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mccloud
I appreciate that the alt-text fits scansion.
I’m having trouble seeing it. Could you show your work? (Which meter? Dactylic Hexameter? Eligiac Couplet?)
“They won’t let you remember” has the same number of syllables as “right after they transition.”
“here COME the MEN in BLACK, right AFter THEY tranSItion”, probably
(so ~iambic hexameter)
I find most gender specifics rather arbitrary but go off Becks you’re working through it.
I love these two’s dynamic.
Is Dina non-binary? Or coming to terms with it?
I think you could make the argument. She said she’s not attached to her gender presentation but I think she’s also comfortable with it and doesn’t feel dysphoria. Some feel that qualification is important.
Some others might argue the point, rather than alleviate dysphoria, might be to generate euphoria! As in everything, it’s an spectrum, and in special with NBs ^^
Just giving a +1 that we’re moving away from dysphoria being a thing that “proves” someone is trans/enby and towards gender euphoria, that is, feeling good about your gender presentation.
I don’t think that someone who thinks dysphoria is required to be non-binary has much place making that kind of call.
Honestly I don’t think anyone really should have the authority to set criteria for someone else for their gender, but that’s beside this particular point.
If Dina doesn’t feel an impetus to identify as non-binary then that is entirely valid, but she’s the only one who gets to make that call (I mean technically Willis does, but trying to draw those distinctions gets messy)
Yeah I agree. Dysphoria is absolutely NOT a criteria for being nonbinary or binary trans. And anyone who thinks suffering is necessary to prove gender can stuff it.
Ooo. Binary trans, please explicate.
Binary just means folks who identify as a woman or man
vs. nonbinary being folks not covered by the typical dichotomy
Yeah, Sorry, was not clear. Also didn’t type correctly. Also did not read correctly. Nymph meant nonbinary and trans, or binary and trans. My brain interpreted binary trans as a special term for people who are trans in the sense of being either male, or being female (hence binary) depending on how the mood takes them (but not being nonbinary).
Thanks for responding tho.
+1
Agender people exist. (Or gender casual as Elliot Dunkel might put it)
Boy, that’d really spike Becky’s lesbian anxiety until she realises she loves Dina however they present.
Kind of confused by the use of agender people here. I don’t really know the comic referenced, but it seems different (even if there’s potential overlap) than “gender casual.”
It is a made up term from that comic that one of the character use to describe his fellings about his gender expression that another rone of the character interprets, probably correctly, as being agender. They are mean to be interchangeable in this one instance.
Okay. As an agender person, I was confused about it being used as a response to what Sirksome said. There are many ways to experience it, like with any identity, but mine certainly doesn’t include a lack of dysphoria. (Or indifference.)
Yeah like you said, there many ways to experience it.
“gender-ambivalent” is also a good one
+1 for the EGS reference. When Elliot first got zapped and became Ellen he was frantic to get back to his assigned gender, but after a year or so of having to spend at least 8 hours as a female he’s gotten used to the idea. But his touching the dewitchery jewel created Ellen as a separate person who can change people’s gender with what they call the FV5 zap in-comic.
No, this is in response to Becky being afraid she might like some guys, and this will somehow be bad for her. The discussion happened in gender studies, but I don’t remember when.
It might have just been yesterday. Who knows?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/02-the-one-where-jocelyne-returns/rock-solid/
I feel that, like a lot of autistic people, gender rules make no sense so we make a playground of them :3c
Maybe she just hadn’t figured out it was a possibility _because_ she didn’t care enough to explore it?
yee can confirm ^^
was so much better once I found out being genderfluid is a thing <3
Joys or arbitrary societal norms.
On a side note, I still don’t understand the point of having male and female clothes for young kids, especially babies. I know that stores wanted it from a commercial standpoint (people buy more clothes if they need different clothes for a son or daughter). The color restriction is what annoys me the most (red and yellow for girls and blue or green for boys), but I still don’t understand why boys can’t wear frills, glitter, or skirts and girls can’t wear monster truck or superhero things. Most toddler’s I know go through a construction vehicle phase no matter the gender. Just all makes no sense to me.
Arbitrary and outdated Societal expectations and the like.
I strongly agree with your side note. If kids care about it you can give them the colour / pattern / style that they want. If they don’t care, then neither should the parent. I’m reminded of the “is this kids toy for boys or girls?” flowchart where the question is “is this toy operated with the genitals?” And the two possible answers are “No – This is for all kids” and “Yes – This is not a kids toy”, we can apply the same to kids clothing. The only thing that matters is if it fits the kid’s body.
Nonbinary parent here, I have opinions on gendered baby/kids’ clothes. My 1y.o. does not care what he wears and would be delighted to crawl around naked, eating sand.
Babies used to all wear dresses (easy diaper changes, plus if you needed them to stay put you could tie ’em to things).
It’s entirely modern marketing so that you’ll buy more clothes. Plus people think that gender roles are cute, imagining the little kid as an outdated grownup based on the one bit of info you have. It’s legit hard to find clothes in bright colors that aren’t pink/blue (tho I really like primary.com).
The three baby genders are apparently frilly pink, butch blue, and dull pale grey.
I think we should go back to putting babies in dresses. Tiny tuxedos for events are cute tho
That’s why we leaned heavily into green and purple when the kiddo was young. But since baby days, they’ve gone through multiple preferences, red, stripey things, mucho pink, black, what i call “neutral boy band”, and navy and dusty pink, dusty blues. Nothing i could have predicted, none of “my” colors. Ha.
They should really make clothes of all colors. Not everyone’s skin tone goes with the typical colors. My niece’s skin tone with her blue eyes goes well with green, grey or blue, but does not look good in orange.
Gendering toddlers is parents trying to stuff them into their preferred boxes.
Did you know that up to roughly 1914, it was common in the western world for boys to wear skirts until they were about 5? And that as late as the 1940s, pink was considered a color for boys, and light blue for girls? These kinds of societal constructs are not as old or unchanging as people often think.
Pink for girls is a relatively new thing, from the late 1940s. After winning the war on the homefront, the Rosie the Riveter working ladies wer fed up to death with wearing blue coveralls, and basically self-selected pink as the new preferred presenting-female color. Up to that point pink was the manly color, so much so that the color for the leading cyclist in the Giro d’ Italia is pink.
I believe that it was considered manly due to red being a “blood” color. Blue was considered a color of “purity”.
Specifically it was (and still is) strongly associated with the Virgin Mary.
Pink being for boys makes a lot more sense when you realize how unusual it is for a paler shade of a primary color to get its own super common color word. Like if you break out the Crayolas, sure, light green has its own color word, but it still isn’t a completely separate color the way Pink is.
Some kids care very much about it no matter how hard you try to avoid it. My daughter refused to wear yellow and blue clothes even as an infant that couldn’t roll over. Idk what possibly got into her head that little, but she’s been glitter and sparkles her entire life. Despises pants with a passion. My husband and I certainly didn’t conform at that period of her life (I was exploring my gender and presenting as male, I think I might be closer to bigender but have no clue and given the current situation in Texas have decided to just… pause that for a bit. My husband has beautiful long hair, which isn’t effeminate in itself but most dudes here are shaved near bald, so I think it counts as nonconforming.)
As much as I wish she would wear jeans or get over the “that’s a boy thing” phase to make my life easier, she knows what makes her comfortable. She’s a baby pastel goth, that’s what she’s chosen as her style since I let her decide her clothes since she could walk lol.
It’s true, autistic people are good at questioning social norms that are typically used to exclude us from everything, and there’s much overlap with gender nonconformism.
Though if you want to be paranoid we’re also good at faking indifference. A common strategy when you grow up not understanding your feelings is developing the belief they don’t exist. Me, I took 35 years to figure out I was trans cause I preferred to ignore everything my heart and my body was telling me, and that only worked for so long. If Dina’s “unconcerned” attitude to gender and sexuality was similarly powered by denial, it would fit.
I’m autistic, and I have to admit I am not as concerned with gender presentation. I can’t do performative gender at all. My concern has always been physical gender. To put it simply, to be the “right” thing stark naked. Its always been about the physiological aspect to me. Its an issue of “the correct plumbing” not about whether I can wear “pretty clothes” or act a certain way in society. This has always put me at odds with the current definition of “transgender”. Its why I still say transsexual instead of transgeder, in my case anyway as sex is much more important to me than gender roles or prsentation.
I think that I also differentiate in between transsexual and transgender in my mind. I am not sure that I knew the terms for it, but one is a frustration with biology while the other is a frustration with societal norms, if that makes sense.
She’s trying to assuage Becky’s fear of one day not being a lesbian.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/04-for-me-it-was-tuesday/toohonest/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-15/02-the-one-where-jocelyne-returns/hrt/
(no html tonight, i’m not fit to operate heavy machinery)
It’s possible! I was pondering on it and many of the clothes we’ve seen Dina wear up to this point don’t exactly read as feminine nor masculine and are instead rather neutral androgynous sort of clothes. At the same time, outside of specific instances with her dinosaur hoodie, I think Dina primarily dresses for comfort rather than style. I could see her as a comfortable she/they non-binary (much like myself, as I also dress in a neutral style rather than directly masc or femme). We’ll have to see how it goes, though.
Also I wanna take this time to remember the time there was some discourse in the comments about Dina looking younger than her age and one of the things a commenter told me was that she “dresses like she’s a kid” which was annoying and upsetting. How exactly does she dress like a kid, just because she’s not wearing daisy dukes and showing off her breasts?
If she did go for a more masc look, she might end up being read as even younger… a person once asked my mom, “Is he older than seven?” about me when I was a fully grown adult– she wasn’t that close to us, and probably was open to giving my mom some wiggle room in saying what my age was, but again. Adult. (I had shaved my head a couple months previously, and the super short hair was getting me he/him/sir-ed A LOT.)
She’s petite in general, and her hat takes off another 5 to 7 years.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/rapport/
I am on my knees, begging and pleading for people in the comments to not insist that a woman being petite means she is a child or childish and should therefore be seen as ‘a child’.
Where did I say that?
My question was “how exactly does she dress like a kid” and your answer was “she’s petite in general”. How is that NOT you saying “she’s petite so she looks like a kid”.
“looks like a kid” does not mean “is a child or childish”, and does not mean “should […] be seen as ‘a child'” (emphasis mine).
I’ll admit that some of my comment was also speaking generally because in the past I have had people try to argue to me that because Dina wears dinosaur hats, eats cereal, and doesn’t wear form fitting clothing, along with being short, she’s “clearly” going to be seen as younger than she is and therefore shouldn’t be annoyed about being referred to as if she was a child.
You didn’t, it’s preemptive.
Also, I am forever gonna be on the side that ‘Dina wearing a cute dino hat that gives her joy doesn’t mean she’s dressing like a child or otherwise imply she’s being childish, she’s 19 fucking years old for God’s sake, let people have a bit of whimsy’.
There’s a difference between “dressing like a child” and “being childish”. “When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” — C. S. Lewis [speaking of reading fantasy, but it applies broadly]
I suspect that Dina has learned from unhappy experience that conforming to others’ expectations doesn’t buy her anything she values. She may be the most mature member of the cast. But you have to know her to discover that.
I like that quote.
I used to go to a campout every year for several years that did not allow pants on either gender so I got a couple of nice skirts to wear there, my favorite being a red number with blue hibiscus flowers printed on it. I wore it topless with a generous coat of sunblock rubbed into my fur. As I have gotten older my body hair has thinned out considerably so that you can actually see skin on my chest now, and just barely on my back. And yes I have been mistaken for a juvenile Squatch at times.
More likely, she’s gender non-conforming, honestly, at least as portrayed so far. She simply feels no particular attachment to ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ performance; she does what she likes, including indulging her fascination with dinosaurs, children’s cereal, and Becky.
I get the feeling that she doesn’t care enough about gender roles and expectations to be non-binary. There’s no evidence of any perceived discomfort with “being a woman” but she also seems like the type who would identify herself as whatever makes the most functional sense for a given situation and environment.
I mean tbf being gender-apathetic means non-conformity to established gender-binary and thus still goes under the non-binary umbrella
As someone who is gender-apathetic I’m equally happy with being considered non-binary versus being considered outside of the gender spectrum. It has a vague academic interest since which it is helps shape my view of what the gender categories mean, but personally I am not affected either way.
Same. I only know I’m a-gender because my kids told me I was and I looked it up and was like yep that seems right.
She shall achieve an even butcher form!
This, is super butch 2.
*plays “Puttin’ On The Ritz” by Taco on hacked muzak*
I prefer this version, though they’ve kind of made it anachronistic for the time period by not using the most racist version of the lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RISDJO_w9h4
Ugh, pasted the wrong clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO9axGrzDE0
Obligatory link to the Gene Wilder / Peter Boyle version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab7NyKw0VYQ
the only one I acknowledge
There’s a racist version? I wasn’t aware.
You don’t rip, Becky. You unbutton.
It’s the anticipation. And the incidental touching while occupied with a task.
You’re clearly a person of culture
If you Rip that means you also either have to get the Suit Fixed, which can be expensive if you take it to a suit place, or replace the suit entirely because more then just the buttons broke.
It is both more Sexy to unbutton but also cost effective.
Doubleplus agree.
Cues up Anticipation by Carly Simon.
heh, Dina used a contraction in panel 2.
Am I to take it that this is indicative of Dina not having to worry that much about being understood by her partner, or an error?
She’s gradually been using more contractions over time, I think. She just uses them less frequently than everyone else.
Also for some reason it took me four tries to spell “frequently” correctly, so here’s a few fuck-ups for shits and giggles: frewuently, frequalty, frequantly.
May your fuckups be frequality!
You mention her using them more overtime, but funny enough if you go way way back to book 1 and 2 she actually used them fairly frequently (though definitely still less than others) back then.
But around the time she started to become part of the main cast her not using contractions often became a more solid part of her character.
I ain’t makin another list now though. Dina had like 60 appearances back then instead of 600
Godammit fucked the formatting a bit there.
Was supposed to say I made a list of each contraction she used, before saying she had way fewer appearances back then
Becky now discovers lesbian women in suits.
Next she will discover the wheel and fire!
Not all of those things are as basic as you might think. Africa didn’t have lesbians in suits until they were introduced by colonizing European powers.
Now pondering all the queer swag we have lost due to colonization’s erasure of culture…
True, they had their own unique lesbian gender nonconforming outfits.
I’m not even making a crack. They did.
Your wise women have discovered the secret of:
Queerness
I heard the song in my head and now it’s gonna be stuck there, thank you Willis for that alt text :’33
Yes! A CLASSIC!
*plays “Men in Black” on hacked muzak*
Didn’t that woman who was a morgue doctor end up a WiB at the end of the movie?
Apparently for like, about a month before J decided to neuralyze her.
“You shouldn’t fear a hypothetical shift in sexual preference”, if only Dorothy was around to hear you say that lol. Dina might actually be a good person for Dorothy to talk to about her new found attraction.
I feel like Becky is too caught up in being lesbian to admit she might find someone, who isn’t female, attractive. I understand that it concerns her, and she should probably talk to Leslie about this.
However, the idea of Dina wearing more suits definitely appeals to me, so carry on Dino-Girl!(Copyright 1787)
hey, it worked for Annie Lennox.
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
maybe a more masculine form of address? for instance, instead of “Dina”, what if she went by “Dino”
…nobody tell her, we’d never get her back
…so how do we pronounce it?
The same as when people woudl call someone named Dean “Deano”. Deeno.
So is it just Queer Disaster Month™in this comic?
as far as I’m concerned, both IRL and in-comic,
Pride Now. Pride Tomorrow. Pride Forever.
The first couple strips were Joyce and Becky and the elephant in the room that Becky had thrown a tablecloth over and was pretending was an ottoman, and then we moved on to Billie and Walky, who’s one slice of pizza away from a first bi experience. And then Danny and Dorothy showed up. This comic has literally been Queer Disaster Month since Day One.
(accidental report. dammit)
Walky does strike me as the kind of guy to say “I’m not gay but 40 McNuggets is 40 McNuggets.”
He literally has said that he’ll go down on a dude for pizza.
The comic actually goes almost two full months before there’s a strip that doesn’t have at least one confirmed or plausibly queer character (counting Joyce, who I’m pretty sure is at least biromantic, as plausibly queer) in it: November 8th, 2010, Sarah and Raidah.
Trick question: Every month is queer disaster month.
Month? This has been the way of things for years. Decades. CENTURIES.
*SPLOOSH*
faced with the necessity of dismantling rigid views of gender and attraction, dina decides that transitioning is the only way to make her point
I thought a “Pixie Cut” was when you broke the Laws of Faery, and no one from there will interact with you anymore.
no, that’s the “pixie cut direct”.
“Well, Dotty – who’s your futch friend?”
Pixie Cut, Sandy Duncan, hubba hubba.
She definitely should try this cut.
It works for Tinker Bell.
Sandy Duncan played Peter Pan in 1980.
Oh, honey.
I’m torn between seeing more of Dottie learning something about herself… and the adventures of Dom Dina in a Suit.
We could have both, of course. Dottie needs some subbie time.
… You’ve awoken in me a powerful need.
Reject uhhhhh
Embrace uhhhhhhhhh…
Pixie cut and a suit? Close enough, hello Kristen Stewart (or Kate McKinnon).
Appropriate grav is appropriate.
In my fantasy casting, Leslie was always played by Kate.
Compromise for Panel 1 Becky: Body paint tux.
…. mostly because I want to break her brain.
does Dina think clothes determine gender?
her gender was not altered by her clothes, so whether Becky has suddenly shifted to being attracted to men is neither disproven nor proven. bad science Dina
I might be mistaken about this, but I thought the stance that “gender is a social construct” implies that gender is basically all of the spoken/unspoken rules that a man or woman should/should not do, and as such, clothing can be considered part of gender insofar as certain clothes are viewed as men’s clothing or women’s clothing and frowns on violations of this rule. In some countries, women wearing suits is still considered unacceptable, although in most Western countries this no longer draws any attention.
Maybe she doesn’t have a gender identity, hasn’t noticed that some people do, and thinks gender roles are all there is to it.
That is how it is for me, which is why it took me so long to understand the whole gender identity thing. I just sort of went the path of least resistance when it came to which gender I represent as.
I had the opportunity to meet a bunch of gender diverse people when I was 16, which really helped things along for me. I had previously had feelings of, “Wait, I don’t feel like a girl” but upon exploring was like, “Okay, I don’t feel like I’m a guy, guess I’m a girl after all! Crisis averted.”
Gravatar seems appropriate here (yes, I have made some assumptions about Charlie)
I don’t know if it’s about her gender as much as what it means to be attracted to people of certain genders. She said to Becky that she’d change her presentation if it helped Becky even if Dina was “secure in [her] girlness.”
Dina once said that she wasn’t sure if gender mattered to her attraction, so I could see her having a hard time conceptualizing how it does to others and can mean something beyond preference for a type of gender presentation.
I mean, she is essentially just doing a low-key drag here. Wearing ‘men’s’ clothes and hiding her long hair in order to show a masculine presentation even though she remains cis (as far as we’re aware). Presumably if she normally wore makeup (which I don’t think she does but could be wrong), she would also not be weaing makeup here, or possibly would do makeup to accentuate masculine features
also where did she get a little butler outfit her size
she probably got a big butler outfit, then used her diaspora tech family money to make it her size
maybe she looked at sizes for teen boys. I used to have to do that for shoes
And now I have the music in my head, thanks.
Meanwhile, next door, Dorothy and AmaziGirl are having a Slipshine adventure.
I’m very keen on Willis’ new “Forget You” header.
Clothes don’t make the dinosaur
Sounds like Dina is about to learn about the attractiveness of women in suits and women with short hair.
Apparel oft proclaims the Dina.
NGL, I was kinda hoping today’s strip would see Dorothy walk into the hall and run into a firefighter or a woman wearing a toolbelt… a whole series of Sapphic romance trope gag strips
Trips over someone in the hall and knocks a book of Sappho’s poems out of their hands.
Best alt-text ever.
Gender expression is weird and very much tied to how an individual person defines it AND how others percieve it.
It’s such a strange amalgamation of the self and the world.
The pixie cut in particular is a strong indicator of this where a woman having short [male-coded] haircut is STILL percieved as feminine BECAUSE the culture we’re in defines it as a feminine haircut, despite it looking fairly similar.
It’s really like this in all things, though. If we were solitary beings that never talked to each other or worked together, there would be no reason for us to have an ego at all. Our identity is always inseparable from our relationships with others and how they view us.
I have to say Dina cuts an incredible look in that sharp-ass suit. She looks good as hell. If she had a black dinosaur hat with a more subtle appearance she could wear that to a wedding, like damn dude
i’m down with genderfluid dina tho i imagine even if they do break up (hopefully not), i’d think if becky wanted to date again it still would be another girl