WARNING: This comic often ignores the Laws of Physics
Sam & Fuzzy
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Paranatural
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Kiwi Blitz
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The Sanity Circus
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The Automan's Daughter
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A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Alice and the Nightmare
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Alice finally attends University to learn to collect the dreams of humans, meet new friends, and deal with a pesky reflection along the way.
Widdershins
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A series of light-hearted Victorian-era adventure stories featuring grumpy bounty hunters, accidental thiefkings, and more, in England's magical capital city Widdershins!
Goodbye to Halos
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Cuddles, gay flirting, weird feelings, and magic-fueled knife fights - it's an adventure across the queer multiverse!
Sufficiently Remarkable
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Hazy London
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Jailbird
Charlie Davis
An all-ages comic about a recently escaped prisoner's struggle to understand the outside world, and vice-versa. Also, a magic cape!
Stand Still, Stay Silent
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A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
Sister Claire
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In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Anarchy Dreamers
Emily Ree
Sparkly undead kids fight society's worst Nightmares in this pastel-punk urban fantasy coming-of-age!
Real Science Adventures
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Spin off stories and other adventures from the world of Atomic Robo!
Wychwood
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When Tiara's pyrokinesis is finally noticed, she is captured by a magical research organization for study. If she cooperates, she could be helping to save humanity from a dire threat - but can she trust them?
Ghost Junk Sickness
Studio CARTRIDGE, Laura Lee
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[un]Divine
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Lilith's Word
inkPangur
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Atomic Robo
Brian Clevinger, Scott Wegener
The robot punches monsters and bad robots and one time he was a cowboy.
Demon's Mirror
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Based loosely off of "The Snow Queen", a story by Hans Christian Andersen, we see things take a different turn as the demons become central characters, and the side characters stick around. Yup, that's the only differences. Enjoy!
Empowered
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Whomp!
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Fireweeds Moors
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Knights Errant
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A cute, pantsless thief is pursued across the stars by a buttoned-up military officer in the spacey, laser-filled future.
Starhammer
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Kochab
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A YA F/F fantasy comic about Sonya, a lost skier trying to survive a snowy wilderness and find her way back to her village; and Kyra - a fire spirit trying to fix the home that she let fall apart around her.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Cyanide & Happiness
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Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Devil's Candy
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A lush fantasy about boy genius Kazu Decker, the girl he constructed for his 9th grade science project, and the world of devils and monsters they live in.
Wilde Life
Pascalle Lepas
Oscar decided to rent an old haunted house, and that's when things got weird...
Star Impact
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A young, energetic woman fights her way up in the world of super-powered boxing after discovering the mighty gloves of her missing idol!
Awaken
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Monster Pulse
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Caramel Corn
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Sarah is the only human left in a world full of mythical creatures and monsters. All she wants to do is live a quiet life, but everything changes when she meets her guardian angel, Jacob.
Between Failures
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The low stakes adventures of an assorted group of 20 somethings trapped in the declining years of American retail. They are naughty and say lots of swears.
Cut Time
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The Witch Door
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Katariina Lehto discovers her neighbor is a witch called Jousia Muotka. Jousia introduces Katariina to the strange people and places beyond the witch door...
Go Get a Roomie
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Experience the queer journey of an upbeat hippie and the friendships she makes along the way! A tale of self-discovery and love of many forms.
Love Not Found
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Tigress Queen
Allison Shaw
A barbarian warlord and a pampered prince try to avoid a marriage alliance that could end decades of violence.
The Lonely Vincent Bellingham
Diana Huh
Vincent is an unkind man looking to disappear, and finds himself in the care of a vampire and her two wicked children.
Astral Aves
Moon Cabal
A fantasy coming-of-age following the adventures of Astra The Black and friends, as they navigate the mysterious world around them. It's politics, adventure, and the supernatural; oh, and crazy hair.
This is Not Fiction
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What do you do when the person you're in-love with is an anonymous romance novelist? Get your best friend to hire your worst enemy for help!
Girl Genius
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In a time when the Industrial Revolution has become an all-out war, Mad Science rules the World...with mixed success.
Monsterkind
Taylor C
Wallace Foster, a young, bright-eyed human social worker, has his entire world view rocked when he's suddenly relocated into a city primarily inhabited by monsters.
Guilded Age
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Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Godslave
Meaghan Carter
Edith has been thrown into the dangerous world of modern-day Egyptian mythology. Fighting monsters and dealing with family drama of godly proportions.
Lighter Than Heir
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The End
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Two aliens crash a sci-fi convention and accidentally take seven nerds on an adventure that spans the galaxy!
Never Satisfied
Taylor Robin
Lucy Marlowe, a magician's apprentice, competes against other apprentices for an important, magical, Goverment Job.
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Amber’s dad’s current stepson cares muchly about Amber’s dad’s current stepson and has charted a diagram of Amber’s dad’s current stepson intersecting many former mens’ lady friends
While Joe thinks this is the case, Faz is Amber’s dad’s son with his current wife so that makes Amber and Faz half-siblings but Joe and Faz *Darth Helmet voice* ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! *Darth Helmet voice*
Pablo, you may hate that you understand the comment, but I’m still trying to puzzle out if there was any significance to “many former men’s lady friends ” vs “many men’s former lady friends.”
So, what are we supposed to think when a man is cast as a woman’s property? Just wondering, ’cause there’s a lot of that going on here, and I don’t want to commit a thoughtcrime.
Think the same thing of the woman, but when you refer to her in the future, use her name, rather than, “x’s wife,” “x’s sister,” “x’s mom,” “x’s daughter,” etc.
Yes, she might very well be a wife, sister, mom, daughter…she might be ALL of those. But she’s herself, first and foremost.
I wish there were an edit button on comments. -__-
I also want to add: This is the central concept of “person-first” language. Any time you frame someone with a descriptor or label FIRST, your impression of that label colors your opinion of that person. If you say “Betty Anne is married to Steven,” that puts the focus on who I am and how I relate to the people around me. If you say, “Steven’s wife,” or “Steven’s wife is Betty Anne,” that either eliminates me as an individual entirely or puts me secondary to my husband. And believe me – this happens ALL THE TIME. Even my own parents devalue my work and my income, because in their mind, I am “Steven’s wife” or “Don and Cindy’s daughter,” before I’m “Betty Anne.”
One of the things that drives the woman to whom I am married absolutely spare is the way my parents insist upon addressing letters or parcels sent only to her as “Mrs. John Small Berries”.
I’ve asked them repeatedly to knock it off and use her actual name (and, if they absolutely have to prepend a title, to use the “Dr.” to which she’s entitled), but they hide behind the excuse that “Well, this is what we learned as the proper way to address a letter.” (Which excuse has been recently bolstered by “Here’s a Miss Manners book [from 1989!] which says it’s still correct.”)
I guess following patriarchal conventions is more important to them than respecting their daughter-in-law’s desire to be treated as an actual person in her own right.
I have a button I sometimes wear that says “Property of 《spouse’s name》. If lost, please return.” I might someday get a shirt that says the same thing. You can think whatever you like.
Same here. And it irks me that she doesn’t see how it’s so obviously a morally dubious idea that even JOE points it out.
But to be fair, I hate how she calls Sal “Walky’s sister” even more. Nothing prompted it. It’s nice that she uses the things she learned from the gender studies class, but a lot less so if it’s to reinforce the sexist bullshitting rather than deconstruct it.
I agree that it made him snap out of his (probably lusty) gazing. Still, I don’t like it, because she is the one who put this “another man’s relation” angle, and it’s actually that weird turn of phrase that ticked him off, not the fact that Sal is “another man’s relation”. It’s proven by how he didn’t stop looking at Sal while he began to answer. He only did when he had a “wait a minute” moment.
Actually, to Joe’s credit, he’s NOT snapped out of it. He’s objectifying her as Walky’s sister and how he doesn’t believe she could be so hot and related to Walkerton. It’s the fact she DIDN’T USE HER NAME that he found weird that snaps him out of it–showing it didn’t work.
What I find interesting is how all these guys find it hard to notice Sal and Walky are related.
They literally have the same face. Like Walky said to Billie, she’s physically him, but with boobs (he left off the long hair and other anatomical differences, but you get the point).
I’ll admit that I’ve never been good at noticing people who are related to each other, but when they look this alike, even I would notice.
But Ethan, Danny, I think Jason, and now Joe all missed it. And it can’t be that they’re all too busy lusting after her body to notice her face, because She doesn’t do it for Ethan.
She literally only did it to make a point to Joe explicitly. She didn’t, like, make a slogan saying “that’s someone’s daughter” or something. Joyce is not reinforcing a sexist system by making a specific point to one guy.
“What I find interesting is how all these guys find it hard to notice Sal and Walky are related.”
Well, a few things to keep in mind:
– Comics (by their nature) don’t show a lot of detail. While Walky and Sal are drawn with similar skin tone, overall body type, etc. there may be differences in (for example) facial features that might be obvious in a real person that don’t show up in a drawing
– They do have different accents and different personality types
As kids/teenagers, my brothers and I looked very, very much alike, and everyone noticed. A scant few people had a “I can’t put my finger on why I feel like we’ve met” moments, but that was mostly in adulthood where we’ve diverged a bit. Mostly, everyone was like YOU ARE CLEARLY SIBLINGS, HOW DO YOU HAVE THE SAME FACE, THAT IS CRAZY.
(It was made worse because we also have the same mannerisms and comedic timing, which the Walkertons don’t share, but still. It was really noticeable!)
It was nice to have a game we could play with everyone, it was called Scare Leorale’s Friends, in which we just all smiled at the same time. I hope Walky and Sal play that game sometimes. It’s pretty amusing.
I kind of want to see Joe get legitimately mad at Joyce over this. And maybe point out to her that Sarah’s trying to get Jacob to fall for *her*. Joyce needs a reality check, and I kind of want to see Joe get properly pissed at something. Last time was like… when Joyce was getting Mike to punch him in the face. And even that seemed weirdly low-key.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Joe’s forcing himself to not do feelings means he doesn’t get really mad easily. I know I have muted emotional reactions to a lot of things, and it’s because I don’t get emotionally invested in a lot of things.
Yeah, but she’s on record saying that Joe is usually right about stuff (it was when Sarah woke her up for church and Joyce wondered if she was about to be strangled).
I am oddly fixated on their matching clavicles here. They look like sideways exclamation points. Or the Morse code for “N”.
“Your eyes say ‘yes, yes” but your neck says “nnnn!:
I can, on a basis of “I’ll swing by for the approximately seven minutes per day of human affection that I can tolerate, and the rest of the time the two of you just have fun and don’t bother me, okay?”
Well, remember, Joyce thinks ANYONE can be changed in however way she wants with “gentle” nagging. She was going to make Joe not be Jewish anymore, remember?
I kinda want them together, since they’d be good for each other and make an awesome couple and Raidah is pretty manipulative towards Jacob. But I don’t want them to get together on these terms.
Raidah/Jacob so far seems like a relationship of convenience, at least painted by Raidah’s dialogue. That doesn’t seem like the strongest bond unless he’s serious about being a lawyer.
I find that an interesting thing for Leslie to teach her students in a college age gender studies class. It makes me wonder if this is because she’s from a fundamentalist religious household like Joyce and that colors the way she thinks about people. Ironically, it means she and Joyce probably speak the same language on these things–just came to opposite conclusions. Joyce=More God, Leslie=No God.
I think Leslie would’ve brought it up as an example of how patriarchal our culture is, which seems like exactly the kind of thing you’d expect in gender studies?
It sounds like the sort of thing which a patriarchal promoting person would say is true rather than actually being true as it feeds into masculine essential-ism. Then again, I don’t know the context of what Joyce is quoting.
Yeah, I think that cultural mode is more likely where Joyce and Leslie are from where there’s strong gender roles and oppression of women via a formalized structure. Outside of it, its a more disorganized generalized dismissal of women and misogyny. At least that’s a compare/contrast I heard in my gender studies class.
Or translated into English, “Hatred of women doesn’t diminish if there’s a dude protecting them in modern culture.”
Oh definitely, but in this case more respect is granted to the dude in ownership, so the listening man has reason to care more, because it’s not just blah blah blah about a woman, another man is now involved so it Matters More
At least, that’s my guess about the psychology behind it
Considering it’s a rather recent developement that women are allowed to stand on their own feet and are not concidered either the property of their father or their husband, I think that’s a rather condescending pow, Mr D.
There are still countries where a women cannot leave n her own because she doesn’t get her own passport but gets only an entry in her husbands/fathers.
Leslie was stating a historical and cultural fact.
I wonder how Joyce managed to understand her backwards,though. It’s not like Leslie is likely to approve.
It probably was presented as “this is another way women are undervalued in our culture” rather than “here’s a way to manipulate dudes”. Also, it’s almost definitely not Leslie’s own observation alone, it’s likely something out of their textbook or other reading material. You know, with sources and junk.
Take note, obviously, I think Leslie wasn’t trying to teach mind-control techniques. Just noting that it strikes me as the kind of thing she’d have grown up with and the culture therein.
Then again, it says something about my own views of society that I think it wouldn’t work in a broader generalized sense because it would require men to have any respect for other men’s “rights.” My view of society is there’s no limits to poor treatment, girlfriend or daughter or sister.
Well, consider as an example, how men are more likely to listen to a woman’s rejection if it’s “I have a boyfriend” and not “I’m not interested”–not 100% of the time, mind you, but more often
Also, the way we as a society have a tendency to go “she’s someone’s mother/daughter/sister/etc” rather than “she’s a person”
Also also, how many men only seem to understand how bad rape/etc is once they have a daughter
It’s absolutely true in fundie culture, but it’s also very much a thing in the wider culture
But that’s exactly the implicit misogyny problem here.
If she’s attached, trying to convince her to cheat – i.e. to ignore her stated preference in order to break her agreement with a man – is seen as making you a terrible person.
But trying to “change her mind” – i.e. to ignore her clearly stated preference by itself – is seen as fine.
In other words, respecting women’s decisions is optional unless it interferes with a man’s life.
No, unless the guy is a total douchebag, “I’m not interested” is the end of the interaction. But unfortunately, “no” from a woman in this culture just means the start of negotiations, because respect for consent? What’s that?
I typed the thing about rejecting vs having (or “having”) a boyfriend above myself but then I saw your post with more examples so I’m just +1ing it, and adding that as an afab person, I’ve had tons of times where I rejected a guy repeatedly, where he only backed off if I said I was taken, and often where they didn’t until they found out I was married, but then dropped it immediately.
Tbh I’ve always seen the “she’s someone daughter, sister, mother” thing as more displaying who else that person’s tragedy affects. People do the same with men.
They do, but I see that so much less often than the reverse. It shouldn’t matter who else it’s affecting–empathizing with a human being for her own sake should be plenty.
Depends on how you look at it. She did pretty much set Joe to point out that Sarah’s positioning Joyce for that role, not her, but I think Joe would rather consider Joyce’s feelings than be right. She’s not going to listen if Joe points it out, and she needs to hear it from Sarah, not him.
Ah, your first point feels right. As for shame . . . does Joyce know Raidah well enough to appreciate her point of view? It’s easy to dismiss another person’s feelings if you don’t know them.
I mean if you have much empathy no? It’s not that hard to be like “wow maybe I shouldn’t sabotage this person’s relationship for the gain of someone I like personally”
I think the issue is Joyce’s view of romance is still a 2-dimensional romcom ideal where the guy/girl is with the objective jerk and the protagonist (who she views Sarah as) will outshine the jerk and win the love interest over
100% this. There are tons of examples of “he’s just with the wrong girl” in heteronormative love stories. That is basically the basis of 90% of romantic comedies. Joyce’s script is fucked up, but it’s one that we’ve ALL been taught.
Eh, Joe can easily turn around and go “They’re not anywhere close to dating, that’s a little creepy, you still have no respect for people in established relationships”
That might just be because I honestly don’t remember if Sarah and Jacob have interacted since Joyce went with Jacob to church, and if it was anything substantial to lead Joyce to think that her ploy is working
I don’t believe we’ve seen them together, yet.
But they do have class together the same day Joyce hurt her toe, so they should have interacted off panel.
@cbwroses
if I remember correctly Joyce called Sarah for help after the
gender studies class, which interrupted Jacob and Sarah getting
back from class together because Sarah went to help Joyce
I also agree with Reaver.
However, people have easily mistaken “nice” for “flirting/interest” before and will do so again.
There are probably thousands of people doing so as you read this comment.
It’s also quite possible for one to develop into the other without any real intent. Or for the way you express “nice/friendly” to come off as flirtatious/interested.
Jacob’s commented on having problems with jealous girlfriends before. I wonder if he appears to be more flirty than he really is. Or if he tends to form friendships with women that seem close enough to worry his girlfriends (and mislead the female friends.)
Also, he is niiiice. Looks good, acts with respect, has ambitions and it seems to be from a wealthy enough family. He is close to a perfect match (if not downright perfect), and I guess that for some, he’s one that they’d really want to keep. One that, in their mind, may be too good to last and Jacob will be snatched by another woman any minute now.
Yeah, but Joyce is pleased to be able to declare Sarah as Jacob’s girlfriend because this is the sort of thing that the more you say it, the truer it becomes.
And he’s doing it wrong, because turning it around would be “How is Raidah’s boyfriend”? The trick is that MEN find more value in other men than women.
(Of course, there isn’t an existing cultural reverse of that for women. Sexism is asymmetrical)
If anything, I’d expect it would work the same way for women, if to a lesser degree. In which case, he’s doing it right – emphasizing Raidah’s status as Jacob’s girlfriend to raise her value.
I wonder what Joe would do if he stopped and realized that this means that he would be attracted to Walky if he had a pair of boobs and a pretty head of hair.
Y’know, I’m wondering how similar Walky and Sal actually look to people in-universe. Them being related had to be pointed out to Ethan, Danny and Joe before it clicked for them.
To be fair, once Danny saw them together it clicked.
I think the thing nagging at the back of Ethan’s mind when he saw Sal’s face was actually because of the robbery, but then when she said ‘Oh, have you met my twin?’ it was easy enough to go ‘oh, yeah, of course, that must be it’. And that realization can gets kicked down the road for another storyline’s problem.
Some significant differences. Hair is something people remember and their hair is very different for siblings. Boobs and the lack thereof is a pretty significant difference. And they don’t sound alike. I have four brothers, who have spent time in NYC, Boston, Indy, St. Louis, DC, the U.P. and Japan, which should have impacted our speaking. We all sound like basically the same person on the phone. Plus Sal can be very in your face or dismissive, while Walky is a go-along kinda guy. So we’re left with skin color and their face?
Oh let’s be real, we are ALL obnoxious little shits when we get into our first “studies” class. Be it gender, psychology, economy or anything. We rub the knowledge in people’s faces.
It usually has the opposite reaction because of the smugness,
So, I know this is off topic, but any USians should call their elected officials about the appointment of John Bolton. It doesn’t require senate approval, so you can’t block him, but you can express outrage that that incompetent warmonger in office and you can definitely ask your electeds to support circumventing measures (like limiting the president’s first strike capacity).
5calls and its-time-to-fight on weebly (aka Celeste_pewter on twitter) both have scripts if you need them.
Impeaching a president of the USA requires 218 votes in the US House of Representatives, and the way recent special elections have been going the Democratic Party might be able to swing that next January. But convicting on the impeachment and removing the president from office requires 67 votes in the Senate. But if the Democrats should win every single senate election this coming November they would have only 58 senators.
Ain’t nine Republican senators that would vote against Trump even if he were caught with ten billion borrowed roubles and tossing Putin’s salad.
It may not be something to wait out, but it’s unclear what can actually be done.
As far as impeachment, barring something far more outrageous than firing Mueller, it certainly won’t happen before January and Democratic control. It’s possible that with Democratic control of the House and revelations from real public investigations, public opinion will swing far enough to push even GOP Senators into acting.
Even without that, the House would be able to limit the damage.
At this point, the only thing that can be really done is damage control – limiting the president’s first strike capacity and basically ensuring that any elected official in an underwater district knows that their population does not want Bolton (and thereby will work to circumvent him).
Oddly enough, if you can do anything whatsoever about Trump, Pence is gone as well. In fact, I’m pretty sure we’ll go down to the Designated Survivor, because frankly, if you can actually demonstrate culpability at this point, Ryan’s probably doomed too.
I mean it’s beyond impossible because impeachment isn’t actually a process to remove a president, but rather a process by which to express disapproval of a president, but if you could clear the initial hurdle…
So sisters are the property of their brothers? Even interpretations of gender studies are bullshit.
And yes, I’m well aware his comment will be deleted.
The fact that it is bullshit has didn’t stop it from being the literal truth only about a century ago. A woman was never fully recognized as an adult. They were their father’s ward until they were married off, or if their father died first, their oldest male relative, even if that was a much younger brother.
That’s no longer the case today, but the underlying mentality didn’t just evaporate from our culture without a trace.
If you’d actually ever taken a gender studies class and paid attention, you might have understood what Leslie would’ve been talking about
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding her, but I’m not sure how Joyce’s point holds. Joe is essentially wondering how a woman he values quite highly, albeit for reprehensibly sexist stated reasons, could possibly be related to the annoying man-child. In other words, connecting her to Walky threatens to diminish her in Joe’s eyes, and for reasons specific to Walky rather than generalized to his sex.
Well, that’s still objectifying but Joyce’s opinion about Joe is wrong because he only snaps out of it because he does know Sal’s name and is confused why Joyce is referring to her as an accessory.
I think Joyce was making a deliberate point about objectifying? Like “you act and talk like a dude who would think like this”.
And describing her as “Walky’s sister” is a nice way to turn Joe’s world upside down out of nowhere, so I don’t actually think it’s objectifying on her part, just pointing out a relation. Like how Sal called her “the one who breaks out in hives when she lies”
Joe has just learned – in a recent class – that treating women as someone’s accessory rather than a person in their own right is a dick move. (And since he’s being reflective at the moment, he probably noticed that he’s done so in the past at some point. Just about everyone is guilty of that one at some point; it’s embedded in our culture.) It’s fresh in his memory.
And Joyce knows that.
Joyce is snapping him out of his reflexive objectification – without directly calling him on it – by making him think about, and notice, a completely different bad thing to do. Which makes him think about gender biased bad things to do in general. Which makes him notice the problem.
Not really, she should have just called him out directly on the shitty thing he was actually doing because it’s the only way he’s going to learn not to do it. Distracting him from doing it doesn’t solve anything about the relevant behaviour here.
Quick reminder: Sal and Walky are somehow identical twins of opposite genders. To the point that if Walky were to wear a wig (Or seaweed in the OG comic because FUCK YOUR LOGIC), he looks identical to Sal.
With that in mind, I ask your opinion: Do you think Walky androginous? or do you think Sal is the one that looks Androginous?
Some trans people don’t want to be called androgynous or any sort of synonym for ambiguous if I recall correctly. It depends on your intent and the context.
I can understand that. I’m nb myself, and I know that a lot of trans and nb people embrace androgyny as a style/identity of itself. Similar to femme/masc.
By itself, however, androgynous is not a slur. But, like you said, it depends on the context and people have used it to other trans people who don’t identify that way.
Without either of them looking androgynous. Their facial structures are close, but their bodies certainly aren’t identical – not just boobs, but curves and hips and the like.
And the hair and the style really make a huge difference in how we perceive people. Our brains work off patterns and shorthand as much as detail.
My siblings and I – both younger, one a boy, one a girl – aren’t twins even in the slightest, they are 5 and 7 years younger than me, and we all look nearly identical. People are constantly mistaking my sister and I for each other. It’s not all that uncommon.
…okay, that bit about “Men being more likely to see value in a woman if she’s cast as a man’s property”…
I mean, I get that we’re talking about subconscious, socially driven stuff, but I just don’t get that. Wouldn’t it be the opposite, that casting a woman as a man’s properly makes them seem less valuable?
I want to say that I don’t look at it that way… then again, I dunno. Just… never come across this concept before.
Think of it as “men are more likely to respect a woman if she belongs to another man”
If a woman is met with unwanted advances from a man, he is more likely to back off if she tells him that she is dating/married to another man than he would if she tells him ‘no’ straight up. In a similar vein, more sympathy is given to human trafficking/rape victims by portraying them as “someone’s daughter/sister/wife” than “this is another human being”
Without that qualifier, without there being that attachment to someone else, women are not seen as something valuable and can be disrespected and disregarded at will.
Well, traditionally, a woman was very valuable……a very valuable piece of property, that is. Making advances on a “taken” woman entailed serious risk to you, her husband might take it as an insult and hurt or kill you. But if she’s unattached, she’s taking all the risk, as her maintaining her place in respectable society was dependent on keeping her sacred virginity intact.
I’m _really_ not comfortable erasing the actual, honest-to-god agency that women historically have possessed, but I have no actual idea what the hell to do about it. Like, it’s also bad for the dead people (Who, as they’re dead, have precious few opinions about it) but it’s also wrapped up in the complacency that the status quo is seen in (“things have gotten so much better!”)
Your comment isn’t unique, and much of what you’re saying still does carry some weight, I just don’t know what to say about it and am bothered.
While I know that attitude was common up until a few generations back, I thought we as a society had pretty much outgrown it, something that changed about the time when women were recognized as persons and allowed to vote and own property, etc. That attitude towards women is totally foreign to me and I find it sad that it is still that common.
Shit, fuck, damn, there was the exact thing I was talking about and I literally did not see it until right after.
No. We haven’t outgrown it. We’ve gotten kinda better, but we have not ‘outgrown it’. These things are not gone. They are lessened. And it’s probably not totally foreign to you (or anyone else).
Traditionally, assaulting a woman who is cared for by another man is seen as more likely to backfire than assaulting a woman who stands on her own. Loads of weird thinking were inherited from the way our ancestors view life and relationships between genders, after all.
1. I think the shock to joe is sal being walkys sister…… and all that entails
2. Joyce is illustrating the point that many people point out that once your engaged/married in a relationship people seem to be more attracted to you the mistake she and the class is making is its just males intrested in females
IE “before i was married no one hot gave me the time of day … where were they years ago befoire i found her/him ? ”
3. The last panel is joyce just being a smartass …….
Okay. this is all IMHO so please take it that way.
I am a cisgender (pansexual) woman with a long-term male partner. I visibly present as “female.” I am NOT married to my partner and never will be, because I believe opposite-sex marriage in the U.S. (where I live), derives from a tradition of ownership of women.
BUT I have sometimes referred to my partner as my “husband” because it can make things easier. (NO I am NOT proud of this.) For example, when we travel outside the U.S., telling people at the hotels that we’re husband and wife facilitates things – and sometimes, when we haven’t, we get asked when we’re “getting married.” A bunch of people in our building (we live in an apartment) and the friendly guy who runs the bodega around the corner assume we are husband and wife.
I won’t lie – often when I introduce myself as [my partner’s name here] wife, I am treated better than when I present as an unmarried woman. Again, NOT PROUD of that and I’m actively trying to rectify that (“No, I’m NOT actually married to him…”).
My wife didn’t initially want to get married. My response was, “This is a way of demonstrating to other people I am serious about you, of my own commitment to you, my relationship before my religion, and also to solve a bunch of potential legal hurdles. Because until we’re married, plenty of people will not take our love seriously.”
If it helps any, my parents never got married. Like you and your partner though, my parents usually have to fudge details be saying they’re engaged, especially in hospitals and regarding bills and such. Especially since common law marriage isn’t a thing in our state. I used to get odd comments in school when they’d see my mom’s signature and realize we didn’t have the same last name. The typical assumption was that she was my ‘step-mom’ which confused the heckle out of me.
It’s such a thing. People think if you’re not married, you can’t be serious or in love or committed, and it’s stupid. I a lot of examples in like, advice columns and stuff, where someone will be like ‘my boyfriend/partner of ten years and I are having x issue,’ and the comments and sometimes the columnist (depends how old and conservative they are) are like ‘if it’s been ten years and you’re not even engaged, just break up, you’re just getting jerked around,’ even if the person explains why they’re not married.
(also yeah, experienced it here too. I straight up told our landlords we were married when we moved in here, and they were like ‘oh good ’cause you never know what types are applying.’ I’m married now, but that was creepy and weird. (it was also before I looked outwardly like a man))
I really want to like you Joyce but you REALLY need to pull that beam out of your eye… to be fair though Joe has a beam in his eye too but is trying to pull it out.
When someone whose moral authority is unquestionable tells Joyce that she’s doing the wrong thing to Jacob and Raidah, it will be a dark, horrible day for her. It might be the darkest day she ever had because she’s never really had reason to question her own moral grounding so deeply.
Considering what Joyce’s mom is like that is not surprising at all. At least her dad is okay.
Also I’m internally laughing my ass off that the moment someone mentioned a figure of “unquestionable moral authority to Joyce” my mind instantly jumped to Dorothy the Atheist XD
Joyce has had a lot of reason to question her own moral grounding deeply and has been since coming to college. Offhand, she learned to question her moral conviction of homosexuality as wrong and therefore realized what she was doing with Ethan wasn’t right. Toedad kidnapping Becky with a gun, etc, also lead her to deeply question the base of her convictions. Joyce has done a lot of evolving really.
In the case of trying to get Sarah and Jacob together, I think that’s less to do with her moral upbringing and more to do with her romantic enthusiasm. Like thinking Walky is secretly in love with Billie, that kind of thing.
I mean part of her upbringing was the idea that people who “know what’s best for you” have the authority, or even moral obligation, to ignore your expressed wishes in favour of theirs.
Look, Joe. This is a reasonable thing to disapprove of. But if you REALLY disapprove of it, it’s not like you don’t have Jacob’s number, which I can’t help but notice you’re not using.
That is curious, isn’t it? I mean, Jacob seems to be Joe’s friend so why hasn’t he told him to his face what Joyce is doing and her reasons for doing so? Everything should be soluble if Jacob politely asks Joyce to back off and tells Sarah that what she did is not only uncool, it is frankly wrong on many levels.
Still, this strip is called Dumbing of Age, after all. Sensible and common-sense thinking shouldn’t be expected and lessons will inevitably be learned the hard, painful way.
He’s friends with both, though, if I were him I wouldn’t want to be caught in that dumpster fire waiting to happen. Is it really so bad to not want to be caught up in that?
I remember that back in high school, I was the one who got in the middle, and the dumpster fire is not worth it. For the life of me, I can’t remember the exact details since it was 10+ years ago, and I don’t speak with any of the involved persons anymore. But in that case, I was friends with the boyfriend, the girlfriend, and others in a group. The boyfriend was being super jerk in some way (he was or had cheated with someone else in the group) and I told the girlfriend. In the end, she either a) didn’t believe me or b) decided he was worth it, because I got shunned out of that “friend” group despite the fact that everyone was mad at everyone for a while.
And this is how you learn that trying to be a good friend is not worth the drama and shit show that comes from involving yourself with other people’s relationships. Sure, all things considered, it’s better for me that I’m not stuck in that group anymore…but, still, I can 100% understand Joe not wanting to get in the middle of relationship clusterfuck.
I don’t think Joe feels he has the right to tell people who they should be with. If people break up or cheat, that’s their decision. He doesn’t expect everything to workout nicely (look at his father’s past behavior and experiences), but I think he respects people’s right to make those decisions.
It’s the deliberate manipulation and deceit that I feel really bugs him. And it’s happening on two levels, both by Joyce and to Joyce. So by repeatedly talking to Joyce about it, he may hope to get her to stop, realize Sarah is manipulating her, or both. Also, not saying anything to Jacob means he doesn’t harm the genuine affection Jacob and Joyce can have as friends.
It’s hard, when you’re in that situation, to tell the person being affected. If they honestly haven’t noticed or otherwise don’t care, they may just ignore you or completely cut you out, because now you’re the manipulative one trying to ruin someone’s relationship. It’s very likely that Jacob, who has portrayed his exes as all being ‘jealous’ for seemingly no reason, would not believe anyone if they told him someone was trying to break him up with Raidah, even if it was Joe. Jacob could look at Joe’s current relationship with Joyce and either 1) come to the conclusion that because Joe does not get along with her, he’s deliberately trying to ruin their friendship or 2) come to the conclusion that Joe likes Joyce and is trying to ruin their friendship out of jealousy
Either way, unless Jacob would take it seriously and not ignore or brush it off, it might not be worth bringing it up to him. At worst, it would just strain relationships between all three of them.
I think Joe’s betting on Joyce being a nice, good person- or at least, someone who’s trying to be that way- and it is generally more effective to get the person to stop doing what they’re doing than it is to tell the person being affected what’s going to happen. If Joe gets Joyce to stop, then it stops. If Joe tells Jacob, Jacob will either ignore Joe, let it happen, or maybe tells Joyce to stop. But it’s not a guarantee.
That would be a stupid reaction since telling Jacob that Joyce has openly expressed ulterior motives to him in no way casts aspersions on his trustworthiness it’s simply warning him that someone is trying to manipulate him.
I think Joe is trying to stop Joyce and Sarah without blowing up their friendship with Jacob, or at the very least seriously damaging it, which is likely what would happen if he told Jacob what they were up to.
There are some cultures (even in the first world) where females are considered chattel, yes. Ideally, a marriage or any committed relationship should have equal ownership: “You’re MY boyfriend/husband” being as equally as valid as “You’re MY girlfriend/wife” and both parties placing the other’s interests as equally and even more important than their own. Unfortunately, this ideal is rarely met, even with those who try to do so.
Like, my mom went to a dealership only a couple decades ago, and my dad came along exclusively because if she bought one, someone would have to drive the other car home.
She knew she wanted. She was buying with her own money. But EVERY time my mom would ask the salesman a question, he would turn and answer my dad instead of talking to her. Even after my dad told him he was not the one he should be talking to.
This kind of thing STILL happens to various degrees in most parts of the country.
I gotta be honest, that sounds super foreign to me, that someone is that disrespectful and rude and thinks it’s socially acceptable. I can’t see that happening anywhere around here, or to my parents.
I can’t imagine that being socially acceptable.
Neither could I. It’s behavior that can hide right under your nose when its not directed at you. The same person Who treated my mom like that would’ve been completely respectful to my dad, or any other man. Most people like that are indistinguishable from anyone else unless you see them being awful to someone
This is absolutely a thing. For example, think about how some men will keep hitting on a girl unless she (falsely or otherwise) says she already has a boyfriend. Oh, then she’s another man’s property basically, better back off. They respect the other unknown hypothetical man’s “claim” on her more than the woman’s individual wishes. (Then there are the guys who STILL don’t care but that’s a whole other gross can of worms.)
The idea that a lot of men need to think of women as being a mother/sister/girlfriend of another man to think of them more as an actual person than an object is very real thing.
I don’t think I ever met a man who generally just thought about women as things. And most of my friends are male. I can’t believe that this is supposed to be such a common mindset. Maybe it’s because I’m not American, and it’s a thing common in America, but… idk. I just only ever heard about it on the internet.
(And before someone comments: yes, I am aware that there are countries and cultures where women are considered property and where it’s legal to treat a women like that. I was however referring to Western and first world countries here.)
Very few will actually admit to doing so, even to themselves, but the patterns are pretty common.
It might be different where you are, but I doubt it’s non-existent. Sometimes it’s hard to see, just because it’s so ubiquitous. It’s just the normal way things are.
Yeah, there will alwaysbe shitty people, everywhere. I just doubt it’s every other guy. I really think most people are pretty decent.
It’s just not socially acceptable to not treat people like people where I live.
I mean, your own personal experience isn’t universal. Not to mention the fact that it’s not like people are going to walk around and be super obvious about these incredibly insidious prejudices and biases. Men aren’t generally going to be walking around shouting “hey you, woman! you are an object to me!”
I don’t know where you live, but I guarantee this is not just a USA thing.
Germany. And I think I know my friends well enough to know how they treat women. If they wouldn’t treat them like people, I wouldn’t be friends with them.
And I never said my experience was universal, I know it’s not – but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t count, right?
I think its also because a boyfriend changes sex with pushy stranger from something she doesn’t want to do to something she can’t do in some people’s heads.
And you know if somebodies skeptical of green eggs and ham and you push them long enough maybe they will give in to shut you up and maybe they will discover they really like it( most likely they will hate eggs more on principle).
But if they are allergic to eggs there is no point in pushing them.
I don’t see how this reasoning literally at all makes anything better. Willfully ignoring the wishes and autonomy of a person simply because of what you personally want is still a shitty thing to do. Badgering a women until they give in “just to shut you up” is maybe cute when it’s literally about a breakfast food (it’s actually not, surprise surprise, because consent is important no matter what), but when it’s about sex it’s a whole other ball game.
Respecting that someone doesn’t want to do something should be just as important as respecting when someone can’t do something. Period. :/
It’s not about saying that that DO have more value – it’s about recognizing that a lot of patriarchal society (at least in the US) still thinks that way. Joyce was clever here, not just by remembering that lesson, but recognizing that Joe was an ideal candidate to think that way, so she could use it as a trap.
Funny enough I don’t think Joe took it that way, though? I mean, this is just how I’m reading it, but he’s suprised Walky’s sister is so attractive.
I don’t really know how to phrase what I mean, but you know how you’re surprised when someone really ordinary has a really successful sibling, and it surprised you? Like that.
…and then he asks why Joyce is phrasing it like that.
(But again, just how I see it, could be totally wrong.)
I don’t think Joe took it that way either, but it was Joyce’s intention. A failed stratagy from the start, because Walky is known to most as a sloppy, clownish doofus.
I don’t know if they teach it in gender studies’ classes, but the point is correct that women are more highly valued in reference to a man. Listen to any politician speaking against sexual harassment; good odds they’ll say “Imagine if that was your daughter or your sister!” She’s a person now, so it matters.
Cue any number of movie scenes where one character says to another; “Hands off, man, that’s my sister!”
And it is absolutely correct that in some cultures, if the father is absent, the brother steps in to make the big life decisions for a woman.
Of course Daddy has primary ownership until she has a husband. Cue the standard joke about the father threatening a girl’s date.
Also, too, OMG adorable Joyce side-eye there in the last panel…
I guess it has to do with being expendable. A man is more expendable than a woman after all. A woman gives birth to children, prolonging the family’s existence so it is a smaller loss to lose a man than a woman. A man stands as a barrier protecting the future of his family/clan.
Yeah that was the problem. When she heard Jacob wanted a long-term relationship, her interest went kinda out of the window (or, well, like half of it, because he’s still hot).
2 joyce and the class assumes the effect is just female based its both sexes just ask anyone whos married/engaged or “taken ” most of them will tell you they get more attention once they wear a ring or any sign that they are “until i got engaged the sexy ones wouldnt give me the time of day …. now i wish theyed go away but where were they when i was alone ”
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 14h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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What will become of Willis’s main character and Amber’s mother’s future stepson??
Luckily no one cares what happens to Amber’s dad’s current stepson.
Amber’s dad’s current stepson cares muchly about Amber’s dad’s current stepson and has charted a diagram of Amber’s dad’s current stepson intersecting many former mens’ lady friends
I hate that I understand this comment
While Joe thinks this is the case, Faz is Amber’s dad’s son with his current wife so that makes Amber and Faz half-siblings but Joe and Faz *Darth Helmet voice* ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! *Darth Helmet voice*
You are right that it makes Joe & Faz nothing, but Amber & Faz are step-siblings, not half-siblings.
Half step siblings? (This needs to be in a FAQ somewhere.)
Amber and Faz are not even half-siblings, genetically speaking: Faz’s father is not Amber’s, as explicited here:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/stepdad/
So Joe and Faz are even more absolutely nothing for each other.
Well, now I’m confused. I thought Amber & Faz had the same biological father, (Blaine) but different mothers. This is wrong?
That was true in the other universe but in this one they’re not biologically related.
They’re half siblings in Walkyverse, step siblings here.
But Blaine couldn’t possibly be lying about where he was when Faz was conceived.
I wonder what this implies for Rose and Zaph. Are they also not biologically related to Amber in this universe?
Rose and Zaph who?
Pablo, you may hate that you understand the comment, but I’m still trying to puzzle out if there was any significance to “many former men’s lady friends ” vs “many men’s former lady friends.”
Lets zee if I kan dee-con-struck dis statement.
Many – more than three
former men – now no longer men, status uncertain
men’s – belonging to
lady friends – social companions that are ladies
Dat iz my gezz
*breaks out the thumbtacks and colored string*
So, what are we supposed to think when a man is cast as a woman’s property? Just wondering, ’cause there’s a lot of that going on here, and I don’t want to commit a thoughtcrime.
Think the same thing of the woman, but when you refer to her in the future, use her name, rather than, “x’s wife,” “x’s sister,” “x’s mom,” “x’s daughter,” etc.
Yes, she might very well be a wife, sister, mom, daughter…she might be ALL of those. But she’s herself, first and foremost.
Whoops, migraine mis-read. But yeah, the same applies for a man cast as a woman’s property.
I wish there were an edit button on comments. -__-
I also want to add: This is the central concept of “person-first” language. Any time you frame someone with a descriptor or label FIRST, your impression of that label colors your opinion of that person. If you say “Betty Anne is married to Steven,” that puts the focus on who I am and how I relate to the people around me. If you say, “Steven’s wife,” or “Steven’s wife is Betty Anne,” that either eliminates me as an individual entirely or puts me secondary to my husband. And believe me – this happens ALL THE TIME. Even my own parents devalue my work and my income, because in their mind, I am “Steven’s wife” or “Don and Cindy’s daughter,” before I’m “Betty Anne.”
One of the things that drives the woman to whom I am married absolutely spare is the way my parents insist upon addressing letters or parcels sent only to her as “Mrs. John Small Berries”.
I’ve asked them repeatedly to knock it off and use her actual name (and, if they absolutely have to prepend a title, to use the “Dr.” to which she’s entitled), but they hide behind the excuse that “Well, this is what we learned as the proper way to address a letter.” (Which excuse has been recently bolstered by “Here’s a Miss Manners book [from 1989!] which says it’s still correct.”)
I guess following patriarchal conventions is more important to them than respecting their daughter-in-law’s desire to be treated as an actual person in her own right.
I have a button I sometimes wear that says “Property of 《spouse’s name》. If lost, please return.” I might someday get a shirt that says the same thing. You can think whatever you like.
Joyce no
Joyce yes
I hope she succeeds!
I don’t.
(not least because of the whole “Sarah’s doing this to spite Raidah”, which is definitely coloring a lot of my views on the situation)
Same here. And it irks me that she doesn’t see how it’s so obviously a morally dubious idea that even JOE points it out.
But to be fair, I hate how she calls Sal “Walky’s sister” even more. Nothing prompted it. It’s nice that she uses the things she learned from the gender studies class, but a lot less so if it’s to reinforce the sexist bullshitting rather than deconstruct it.
It did get Joe to think twice before he finished the objectifying comment.
I agree that it made him snap out of his (probably lusty) gazing. Still, I don’t like it, because she is the one who put this “another man’s relation” angle, and it’s actually that weird turn of phrase that ticked him off, not the fact that Sal is “another man’s relation”. It’s proven by how he didn’t stop looking at Sal while he began to answer. He only did when he had a “wait a minute” moment.
Actually, to Joe’s credit, he’s NOT snapped out of it. He’s objectifying her as Walky’s sister and how he doesn’t believe she could be so hot and related to Walkerton. It’s the fact she DIDN’T USE HER NAME that he found weird that snaps him out of it–showing it didn’t work.
Yep, that’s what I said. Glad to see I’m not the only one reading it that way.
What I find interesting is how all these guys find it hard to notice Sal and Walky are related.
They literally have the same face. Like Walky said to Billie, she’s physically him, but with boobs (he left off the long hair and other anatomical differences, but you get the point).
I’ll admit that I’ve never been good at noticing people who are related to each other, but when they look this alike, even I would notice.
But Ethan, Danny, I think Jason, and now Joe all missed it. And it can’t be that they’re all too busy lusting after her body to notice her face, because She doesn’t do it for Ethan.
She literally only did it to make a point to Joe explicitly. She didn’t, like, make a slogan saying “that’s someone’s daughter” or something. Joyce is not reinforcing a sexist system by making a specific point to one guy.
“What I find interesting is how all these guys find it hard to notice Sal and Walky are related.”
Well, a few things to keep in mind:
– Comics (by their nature) don’t show a lot of detail. While Walky and Sal are drawn with similar skin tone, overall body type, etc. there may be differences in (for example) facial features that might be obvious in a real person that don’t show up in a drawing
– They do have different accents and different personality types
I choose to believe it’s the mask that throws people off. :-*
As kids/teenagers, my brothers and I looked very, very much alike, and everyone noticed. A scant few people had a “I can’t put my finger on why I feel like we’ve met” moments, but that was mostly in adulthood where we’ve diverged a bit. Mostly, everyone was like YOU ARE CLEARLY SIBLINGS, HOW DO YOU HAVE THE SAME FACE, THAT IS CRAZY.
(It was made worse because we also have the same mannerisms and comedic timing, which the Walkertons don’t share, but still. It was really noticeable!)
It was nice to have a game we could play with everyone, it was called Scare Leorale’s Friends, in which we just all smiled at the same time. I hope Walky and Sal play that game sometimes. It’s pretty amusing.
Sal and Walky have exactly the same skin tone. (This also needs to be in the FAQ.)
oof
That is some fantastic Joyce face right there. We need a full set of Joyce emojis at this point.
100% for this
Joyce Telegram stickers FTW
/doesn’t actually use Telegram but hears it’s a thing
Agreed. Best Joyce is coquettish Joyce.
Second-best Joyce. Best Joyce is full-on snark.
Best Joyce is all of her freakout faces.
I think the best Joyce face is the last panel of this one http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/cussed/
Last panel Joyce face is best smug face.
I put together one day’s worth of Joyce, and that was enough of an emotional roller coaster for me.
https://baggebythesea.tumblr.com/post/110547840116/spoilers-for-dumbing-of-age-so-joyce-how-has
Those are great but you forgot angry joyce with red eyes.
Faz better not be making/dropping more graphs
There’s a Hansel & Gretel vibe here, isn’t there?
Faz is DEFINITELY making/dropping more graphs, and probably reviewing the reclaimed ones for improvements.
Joyce is learning!
People say, I should forget
There’s plenty more, don’t get upset
People say, she’s doing fine…
Ah yesss more Good Place references, please.
I keep meaning to start it but haven’t yet. What’s the reference?
The hovertext.
The human insult. It’s devastating.
Oh lawd yes someone else noticed
I kind of want to see Joe get legitimately mad at Joyce over this. And maybe point out to her that Sarah’s trying to get Jacob to fall for *her*. Joyce needs a reality check, and I kind of want to see Joe get properly pissed at something. Last time was like… when Joyce was getting Mike to punch him in the face. And even that seemed weirdly low-key.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Joe’s forcing himself to not do feelings means he doesn’t get really mad easily. I know I have muted emotional reactions to a lot of things, and it’s because I don’t get emotionally invested in a lot of things.
I think it might take Billie pointing it out for it to sink in. For some reason, Joyce hasn’t had a great track record of taking feedback from guys.
Yeah, but she’s on record saying that Joe is usually right about stuff (it was when Sarah woke her up for church and Joyce wondered if she was about to be strangled).
I am oddly fixated on their matching clavicles here. They look like sideways exclamation points. Or the Morse code for “N”.
“Your eyes say ‘yes, yes” but your neck says “nnnn!:
After reading this, I already feel better about getting out of bed today.
I ship Joyce/Jacob/Sarah.
I think they’d be a very happy threesome.
I cannot even picture Sarah in a threesome haha.
I can, on a basis of “I’ll swing by for the approximately seven minutes per day of human affection that I can tolerate, and the rest of the time the two of you just have fun and don’t bother me, okay?”
It’s JOYCE I can’t picture in a threesome.
You just need to point out it’s Biblical.
This is actually my life
I’m basically an antisocial hermit in a relationship with a poly person who prefers 2 partners. It works!
AFAIK, Jacob thinks Raidah is his girlfriend. Joyce has been trying to change that, but (again, AFAIK) she has no reason to believe she has succeeded.
Mind you, Jacob seems perfectly open to Sarah rather than Raidah but she ruined every opportunity she had with him.
I suppose, to answer my own point, Joyce being Joyce, she has absolute confidence she WILL succeed, therefore it’s essentially a done deal already.
Well, Sarah is trying to hook Joyce up with Jacob and Joe is well aware of this. Joyce (and Jacob) aren’t though.
Well, remember, Joyce thinks ANYONE can be changed in however way she wants with “gentle” nagging. She was going to make Joe not be Jewish anymore, remember?
I mean, more than just thinks it. Raidah is his girlfriend. They are currently dating.
She’s surely vibrating.
Also; no, Joyce!
I don’t know if I want Joyce and Jacob to get together but I forgot about Jacob entirely so now I don’t even know.
I kinda want them together, since they’d be good for each other and make an awesome couple and Raidah is pretty manipulative towards Jacob. But I don’t want them to get together on these terms.
Goddammit Joyce.
Raidah/Jacob is doomed. Mostly because Jacob seemed open to Sarah and Joyce both. It doesn’t seem like he’s all that into her.
It happens.
Raidah/Jacob so far seems like a relationship of convenience, at least painted by Raidah’s dialogue. That doesn’t seem like the strongest bond unless he’s serious about being a lawyer.
Then wouldn’t it just be a relationship of convenience and money?
It’s a relationship of family. Customs differ.
I find that an interesting thing for Leslie to teach her students in a college age gender studies class. It makes me wonder if this is because she’s from a fundamentalist religious household like Joyce and that colors the way she thinks about people. Ironically, it means she and Joyce probably speak the same language on these things–just came to opposite conclusions. Joyce=More God, Leslie=No God.
I think Leslie would’ve brought it up as an example of how patriarchal our culture is, which seems like exactly the kind of thing you’d expect in gender studies?
It sounds like the sort of thing which a patriarchal promoting person would say is true rather than actually being true as it feeds into masculine essential-ism. Then again, I don’t know the context of what Joyce is quoting.
How so? The statement wasn’t “women are more valuable when cast as men’s property” but “men are more likely to see value in a woman”
Yeah, I think that cultural mode is more likely where Joyce and Leslie are from where there’s strong gender roles and oppression of women via a formalized structure. Outside of it, its a more disorganized generalized dismissal of women and misogyny. At least that’s a compare/contrast I heard in my gender studies class.
Or translated into English, “Hatred of women doesn’t diminish if there’s a dude protecting them in modern culture.”
Oh definitely, but in this case more respect is granted to the dude in ownership, so the listening man has reason to care more, because it’s not just blah blah blah about a woman, another man is now involved so it Matters More
At least, that’s my guess about the psychology behind it
I stand corrected. That makes sense as a Leslie argument.
I may be wierd, but I happen to respect women a lot more when they stand up for themselves rather than using a guy.
Considering it’s a rather recent developement that women are allowed to stand on their own feet and are not concidered either the property of their father or their husband, I think that’s a rather condescending pow, Mr D.
There are still countries where a women cannot leave n her own because she doesn’t get her own passport but gets only an entry in her husbands/fathers.
Leslie was stating a historical and cultural fact.
I wonder how Joyce managed to understand her backwards,though. It’s not like Leslie is likely to approve.
Actually, I think Joyce used her newfound knowledge well, because now she knows the psychology around it and can point it out explicitly.
It probably was presented as “this is another way women are undervalued in our culture” rather than “here’s a way to manipulate dudes”. Also, it’s almost definitely not Leslie’s own observation alone, it’s likely something out of their textbook or other reading material. You know, with sources and junk.
Take note, obviously, I think Leslie wasn’t trying to teach mind-control techniques. Just noting that it strikes me as the kind of thing she’d have grown up with and the culture therein.
Then again, it says something about my own views of society that I think it wouldn’t work in a broader generalized sense because it would require men to have any respect for other men’s “rights.” My view of society is there’s no limits to poor treatment, girlfriend or daughter or sister.
Eh, I’m probably reading way too much into this.
Well, consider as an example, how men are more likely to listen to a woman’s rejection if it’s “I have a boyfriend” and not “I’m not interested”–not 100% of the time, mind you, but more often
Also, the way we as a society have a tendency to go “she’s someone’s mother/daughter/sister/etc” rather than “she’s a person”
Also also, how many men only seem to understand how bad rape/etc is once they have a daughter
It’s absolutely true in fundie culture, but it’s also very much a thing in the wider culture
Good points.
Well part of it is also that one IMPLIES that something can be done about it.
‘She’s not interested? Well that just means I gotta make myself interesting!’
as opposed to
‘She’s attached? Well guess I have to break them up or convince her to cheat… wait that’s terrible I’m a terrible person’.
But that’s exactly the implicit misogyny problem here.
If she’s attached, trying to convince her to cheat – i.e. to ignore her stated preference in order to break her agreement with a man – is seen as making you a terrible person.
But trying to “change her mind” – i.e. to ignore her clearly stated preference by itself – is seen as fine.
In other words, respecting women’s decisions is optional unless it interferes with a man’s life.
Oh I don’t disagree. It’s a problem alright, it’s just disturbing that one’s considered less terrible than the other.
No, unless the guy is a total douchebag, “I’m not interested” is the end of the interaction. But unfortunately, “no” from a woman in this culture just means the start of negotiations, because respect for consent? What’s that?
I typed the thing about rejecting vs having (or “having”) a boyfriend above myself but then I saw your post with more examples so I’m just +1ing it, and adding that as an afab person, I’ve had tons of times where I rejected a guy repeatedly, where he only backed off if I said I was taken, and often where they didn’t until they found out I was married, but then dropped it immediately.
Tbh I’ve always seen the “she’s someone daughter, sister, mother” thing as more displaying who else that person’s tragedy affects. People do the same with men.
They do, but I see that so much less often than the reverse. It shouldn’t matter who else it’s affecting–empathizing with a human being for her own sake should be plenty.
I think Joyce won that banter, y/n?
Depends on how you look at it. She did pretty much set Joe to point out that Sarah’s positioning Joyce for that role, not her, but I think Joe would rather consider Joyce’s feelings than be right. She’s not going to listen if Joe points it out, and she needs to hear it from Sarah, not him.
Oh yeah, she definitely left an opening for Joe to lay down some heavy Truth, but she got a few excellent zingers in there today
It doesn’t have to be zero sum. She certainly seems pleased with herself, but I see no reason for Joe to feel he has “lost”.
I think Joe turning it on her was to try to get her to feel guilty.
The problem is she feels no shame in breaking up a couple to make Sarah happy.
Ah, your first point feels right. As for shame . . . does Joyce know Raidah well enough to appreciate her point of view? It’s easy to dismiss another person’s feelings if you don’t know them.
I mean if you have much empathy no? It’s not that hard to be like “wow maybe I shouldn’t sabotage this person’s relationship for the gain of someone I like personally”
I think the issue is Joyce’s view of romance is still a 2-dimensional romcom ideal where the guy/girl is with the objective jerk and the protagonist (who she views Sarah as) will outshine the jerk and win the love interest over
100% this. There are tons of examples of “he’s just with the wrong girl” in heteronormative love stories. That is basically the basis of 90% of romantic comedies. Joyce’s script is fucked up, but it’s one that we’ve ALL been taught.
Eh, Joe can easily turn around and go “They’re not anywhere close to dating, that’s a little creepy, you still have no respect for people in established relationships”
That might just be because I honestly don’t remember if Sarah and Jacob have interacted since Joyce went with Jacob to church, and if it was anything substantial to lead Joyce to think that her ploy is working
I don’t believe we’ve seen them together, yet.
But they do have class together the same day Joyce hurt her toe, so they should have interacted off panel.
@cbwroses
if I remember correctly Joyce called Sarah for help after the
gender studies class, which interrupted Jacob and Sarah getting
back from class together because Sarah went to help Joyce
Certainly for us, the general audience, if not between the two of them.
Jacob has expressed interest in both Joyce and Sarah. I wonder if he’s just not that into Raidah.
How did those two get together again ?
They likely share some classes. Or Tinder, etc.
Or he’s just a nice guy who wants to be friends with people?
He has not expressed “Interest” He has “Been nice, and interacted positively with both of them”
Just because someone is nice to you doesn’t mean they want to do you
Yeah I agree with the Cult of Silent hill guy.
Either that or by being nice I’ve been giving the wrong impression to people for YEARS D:
I also agree with Reaver.
However, people have easily mistaken “nice” for “flirting/interest” before and will do so again.
There are probably thousands of people doing so as you read this comment.
It’s also quite possible for one to develop into the other without any real intent. Or for the way you express “nice/friendly” to come off as flirtatious/interested.
Jacob’s commented on having problems with jealous girlfriends before. I wonder if he appears to be more flirty than he really is. Or if he tends to form friendships with women that seem close enough to worry his girlfriends (and mislead the female friends.)
Also, he is niiiice. Looks good, acts with respect, has ambitions and it seems to be from a wealthy enough family. He is close to a perfect match (if not downright perfect), and I guess that for some, he’s one that they’d really want to keep. One that, in their mind, may be too good to last and Jacob will be snatched by another woman any minute now.
Joyce continues to have the best faces of any character in this comic.
I wonder if Joe is implying Raidah or Joyce as “Jacob’s girlfriend”.
Raidah is Jacob’s girlfriend, so I think Joe is just turning the gender studies trick back on Joyce. Less implication than flat out statement.
Yeah, but Joyce is pleased to be able to declare Sarah as Jacob’s girlfriend because this is the sort of thing that the more you say it, the truer it becomes.
And he’s doing it wrong, because turning it around would be “How is Raidah’s boyfriend”? The trick is that MEN find more value in other men than women.
(Of course, there isn’t an existing cultural reverse of that for women. Sexism is asymmetrical)
If anything, I’d expect it would work the same way for women, if to a lesser degree. In which case, he’s doing it right – emphasizing Raidah’s status as Jacob’s girlfriend to raise her value.
I wonder what Joe would do if he stopped and realized that this means that he would be attracted to Walky if he had a pair of boobs and a pretty head of hair.
Wouldn’t he have to be less of a lazy, irresponsible goofball as well?
You make it sound like Joe was attracted to her personality and not her looks and style of image.
Not necessarily either/or (not that it makes him any less sleazy).
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/harness/
I imagine that the tank top and tattoos are also part of it.
Well, he was pretend married to Walky for a while.
Y’know, I’m wondering how similar Walky and Sal actually look to people in-universe. Them being related had to be pointed out to Ethan, Danny and Joe before it clicked for them.
To be fair, once Danny saw them together it clicked.
I think the thing nagging at the back of Ethan’s mind when he saw Sal’s face was actually because of the robbery, but then when she said ‘Oh, have you met my twin?’ it was easy enough to go ‘oh, yeah, of course, that must be it’. And that realization can gets kicked down the road for another storyline’s problem.
Some significant differences. Hair is something people remember and their hair is very different for siblings. Boobs and the lack thereof is a pretty significant difference. And they don’t sound alike. I have four brothers, who have spent time in NYC, Boston, Indy, St. Louis, DC, the U.P. and Japan, which should have impacted our speaking. We all sound like basically the same person on the phone. Plus Sal can be very in your face or dismissive, while Walky is a go-along kinda guy. So we’re left with skin color and their face?
What a smug asshole.
Most of the comments are focusing on the interaction between Joyce and Joe, not Faz.
In this case Joyce and Faz are both smug assholes… not to equal extents but still
What do the other comments have to do my comment?
They provide context and metadata?
–Dave, never metadata I didn’t like
Hahaha what a droll little caricature. It’s not like I was just as obnoxious when I first discovered gender studies or anything.
Oh let’s be real, we are ALL obnoxious little shits when we get into our first “studies” class. Be it gender, psychology, economy or anything. We rub the knowledge in people’s faces.
It usually has the opposite reaction because of the smugness,
Nah I wasn’t the rubbing it in guy I was the fun-facts guy
Typical sisters, playing dueling matchmakers for each other for more or less nefarious purposes.
That’s… that’s typical?
So, I know this is off topic, but any USians should call their elected officials about the appointment of John Bolton. It doesn’t require senate approval, so you can’t block him, but you can express outrage that that incompetent warmonger in office and you can definitely ask your electeds to support circumventing measures (like limiting the president’s first strike capacity).
5calls and its-time-to-fight on weebly (aka Celeste_pewter on twitter) both have scripts if you need them.
We’re all hoping Trump will be impeached soon so we can get our long national nightmare over–and move onto the next one with Pense.
Wow, I have so little respect for the VP, I misspelled his name.
Mike Penis will probably be even worse, tbh.
I’m of the mind removing Trump will probably take up the rest of his term but it’s the principle of the thing.
Impeaching a president of the USA requires 218 votes in the US House of Representatives, and the way recent special elections have been going the Democratic Party might be able to swing that next January. But convicting on the impeachment and removing the president from office requires 67 votes in the Senate. But if the Democrats should win every single senate election this coming November they would have only 58 senators.
Ain’t nine Republican senators that would vote against Trump even if he were caught with ten billion borrowed roubles and tossing Putin’s salad.
There might be if he tries to fire Mueller – I’m told at least one GOP senator used the word ‘impeachment’ when discussing that debacle.
Regardless, this is not something to wait out. Bolton is a mess.
It may not be something to wait out, but it’s unclear what can actually be done.
As far as impeachment, barring something far more outrageous than firing Mueller, it certainly won’t happen before January and Democratic control. It’s possible that with Democratic control of the House and revelations from real public investigations, public opinion will swing far enough to push even GOP Senators into acting.
Even without that, the House would be able to limit the damage.
At this point, the only thing that can be really done is damage control – limiting the president’s first strike capacity and basically ensuring that any elected official in an underwater district knows that their population does not want Bolton (and thereby will work to circumvent him).
Oddly enough, if you can do anything whatsoever about Trump, Pence is gone as well. In fact, I’m pretty sure we’ll go down to the Designated Survivor, because frankly, if you can actually demonstrate culpability at this point, Ryan’s probably doomed too.
I mean it’s beyond impossible because impeachment isn’t actually a process to remove a president, but rather a process by which to express disapproval of a president, but if you could clear the initial hurdle…
So sisters are the property of their brothers? Even interpretations of gender studies are bullshit.
And yes, I’m well aware his comment will be deleted.
And “whoooooosh” did the point go over your head.
By about three miles, I’d say.
https://i.imgur.com/OAaRV.gif
denser than a star
The fact that it is bullshit has didn’t stop it from being the literal truth only about a century ago. A woman was never fully recognized as an adult. They were their father’s ward until they were married off, or if their father died first, their oldest male relative, even if that was a much younger brother.
That’s no longer the case today, but the underlying mentality didn’t just evaporate from our culture without a trace.
If you’d actually ever taken a gender studies class and paid attention, you might have understood what Leslie would’ve been talking about
“If you’d actually ever taken a gender studies class and paid attention, you might have understood what Leslie would’ve been talking about”
That OP was classic example of how those that deride gender studies are clearly the ones most in need of it.
If this comment isn’t deleted, does that mean you have to admit the rest of it is you misunderstanding things, too?
I’m leaving this comment up because your self-satisfying cowardice in begging for deletion makes you look like a tool.
Welp this strip made me realise I ship both Joe AND Jacob with Joyce (not at the same time SETTLE DOWN).
Personally, I’m partial to shipping Joyce with Mike.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding her, but I’m not sure how Joyce’s point holds. Joe is essentially wondering how a woman he values quite highly, albeit for reprehensibly sexist stated reasons, could possibly be related to the annoying man-child. In other words, connecting her to Walky threatens to diminish her in Joe’s eyes, and for reasons specific to Walky rather than generalized to his sex.
Well, that’s still objectifying but Joyce’s opinion about Joe is wrong because he only snaps out of it because he does know Sal’s name and is confused why Joyce is referring to her as an accessory.
I think Joyce was making a deliberate point about objectifying? Like “you act and talk like a dude who would think like this”.
And describing her as “Walky’s sister” is a nice way to turn Joe’s world upside down out of nowhere, so I don’t actually think it’s objectifying on her part, just pointing out a relation. Like how Sal called her “the one who breaks out in hives when she lies”
I agree completely.
Joe has just learned – in a recent class – that treating women as someone’s accessory rather than a person in their own right is a dick move. (And since he’s being reflective at the moment, he probably noticed that he’s done so in the past at some point. Just about everyone is guilty of that one at some point; it’s embedded in our culture.) It’s fresh in his memory.
And Joyce knows that.
Joyce is snapping him out of his reflexive objectification – without directly calling him on it – by making him think about, and notice, a completely different bad thing to do. Which makes him think about gender biased bad things to do in general. Which makes him notice the problem.
Well played, Joyce.
Not really, she should have just called him out directly on the shitty thing he was actually doing because it’s the only way he’s going to learn not to do it. Distracting him from doing it doesn’t solve anything about the relevant behaviour here.
Phipps, Joe and Sal had literally never met before. They hadn’t even appeared in the same strip before. Joe did not know her name.
I am still mad at that whole situation.
But that is my FAVORITE Joyce face.
Also… Joe’s reaction: funny. BUT HOW DID YOU NOT MAKE THE CONNECTION DUDE THEY ARE LITERAL ID TWINS
I’m still waiting for a bisexual character to be attracted to both.
That would be interesting; their personalities are polar opposites.
Some days you want to date Blade (Sal) and some days you want to date Harley Quinn (Walky).
That comparison is a mortal insult against Harley Quinn.
I mean, that’s how Danny’s bisexuality was retconned into the Walkyverse.
They are literal fraternal twins.
Yep.
“Literal”, I weep for you.
Joyce is making the same face my girlfriend does in bed while she is teasing
I am officially confused
oof, sorry about that. i pray that you will come out of this ordeal unharmed.
Quick reminder: Sal and Walky are somehow identical twins of opposite genders. To the point that if Walky were to wear a wig (Or seaweed in the OG comic because FUCK YOUR LOGIC), he looks identical to Sal.
With that in mind, I ask your opinion: Do you think Walky androginous? or do you think Sal is the one that looks Androginous?
Also quick question: Is Androginous a slur now?
They could both be androgynous.
Also: no. Why would it be?
Some trans people don’t want to be called androgynous or any sort of synonym for ambiguous if I recall correctly. It depends on your intent and the context.
I can understand that. I’m nb myself, and I know that a lot of trans and nb people embrace androgyny as a style/identity of itself. Similar to femme/masc.
By itself, however, androgynous is not a slur. But, like you said, it depends on the context and people have used it to other trans people who don’t identify that way.
Lots of fraternal twins look as much alike as identical, barring secondary sexual characteristics for mixed sex twins. It’s not that weird.
Without either of them looking androgynous. Their facial structures are close, but their bodies certainly aren’t identical – not just boobs, but curves and hips and the like.
And the hair and the style really make a huge difference in how we perceive people. Our brains work off patterns and shorthand as much as detail.
Fraternal twins are siblings that are the same age. Siblings often look similar, even if they are different sexes.
My siblings and I – both younger, one a boy, one a girl – aren’t twins even in the slightest, they are 5 and 7 years younger than me, and we all look nearly identical. People are constantly mistaking my sister and I for each other. It’s not all that uncommon.
Joe realizing just exactly who he fucked with.
(in more ways than one)
…okay, that bit about “Men being more likely to see value in a woman if she’s cast as a man’s property”…
I mean, I get that we’re talking about subconscious, socially driven stuff, but I just don’t get that. Wouldn’t it be the opposite, that casting a woman as a man’s properly makes them seem less valuable?
I want to say that I don’t look at it that way… then again, I dunno. Just… never come across this concept before.
Think of it as “men are more likely to respect a woman if she belongs to another man”
If a woman is met with unwanted advances from a man, he is more likely to back off if she tells him that she is dating/married to another man than he would if she tells him ‘no’ straight up. In a similar vein, more sympathy is given to human trafficking/rape victims by portraying them as “someone’s daughter/sister/wife” than “this is another human being”
Without that qualifier, without there being that attachment to someone else, women are not seen as something valuable and can be disrespected and disregarded at will.
Well, traditionally, a woman was very valuable……a very valuable piece of property, that is. Making advances on a “taken” woman entailed serious risk to you, her husband might take it as an insult and hurt or kill you. But if she’s unattached, she’s taking all the risk, as her maintaining her place in respectable society was dependent on keeping her sacred virginity intact.
I’m _really_ not comfortable erasing the actual, honest-to-god agency that women historically have possessed, but I have no actual idea what the hell to do about it. Like, it’s also bad for the dead people (Who, as they’re dead, have precious few opinions about it) but it’s also wrapped up in the complacency that the status quo is seen in (“things have gotten so much better!”)
Your comment isn’t unique, and much of what you’re saying still does carry some weight, I just don’t know what to say about it and am bothered.
While I know that attitude was common up until a few generations back, I thought we as a society had pretty much outgrown it, something that changed about the time when women were recognized as persons and allowed to vote and own property, etc. That attitude towards women is totally foreign to me and I find it sad that it is still that common.
Shit, fuck, damn, there was the exact thing I was talking about and I literally did not see it until right after.
No. We haven’t outgrown it. We’ve gotten kinda better, but we have not ‘outgrown it’. These things are not gone. They are lessened. And it’s probably not totally foreign to you (or anyone else).
Traditionally, assaulting a woman who is cared for by another man is seen as more likely to backfire than assaulting a woman who stands on her own. Loads of weird thinking were inherited from the way our ancestors view life and relationships between genders, after all.
Three things:
1. I think the shock to joe is sal being walkys sister…… and all that entails
2. Joyce is illustrating the point that many people point out that once your engaged/married in a relationship people seem to be more attracted to you the mistake she and the class is making is its just males intrested in females
IE “before i was married no one hot gave me the time of day … where were they years ago befoire i found her/him ? ”
3. The last panel is joyce just being a smartass …….
Joyce… no
Okay, now Joyce is doing this only to annoy Joe.
Okay. this is all IMHO so please take it that way.
I am a cisgender (pansexual) woman with a long-term male partner. I visibly present as “female.” I am NOT married to my partner and never will be, because I believe opposite-sex marriage in the U.S. (where I live), derives from a tradition of ownership of women.
BUT I have sometimes referred to my partner as my “husband” because it can make things easier. (NO I am NOT proud of this.) For example, when we travel outside the U.S., telling people at the hotels that we’re husband and wife facilitates things – and sometimes, when we haven’t, we get asked when we’re “getting married.” A bunch of people in our building (we live in an apartment) and the friendly guy who runs the bodega around the corner assume we are husband and wife.
I won’t lie – often when I introduce myself as [my partner’s name here] wife, I am treated better than when I present as an unmarried woman. Again, NOT PROUD of that and I’m actively trying to rectify that (“No, I’m NOT actually married to him…”).
But I think Joyce has a point.
Yep, society is always easier if you follow the norms and peoples expectations.
Again, trying NOT to do that…
My wife didn’t initially want to get married. My response was, “This is a way of demonstrating to other people I am serious about you, of my own commitment to you, my relationship before my religion, and also to solve a bunch of potential legal hurdles. Because until we’re married, plenty of people will not take our love seriously.”
…the fuck kind of response is that.
If it helps any, my parents never got married. Like you and your partner though, my parents usually have to fudge details be saying they’re engaged, especially in hospitals and regarding bills and such. Especially since common law marriage isn’t a thing in our state. I used to get odd comments in school when they’d see my mom’s signature and realize we didn’t have the same last name. The typical assumption was that she was my ‘step-mom’ which confused the heckle out of me.
It’s such a thing. People think if you’re not married, you can’t be serious or in love or committed, and it’s stupid. I a lot of examples in like, advice columns and stuff, where someone will be like ‘my boyfriend/partner of ten years and I are having x issue,’ and the comments and sometimes the columnist (depends how old and conservative they are) are like ‘if it’s been ten years and you’re not even engaged, just break up, you’re just getting jerked around,’ even if the person explains why they’re not married.
(also yeah, experienced it here too. I straight up told our landlords we were married when we moved in here, and they were like ‘oh good ’cause you never know what types are applying.’ I’m married now, but that was creepy and weird. (it was also before I looked outwardly like a man))
It might be a regional thing. In Australia, people often refer to long-term significant others as ‘partners’ and nobody really bats an eye.
“Men being more likely to see value in a woman if she’s cast as a man’s property”
Maybe its not a thing to do then, Joyce
She’s not perpetuating it – she’s subverting it by using it to trick Joe into seeing past it.
Dammit Joyce.
I really want to like you Joyce but you REALLY need to pull that beam out of your eye… to be fair though Joe has a beam in his eye too but is trying to pull it out.
When someone whose moral authority is unquestionable tells Joyce that she’s doing the wrong thing to Jacob and Raidah, it will be a dark, horrible day for her. It might be the darkest day she ever had because she’s never really had reason to question her own moral grounding so deeply.
We need Dotty on the job…
“This is no longer adorable”
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/06-strange-beerfellows/skywizard/
Joyce Raising Project is a long term assignment it would seem.
It is always hard when you have to mom your girlfriend.
Considering what Joyce’s mom is like that is not surprising at all. At least her dad is okay.
Also I’m internally laughing my ass off that the moment someone mentioned a figure of “unquestionable moral authority to Joyce” my mind instantly jumped to Dorothy the Atheist XD
The other one whose word Joyce is likely to accept as unquestionable is Leslie, which is even more ironic for a variety of reasons.
Her mother would freak out if she knew XD
Joyce has had a lot of reason to question her own moral grounding deeply and has been since coming to college. Offhand, she learned to question her moral conviction of homosexuality as wrong and therefore realized what she was doing with Ethan wasn’t right. Toedad kidnapping Becky with a gun, etc, also lead her to deeply question the base of her convictions. Joyce has done a lot of evolving really.
In the case of trying to get Sarah and Jacob together, I think that’s less to do with her moral upbringing and more to do with her romantic enthusiasm. Like thinking Walky is secretly in love with Billie, that kind of thing.
I mean part of her upbringing was the idea that people who “know what’s best for you” have the authority, or even moral obligation, to ignore your expressed wishes in favour of theirs.
Look, Joe. This is a reasonable thing to disapprove of. But if you REALLY disapprove of it, it’s not like you don’t have Jacob’s number, which I can’t help but notice you’re not using.
That is curious, isn’t it? I mean, Jacob seems to be Joe’s friend so why hasn’t he told him to his face what Joyce is doing and her reasons for doing so? Everything should be soluble if Jacob politely asks Joyce to back off and tells Sarah that what she did is not only uncool, it is frankly wrong on many levels.
Still, this strip is called Dumbing of Age, after all. Sensible and common-sense thinking shouldn’t be expected and lessons will inevitably be learned the hard, painful way.
He’s friends with both, though, if I were him I wouldn’t want to be caught in that dumpster fire waiting to happen. Is it really so bad to not want to be caught up in that?
I remember that back in high school, I was the one who got in the middle, and the dumpster fire is not worth it. For the life of me, I can’t remember the exact details since it was 10+ years ago, and I don’t speak with any of the involved persons anymore. But in that case, I was friends with the boyfriend, the girlfriend, and others in a group. The boyfriend was being super jerk in some way (he was or had cheated with someone else in the group) and I told the girlfriend. In the end, she either a) didn’t believe me or b) decided he was worth it, because I got shunned out of that “friend” group despite the fact that everyone was mad at everyone for a while.
And this is how you learn that trying to be a good friend is not worth the drama and shit show that comes from involving yourself with other people’s relationships. Sure, all things considered, it’s better for me that I’m not stuck in that group anymore…but, still, I can 100% understand Joe not wanting to get in the middle of relationship clusterfuck.
I don’t think Joe feels he has the right to tell people who they should be with. If people break up or cheat, that’s their decision. He doesn’t expect everything to workout nicely (look at his father’s past behavior and experiences), but I think he respects people’s right to make those decisions.
It’s the deliberate manipulation and deceit that I feel really bugs him. And it’s happening on two levels, both by Joyce and to Joyce. So by repeatedly talking to Joyce about it, he may hope to get her to stop, realize Sarah is manipulating her, or both. Also, not saying anything to Jacob means he doesn’t harm the genuine affection Jacob and Joyce can have as friends.
It’s hard, when you’re in that situation, to tell the person being affected. If they honestly haven’t noticed or otherwise don’t care, they may just ignore you or completely cut you out, because now you’re the manipulative one trying to ruin someone’s relationship. It’s very likely that Jacob, who has portrayed his exes as all being ‘jealous’ for seemingly no reason, would not believe anyone if they told him someone was trying to break him up with Raidah, even if it was Joe. Jacob could look at Joe’s current relationship with Joyce and either 1) come to the conclusion that because Joe does not get along with her, he’s deliberately trying to ruin their friendship or 2) come to the conclusion that Joe likes Joyce and is trying to ruin their friendship out of jealousy
Either way, unless Jacob would take it seriously and not ignore or brush it off, it might not be worth bringing it up to him. At worst, it would just strain relationships between all three of them.
I think Joe’s betting on Joyce being a nice, good person- or at least, someone who’s trying to be that way- and it is generally more effective to get the person to stop doing what they’re doing than it is to tell the person being affected what’s going to happen. If Joe gets Joyce to stop, then it stops. If Joe tells Jacob, Jacob will either ignore Joe, let it happen, or maybe tells Joyce to stop. But it’s not a guarantee.
I think there is even the risk that he will believe Joe might be right but be upset that Joe doesn’t trust him.
Oh, absolutely. Joe becomes a busybody who can’t trust Jacob to handle his own business.
Now, by all accounts, Jacob should know what’s going on, but it’s not something easy for Joe to just tell him.
That would be a stupid reaction since telling Jacob that Joyce has openly expressed ulterior motives to him in no way casts aspersions on his trustworthiness it’s simply warning him that someone is trying to manipulate him.
I think Joe is trying to stop Joyce and Sarah without blowing up their friendship with Jacob, or at the very least seriously damaging it, which is likely what would happen if he told Jacob what they were up to.
This can’t seriously be taught in gender studies, right? Sisters are not the property of their brothers.
There are some cultures (even in the first world) where females are considered chattel, yes. Ideally, a marriage or any committed relationship should have equal ownership: “You’re MY boyfriend/husband” being as equally as valid as “You’re MY girlfriend/wife” and both parties placing the other’s interests as equally and even more important than their own. Unfortunately, this ideal is rarely met, even with those who try to do so.
In which first world country? And would we even consider that a “first world country” then?
The United States is a good example, especially in the more isolated parts of the interior.
But isn’t owning a person illegal in the US?
They’re not LEGALLY considered property, but that doesn’t stop people from treating someone that way
Like, my mom went to a dealership only a couple decades ago, and my dad came along exclusively because if she bought one, someone would have to drive the other car home.
She knew she wanted. She was buying with her own money. But EVERY time my mom would ask the salesman a question, he would turn and answer my dad instead of talking to her. Even after my dad told him he was not the one he should be talking to.
This kind of thing STILL happens to various degrees in most parts of the country.
I gotta be honest, that sounds super foreign to me, that someone is that disrespectful and rude and thinks it’s socially acceptable. I can’t see that happening anywhere around here, or to my parents.
I can’t imagine that being socially acceptable.
(sorry for the repeat, I’m about ready to go to bed :P)
Neither could I. It’s behavior that can hide right under your nose when its not directed at you. The same person Who treated my mom like that would’ve been completely respectful to my dad, or any other man. Most people like that are indistinguishable from anyone else unless you see them being awful to someone
I’m pretty sure I’d notice if I came across it. Especially if it’s something directed at women. So I’m happy to say, I haven’t.
This is absolutely a thing. For example, think about how some men will keep hitting on a girl unless she (falsely or otherwise) says she already has a boyfriend. Oh, then she’s another man’s property basically, better back off. They respect the other unknown hypothetical man’s “claim” on her more than the woman’s individual wishes. (Then there are the guys who STILL don’t care but that’s a whole other gross can of worms.)
The idea that a lot of men need to think of women as being a mother/sister/girlfriend of another man to think of them more as an actual person than an object is very real thing.
I don’t think I ever met a man who generally just thought about women as things. And most of my friends are male. I can’t believe that this is supposed to be such a common mindset. Maybe it’s because I’m not American, and it’s a thing common in America, but… idk. I just only ever heard about it on the internet.
(And before someone comments: yes, I am aware that there are countries and cultures where women are considered property and where it’s legal to treat a women like that. I was however referring to Western and first world countries here.)
Very few will actually admit to doing so, even to themselves, but the patterns are pretty common.
It might be different where you are, but I doubt it’s non-existent. Sometimes it’s hard to see, just because it’s so ubiquitous. It’s just the normal way things are.
Yeah, there will alwaysbe shitty people, everywhere. I just doubt it’s every other guy. I really think most people are pretty decent.
It’s just not socially acceptable to not treat people like people where I live.
I am with you. That attitude towards women is foreign to me as well. And for the record, I am Canadian.
I sincerely doubt it’s all that foreign if you watch literally any television or consume any media at all, and pay attention.
I’m Canadian and I’m still pretty sure I’d have better luck telling a guy to leave if I said ‘I have a boyfriend’ than ‘I’m not interested’.
I mean, your own personal experience isn’t universal. Not to mention the fact that it’s not like people are going to walk around and be super obvious about these incredibly insidious prejudices and biases. Men aren’t generally going to be walking around shouting “hey you, woman! you are an object to me!”
I don’t know where you live, but I guarantee this is not just a USA thing.
Germany. And I think I know my friends well enough to know how they treat women. If they wouldn’t treat them like people, I wouldn’t be friends with them.
And I never said my experience was universal, I know it’s not – but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t count, right?
I think its also because a boyfriend changes sex with pushy stranger from something she doesn’t want to do to something she can’t do in some people’s heads.
And you know if somebodies skeptical of green eggs and ham and you push them long enough maybe they will give in to shut you up and maybe they will discover they really like it( most likely they will hate eggs more on principle).
But if they are allergic to eggs there is no point in pushing them.
I don’t see how this reasoning literally at all makes anything better. Willfully ignoring the wishes and autonomy of a person simply because of what you personally want is still a shitty thing to do. Badgering a women until they give in “just to shut you up” is maybe cute when it’s literally about a breakfast food (it’s actually not, surprise surprise, because consent is important no matter what), but when it’s about sex it’s a whole other ball game.
Respecting that someone doesn’t want to do something should be just as important as respecting when someone can’t do something. Period. :/
It’s not about saying that that DO have more value – it’s about recognizing that a lot of patriarchal society (at least in the US) still thinks that way. Joyce was clever here, not just by remembering that lesson, but recognizing that Joe was an ideal candidate to think that way, so she could use it as a trap.
Funny enough I don’t think Joe took it that way, though? I mean, this is just how I’m reading it, but he’s suprised Walky’s sister is so attractive.
I don’t really know how to phrase what I mean, but you know how you’re surprised when someone really ordinary has a really successful sibling, and it surprised you? Like that.
…and then he asks why Joyce is phrasing it like that.
(But again, just how I see it, could be totally wrong.)
I don’t think Joe took it that way either, but it was Joyce’s intention. A failed stratagy from the start, because Walky is known to most as a sloppy, clownish doofus.
I don’t know; a friend of mine is married to a man chosen for her by her brother. Because her father passed away.
Faz is in a panel and he isn’t talking.
This is not the way of things. I’m scared.
Guess they’ll have to give chase after Faz again… well Joe will chase him, Joyce will hop on behind trying to catch up.
I don’t know if they teach it in gender studies’ classes, but the point is correct that women are more highly valued in reference to a man. Listen to any politician speaking against sexual harassment; good odds they’ll say “Imagine if that was your daughter or your sister!” She’s a person now, so it matters.
Cue any number of movie scenes where one character says to another; “Hands off, man, that’s my sister!”
And it is absolutely correct that in some cultures, if the father is absent, the brother steps in to make the big life decisions for a woman.
Of course Daddy has primary ownership until she has a husband. Cue the standard joke about the father threatening a girl’s date.
Also, too, OMG adorable Joyce side-eye there in the last panel…
I guess it has to do with being expendable. A man is more expendable than a woman after all. A woman gives birth to children, prolonging the family’s existence so it is a smaller loss to lose a man than a woman. A man stands as a barrier protecting the future of his family/clan.
No. It is not for that reason.
Joyce you devil
wait sarah isn’t jacob’s girlfriend
Not YET if Joyce gets her way. Which she won’t… because if anything She is more likely to become Jacob’s girlfriend.
Not to mention I don’t think Sarah has ever expressed a desire to be his girlfriend, just to do the do with him.
Yeah that was the problem. When she heard Jacob wanted a long-term relationship, her interest went kinda out of the window (or, well, like half of it, because he’s still hot).
We so need last panel Joyce as a gravatar…
Someone grabs smug-ass Joyce face for a gravatar in 3.. 2.. 1..
three things
1 joe is shocked sals related to walky
2 joyce and the class assumes the effect is just female based its both sexes just ask anyone whos married/engaged or “taken ” most of them will tell you they get more attention once they wear a ring or any sign that they are “until i got engaged the sexy ones wouldnt give me the time of day …. now i wish theyed go away but where were they when i was alone ”
3.the last panel joyces just being a smartass ……
Joyce is looking Very Sexy in that last shot. Of course She’s very attractive all the time. (Even if she’s being a ‘smartass’)