s gender 🙂
We’ll see when Jordan appears, whether the reasonableness gene is attached to the same chromosome as the eye colour gene. (Unless Willis decides to mess with us and give him Hank’s eyes anyway.)
Though now I’m imaging (like, really just imagining, don’t actually believe this is the case) that John didn’t include the T because he views it as different and not part of this “trendy” LGBQXYZ; he’s actually surprisingly pretty okay with the T.
I’m guessing it’s more like when people say “Black, White, Purple, whatever”. And everyone who isn’t black or white is all “Hey… you shot off into imaginary people before even thinking about us.”
Yup, it’s a microaggression. It’s a reminder that not only are you an unperson and viewed as total garbage by the bigot you’re talking to… you’re also less than that garbage, not even acknowledged, seen as something almost fictional.
And it ends up being a reminder of how far your movement has to go and the itching knowledge that eventually once you’ve fought for years for visibility, you’ll rise to the position of being even more actively hated for what you are.
Yeah. As evidenced by the fact that the response to the unparalleled trans visibility of 2015 was 2016’s unparalleled wave of legislative attempts to pass laws effectively banning our very existence in public or ability to lead public lives. Sometimes visibility fucking sucks, y’all.
Not John, who is just showing contempt, but that was me back in the day. I actually was under the mistaken idea that gay men were really women and lesbians were really men, and that trans people were just more honest about it.
Yeah, I bought that being gay was wrong (from what I was taught), but being trans never seemed to be. Either they were sick, in which case it was horrible to have a problem with them, or they really were the other gender, and then of course they’d try to wear the other gender’s clothes. It would be sinful for them to do otherwise! (Yes, there really is such a scripture.)
Don’t get me wrong. While I am still a Christian, I don’t believe any of the anti-gay or anti-clothing stuff today. I’m just discussing how I grew up.
And I don’t think this applies to John at all. I didn’t even show that level of contempt towards gay people when I thought they were sinners.
So are all naturalists be us black, white, Chinese, Indian, native American, Asian, gay, straight, bi, trans, asexual, or any other race, gender, orientation you can think of
My only problem with naturism is that I wouldn’t be able to get through the day without laughing like a maniac. For some reason I cannot think of boobs as anything but hilarious and I think it might be a problem.
I’ve encountered at least one trans woman who was virulently homophobic, insisting that gay men were all secretly trans women, and vice-versa. (The notion of a trans lesbian, for instance, was completely unthinkable to her, as was the idea of bisexuality as anything other than a sign the person was simply a deviant of the highest order.)
In addition to the religious aspect trikly refers to, there’s also the fact that for many trans people, especially in conservative areas, the gatekeeping to get your trans status approved is intense, and rife with gender-policing. If you find a doctor willing to sign the forms at all, you frequently have to prove yourself to be an idyllic form of your true gender, as determined by traditional roles. So trans women are expected to be ultra-feminine housewives, while trans men have to be uber-masculine alpha males.
I was a bit shocked the first time I met a gay man who claimed that bisexuals were just faking it. Since then I learned that that has been a not uncommon “thing”. Before that point I had assumed that the LGBTQ-community were all sort of on the same page, but of course it’s going to have a ton of internal biases because everyone’s just people, after all.
I’ve read that a lot of bi kids are at significant more risk of mental health illness than usual, stemming from the idea that they can get shit from within the Queer community as well as out of it when we’ve built it up to be a safe haven of tolerance and understanding.
Part of that one stems from the unfortunate nature of ‘coming out’ in parts of this country. Since conservatives insist that being gay is a choice, then one consequence of that is that if you aren’t straight, you’re gay. So a kid in a situation like Becky’s has a romantic relationship (or even just recognizes the attraction) and decides they must be homosexual. (Note that neither Becky nor Joyce seems to have heard of the concept of a bisexual in their pre-comic lives.)
So, they go through the whole coming-out process, including lots of intense emotions and counseling and group struggles and so on. And they get to be in a lot of other people’s lives as well. Then they fall for someone of the opposite sex, and everyone is confused, and maybe former same-sex lovers feel betrayed/deceived. It’s a situation where ignorance of how this all actually works leads to a lot of confusion and doubt.
So, stories like that get passed around the gay community (usually only from one side), and pretty soon you get, “There’s no such thing as bisexual.”
There’s also a thing where people aren’t quite willing to fully embrace being gay and try to hang on to some normalcy or just continuity be thinking of themselves as bi, but eventually admit that they’re really only interested in the same sex. Then they or those who’ve watched them go through that, try to help others accept they’re actually gay.
Which does happen and is even well-intentioned, but still contributes to bi-erasure.
The problem, of course, is when those folks who were gay but “tried to hold onto normalcy” deny bisexuality as a valid sexual orientation.
This view of bisexuality as a half measure until admitting you were really gay all along and nothing previous mattered is a huge component of the bi-erasure epidemic.
Absolutely. But it is a thing that happens and it’s understandable when they think others are going through the same process. Wrong, but understandable. Less so in this day and age which is far more open about such things than even a decade or so ago. At least once people are past the Dan/Becky “Is that even a thing?” stage.
Lots of bigotry is understandable. It still hurts and it should still be squashed out so people never have to go through that “is that even a thing” stage.
I noticed but that’s coincidentally around the point where most people stop remembering the rest, or pretend not to remember the rest because it proves they actually recognize it all
though it would be super-weird to be okay with trans* but NONE OF THE REST–that’s like skipping some steps
It’s a cure for homosexuality, but it’s also totally a thing (And probably better accepted there than here, since even as a top-down dictate it still is unlikely to have remained in effect for 2 decades without at least broad support (Even among the rural people, since the people of the cities are generally more liberal than those who live in the states).
I mean, the general population of Iran isn’t more progressive than that of the states – IE if you count rural and rural. But it’s by no means some enormous gap that Meriken simply automatically win like they tend to imagine. Which is pretty true as a rule, afaik.
Well my impression and what I was getting at is that it’s about as accepted there as homosexuality is here, which is, you know, not great, esp. when you look at rural people or conservatives, but the contrast basically shows that intolerance (and partial/incomplete progression of tolerance on a societal level) comes in all sorts of flavors and you can’t really generalize there being “steps” or that accepting trans people is automatically a “higher level” than accepting gay people.
They do more surgery than thailand. Thailand is one of the most common places for Westerners to go (and plenty, even in more accepting countries, will still go to thailand). I’m sure it’s still not great, but there’s only so much room for this handwringing about how it’s ‘like the USA’.
It’s partially intentional. Folks like John do not believe in trans people. Trans people are just “extreme versions of gay people”. Like someone gays so hard they become a trans person. As such, of course they are not going to honor it, because in their eyes a (slur for gay male) is a (slur for gay male).
Don’t forget, all the people just putting it aside as a mental disease and it should be cured with Pimozide or something like that. In my experience that is the kind of opinion you meet when talking with “Intellectuals” any way.
“Someone gays so hard they become a trans person.”
That made me laugh in a really darkly amused way. I have been gaying all over the place for many years and still no penis 🙁 Gotta keep buyin’ em at the store.
Sorry if insensitive, but sometimes I really think all the shitty nonsense bigots believe is ridiculous enough to be a joke. <3
Laughing at other people’s utterly irrational, unwavering stupidity is one of the most benign forms of dark humor probably. It may make you seem a bit insensitive but at least you’re not being actively offensive.
Actually historically it’s always been the other way around; LBGA people were all violating our traditional gender roles, by not wanting to marry and have kids in the Proper Heteronormative Fashion. So we were seen as “basically trans”, rather than trans folk being seen as “basically gay”.
I mean, transphobic cis LGBs have done a bang up job of trying to shift the umbrella so as to make same-gender attraction (esp. exclusive same-gender attraction) the primary reason for oppression, so that we can uh I guess feel more important and authoritative as we try to toss other people out of “”our”” movement for not being gay enough… but yeah, historically it’s not true. And in terms of which groups of us suffer the most extreme effects of LGBTQIAphobia, it’s pretty clear that it’s still not true. A white cis gay man is not, in fact, the most at-risk demographic.
Sure, though I wouldn’t be so quick to say “started by feminists” as if there was no overlap? See: the Spinster Movement, which was made up of LBA and feminist women. Feminism, asexuality, and WLW all united in an attempt to fight back.
HALLELUJAH, these words. I am sick to death of the sga model tacking on “or you could be trans I guess, then you can be part of the community too” as if…. the reason for being targeted is and always has been sga…..
Plus it’s incredibly obviously about excluding people (particularly aces).
/stands up for my ace and aro honorary siblings forever
I know it doesn’t always feel like this, but I swear to you: some of us recognize that the gatekeeping crap being lobbed your way right now is exactly the same transphobic and biphobic crap we’ve rejected before (are still rejecting now), and are only more determined to not tolerate it being used again.
You are valid and real and important and that you’ve been deliberately erased from history doesn’t make you any less deserving of a seat at the table.
True, very true. Which I think makes it easier for bigots to lump us all together (and is the reason that trans and other queer rights have always been intertwined). In their eyes, we’re all “sinning” against “proper gender roles” and trans people are just “sinning” harder than the rest.
And it tends to all stem from the same pit of anxious toxic masculinity, terrified that the separation between men and women isn’t the uncrossable gaping chasm they want it to be.
YEP. I think the thing to remember when looking at how we’re categorized is to remember that the cis straight dyadic hegemony has never given the tiniest of craps about how we differ from each other or why; we are all, have always been, weird and wrong to them. That’s why we were all “queer”. Because we failed the test for “normal”, because we our non-normality was incredibly threatening for their concept of society; not because we were specifically some degree of gay. And they sure as heck didn’t care to distinguish between someone exclusively gay and someone ace, because both had the same result of not wanting to get married and have kids.
But that’s why I’m nonbinary–maximum gay! Feelings for a dude? It’s gay. Feelings for a lady? Also gay. Feelings for another nb person? Super mega gay. Maximum gay: achieved. (I mean I’m also ace which people loooooove like to bring up to invalidate 100% of that, but only if they’re an asshat)
Oh I have gotten the “How is your “boyfriend”” from people. They literally do air quotes. So tempting to respond that “he is getting further than you ever will.”
Or the one I get from the a bunch of the kids at the college Queer Alliance, “You are just afraid to come out as gay.” Well no honey, I am biromantic and open about it, and most people I know would give me less shit for being gay.
Actually, I became “okay with trans” back in the ’80s, long before I became a decent human being on this stuff. It was a case of my sexism and homophobia beating up my transphobia. See, there was this James Bond Girl named Tula, who was trans, who did nude photo spreads. Somewhere, deep in my mind while flipping through the magazine, I came to the conclusion that either she was a woman, or I was gay–and being gay in the 80s was simply unacceptable even as a remote thought, so “trans woman = woman” it was.
I agree that that’s more likely. But, riddle me this…
Which is more interesting: Somebody who’s a bigot through and through? Or somebody who’s a bigot through and through, yet practices some bizarre form of mental gymnastics such that they can support their trans (and straight!) sister Jocelyne, but reject the rest of the lgbt+ community on the basis of being sinning trend-chasers that are distracting from the only important issue, the one that effects the people I know personally?
But frankly, if that were John’s exact attitude towards Joss, I wouldn’t take it as any sort of kindness or concession. It would simply be him choosing to specifically pardon his sister’s sin, while still fully internally believing that Joss is an abomination and subhuman, for either the sake of appearances or being utterly incapable of expanding his worldview beyond his privileged existence. That makes him a special kind of asshole, and a complete and total hypocrite.
I agree that it would be incredibly interesting if John were consciously sensitive towards Jocelyn. Unfortunately, with him addressing them as “Josh” in yesterday’s strip, it’s likely that John either isn’t aware of Joss’s situation, or (worse) he does know and is entirely dismissive of it.
Interestingly, I got it from an acquaintance of a friend of James Dobson, the founder and erstwhile president of Focus on the Family, that dear Dr Dobson believes just this. Trans people have a physical problem (i.e., being born into a body with a sex that doesn’t match who they are) and should be accepted and supported, but gay people have a sexual perversion that they indulge. So yeah. Apparently it’s a thing.
I don’t think I knew ‘T’ was a part of the acronym until a couple of years ago. If I was to have ‘Alphabet Soup’ the acronym, I’ve of done the same.Hell, I don’t think I even realized that the ‘T’ part of it was a thing at all, and my life was only partly sheltered. Perhaps John doesn’t know Trans people exist as well.
I grew up knowing “LGBT” without actually knowing the deciphering. I also knew “LGBT+” and “LGBTQ” (and “LGBTQ+”). Everything past that just disintegrates into alphabet soup for me… I prefer MOGAI XD
QUILTBAG does seem more fun, but seeing it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Think I’ve heard the term ‘queerbag’ used as an insult to a bi friend before.
He has no reason to actually learn or internalize everything, but due to being younger and also the importance of keeping up his appearance as a stoic and learned moral paragon of his ministry, he has to pretend to make an effort such that he differentiates himself from the more openly bigoted people with whom he agrees, yet must look and feel superior towards. By learning anything at all, he’s satisfied himself with his own exploration of the topic because he knows that he knows more about “that sort of trendy nonsense” than his peer group, which is exactly the same in his mind as actually giving the concepts and ideas an actual, critical, fair shake.
I don’t think they got to the “ordering” phase. I don’t know this restaurant chain, but I doubt they’re out more than some water and maybe some rolls or something.
And in half an hour, once they’ve eaten (Chicken fingers after all), they come out to find John and Jocelyne still in a screaming match in the parking lot.
Could be a Prosperity Gospel thing of some sort. An American evangelist, Creflo Dollar, has been getting a lot of press in recent months because he wants his congregation to donate funds for a 60 million buck bizjet for supposed evangelisation purposes.
That’s been a controversial point in the news before. The tithe goes to the church and is supposed to be used to spread the word of God… But if the preacher gets a fancy new car, well, if it helps him proselytize, who cares?
… if the preacher gets a fancy new car (or $60M jet), well, if it helps him proselytize, who cares?
—————————
It is beyond amazing just how people will twist the word of God when they need it to support their particular position, desire, or lifestyle.
I wouldn’t stretch to “Amazing”, really. Considering how many words they are and the it all has the verifiability of a fortune cookie it’s really a wonder that people have managed to form large consensuses at all.
A parsonage is fairly standard going back to at least the middle ages. It means that there is a place fro the pastor near the church and is a relatively sound investment for a fair size church as it can reduce the pastors needed salary, especially once the building is paid off it can reduce. In the churches that rotate pastors like the United Methodist it also save an incoming pastor from taking out a mortgage every few years.
And parsonages aren’t usually McMansions. I grew up as a PK (ELCA Lutheran), and I remember the fun that ensued when it was discovered that the basement wall of the parsonage was visibly bowing inwards. Time for committees, which always move fast!
Yeah, that’s not a big deal. It’s a house that they have for the pastor, and it’s a lot cheaper than paying him to have a large enough salary to actually buy a house. And he gets to be nearby, so he can get to the church quickly–which not only helps the parishioners, but also keeps transportation costs down.
You can’t literally have all the money coming to the church be spent on the poor–unless everyone working there is independently wealthy. That’s not really the issue. The issue is, as Joss pointed out, that a brand new car is not remotely necessary for his mission in India. Especially not a car that is back her in America.
Letting him borrow a car while he’s back would make sense, but a brand new car? That is just wasteful. And makes me think he’s not even the type of missionary who has to work when he comes back home.
I would like to take a small amount of pride in saying no mission or congregation I have been a part of was ever that wasteful. It really is amazing just how fast my opinion of John sank. I really wanted to like him.
I remember one priest get a car that expensive from our church… Three days later when I saw him at school for Wednesday mass he had sold it and was giving the money to the school for some to quote “new god damn paint” for the drama department. The uniforms it bought for the basketball team were… Infuriating.
I don’t think that’s accurate. I think in his case he may be blind enough to his own inherent hypocrisy that it’s more like “my sister was almost killed, but it was the direct consequence of her sins, and she needs to learn the lesson that God is trying to teach her with His Plan.”
There needs to be a group consisting of Joyce, Becky, Ethan, Danny, Walky, Dorothy, Billie, Ruth, Marcie, Carla, and Malaya standing behind her going “OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH” every time she says something boss.
I can’t say any of the things I truly think/would like to see visited upon this family which would embarrass even the Old Testament God. This seems like a nice enough place, and I don’t much want to be banned from commenting over it.
The problem is that he’s the one making the consequences. Like, being a lesbian needn’t have consequences, except that people like John and Ross are utterly horrible assholes about it.
You know, it’s actually incredible how little he seems to care for Joyce (and Becky, but Joyce is his SISTER so it’s more surprising). Does he even realize her life was literally in danger? She had a friggin rifle aimed at her. Does he somehow not realize that? Does he not care?
If he acknowledges she has a genuine point it strengthens her position and weakens his. Suddenly the lesbian is in the right and the fundy is in the wrong for acting on his beliefs.
It’s not that he doesn’t care, exactly. It’s that he thinks Ross was in the right to remove Becky from school and make plans for her to be sent to a “correction” camp, and Joyce was in the wrong to deceive a parent (and ngl, Ross being an older man does factor in in this particular sect, and Joyce defying him was beyond wrong to someone like John) when the parent was simply trying to protect their child. (Even though Ross’ form of “parenting” was abuse and kidnapping at gunpoint)
In his line of thinking, Joyce isn’t an adult protecting another adult/friend, Joyce is a dumb little kid lying to the adults to protect a sinful, entitled brat from the “loving correction” of their betters, and they drove Ross to his extreme actions.
So everything Ross did is Becky’s fault, and partly Joyce’s, and they should feel bad for driving Ross to it and getting Ross in trouble, and then daring to act like they were in the right.
If you’ll excuse me, I need to go take a shower and scrub these terrible childhood memories of these sorts of assholes off of my soul.
A singular fairness I can grant to him on this one thing is he probably has had zero involvement in Joyce or her life. He was probably nearly moved out by the time she was walking and talking, they’ve presented him that way. Why would you be close to a family member who was a baby when you lived with them and you then stopped seeing regularly, without some kind of special connection between the two of you?
Making sure to pass laws creating awfulness and suffering for a marginalized group, so you can point to the “harder” lives they live as proof of your superiority and the raw degeneracy of that “lifestyle”.
Encourage bullying in the schools, disownnment of queer kids, and firing them from all jobs and evicting them from all housing and then point to the suicide, homeless, and depression rates as proof of the “unhealthiness” of being queer. It’s the Family Research Council’s life-long shtick.
You know that phrase “Science advances one funeral at a time”? It totally applies to social progress too because half the way we move away from this shit is when the people who believe it have the good grace to fucking bite it.
Wanna know something super gross? “Social skills” therapy for autistic kids includes performance of gender stereotypes.
So if you are an autistic girl who likes weather like I was, your therapy will include trying to “extinguish” the “inappropriate behavior” of preferring meteorology to dolls. When they aren’t holding everything you love hostage to compliance as a “positive reinforcer..”
And autistic folk are WAY more likely to be transmitted and/or various non-straight alignments. Guess how they’re treated, since if you’re autistic you’re not even allowed to know you’re passionate about something. Cuz it’s not a passion, it’s a “special interest”.
As much as I think actions should have consequences (a huge part of agency is feeling that your actions produce proportionate responses) being a lesbian is not an action, and having a gun pointed at you pretty much not an acceptable consequence of any action.
And the refusal to accept that Toedad’s actions (aka. holding your daughter and her friend up at gunpoint) have consequences too, much more legally enshrined ones.
Seriously, life being hard or unfair is not a justification for your concerted efforts to maintain or exacerbate that state, the fact that life is hard and unfair should be something we strive to mitigate not an excuse to be an asshole.
Like, I am no shrinking violet at all, but in Jocelyne’s closeted shoes I’d probably be looking out the car window and trying to be as small as possible. It would be perfectly understandable and okay for her to react that way about all the terrible BS flying around her.
But that’s not what she’s doing, now is it!! YES GO JOCELYNE GO
Note how she’s not saying a thing about the actual issue at hand, she goes off on an independent barely related tangent having to do with John’s personal moral character instead.
Not a word uttered in actual overt support of alphabet soup.
I think Jocelyne was afraid of the conflict, and afraid of John turning his hellfire on her next, and afraid because she was getting a front-row seat to how conditional their family’s support is… but then she sassed him anyway, because she loves Joyce and she knows it’s right and she’s brave.
This also isn’t a direct defense of the lesbian. That’s too scary territory to touch. Comes to close to home.
She can attack John on the greed and hypocrisy without getting close to that. Deflection, but an outlet for the rage that has to be tearing her up.
I love Jocelyn. I want to hug him and just love him forever. Because he understands how it feels to have to hide something from your family because they wouldn’t understand or worse think that he needs to be “reconditioned”. V -V *hugs laptop* > A< YOU TELL HIM JOCELYN!
I know you mean well, but…
“I love Jocelyn. I want to hug *her and just love *her forever. Because *she understands how it feels to have to hide something from your family because they wouldn’t understand or worse think that *she needs to be “reconditioned”. V -V *hugs laptop* > A< YOU TELL HIM JOCELYN!"
Really, has she told anybody? She sent Ethan an SMS with her email addy so he may have some small inkling, but if there are any people that actually know, like members of her LGBTQIAPK support group (did I get all the letters in the correct order?) are people who have not been introduced in-comic as yet.
Ethan doesn’t have an inkling, he straight up knows that Joyce has a sister, now. Jocelyne took a huge risk in telling him, but, yeah, his face at the end of that strip was one of realization, when he saw the JocelyneJBrown email address.
Actually, I went back and looked at that comic again. After Ethan asked about being able to see some of her writing, Joshua/Jocelyne told Ethan she would text him some links; and then what he got on his phone was “JocelyneJBrown.com” — which is *NOT* an email address. I too thought at first that Joshua was writing under a female nom de plume in much the same way many females have written under an assumed male or androgynous name; it wasn’t until Willis himself made in clear in the comments that we knew beyond a doubt that Jocelyne was transgender but unannounced.
Speak for yourself. I didn’t read the comments the first time through and I picked up on that. (It helped that the hover text said “Joyce’s sister is kinda adorable.” I mean there’s only one way to interpret that)
I’m srry. Because there are some people who get confused or offended I wrote “he” more jokingly. V v V I realize her situation and shouldn’t have been rude like that.
Someone needs to kill him. Right now. Just slit his fucking throat and be DONE with it. “Entitled”?! “ENTITLED”?! Consequences for WHAT?! EXISTING?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
I was expecting this ever since John tried to keep Becky from coming to lunch. Seeing everyone else arrive here is … well, I didn’t expect it to be this painful.
I am never actively wishing violence or physical harm on anybody, but maaaan, if someone wrecked this jerkwad’s fancy car or something, I’d be so super okay with that.
Yeah. This is the Margaret Thatcher thing. Or Scalia. Or numerous others. People who, in life, used their power to actively harm people. I am not gonna be sad that they died. Maybe I have sympathy for their loved ones, but if anyone comes and tells me to ‘respect their legacy’, then….. nahhhhhh thanks, I’m good.
I don’t expect the car to be “free” actually. It’s probably paid from his income which will not be significantly more than that of others. It’s just that when you have that kind of income while living in a country where the average income is a 20th of yours, money tends to accumulate even when living a considerably luxurious style.
The bottom line may be the same but you arrive there with a lot more of, well, entitlement. You feel you deserve that much more than the ones around you since you were born into an exploitative country which you left voluntarily. You just left the money tap running, and when coming back to visit, the house is flooded.
Actually, in the megachurch scene it’s not uncommon for pastors and missionaries to get free luxury items tax free, often with some BS attached about how they totally use it for ministering… and just driving around.
A lot of the time, it’s paid for by little old ladies sending in their life savings to the Church because “that’s what god wants”.
This content made me think of that guy who tried to convince his congregation to put together a few million bucks to buy him a private jet – to use in the ministry, of course – and then blamed ‘Satan’ when they didn’t hit the funding target.
Jesus walked and frequently slept rough.
The Apostle Paul either walked or hitch-hiked his way around the entire Western Empire when he wasn’t on military prison barges.
I wonder if they’re capable of understanding what this says about them as ‘Christians’?
Where is the lightning when it is so clearly called for? Jocelyn’s burn needs to be followed by one from God — the real God, the God who loves and doesn’t put up with bigots and bullshit. The actual God of love; not the one of whatever f’ed up church the Brown’s attend.
I assume it is, since it’s Willis’ sort of thing to know, but it definitely is for higher ups in the mission programs (organizers and up, I mean, rather than random missionaries or the churches who promote missions).
Well clearly if the church gave them that car that means that God wanted them to have it.
But yeah it happens. They don’t often call it skimming, and some are even open about spending money on personal gifts, but mega-churches can make a ton of money and you can’t spend all of that on poor people, can you?
See, I never know how involved other people are in the culture. “Should I bring up Creflo Dollar’s 65 million dollar luxury jet, which was bought to replace another, smaller jet that he felt wasn’t worthy of him? I mean, he’s hardly a *standard* missionary, and everyone’s already heard of that, right?
Distributing a whole bunch of money to five people is a whole lot less work than distributing it to hundreds of thousands of people.
It’s just being efficient. Try getting some developing country project funded for $10000. Close to impossible. Make it $100mill of which most will go to “administrative” costs and spent inside of the organization including a bit of backpay, possibly in the form of campaign funds and other actually legal niceties, and you’re talking.
Plus it still makes its way down to the poor via “trickle down economics,” right? So it’s basically just the same as giving that money to the poor directly, just more efficient. And, like, intuitive and natural and stuff. Yeah.
There’s a long, shameful history of corrupt jackasses using the church as their own personal piggybank, and it’s alive and well (like a cancer) in the modern evangelical churches of America. It’s particularly grotesque and virulent in the ‘prosperity gospel’ variants, which con and coerce poor and desperate people into donating everything they’ve got ‘give till it hurts’ to ‘plant a seed’ that will then guarantee them that god will give them great riches in return. It’s disgusting beyond words.
Less common than people say, more common than a lot of people think. Prosperity Gospel malarky aside, some churches really do like buying expensive junk for their pastors. It’s not overwhelmingly common, but it happens.
Anywhere where huge amounts of money accumulate in one place, corruption tends to follow. That’s doubly so if the people accumulating the money have convinced themselves that they speak for a higher power.
Now I’m curious about the age difference between John and Jocelyne. Also, eee~ Go Joss~ as a starving writer, she knows that the real world is hard. Becky and Joyce know that too. But the real world shouldn’t have a consequence like ‘my dad came to SHOOT ME AND MY FRIENDS BECAUSE I’M GAY’. Like, this guy’s a missionary? THIS guy? Suppose the people of India should know they need to learn the consequences of having a different religion and culture…
Wooow, that’s a lot of years. I’m a little surprised that John roped Joss in with himself then, did he think college changed so much in the 5 years between when Joyce and Joss started college? Then again he probably just took Joss’ silence to mean she agreed and thus HER college years weren’t filled with so much ‘entitlement’.
I think it’s a convenient othering of experience that’s simply convenient to the social narrative that is shared by this social group. The “entitlement culture” of millennials and college students is a massive talking point of the regressive right in the modern day. Simply because this is the way that his culture views those things, right now, today, John is perfectly able to accept it as 100% fact that his lived experience with college was the “correct” and “standard” way the affair was supposed to go, but now that said demographic doesn’t include or agree with him, the narrative is simply “ever since we were done with it, it changed for the worse.” Ignore the fact that John was naturally absent from the specific segments of his college’s population (or, he probably just went to the fundie college to get his tax exemption uniform) that might have disagreed with his opinion, the way he experienced it was the way it was for everybody who came out of it at the same time as him. That, and since Joss came out of her time at Anderson as a “normal” person whereas Joyce has become something abhorrent and terrifying in the eyes of God (see: a baby girl who questions his overarching authority on all matters), so therefore the change in how college works can only possibly occur in the time between Joss leaving and Joyce showing up there. There is simply no other possible way of looking at it, because God is infallible and he made the world exactly this simple, which is what I was taught and is to what I owe all my success in life. The core failure that causes the suffering and complex problems of others can be summarized as “they didn’t believe the same things I did and therefore God intentionally fucked them over.”
There was a bonus comic that had Joyce not-yet-born, Jocelyne trying to express her trans-ness despite being FAR too young to even grock the concept, and John being discussed as if he was already out of school.
No it was John.
Which is why I’m a little surprised that John’s talking about college not being the same when they both went. Jocelyne can’t be that many years out of school.
I’d interpreted John as high school age in that one. Note that he is eating while the rest of the family is talking, so growth spurt in progress, maybe.
Isn’t the point of religious missionaries to completely replace the religion and culture of a foreign people with the “correct” one? You go in under the guise of improving the quality of life and helping people who need it and destroy everything that made them them.
Wow. I wasn’t sure there would be even more ways to utterly loathe the giant douchebag, but there we go.
Blame the lesbian for existing, and belittle being kidnapped and shot at, while going on about how entitled the women are getting, and you’re driving around in a gifted mustang.
Yeah. It’s Joyce and Becky that are “entitled” now. Burn in hell, older Brown sibling. I hope you enjoy Dante’s 6th Circle…I think this sort of action would fall under how Dante described heresy.
9th Circle is Complex Fraud, betrayal of family, but Dante’s version of betrayal was less this sort of action and more murdering them.
Toedad would go straight to 9th Circle. Jackass brown, even if mentality is similar, the action is not as “harsh”, at least to the eyes of someone like Dante.
Given that, by Dante’s schema, people on the inner ring of the 7th Circle include the “violent against nature” (i.e. gays), I imagine Dante would disagree with you there. But I think we can ignore that fact.
John would end up in the 8th Circle’s third bolgia, where dwell those condemned for committing simony and other profiteers of piety. Simon Magus, who trade gold for holy power, ended up there.
In Dante’s time, LGBT would be considered sinners, true. It’s only recently that view has been changed since the spread of Christianity.
However, Dante considered the acts in addition to who they were committed against. Those who kidnapped and killed Boniface VIII Dante stated would go to the inferno, even though Dante considered Boniface as shockingly horrible. Doesn’t matter if Becky is LGBT or not a sinner, Toedad’s actions without repentance would get him sent to Caina as an action against his daughter. If it was towards a non-relative or someone Toedad did not have an obligation to, 7th circle.
My point was more that Dante might very well have considered ToeDad’s acts righteous, rather than worthy of punishment. He wasn’t intending to kill her, after all; he was trying to “save” her in his own warped way. I think Dante would agree that the act and intents were noble.
If you set that aside, yes, ToeDad’s bound for Caina.
Actually, I think Ross would be bound for Caina. Paolo and Francesca were sent to the Lust ring for getting caught in bed together by Francesca’s husband and then getting killed before they could repent. Francesca’s husband, meanwhile, will have been sent lower down for his violent action, which he considered perfectly just and never repented for. Whether to the seventh or the ninth, I don’t remember, and I’m not sure it was mentioned.
Also, there’s the point that all sinners are judged by the ethics of their time; Cleopatra and Dido both appear in the Lust ring despite both being suicides because neither lived in a culture where suicide was a sin, despite that culture being “wrong”.
That’s Toedad’s dominion, definitely. Straight down to Caina.
I think, as awful as Brown #1 is, according to the way Dante categorized hell and sin, he’d be stuck in Circle 6. Heresy, at least in Dante’s time, was viewed as something very differently than today. This was before the Protestant reformation, after all. Placing things ahead of the common good, ahead of how Dante viewed Faith, but most importantly–how it played out.
The way I’m interpreting Dante’s view…all of the fundamentalists of Joyce’s soon-to-be-former church would probably be sent straight to Circle 6 as false Christians, or to the Malebolge of the Simonists in Circle 8, for how they are abusing church funds.
Of course, I am not an expert, I could be completely wrong.
Neither am I, but you certainly seem to be more of one than me. I’ve only read La Commedia once or twice, and it’s been a while. I need to dig them back up soon, now that I think of it.
I still need to find a good copy of Paradiso, the person who translated two of the standard English copies of Inferno and Purgatorio died before finishing the Paradiso translation. Even then, it’s a hard read, just because of how many contemporary figures Dante referenced. 0_O;
If you’re talking about the Dorothy L. Sayers translation, that’s the one I have. Paradiso’s last ten cantos were translated by one of Sayers’s friends and confidants who had access to her notes and had been “consulted” (I don’t know a better word for it) for the other twenty-three cantos of Paradiso. In my last reading, admittedly distant, I barely noticed a difference in quality.
Also, apparently Dante himself may have died before finishing his work, as there is a story where his son only found the last ten cantos (coincidence?) after a dream sent from his father told him where to look. Considering the era, it might have been media hype.
Also, where the hell is entitlement coming into this, even from a warped religious viewpoint? Or does John just thing “being angry” is a privelege reserved for those 30+?
It’s what they call Millennials who would like anything at all, such as a living wage, equality, self-respect, not getting guns pointed at them, you know, ridiculous things like that.
Additionally it’s truly a struggle not to choke condescending older asshats condemning Participation Trophy Entitlement Culture Millennials when they were the ones handing out the fucking participation trophies to their kids and grandkids with smiles on their faces like what did you expect of CHILDREN? TO GIVE THEM BACK TO YOU?
You’re right, why are they bongoing about that “everyone gets a trophy” mindset when THEY were the ones giving out the trophies and raising us like that?
I once read a person making a fair point, that everyone told him to study hard and go to a good college lest he have to flip burgers, and so he did well in college, and when he graduated and doesn’t particularly want to flip burgers they call him entitled.
Like, constantly through childhood, they told him that flipping burgers would be super terrible and/or shameful, it was the great big threat for not doing what they wanted, and that going to college = great job, so it’s his fault for believing them.
(Of course, I always expected to be a starving artist, so poverty wasn’t such a surprise, but you know, different strokes.)
And even if he sucks it up and starts flipping burgers despite that stigma that’s been repeated to him his whole life, he’d best not DARE point out the problems with the minimum wage. To his parents (and grandparents esp), that wage was actually LIVABLE so clearly the problem is with these bratty, entitled whelps. What inflation is?
My favorite part of the hatred for “trophy culture” is the dramatic misunderstanding of it. “Everyone gets a trophy” doesn’t lead to entitlement. It leads to people who don’t trust positive reinforcement or praise and don’t believe that they earned anything because it didn’t matter how mediocre or straight-up terrible you were as a kid, you still got that positive reinforcement, even if you knew you didn’t deserve it! Why would any praise or positive reinforcement be different as an adult? You’re actually worthless and everyone’s too polite to actually tell you that!
He’s entitled to be treated as the Wise sage because he’s older, male, and heterosexual? They’re NOT entitled (and thus Entitled with a capital E) because they’re expecting to have their opinions treated as valid just because they lived through the events.
Like most people of his ilk, words like “entitlement” don’t have actual meanings to him, it’s just a buzzword to describe “people who don’t agree with me”. It’s like “communist” and “fascist” in politics.
“Entitlement” is a phrase like “political correctness”, in the sense that although it does exist in a negative sense it’s more likely used by people in power to dismiss those who don’t have it but want to be treated with some sense of fairness.
People with a sense of privilege who think that because they have it easy everyone who doesn’t is a sponge, whiny or greedy, basically.
For John, Joyce is angry because she believes what hapenned to her and Becky wasn’t deserved, but for him it was a direct consequence of their actions (being gay, running away, helping to hide the runaway). It’s just what happens when you do those things, expecting to act this way and not suffer the natural consequences is Entitlement to him.
Basically, for John college should be like Becky’s, where bekng gay gets you kicked out. But it is like Joyce’s, where you get free pizza. “That’s entitlement”, says the man with the free mustang.
I don’t think that John even knows what the letters stand for. He clearly believes it’s all some trendy nonsense that doesn’t deserve a second thought.
I have heard people say LMNOP, but they meant it with loving good-humour, from within the community, not like what John’s doing here.
Oh, he knows, or at least, he could easily learn. No, he’s not only being hateful, he thinks he’s clever, because he’s rhyming. I’m sure he was smirking while he said it. (Source: Two years of Pre-Seminary courses.)
It’s that little ‘heh’ at the beginning of John’s rant that really makes me detest him. As if Joyce had just been involved in some wacky college prank, and not, you know, a gunman who threatened her life and Becky’s. What a completely garbage human being.
The condescension of that laugh, thinking it was funny that Joyce was so angry royally pissed me off. Then assuming that it was her immaturity that caused the reaction without ever considering what his reaction would be in the same situation. In short, he demonstrated how very little he cares about Joyce. Then he doubled down by rejecting the call for understanding because it was, for him, about the sin. And then doubled down again by assuming that being lesbian is a sense of entitlement and that what happened to Joyce, by supporting Becky, was a logical consequence and therefore deserved.
I’m so very impressed with Willis’s ability to write John’s lines because I couldn’t do so without veering off into farce. That he also set up the punchline for Jocelyn was genius.
Wow John is getting worse and worse every day. I am so angry at his entire existence, I am seething. I don’t even want to think about how he stands for very real, flesh and blood people out there, who think exactly these kinds of things and it just. Ugh. Makes my skin crawl.
Mathew 19:16-24 The highlights (ESV):
16: And someone came to Him and said, “Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?”
20: Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
21: But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.
24: Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
He’ll probably turn the heat onto Jocelyne somehow, for supporting the sinners, hopefully in a way that doesn’t take the wind out of her sails because Sassy Jocelyne is cathartic and amazing and I only want more of her.
Actually what I would really enjoy is one where Jocelyne just keeps burning him and we don’t even get a big John reaction bc who cares what he thinks, it’s just awesome Jocelyne All Day tomorrow til she drops the mic and goes back in to hang with Becky and Joyce. <3
DoA: super cathartic edition.
I believe that he believes himself above “that kind of behavior.” It’s not that he thinks it’s wrong, but he knows how it can be perceived, and has an image to maintain as a member of his community. But, behind closed doors, when he knows he’s truly in an echo chamber? Then, perhaps.
Everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt. John proved beyond a doibt he’s a shitty person 3 comics back. Today’s comic lowered him to “self righteous hypocritical piece of shit” levels.
There will always be people who’ll defend characters like this. There are three reasons:
1) They agree with them
2) They don’t want to accept that people like that exist
3) They’re trolls who just want attention and to see people fight.
Yeah. I just hope I don’t encounter any of these people because boy am I ever NOT in the mood or right frame of mind to deal with them right now. I mean, unless they *want* to get their heads torn off…. ^^
True. I’m honestly a little surprised that we’re not getting an avalanche of “what a strawman, no one acts like this” comments like usually happens when a character reveals themselves to be so awful as to be indefensible.
Not just surprised, but pleasantly surprised, which is nice, because I’ve had way too many encounters with this flavor of asshole to tolerate much of that malarky.
I believe that is because Willis has to approve the first comment anyone makes in the site before they are able to comment more, and it’s very likely that these people would start with “strawman!”
Unfortunately I’ve seen enough of this world to know that there are still asshats who’d defend John. Luckily Willis is a speedy moderator so we don’t see as much of that here.
I was one of the people giving him the benefit of doubt, thinking he didn’t know the story at all, or new only oarts of what happend, or only got a one sided story from his mother. But no, hes just a homophobic, sexist, d-bag
IIRC a lot of people regretted it! Like, they gave him the benefit of the doubt as a human being, and then he crapped all over it, and then they were sad.
Well, benefit of the doubt only applies as long as doubt remains. There was nothing wrong with defending him prior to him doing or saying anything truly awful. Now that he’s unquestionably proven himself to be a dick, no one’s going to defend him.
I think the difference was that people who weren’t used to his style of behaviour —probably because it had never happened to them— kept giving him the benefit quite a bit beyond what the people who could see the red flags coming from a mile away, because they’d lived through those red flags repeatedly.
Me, I chose to believe the ones calling out the red flags. Turns out they were right too.
Personally, I was defending him a couple comics ago not because I didn’t see the red flags, but because I don’t like the idea of red flags. I find the idea of extrapolating a person’s entire personality based solely on initial impressions to be rather judgemental. Honestly, I would never be able to have any social interaction if everyone worked like that, because I’m not the most likeable person up front. Since people have the courtesy of not assuming I’m a total dick based on my antisocial behavior (note: I’m on the autism spectrum) I kinda feel like I have to extend the same courtesy to others. A lot of people can seem a little cold at first or hold one or two shitty beliefs and still turn out to be decent people overall, even if they make a terrible first impression.
Maybe I shouldn’t extend that courtesy to fictional characters, because they work by different rules and also don’t have actual feelings, but I dunno. Fiction is good training for handling situations in real life, so I try not to judge even fictional characters.
Like, this is a great ideal, and one I operated by for a long time, and then it got me into multiple abusive relationships and now I have C-PTSD and seeing people insist that red flags should be ignored in order to be, idk, humane and reasonable and a good person, is scary and shakiness-inducing.
And I say this as an autistic person, too, who often gets pegged as condescending and abrasive. It’s a really hard balance, and I don’t have a good answer. I’m just working so hard to listen to my instincts, which were trained out of me, and to learn that yeah it’s okay to avoid people who make you feel bad just because they make you feel bad.
And then there’s apologism and the superiority of “well IIII don’t judge so quickly” and general comment-section nature (although DOA is amazingly atypical), and it all turns into a giant trigger-ball of “can I ever feel like a person is sketchy without being a Horrible Judger.”
Of course there’s a lot of nuance to consider. I don’t believe any statement can apply to the entirety of human experience. “Don’t judge” is about as true as “lying is bad,” which is to say not always.
To say that you shouldn’t judge prematurely doesn’t mean you should try to be friends with someone who sounds like a jerk. There’s an in-between: you don’t need to assume either the best or the worst of someone, you can just be cautious until it becomes obvious which it is.
Yes, John did turn out to be a jerk, but that only became clear at the point where he got up and left. Prior to that, anything he said could be interpreted as tactless, poorly expressed concern. You shouldn’t assume that’s the case, but I don’t think you should assume he’s being dismissive and condescending right off the bat either. It’s what we call benefit of the doubt: just keep both possibilities in mind until you know for sure.
Ehh, I don’t have a problem with making conclusions based on your experience, as long as you’re not a jerk about it and as long a you’re very open to changing your initial stance given new info. People are judging *machines*, and learning from your experience is important.
Yes, you can, and I absolutely respect that. It’s just not how I proceed. I make no conclusions until I have enough evidence. I’m not saying that method’s superior; we’re talking about social interaction, not science experiments after all.
However, there were a lot of people defending John in previous comics (not so much now), myself included, and also a lot of people who were hating not just on John, but on anyone defending him. That I don’t think is fair.
Really simple? Most of them were saying “We shouldn’t ASSUME he’s an asshole. Let’s give the character a chance to prove if he is, or not.” And now, he has.
There’s really no hypocrisy in “Let’s at least see if it plays out like that. Well. Yep, it sure did.”
Willis left plenty of the room at the beginning for him to turn out to be misinformed, misunderstanding, misunderstood, or in some other fringe case not acting purely out of malice and dogma. I also don’t think there was enough evidence very early on that he was, in fact, unchangeable. But, the rate at which Willis is trying to torpedo any potential goodwill for John, I wouldn’t be surprised at any reveal of his wrongdoings at this point if they make sense in the context of the character. He’s clearly meant to have essentially zero redeeming qualities.
I still wouldn’t be at all surprised if the earlier speculation about Christi being Indian and that being a source of friction with his parents was true. It would be interesting if he was better on racial issues than at them, while still being horrible in many ways.
Good lord, it’s like reading things my father has said but with religious fervor.
Also Jocelyne just got a new reason as to why she’s my longtime fave: she is a MASTER of burns
(And yeah, John, real life is hard. For example, some people get stuck with really shitty older brothers who completely dismiss the horrifying experience they went through because “real life has consequences” or some gross sanctimonious bullshit.)
Anything I may have ever said nice about John — I take it all back.
And Jocelyne earns ten points for Gryffindor for recognizing hypocrisy when it’s staring her in the face
Even if you buy into everything he believes, even if you buy every possible excuse of working with partial information, trying to be pragmatic, whatever, he STILL got pissy with his little sister (a week after an incredibly traumatic experience) as soon as their conversation left the safest topics possible (running gags about Joyce’s eating habits), he STILL was incredibly dismissive about Becky (the friend-to-the-family-who-just-lost-her-parents-and-is-homeless), he contributed with nothing helpful at all and he ran away as soon as Joyce raised her voice.
Go John, truly you are a stellar shepherd for the troubled and lost.
Honestly, I really love how you follow up his “entitlement” comment with the fact that he has a fucking Mustang bought with Church tithings, Willis. That’s honestly the last few previous generations in a nutshell.
Go read about the 3C church and other prosperity denominations. They preach the “prosperity gospel” (antithesis of what Jesus taught) and their pastors make boatloads of money. I’ll bet John is one of those men who will always ask for the pastor discount at shops, restaurants and garage sales.
The Prosperity Gospel is actually more offensive to me than Ayn Rand’s teachings as a theistic follower of Rabbi Joshua ben Joseph (which I say just to screw with my fundamentalist neighbors I admit). I mean, there’s genuine evil in the name o God all the time, but that’s just so…self servingly SMUG.
At least when it comes to Ayn Rand, she’s only economically reprehensible. Socially, she’s… Pretty good, really. Rationalist and libertarian on social issues, through and through.
I’m hardly in agreement with her either, but if you believe in things like freedom of speech and conscience and the simple right to be different without fear of state-sanctioned persecution, you’ve gotta give credit where it’s due.
Not really racist, but culturally supremacist to the extreme, to where it’s virtually indistinguishable. She believed they didn’t have property rights because they didn’t “use” the land, and thus this justified white Europeans in extirpating the Natives from their homes by whatever means they saw fit.
Did she believe that Natives were in any way inherently inferior, though? Not that I’ve ever heard. As she put it herself, “Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.”
Rand did more than say she wasn’t racist, though; she dedicated a fairly reasonable amount of her writing on ethics and virtue to how and why racism was irrational and wrong. The Virtue of Selfishness has an entire chapter dedicated to tearing at the concept philosophically. Racism, in her eyes, denigrates humanity to a kind of biological determinism. You are a genius or an idiot on your own terms – and, really, those were the only things she cared about – regardless of your origin.
The problem is, Rand loved the idea of “progress”, and anyone who didn’t get with the program was backwards and stupid; a standard to which she held everyone. It just becomes most glaring and cruel when directed at minorities and peoples whose histories have been marked by oppression and cultural ruin. “Yes, this is the society that oppressed you and murdered your ancestors, but it’s got trains and planes and automobiles, so if you don’t get with the program, you’re just stupid.”
Empathy wasn’t her strong suit, but I’m betting you knew that already.
Rand blamed numerous problems that women suffered on, you know, women. Saying she was ‘good socially’ pretends that libertarians, as a rule, are ‘good socially’. No, they’re just the ones who get defined as libertarians by libertarians who at least claim to be good socially. She considered Libertarians to be hippies (Much like how Marx never once identified with Marxism), so calling her one ‘through and through’ is laughable in the extreme.
And you’re saying she said racist shit, so I don’t know why you’re wasting your time trying further. Like, you won’t identify it as such, but you’re saying she said racist shit, so. People who WERE geniuses among natives were roundly ignored, and white geniuses were glorified.
The only thing that gets my hackles up more is people who use their kids for proselytizing. If the young’uns want to participate in church/synagogue/whatever stuff, sure, but when you tell them it’s their duty and hang back because emotional blackmail of strangers is more important than your kid’s well-being…
Reminds me of John Oliver’s bit on it, which resulted in him setting up the fake church “Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption.” (Unlike the prosperity gospel churches, though, he actually used his money for a good cause- in this case, donating it to Doctors Without Borders.)
If only there was someone else with a car there.
Someone who’s also a family.
Someone who’s not a complete bag of dicks.
Someone who she can feel relatively safe with.
Someone she desperately wants to support.
Now it’s been a long time since I gave an offering at church, but I thought it was supposed to be FOR the poor, not FROM them. Of course, if you’re going to skim off the top for fancy cars, I suppose it doesn’t matter who’s giving.
Yes, they do. But that’s not all of it. Some churches also tell people who can’t really afford it that they have to tithe. There are some churches that require you to give them your W2s and everything to even be a member.!
Plus, John is a missionary to India, which has a lot of poor people.
But thanks for catching that. I instinctively read it as “for.” Now the burn is on much, much stronger ground. (As tithes aren’t always for poor people.)
John: Listen, Josh, I’m ENTITLED to this because I don’t think I’m entitled to this. It was GIFTED to me by the church out of the goodness of their hearts which I KNEW about but didn’t EXPECT. That’s the difference. They, however, PRESUME I will be sympathetic and understanding which just will not stand.
Wow John I thought you couldn’t be more of an Asshole….I was wrooooooiiiing.
I am so glad that Jocelyne is calling him out on his bullshit. Its especially brave considering her own situation.
Amazing. John had already proven himself to be trash, and then he went and somehow managed to make me think even worse of hi,. And I hadn’t considered that possible before now.
Someone should remind John of Proverbs 16:18 (King James Version (KJV)) “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” His fall will be a wonder to behold.
oh ick. John is sounding kinda scumbaggy, aside from policing Joyce’s tone and not being emotionally supportive. what did he even want to accomplish during the lunch, if he wasn’t going to be there for Joyce?
Damn but that was good Jocelyne. Also, seriously, a damn Mustang?!? Is John’s church one of those Joel Olsteen style mega-churches or something, cause that level of corruption is pretty hard to hide otherwise.
To be fair, it’s very possible he works for the Willisverse of the 700 club where massive numbers of donations are sent to the Church’s missionary efforts where much falls off for plane fuel and otherwise.
Best prank ever: the Mustang is Ultra-Car in disguise, and she drops John off in the Amazon. Let’s see you spread the word of God to the jaguars and the venomous snakes.
I am so disappointed that, as the comic is generally grounded in these types of issues (plus Joyce being semi-autobiographical and Willis’s mom still being like this), it is highly unlikely characters like John and Carol will ever see the errors of their ways. DX
Now I’m picturing Joyce, Jocelyn, and Jordan’s family having thanksgiving in the future and one of the kids complaining that they invited Mean, Crazy, Uncle John.
Oh she will escape. I have no doubt about that. Hell, she’s already in the midst of grabbing what she can and building what she can before the inevitable skedaddle.
It’s not a matter of if, but rather when. And given that she’s hit her limit here. The when might be very very soon. Especially if she sees it as a way to protect her little sister from the rest of the family.
So after all this, let’s see how many people will still be up to defending John tonight, after this final display of his grotesque hypocrisy and contempt. He couldn’t even say ‘LGBTQ’ without intentionally changing it, to show his contempt for the very notion. “Her friend is swept up in some trendy whatever,” his utter disdain for Becky, the clear fact that he didn’t spend even a second, then or now, thinking about the fact that his sister was held at gunpoint by a man prepared to murder her in order to abduct his child so she could be tortured into compliance. All of that was just “whatever,” because he won’t, he *can’t*, countenance the possibility that they could have seriously gone through anything worthy of his consideration, understanding, or care. And the little thought he *did* spend on it led him to the conclusion, apparently, that she “should have thought of that before,” before coming out, before ‘deciding’ to be gay, before defying her father, before whatever hateful shit he was about to say.
This is the kind of man John is. I’m really waiting to hear what the defense of him will be, now. Or will it just be the fallback of “this is so unrealistic, Willis is just strawmanning christians, which he so *obviously* hates, nobody is ever like this for real.”
I’m sorry for being so bitter, here, but, seriously – people like me; gay folks, trans folks; have been in these comments sections night after night trying to explain that people like John are real, that they exist, and that they’ve made our lives a living hell even within our own families. That even now, people like John are trying to make it illegal just to *be* a trans person out in public, to even have a public life, by trying to deny us the simple ability to go to the frikkin’ restroom – but it’s like arguing with a brick wall, and even here, being shown a callous, patriarchial egotist like John, people have *lined up* to defend him, to construct arguments and alternate scenarios where he has a point, where he’s not wrong, where if only people would stop being so gosh darn emotional and listen. Even last night, people were explaining that he “had a point,” that he was just being misunderstood. Like, *now* do you see why that is and was always absolutely bogus?
I grew up surrounded by fundamentalists and most of them would have at least wanted to shoot (and kill) Ross for hurting their daughter. They also would have actually loathed him for trying to kidnap his daughter too at gunpoint to.
And that’s a legit thing. You experienced that.
Trigger warning for mention of sexual abuse and incest as well as mention of corrective rape as a “joke”
But they’re are so many of us who heard how we should die. How we’re sinners, damning ourselves. My southern Baptist family would have similar feelings to John here and my own feelings would be ignored. Once, corrective rape was joked about in front of me at a reunion for lesbians and those “fad following” bisexuals. In front of me. My dad was there, who had been suspicious abusing me since I was 6. His mother said this, after just that day telling me that the most important thing I could do as a woman was keep my flower until marriage. She made a corrective rape joke about lesbian and bisexual people. My dad, her son, my rapist, the person who “stole” my “flower” and made me feel filthy most of my life? He laughed.
So while I believe that the fundamentalists around you might not be this level of wilful ignorance and violent disregard for actually caring about people, and that’s great! It feels a bit like you’re trying to do exactly like the commenter above you said, calling out this as strawman arguments, as if real lived experience others have doesn’t matter because you know some who aren’t like that. If you didn’t mean it like not all fundies,sorry, I guys I misunderstood.
I’m actually attempting to draw attention to the sheer level of insensitivity and douchebaggery which is on display here. Hatespeech is hatespeech and there’s no buttering it up. However, plenty of fundamentalist do go the Joyce route and don’t act on their darker impulses and thankfully reject that portion of their view. The fact the Browns do not in the face of deliberate provocation to the contrary which would work on many-many members of similar sects is something I’m underscoring as even worse. I’m also in no way suggesting Dumbing of Age’s depiction is unrealistic. It’s dramatized but I have no doubt the Rosses can and do exist in commentator’s own lives let alone in reality as a whole.
Or, to summarize, “Fundamentalists tend to be homophobic. The sheer level of homophobia and hate on display here goes beyond that and shows it is something beyond even their religious beliefs justifying it. It is double-plus ungood and the worst of what is already a streak of religious thought I strongly disdain.”
Gotcha. I wasn’t sure which direction you were going with it, but your explanation made it more clear thank you. And I agree. While Ross and John are not the only Christians, so often people let them get away with things while being silent, I’m just glad there are people like Joyce within that can say who’s hold up this is awful, stop! Even if it doesn’t work. Idk I dredged up more hurt than I thought I would and I can’t articulate well and I have typos, probably but my screen is small and I can’t see.
No one’s blaming you for the pain. One thing Willis deserves amazing credit for is the honesty of his web comic and I believe it’s really helping make the world a better place, even if in just a small way of showing it like it is.
A certain kind of person existing isn’t proof that another kind of person doesn’t. Yeah there are plenty of people who’d be flipping out or at least acting like Joyce’s dad, but there’s also plenty of people who’d behave like John or Joyce’s mom, I know those people. Hell I even know people who would think Ross would have been in the right to disown or murder Becky.
You don’t have to apologize for sounding ‘bitter’. It’s because their words are bitter and terrible and you’ve had to swallow a lot of it. I imagine Willis will be moderating like hell tonight.
Privileged people don’t want to believe that evil exists (because, wouldn’t it be nice if it didn’t? That would be great!) whereas marginalized people know for damn certain, over and over, that it does. Some people really are this terrible. A lot of them. A lot of them have serious political power, too.
Don’t like it? Well, this is where a call to action goes, but I’m not sure exactly what we can do about it (other than voting, and not being assholes ourselves). Thoughts for real world action?
I feel like this comic is often an education for people who haven’t had lives of awful surrounded by truly abominable people.
Like, if I didn’t grow up surrounded by fundie culture, I wonder if it wouldn’t all seem alien and unreal to me. Like, what? No, no one could be that small-mindedly self-destructive and awful, right?
I mean if you have access to the internet it really shouldn’t surprise you. Like everyone I know is totally down with the LGBTQ or knows well enough to keep it to themselves if they’re not but I know plenty of people for whom that’s not the case because I make an active effort to encounter perspectives different from mine. It’s just a matter of trusting someone else to know their experiences better than you do instead of taking the ridiculously egotistical stance of “Well, that’s not what I experienced therefore it can’t be true.”
I didn’t grow up with Fundie culture, and I didn’t find it hard to believe that this goes on when I started reading. Then again the comic slowly introduces it so you become more receptive to believing it exists as opposed to starting with John.
Effectively, those not surrounded by Fundie culture can believe it more easily thanks to escalation.
I didn’t grow up with bigots, but I did grow up with the idea that the world is vast and full of wonders and terrors, so many many people who believe/do such varied things. So, if somebody says they meet a person who behaves a certain way, I tend to believe them!
I think the fact that all his characters are so rooted in reality, believable, and understandable, even the ones that are consistently vile, is a real testament to the writing skill at play here. If people are willing to open themselves to what’s outside their experience, it is very quick and very clear to see that all of these characters are very, very human, and their actions tend to be drawn logically from concrete internal reasoning that is supported by their own written or implied experiences.
I really hope John’s car gets totaled in this chapter. Or like, he crashes into a religious billboard encouraging people to be kind and understanding. “God, I need help dealing with my sister and her heathen friend, please send me a sign!” How about STOP, buddy?
It’s never right to harm another person, with very few defined exceptions. But, I would gladly lower myself to a level far below what the world deserves of me to wreak vengeance upon some of these characters. I could live with being morally incorrect over it.
Why did the church give him a brand new car? I feel like if there is a “sin” around here it is something John has done like blackmail or skimming the top of the offerings given on Sunday. I just don’t get it. Joss is still neutral, which makes sense. Joyce is being treated like she is insane by her family, which makes no sense. Becky is happy go lucky but I think that is only because Joyce is there defending her. She feels loved, and protected in a vulnerable time.
It is clear that Joss is ok with the lesbianism. What is not clear is her full stand. I want to say she is open minded, and understanding since she is transgender. Possibly feels jealous of Becky for having the confidence to stand up for who she is.
I have yet to find a redeemable quality from Josh. I feel like he is one of those christians like the Duggars. They use it to defend their own hatred and use it to extort money from poor people.
You’re probably not familiar with the fact missionary work is often tied to the “televagenglist” phenomenon in some areas. Also, bluntly, ministers giving themselves expansive paychecks and lifestyles is nothing new. Skimming from the plate is a time honored pasttime dating back to Babylon.
Becky is not happy-go-lucky. Becky -acts- happy-go-lucky, but that’s her way to cope, to survive. It’s her shield against the world.
And yes, it will bite her in the ass, and yes, what she needs to learn is to let her guard down and let her sadness show… Hopefully that day will come sooner rather than later. Best case scenario is that she’ll cry and vent for an entire day with people she can let down her guard with.
I presume you meant to type “John” in your last paragraph. Other than that, you’re pretty spot on on what type of Christian he is.
I suspect it’s a bit more complicated than that. She’s upset about a lot of things but I suspect her happiness is genuine as she has shed a terrible weight off her shoulders.
Back in college, she might have had some relatively happy last couple of days, especially with Dina. And Hank hugging her and still treating her as family with just a touch of awkwardness was also nice.
Although the fact that she felt safe enough in the car trip to fall asleep was probably the best indicator that things weren’t looking so bad… at this particular point.
And then she meets Carol, and pretty much every joke after that is a shield joke.
Yakno.. you should have been supportive like that IN FRONT of those two. ITs good to try and help behind the scenes but you’ve effectively done nothing for them in the end
Jocelyn isn’t perfect, and she was probably really scared of directly getting in the middle of that fight. It’s much easier (especially for someone in the closet) to confront one person than to take sides in a volatile fight between two other people.
Besides, they haven’t left the parking lot yet. Personally I’m hoping Jocelyn gets a ride home from Joyce instead.
In addition to what Greatveiledbear said, notice she didn’t actually go for the “you need to stop being a bigoted asshole” front. Instead, she went the “you were harsh and are kind of a shitty Christian” route. She’s still understandably afraid to directly support a fellow LGBT person, because that could lead to accidentally outing her.
Waiting til they got out to the car allowed her to slightly shift the subject.
I went though an entirely long-winded and, admittedly, excessively caustic in tone explanation above explaining why this is a tremendously unfair expectation of behavior from Joss. In short, we don’t know what her plans are for her life, both her and Joyce and even their shithead family have a lot to lose, and pushing even slightly too hard against this kind of thing can unleash a maelstrom of awful consequences that are morally despicable, but completely unavoidable. Joss and Joyce both are in a situation where they are actually under danger of egregious harm, bodily or otherwise, and holding Joss up to some kind of moral imperative to accept those consequences immediately and without any modicum of fully stable independence and control of her life is, at best, unrealistic for her character.
Jocelyne is a she. If you’re confused why that is, I’d be happy to explain, but I don’t want to patronize you as it may’ve been a typo or other mistake.
I bet she feels bad that she didn’t speak up for them in the restaurant. I mean, what happened is hardly her fault, but she’s trying to do what she didn’t do in the moment.
My apologies as it was a typo. Joss (is that even appropriate for Jocelyn?) didn’t stick up for Becky and Jocye during all this but gave silent consent to all of John’s attacks. With very good reason and out of fear but enough to give reason for her to feel guilty.
Willis himself used “Joss” in the alt-text of a comic a couple days ago, so I’d say it’s fine.
Now, ‘Jocelyn’ isn’t. There’s an e at the end of Jocelyne’s name.
I feel the content of this comment thread is a good detail to point out and I’m sad that a lot of people will miss it. I didn’t fully register it myself and it’s a very telling clue about how we are to best understand Joss’ inner turmoil.
I think it may well be Josie (I think this is a better nickname for Jocelyn) is so used to being the “perfect son” to hide their true identity they never have been put in a situation where they have to stand up for someone else suffering from a similar situation. It’s probably a new and terrifying experience to be face with an uncloseted person on the spectrum who is facing all the things she was afraid of facing. With, well, good reason given Ross’ gun.
See, this is why *I* only tithe to Willis and Spike Trotman! If either of THEM get a free GT, they’ve EARNED IT
(sensing Joss will seek a new ride home in 3, 2, 1…)
anyway, India’s right next to Indiana, so YEAH???
[/sarcasm]
[/unless you count the dictionary]
what kinda dictionaries are you reading? proper nouns ‘n what not
besides Urban Dictionary? well
“what kinda dictionaries are you reading? proper nouns ‘n what not”
The New Century Dictionary (1946 edition) has an index of geographical names at the end so India and Indiana do indeed appear next to each other in that dictionary. Page 2647, I think.
I think I love you.
So what am I so afraid of?
*applause*
Sea cucumbers?
Cuttlefish! I saw a documentary. It was terrifying.
…I actually am afraid of cuttlefish. (I am not, however, Klaw.)
True facts about the Cuttlefish?
Ooh, someone’s dating themselves with THAT reference!
Oi! Take that back! I haven’t dated myself for years! I have a girlfriend who takes care of that, now. >_>
She dates herself for you?
If we’re in the mood for that, sure. >_>
What reference are you guys making? I am so confused. T^T
I’m afraid that I’m not sure of
A love there is no cure for
I think I love you
Something something in French*
Though it worries me to say
I’ve never felt this way
Heyyyyyyy
*elevator ding*
(*not the actual line here, in-joke substitute for the part I can’t remember w/o looking it up)
Everything.
So did you know that from memory or did you look it up
The out of date college dictionary I read cover to cover for no good reason when I was about ten had proper nouns, a list of prefixes and suffixes, four alphabets and a whole page about semicolons. I didn’t really take the last one to heart, but that’s beside the point.
Umm, most dictionaries I’ve seen include proper nouns. Not even in a separate section, just right along with the rest of the words.
all the dictionaries i read at school had all the rude words underlined until i got to secondary school, then they were highlighted in pink or bright yellow
You think Indiana’s next to India? Na, man.
Well, it’s close enough that it could be in the adjacent column or the opposite page.
…. Wait.
…. Wouldn’t “Indian” be between the two?
Not when geographical names appear in a separate index.
Okay, now I’m sure.
At least you can get away with saying “India” is IN “Indiana”.
Dunno, but India is in Texas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India,_Texas
waitWHOA it’s like
Christian is Christi with “an”
Indiana is India with “an” (Indi – AN – a)
Johann is John with “an”
MIND BLOWN
[/sarcasm]
[[gonna cut back on sugar and take a nap now]]
Daw…
What you did there, I see it.
Makes me think of the old cartoon with Columbus planting his flag in the ice and insisting that it was “Northern India”.
India? Na.
she coulda tried that in front of joyce, but still: zing!
if only there were a more rebellious ride for her to catch…
No, she couldn’t have. As much as I love Jocelyne, she is still a propagator of the infallible patriarchy. It’s how she was raised, not her fault, and she can try to break it, but for now she has shown me she is more or less part of it.
Literally everyone is raised to be a propagator of patriarchy. Everyone. The implication that Jocelyne does so more than Joyce does (who just yesterday was laying down concepts of a woman’s role in marriage that are patriarchal to the core, and bucked Dorothy’s suggestion that it could be otherwise) by lieu of having been assigned a male gender at birth is kinda gross? Unless you meant something else by this and I’m misreading you, but that’s sort of the implication I’m getting. Sorry in advance if I’m misinterpreting.
Oh, no, sorry. My fault, I should have been clearer, and you’re right, Joyce is terrible with that stuff, obviously (she’s growing but not great). At least she’s trying (she had to have a lesbian best friend and be held up for it to happen), I don’t see any of that from Jocelyne until now.
It is about gender, but not what Jocelyne was assigned at birth. I meant that there is no way she could’ve stood up to her brother because as a woman that would help further deconstruct it as Joyce was doing. Plus she’s been uber passive at all points before this, in part due to hiding sure, but you can’t tell me none of it is due to this. She didn’t help her sister because she’s scared and “it isn’t her place, she isn’t allowed to disagree.” She hid behind her menu, knowing full well her sister is right.
If any of this came across as close-minded or misinformed, I apologize. and please inform me where I’m wrong or if I made fallacies.
I don’t agree at all that there was “no way she could’ve”, because she is absolutely capable. I’m not even going to try to respond to the bit about “because as a woman that would help further deconstruct it as Joyce was doing,” because to be frank, I don’t understand what you meant by it at all.
I think Jocelyne is scared. But she’s not scared that it isn’t her place. She’s scared about what will happen if she begins to fight back against her family. She is stuck in an incredibly toxic situation. I’m not sure what she has in terms of resources for getting away from them, her own money, etc., but regardless of whether she could cut off ties with them or not, it’s a really hard situation that she’s in. As she once said to Ethan, she’s afraid she’ll say some things she can’t ever take back. Of course, in this strip, it seems like she may finally have had enough.
“She hid behind her menu, knowing full well her sister is right.” This makes it sound like she was ashamed or felt at fault because of what Joyce was saying, and I don’t think that’s the case. I think she hid because, as I said before, she is worried about what will happen when conflict breaks out. She tried to divert the conversation to protect Joyce and Becky and to avoid the conflict, but I don’t think she in any way wants to silence what they have to say.
Your opinion definitely makes more sense, and helps me understand why so many are mad at me. You are totally right, and now I see where I was making connections that aren’t strong at all frankly. I do get how it should be read as her trying to avoid conflict until now. That has just never been my strong suit, as you can tell with this thread.
I really appreciate you saying this! It’s always nice to have a positive experience with comments section discussions, haha.
This is how debates should be. It’s nice to see people explaining themselves without resorting to thinly veiled attacks and actually listening to responses rather than just getting defensive.
The sad thing is how often things go the other way instead 🙁
I’m glad I decided to read this.
I just don’t understand what you’re getting at. Yes, it would be completely out of character for Joss right now to have said this in front of Joyce. Yes, it would have been a bad idea for her to do it, given how John was acting, since at least part of what John was doing was trying to save face.
Yeah, maybe she has internalized some of the female gender roles of being passive, maybe even pursuing them because she’s female and that’s how women are “supposed” to act. And, yeah, she probably was raised to believe in the whole familial hierarchy where the bigger brother (as long as he’s a Christian) is an authority.
But it seems a bit simplistic to put it down to upholding the patriarchy. Especially when that’s a common refrain of the anti-trans feminists.
(They think trans people are upholding the patriarchy by claiming to have an innate gender.)
Are the feminist that oppose trans people because of the concept of innate gender? I always read the argument as “trans people were encourage to transition by (certain parts of) society because if they transition, they don’t threaten the traditional gender roles.” An either conform or transition- approach by society which puts more pressure on women who do stuff traditionally not supposed to be done by women.
Nothing to be sorry for! Language is strange and imperfect, it’s friggin’ difficult trying to get the full scope of thought across and misunderstandings spring from that. If anything I’m sorry for drawing an incorrect conclusion!
Uh…not really…Trans women are just as much victims of the patriarchy as cis women, even if they are still in the closet.
It’s true! women are women are women regardless if they’re cis or not. Trans women get an even shorter end of the stick than cis women do because transmisogyny is like regular misogyny… but super-charged.
Transmisogyny is, like, double-ply.
Without being NEARLY so comfortable on the ol’ tushie as say, Charmin.
I don’t get why you’re saying this. Yes, we’re probably all propagators of the patriarchy to a degree, so you’re right in that sense. But why on earth are you zeroing in on Jocelyne? She is a member of a demographic that suffers the worst from the patriarchy and from the gender binary itself.
So why didn’t Jocelyne say this in the restaurant? She was afraid. And if that’s true, why is she saying it now? Because people aren’t automatons that say exactly the right thing at any given moment. It’s hard to make the right decision in a tense moment. It’s hardly ever done by anyone, imo. It’s really, really difficult.
Okay, Wheelpath. You have me curious here. Exactly *how* is Jocelyne a propagator of the infallible patriarchy?
Excuse me? Are you forgetting that she is trans existing in a trans-unfriendly space? Did you know trans people are often murdered in these spaces? Let me give an incredible “fuck you” for accusing Joss of being a part of something that would literally murder her if she went up against it.
Holy shit you’re right. I did definitely deserve that, I hope what I said explains my view for everyone else, but actually yeah.
I was just too hopeful in thinking maybe they could be like Joyce, and once someone close has these issues with oppression they could change, but they aren’t…
Sorry
I do think the fact she’s being forced to be silent instead of supporting Becky is something like a special torture for Josie. She wants to help and be supportive but it could very well be physically dangerous. Not to mention financially if they’re struggling. Which makes it no less like a punch in the gut.
Jocelyne is /likely/ pretty appraised on this stuff seeing as she’s young and in the modern era (and Gay males still have pride of place in queer networks, so what Becky’s gone through shouldn’t be unheard of for her). She’s scared because she has cause to be.
Damn right. Hell, I’ve almost died for being a transwoman. Her fears are not unfounded.
Oh yeah, very much ditto on that. Including the almost dying part. Jocelyne will have a tough fucking road ahead and that’s a major part of why she’s scared. The other part is that she is incensed by it all, but she knows if she gives in to that anger she risks outting herself and that’s the ballgame.
Hell, I’d say it’s guaranteed that she’s stewing in anger all the time, especially with family. When you’re a girl, but everyone thinks you’re a boy and thus you’ll fully agree with their ultra toxic masculinity and sexist views of women, it’s hard not to be.
It’s like having a front row seat to the partiarchy’s worst showing.
It helps to be heavily armed.
It really doesn’t ‘help to be heavily armed’. Then you’re an extremist and it’s okay to kill you anyway. And you kinda have to sleep, and aren’t omniscient besides.
quarktime-
Sadly, even if that helped, it would not help us:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/11196-no-justice-when-women-fight-back
Well said.
….
so you’re saying that, on pain of death, she’s upholding a part of the patriarchy?
Look, part of the point of saying things like “EVERYONE is sexist” or “Everyone is racist” is that, you know, we actually mean them, rather than using them as a shibboleth. Jocelyne is both victim and inadvertent, unwilling supporter. It /is/ fucked up to go after her more for it than the gal we know is way more gung ho on supporting patriarchy as a rule, but she DID just allow patriarchy to continue by inaction. I’m not going to get MAD about it, because yeah, even without the fear of death (Which is completely a legit fear for her), she’s still ultimately afraid (of a dozen other terrible things), but that doesn’t change that Joyce just suffered directly from patriarchy, and Jocelyne didn’t try to stop it.
That’s ridiculous logic and I don’t agree with you.
Whether you agree or disagree, whether patriarchy hurts or helps you, makes no fucking difference. Did you support it through your action, or your inaction? If so, what you did is sexist. If that hurts you, well, it’s kind of immaterial to that question. “Is what you did something I should be angry with you about” is not actually the same question as “Is what you did sexist”
I really, really, REALLY don’t need any fucking Brave Defenders who will deny my agency, or people who want to strip the complexities of life away. These things are hard and life sucks. Sometimes you don’t get a good choice – you just have to choose shitty options. Jocelyne’s choices suck – let John abuse the patriarchy to hurt Joyce, or open herself up to abuse for opposing him publicly. I *respect* her decision, but I’m not going to deny what it did.
Yo…getting awfully close to TERF nonsense here, Wheelpath…might want to cool it with the “trans women are tools of the patriarchy” bullcrap.
Considering I don’t identify as a feminist that would be bad. Also wasn’t trying to say that, but obviously I don’t know how to voice my opinions correctly, I apologize.
Jocelyne is being *far* more effective talking to John one on one. That is, this way she has a chance of having a positive effect. If she’d spoken up in front of the evil sinner, she would have had no chance to do anything except undermine her own credibility in John’s eyes. Especially since she wouldn’t have been able to get the dig in about the fancy car bought by the poor for his use. I’ve had some second thoughts about something I said about John never seeing someone else’s problems as his own because of his missionary status, but if he’s driving that car around without guilt, he’s either an entirely thoughtless bastard or a sociopath. I’m hoping for thoughtless bastard, as that leaves some room for growth.
Between Twins and Transformers, if Willis can get a Mustang as well I should just give him all my money, he clearly can manage it better than I can.
So if he buys the movie version of Barricade, you’ll park the TARDIS where now? *Opens notepad.*
I think she may be forced to find a new ride home, depending whether John continues doubling down (likely) or not (in which case, he instead wants to try to prove he is a) a good christian and b) using the car well by getting Joss home.)
If only there was someone else there with a car.
Someone who’s also her family.
Someone who’s much safer for her to be around.
Someone she desperately wants to support.
If only…
Yeah, because Joss carpet-bombing her relationship with her entire family and hometown before she is established in life as a safe and assured independent, and doing so in such a way that would likely also guarantee her sister’s relationship with the family is destroyed, which would cost said sister her free college education from said family, is an absolutely sane and rational decision. Beyond that, you know how awful a position Becky is in right now? I can almost guarantee that at this early point in her college life, her adult life, Joyce’s parents could immediately leave her in the same position just by disowning her, let alone actively making it difficult for her to get what she needs to establish herself in life in the many ways that Toedad has for Becky?
Oh, not to mention that despite their despicable collection of human failings, Joss probably still loves at least some of her family, and knows that an explosive fucking drama bomb of in-fighting with unrepentant sinners will cost said family their entire social standing in their lifelong hometown, their very important positions in their church, even her older brother’s entire career and adult life up to this point. All of that could be gone in months or even weeks if this situation were to blow up into something that makes public record, or even generates the right rumours. I bet that Joss is plenty aware what most of the town is talking about related to this situation, and I bet it isn’t good. People can have genuinely shitty parents and any way Joss chooses to deal with that problem would be completely justified, but it’s entirely her choice to play this situation out how she thinks will keep everyone safer, or happier.
Joss is a meek person, but a calculating one, and she hopefully has some kind of long-term plan for gently making a clean break. Fuck, as meek as she has been shown to be, maybe she currently plans to stay closeted indefinitely – and that is absolutely a valid choice, despite the fact that it’s tragic and would make us all feel very sad, and possibly even make some people here outright hate her like she is some kind of traitor to trans* people. But undermining 25+ years of careful balancing to try to set herself up for a position where she could possibly live her life safely and happily by escalating a situation which may blow over with sufficient damage control and siding with her sister when she knows full well the family can’t possibly respect her as a sensible adult with meaningful agency is highly unlikely to help her sister or Becky, and will possibly destroy her own life in the process.
We would all love to see Joss take the warrior angle on this. It would be immediate, vindicating, and a beautiful symbolic and literal moment. But, the consequences are levels of dire that perhaps some people who haven’t experienced this sort of situation will find it difficult to comprehend. Even knowing of how dire they are, some in such a situation would choose to accept those consequences, and while that would be brave as hell for Joss to do, that does not make it the right choice, or the best choice, but simply the most honest and most satisfying. Once again, we know nothing about Joss’ long-term plan, and very little about her in general; we’re being clearly shown what Joss would like to do and projecting our desires to see her gain all the self-actualizing she would gain from finally getting to live true to who she is, and what she believes in, but with her upbringing this kind of dramatic moment is, if nothing else, not something she would ever just “jump into” the way that, say, Becky has.
But if anyone doubts the stakes here, please consider this and think about it in terms of precisely why Joss would want to see this blow over instead of come to a head; Joss is a member of the LGBQT community, and a member of the fundamentalist community, so she therefore knows well the dangers of being associated with the former and the reactionary attitudes of the latter. These girls are in a small American town that is predominantly fundamentalist, where their family is a well-known, well-respected, well-connected fixture of the community, and the young patriarch of the family is the local goddamned minister. Just think about what such a family could possibly do to solve the problem of a trouble-making, defiant, embarrassment of a daughter. Just think about the fact that this family is politically connected in the town’s hierarchy due to how deeply and thoroughly they are involved with the church, and that the vast majority of citizens and authority figures share their moral sensibilities. What if Joyce’s family decided that saving face with their community was worth more than their daughter’s safety, or even her life? Honour killings are a real thing, and not many questions would ever be asked if she were to suddenly disappear and never come back. Joyce is not in the same position as Joss to understand how much danger she may actually be putting herself in, so it’s great to see her react to all this in a way that mirrors our own frustration and disgust. But in Joss’ mind, I’m sure she’s trying to find a way to keep her sister from obliterating her current, privileged position in life for a simple moral victory that Joyce will be in a much safer position to assume after enacting a long-term plan.
Maybe I’m being excessively pessimistic, protective, or even paranoid with the extent to which I believe the danger could escalate in this situation. But not only is that level of discrepancy absolutely called for by those who are trapped in such situations, it suits the thinking of somebody brought up in such a hostile environment. John nailed the attitude of these people perfectly in his shut-down to Becky: People get what they deserve, and because you chose to do wrong, you should have expected all of the consequences that befell you and accept them as God’s will, and summary punishment for your wrongs. Even if you take the God parts out of it, this style of thinking often leads to that sort of never-ending forward-thinking and meticulous planning for the simple fact that you have internalized all outcomes as your direct responsibility and hold yourself fully accountable for ensuring that nothing bad ever happens.
I could have ascribed far too much thought into Joss’ motivations, but if nothing else, any and all deviations from her script with her family have a chance of raising suspicions she doesn’t want raised. If you think being a lesbian sympathizer isn’t going to go over well with the conservative establishment of a small town, think about the amount of immediate danger Joss would be in if she were ever outed before she has made a safe, clean break from the entire town? Being a gay ally is one thing, but a trans* person, in a place like that, from a family like that? She wouldn’t just be at risk from her family, anybody in that place might try to seriously hurt her. It could end up with a full-on lynch mob. Joss is meek, and scared, and is therefore understandably careful with how she handles her affairs, and if anybody is judging her for that they are seriously off their mark.
^ Amen. Well said, HMH.
I do wish I was a bit nicer in retrospect, but I also wanted to be off-putting to try to highlight the actual gravity of this scenario, which might be lost on some people.
She could however fake it. Stay and talk to Joyce & Becky under the guise of “getting her to calm down”. And then try to make it clear to Joyce that while she supports her, it’s really best for both to try to stay low key.
If only because a long car ride with John and/or talking to Mom in this state might be even more dangerous.
Sounds like a wise plan to me, seems like we might be headed that way.
This is what I’ve been hoping (or she at least keeps it under the implication of ‘that car is unchristian’ and not an unplanned ‘I’m an LGBQXYZ too, you snot’ no matter how satisfying it would be)
Yep.
She’s accusing John of being a hypocritical asshole without peeping a word in support of LGBT+ cause. She’s not breaking her relationship with her entire family but just leaving him and going to Joyce. Her secret is still safe.
I can just feel the divide start in this family
What I want Jocelyne to say”Forget about Becky for a minute. A man we have known or who life came to our sister’s school. Aimed a gun at her and her best friend. FIRED that gun into the air. Kidnapped her best friend at gun point from right next to her and after a series of very dangerous actions one of the only things our sister could do about all of this is hit the man who did all of this before he was arrested. Then instead of getting comfort and support from her family after a newer life ending event her family keeps focusing on one aspect of one of the victims and essentially siding with the man who could have and seemed willing to SHOOT AND KILLED HER. You say she needs to calm down but maybe…. you should be thinking about her and not Becky and getting angry.” Not going to happen but I can wish.
And once more Fuck you John DIAF and I know we haven’t meet her but your wife must be a moron to marry you.
Chuck autocorrect and 2 am posts ‘ known our whole life’ not know or who and ‘near life ending’ not newer life ending
I think John’s feeling a little grab in the ol hypocrite jeans, as he sort of left the “T” out of the LGBQXYZ alphabet-soup there. Probably would have earned himself a clout in the ear if he’d put it in there, though, considering close company.
Kept thinking about that yesterday. How hypocritical John and his mother have been. “We support Ross because he is a part of our religious community.” Isn’t Joyce also a member of your religious community? As well as a member of your family?
Yes, but, see, Ross is a guy, and therefore More Right than Joyce (in John’s mind)
Yep. That’s probably what they’re afraid of facing psychologically. I mean, I don’t think Carol liked Ross *either.* She just wasn’t going to let that stand in the way of never being wrong.
holy crap, is this a thing that happens?! I mean when i was a kid and was part of a christian (catholic) community we pitched in and bought our priest a car but that was a separate thing from the charity donations and he’d been a art of the community for decades at that point. is John even a pastor? or is he just a missionary? I admit i’m fuzzy on how it works in Protestant communities. I’m only catholic anymore when my grandma asks.
There’s no Protestant vow of poverty, unlike in Catholicism. Unfortunately, I have a Catholic upbringing and don’t know any more than that.
He probably works for one of those super-douchy tv churches that sends people envelopes asking them to “plant a seed”. Jocelyne didn’t necessarily misspeak when she said “tithings from the poor”.
Yeah, I had automatically read it as for at first (‘cos that’s how my church works and how any sane system would be set up), but I caught it on the second read. It literally hadn’t occurred to me because what the ever-living fuck.
That’s some televangelist / talk radio host level shit there, John.
No, he’s a missionary in India, I suspect Jocelyne’s statement was basically correct. That money was supposed to come from the poor, to support a church, and he took it.
I mean, probably legally, and probably on the grounds of ‘I didn’t need ALL of this money to set up a church in India, it’s cheap there”. Either way, whatever EXACT mechanism he used, there’s still no legitimate method for a missionary pastor to have a mustang that isn’t “I married into wealth” (Not actually impossible.)
People buying themselves private jets with the donations they get from the poor, sick and elderly is a thing (justified by them NEEDING a private jet to preach, somehow), so someone getting a car out of the same folks isn’t that surprising.
There is a looong history of (presumably not exclusively) American preachers getting rich off of donations, particularly among televised preachers (televangelists). Many American preachers don’t belong to any denomination and are beholden to no one.
There is also a belief among many American eVANGELICALS THAT caps lock is the devil- material success correlates with god’s approval of you; essentially the poor wouldn’t be poor if they didn’t deserve it, and the same for the rich.
It’s not a new or unknown phenomenon by any means. Now enjoy a topical rock song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MixVbumoDWU
Not to mention the Last Week Tonight monologue that introduced us to Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption.
+1
Which, of course, they later shut down not because they’d broken any laws but because the “seed” they’d been receiving had begun to include semen.
… Whyyyyyyy?
Because people will figure out a way to ruin anything nice.
The term “Prosperity Gospel” is commonly used to describe this belief. It’s damnably toxic.
I’m going with ‘The Pastor’s Son-in-Law.’
DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN.
That burn. Well done Jocelyne!
But John DESERVES that ‘Stang.
Yeah, I don’t know what I was expecting after last time, but wooooooow. Fuck off, you prickmuffin. Fuck all the way off.
He now gets all my hatred previously reserved for Mr. Brown.
… ALL of them? You’ve got none left for Hank? None at all?
I mean, yeah, John’s probably more deserving, but share the anti-love.
I actually kinda like Hank.
And I do believe John has been put right up there with Ross, Blaine, and Mary at the top of my “fuckin’ hate” list.
I don’t think Hank has literally done much that would take him out of the “we should hate him without compassion or mercy” bubble, but he seems to be written distinctly more moderate than the rest of the family in a pointed way that suggests to me in a meta-narrative way that Willis could actually plan for him to, in the long run, come around to reason and recognize that he is on the wrong side of his family for his own interpretation of Jesus’ teachings, similar to how Joyce has. The mother is unsalvageable, John is unsalvageable, but maybe there is hope for dear old dad to be a decent human being.
let’s all cross our fingers
I am with you. Wow… so much.
Wait, that’s not my account?
I hope the eyeroll and jerking motion which go with that statement just didn’t translate to text…
Sarcasm?
Savage AF!
I like angry-Joyce savage, but I think I prefer impossible-to-recover-from sick-truth-burns savage
If Jocelyn and Joyce did the Fusion Dance, the righteous, snarky fury would be absolutely unstoppable.
“Go ahead and try to hit us if you’re able
Can’t you see that our sisterhood is stable?
You can tsk and preach and scoff and threaten hellfire,
But we’ll knock you down with all the force of God’s ire”
Yes!
“And you’re not gonna snark at us two together,
We are gonna stay like this forever.
If you preach us apart, we’ll just quip back better,
And we’ll always be twice the human you are.”
(am i doin’ this right?)
Thumbs up! 😀
I need this song on youtube. Just saying.
You guys have made my morning.
Were you talking about DBZ, and everybody assumed it was Steven Universe, or were you talking about SU, and I assumed it was DBZ?
Plot Twist: it was really A:tLA.
And the constant misspelling Joycelyne would finally make sense!
“Welcome to burn city, don’t let your privilege hit you on your way in”
Fun driving comics incoming!!
AGAIN?!!
Oh DANG Jocelyn that was a SICK BURN
That’s it, Jocelyne is basically me (if I weren’t a guy). Don’t take any of John’s bullshit, Jocelyne!
Go, Jocelyn!
Jocelyn landing some quality blows.
I can only hope someone comes along to land some actual blows.
They’re only quality blows if she actually got through John’s armor. I perceive it’s within the parameters of possibility, plausibility, and perhaps probability that John’s perpetually, permanently unperturbed by people pointing out his putridness.
Jocelyne’s burn did not seem critical enough to affect the type of person who would gladly accept a mustang paid for from tithings, unfortunately.
*effect!
But I’m sure he’ll get self righteously angry about it, just not introspective or repentant.
You had it right the first time.
Don’t worry, I see what you did there
The hero we need.
We haven’t seen her and Mar ie for a while. Wonder what they are up to.
*Marcie
I do believe that’s the other shoe…
Not yet! It’s falling but hasn’t hit the ground yet! Wait for John to suplex Joss for having an opinion in the next strip!
(and then watch people defend him as not being that bad)
About as intense as watching the ball fall in slow motion only to be received AGAIN.
Snap! Privilege checked.
Anyone else notice that Joyce’s family members that are more calm and understanding actually have eye color?
Clearly blue eyed Browns are the superior Brown. 😉
it’s mostly a coincidence because Willis gives kids the eyecolor of the parent of the opposite gender. which is a nice little hint for Jocelyn.
It’s a design choice I appreciate for a variety of reasons. Partly because my sister & I got our father’s blue-gray eyes and my brothers got my mom’s dark brown eyes. Partly because it helps make it so children don’t just look like clones of their same-sex parent in simple art styles. And partly for that great nod to Joc’s gender 🙂
We’ll see when Jordan appears, whether the reasonableness gene is attached to the same chromosome as the eye colour gene. (Unless Willis decides to mess with us and give him Hank’s eyes anyway.)
Plot twist: Jordan is non binary. They have different colored eyes.
OH
OHH
*OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH*
^ All of the voices in my head right now.
And fuck yo’ shitty shoes too!
Gotta love how even when he’s adding random letter on, the T still gets left out.
I was hoping someone else noticed. I wonder if Joss did (seeing as the letters probably weren’t her focus in this moment)
Though now I’m imaging (like, really just imagining, don’t actually believe this is the case) that John didn’t include the T because he views it as different and not part of this “trendy” LGBQXYZ; he’s actually surprisingly pretty okay with the T.
John: maybe only mostly an asshole
I’m guessing it’s more like when people say “Black, White, Purple, whatever”. And everyone who isn’t black or white is all “Hey… you shot off into imaginary people before even thinking about us.”
Yes, this
Yup, it’s a microaggression. It’s a reminder that not only are you an unperson and viewed as total garbage by the bigot you’re talking to… you’re also less than that garbage, not even acknowledged, seen as something almost fictional.
And it ends up being a reminder of how far your movement has to go and the itching knowledge that eventually once you’ve fought for years for visibility, you’ll rise to the position of being even more actively hated for what you are.
(/what it feels like to be ace most days)
Yeah. As evidenced by the fact that the response to the unparalleled trans visibility of 2015 was 2016’s unparalleled wave of legislative attempts to pass laws effectively banning our very existence in public or ability to lead public lives. Sometimes visibility fucking sucks, y’all.
Nah, if it was intentional at all it’s because he doesn’t know what T is.
LGBQXYZ is the super secret queer mathematics guild.
As if queer mathematicians would only be satisified with three dimensions!
We can’t put the symbol for the 4th dimension up in public. It would destroy the world.
Lesbian Gay Bisexual Queer Xenosexual YuGiOh Zoids
Not John, who is just showing contempt, but that was me back in the day. I actually was under the mistaken idea that gay men were really women and lesbians were really men, and that trans people were just more honest about it.
Yeah, I bought that being gay was wrong (from what I was taught), but being trans never seemed to be. Either they were sick, in which case it was horrible to have a problem with them, or they really were the other gender, and then of course they’d try to wear the other gender’s clothes. It would be sinful for them to do otherwise! (Yes, there really is such a scripture.)
Don’t get me wrong. While I am still a Christian, I don’t believe any of the anti-gay or anti-clothing stuff today. I’m just discussing how I grew up.
And I don’t think this applies to John at all. I didn’t even show that level of contempt towards gay people when I thought they were sinners.
I’m anti-clothing and I’m not even religious.
So are all naturalists be us black, white, Chinese, Indian, native American, Asian, gay, straight, bi, trans, asexual, or any other race, gender, orientation you can think of
Naturists not naturalists my mobile always something like this when I forget autocorrect is on
My only problem with naturism is that I wouldn’t be able to get through the day without laughing like a maniac. For some reason I cannot think of boobs as anything but hilarious and I think it might be a problem.
I’ve encountered at least one trans woman who was virulently homophobic, insisting that gay men were all secretly trans women, and vice-versa. (The notion of a trans lesbian, for instance, was completely unthinkable to her, as was the idea of bisexuality as anything other than a sign the person was simply a deviant of the highest order.)
In addition to the religious aspect trikly refers to, there’s also the fact that for many trans people, especially in conservative areas, the gatekeeping to get your trans status approved is intense, and rife with gender-policing. If you find a doctor willing to sign the forms at all, you frequently have to prove yourself to be an idyllic form of your true gender, as determined by traditional roles. So trans women are expected to be ultra-feminine housewives, while trans men have to be uber-masculine alpha males.
I was a bit shocked the first time I met a gay man who claimed that bisexuals were just faking it. Since then I learned that that has been a not uncommon “thing”. Before that point I had assumed that the LGBTQ-community were all sort of on the same page, but of course it’s going to have a ton of internal biases because everyone’s just people, after all.
I’ve read that a lot of bi kids are at significant more risk of mental health illness than usual, stemming from the idea that they can get shit from within the Queer community as well as out of it when we’ve built it up to be a safe haven of tolerance and understanding.
Part of that one stems from the unfortunate nature of ‘coming out’ in parts of this country. Since conservatives insist that being gay is a choice, then one consequence of that is that if you aren’t straight, you’re gay. So a kid in a situation like Becky’s has a romantic relationship (or even just recognizes the attraction) and decides they must be homosexual. (Note that neither Becky nor Joyce seems to have heard of the concept of a bisexual in their pre-comic lives.)
So, they go through the whole coming-out process, including lots of intense emotions and counseling and group struggles and so on. And they get to be in a lot of other people’s lives as well. Then they fall for someone of the opposite sex, and everyone is confused, and maybe former same-sex lovers feel betrayed/deceived. It’s a situation where ignorance of how this all actually works leads to a lot of confusion and doubt.
So, stories like that get passed around the gay community (usually only from one side), and pretty soon you get, “There’s no such thing as bisexual.”
There’s also a thing where people aren’t quite willing to fully embrace being gay and try to hang on to some normalcy or just continuity be thinking of themselves as bi, but eventually admit that they’re really only interested in the same sex. Then they or those who’ve watched them go through that, try to help others accept they’re actually gay.
Which does happen and is even well-intentioned, but still contributes to bi-erasure.
The problem, of course, is when those folks who were gay but “tried to hold onto normalcy” deny bisexuality as a valid sexual orientation.
This view of bisexuality as a half measure until admitting you were really gay all along and nothing previous mattered is a huge component of the bi-erasure epidemic.
Absolutely. But it is a thing that happens and it’s understandable when they think others are going through the same process. Wrong, but understandable. Less so in this day and age which is far more open about such things than even a decade or so ago. At least once people are past the Dan/Becky “Is that even a thing?” stage.
Lots of bigotry is understandable. It still hurts and it should still be squashed out so people never have to go through that “is that even a thing” stage.
He also left out a bunch of other letters.
Dumbass never learned his ABC’s yet he’s callin’ Joyce a kid, shaw right.
[/wittysarcasm]
Oooooh. That is such an interesting detail. Kudos, Willis.
…oh wow. It’s a small thing, but… wow.
I noticed but that’s coincidentally around the point where most people stop remembering the rest, or pretend not to remember the rest because it proves they actually recognize it all
though it would be super-weird to be okay with trans* but NONE OF THE REST–that’s like skipping some steps
> though it would be super-weird to be okay with trans* but NONE OF THE REST–that’s like skipping some steps
Well, AIUI that’s the situation in Iran (at least, on the official level – the general population isn’t necessarily any more progressive than here).
It’s a cure for homosexuality, but it’s also totally a thing (And probably better accepted there than here, since even as a top-down dictate it still is unlikely to have remained in effect for 2 decades without at least broad support (Even among the rural people, since the people of the cities are generally more liberal than those who live in the states).
I mean, the general population of Iran isn’t more progressive than that of the states – IE if you count rural and rural. But it’s by no means some enormous gap that Meriken simply automatically win like they tend to imagine. Which is pretty true as a rule, afaik.
Well my impression and what I was getting at is that it’s about as accepted there as homosexuality is here, which is, you know, not great, esp. when you look at rural people or conservatives, but the contrast basically shows that intolerance (and partial/incomplete progression of tolerance on a societal level) comes in all sorts of flavors and you can’t really generalize there being “steps” or that accepting trans people is automatically a “higher level” than accepting gay people.
They do more surgery than thailand. Thailand is one of the most common places for Westerners to go (and plenty, even in more accepting countries, will still go to thailand). I’m sure it’s still not great, but there’s only so much room for this handwringing about how it’s ‘like the USA’.
Content warning: Homophobia
Oh, it’s not just that.
It’s partially intentional. Folks like John do not believe in trans people. Trans people are just “extreme versions of gay people”. Like someone gays so hard they become a trans person. As such, of course they are not going to honor it, because in their eyes a (slur for gay male) is a (slur for gay male).
Don’t forget, all the people just putting it aside as a mental disease and it should be cured with Pimozide or something like that. In my experience that is the kind of opinion you meet when talking with “Intellectuals” any way.
“Someone gays so hard they become a trans person.”
That made me laugh in a really darkly amused way. I have been gaying all over the place for many years and still no penis 🙁 Gotta keep buyin’ em at the store.
Sorry if insensitive, but sometimes I really think all the shitty nonsense bigots believe is ridiculous enough to be a joke. <3
Laughing at other people’s utterly irrational, unwavering stupidity is one of the most benign forms of dark humor probably. It may make you seem a bit insensitive but at least you’re not being actively offensive.
Actually historically it’s always been the other way around; LBGA people were all violating our traditional gender roles, by not wanting to marry and have kids in the Proper Heteronormative Fashion. So we were seen as “basically trans”, rather than trans folk being seen as “basically gay”.
I mean, transphobic cis LGBs have done a bang up job of trying to shift the umbrella so as to make same-gender attraction (esp. exclusive same-gender attraction) the primary reason for oppression, so that we can uh I guess feel more important and authoritative as we try to toss other people out of “”our”” movement for not being gay enough… but yeah, historically it’s not true. And in terms of which groups of us suffer the most extreme effects of LGBTQIAphobia, it’s pretty clear that it’s still not true. A white cis gay man is not, in fact, the most at-risk demographic.
All of which, while certainly true, is also part of the even larger shift in our approach to gender roles, started by the early feminist movements.
Sure, though I wouldn’t be so quick to say “started by feminists” as if there was no overlap? See: the Spinster Movement, which was made up of LBA and feminist women. Feminism, asexuality, and WLW all united in an attempt to fight back.
The idea of bigotry from within the Queer community always truck me as one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.
Seconded, but there will always be people who react to oppression by trying to oppress someone else even more vulnerable than they are 🙁
HALLELUJAH, these words. I am sick to death of the sga model tacking on “or you could be trans I guess, then you can be part of the community too” as if…. the reason for being targeted is and always has been sga…..
Plus it’s incredibly obviously about excluding people (particularly aces).
/stands up for my ace and aro honorary siblings forever
I know it doesn’t always feel like this, but I swear to you: some of us recognize that the gatekeeping crap being lobbed your way right now is exactly the same transphobic and biphobic crap we’ve rejected before (are still rejecting now), and are only more determined to not tolerate it being used again.
You are valid and real and important and that you’ve been deliberately erased from history doesn’t make you any less deserving of a seat at the table.
True, very true. Which I think makes it easier for bigots to lump us all together (and is the reason that trans and other queer rights have always been intertwined). In their eyes, we’re all “sinning” against “proper gender roles” and trans people are just “sinning” harder than the rest.
And it tends to all stem from the same pit of anxious toxic masculinity, terrified that the separation between men and women isn’t the uncrossable gaping chasm they want it to be.
YEP. I think the thing to remember when looking at how we’re categorized is to remember that the cis straight dyadic hegemony has never given the tiniest of craps about how we differ from each other or why; we are all, have always been, weird and wrong to them. That’s why we were all “queer”. Because we failed the test for “normal”, because we our non-normality was incredibly threatening for their concept of society; not because we were specifically some degree of gay. And they sure as heck didn’t care to distinguish between someone exclusively gay and someone ace, because both had the same result of not wanting to get married and have kids.
But that’s why I’m nonbinary–maximum gay! Feelings for a dude? It’s gay. Feelings for a lady? Also gay. Feelings for another nb person? Super mega gay. Maximum gay: achieved. (I mean I’m also ace which people loooooove like to bring up to invalidate 100% of that, but only if they’re an asshat)
INFINITE GAY!
Oh I have gotten the “How is your “boyfriend”” from people. They literally do air quotes. So tempting to respond that “he is getting further than you ever will.”
Or the one I get from the a bunch of the kids at the college Queer Alliance, “You are just afraid to come out as gay.” Well no honey, I am biromantic and open about it, and most people I know would give me less shit for being gay.
Actually, I became “okay with trans” back in the ’80s, long before I became a decent human being on this stuff. It was a case of my sexism and homophobia beating up my transphobia. See, there was this James Bond Girl named Tula, who was trans, who did nude photo spreads. Somewhere, deep in my mind while flipping through the magazine, I came to the conclusion that either she was a woman, or I was gay–and being gay in the 80s was simply unacceptable even as a remote thought, so “trans woman = woman” it was.
Rightest decision for wrongest reasons, ever.
I thought the omission was startling as well.
I wonder if it’s because he’s somehow sensitive to Jocelyne’s “T”-ness. Or it’s just a mistake or erasure.
Given his current attitude, what do you think the odds are that he knows at all?
Seems more likely to me that he just doesn’t care enough to actually know the full acronym.
Bingo. “This isn’t even worth me taking it seriously enough to be accurate about it.”
I agree that that’s more likely. But, riddle me this…
Which is more interesting: Somebody who’s a bigot through and through? Or somebody who’s a bigot through and through, yet practices some bizarre form of mental gymnastics such that they can support their trans (and straight!) sister Jocelyne, but reject the rest of the lgbt+ community on the basis of being sinning trend-chasers that are distracting from the only important issue, the one that effects the people I know personally?
“They’re all terrible except for tnis one individual in particular because I know them personally” is a logic contortion in many circles.
But frankly, if that were John’s exact attitude towards Joss, I wouldn’t take it as any sort of kindness or concession. It would simply be him choosing to specifically pardon his sister’s sin, while still fully internally believing that Joss is an abomination and subhuman, for either the sake of appearances or being utterly incapable of expanding his worldview beyond his privileged existence. That makes him a special kind of asshole, and a complete and total hypocrite.
Yes and as if she needs his pardon for being herself.
I agree that it would be incredibly interesting if John were consciously sensitive towards Jocelyn. Unfortunately, with him addressing them as “Josh” in yesterday’s strip, it’s likely that John either isn’t aware of Joss’s situation, or (worse) he does know and is entirely dismissive of it.
Interestingly, I got it from an acquaintance of a friend of James Dobson, the founder and erstwhile president of Focus on the Family, that dear Dr Dobson believes just this. Trans people have a physical problem (i.e., being born into a body with a sex that doesn’t match who they are) and should be accepted and supported, but gay people have a sexual perversion that they indulge. So yeah. Apparently it’s a thing.
Benzene is awesome.
‘Kay, bye.
I don’t think I knew ‘T’ was a part of the acronym until a couple of years ago. If I was to have ‘Alphabet Soup’ the acronym, I’ve of done the same.Hell, I don’t think I even realized that the ‘T’ part of it was a thing at all, and my life was only partly sheltered. Perhaps John doesn’t know Trans people exist as well.
I grew up knowing “LGBT” without actually knowing the deciphering. I also knew “LGBT+” and “LGBTQ” (and “LGBTQ+”). Everything past that just disintegrates into alphabet soup for me… I prefer MOGAI XD
QUILTBAG for me. More fun to say; harder to leave anyone out. 😀
QUILTBAG does seem more fun, but seeing it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Think I’ve heard the term ‘queerbag’ used as an insult to a bi friend before.
Part of why I like QUILTBAGPIPE 😀
(Pansexual, Intersex again because they get left out so much, Polyamorous, and Everyone Else we forgot)
Ouch, yeah, and that was absolutely not lost on Jocelyne.
And the A, please don’t forget about us….
And no, it does NOT mean Ally.
Well, duh, it’s stands for… uh… um… “aren’t we glad we didn’t miss anyone?”, right?
(/sarcasm because I’m also totally ace)
Between the regular “A is for Ally!” and preferring MOGAI for that exact reason, I actually didn’t notice.
John is truly a neverending deliverer of miracles
Truth in fiction. Truest truth in any fiction ever.
I’m just surprised he got the LGBQ part.
I’m surprised that he knows about the alphabet soup. Normally people just stick with “the gays”
I’m surprised he cares.
He has no reason to actually learn or internalize everything, but due to being younger and also the importance of keeping up his appearance as a stoic and learned moral paragon of his ministry, he has to pretend to make an effort such that he differentiates himself from the more openly bigoted people with whom he agrees, yet must look and feel superior towards. By learning anything at all, he’s satisfied himself with his own exploration of the topic because he knows that he knows more about “that sort of trendy nonsense” than his peer group, which is exactly the same in his mind as actually giving the concepts and ideas an actual, critical, fair shake.
Good GOD, Jocelyn! That burn wasn’t even HUMANE!
Nice work.
So savage she should be busting myths on TV.
YEAHHHHHHH JOCELYNE IN FOR THE KILL
Wrong person to lecture to, Johnny-boy.
Oh shit – Jocelyne is bringing out the receipts, because it’s time to get payback.
John better pull out his aloe, ’cause he’ll need it for those burns!
I trust that they were only drinking water, so they didn’t just run out on the check.
I don’t think they got to the “ordering” phase. I don’t know this restaurant chain, but I doubt they’re out more than some water and maybe some rolls or something.
I love the idea that now that they’re gone Joyce and Becky are kicking back and perusing the menu.
And in half an hour, once they’ve eaten (Chicken fingers after all), they come out to find John and Jocelyne still in a screaming match in the parking lot.
Ooh sick burn brah.
Well, well– I can see John is going to be even more “popular” around here after reading today’s strip!
If I were in a room with John and Toedad, I honestly suspect I’d punch John first.
At least Toedad didn’t pretend there was no gun, kidnapping, and death threats involved.
Toedad is Voldemort; John is Umbridge.
I can totally see John forcing Joyce to write something like “I won’t say angry things” in her own hand.
And then Joyce and Becky leave him to a herd of the destitute, lesbians, and gay men as he begs for help.
He never recovers and screams every time he sees red hair.
Do you think the comments will exceed yesterday’s?
Looks like there is a strong chance of it.
Wow, just wow…is that like a thing that you get a new car for being a missionary?
I really now virtually nothing about the workings of churchs and missionaries but this seems…excessive
Ninjaed.
And yeah, I’ve never heard of this, but then I don’t know any fundie missionary types. It seems rather less than charitable.
Could be a Prosperity Gospel thing of some sort. An American evangelist, Creflo Dollar, has been getting a lot of press in recent months because he wants his congregation to donate funds for a 60 million buck bizjet for supposed evangelisation purposes.
He got the jet, actually. Oh, and the home they own are tax-free.
Yea, because apparently his previous jet was too old or too small.
That’s been a controversial point in the news before. The tithe goes to the church and is supposed to be used to spread the word of God… But if the preacher gets a fancy new car, well, if it helps him proselytize, who cares?
Satan’s already got all that cool hellfire and shit, Pastor’s gotta’ have something to up the cool factor.
“HEY KIDS LOOK! A NEW WATERSLIDE!”
A… holy waterslide?
Makes baptisms a whole lot more fun.
That holy waterslide is for killing vampires only, and don’t you forget it!
Look…if there is a waterslide involved I am gettin’ baptised. I might need four or five turns on the slide just to make sure it takes.
“I still feel like a godless gay heathen, can I get baptized again?”
… if the preacher gets a fancy new car (or $60M jet), well, if it helps him proselytize, who cares?
—————————
It is beyond amazing just how people will twist the word of God when they need it to support their particular position, desire, or lifestyle.
I wouldn’t stretch to “Amazing”, really. Considering how many words they are and the it all has the verifiability of a fortune cookie it’s really a wonder that people have managed to form large consensuses at all.
You throw all the money up in the air, and God grabs what he needs, and the rest is yours.
My cousins-in-law got a house. It came with their pastorate. The whole thing makes me kinda queasy.
Were they given it or are they living in it rent free?
A parsonage is fairly standard going back to at least the middle ages. It means that there is a place fro the pastor near the church and is a relatively sound investment for a fair size church as it can reduce the pastors needed salary, especially once the building is paid off it can reduce. In the churches that rotate pastors like the United Methodist it also save an incoming pastor from taking out a mortgage every few years.
Of course, traditionally, it’s never actually the preacher’s house. They can’t even change the carpet without permission.
And parsonages aren’t usually McMansions. I grew up as a PK (ELCA Lutheran), and I remember the fun that ensued when it was discovered that the basement wall of the parsonage was visibly bowing inwards. Time for committees, which always move fast!
I literally could have written this entire comment. Are you me (or one of my five siblings)?
Yeah, that’s not a big deal. It’s a house that they have for the pastor, and it’s a lot cheaper than paying him to have a large enough salary to actually buy a house. And he gets to be nearby, so he can get to the church quickly–which not only helps the parishioners, but also keeps transportation costs down.
You can’t literally have all the money coming to the church be spent on the poor–unless everyone working there is independently wealthy. That’s not really the issue. The issue is, as Joss pointed out, that a brand new car is not remotely necessary for his mission in India. Especially not a car that is back her in America.
Letting him borrow a car while he’s back would make sense, but a brand new car? That is just wasteful. And makes me think he’s not even the type of missionary who has to work when he comes back home.
Unless it’s a particularly nice house, I’m not sure why that’s odd or controversial. Pastor needs a place to live, don’t ‘e?
I would like to take a small amount of pride in saying no mission or congregation I have been a part of was ever that wasteful. It really is amazing just how fast my opinion of John sank. I really wanted to like him.
Yeah, I wanted him to be an okay person too. Not necessarily perfect, but generally sympathetic.
I remember one priest get a car that expensive from our church… Three days later when I saw him at school for Wednesday mass he had sold it and was giving the money to the school for some to quote “new god damn paint” for the drama department. The uniforms it bought for the basketball team were… Infuriating.
Depends on the missionaries and the people backing them.
*plays the Osmond Brothers’ “Crazy Horses” on a passing car’s stereo*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K48WZaA3rlA <- For your listening pleasure.
Yes. This is good.
Niiiiice.
Woo Jocelyne! I’m glad she’s getting some in. Now let’s see if John’s a jerk enough to leave her here.
My money’s on no, but only because he needs a captive audience to criticize for a bit. Probably gets antsy if he can’t do that every few minutes.
Yeah, John needs to explain how, even from his viewpoint, his sister shouldn’t be upset at having a rifle pointed at her.
“My sister was almost killed, how can I make this about me?”
I don’t think that’s accurate. I think in his case he may be blind enough to his own inherent hypocrisy that it’s more like “my sister was almost killed, but it was the direct consequence of her sins, and she needs to learn the lesson that God is trying to teach her with His Plan.”
Oh, John will definitely leave her behind.
Oh snap!
Jocelyn. You fucking go girl.
That was so needed to be said at that moment.
There needs to be a group consisting of Joyce, Becky, Ethan, Danny, Walky, Dorothy, Billie, Ruth, Marcie, Carla, and Malaya standing behind her going “OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH” every time she says something boss.
I am so angry at this condescending fucker that I can’t even articulate how much I hate him. I’m just seething.
Well, getting angry just proves you are wrong, right?
I can. I’d like to knock his smug, condescending teeth so far in he’ll be chewing with his colon.
Seriously, that, ‘life is hard, so i don’t NEED to have sympathy for others’ right wing attitude makes me mad as hell too.
-Especially- when their own life is anything but hard.
+1
I can’t say any of the things I truly think/would like to see visited upon this family which would embarrass even the Old Testament God. This seems like a nice enough place, and I don’t much want to be banned from commenting over it.
Let’s discuss this later when you can be reasonable, mmkay?
How ’bout I “reasonably” rearrange his face with my cane. I have to have it to walk to the bus stop or farther, might as well put it to good use.
…is walking to the bus stop or father not good use?
Same. Urge to punch someting – rising.
I feel like I should be inventing words or something myself.
Behold, the next Shakespeare.
Fie! Though Jocelyne’s burneth wast very much hot, joshua yet stands unbearably entithl’d.
Might I recommend a series of three *snaps?
What sucks is he’s not all wrong. Actions have consequences is a prime lesson in college.
The problem is that he’s the one making the consequences. Like, being a lesbian needn’t have consequences, except that people like John and Ross are utterly horrible assholes about it.
You know, it’s actually incredible how little he seems to care for Joyce (and Becky, but Joyce is his SISTER so it’s more surprising). Does he even realize her life was literally in danger? She had a friggin rifle aimed at her. Does he somehow not realize that? Does he not care?
Trust me, it’s the ‘not care’ one.
Nope ’cause in their bigoted little heads, it was all their fault for being what they are.
You know.
Decent human beings.
If he acknowledges she has a genuine point it strengthens her position and weakens his. Suddenly the lesbian is in the right and the fundy is in the wrong for acting on his beliefs.
It’s not that he doesn’t care, exactly. It’s that he thinks Ross was in the right to remove Becky from school and make plans for her to be sent to a “correction” camp, and Joyce was in the wrong to deceive a parent (and ngl, Ross being an older man does factor in in this particular sect, and Joyce defying him was beyond wrong to someone like John) when the parent was simply trying to protect their child. (Even though Ross’ form of “parenting” was abuse and kidnapping at gunpoint)
In his line of thinking, Joyce isn’t an adult protecting another adult/friend, Joyce is a dumb little kid lying to the adults to protect a sinful, entitled brat from the “loving correction” of their betters, and they drove Ross to his extreme actions.
So everything Ross did is Becky’s fault, and partly Joyce’s, and they should feel bad for driving Ross to it and getting Ross in trouble, and then daring to act like they were in the right.
If you’ll excuse me, I need to go take a shower and scrub these terrible childhood memories of these sorts of assholes off of my soul.
Gods, I need a shower after reading that as well.
*hugs and sobs uncontrollably*
A singular fairness I can grant to him on this one thing is he probably has had zero involvement in Joyce or her life. He was probably nearly moved out by the time she was walking and talking, they’ve presented him that way. Why would you be close to a family member who was a baby when you lived with them and you then stopped seeing regularly, without some kind of special connection between the two of you?
That’s the rub, ain’t it?
Making sure to pass laws creating awfulness and suffering for a marginalized group, so you can point to the “harder” lives they live as proof of your superiority and the raw degeneracy of that “lifestyle”.
Encourage bullying in the schools, disownnment of queer kids, and firing them from all jobs and evicting them from all housing and then point to the suicide, homeless, and depression rates as proof of the “unhealthiness” of being queer. It’s the Family Research Council’s life-long shtick.
You know that phrase “Science advances one funeral at a time”? It totally applies to social progress too because half the way we move away from this shit is when the people who believe it have the good grace to fucking bite it.
Wanna know something super gross? “Social skills” therapy for autistic kids includes performance of gender stereotypes.
So if you are an autistic girl who likes weather like I was, your therapy will include trying to “extinguish” the “inappropriate behavior” of preferring meteorology to dolls. When they aren’t holding everything you love hostage to compliance as a “positive reinforcer..”
And autistic folk are WAY more likely to be transmitted and/or various non-straight alignments. Guess how they’re treated, since if you’re autistic you’re not even allowed to know you’re passionate about something. Cuz it’s not a passion, it’s a “special interest”.
Trans not transmitted. Fucking Autocorrect.
True, but it’s hard to hear any reasonable meaning he has when his head is so far up his ass.
Yeah, but that really doesn’t apply to the situation here.
Not all wrong, no. Just where it counts.
As much as I think actions should have consequences (a huge part of agency is feeling that your actions produce proportionate responses) being a lesbian is not an action, and having a gun pointed at you pretty much not an acceptable consequence of any action.
And the refusal to accept that Toedad’s actions (aka. holding your daughter and her friend up at gunpoint) have consequences too, much more legally enshrined ones.
“Life is hard” is not false. But it is all wrong when spoken as if it had to be the case, by someone who is actually one of the reasons life is hard.
Seriously, life being hard or unfair is not a justification for your concerted efforts to maintain or exacerbate that state, the fact that life is hard and unfair should be something we strive to mitigate not an excuse to be an asshole.
Well well, welly well well, to quote Jonesy Garcia. Remove the beam from your own eye and all that, John.
Ooooooh I underestimated Jocelyne.
::popcorn::
Like, I am no shrinking violet at all, but in Jocelyne’s closeted shoes I’d probably be looking out the car window and trying to be as small as possible. It would be perfectly understandable and okay for her to react that way about all the terrible BS flying around her.
But that’s not what she’s doing, now is it!! YES GO JOCELYNE GO
Note how she’s not saying a thing about the actual issue at hand, she goes off on an independent barely related tangent having to do with John’s personal moral character instead.
Not a word uttered in actual overt support of alphabet soup.
SICK BURN delivered.
I fucking love Jocelyne.
With this, I agree completely and heartily!
I know right! I wasn’t expecting this, but pretty excited about all this sass.
(Actually it makes me wonder if Jocelyne was actually afraid of Joyce, yesterday.)
I think Jocelyn might have been afraid of getting hit by whatever Joyce was likely to throw at Jonathan.
Yeah, I’d be afraid of Joyce with a heavy object rn.
I think Jocelyne was afraid of the conflict, and afraid of John turning his hellfire on her next, and afraid because she was getting a front-row seat to how conditional their family’s support is… but then she sassed him anyway, because she loves Joyce and she knows it’s right and she’s brave.
Also the heavy objects.
If only Round The Clock served sweet-pickle pies.
Yup! Those are all very scary things. And yet she spoke up anyhow! I think all the love for Jocelyne is more than warranted!
This also isn’t a direct defense of the lesbian. That’s too scary territory to touch. Comes to close to home.
She can attack John on the greed and hypocrisy without getting close to that. Deflection, but an outlet for the rage that has to be tearing her up.
JOCELYNE WITH NO REGARD FOR HUMAN LIFE
JOCE DA HOSS
I DUNNO I’M JUST SUPER EXCITED AND HAPPY WITH OL’ JOCELYNE TEAM JOCE 4EVER
I’VE GOT THE T-SHIRTS
LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOO
That guy has to be the youngest curmudgeon I’ve ever seen. Will John call Joyce a whippersnapper in the next strip?
… I read ‘curmudgeon’ as ‘cum dungeon’
Well you’re not wrong…
Is that some kind of LGBQXYZ thing?
Age is a state of mind.
I love Jocelyn. I want to hug him and just love him forever. Because he understands how it feels to have to hide something from your family because they wouldn’t understand or worse think that he needs to be “reconditioned”. V -V *hugs laptop* > A< YOU TELL HIM JOCELYN!
I know you mean well, but…
“I love Jocelyn. I want to hug *her and just love *her forever. Because *she understands how it feels to have to hide something from your family because they wouldn’t understand or worse think that *she needs to be “reconditioned”. V -V *hugs laptop* > A< YOU TELL HIM JOCELYN!"
Her. Jocelyne, and “her”.
*her, she, she. Careful there.
*her, her, she & she
I really hope the misgendering was accidental.
(Jocelyn is trans, and she hasn’t dared tell anyone in her family yet.)
Really, has she told anybody? She sent Ethan an SMS with her email addy so he may have some small inkling, but if there are any people that actually know, like members of her LGBTQIAPK support group (did I get all the letters in the correct order?) are people who have not been introduced in-comic as yet.
Ethan doesn’t have an inkling, he straight up knows that Joyce has a sister, now. Jocelyne took a huge risk in telling him, but, yeah, his face at the end of that strip was one of realization, when he saw the JocelyneJBrown email address.
Assuming he picked up on it as well as the chat did. He did seem to come to a realization when he saw it. But I could still see him not quite get it.
I know I thought it was a pen name. It wasn’t until I saw the chat that I put it all together.
Actually, I went back and looked at that comic again. After Ethan asked about being able to see some of her writing, Joshua/Jocelyne told Ethan she would text him some links; and then what he got on his phone was “JocelyneJBrown.com” — which is *NOT* an email address. I too thought at first that Joshua was writing under a female nom de plume in much the same way many females have written under an assumed male or androgynous name; it wasn’t until Willis himself made in clear in the comments that we knew beyond a doubt that Jocelyne was transgender but unannounced.
Incidentally, type “JocelyneJBrown.com” into your browser and see what comes up.
haahhahahahahah omg that’s amazing
Not that amazing. It’s pretty much common sense that if you’re going to use a URL in fiction, you register it.
What’s unusual is he’s still keeping the registration up several years later.
(What would be amazing would be if he’d actually built a site of Joss’s writing. Just redirecting is more common.)
Well…register it, or use a TLD that doesn’t exist. But in this era of .horse, I’m not sure if it’s possible for a TLD to not exist ant more.
Speak for yourself. I didn’t read the comments the first time through and I picked up on that. (It helped that the hover text said “Joyce’s sister is kinda adorable.” I mean there’s only one way to interpret that)
I’m srry. Because there are some people who get confused or offended I wrote “he” more jokingly. V v V I realize her situation and shouldn’t have been rude like that.
Wow, you know what, fuck John, he’s terrible.
What’s practical with John is that you can fuck him ANYWHERE since he’s just a giant asshole!
Oh come on, he did not park in the handicapped space.
*inhales slowly*
*breathes out slowly*
Someone needs to kill him. Right now. Just slit his fucking throat and be DONE with it. “Entitled”?! “ENTITLED”?! Consequences for WHAT?! EXISTING?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
I want him dead I want him dead I want him dead
Tempting but psychological trauma last a lot longer than death.
I was expecting this ever since John tried to keep Becky from coming to lunch. Seeing everyone else arrive here is … well, I didn’t expect it to be this painful.
I am never actively wishing violence or physical harm on anybody, but maaaan, if someone wrecked this jerkwad’s fancy car or something, I’d be so super okay with that.
“I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.” – Clarence Darrow
Yeah. This is the Margaret Thatcher thing. Or Scalia. Or numerous others. People who, in life, used their power to actively harm people. I am not gonna be sad that they died. Maybe I have sympathy for their loved ones, but if anyone comes and tells me to ‘respect their legacy’, then….. nahhhhhh thanks, I’m good.
Why have I never heard this quote before?
What about:
“You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good . . . Joan Crawford is dead. Good.” – Bette Davis
please I need more
Wow. That’s not an overreaction or anything…
I especially love the guy with the free fancy car is the one calling others entitled.
Even without all the other factors that’s enough to make him a total arsewipe.
I don’t expect the car to be “free” actually. It’s probably paid from his income which will not be significantly more than that of others. It’s just that when you have that kind of income while living in a country where the average income is a 20th of yours, money tends to accumulate even when living a considerably luxurious style.
The bottom line may be the same but you arrive there with a lot more of, well, entitlement. You feel you deserve that much more than the ones around you since you were born into an exploitative country which you left voluntarily. You just left the money tap running, and when coming back to visit, the house is flooded.
Actually, in the megachurch scene it’s not uncommon for pastors and missionaries to get free luxury items tax free, often with some BS attached about how they totally use it for ministering… and just driving around.
A lot of the time, it’s paid for by little old ladies sending in their life savings to the Church because “that’s what god wants”.
Basically just google “prosperity gospel”.
This content made me think of that guy who tried to convince his congregation to put together a few million bucks to buy him a private jet – to use in the ministry, of course – and then blamed ‘Satan’ when they didn’t hit the funding target.
Jesus walked and frequently slept rough.
The Apostle Paul either walked or hitch-hiked his way around the entire Western Empire when he wasn’t on military prison barges.
I wonder if they’re capable of understanding what this says about them as ‘Christians’?
Where is the lightning when it is so clearly called for? Jocelyn’s burn needs to be followed by one from God — the real God, the God who loves and doesn’t put up with bigots and bullshit. The actual God of love; not the one of whatever f’ed up church the Brown’s attend.
… is this a thing that happens? Missionarys getting free cars from skimmed money? Cause… damn.
I assume it is, since it’s Willis’ sort of thing to know, but it definitely is for higher ups in the mission programs (organizers and up, I mean, rather than random missionaries or the churches who promote missions).
Yes. Yes, it is.
Well clearly if the church gave them that car that means that God wanted them to have it.
But yeah it happens. They don’t often call it skimming, and some are even open about spending money on personal gifts, but mega-churches can make a ton of money and you can’t spend all of that on poor people, can you?
See, I never know how involved other people are in the culture. “Should I bring up Creflo Dollar’s 65 million dollar luxury jet, which was bought to replace another, smaller jet that he felt wasn’t worthy of him? I mean, he’s hardly a *standard* missionary, and everyone’s already heard of that, right?
Considering it was covered on Last Week Tonight last year, I think people know.
Yeah, but LWT is delivered to a small audience of the like-minded. Granted, those people are disproportionately likely to read DoA, but…
Bless our Mega Reverend and CEO for founding Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption!
And call 1-800-THIS-IS-LEGAL!
LET’S SEND OUR SEED
I have no idea who it was who played his ‘wife’ for that segment, but she was fantastic.
Rachel Dratch, SNL 1999-2006, and she’s been in a lot of stuff (over a dozen different one-episode roles in 30 Rock, for example).
Distributing a whole bunch of money to five people is a whole lot less work than distributing it to hundreds of thousands of people.
It’s just being efficient. Try getting some developing country project funded for $10000. Close to impossible. Make it $100mill of which most will go to “administrative” costs and spent inside of the organization including a bit of backpay, possibly in the form of campaign funds and other actually legal niceties, and you’re talking.
Plus it still makes its way down to the poor via “trickle down economics,” right? So it’s basically just the same as giving that money to the poor directly, just more efficient. And, like, intuitive and natural and stuff. Yeah.
Yup and more.
Hey, it’s not like Jesus said that it should be the rich giving all their money to the poor, is it?
There’s a long, shameful history of corrupt jackasses using the church as their own personal piggybank, and it’s alive and well (like a cancer) in the modern evangelical churches of America. It’s particularly grotesque and virulent in the ‘prosperity gospel’ variants, which con and coerce poor and desperate people into donating everything they’ve got ‘give till it hurts’ to ‘plant a seed’ that will then guarantee them that god will give them great riches in return. It’s disgusting beyond words.
Less common than people say, more common than a lot of people think. Prosperity Gospel malarky aside, some churches really do like buying expensive junk for their pastors. It’s not overwhelmingly common, but it happens.
Anywhere where huge amounts of money accumulate in one place, corruption tends to follow. That’s doubly so if the people accumulating the money have convinced themselves that they speak for a higher power.
Now I’m curious about the age difference between John and Jocelyne. Also, eee~ Go Joss~ as a starving writer, she knows that the real world is hard. Becky and Joyce know that too. But the real world shouldn’t have a consequence like ‘my dad came to SHOOT ME AND MY FRIENDS BECAUSE I’M GAY’. Like, this guy’s a missionary? THIS guy? Suppose the people of India should know they need to learn the consequences of having a different religion and culture…
From the patreon bonus strip, Jocelyne is maybe 5 years older than Joyce and 10 years younger than John. Not sure about Jordan.
Wooow, that’s a lot of years. I’m a little surprised that John roped Joss in with himself then, did he think college changed so much in the 5 years between when Joyce and Joss started college? Then again he probably just took Joss’ silence to mean she agreed and thus HER college years weren’t filled with so much ‘entitlement’.
Thanks for answering that for me!
The Johns of the world are always surprised to encounter face-to-face disagreement. I mean, they’re just RIGHT, y’know?
Well, if Joycelen weren’t wrong, she would not need to get angry, would she now? Man, that line of condescension is a gold mine.
I think it’s a convenient othering of experience that’s simply convenient to the social narrative that is shared by this social group. The “entitlement culture” of millennials and college students is a massive talking point of the regressive right in the modern day. Simply because this is the way that his culture views those things, right now, today, John is perfectly able to accept it as 100% fact that his lived experience with college was the “correct” and “standard” way the affair was supposed to go, but now that said demographic doesn’t include or agree with him, the narrative is simply “ever since we were done with it, it changed for the worse.” Ignore the fact that John was naturally absent from the specific segments of his college’s population (or, he probably just went to the fundie college to get his tax exemption uniform) that might have disagreed with his opinion, the way he experienced it was the way it was for everybody who came out of it at the same time as him. That, and since Joss came out of her time at Anderson as a “normal” person whereas Joyce has become something abhorrent and terrifying in the eyes of God (see: a baby girl who questions his overarching authority on all matters), so therefore the change in how college works can only possibly occur in the time between Joss leaving and Joyce showing up there. There is simply no other possible way of looking at it, because God is infallible and he made the world exactly this simple, which is what I was taught and is to what I owe all my success in life. The core failure that causes the suffering and complex problems of others can be summarized as “they didn’t believe the same things I did and therefore God intentionally fucked them over.”
Jordan’s between the girls, so that narrows it down considerably.
There was a bonus comic that had Joyce not-yet-born, Jocelyne trying to express her trans-ness despite being FAR too young to even grock the concept, and John being discussed as if he was already out of school.
So probably something like 20 years.
Whoops, got John and the older kid mixed up.
No, you wereright. John is the oldest.
No it was John.
Which is why I’m a little surprised that John’s talking about college not being the same when they both went. Jocelyne can’t be that many years out of school.
That’s even more years, damn. I’m surprised he’s only been married one year and with no children. Thank you for answering, too!
Christi is probably Hijra. So no children to be expected.
I’d interpreted John as high school age in that one. Note that he is eating while the rest of the family is talking, so growth spurt in progress, maybe.
It’s really heart-breakingly adorable and that’s why I’m happy that the print comics are going to have the Bonus Strips in them.
Isn’t the point of religious missionaries to completely replace the religion and culture of a foreign people with the “correct” one? You go in under the guise of improving the quality of life and helping people who need it and destroy everything that made them them.
Good point, John’s perfect for the job.
Word of Willis says he’s “between 30 and 35”. There’s a pretty long gap between John and Jocelyne, the next oldest. We know Joyce is the youngest, and she’s 18.
Wow. I wasn’t sure there would be even more ways to utterly loathe the giant douchebag, but there we go.
Blame the lesbian for existing, and belittle being kidnapped and shot at, while going on about how entitled the women are getting, and you’re driving around in a gifted mustang.
Yeah. It’s Joyce and Becky that are “entitled” now. Burn in hell, older Brown sibling. I hope you enjoy Dante’s 6th Circle…I think this sort of action would fall under how Dante described heresy.
IIRC there’s a very low circle for betraying your family. I think that’s where John would fit in the best.
9th Circle is Complex Fraud, betrayal of family, but Dante’s version of betrayal was less this sort of action and more murdering them.
Toedad would go straight to 9th Circle. Jackass brown, even if mentality is similar, the action is not as “harsh”, at least to the eyes of someone like Dante.
It’s still unequivocally awful, though.
Given that, by Dante’s schema, people on the inner ring of the 7th Circle include the “violent against nature” (i.e. gays), I imagine Dante would disagree with you there. But I think we can ignore that fact.
John would end up in the 8th Circle’s third bolgia, where dwell those condemned for committing simony and other profiteers of piety. Simon Magus, who trade gold for holy power, ended up there.
In Dante’s time, LGBT would be considered sinners, true. It’s only recently that view has been changed since the spread of Christianity.
However, Dante considered the acts in addition to who they were committed against. Those who kidnapped and killed Boniface VIII Dante stated would go to the inferno, even though Dante considered Boniface as shockingly horrible. Doesn’t matter if Becky is LGBT or not a sinner, Toedad’s actions without repentance would get him sent to Caina as an action against his daughter. If it was towards a non-relative or someone Toedad did not have an obligation to, 7th circle.
My point was more that Dante might very well have considered ToeDad’s acts righteous, rather than worthy of punishment. He wasn’t intending to kill her, after all; he was trying to “save” her in his own warped way. I think Dante would agree that the act and intents were noble.
If you set that aside, yes, ToeDad’s bound for Caina.
True. Reading something from centuries ago, values dissonance is a big problem, you are completely right. Dante might have considered it so.
Actually, I think Ross would be bound for Caina. Paolo and Francesca were sent to the Lust ring for getting caught in bed together by Francesca’s husband and then getting killed before they could repent. Francesca’s husband, meanwhile, will have been sent lower down for his violent action, which he considered perfectly just and never repented for. Whether to the seventh or the ninth, I don’t remember, and I’m not sure it was mentioned.
Also, there’s the point that all sinners are judged by the ethics of their time; Cleopatra and Dido both appear in the Lust ring despite both being suicides because neither lived in a culture where suicide was a sin, despite that culture being “wrong”.
That would be Caina in Cocytus. He’d be frozen up to his neck.
That’s Toedad’s dominion, definitely. Straight down to Caina.
I think, as awful as Brown #1 is, according to the way Dante categorized hell and sin, he’d be stuck in Circle 6. Heresy, at least in Dante’s time, was viewed as something very differently than today. This was before the Protestant reformation, after all. Placing things ahead of the common good, ahead of how Dante viewed Faith, but most importantly–how it played out.
The way I’m interpreting Dante’s view…all of the fundamentalists of Joyce’s soon-to-be-former church would probably be sent straight to Circle 6 as false Christians, or to the Malebolge of the Simonists in Circle 8, for how they are abusing church funds.
Of course, I am not an expert, I could be completely wrong.
Neither am I, but you certainly seem to be more of one than me. I’ve only read La Commedia once or twice, and it’s been a while. I need to dig them back up soon, now that I think of it.
I still need to find a good copy of Paradiso, the person who translated two of the standard English copies of Inferno and Purgatorio died before finishing the Paradiso translation. Even then, it’s a hard read, just because of how many contemporary figures Dante referenced. 0_O;
I may have a good copy of Paradiso, but I just can’t get through Purgatorio. Though I agree with the 8th circle for John.
If you’re talking about the Dorothy L. Sayers translation, that’s the one I have. Paradiso’s last ten cantos were translated by one of Sayers’s friends and confidants who had access to her notes and had been “consulted” (I don’t know a better word for it) for the other twenty-three cantos of Paradiso. In my last reading, admittedly distant, I barely noticed a difference in quality.
Also, apparently Dante himself may have died before finishing his work, as there is a story where his son only found the last ten cantos (coincidence?) after a dream sent from his father told him where to look. Considering the era, it might have been media hype.
Awwww, did your little speech about entitlement and consequences backfire right into your face, John? Man, I feel sooooo sorry for you!
Riiiiiiiight?
Ah yes the trauma was all reasonable consequence for sinful actions.
Heck yeah, Jocelyn strikes back!
Wow, that was a sick burn at the end!
LGBQXYZ Yeah nice one john now your gonna start saying your a member of the La-li-lu-le-lo.
Who are the patriots?
Also, where the hell is entitlement coming into this, even from a warped religious viewpoint? Or does John just thing “being angry” is a privelege reserved for those 30+?
It’s what they call Millennials who would like anything at all, such as a living wage, equality, self-respect, not getting guns pointed at them, you know, ridiculous things like that.
Affordable anything, really. Health care, Post-High School, food.
Additionally it’s truly a struggle not to choke condescending older asshats condemning Participation Trophy Entitlement Culture Millennials when they were the ones handing out the fucking participation trophies to their kids and grandkids with smiles on their faces like what did you expect of CHILDREN? TO GIVE THEM BACK TO YOU?
This, everything this guy said right here.
You’re right, why are they bongoing about that “everyone gets a trophy” mindset when THEY were the ones giving out the trophies and raising us like that?
I once read a person making a fair point, that everyone told him to study hard and go to a good college lest he have to flip burgers, and so he did well in college, and when he graduated and doesn’t particularly want to flip burgers they call him entitled.
Like, constantly through childhood, they told him that flipping burgers would be super terrible and/or shameful, it was the great big threat for not doing what they wanted, and that going to college = great job, so it’s his fault for believing them.
(Of course, I always expected to be a starving artist, so poverty wasn’t such a surprise, but you know, different strokes.)
And even if he sucks it up and starts flipping burgers despite that stigma that’s been repeated to him his whole life, he’d best not DARE point out the problems with the minimum wage. To his parents (and grandparents esp), that wage was actually LIVABLE so clearly the problem is with these bratty, entitled whelps. What inflation is?
My favorite part of the hatred for “trophy culture” is the dramatic misunderstanding of it. “Everyone gets a trophy” doesn’t lead to entitlement. It leads to people who don’t trust positive reinforcement or praise and don’t believe that they earned anything because it didn’t matter how mediocre or straight-up terrible you were as a kid, you still got that positive reinforcement, even if you knew you didn’t deserve it! Why would any praise or positive reinforcement be different as an adult? You’re actually worthless and everyone’s too polite to actually tell you that!
OH MY GOD THIS. YES.
Children are a lot more observant of these things than adults give them credit for. And at a much younger age.
He’s entitled to be treated as the Wise sage because he’s older, male, and heterosexual? They’re NOT entitled (and thus Entitled with a capital E) because they’re expecting to have their opinions treated as valid just because they lived through the events.
Like most people of his ilk, words like “entitlement” don’t have actual meanings to him, it’s just a buzzword to describe “people who don’t agree with me”. It’s like “communist” and “fascist” in politics.
“Entitlement” is a phrase like “political correctness”, in the sense that although it does exist in a negative sense it’s more likely used by people in power to dismiss those who don’t have it but want to be treated with some sense of fairness.
People with a sense of privilege who think that because they have it easy everyone who doesn’t is a sponge, whiny or greedy, basically.
For John, Joyce is angry because she believes what hapenned to her and Becky wasn’t deserved, but for him it was a direct consequence of their actions (being gay, running away, helping to hide the runaway). It’s just what happens when you do those things, expecting to act this way and not suffer the natural consequences is Entitlement to him.
And now I need a shower after typing all this.
Basically, for John college should be like Becky’s, where bekng gay gets you kicked out. But it is like Joyce’s, where you get free pizza. “That’s entitlement”, says the man with the free mustang.
John confirmed as raging dick hole
When did human rights become entitlement?
To the people who had the power, pretty much always.
Pull through for them, Jocelyne! Stick up for your sister.
Also FU John. Being gay is not a trend.
“LGBXYZ”
Note the lack of the “T”
He probably figures the ‘Q’ would cover it all anyway.
Nah, John’s just heard the acronym tossed around, he doesn’t know (or care, I imagine) what the significance behind it or any part of it is.
He hasn’t cared about other peoples’ rights since the “T” got added.
I don’t think that John even knows what the letters stand for. He clearly believes it’s all some trendy nonsense that doesn’t deserve a second thought.
I have heard people say LMNOP, but they meant it with loving good-humour, from within the community, not like what John’s doing here.
Oh, he knows, or at least, he could easily learn. No, he’s not only being hateful, he thinks he’s clever, because he’s rhyming. I’m sure he was smirking while he said it. (Source: Two years of Pre-Seminary courses.)
D’:
It’s that little ‘heh’ at the beginning of John’s rant that really makes me detest him. As if Joyce had just been involved in some wacky college prank, and not, you know, a gunman who threatened her life and Becky’s. What a completely garbage human being.
This!
The condescension of that laugh, thinking it was funny that Joyce was so angry royally pissed me off. Then assuming that it was her immaturity that caused the reaction without ever considering what his reaction would be in the same situation. In short, he demonstrated how very little he cares about Joyce. Then he doubled down by rejecting the call for understanding because it was, for him, about the sin. And then doubled down again by assuming that being lesbian is a sense of entitlement and that what happened to Joyce, by supporting Becky, was a logical consequence and therefore deserved.
I’m so very impressed with Willis’s ability to write John’s lines because I couldn’t do so without veering off into farce. That he also set up the punchline for Jocelyn was genius.
Tell him, Jocelyn
“Consequences”. As if having your life threatened and bring kidnapped are reasonable consequences to being outside the heteronormative script.
To the Johns of the world, they are.
Or being homeless at 18.
Wow John is getting worse and worse every day. I am so angry at his entire existence, I am seething. I don’t even want to think about how he stands for very real, flesh and blood people out there, who think exactly these kinds of things and it just. Ugh. Makes my skin crawl.
But omfg, you go Joceylne! Sick burn. I love you.
So, grade A scumbag through and through. Good to know.
1.) Yesssssssssssssssss girl ♥
2.) Holy shit their church, taking from the poor to give out free cars is not at all Christlike
3.) John keeps getting worse and worse, bets for what he’ll say tomorrow?
3. Nothin’, he’s driven off and run over Joss’ foot on the way
“What do you mean Jesus said that it is the rich that should give their money to the poor? Show me where it says that in the bible!”
I was poor and now I’m getting money! It’s all justified by the Bible!
Puts me in mind of the Shortpacked AFD comic…
Pretty much.
Because I can’t resist such a setup:
Mathew 19:16-24 The highlights (ESV):
16: And someone came to Him and said, “Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?”
20: Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
21: But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.
24: Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”
He’ll probably turn the heat onto Jocelyne somehow, for supporting the sinners, hopefully in a way that doesn’t take the wind out of her sails because Sassy Jocelyne is cathartic and amazing and I only want more of her.
Actually what I would really enjoy is one where Jocelyne just keeps burning him and we don’t even get a big John reaction bc who cares what he thinks, it’s just awesome Jocelyne All Day tomorrow til she drops the mic and goes back in to hang with Becky and Joyce. <3
DoA: super cathartic edition.
Okay, you were right, he’s just a dick.
So is John just going to go for broke and actually start dropping slurs tomorrow?
I believe that he believes himself above “that kind of behavior.” It’s not that he thinks it’s wrong, but he knows how it can be perceived, and has an image to maintain as a member of his community. But, behind closed doors, when he knows he’s truly in an echo chamber? Then, perhaps.
Oooh. Go Jocelyn!
So where are all those folks who kept saying we should still give him the benefit of the doubt?
Everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt. John proved beyond a doibt he’s a shitty person 3 comics back. Today’s comic lowered him to “self righteous hypocritical piece of shit” levels.
If last comic didn’t already cement him as a douche in there eyes they might still try to hang on in this one.
lol if there are STILL people defending him after today (tbh, after yesterday), I’m gonna fucking lose it.
There will always be people who’ll defend characters like this. There are three reasons:
1) They agree with them
2) They don’t want to accept that people like that exist
3) They’re trolls who just want attention and to see people fight.
Yeah. I just hope I don’t encounter any of these people because boy am I ever NOT in the mood or right frame of mind to deal with them right now. I mean, unless they *want* to get their heads torn off…. ^^
True. I’m honestly a little surprised that we’re not getting an avalanche of “what a strawman, no one acts like this” comments like usually happens when a character reveals themselves to be so awful as to be indefensible.
Not just surprised, but pleasantly surprised, which is nice, because I’ve had way too many encounters with this flavor of asshole to tolerate much of that malarky.
I believe that is because Willis has to approve the first comment anyone makes in the site before they are able to comment more, and it’s very likely that these people would start with “strawman!”
…sorry
Unfortunately I’ve seen enough of this world to know that there are still asshats who’d defend John. Luckily Willis is a speedy moderator so we don’t see as much of that here.
I was one of the people giving him the benefit of doubt, thinking he didn’t know the story at all, or new only oarts of what happend, or only got a one sided story from his mother. But no, hes just a homophobic, sexist, d-bag
IIRC a lot of people regretted it! Like, they gave him the benefit of the doubt as a human being, and then he crapped all over it, and then they were sad.
Well, benefit of the doubt only applies as long as doubt remains. There was nothing wrong with defending him prior to him doing or saying anything truly awful. Now that he’s unquestionably proven himself to be a dick, no one’s going to defend him.
I think the difference was that people who weren’t used to his style of behaviour —probably because it had never happened to them— kept giving him the benefit quite a bit beyond what the people who could see the red flags coming from a mile away, because they’d lived through those red flags repeatedly.
Me, I chose to believe the ones calling out the red flags. Turns out they were right too.
Personally, I was defending him a couple comics ago not because I didn’t see the red flags, but because I don’t like the idea of red flags. I find the idea of extrapolating a person’s entire personality based solely on initial impressions to be rather judgemental. Honestly, I would never be able to have any social interaction if everyone worked like that, because I’m not the most likeable person up front. Since people have the courtesy of not assuming I’m a total dick based on my antisocial behavior (note: I’m on the autism spectrum) I kinda feel like I have to extend the same courtesy to others. A lot of people can seem a little cold at first or hold one or two shitty beliefs and still turn out to be decent people overall, even if they make a terrible first impression.
Maybe I shouldn’t extend that courtesy to fictional characters, because they work by different rules and also don’t have actual feelings, but I dunno. Fiction is good training for handling situations in real life, so I try not to judge even fictional characters.
Like, this is a great ideal, and one I operated by for a long time, and then it got me into multiple abusive relationships and now I have C-PTSD and seeing people insist that red flags should be ignored in order to be, idk, humane and reasonable and a good person, is scary and shakiness-inducing.
And I say this as an autistic person, too, who often gets pegged as condescending and abrasive. It’s a really hard balance, and I don’t have a good answer. I’m just working so hard to listen to my instincts, which were trained out of me, and to learn that yeah it’s okay to avoid people who make you feel bad just because they make you feel bad.
And then there’s apologism and the superiority of “well IIII don’t judge so quickly” and general comment-section nature (although DOA is amazingly atypical), and it all turns into a giant trigger-ball of “can I ever feel like a person is sketchy without being a Horrible Judger.”
Of course there’s a lot of nuance to consider. I don’t believe any statement can apply to the entirety of human experience. “Don’t judge” is about as true as “lying is bad,” which is to say not always.
To say that you shouldn’t judge prematurely doesn’t mean you should try to be friends with someone who sounds like a jerk. There’s an in-between: you don’t need to assume either the best or the worst of someone, you can just be cautious until it becomes obvious which it is.
Yes, John did turn out to be a jerk, but that only became clear at the point where he got up and left. Prior to that, anything he said could be interpreted as tactless, poorly expressed concern. You shouldn’t assume that’s the case, but I don’t think you should assume he’s being dismissive and condescending right off the bat either. It’s what we call benefit of the doubt: just keep both possibilities in mind until you know for sure.
Ehh, I don’t have a problem with making conclusions based on your experience, as long as you’re not a jerk about it and as long a you’re very open to changing your initial stance given new info. People are judging *machines*, and learning from your experience is important.
Yes, you can, and I absolutely respect that. It’s just not how I proceed. I make no conclusions until I have enough evidence. I’m not saying that method’s superior; we’re talking about social interaction, not science experiments after all.
However, there were a lot of people defending John in previous comics (not so much now), myself included, and also a lot of people who were hating not just on John, but on anyone defending him. That I don’t think is fair.
Really simple? Most of them were saying “We shouldn’t ASSUME he’s an asshole. Let’s give the character a chance to prove if he is, or not.” And now, he has.
There’s really no hypocrisy in “Let’s at least see if it plays out like that. Well. Yep, it sure did.”
Doubt was given. He used it all up.
Some people managed to defend Toedad right to the end.
And I bet a few still do.
Willis left plenty of the room at the beginning for him to turn out to be misinformed, misunderstanding, misunderstood, or in some other fringe case not acting purely out of malice and dogma. I also don’t think there was enough evidence very early on that he was, in fact, unchangeable. But, the rate at which Willis is trying to torpedo any potential goodwill for John, I wouldn’t be surprised at any reveal of his wrongdoings at this point if they make sense in the context of the character. He’s clearly meant to have essentially zero redeeming qualities.
I still wouldn’t be at all surprised if the earlier speculation about Christi being Indian and that being a source of friction with his parents was true. It would be interesting if he was better on racial issues than at them, while still being horrible in many ways.
Oh god, it just hit me that John is my entire family. Just replace “it’s a sin” with “it’s weird”.
I found Carla’s next job. http://blog.caranddriver.com/this-is-the-design-for-roboraces-self-driving-race-car/?mag=cdb&list=nl_dvr_news&src=nl&date=040416 The cars are delivered minus software other than a basic OS.
Good lord, it’s like reading things my father has said but with religious fervor.
Also Jocelyne just got a new reason as to why she’s my longtime fave: she is a MASTER of burns
Ohhhhhhhhhhh
You tell ‘im, Jocelyne.
(And yeah, John, real life is hard. For example, some people get stuck with really shitty older brothers who completely dismiss the horrifying experience they went through because “real life has consequences” or some gross sanctimonious bullshit.)
Dumbing of Triangle: DAY 20
These triangle grins get more and more unfitting… wait, FREE MUSTANG!?
The car really needs a triangle on the front grill.
Lemme guess, you also want me to paint it red and name it Ultra-Car?
Why would I want to punish Ultra Car like that? A triangle would merely show how evil John’s car no doubt is.
Nega-Ultra-Car? We sure John’s car is evil?
I dunno, Jocelyne in that last panel…
Anything I may have ever said nice about John — I take it all back.
And Jocelyne earns ten points for Gryffindor for recognizing hypocrisy when it’s staring her in the face
Yeah, John didn’t impress very much. Or at all.
Even if you buy into everything he believes, even if you buy every possible excuse of working with partial information, trying to be pragmatic, whatever, he STILL got pissy with his little sister (a week after an incredibly traumatic experience) as soon as their conversation left the safest topics possible (running gags about Joyce’s eating habits), he STILL was incredibly dismissive about Becky (the friend-to-the-family-who-just-lost-her-parents-and-is-homeless), he contributed with nothing helpful at all and he ran away as soon as Joyce raised her voice.
Go John, truly you are a stellar shepherd for the troubled and lost.
Wait, am I understanding right, that John gets expensive cars based on money taken from the poor?
If thats the case, he may have just upgraded from Jackass to actually evil.
It’s a religious thing. Some big churches do that. For reasons.
He didn’t actually ask for the car, I think, they just gave it to him for being such a good little converter.
He abuses the brown people with smug detachment far better than most of his flock.
Honestly, I really love how you follow up his “entitlement” comment with the fact that he has a fucking Mustang bought with Church tithings, Willis. That’s honestly the last few previous generations in a nutshell.
Maybe not him personally. It may be the proper of XYZ Ministries.
“property”
That’s human history in a nutshell.
What I wonder, is if he went to India as a destination wedding instead of “missionary work” as he claims.
http://36.media.tumblr.com/3b7051c0a622e8cecc33f8bd8a09bc52/tumblr_nvgl1zHxgS1rblazuo1_1280.jpg?.jpg
Well played, Jocelyne. Now follow it up with the perfect heel pivot-turn right back into that diner so you can go hang out with Joyce and Becky.
Go read about the 3C church and other prosperity denominations. They preach the “prosperity gospel” (antithesis of what Jesus taught) and their pastors make boatloads of money. I’ll bet John is one of those men who will always ask for the pastor discount at shops, restaurants and garage sales.
The Prosperity Gospel is actually more offensive to me than Ayn Rand’s teachings as a theistic follower of Rabbi Joshua ben Joseph (which I say just to screw with my fundamentalist neighbors I admit). I mean, there’s genuine evil in the name o God all the time, but that’s just so…self servingly SMUG.
… I thought he wasn’t a rabbi. >_>
‘Rabbi’ means ‘teacher’, and this was during the rise of rabbinical Judaism. He can be one.
Jewish rabbis have been known to refer to Yeshua bin Yusef as a rabbi (which roughly means teacher ).
At least when it comes to Ayn Rand, she’s only economically reprehensible. Socially, she’s… Pretty good, really. Rationalist and libertarian on social issues, through and through.
As a socialist far left liberal Christian, let’s say me and Ayn Rand’s views on social issues differ.
I’m hardly in agreement with her either, but if you believe in things like freedom of speech and conscience and the simple right to be different without fear of state-sanctioned persecution, you’ve gotta give credit where it’s due.
I give credit to Ayn Rand for her Epic Burn on Reagan, I admit. Also, inspiring Bioshock and being a fairly engaging science-fiction writer. 🙂
She had her moments. I’ve not read anyone quite like her who offers such a soaring salute to the human spirit.
Wait, wasn’t she racist towards Native Americans or something?
Not really racist, but culturally supremacist to the extreme, to where it’s virtually indistinguishable. She believed they didn’t have property rights because they didn’t “use” the land, and thus this justified white Europeans in extirpating the Natives from their homes by whatever means they saw fit.
Did she believe that Natives were in any way inherently inferior, though? Not that I’ve ever heard. As she put it herself, “Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.”
Well if she says she’s not racist, then…
I really fail to see the distinction in terms of reprehensibility here.
On that particular point, there isn’t one.
Rand did more than say she wasn’t racist, though; she dedicated a fairly reasonable amount of her writing on ethics and virtue to how and why racism was irrational and wrong. The Virtue of Selfishness has an entire chapter dedicated to tearing at the concept philosophically. Racism, in her eyes, denigrates humanity to a kind of biological determinism. You are a genius or an idiot on your own terms – and, really, those were the only things she cared about – regardless of your origin.
The problem is, Rand loved the idea of “progress”, and anyone who didn’t get with the program was backwards and stupid; a standard to which she held everyone. It just becomes most glaring and cruel when directed at minorities and peoples whose histories have been marked by oppression and cultural ruin. “Yes, this is the society that oppressed you and murdered your ancestors, but it’s got trains and planes and automobiles, so if you don’t get with the program, you’re just stupid.”
Empathy wasn’t her strong suit, but I’m betting you knew that already.
Rand blamed numerous problems that women suffered on, you know, women. Saying she was ‘good socially’ pretends that libertarians, as a rule, are ‘good socially’. No, they’re just the ones who get defined as libertarians by libertarians who at least claim to be good socially. She considered Libertarians to be hippies (Much like how Marx never once identified with Marxism), so calling her one ‘through and through’ is laughable in the extreme.
And you’re saying she said racist shit, so I don’t know why you’re wasting your time trying further. Like, you won’t identify it as such, but you’re saying she said racist shit, so. People who WERE geniuses among natives were roundly ignored, and white geniuses were glorified.
The only thing that gets my hackles up more is people who use their kids for proselytizing. If the young’uns want to participate in church/synagogue/whatever stuff, sure, but when you tell them it’s their duty and hang back because emotional blackmail of strangers is more important than your kid’s well-being…
Reminds me of John Oliver’s bit on it, which resulted in him setting up the fake church “Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption.” (Unlike the prosperity gospel churches, though, he actually used his money for a good cause- in this case, donating it to Doctors Without Borders.)
Oh for f**k’s sake, John, why do you have to be the absolute worst? I had hopes for you!
Joce is gonna have to walk home.
If only there was someone else with a car there.
Someone who’s also a family.
Someone who’s not a complete bag of dicks.
Someone who she can feel relatively safe with.
Someone she desperately wants to support.
If only…
;]
(>u<)
Now it’s been a long time since I gave an offering at church, but I thought it was supposed to be FOR the poor, not FROM them. Of course, if you’re going to skim off the top for fancy cars, I suppose it doesn’t matter who’s giving.
Yes, they do. But that’s not all of it. Some churches also tell people who can’t really afford it that they have to tithe. There are some churches that require you to give them your W2s and everything to even be a member.!
Plus, John is a missionary to India, which has a lot of poor people.
But thanks for catching that. I instinctively read it as “for.” Now the burn is on much, much stronger ground. (As tithes aren’t always for poor people.)
John: Listen, Josh, I’m ENTITLED to this because I don’t think I’m entitled to this. It was GIFTED to me by the church out of the goodness of their hearts which I KNEW about but didn’t EXPECT. That’s the difference. They, however, PRESUME I will be sympathetic and understanding which just will not stand.
Petition to rechristen John “Johnny B. Douche”.
Wow John I thought you couldn’t be more of an Asshole….I was wrooooooiiiing.
I am so glad that Jocelyne is calling him out on his bullshit. Its especially brave considering her own situation.
John: “No, they also gave me a private yacht. THAT is how I get to India, stupid.”
Amazing. John had already proven himself to be trash, and then he went and somehow managed to make me think even worse of hi,. And I hadn’t considered that possible before now.
You go, Jocelyne.
John responds saying “Some people joined the wrong church”.
Someone should remind John of Proverbs 16:18 (King James Version (KJV)) “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” His fall will be a wonder to behold.
oh ick. John is sounding kinda scumbaggy, aside from policing Joyce’s tone and not being emotionally supportive. what did he even want to accomplish during the lunch, if he wasn’t going to be there for Joyce?
Is John a minister because usually this level of corruption only follows actual members of the Church Hierarchy? This is a serious question.
Damn but that was good Jocelyne. Also, seriously, a damn Mustang?!? Is John’s church one of those Joel Olsteen style mega-churches or something, cause that level of corruption is pretty hard to hide otherwise.
To be fair, it’s very possible he works for the Willisverse of the 700 club where massive numbers of donations are sent to the Church’s missionary efforts where much falls off for plane fuel and otherwise.
BOOM
John is the kind of scumbag that makes me want to temporarily redact my “Pacifist to a Point” stance, and punch the ever-loving-fuck out of.
Don’t know about you, but my personal pacifism is not about never wanting to punch people; it’s about wanting it but never doing it.
There are days when the wanting is pretty damn strong.
Did I miss a Nazi joke? What’s that line in reference to?
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/roundtheclock/
She’s referring to Becky’s “Hitler youth” crack a few days back
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/roundtheclock/
Whoops, beaten to the punch XD
Did ya Nazi them all over the place?
Best prank ever: the Mustang is Ultra-Car in disguise, and she drops John off in the Amazon. Let’s see you spread the word of God to the jaguars and the venomous snakes.
Sweet-pickle-pies to the face!
Snakes: We are deeply offended that you are trying to burn us for being the devil! That was one book!! One!!
Well, it was in the first of seventy-three books and they never got their own character arc that explained why they weren’t that bad, so…
(I’m sorry if I’m wrong but I only cared about the bible when I was an altar boy at 10-years-old, and then it quickly faded…)
Zing!
Well Joyce missed her chance, but now Jocelyne can throw John into his car
I am so disappointed that, as the comic is generally grounded in these types of issues (plus Joyce being semi-autobiographical and Willis’s mom still being like this), it is highly unlikely characters like John and Carol will ever see the errors of their ways. DX
Joyce is the one that escapes, far as I can tell.
I sure hope that Jocelyne escapes! Because the only alternative I could see to that in her position is for her to, well, die.
(And, of course, Jordan has already escaped, it seems. Probably the most truly Christian of the bunch, given how much they dislike him.)
Now I’m picturing Joyce, Jocelyn, and Jordan’s family having thanksgiving in the future and one of the kids complaining that they invited Mean, Crazy, Uncle John.
And cheering because Grandpa Hank is there without mean Grandma Carol.
An everyone wants to play with auntie Becky and auntie Dina! They brought the cloned velociraptors and the youngest can still ride them.
Oh she will escape. I have no doubt about that. Hell, she’s already in the midst of grabbing what she can and building what she can before the inevitable skedaddle.
It’s not a matter of if, but rather when. And given that she’s hit her limit here. The when might be very very soon. Especially if she sees it as a way to protect her little sister from the rest of the family.
So after all this, let’s see how many people will still be up to defending John tonight, after this final display of his grotesque hypocrisy and contempt. He couldn’t even say ‘LGBTQ’ without intentionally changing it, to show his contempt for the very notion. “Her friend is swept up in some trendy whatever,” his utter disdain for Becky, the clear fact that he didn’t spend even a second, then or now, thinking about the fact that his sister was held at gunpoint by a man prepared to murder her in order to abduct his child so she could be tortured into compliance. All of that was just “whatever,” because he won’t, he *can’t*, countenance the possibility that they could have seriously gone through anything worthy of his consideration, understanding, or care. And the little thought he *did* spend on it led him to the conclusion, apparently, that she “should have thought of that before,” before coming out, before ‘deciding’ to be gay, before defying her father, before whatever hateful shit he was about to say.
This is the kind of man John is. I’m really waiting to hear what the defense of him will be, now. Or will it just be the fallback of “this is so unrealistic, Willis is just strawmanning christians, which he so *obviously* hates, nobody is ever like this for real.”
I’m sorry for being so bitter, here, but, seriously – people like me; gay folks, trans folks; have been in these comments sections night after night trying to explain that people like John are real, that they exist, and that they’ve made our lives a living hell even within our own families. That even now, people like John are trying to make it illegal just to *be* a trans person out in public, to even have a public life, by trying to deny us the simple ability to go to the frikkin’ restroom – but it’s like arguing with a brick wall, and even here, being shown a callous, patriarchial egotist like John, people have *lined up* to defend him, to construct arguments and alternate scenarios where he has a point, where he’s not wrong, where if only people would stop being so gosh darn emotional and listen. Even last night, people were explaining that he “had a point,” that he was just being misunderstood. Like, *now* do you see why that is and was always absolutely bogus?
I grew up surrounded by fundamentalists and most of them would have at least wanted to shoot (and kill) Ross for hurting their daughter. They also would have actually loathed him for trying to kidnap his daughter too at gunpoint to.
And that’s a legit thing. You experienced that.
Trigger warning for mention of sexual abuse and incest as well as mention of corrective rape as a “joke”
But they’re are so many of us who heard how we should die. How we’re sinners, damning ourselves. My southern Baptist family would have similar feelings to John here and my own feelings would be ignored. Once, corrective rape was joked about in front of me at a reunion for lesbians and those “fad following” bisexuals. In front of me. My dad was there, who had been suspicious abusing me since I was 6. His mother said this, after just that day telling me that the most important thing I could do as a woman was keep my flower until marriage. She made a corrective rape joke about lesbian and bisexual people. My dad, her son, my rapist, the person who “stole” my “flower” and made me feel filthy most of my life? He laughed.
So while I believe that the fundamentalists around you might not be this level of wilful ignorance and violent disregard for actually caring about people, and that’s great! It feels a bit like you’re trying to do exactly like the commenter above you said, calling out this as strawman arguments, as if real lived experience others have doesn’t matter because you know some who aren’t like that. If you didn’t mean it like not all fundies,sorry, I guys I misunderstood.
I’m actually attempting to draw attention to the sheer level of insensitivity and douchebaggery which is on display here. Hatespeech is hatespeech and there’s no buttering it up. However, plenty of fundamentalist do go the Joyce route and don’t act on their darker impulses and thankfully reject that portion of their view. The fact the Browns do not in the face of deliberate provocation to the contrary which would work on many-many members of similar sects is something I’m underscoring as even worse. I’m also in no way suggesting Dumbing of Age’s depiction is unrealistic. It’s dramatized but I have no doubt the Rosses can and do exist in commentator’s own lives let alone in reality as a whole.
Or, to summarize, “Fundamentalists tend to be homophobic. The sheer level of homophobia and hate on display here goes beyond that and shows it is something beyond even their religious beliefs justifying it. It is double-plus ungood and the worst of what is already a streak of religious thought I strongly disdain.”
heavy-heavy sarcasm on the justifying, FYI. Just want to be clear.
Gotcha. I wasn’t sure which direction you were going with it, but your explanation made it more clear thank you. And I agree. While Ross and John are not the only Christians, so often people let them get away with things while being silent, I’m just glad there are people like Joyce within that can say who’s hold up this is awful, stop! Even if it doesn’t work. Idk I dredged up more hurt than I thought I would and I can’t articulate well and I have typos, probably but my screen is small and I can’t see.
No one’s blaming you for the pain. One thing Willis deserves amazing credit for is the honesty of his web comic and I believe it’s really helping make the world a better place, even if in just a small way of showing it like it is.
A certain kind of person existing isn’t proof that another kind of person doesn’t. Yeah there are plenty of people who’d be flipping out or at least acting like Joyce’s dad, but there’s also plenty of people who’d behave like John or Joyce’s mom, I know those people. Hell I even know people who would think Ross would have been in the right to disown or murder Becky.
Your other comments hadn’t showed up on the page I had loaded up. Disregard this post 😛
You don’t have to apologize for sounding ‘bitter’. It’s because their words are bitter and terrible and you’ve had to swallow a lot of it. I imagine Willis will be moderating like hell tonight.
Privileged people don’t want to believe that evil exists (because, wouldn’t it be nice if it didn’t? That would be great!) whereas marginalized people know for damn certain, over and over, that it does. Some people really are this terrible. A lot of them. A lot of them have serious political power, too.
Don’t like it? Well, this is where a call to action goes, but I’m not sure exactly what we can do about it (other than voting, and not being assholes ourselves). Thoughts for real world action?
I feel like this comic is often an education for people who haven’t had lives of awful surrounded by truly abominable people.
Like, if I didn’t grow up surrounded by fundie culture, I wonder if it wouldn’t all seem alien and unreal to me. Like, what? No, no one could be that small-mindedly self-destructive and awful, right?
I mean if you have access to the internet it really shouldn’t surprise you. Like everyone I know is totally down with the LGBTQ or knows well enough to keep it to themselves if they’re not but I know plenty of people for whom that’s not the case because I make an active effort to encounter perspectives different from mine. It’s just a matter of trusting someone else to know their experiences better than you do instead of taking the ridiculously egotistical stance of “Well, that’s not what I experienced therefore it can’t be true.”
I didn’t grow up with Fundie culture, and I didn’t find it hard to believe that this goes on when I started reading. Then again the comic slowly introduces it so you become more receptive to believing it exists as opposed to starting with John.
Effectively, those not surrounded by Fundie culture can believe it more easily thanks to escalation.
I didn’t grow up with bigots, but I did grow up with the idea that the world is vast and full of wonders and terrors, so many many people who believe/do such varied things. So, if somebody says they meet a person who behaves a certain way, I tend to believe them!
I think the fact that all his characters are so rooted in reality, believable, and understandable, even the ones that are consistently vile, is a real testament to the writing skill at play here. If people are willing to open themselves to what’s outside their experience, it is very quick and very clear to see that all of these characters are very, very human, and their actions tend to be drawn logically from concrete internal reasoning that is supported by their own written or implied experiences.
I really hope John’s car gets totaled in this chapter. Or like, he crashes into a religious billboard encouraging people to be kind and understanding. “God, I need help dealing with my sister and her heathen friend, please send me a sign!” How about STOP, buddy?
Dang it I can’t quite get my finger through the screen to throttle John.
BOOP BOOP
It’s better to hear wisdom from someone who orders from the kids’ menu that to hear foolishness from someone who orders from the wine list.
“Thus said the prophet and ate her Chicken fingers. Because they had not touched other stuff, which would have been an affront to the Lord.
Also, gays are totally OK, just so we all are clear on that. Anyone has a problem with that, huh? huh?”
~The Letters of Joyce~
The Apology of Joyce Martyr.
More leik whine list, amirite?
So is it now alright for him to be punched?
When was it not?
The previous strip when people were telling me violence is not the answer.
It’s never right to harm another person, with very few defined exceptions. But, I would gladly lower myself to a level far below what the world deserves of me to wreak vengeance upon some of these characters. I could live with being morally incorrect over it.
Why did the church give him a brand new car? I feel like if there is a “sin” around here it is something John has done like blackmail or skimming the top of the offerings given on Sunday. I just don’t get it. Joss is still neutral, which makes sense. Joyce is being treated like she is insane by her family, which makes no sense. Becky is happy go lucky but I think that is only because Joyce is there defending her. She feels loved, and protected in a vulnerable time.
It is clear that Joss is ok with the lesbianism. What is not clear is her full stand. I want to say she is open minded, and understanding since she is transgender. Possibly feels jealous of Becky for having the confidence to stand up for who she is.
I have yet to find a redeemable quality from Josh. I feel like he is one of those christians like the Duggars. They use it to defend their own hatred and use it to extort money from poor people.
You’re probably not familiar with the fact missionary work is often tied to the “televagenglist” phenomenon in some areas. Also, bluntly, ministers giving themselves expansive paychecks and lifestyles is nothing new. Skimming from the plate is a time honored pasttime dating back to Babylon.
Becky is not happy-go-lucky. Becky -acts- happy-go-lucky, but that’s her way to cope, to survive. It’s her shield against the world.
And yes, it will bite her in the ass, and yes, what she needs to learn is to let her guard down and let her sadness show… Hopefully that day will come sooner rather than later. Best case scenario is that she’ll cry and vent for an entire day with people she can let down her guard with.
I presume you meant to type “John” in your last paragraph. Other than that, you’re pretty spot on on what type of Christian he is.
I suspect it’s a bit more complicated than that. She’s upset about a lot of things but I suspect her happiness is genuine as she has shed a terrible weight off her shoulders.
Back in college, she might have had some relatively happy last couple of days, especially with Dina. And Hank hugging her and still treating her as family with just a touch of awkwardness was also nice.
Although the fact that she felt safe enough in the car trip to fall asleep was probably the best indicator that things weren’t looking so bad… at this particular point.
And then she meets Carol, and pretty much every joke after that is a shield joke.
Not at all related but I like drawing lewd to lighten the mood.
Billie’s Billies are powerful.
http://i.imgur.com/Yu5z0eV.png
Becky Boob Screen Of Death?
(Sorry.)
(Not really sorry.)
Nothing lighten up the mood more than yotomoe art, which has always been the best thing about DoA fan art.
“Billies’ Billies”. Yup, that’s the correct terminology.
And that’s the correct response of Becky.
You are a constant ray of sunshine, Yotomoe.
Billie used Lift Shirt!
It’s Super Effective.
Becky is now Paralyzed.
Yup.
Yakno.. you should have been supportive like that IN FRONT of those two. ITs good to try and help behind the scenes but you’ve effectively done nothing for them in the end
Jocelyn isn’t perfect, and she was probably really scared of directly getting in the middle of that fight. It’s much easier (especially for someone in the closet) to confront one person than to take sides in a volatile fight between two other people.
Besides, they haven’t left the parking lot yet. Personally I’m hoping Jocelyn gets a ride home from Joyce instead.
In addition to what Greatveiledbear said, notice she didn’t actually go for the “you need to stop being a bigoted asshole” front. Instead, she went the “you were harsh and are kind of a shitty Christian” route. She’s still understandably afraid to directly support a fellow LGBT person, because that could lead to accidentally outing her.
Waiting til they got out to the car allowed her to slightly shift the subject.
Exactly.
With a side note of not being able to take John doubling down now that he thinks he’s got a friendly audience.
I went though an entirely long-winded and, admittedly, excessively caustic in tone explanation above explaining why this is a tremendously unfair expectation of behavior from Joss. In short, we don’t know what her plans are for her life, both her and Joyce and even their shithead family have a lot to lose, and pushing even slightly too hard against this kind of thing can unleash a maelstrom of awful consequences that are morally despicable, but completely unavoidable. Joss and Joyce both are in a situation where they are actually under danger of egregious harm, bodily or otherwise, and holding Joss up to some kind of moral imperative to accept those consequences immediately and without any modicum of fully stable independence and control of her life is, at best, unrealistic for her character.
Also I just realized Joss included herself in “we should’ve been more understanding”
Is she blaming herself partly for John being a doucheface, or is this a tactic to try and bring John around to being less awful?
I think Joss is noting he didn’t do anything to defend Joyce or Becky.
Jocelyne is a she. If you’re confused why that is, I’d be happy to explain, but I don’t want to patronize you as it may’ve been a typo or other mistake.
I bet she feels bad that she didn’t speak up for them in the restaurant. I mean, what happened is hardly her fault, but she’s trying to do what she didn’t do in the moment.
My apologies as it was a typo. Joss (is that even appropriate for Jocelyn?) didn’t stick up for Becky and Jocye during all this but gave silent consent to all of John’s attacks. With very good reason and out of fear but enough to give reason for her to feel guilty.
Willis himself used “Joss” in the alt-text of a comic a couple days ago, so I’d say it’s fine.
Now, ‘Jocelyn’ isn’t. There’s an e at the end of Jocelyne’s name.
I hate English third person pronouns. It’s so easy to accidentally misgender someone with a typo.
I feel the content of this comment thread is a good detail to point out and I’m sad that a lot of people will miss it. I didn’t fully register it myself and it’s a very telling clue about how we are to best understand Joss’ inner turmoil.
I definitely read it as a tactic she’s using to avoid putting him on the defensive.
I think it may well be Josie (I think this is a better nickname for Jocelyn) is so used to being the “perfect son” to hide their true identity they never have been put in a situation where they have to stand up for someone else suffering from a similar situation. It’s probably a new and terrifying experience to be face with an uncloseted person on the spectrum who is facing all the things she was afraid of facing. With, well, good reason given Ross’ gun.
That makes a lot of sense to me.
I also like that you used the “they” pronoun. After all, we don’t really have any details about how they identify, which I hadn̵