Honestly in a weird way, Robin is kinda one of the best influences she could’ve gotten when first coming away from all of the fundie stuff that prescribes how she should live? Like obviously being gay was already a big step from what she was “supposed” to be, but Robin’s kind of… flippant nature around expectations and external pressures (even if she still would play as she’s “supposed” to a lot of the time) was a great model for Becky, letting her see that she can kinda just do… whatever?
It’s a well-known phenomenon that the Grindr servers get overloaded whenever there’s a Republican convention or other MAGA gathering.
Last time was for the Horst Wessel Charlie Kirk memorial thing. Grindr crashed due to the huge spike in connections at the event.
The core of conservative thought is hypocrisy. Those who make the most performative shows of being patriots are traitors; those who make the most performative shows of being Christian are selfish, greedy, and spiteful instead of selfless, generous and forgiving; those who make the most performative shows of being fiscally responsible are embezzlers; those who make the most performative shows of wanting to release the Epstein files are on it; those who make the most performative shows of being for “traditional family values” are closeted.
Honestly, I disagree. This issue isn’t going to be resolved by lying to Hank.
Hank feels alone and confused with how his life has shifted. Now he has the feeling that he’s losing everything left of his family as well. Sure, Joycelyn needs to be safe and respected, but Hank needs to feel loved and supported as well. Those two needs are equal.
Hiding them from one another denies them both the opportunity to redefine their relationship as parent and child.
It’s not really “hiding them from one another” as much as it is “give Jocelyn time to be prepared, if she even wants to have this interaction right now”. I’ll also say that Jocelyn’s need to be safe actually IS more important – the stakes are just wayyyyy higher on her end.
The male suicide rates make me concerned that this might very possibly be an issue of Hank’s safety as well. He lost everyone in his life. His wife, his community, everyone except his children. If he feels like he lost his children as well, things could turn really ugly, really quickly.
I hope not, because Hank doesn’t deserve that, but I don’t feel like Joycelyn is the only one with ‘safety’ as a primary concern.
You know that characters with shitty views can still be characters that people are invested in the stories of, right? Otherwise no one would’ve been invested in Joyce when she was still a fundie and pulling shit like, say, trying to 9 Chickweed Laneify the only gay man who existed in the comic at the time. (With the important distinction that, unlike 9CL, doing conversion therapy to Ethan wasn’t treated as Joyce having the mandate of heaven by the narrative. I mean there are a bunch of other important distinctions such as shared dreamscapes and a cat and really bad sex but shhh let’s not dwell on it)
Hank may be completely misguided and wrong about almost everything, but he’s a good guy. You don’t have to have the right opinions to be a good person. There are many COMPLETE s-bags with the right opinions.
I think you raise a really good point regarding Hank likely lacking a support network right now. Losing his wife, leaving his church, and discovering that Joyce and Jocelyn don’t share his beliefs all at once could be a really rough time. But I feel that learning about Jocelyn could just as easily make things worse. Even if it did make things better,, and even granted that his safety is as big a concern as Jocelyn’s, she still has the right to make that decision for herself. There’s no reason why Hank’s support should fall on her shoulders, when she’s probably in the worst position to take that on.
This exactly. When I had a baby, I was basically signing a blank piece of paper: whoever you are, whoever you’ll become, I’ll support you. I’ll love you, no matter what, forever and ever.
Kids — including adult kids — didn’t make any agreement like that.
Sure, I’ll hope that my kid(s) eventually help me too, when it’s my turn to be more needful. But, in our culture, they get to choose, and they might choose not to help (esp if I’m a jerk to them, but for any reason really). Progeny didn’t promise to support their parents, or even to love us. Their love and support are far more conditional.
It’s not equal, but, that’s the way it goes!
Hank may highlight that wives are often automatically put in charge of social networking, and churches are a major place that people get support, and with neither wife nor church, Hank is suddenly without support. And that’s super hard!! But that doesn’t mean that anyone in particular should step up and shoulder the entire support system herself. Hank is gonna have to gather support, himself, even though he might not have any idea that he needs it, or how to do it. Again not equal, again, that’s the way it goes.
As a parent, I don’t think those two needs are equal, because one person is the parent of the other. Also safety needs are more important than emotional needs. Also Becky has agreed to help Jocelyne. But mainly that first one.
In what sense is Hank a {potential} threat to Jocelyn’s safety? He ain’t Toedad, and never has been. The only threat here is emotional–the threat of rejection. Which is exactly what Hank is feeling right now.
Again, what danger? Physically, I can’t see Hank striking his own child, period. I’m not denying that many trans kids face danger in their homes, but this is not one of those situations, and claiming it is is actually bad for talking about these issues.
Why wouldn’t taking a step back and getting your kids pizza instead jumping to assumptions about the protest and getting upset about it be a bad idea? Isn’t Jocelyne a fully capable adult at this point? I could see her dad being concerned about her safety at a protest like that, but acting confrontational about your adult child’s different beliefs is not how you keep that relationship going. Not to say that you can’t have a discussion with your child about it, but asking them to explain and then actively listening and trying to understand their point of view is a good step.
As for a support network, please don’t only rely on your children for that. Generally, parents chosd to have kids while kids can’t help having parents. I thought that being the support network for your child was understood to be part of what you signed up for when you became a parent. I have, unfortunately, known people who have had kids in order to feel better about themselves and use them as support. It doesn’t tend to end well. Hank would be better off making a new support network by finding a group to join that does a hobby he enjoys or wants to try. Join a theater or reenactment group, a musical group, a sport, photography, sewing, etc. He would probably enjoy doing volunteer work, like food distribution or at an animal shelter. The point being, Hank should really be some form of stable before he tries to handle what he thinks is going on with his kids. If your mind and life is a mess, you’re probably only going to dish out a mess to everyone, especially if your end purpose is to get them to be what you perceive as “under control” or “on track”. To me, that feels like trying to do a controlled burn in the middle of fire season. You’re more likely to end up with everything burning down around you than the nice clearing of debris to make the relationship stronger.
Also, if you want to control something’s life completely, get a plant.
If you did a good job raising your kids, they’ll still want to have a relationship with you when they’re adults. Not the same kind of relationship, more one of equals. Hank could be a supportive dad and have a good adult relationship with Jocelyn and have a good faith disagreement with her about the Bulmerian crisis. Let’s see if he nails it.
Sorry, no. Hank’s need to be loved and supported is NOT actually equal to his trans daughter’s need to be safe. Hank is a parent, not a friend, it isn’t his children’s job to support him through a divorce, that is a job for his friends and other family members. Your kids are not crutches and they certainly don’t owe it to you to put themselves in danger for your comfort or happiness.
Any good parent would rather be in danger themselves than put their child in danger, and there are other options and resources for support that he can access which wouldn’t put Joss in the firing line at all.
ALSO also – You have no idea what his reaction will be to finding out his daughter is trans. He might just off himself over that, viewing it as a “failure” of some kind. There’s no way to predict that, but there IS a way of predicting that Joss wasn’t ready to tell him she’s trans yet. Because she hasn’t yet.
They both have phones, she isn’t answering for him. Or texting him. It’s actually really easy to tell she doesn’t want to be confronted with him right now, and that the best thing to do is distract him while someone tells Joss he’s here so she can decide for herself.
My big issue with this is the idea that Jocelyn telling Hank the truth, or otherwise being outed to him, would somehow put her ‘in danger’, or threaten her safety. She’s living on her own, supporting herself, and generally doing just fine. And Hank, for all his retrograde views, is not Toedad. He never does anything more offensive than take a little while to adjust to new information that runs counter to the cult programming he’s been dealing with his entire adult life.
This is NOT to say that Jocelyn is obligated to come forward. Merely that any notion that doing so would place her ‘in danger’ is hyperbolic, at best.
Yes, maybe it would. What’s driving me up the wall in this convo right now is everyone else assuming that Jocelyn is refraining from outing herself to Hank because of concerns about her own safety, rather than just not wanting to deal with the emotional drama it would cause right now.
Again, whatever her reason is, that’s fine. I’m just disliking the ‘safety’ mantra in the comic which bears no relation to the existing situation in the comic, or any aspect of Hank’s characterization.
She was talking about the still-very-financially-dependent Joyce, there. She might have been also talking about herself, but that would be in a past-tense way–perhaps when she first started drifting from the fundie mold, Carol persuaded Hank to cut off financial support for Jocelyn. But she’s independent, even if she’s not financially secure, right now.
It does put her in danger. That danger might not come to fruition, but the unfortunately nightmarish fact of life is that you are in potential danger when you come out to people. Maybe Hank will be great, maybe he’ll suck, that doesn’t change the concerns in this moment given his background.
He’s “not Toedad” but until recently, they were members of the same community which is anti-trans and anti-queer.
Also, if you read my post, you’ll see I wrote “the best thing to do is distract him while someone tells Joss he’s here so she can decide for herself.” which is absolutely NOT a point I’ll ever back down on.
Not sure how accurate this still is, but according to Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs (specifically set up to answer those questions), Safety is actually more important than relationship needs. You can read up on the theory here here.
Guess I’m somewhere between a 1 and a 3 on there. Somewhere with a little red, a little orange, and a little yellow, maybe.
I remember getting really mad at the health teacher who taught us about that, in high school, and getting in a big argument with him in class. He was saying you needed to have basic needs met before self actualization, but I was saying that sometimes people don’t pursue all those needs in the same order. Folks might find one answer to meet a need or rwo, but not all of them in a row. Certainly not in a solid-foundation pyramid.
I suspect we’ll find if Hank is about to discover his own, personal “Limits to Growth”. Sure hope not — my dad died a pain-filled death because he was an unreconstructed racist. Wouldn’t have a Philippina home care nurse in his house (or any brown-skinned person) to administer the requisite narcotics.
The physician recommends a veggie pizza with reasonable amount of cheese.
Everyone else recommends.things the physician is not happy about.
Either way pizza is a great idea, because at least everyone starts in a good mood, there are always possible diversions, and people tend to behave better in public places. Also pizza is in and of itself a great idea.
…which means that the more intense the taste of the other toppings, the more cheese is reasonable.
Wonder what toppings you’d need to have to justify adding an entire wheel of cheese?
See, if you’re REALLY clever you realize this means the Cheese Pizza is functionally allowed infinite cheese so long as you can still perceive tomato sauce in there.
The pizza place near me used to make good, and sometimes great, pizza, until they went down the three-cheese road. The their pizza got too salty to eat.
A+ navigation from Becky. Hank clearly doesn’t want to do this anyway, he’s just doing what he thinks he’s ‘supposed’ to be doing, but we already know he’s cool with letting his kids have their own beliefs and make their own choices.
Yeah, it’s hard not to read him as conflicted between thinking his beliefs are right and straying from them necessitates intervention and his genuine belief that his children are their own people and deserve to make their own choices and have their own beliefs, even if that takes them away from his own. There’s hope for him yet.
Plus he seems to be anxious about his kids slipping away from him, post-divorce. His status as dad of the family isn’t so assured now that the family isn’t a unit anymore.
It’s left over from the evangelical anti-Christian ideology. A father is the… let’s say patriarch… of all his children, no matter how old. Or, more precisely, those kids are supposed to do as he tells them, for as long as they live.
This logic is to apply to the leader(s) of their church, who are the father(s) of all the congregation. Meaning, everyone MUST do everything they say, because God said so.
I recently watched Season of the Witch a Nicholas Cage and Ron Perlman movie free on youtube and weirdly the first part of the movie was kind of all about this.
I’m going to amplify what Adeptus said — there’s a fairly wide semantic gulf between “my kid is a terrorist” and “my kid is siding with terrorists”, and (especially in the mindset that a lot of Christian conservatives tend to operate in) there’s a vast gulf between “who you are” and “what you do” in terms of what it all means.
Hank could still make some pretty damn harmful choices and say some harmful things here, but he’s so far still acting like someone who a) isn’t convinced his kid is evil and b) can be taught — after all, he’s being super chill with his kid’s best friend who is not only a lesbian but the underlying cause of his marriage and church community blowing up in his face.
The fact that he chose to side with Becky and Joyce during the Toedad incident and continues to do so without any apparent resentment directed at her in these strips is the main reason I think Hank has a shot at being ultimately being led to being 100% a decent human being.
2 : in effect : virtually
—used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible will literally turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or injustice—
Norman Cousins
The detail of having to self-correct to the “right” pronoun when talking to a transphobic parent about their trans kid is so real- I’ve had to do some fast thinking when referring to a friend how I’m used to calling them, then bullshitting their parents about the actual reason why I called them that.
“I called her cole because her hair is black so it’s a nickname I use sometimes” and thankfully they bought it enough for it to not be an issue
Tell me about it. I’m the “safe affirming” parent and keeping track of two names and which parents are chill and which aren’t and code switching between friend safe name and government name and pronouns is terrifying. My kids have lots of queer friends with not chill parents.
I maintain the big twist will be that Hank and Carol assumed Joyce was pro-Becky because she was gay but were hoping it was a phase (bleah). Also that Hank doesn’t know the difference between gay and trans.
He was less trustworthy when he was alive. These days he can pretty much be relied upon to lie there and rot. It’s not like this is Shortpacked! or something.
Ronald Reagan being a character in Shortpacked is one of those things that make me wonder what the hell was going on in that comic. I’ve learned through comments that Robin was also a congresswoman and married Leslie and had super speed and I don’t understand the how or why of any of that. Also Carla was a robot.
If you have the time, you might want to go back and read the Willis comics set in the Shortpacked universe. They’re a lot more wacky and zany than Dumbing of Age, which is set in a more realistic world. That other universe had aliens and robots and lots of people with actual superpowers and stuff, and it can be interesting to see how similar and different the same characters are in those comic strips compared to this comic.
I feel like while Becky’s mask is canonically very good, it’s starting to fall out of plausibility range.
First, Hank knows her sexuality, and to him that’s going to near-automatically push her out of “politically reliable” box.
Second, assumptions aside, didn’t she pretty publicly hijack Congresswomen DeSantos’s Twitter feed and swing her left as campaign manager? Not big national news, but public enough for a quasi-parent who cared about her safety to take note. And that was less than four months ago.
I don’t think any of that would influence Hank because Hank would know the left as terrorist supporting psychopaths who hate freedom. Not because who support free medicare and a basic income. No, he’s against socialism. You know, EVIL.
(I’m not even joking, the household is using the word to mean something totally different which is why Bernie is so popular when people listens)
“You know this, and this, and this? Those are things ‘socialists’ actually want.”
“That’s not possible, those are all good things. Everyone wants those.”
“Uh huh. Well, what about this, and this, and this? Because those are things that the Republican Party is for.”
“Oh stop it, you’re making that up, that’s just cartoonishly evil.”
“Mr. Hines, I ain’t been here long. What is these goddamn reds?”
“A red is any son-of-a-bongo that wants thirty cents an hour when we’re payin’ twenty-five!”
“Well, Jesus, Mr. Hines. I ain’t a son-of-a-bongo, but if that’s what a red is— why, I want thirty cents an hour. Ever’body does. Hell, Mr. Hines, we’re all reds.”
Looks like about 5.83/hour in 2025 money if you start with 0.25/hr in 1939.
Also, the average factory wage was about 0.45/hour, so Mr. Hines was skinning his workers alive.
You’re missing the part where it’s not just some lefty telling you the Republicans want those things, they actually explicitly say they do, but it still gets dismissed as too cartoonishly evil to believe anyway.
I think Hank is realizing that Jordan, Joyce, and possibly jocelyne are either:
A. Failures as human beings which means he’s a failure as a parent
B. Good human beings, which means he’s a failure as a person for this being in spite of his teachings.
Honestly, he sounds like what he wants is an easy way to reconcile being “The Dad” with who he thought “Hank, the Good Christian Father” was. He’s been learning the whole strip that those two things aren’t compatible.
I’m glad that for all that Hank is misguided here we’re able to see that he’s still coming from a good place. At first glance it might seem controlling, like he’s trying to force his views on his children. But what he’s trying to do is not nearly so sinister; he’s just trying to be there for his kids in spite of all the trouble his family is going through. Sure, he’s not going about it in the best way right now, but as long as his actions are being motivated by his care for his children I genuinely believe he’s going to come out of this a parent that we can respect and support.
True story: a long time ago my autistic son had done something wrong, with the best of intentions, and asked him (rhetorically), “Do you know what the road to Hell is paved with?”
He thought for a while and offered, “Republicans?”
I couldn’t decide which sounded better, which is weird because usually things like word are easy for me to discern. For example, “ugly old grey troll” sounds normal, but “grey old ugly troll” sounds weird.
Descriptive order” refers to the standard sequence of adjectives in English, which is Determiner, Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Origin, Material, Purpose (often abbreviated as DOSASCOMP). This order ensures that sentences sound natural and are easily understood, as native speakers subconsciously follow this pattern. For example, a “lovely little old round red French wooden rocking chair” follows the established order.
“Commie” functions as an adjective, though, at least more often than other right-wing invective: compare “commie terrorist” to “terrorist commie”, the first is clearly more correct.
I need the doctor who will “find evidence” that Viagra causes autism, which must be doable since geriatric sperm increases the rate of all kinds of non typical outcomes.
Autism existed before Tylenol but this is just the latest distraction from the files that absolutely do not contain Trump and are a hoax anyway. Nudge, nudge, wink wink.
I honestly think this is the same thing as what actually happened with the measles vaccine.
They’ll bang on and on about how dangerous Tylenol is and then come out with a “totally safe because we removed a preservative” version of acetaminophen to sell so they can profit off being the only pain and fever reducer on the market allowed to pregnant women.
Because Andrew Wakefield was never trying to stop kids being vaccinated full stop. He was trying to sell his own version of a vaccine by throwing mud on the much more ubiquitous competition.
Andrew Wakefield is one of many people that make me wish I believed in hell because no earthly punishment can possibly be enough for the damage he’s done
it’s not really a debate, there’s no magical sequence of words that’ll make our adversaries see reason, we can (and we SHOULD) venerate the truth without acknowledging the liars, the lies or the ones repeating them
in this political climate, these discussions has some very real impact on people’s lives — they are in fact, not a game of intellectual football
There IS no way to prove a negative. Billions of pregnant people taking Tylenol every day and having 100% neurotypical kids would not prove that it can’t “slightly increase the chances”, and in the meantime:
1. Denying pregnant people the only painkiller they can currently take while pregnant without massive risk to the fetus,
2. Blaming pregnant people for any difficulties their autistic kids have,
3. Potentially dismantling ADA protections for autistic people, because it’s their “mother’s” fault they’re disabled, so the state shouldn’t have to provide jack shit, especially going forward now that they’re “””willfully””” causing future fetuses to be autistic.
Oh and of course RFK Jr also wants all neurodiverse people denied any medications we might need and put to work on “””””wellness””””” farms to make us neurotypical. i.e., conversion therapy, but also, you know. Definitely a certain type of camp, too.
Oh, and BEING FEVERISH WHILE PREGNANT is also a massive risk to the fetus. So “taking nothing” is also a bad option, even if you don’t care about pregnant people suffering.
Li, of course they care about pregnant people suffering. They care that it’s not happening enough, and they want it to happen more, in as many ways as possible.
It’s not “interesting, worth looking deeper” at all, because the entire thing is a smokescreen. The only motivation, the only real endgame that’s ever going to come from asking “Does X cause autism?” is some worthless bigot trying to stop people like me from existing. Hasn’t everyone had enough of that? When they start asking those questions, you need to start stapling their mouths shut, not encouraging them by saying “Hmm, maybe they’re onto something here”.
“””debate”””” like this doesn’t really work to automatically benefit us or society at large the way white liberals wanna think it does
by allowing an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist from their pseudo-science fringes to be put alongside an actual accomplished scientist, all it really dues is further legitimize/normalize the anti-vaxxer to people who haven’t yet made up their minds
hell, Ian Danskin even made an entire video in the Alt-Right playbook about how this kinda crackpot bigoted bullshit gets mainstreamed
Like I said elsewhere, I don’t have autism because my mom took acetaminophen while she was pregnant; I have autism because my dad used to watch westerns and criticize the historical inaccuracies. (He got especially incensed when somebody in 1886 had a Winchester rifle that wasn’t produced until 1888. Note: Dates from memory, so I might have them wrong because my field is more SF than Old West, but it was something along those lines.)
Quick note for anyone who gets caught in this conversation with a true believer, or even someone who is just confused. There IS a correlation, in some studies, between Tylenol usage in pregnancy and autism in the kid. However, this correlation disappears entirely in studies that focus on siblings (where the drug was used during one pregnancy, but not the other).
What this means is that this really is an example of correlation, not causation–what happens is the mother gets an infection or other source of inflammation during pregnancy, and THAT likely triggers an increased incidence of autism. Tylenol is about as relevant to the autism as ice cream consumption is to shark attacks.
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
Pizza is good. Talking about politics over pizza might not be so good, especially when your dad seems to think you’re a terrorist and/or communist for protesting against genocide.
“Y’know Hank, from what I gather of Joss’s * political arguments, what . . . he . . . is protesting is targeted killings of women and children and doctors and other noncombatants. Now, I know that’s a radical position, but you can think about counterarguments and such while the pizza is on its way. I bet you can think of something really persuasive! You’re the dad!”
*: If you say “Joss” quickly, it doesn’t sound too different from “Josh”
The first time I read this, I remember thinking “haha what funny extreme examples of silly political things” and then I remembered… that these were all real talking points last year in politics…
“Any hand-wringing over the results just means you’re falling for the propaganda of the insurgents”
(could be that “propaganda” and “insurgents” should be italicized/boldface)
“It betrays the company you keep.”
(could be that “company” should be italicized/boldface)
What could be the response to that? Well, maybe something like . . .
“Okay, so you would tell Joss that caring about targeted killings of women and children and doctors and other noncombatants is just . . . hand-wringing over propaganda? . . . Maybe you two could just agree to disagree about that or something? Like, kids these days and their hand-wringing, haha!”
(I would kinda hope that hearing his own words echoed back at him like that would give Hank pause.)
Pick a comment
1. Aww, as a father, he still worries about his children and want to be in contact
2. What a patriarchal Republican who puts his need to play daddy above his child’s need to be left alone.
Would like to add
3. Man who had what he though was his solid purpose and place in life shattered (church, marriage) instinctively clings to what family structure and sense of purpose he can, as a shipwrecked person clings to a life float.
We know the oldest kid peaced out long ago and part of that of that was reinforced by his ex-wife. It could be he thinks he still has a chance to connect with Joss to show he isnt as awful as Carol about just dumping kids who don’t agree. He might not view it as wanting to be left alone but not wanting them to feel like they have to be alone any longer.
pizza is universal tho i wonder how many ppl in their 60s would still eat some, i feel like i’d get halfway through one slice and immediately get stomach issues
He’d have been around, but would he have been old enough to be paying attention to politics at all? If he started paying attention to politics in 8th grade and he’s 50 years old, his first political memory would be the 1988 election. For him to remember Morning in America, he’d have to be born in 1971 at the absolute latest, which would make him 54. It’s certainly possible, but the window is closing rapidly. This may well be the last Reagan reference Dumbing of Age can realistically get away with.
Remembering Reagan is not a prerequisite for idolizing Reagan.
Case in point, I was once subjected to a godawful video about “Who does God want you to vote for?” shares by churches, who couldn’t actually go and *tell people* who to vote for, but sure used Reagan as the model for an ideal presidency.
In fact, given the modern Republican party, remembering Reagan may directly conflict with idolizing Reagan. A politician with Reagan’s policies and positions would seen as a RINO traitor today, but since he’s the sainted dead he can be invoked and endowed with support for whatever Republican ideology you want.
Carol is 60, so it’s likely Hank is either the same age or older. Also, I’m 51, and I remember Reagan well (unfortunately). The first election I was really aware of was ’84, as the candidates and the issues were covered in Scholastic News. My 4th grade class even had a debate and a mock vote. (Mondale lost. 🤷♀️) As Hank is very probably a decade older than me, his Reagan memories would be even clearer. Not to mention how Reagan’s been deified by conservatives since his death. (see also Mary)
I’m pretty sure there is an older comic where Hank is described as a dentist in his 60s by Joyce, which would put him about at that age. Sliding timescale gets weird as time will go on, but for the moment Hank was definitely solidly in his 20s for part or all of the Reagan presidency.
The children of more politically aware parents can be remarkably tuned in to politics, as long as their parents actually talk to them about it.
One of my aunts has Gen Z kids, and they were like, making jokes about like, McCain and Romney when they were in like ten at the oldest, because my aunt has just always talked to her kids — not like they were adults but like they were people capable of understanding her. (She also taught them sign language as infants, so they had some language ability even when they couldn’t physically form understandable words yet.)
I do wonder increasingly what Hank’s parents were like. The only insights we’ve got right now on Younger Hank are the bonus strip where he met Carol and him telling Jocelyne that he grew his hair out “too” at “your age”. He can’t have gone very liberal, but maybe he was more “Jesus’s main message is love” for a while or something.
Anyway, he probably didn’t have parents like my aunt, but he MAY have had parents who thought informing him of how great Reagan was was just part of good parenting.
Versus Joyce, who it seems was kept sheltered from politics (“you have the letter my parents like next to your name” about Robin being a Republican)? But it really seems like Carol was pulling further and further away from “secular” everything as the kids grew up, and “protecting” them from politics was probably kind of a not entirely happy compromise.
I don’t agree with libertarians re: individualism vs collectivism, and the importance of government in delivering societal good. But I can at least talk to them on a level where we can find common ground and overcome most differences.
But that’s actual libertarians. “Libertarian-conservatives” in a U.S. context tend to be people who believe in keeping government out of things that they like or affect them, while writing flowery arguments excusing things like anti-LGBT discrimination. Small govt for me, not for thee bs.
Or insisting on small government in order to keep government from preventing such discrimination. Seen plenty of libertarians arguing that equal employment and public accommodation legislation was government overreach.
As is typical with politics, you can generally talk with everyone and find common ground if you have similar values and are willing to accept other people can have similar values with wildly divergent proposed approaches — and “I want everyone to be as prosperous and free as possible” are pretty common values for political movements.
Unfortunately as is also typical, some people’s values are “I want to punish people who aren’t like me” or “I don’t believe the world can be good for everyone, so I want to be on top”.
Fun fact: Pizza was the original McDonalds. In Ancient Rome, it was food served in a cart in a folded bread like a taco of whatever meats they had lying around and other stuff.
Which is why it had a reputation as cheap peasant food for a long time.
When I was a kid, there was a Pizza Hut that actually had a license to serve beer. The cops kept a close eye on the place. And of course they had a smoking section – even McD’s had ashtrays back then.
I’m actually relieved to see Hank thinking about Becky’s offer for a second before resolving to be the Dad. Toedad would have just shut down any such offer in his single mindedness. Hank genuinely considers the offer as it might help his child. And it’s clear that he values his relationship with his children very strongly, on a genuine level.
He has a long way to go. If he can regulate himself through the strong emotional reactions he has when he hears the vastly different viewpoints and learns the truth about Jocelyn, I think this could turn out okay.
At least, I hope it turns out okay. I would really love to see Hank’s character arc continue in a positive direction.
Like Resident Alien pizza is my greatest weakness.
To be fair, if one of my kids turned up on the fascist side I’d want to intervene somehow. Luckily that doesn’t seem likely. As adults they have more sense that I did at their age.
That’s a good point.
We think Hank is wrong, so we see him as trying to control his kids when he should be letting them go their own way and even learning from them, but if a more liberal parent was dealing with an early 20s kid heading down the incel/fascist rabbit hole we wouldn’t be talking about how parents shouldn’t try to control their adult children.
This is about half of where I’m coming from, especially as Hank has already proven himself to have that rarest of conservative-parent attributes — he actually listens when his kids talk, sometimes.
So it’s not about Jocelyne being gay, and it’s not even really necessarily about her politics. It’s about a loss of control and a feeling that Hank’s role in the world has been upended by the divorce and Carol going all in on their horrible church. Tough shit to deal with, but Jocelyne doesn’t deserve to have those insecurities taken out on her.
Becky is so masterful at this, Im always impressed by how smart she is. And I’m so proud of her putting her heartbreak aside and getting things done without letting it hold her back at all. Just wanna give her a huge hug and praise her right now
So I’m sure I missed this discussion from the first strip Hank reappeared in but he is supposed to look older now, right? This isn’t just enhanced dadliness? Like this is “the last few months have been A LOT” stress aging. Not drastic, but definitely there.
You know. I think Hank is just so much like Joyce, actually. Joyce was a lot like this at the start. Completely misguided in pretty much most things, clinging to hurtful ideas because they are familiar, but when push comes to shove she always actually does the right thing that she knows in her heart to be right, not what she’s been told to believe. I think Hank is the same way, and he’s literally just starting out where Joyce used to be. And Hank is probably a lot more set in his ways, so it will take him longer than it did Joyce, but…
Ultimately, when faced with the decision to either accept his daughters for who they are or drive them away and hurt them, the choice will be an obvious one, even without the clear cautionary tale of Toedad fresh in his mind. He may not make that choice GRACEFULLY but…he’ll do it, and he’ll try. (Joyce has pretty much always been clumsy as hell in every part of her growth journey, but DAMNED if she doesn’t try.)
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*facepalm*
they’re FUCKED X-X
…as are we all.
It’ll probably be fine if he only has a couple of slices.
YTMND
You’re “The MAN” now, Dad
If anyone in this friend group, Becky should be the politician
That’s what Robin said.
Oddly, I think Robin was kind of a good influence on her. If only accidentally.
Honestly in a weird way, Robin is kinda one of the best influences she could’ve gotten when first coming away from all of the fundie stuff that prescribes how she should live? Like obviously being gay was already a big step from what she was “supposed” to be, but Robin’s kind of… flippant nature around expectations and external pressures (even if she still would play as she’s “supposed” to a lot of the time) was a great model for Becky, letting her see that she can kinda just do… whatever?
Robin is almost at Walky’s level of “not as dumb and/or oblivious as they play themselves”.
I’m sure there are ‘conservative queers’ but i can’t imagine someone like becky talking up reagan lol
then again this is au niverse where Robin got into office
There are even far right-wing queers. People are weird.
I mean, Blaire White is a straight up right-wing trans woman…
Not the only one, either. Caitlyn Jenner, like most super-rich white people, supports the Republican party.
Oh this is definitely telling Hank what he wants to hear and a solid gambit to defuse the situation/stop him from demanding to see Jocelyne
It’s a well-known phenomenon that the Grindr servers get overloaded whenever there’s a Republican convention or other MAGA gathering.
Last time was for the
Horst WesselCharlie Kirk memorial thing. Grindr crashed due to the huge spike in connections at the event.The core of conservative thought is hypocrisy. Those who make the most performative shows of being patriots are traitors; those who make the most performative shows of being Christian are selfish, greedy, and spiteful instead of selfless, generous and forgiving; those who make the most performative shows of being fiscally responsible are embezzlers; those who make the most performative shows of wanting to release the Epstein files are on it; those who make the most performative shows of being for “traditional family values” are closeted.
The people who should be politicians almost invariably have too much conscience to be successful politicians.
Nearly had him!
Honestly, I disagree. This issue isn’t going to be resolved by lying to Hank.
Hank feels alone and confused with how his life has shifted. Now he has the feeling that he’s losing everything left of his family as well. Sure, Joycelyn needs to be safe and respected, but Hank needs to feel loved and supported as well. Those two needs are equal.
Hiding them from one another denies them both the opportunity to redefine their relationship as parent and child.
It’s not really “hiding them from one another” as much as it is “give Jocelyn time to be prepared, if she even wants to have this interaction right now”. I’ll also say that Jocelyn’s need to be safe actually IS more important – the stakes are just wayyyyy higher on her end.
The male suicide rates make me concerned that this might very possibly be an issue of Hank’s safety as well. He lost everyone in his life. His wife, his community, everyone except his children. If he feels like he lost his children as well, things could turn really ugly, really quickly.
I hope not, because Hank doesn’t deserve that, but I don’t feel like Joycelyn is the only one with ‘safety’ as a primary concern.
wait you’re seriously siding with Hank on this
k
You know that characters with shitty views can still be characters that people are invested in the stories of, right? Otherwise no one would’ve been invested in Joyce when she was still a fundie and pulling shit like, say, trying to 9 Chickweed Laneify the only gay man who existed in the comic at the time. (With the important distinction that, unlike 9CL, doing conversion therapy to Ethan wasn’t treated as Joyce having the mandate of heaven by the narrative. I mean there are a bunch of other important distinctions such as shared dreamscapes and a cat and really bad sex but shhh let’s not dwell on it)
“I am worried about Hank’s mental health” is not the same as “I am siding with him”.
Hank may be completely misguided and wrong about almost everything, but he’s a good guy. You don’t have to have the right opinions to be a good person. There are many COMPLETE s-bags with the right opinions.
I think you raise a really good point regarding Hank likely lacking a support network right now. Losing his wife, leaving his church, and discovering that Joyce and Jocelyn don’t share his beliefs all at once could be a really rough time. But I feel that learning about Jocelyn could just as easily make things worse. Even if it did make things better,, and even granted that his safety is as big a concern as Jocelyn’s, she still has the right to make that decision for herself. There’s no reason why Hank’s support should fall on her shoulders, when she’s probably in the worst position to take that on.
This exactly. When I had a baby, I was basically signing a blank piece of paper: whoever you are, whoever you’ll become, I’ll support you. I’ll love you, no matter what, forever and ever.
Kids — including adult kids — didn’t make any agreement like that.
Sure, I’ll hope that my kid(s) eventually help me too, when it’s my turn to be more needful. But, in our culture, they get to choose, and they might choose not to help (esp if I’m a jerk to them, but for any reason really). Progeny didn’t promise to support their parents, or even to love us. Their love and support are far more conditional.
It’s not equal, but, that’s the way it goes!
Hank may highlight that wives are often automatically put in charge of social networking, and churches are a major place that people get support, and with neither wife nor church, Hank is suddenly without support. And that’s super hard!! But that doesn’t mean that anyone in particular should step up and shoulder the entire support system herself. Hank is gonna have to gather support, himself, even though he might not have any idea that he needs it, or how to do it. Again not equal, again, that’s the way it goes.
Oh dang, I forgot the entire church community sided with Toedad
As a parent, I don’t think those two needs are equal, because one person is the parent of the other. Also safety needs are more important than emotional needs. Also Becky has agreed to help Jocelyne. But mainly that first one.
In what sense is Hank a {potential} threat to Jocelyn’s safety? He ain’t Toedad, and never has been. The only threat here is emotional–the threat of rejection. Which is exactly what Hank is feeling right now.
Just because Hank isn’t among the worst of the worst doesn’t mean he can’t be dangerous to his transgender daughter.
Again, what danger? Physically, I can’t see Hank striking his own child, period. I’m not denying that many trans kids face danger in their homes, but this is not one of those situations, and claiming it is is actually bad for talking about these issues.
Why wouldn’t taking a step back and getting your kids pizza instead jumping to assumptions about the protest and getting upset about it be a bad idea? Isn’t Jocelyne a fully capable adult at this point? I could see her dad being concerned about her safety at a protest like that, but acting confrontational about your adult child’s different beliefs is not how you keep that relationship going. Not to say that you can’t have a discussion with your child about it, but asking them to explain and then actively listening and trying to understand their point of view is a good step.
As for a support network, please don’t only rely on your children for that. Generally, parents chosd to have kids while kids can’t help having parents. I thought that being the support network for your child was understood to be part of what you signed up for when you became a parent. I have, unfortunately, known people who have had kids in order to feel better about themselves and use them as support. It doesn’t tend to end well. Hank would be better off making a new support network by finding a group to join that does a hobby he enjoys or wants to try. Join a theater or reenactment group, a musical group, a sport, photography, sewing, etc. He would probably enjoy doing volunteer work, like food distribution or at an animal shelter. The point being, Hank should really be some form of stable before he tries to handle what he thinks is going on with his kids. If your mind and life is a mess, you’re probably only going to dish out a mess to everyone, especially if your end purpose is to get them to be what you perceive as “under control” or “on track”. To me, that feels like trying to do a controlled burn in the middle of fire season. You’re more likely to end up with everything burning down around you than the nice clearing of debris to make the relationship stronger.
Also, if you want to control something’s life completely, get a plant.
If you did a good job raising your kids, they’ll still want to have a relationship with you when they’re adults. Not the same kind of relationship, more one of equals. Hank could be a supportive dad and have a good adult relationship with Jocelyn and have a good faith disagreement with her about the Bulmerian crisis. Let’s see if he nails it.
Fundies lack that concept. To them, you’re never a fully capable adult without your superiors (your father first of all) all the way up to God.
Sorry, no. Hank’s need to be loved and supported is NOT actually equal to his trans daughter’s need to be safe. Hank is a parent, not a friend, it isn’t his children’s job to support him through a divorce, that is a job for his friends and other family members. Your kids are not crutches and they certainly don’t owe it to you to put themselves in danger for your comfort or happiness.
Any good parent would rather be in danger themselves than put their child in danger, and there are other options and resources for support that he can access which wouldn’t put Joss in the firing line at all.
ALSO also – You have no idea what his reaction will be to finding out his daughter is trans. He might just off himself over that, viewing it as a “failure” of some kind. There’s no way to predict that, but there IS a way of predicting that Joss wasn’t ready to tell him she’s trans yet. Because she hasn’t yet.
They both have phones, she isn’t answering for him. Or texting him. It’s actually really easy to tell she doesn’t want to be confronted with him right now, and that the best thing to do is distract him while someone tells Joss he’s here so she can decide for herself.
My big issue with this is the idea that Jocelyn telling Hank the truth, or otherwise being outed to him, would somehow put her ‘in danger’, or threaten her safety. She’s living on her own, supporting herself, and generally doing just fine. And Hank, for all his retrograde views, is not Toedad. He never does anything more offensive than take a little while to adjust to new information that runs counter to the cult programming he’s been dealing with his entire adult life.
This is NOT to say that Jocelyn is obligated to come forward. Merely that any notion that doing so would place her ‘in danger’ is hyperbolic, at best.
I think there’s financial concerns? Jocelyne was concerned about being cut off from potential resources. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/resources-2/
Regardless, Jocelyne would probably be the best person to determine if Jocelyne feels safe coming out to Hank. Maybe it’d be good to ask her first.
What? Grant the person at the center of the question agency??
That’s not very Christian behavior.
Yes, maybe it would. What’s driving me up the wall in this convo right now is everyone else assuming that Jocelyn is refraining from outing herself to Hank because of concerns about her own safety, rather than just not wanting to deal with the emotional drama it would cause right now.
Again, whatever her reason is, that’s fine. I’m just disliking the ‘safety’ mantra in the comic which bears no relation to the existing situation in the comic, or any aspect of Hank’s characterization.
She was talking about the still-very-financially-dependent Joyce, there. She might have been also talking about herself, but that would be in a past-tense way–perhaps when she first started drifting from the fundie mold, Carol persuaded Hank to cut off financial support for Jocelyn. But she’s independent, even if she’s not financially secure, right now.
It does put her in danger. That danger might not come to fruition, but the unfortunately nightmarish fact of life is that you are in potential danger when you come out to people. Maybe Hank will be great, maybe he’ll suck, that doesn’t change the concerns in this moment given his background.
He’s “not Toedad” but until recently, they were members of the same community which is anti-trans and anti-queer.
Also, if you read my post, you’ll see I wrote “the best thing to do is distract him while someone tells Joss he’s here so she can decide for herself.” which is absolutely NOT a point I’ll ever back down on.
Not sure how accurate this still is, but according to Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs (specifically set up to answer those questions), Safety is actually more important than relationship needs. You can read up on the theory here
here.
Huh. Interesting.
Guess I’m somewhere between a 1 and a 3 on there. Somewhere with a little red, a little orange, and a little yellow, maybe.
I remember getting really mad at the health teacher who taught us about that, in high school, and getting in a big argument with him in class. He was saying you needed to have basic needs met before self actualization, but I was saying that sometimes people don’t pursue all those needs in the same order. Folks might find one answer to meet a need or rwo, but not all of them in a row. Certainly not in a solid-foundation pyramid.
Robert Amman, case in point.
I suspect we’ll find if Hank is about to discover his own, personal “Limits to Growth”. Sure hope not — my dad died a pain-filled death because he was an unreconstructed racist. Wouldn’t have a Philippina home care nurse in his house (or any brown-skinned person) to administer the requisite narcotics.
This is either gonna go horribly wrong or horribly right. Not sure which my money is on…
Depends on what toppings are on the pizza.
IT WILL ALL SERVE THE WILL OF GALASSO!
West Wing: “We’ll see how the pizza turns out.”
The physician recommends a veggie pizza with reasonable amount of cheese.
Everyone else recommends.things the physician is not happy about.
Either way pizza is a great idea, because at least everyone starts in a good mood, there are always possible diversions, and people tend to behave better in public places. Also pizza is in and of itself a great idea.
What’s a “reasonable amount” of cheese, anyway?
Enough cheese to make the melty mozzerella stretch happen but not so much that you can’t taste the other toppings, obviously.
…which means that the more intense the taste of the other toppings, the more cheese is reasonable.
Wonder what toppings you’d need to have to justify adding an entire wheel of cheese?
See, if you’re REALLY clever you realize this means the Cheese Pizza is functionally allowed infinite cheese so long as you can still perceive tomato sauce in there.
Habanero pepper slices, freshly minced garlic, anchovies, broccoli.
The pizza place near me used to make good, and sometimes great, pizza, until they went down the three-cheese road. The their pizza got too salty to eat.
I swear 2 god we need a group huddle with every character and just rip off every bandaid at once
Carla will do it for cookies.
Too bad this Hank isn’t 6 foot 1 and tons of fun and dressed to a T!
He’d be a rapper’s delight, for sure. #IUnderstoodThatReferencee
A dadly premonition…
Wonder if Hank would end up liking that game
A+ navigation from Becky. Hank clearly doesn’t want to do this anyway, he’s just doing what he thinks he’s ‘supposed’ to be doing, but we already know he’s cool with letting his kids have their own beliefs and make their own choices.
Yeah, it’s hard not to read him as conflicted between thinking his beliefs are right and straying from them necessitates intervention and his genuine belief that his children are their own people and deserve to make their own choices and have their own beliefs, even if that takes them away from his own. There’s hope for him yet.
Plus he seems to be anxious about his kids slipping away from him, post-divorce. His status as dad of the family isn’t so assured now that the family isn’t a unit anymore.
It’s left over from the evangelical anti-Christian ideology. A father is the… let’s say patriarch… of all his children, no matter how old. Or, more precisely, those kids are supposed to do as he tells them, for as long as they live.
This logic is to apply to the leader(s) of their church, who are the father(s) of all the congregation. Meaning, everyone MUST do everything they say, because God said so.
I recently watched Season of the Witch a Nicholas Cage and Ron Perlman movie free on youtube and weirdly the first part of the movie was kind of all about this.
He’s literally been calling his kid a terrorist for two strips.
”Siding with terrorists”, so not quite. No need to add more hyperbole to an already unpleasant statement.
He likely knows nothing about the situation other than what was claimed by Faux News or whatever. Hopefully he’ll be willing to listen to other viewpoints, as he has before.
See also these strips:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/humility/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/quarters/
I’m going to amplify what Adeptus said — there’s a fairly wide semantic gulf between “my kid is a terrorist” and “my kid is siding with terrorists”, and (especially in the mindset that a lot of Christian conservatives tend to operate in) there’s a vast gulf between “who you are” and “what you do” in terms of what it all means.
Hank could still make some pretty damn harmful choices and say some harmful things here, but he’s so far still acting like someone who a) isn’t convinced his kid is evil and b) can be taught — after all, he’s being super chill with his kid’s best friend who is not only a lesbian but the underlying cause of his marriage and church community blowing up in his face.
The fact that he chose to side with Becky and Joyce during the Toedad incident and continues to do so without any apparent resentment directed at her in these strips is the main reason I think Hank has a shot at being ultimately being led to being 100% a decent human being.
Have you considered looking the meaning of literally in a dictionary?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally
2 : in effect : virtually
—used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible
will literally turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or injustice—
Norman Cousins
Yeah, sorry man, but the prescriptivists have lost that battle.
As usual.
Fuck the dictionary. It doesn’t know shit.
I love Becky.
Well now I also want pizza
Even when I don’t want pizza, I still kinda want pizza.
totally get that.
“I want pizza. … I’m not actually hungry, but…”
“That’s my secret, Captain. I always want pizza.”
(dangit now I’m hungry for pizza and I *literally just ate dinner*)
Due to certain food-related issues, pizza doesn’t work for me. I know I’m missing out, but if it’s this addictive, maybe I’m lucky?
Or you haven’t met the right pizza.
I remember that Carol is significantly based on Willis’s mom. I wonder how much Hank resembles their irl dad.
eh fuck it
Becky ya gotta hurry up with this shit, it’s PIZZA TIME
*plays “It’s Pizza Time” on hacked muzak*
ooooops not meant to be a reply
fuck
All good. Pizza time for Hank and the mysterious Willis Sr., too.
The detail of having to self-correct to the “right” pronoun when talking to a transphobic parent about their trans kid is so real- I’ve had to do some fast thinking when referring to a friend how I’m used to calling them, then bullshitting their parents about the actual reason why I called them that.
“I called her cole because her hair is black so it’s a nickname I use sometimes” and thankfully they bought it enough for it to not be an issue
Tell me about it. I’m the “safe affirming” parent and keeping track of two names and which parents are chill and which aren’t and code switching between friend safe name and government name and pronouns is terrifying. My kids have lots of queer friends with not chill parents.
As a Doctor of Philosophy I recommend pizza for what ails you.
I’d recommend opening a “Drunken Philosopher’s Pizza and Liquor” but the people who grew up watching Monty Python are getting a bit long in the tooth.
I maintain the big twist will be that Hank and Carol assumed Joyce was pro-Becky because she was gay but were hoping it was a phase (bleah). Also that Hank doesn’t know the difference between gay and trans.
Don’t trust Ronald Reagan. I think that’s just common knowledge now after he’s been dead for decades.
He was less trustworthy when he was alive. These days he can pretty much be relied upon to lie there and rot. It’s not like this is Shortpacked! or something.
No No No – Reagan was the MOST trustworthy character in Shortpacked!
Ronald Reagan being a character in Shortpacked is one of those things that make me wonder what the hell was going on in that comic. I’ve learned through comments that Robin was also a congresswoman and married Leslie and had super speed and I don’t understand the how or why of any of that. Also Carla was a robot.
Well, it’s quite simple, really. She had super speed because of the augmentations the aliens gave her when she was abducted.
If you have the time, you might want to go back and read the Willis comics set in the Shortpacked universe. They’re a lot more wacky and zany than Dumbing of Age, which is set in a more realistic world. That other universe had aliens and robots and lots of people with actual superpowers and stuff, and it can be interesting to see how similar and different the same characters are in those comic strips compared to this comic.
Simple version is Shortpacked was a slice of life sequel to his SciFi comic. Joyce had a jetpack!
I dunno, I think I’d trust Historical Jesus over Reagan
Assuming, of course, there was a historical Jesus.
In Shortpacked, there was: https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/historical
Hell, I never trusted him when he was president.
Free food is always at least second on the priorities list in college, and Becky is no exception.
Damn, guy’s so old he still calls his doctor his ‘physician’.
I have a friend in their 20’s who also calls their doctor their “physician.” I think it’s just a matter of where you grew up.
I feel like while Becky’s mask is canonically very good, it’s starting to fall out of plausibility range.
First, Hank knows her sexuality, and to him that’s going to near-automatically push her out of “politically reliable” box.
Second, assumptions aside, didn’t she pretty publicly hijack Congresswomen DeSantos’s Twitter feed and swing her left as campaign manager? Not big national news, but public enough for a quasi-parent who cared about her safety to take note. And that was less than four months ago.
I don’t think any of that would influence Hank because Hank would know the left as terrorist supporting psychopaths who hate freedom. Not because who support free medicare and a basic income. No, he’s against socialism. You know, EVIL.
(I’m not even joking, the household is using the word to mean something totally different which is why Bernie is so popular when people listens)
“You know this, and this, and this? Those are things ‘socialists’ actually want.”
“That’s not possible, those are all good things. Everyone wants those.”
“Uh huh. Well, what about this, and this, and this? Because those are things that the Republican Party is for.”
“Oh stop it, you’re making that up, that’s just cartoonishly evil.”
“Mr. Hines, I ain’t been here long. What is these goddamn reds?”
“A red is any son-of-a-bongo that wants thirty cents an hour when we’re payin’ twenty-five!”
“Well, Jesus, Mr. Hines. I ain’t a son-of-a-bongo, but if that’s what a red is— why, I want thirty cents an hour. Ever’body does. Hell, Mr. Hines, we’re all reds.”
(Steinbeck)
Exactamundo.
Wonder how much that’d be adjusted for inflation?
Looks like about 5.83/hour in 2025 money if you start with 0.25/hr in 1939.
Also, the average factory wage was about 0.45/hour, so Mr. Hines was skinning his workers alive.
You’re missing the part where it’s not just some lefty telling you the Republicans want those things, they actually explicitly say they do, but it still gets dismissed as too cartoonishly evil to believe anyway.
And you think he doesn’t associate LGBTQ with Communist terrorism in that complex of collective TV-mediated neuroses called politics? At all?
Apparently he doesn’t, considering that when he decided “Josh” must be a commie, he stopped thinking “he” might be gay.
Hank would be confused at that and think that’s crazy.
Carol would nod her head.
Because Hank knows gay people and thinks they’re human.
Hank you don’t sound like you really want to be The Dad, what do you want to be instead?
Maybe he wants to be the guy!
Hank is not the guy. Hank’s not capable of being the guy. I had a guy, but now I don’t. Hank. Is not. The guy.
Hope he remembers to watch for upward-falling giant cherries.
I think Hank is realizing that Jordan, Joyce, and possibly jocelyne are either:
A. Failures as human beings which means he’s a failure as a parent
B. Good human beings, which means he’s a failure as a person for this being in spite of his teachings.
I think in some ways, despite his explicit teachings, his example might have helped.
Honestly, he sounds like what he wants is an easy way to reconcile being “The Dad” with who he thought “Hank, the Good Christian Father” was. He’s been learning the whole strip that those two things aren’t compatible.
I’m glad that for all that Hank is misguided here we’re able to see that he’s still coming from a good place. At first glance it might seem controlling, like he’s trying to force his views on his children. But what he’s trying to do is not nearly so sinister; he’s just trying to be there for his kids in spite of all the trouble his family is going through. Sure, he’s not going about it in the best way right now, but as long as his actions are being motivated by his care for his children I genuinely believe he’s going to come out of this a parent that we can respect and support.
True story: a long time ago my autistic son had done something wrong, with the best of intentions, and asked him (rhetorically), “Do you know what the road to Hell is paved with?”
He thought for a while and offered, “Republicans?”
Correction – ‘I’ asked him
I like your son.
Plot Twist: Hank’s not the dad. He’s some other parental figure… 😉
Everything’s better with pizza! Even if your son is a Commie Queer! (Queer Commie?)
[Narrator] “We’ve replaced Hank’s Commie son with a Progressive Daughter. Let’s see if he notices.”
I think it would be Queer Commie(?) The only justification that I have for that being that it sounds more natural to me.
I couldn’t decide which sounded better, which is weird because usually things like word are easy for me to discern. For example, “ugly old grey troll” sounds normal, but “grey old ugly troll” sounds weird.
Descriptive order” refers to the standard sequence of adjectives in English, which is Determiner, Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Origin, Material, Purpose (often abbreviated as DOSASCOMP). This order ensures that sentences sound natural and are easily understood, as native speakers subconsciously follow this pattern. For example, a “lovely little old round red French wooden rocking chair” follows the established order.
Based on that: ugly is an opinion, old is the age, grey is the color, and troll is the subject.
As for the “Queer Commie” or “Commie Queer” debate, I guess it depends on what you consider the subject, and what you consider the determiner.
No, “commie” just isn’t an adjective, it’s a noun.
I think that’s the problem. So’s queer in this usage
“Commie” functions as an adjective, though, at least more often than other right-wing invective: compare “commie terrorist” to “terrorist commie”, the first is clearly more correct.
Interesting. Danke. Gratzi. Thanks, even. Oh, wait. A Commie would probably say, Xie xie or Spasibo. 🙂
Fuck physicians. They don’t know anything useful.
They know Tylenol does not make autism.
Just wait until a doctor is paid enough to “find” evidence that it does.
I need the doctor who will “find evidence” that Viagra causes autism, which must be doable since geriatric sperm increases the rate of all kinds of non typical outcomes.
????
I require context
Turnit and RFK want to pin autism on Tylenol. Specifically Tylenol foor pregnant women.
forget bullets
somebody needs to sow that guy’s asshole shut and keep feeding him
and feeding him
and feeding him
Autism existed before Tylenol but this is just the latest distraction from the files that absolutely do not contain Trump and are a hoax anyway. Nudge, nudge, wink wink.
I honestly think this is the same thing as what actually happened with the measles vaccine.
They’ll bang on and on about how dangerous Tylenol is and then come out with a “totally safe because we removed a preservative” version of acetaminophen to sell so they can profit off being the only pain and fever reducer on the market allowed to pregnant women.
(I think what’s happening is the same thing… etc)
Because Andrew Wakefield was never trying to stop kids being vaccinated full stop. He was trying to sell his own version of a vaccine by throwing mud on the much more ubiquitous competition.
For more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_MMR_autism_fraud
Andrew Wakefield is one of many people that make me wish I believed in hell because no earthly punishment can possibly be enough for the damage he’s done
I keep trying to think of how to phrase this in a way that doesn’t sound rude, but I think I’m just going to hit enter:
The devil doesn’t need any more advocates, the people being affected by this issue absolutely do.
THIIIIS 👏🏽
it’s not really a debate, there’s no magical sequence of words that’ll make our adversaries see reason, we can (and we SHOULD) venerate the truth without acknowledging the liars, the lies or the ones repeating them
in this political climate, these discussions has some very real impact on people’s lives — they are in fact, not a game of intellectual football
There IS no way to prove a negative. Billions of pregnant people taking Tylenol every day and having 100% neurotypical kids would not prove that it can’t “slightly increase the chances”, and in the meantime:
1. Denying pregnant people the only painkiller they can currently take while pregnant without massive risk to the fetus,
2. Blaming pregnant people for any difficulties their autistic kids have,
3. Potentially dismantling ADA protections for autistic people, because it’s their “mother’s” fault they’re disabled, so the state shouldn’t have to provide jack shit, especially going forward now that they’re “””willfully””” causing future fetuses to be autistic.
Oh and of course RFK Jr also wants all neurodiverse people denied any medications we might need and put to work on “””””wellness””””” farms to make us neurotypical. i.e., conversion therapy, but also, you know. Definitely a certain type of camp, too.
Oh, and BEING FEVERISH WHILE PREGNANT is also a massive risk to the fetus. So “taking nothing” is also a bad option, even if you don’t care about pregnant people suffering.
Billions of pill popping preggos. BILLIONS.
Li, of course they care about pregnant people suffering. They care that it’s not happening enough, and they want it to happen more, in as many ways as possible.
It’s not “interesting, worth looking deeper” at all, because the entire thing is a smokescreen. The only motivation, the only real endgame that’s ever going to come from asking “Does X cause autism?” is some worthless bigot trying to stop people like me from existing. Hasn’t everyone had enough of that? When they start asking those questions, you need to start stapling their mouths shut, not encouraging them by saying “Hmm, maybe they’re onto something here”.
Advocate for me, not the devil.
RIGHT????
“””debate”””” like this doesn’t really work to automatically benefit us or society at large the way white liberals wanna think it does
by allowing an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist from their pseudo-science fringes to be put alongside an actual accomplished scientist, all it really dues is further legitimize/normalize the anti-vaxxer to people who haven’t yet made up their minds
hell, Ian Danskin even made an entire video in the Alt-Right playbook about how this kinda crackpot bigoted bullshit gets mainstreamed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq0ZHgKT2tc
please do not play devil’s advocate for anti-vaxxers.
Like I said elsewhere, I don’t have autism because my mom took acetaminophen while she was pregnant; I have autism because my dad used to watch westerns and criticize the historical inaccuracies. (He got especially incensed when somebody in 1886 had a Winchester rifle that wasn’t produced until 1888. Note: Dates from memory, so I might have them wrong because my field is more SF than Old West, but it was something along those lines.)
Quick note for anyone who gets caught in this conversation with a true believer, or even someone who is just confused. There IS a correlation, in some studies, between Tylenol usage in pregnancy and autism in the kid. However, this correlation disappears entirely in studies that focus on siblings (where the drug was used during one pregnancy, but not the other).
What this means is that this really is an example of correlation, not causation–what happens is the mother gets an infection or other source of inflammation during pregnancy, and THAT likely triggers an increased incidence of autism. Tylenol is about as relevant to the autism as ice cream consumption is to shark attacks.
But do they know why kids love the taste of cinnamon toast crunch?
No, because that might be useful.
I agree with Becky pizza is a great way to be a great parent. Second only to loving your children unconditionally.
Unconditional love. Kinda like Jesus said?!
Funny how that works out; it is almost like he preached love, and forgiveness. :V
Ooo look, we are siblings.
Cool 🙂 Though we’re probably on slightly better terms than they are; since neither of us have antagonized the other.
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
Does Becky even know about Hong Kong? or Bedtime for Bonzo?
this year thus far has been against the recommendation of my physician
We’ve replaced the nation’s top physician with a complete nutcase! Let’s see if anyone notices.
Pizza is good. Talking about politics over pizza might not be so good, especially when your dad seems to think you’re a terrorist and/or communist for protesting against genocide.
Yes yes Pizza pizza
“Even revolutionaries like chocolate chip cookies.” – Mike Doonesbury
So this is about HIM not having failed in his Dadly duties
Have some more pizza, dude. Here, have mine too.
Hank is realizing his children have either outgrown him or he’s been a spectacularly shitty parent to three of them.
“Y’know Hank, from what I gather of Joss’s * political arguments, what . . . he . . . is protesting is targeted killings of women and children and doctors and other noncombatants. Now, I know that’s a radical position, but you can think about counterarguments and such while the pizza is on its way. I bet you can think of something really persuasive! You’re the dad!”
*: If you say “Joss” quickly, it doesn’t sound too different from “Josh”
That’s what the writer of God’s Not Dead thought, too!
“But they’re eating the pets.”
“What?”
“They are forcing the kids to use litter boxes in school.”
“…WHAT?”
“At gunpoint for ISIS!”
“Hank, I love you, but it’s hard to reason you from a position you did not use reason to reach in the first place.”
The first time I read this, I remember thinking “haha what funny extreme examples of silly political things” and then I remembered… that these were all real talking points last year in politics…
this fucking country, man…
Actually, Hank did sort of have a response to that here:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/handwringing/
“A country has a right to defend itself.”
“Any hand-wringing over the results just means you’re falling for the propaganda of the insurgents”
(could be that “propaganda” and “insurgents” should be italicized/boldface)
“It betrays the company you keep.”
(could be that “company” should be italicized/boldface)
What could be the response to that? Well, maybe something like . . .
“Okay, so you would tell Joss that caring about targeted killings of women and children and doctors and other noncombatants is just . . . hand-wringing over propaganda? . . . Maybe you two could just agree to disagree about that or something? Like, kids these days and their hand-wringing, haha!”
(I would kinda hope that hearing his own words echoed back at him like that would give Hank pause.)
Pick a comment
1. Aww, as a father, he still worries about his children and want to be in contact
2. What a patriarchal Republican who puts his need to play daddy above his child’s need to be left alone.
Would like to add
3. Man who had what he though was his solid purpose and place in life shattered (church, marriage) instinctively clings to what family structure and sense of purpose he can, as a shipwrecked person clings to a life float.
Bingo.
That sounds suspiciously like nuance to me
Nuance in the comments section? In this economy?
All three can be true.
We know the oldest kid peaced out long ago and part of that of that was reinforced by his ex-wife. It could be he thinks he still has a chance to connect with Joss to show he isnt as awful as Carol about just dumping kids who don’t agree. He might not view it as wanting to be left alone but not wanting them to feel like they have to be alone any longer.
John is the oldest and he’s still toeing the fundy line. If you mean Jordan, he was the second youngest, between Jocelyne and Joyce.
pizza is universal tho i wonder how many ppl in their 60s would still eat some, i feel like i’d get halfway through one slice and immediately get stomach issues
Fun sliding timescale fact:
Becky is too young to remember Reagan’s presidency.
Horrifying timescale fact:
So’s Hank.
Nah, Hank’s in his 50s. He might have been young, but he was around for Reagan.
He’d have been around, but would he have been old enough to be paying attention to politics at all? If he started paying attention to politics in 8th grade and he’s 50 years old, his first political memory would be the 1988 election. For him to remember Morning in America, he’d have to be born in 1971 at the absolute latest, which would make him 54. It’s certainly possible, but the window is closing rapidly. This may well be the last Reagan reference Dumbing of Age can realistically get away with.
Remembering Reagan is not a prerequisite for idolizing Reagan.
Case in point, I was once subjected to a godawful video about “Who does God want you to vote for?” shares by churches, who couldn’t actually go and *tell people* who to vote for, but sure used Reagan as the model for an ideal presidency.
In fact, given the modern Republican party, remembering Reagan may directly conflict with idolizing Reagan. A politician with Reagan’s policies and positions would seen as a RINO traitor today, but since he’s the sainted dead he can be invoked and endowed with support for whatever Republican ideology you want.
Carol is 60, so it’s likely Hank is either the same age or older. Also, I’m 51, and I remember Reagan well (unfortunately). The first election I was really aware of was ’84, as the candidates and the issues were covered in Scholastic News. My 4th grade class even had a debate and a mock vote. (Mondale lost. 🤷♀️) As Hank is very probably a decade older than me, his Reagan memories would be even clearer. Not to mention how Reagan’s been deified by conservatives since his death. (see also Mary)
I’m pretty sure there is an older comic where Hank is described as a dentist in his 60s by Joyce, which would put him about at that age. Sliding timescale gets weird as time will go on, but for the moment Hank was definitely solidly in his 20s for part or all of the Reagan presidency.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/02-to-remind-you-of-my-love/dozen/
Not everyone starts that late. My oldest datable TV memory is, as it happens, of Reagan – and I was 5.
Counterpoint — I’m in my mid 40s, and I CLEARLY remember the Reagan/Mondale election.
Yeah, a lot of this depends on your parents!
The children of more politically aware parents can be remarkably tuned in to politics, as long as their parents actually talk to them about it.
One of my aunts has Gen Z kids, and they were like, making jokes about like, McCain and Romney when they were in like ten at the oldest, because my aunt has just always talked to her kids — not like they were adults but like they were people capable of understanding her. (She also taught them sign language as infants, so they had some language ability even when they couldn’t physically form understandable words yet.)
I do wonder increasingly what Hank’s parents were like. The only insights we’ve got right now on Younger Hank are the bonus strip where he met Carol and him telling Jocelyne that he grew his hair out “too” at “your age”. He can’t have gone very liberal, but maybe he was more “Jesus’s main message is love” for a while or something.
Anyway, he probably didn’t have parents like my aunt, but he MAY have had parents who thought informing him of how great Reagan was was just part of good parenting.
Versus Joyce, who it seems was kept sheltered from politics (“you have the letter my parents like next to your name” about Robin being a Republican)? But it really seems like Carol was pulling further and further away from “secular” everything as the kids grew up, and “protecting” them from politics was probably kind of a not entirely happy compromise.
(Thinking of their conversation about Jordan.)
Everyone who remembers watching the Challenger burn up remembers Reagan.
I’m waiting for Hank to become an “I love my trans daughter and my AR-15” libertarian conservative.
Ah yes, the ‘why not both’ answer to bi-partisanism.
(Auto correct wanted to change that to bi-parasitism… and it’s not really all that wrong…)
I don’t agree with libertarians re: individualism vs collectivism, and the importance of government in delivering societal good. But I can at least talk to them on a level where we can find common ground and overcome most differences.
But that’s actual libertarians. “Libertarian-conservatives” in a U.S. context tend to be people who believe in keeping government out of things that they like or affect them, while writing flowery arguments excusing things like anti-LGBT discrimination. Small govt for me, not for thee bs.
Or insisting on small government in order to keep government from preventing such discrimination. Seen plenty of libertarians arguing that equal employment and public accommodation legislation was government overreach.
As is typical with politics, you can generally talk with everyone and find common ground if you have similar values and are willing to accept other people can have similar values with wildly divergent proposed approaches — and “I want everyone to be as prosperous and free as possible” are pretty common values for political movements.
Unfortunately as is also typical, some people’s values are “I want to punish people who aren’t like me” or “I don’t believe the world can be good for everyone, so I want to be on top”.
panel 5 : huh
Hank: be the Dad
Pizza is such a popular social lubricant, what did d people do like 100 years ago before it was a thing everywhere?
Fun fact: Pizza was the original McDonalds. In Ancient Rome, it was food served in a cart in a folded bread like a taco of whatever meats they had lying around and other stuff.
Which is why it had a reputation as cheap peasant food for a long time.
It may have had cheese, but it didn’t have marinara sauce, tomatoes are from South America.
Very true.
Booze. I’m pretty sure you knew that.
Oh, and, offering each other cigarettes.
For one raucous moment they had beer, cigarettes and sit down pizza huts all in the same building!
When I was a kid, there was a Pizza Hut that actually had a license to serve beer. The cops kept a close eye on the place. And of course they had a smoking section – even McD’s had ashtrays back then.
Nice save, Becky!
This is why Becky is awesome and I love her.
I’m actually relieved to see Hank thinking about Becky’s offer for a second before resolving to be the Dad. Toedad would have just shut down any such offer in his single mindedness. Hank genuinely considers the offer as it might help his child. And it’s clear that he values his relationship with his children very strongly, on a genuine level.
He has a long way to go. If he can regulate himself through the strong emotional reactions he has when he hears the vastly different viewpoints and learns the truth about Jocelyn, I think this could turn out okay.
At least, I hope it turns out okay. I would really love to see Hank’s character arc continue in a positive direction.
Becky: YGOLOHCYSP, mofos!
Like Resident Alien pizza is my greatest weakness.
To be fair, if one of my kids turned up on the fascist side I’d want to intervene somehow. Luckily that doesn’t seem likely. As adults they have more sense that I did at their age.
That’s a good point.
We think Hank is wrong, so we see him as trying to control his kids when he should be letting them go their own way and even learning from them, but if a more liberal parent was dealing with an early 20s kid heading down the incel/fascist rabbit hole we wouldn’t be talking about how parents shouldn’t try to control their adult children.
This is about half of where I’m coming from, especially as Hank has already proven himself to have that rarest of conservative-parent attributes — he actually listens when his kids talk, sometimes.
So it’s not about Jocelyne being gay, and it’s not even really necessarily about her politics. It’s about a loss of control and a feeling that Hank’s role in the world has been upended by the divorce and Carol going all in on their horrible church. Tough shit to deal with, but Jocelyne doesn’t deserve to have those insecurities taken out on her.
Hopefully, pizza bonding helps.
Plus it gets Hank off campus and away from all those students newspapers…
Now Becky’s trying to kill Joyce’s dad!
Becky is so masterful at this, Im always impressed by how smart she is. And I’m so proud of her putting her heartbreak aside and getting things done without letting it hold her back at all. Just wanna give her a huge hug and praise her right now
pizza IS pretty great
So I’m sure I missed this discussion from the first strip Hank reappeared in but he is supposed to look older now, right? This isn’t just enhanced dadliness? Like this is “the last few months have been A LOT” stress aging. Not drastic, but definitely there.
It could be a combination of that and Willis’ art style evolving since we last saw him
Hear me out: Becky, also running for President.
I am heartened by Hank’s wanting to be a Dad again rather than claiming the rank of Father like Ross would have.
You know. I think Hank is just so much like Joyce, actually. Joyce was a lot like this at the start. Completely misguided in pretty much most things, clinging to hurtful ideas because they are familiar, but when push comes to shove she always actually does the right thing that she knows in her heart to be right, not what she’s been told to believe. I think Hank is the same way, and he’s literally just starting out where Joyce used to be. And Hank is probably a lot more set in his ways, so it will take him longer than it did Joyce, but…
Ultimately, when faced with the decision to either accept his daughters for who they are or drive them away and hurt them, the choice will be an obvious one, even without the clear cautionary tale of Toedad fresh in his mind. He may not make that choice GRACEFULLY but…he’ll do it, and he’ll try. (Joyce has pretty much always been clumsy as hell in every part of her growth journey, but DAMNED if she doesn’t try.)
pizza is comfort food, even for demons, that’s why pizza can calm you. ~<3