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It’s not really a moral dilemma –Joyce isn’t conflicted because of an internal moral quandary. She’s conflicted because she has been made to realise that this aspect of her already-problematic (but still steadfast) moral framework is absolutely incompatible with her much-needed social and emotional support network.
If both Ethan and Joyce are ok with this effort/experiment , why is anyone else’s opinion matter, it’s none of their business!
They can just keep their noses out of Joyce’s & Ethan’s business- Just as they demand others keep their noses out of their business.
Life is a continual learning experience, let them learn in their own way.
Why would you want it to work out? It’s been made abundantly clear that Ethan and Joyce are just using each other in a tragic show of mutual repression. I mean, they may actually like each other as, I dunno, good pals or something, but other than that…?
Because it’s exactly what each needs right now. It would be different if one of them was taking advantage of the other, but seems very unlikely considering the circumstances. Meanwhile you’ve got Amber and Sarah and Raidah’s pet goldfish trying to tear them apart.
The only way I can see this being good for them is that it will tear these faulty ideas from their minds and crush them in the most violent way possible. Crude. Painful. But it will make them better in the end so long as they don’t get hurt too bad along the way and have their fragile psyches smashed in just the right way so that they get the right lessons out and not the wrong damage. But it could far more easily go horribly wrong.
So you think they should just keep on with the relationship up to a certain point? You at least concede that any kind of long-term relationship would fuck them both up, yes?
Also, I’m skeptical of that claim. Maybe what they need is safety, but their mindset going in is fundamentally flawed in a very harmful way. In fact, it seems that any benefit they’d derive from the experience would be so much smaller than the detriment as to be negligible.
They do need safety, but they could get that from, y’know, not dating anyone for a few months, during which they could work on their issues and get stronger. Instead, they’re putting themselves in a position that only perpetuates/enables/worsens each other’s issues. They’ll have no incentive to heal, and every incentive to keep the status quo so they can keep each other.
I mean, Joyce and Ethan are never going to get married. That’s a given. (Besides, how else would she wind up with Danny, her ultimate ship. *Crossing fingers.*) In the short term, though, they get what they need and might learn a thing or two to boot.
Seriously, you must have had a friend in a long-distance relationship that you wish you could shake and say, “You’re wasting you’re time! It’s never going to work out for you both.” Or maybe a friend you wish you could tell that her boyfriend just isn’t right for her.
They’re just teenagers. And as far as I’m concerned, as long as the relationship isn’t toxic (e.g. an abusive one), then I’m rooting for them.
It’s not like he thinks being gay is wrong. And it’s not like he’s hiding it, either. He just doesn’t want to be defined by one characteristic of himself, and I can sympathize with that.
Reread what he says when angsting about it. He doesn’t want help working out how he’s going to deal with it, and finding out what kind of person he is. He wants help pretending it isn’t real, even to himself.
There’s also this tiny chance that they do fall for each other, for reals. Funny thing is you can still be straight and fall for a guy under very unlikely circumstances (quite rare, but it can happen as sexuality isn’t 100% genes or 100% upbringing – it’s a tad more complicated and funny then that), or fall for a girl if you’re a gay guy. Marriage? Hell no. Satisfying relationship that eventually ends at some point due
to various reasons? Not impossible.
Even if above isn’t likely, having each other understand could still be very good for them – even if it will most likely crash and burn in a glorious way sooner or later. But hopefully the trauma thereof will force them to learn some valuable lessons.
Really, either option is likely to lead to character growth – so I’m ok with it.
Ethan wants to be in this relationship because it would be much easier if he were straight, and likes the idea that Joyce can, essentially, “cure” him. And likes the idea of calling it temptation because that makes it seem “easier and more manageable”. When he was talking to Joyce, he said about being gay that he wanted to lock it up and ignore it forever, and Joyce wants him to learn to resist “seemingly overwhelming temptations”.
So yes. Conversion therapy is basically what they’re trying to attempt.
This, conversion therapy is toxic… But calling this conversion therapy is a mite pushing it.
Conversion therapy would be trying to force a square peg in a round hole, they’re not at that stage yet, it’s still at a stage of “I wonder if this square peg can fit in this round hole?”.
Basically, this hasn’t even come close to the escalation of conversion therapy yet.
True, it’s a bit early for me to be throwing around that term. I do think that’s where this is heading, though, and I think it’s going there quickly unless somebody puts a stop to it. Guess we’ll have to see!
What Joyce and Ethan are discussing is not conversion therapy. Conversion therapy is when you take an LGBT person and try to make them straight. What Joyce and Ethan are discussing is refusing to indulge in a particular desire. There is a huge, huge, huge difference between those.
Using a long distance relationship as an example of a terrible choice is a funny thing to do on the site of a webcomic artist who married his long distance girlfriend.
This whole conversation is evidence of what Sarah says in the second-to-last panel. People in mainstream American society are NOT tolerant of anyone who deviates from the norm, whether that’s as an asexual, a gay person who voluntarily represses or changes, or a flying jellyfish with pancakes shooting out its face.
No one is tolerant. Everyone wants you to conform to their accepted lifestyle. It’s something I learned in the church, it’s something I learned in the LGBT community.
Sorry about the harsh things you’ve learned. They’re not really applicable here, though. Sarahis saying that most people think what Ethan and Joyce are doing is harmful, not that people aren’t tolerant of nonconformity.
Ethan struggles with his sexual orientation being the most prominent thing about him and with how hurt he is by the Amber situation. Joyce wants to have sex, but she has been brought up to believe that that’s wrong, so she faces an internal conflict. This isn’t about nonconformity at all; neither is choosing to do what they’re doing because it’s what they want. They’re just trying to avoid difficult problems.
As for your difficulties with the church and the LGBT community and nonconformity, I’m deeply sorry. In my neck of the woods, people aren’t like that; they’re very accepting, in fact. So please try not to make generalizations like “No one is tolerant.” That’s as dramatic as it is inaccurate.
“Sarahis saying that most people think what Ethan and Joyce are doing is harmful, not that people aren’t tolerant of nonconformity.”
In many cases–and I think this is one of them–that’s simply an expression of intolerance. I mean, heck, one of the religious right’s go-to arguments against gay marriage is that it’s harmful–to kids, to traditional marriage, etcetera.
The only reason I can think of for somebody to voluntarily repress is because of religion. Ethan is not religious (or at least, not devoutly), and he isn’t interested in changing himself to please God. He wants to ignore his sexuality.
As far as I can tell, neither of them are trying to refuse their sexual desires because they’re being oppressed for them, so this doesn’t seem to be an issue of homophobia.
If Willis comes in and says that it’s homophobia, okay then the following is null, but -assuming that it’s not-…
I honestly see no issue with refusing to indulge sexual desires. Not only are we perfectly supportive of refusing to indulge other everyday desires, like eating meat or eating greens or being loud or even more violent fare, but on an anecdotal level, well, it seems to be working hella fine for me, compared to how much pointless drama my sexually active friends always seem to be going through — at the very least, I’ve never had to pretend to convert to a religion to impress someone, or stopped talking to someone completely because of hurt feelings.
Anecdotal, sure, but I fail to see how a choice that is not forced upon oneself and is done voluntarily can be claimed to be “inherently toxic”. Maybe I’m actually naturally asexual instead of just choosing to be, is how I get away with it, I dunno.
I think that Ethan’s motivation here cultural, not religious. It sounds like he’s afraid being openly gay would dominate his new circle of friends’ perception of him.
I suppose you could argue that the reason it would potentially be a big deal to his friends would be religion, but the underlying rationale probably matters to Ethan less than the effect on his relationship with them. It’s not *his* religious beliefs that are the issue here.
Whoops, I misread your second paragraph. We’re actually a lot more in agreement than I thought at first regarding Ethan’s lack of direct religious motivation.
We don’t know what Ethan’s coming out experience was, other than that it was rough. We do know that he made a conscious decision to get himself another straight girl like Amber but this time just keep lying forever.
And by the way, it’s a huge stretch to claim that Ethan’s reasons are “cultural, not religious”. His reason is that being gay is seen as abnormal, and that is because of religion, nothing else. Specifically it’s because Judeo-Christianity is so deeply embedded in our society that we can hardly even see the distinction sometimes.
I’m with you. I’m asexual, and I’ve found even those from supposedly ‘tolerant’ groups are convinced I’m deluding myself. If Ethan thinks this will make him happy, who are we, or anyone else, to tell him that it’s not a way in which he’s *allowed* to be happy? You can say ‘I really don’t think this’ll make you happy’, but the comments here aren’t saying that, they amount to ‘If you’re happy doing something we disapprove of, you’re not really happy. It’s not allowed.” Whatever happened to ‘*I* am the master of my fate; *I* am the captain of my soul.”
Sure. But you know, pattern recognition + the hover text on the strips where Joyce and Ethan got together? Those tell a different story.
Ethan isn’t asexual. He’s a gay man with a substantial sex drive, and we have all the reason in the world to think what they are doing is noooooot going to turn out well.
I wouldn’t say that no one is tolerant, but your point is certainly valid. If your way-of-life doesn’t follow the norm – whatever that norm may be – then your choices are deemed unusual, weird, or even harmful. People are entitled to make their own choices, whether or not those choices seem “right” to anyone else. Especially when those choices don’t actually affect anyone else.
“No one is tolerant. Everyone wants you to conform to their accepted lifestyle.” – it’s also perfectly normal, even wise, for a human being.
That sed, there are boundaries that come into play here. Thankfully, in this society only close friends get to have a say in such matters, so it’s much more manageable then the whole town having a say in it, the way it was handled just a few decades ago.
As far as I’m concerned it’s fine for the character’s friends to have a word with them, but not the whole damn world.
I suppose my point was that the quote is needlessly cynical. You’d want your friends to CARE, right? (If not, that’s a whole other can of bad worms that I won’t go into right now) Not so much so that they stop you
from doing shit, but enough to pinch in when they feel you need them to. In-comic I doubt anyone else will even know this is a thing, so a non issue there.
Exactly. This relationship is inevitably going to end badly, since it’s based on “I want to no longer be the thing I am and want to make it go away” and “I want to date someone who I know nothing will ever happen with (and save him from Teh Gay)”, and we know people will react with “WTF?!” when they see it. It’s as healthy as the plague.
That might be true. I don’t think it’s necessarily true, though. To argue that the relationship is doomed because they’re not attracted to each other is to essentially call any relationship not based on sex doomed.
But it IS based on sex. Specifically the repressing thereof. And also based on lies, e.g. the lie that being gay is wrong and that you can or should change your identity in order to be happy.
And relationships based on lies, especially ones we are telling ourselves, do not have a great track record.
Which I’d be inclined to agree with. Doomed without sex that is, save for asexualls, which they are clearly not.
Even so, a little bit of happiness now and some trauma later will likely be good for them in the long run. Have at it kids, he’s a flamethrower. Go nuts.
Technically… she could provide butt-sex inside the dorm if they used a sheet of plywood with a glory hole, and stuffed her mouth with a sock. She’d still be “virginic” and he’d still be hetero… with his eyes closed.
I mean, if you’re going to pretend you’re both doing each other a service, then at least provide the services!
It won’t. It’s based on a desperate need to fit in on one side, a poor understanding of the world on another, and the delusion that one can willingly change their sexual nature all around. The only thing down this road is pain. Horrible, horrible pain.
But that’s just the thing. It’s not a relationship. It’s a gay guy with a measure of self-loathing trying to excise part of himself through amateur “ex-gay” therapy administered by a well-intentioned (in the “road to hell is paved with” sense) fundamentalist girl who’s also trying to use him to aid in her sexual repression. This is not healthy. It never can be and never will be. The only way this ends is in tears.
But that’s never been their intentions at all. Ethan’s never wanted to be straight, he just wants to be an “internet-addicted, robot-collecting geek.” And Joyce doesn’t want him to be straight, either. (Well, it’s not her main objective anyway.) She just wants a guy friend that isn’t going to take advantage of her or slip her a roofie.
Just because the roots of their actions are obvious to outside observers doesn’t mean that it is to them. The scapegoat of trying to make Ethan straight will hurt them. There is no good here. Only pain.
The thing is, this relationship isn’t giving either what they want, neither now or in the long-term.
If Ethan wants people to stop obsessing over his sexuality, he’s not going to get that with Joyce. Not only is she sexually attracted to him (as evidenced by her erotic dream/nightmare), she believes it’s her duty to “guide” him back to heterosexuality. Panel 2 in the comic above? It’s a nicer way of saying “save his soul from eternal damnation because homosexuality is wrong.” You can bet that Joyce will be hyper-aware of his sexuality and how he faces “temptation” from now on. And dating someone who believes with every core of their being that being gay is a sin (no matter how nicely they word it) is hardly a good way of fixing Ethan’s problem of feeling bad about being gay.
As for Joyce, she has platonic guy friends. What she wants is a boyfriend. Scratch that, what she wants is a college sweetheart, who she’ll go steady with all four years and then marry and settle down and raise kids with. Joyce does not do short-term. Ethan is “safe” because he’s gay and not attracted to her sexually. Unfortunately, being gay means he’s not romantically attracted to her either. When Joyce realizes that no matter how hard she tries, it won’t work, she’ll be devastated. And even if she gets over it, I doubt a non-romantic, non-sexual relationship will somehow give Joyce experience in how to handle a real one.
Aaaaaaaaactually… no, he really wants to, and I quote “ignore the annoying stuff going on in [his] pants… just shut it up and lock it away forever.” At the very least, he wants to pretend he’s straight forever.
If Ethan was just asking for a beard, that’s what this would be. A guy faking it to focus on other things and a girl who could point to a “man” to ward off other, possibly more predatory parties.
But you need to reread. That’s not what either is actually doing.
Ethan is talking to himself about managing “temptation” implying an out and out sexual orientation suppression. He’s not just talking about his public presentation, he’s talking about his internal feelings. Joyce likes the idea of suppressing her sexual nature, but her entire problem is that she’s discovered in college that she HAS one and the genie is out of the bottle. She’s going to inevitably want things from Ethan he can’t give her. And not just sex, but intimacy in other ways. Oh, he could be her friend, and a good friend. But that’s not what she’s looking for and eventually it won’t be what she’s asking for. Her goal is something only a man who likes women can provide. And because of her religious beliefs, she’ll be looking for marriage in this deal as well.
Trying to fight your own inherent nature, going “no no no bad thoughts” 9 times out of 10 just means you think about it infinitely more. and Ethan.. Ethan has Jacob as a roommate for fucks sake.
Both will have horrible cognitive dissonance and anxiety/stress as they not only try to surprises what they feel and fail, but likely guilt for letting themselves AND their partner down.
The best case scenario is that they make no progress at all. but as long as they are trying to be together in this way, neither will make any meaningful progress to working out their actual issues.
@kagato 23 I think Joyce is simply misinterpreting what Ethan wants help with. Ethan DID say “Just shut it up and lock it away forever”, but Joyce said “we were tailor-made for each other. I have the patience to guide you…”. My point is that it looks to me like Joyce is trying to be a real friend to Ethan by helping him at this horrifically difficult point in his life.
Joyce just said that Ethan thinks that Joyce can “save him”. He is freaking suffering so much that it aches, why does that mean Dorothy is trying to “fix” the problem rather than helping Ethan live his “new” life?
When Ethan wished he could lock it up and throw it away, he knew when he said that that he CANNOT simply change that part of himself.
I think that Sarah is misinterpreting how Joyce plans to help Ethan. Sarah thinks Joyce is trying to “fix” his homosexuality, but I do not think that is what Joyce is trying to do. YAY wall of text.
Yes, she’s scared of external sexual desire, of the men that crave her. So Ethan is perfect for her. BUT she’s also afraid of her internal sexual impulses. We’ve seen her desire for Ethan, in the sexual dreams, in the dates, and she’s been explicit in how badly these desires terrify her.
Ethan is not her “guy friend”. Ethan is her boyfriend, and she wants to “save him”. From where she’s standing, he wants to be straight. I’d argue that he really does want to be straight; while it may not stem from a desire to have sex with women or anything, he craves the normalcy he sees in heterosexuality.
I’ll bet if she were aware of this story arc, she’d write Willis and ask him to attend a few sessions to see how it is done, and how successful they are!
Gosh, Golly, Gee! I sure do hope Michelle becomes President of the United States one day, so I have a definitive reason to refer to, when I decide to go to North Korea for 4 years!
If Dennis (Denise) Rodman was welcome, then a straight, cynical white dude with no respect for the THEN current president — who can also pre-qualify his mistress choices for new Dear Leader (or a harem of mistresses the happy couple can make use of!) then I should be truly welcome!
Not really. She’s certainly willing to give Ethan a free pass, which seems a bit odd since a) he’s the one who asked Joyce to save him and b) he’s… you know, actually been in a relationship before and knows what the hell he’s doing.
Remember Joyce, you have little life experience, no idea what a relationship entails and only the dimmest idea of what homosexuality entails, but everyone is going to blame YOU for this relationship.
>>I meant that Sarah doesn’t seem to mind what’s going down here…
whoa, Whoa, WHOA! There’s been no ‘going down’ as of yet between those two! For Ethan? Well, he’s got more experience to have them both covered, so that whole “sheet of plywood” thing works to their benefit!
(but let’s be honest – it has to be the furniture grade, on both sides, type – the most expensive sheets, so nobody gets any splinters. If you’re gonna cottage, make it realistic! Hang a toilet paper holder on both sides!)
And when the relationship is over, they can sell it to former Idaho Senator Larry Craig, for him and HIS wife to use!!
THINK OF IT!
I’ve already got my foot tappin’ – tappin’ to a song someone’s a hummin’… just tap-tap-tappin’ along!
If Ted Haggard can do it (which ‘it’ are we talking about here?? Reform or Cottage?? I guess BOTH! ), Ethan can too!
WoooHooo!
Willis – no royalties necessary for these arc enhancements! Just run with it!
There’s a difference between forgiving and indifferent. What does she care if Ethan wants to be stupid? And she’s informing Joyce of the consequences so she won’t have to deal with that drama either.
Yeah, this storyline is a bit over-the-top. When I dated a fundamentalist christian in college to suppress my growing awareness of not being straight it wasn’t *nearly* this exciting.
Rocky & Eric Burden didn’t have access to ozonated/oxide eggs in 1976 or 1966 (respectively) – nor was gamma used for eggs either – until early 2000s.
Stallone would have been better off with 12oz of milk than 3 raw eggs.
Remember kids, Salmonella is a gram-negative bacteria, therefore the organism can easily be killed by being extra cheerful, and complimenting the egg and the Salmonella – using POSITIVE energy! In fact the face of Joyce below, all positive, is enough to kill most gram-negative bacteria! So before you consider using raw eggs for anything but THROWING, save a life, maybe even your own! Bombard those bacteria with POSITIVITY!
I think she would absolutely stop talking to Joyce over this. My guess is that Dorothy considers the whole ex-gay thing tremendously emotionally damaging to gay people. Even though Ethan’s volunteered to become emotionally damaged, it would just feel really awful to be buddies with the person egging on his torture, you know?
Assuming Dorothy stayed long enough to get the full story, I think Dorothy would be more upset at Ethan than Joyce. Ethan is, after all, the one who asked Joyce to save him. She didn’t approach him, he asked her to.
I think she could find plenty of blame all around. She’d doubtlessly rip both of them a new one, and break off contact with both because there would be no way she could be polite about it in its presence.
This really isn’t conversion therapy though. That term actually has a set of associated behavior modification techniques.
This is just “fake it and want it really, really hard.” Neither party has enough competency in conversion therapy to pull off an attempt. Also, I suspect what the comic will give us instead will be funnier, albeit equally effective (which is to say not)
I don’t think Ethan wants Joyce to “convert” him to hetero, I think Joyce is simply misinterpreting what he wants help with. I also do not believe Joyce has “bad” religious reasons for trying to help him; someone she cares deeply about is really struggling and suffering. Joyce wants to do whatever she can to help him. Ethan needs help, however I do not think Joyce is trying to “help get rid of his homosexuality”, I think she is trying to be a good person in her own way.
Check out the International Healing Foundation and tell me how that’s any worse than smoking–something with countless studies proving its unhealthy effects–and yet we all tolerate smokers. We don’t “cease to hang out with them” because they smoke.
Smoking is physically damaging–but I don’t hang out with smokers WHEN THEY SMOKE.
This kind of thing is emotionally damaging, to the point where people sometimes kill themselves over their repressed feelings.
Smoking might kill you, but it’s not going to send you into a depressive spiral where you feel so hopeless and alone because there’s something WRONG with you, and you hate yourself, and why can’t you just be like everybody else and not have to deal with this, and you just CAN’T HANDLE IT.
a) Some people do. Especially if they’re asthmatic.
b) It’s not equivalent. I don’t stop hanging out with my friends who are destroying themselves with cigarette smoke (though I stand upwind when they’re actually doing it), but if I were to find out that one of my acquaintances were actively trying to get other people hooked on cigarettes, I would at least give some deep and serious thought as to whether they were the type of person I wanted to associate with. Similarly, I wouldn’t stop hanging out with Ethan over this.
Yeah. And if one of my friends decided to start smoking, I’d try to convince them otherwise. But it’s their life to live, and their choice to make. And I wouldn’t abandon them as a friend; that’d be counterproductive.
Honestly, I wouldn’t abandon Joyce, either. But that’s largely because I’ve watched Joyce grow up in another universe, and I know that underneath that shell of ignorance, naïvety, and brainwashing there’s a fundamentally good person with a strong moral compass trying to get out. She wants to do the right thing; she just doesn’t know what it is, and is only starting to get the sense that maybe the things she’s been told all her life might not be entirely accurate.
But while she’s not, yet, and maybe not ever, the sort of person who can reject the idea that virtuous atheists like Dorothy or Dina are damned to Hell, much less take the position that a God that would do so is a bad god and not worthy of her worship, she’s at least the sort of person who is seriously troubled by the idea.
(After having watched all the pain and suffering that other Joyce went through to learn these lessons, and come out the other side as a good and strong woman, sometimes seeing this Joyce, who has all of those lessons still ahead of her, makes me unutterably sad.)
The reason those same-sex attractions are unwanted is because religion hates them. I don’t know why homophobia became such a prominent feature of the major religions, but that’s just how it happened.
I’ve seen you post in the past, and I’m glad you’re happy with your life and the way it’s turned out. But what I think is more tragic than anything is that you and other people have to feel like those attractions are wrong for no real reason, other than you grew up being taught that they were. And then people like you perpetuate it, and the cycle continues, the whole time resenting the way your body makes you feel because you believe a higher authority wills you to resist the temptation.
By the way, where do I go for unwanted opposite-sex attractions?
I want Sarah to take the protective mentor relationship stuff and push even further into the shonen anime hero “I will protect you” relationship with the love interest
I still can’t get over just how CUTE that image is. Like, the art style is already adorable, but Sarah kissing Joyce on the forehead? oh my GOOOSSHHHHH
I figured it was a ‘oh s—, I dug myself into a ten mile hole, and I can’t leave because then this water main will pop.’ Of course, the main will pop anyway, but luckily if she doesn’t drown the coincidence of the disasters will carry her to the top, and she’ll be back to where she started.
Always have had Sarah right up there as a favorite. She may not be right about who will stand for it and who won’t, but there is no way this is going to work out for either Joyce or Ethan. If they back off, start again as just friends, then they could probably help each other.
But Joyce gotta have her drama or she wouldn’t be Joyce.
Man, Sarah, way to not give the reason why people might dislike her for this development and thus potentially leave her to assume her actions are doubleplusungood for any number of reasons.
In which case Joyce knows the reason why people might dislike her for this development, and thus Sarah hasn’t potentially left her to assume her actions are doubleplusungood for any number of reasons.
I halfway agree. It’s generally clear to us why this would be viewed as a ‘bad thing’, and it should be clear to Joyce. But I’m a bit afraid that down the line (especially when it comes to atheist Dorothy) that it’s not going to be ‘oh, this is wrong for these reasons that kinda make sense’, but instead turn into ‘this is wrong to you because you’re a sinner, so I just need to not listen to you about it.’
I’ve seen it happen. If you can provide reasoning that doesn’t require a common viewpoint, it’s a lot easier to get a specific point across. Like I said somewhere else, Sarah taking the ‘you’ll lose friends’ approach is good because Joyce really does want friends, but if she doesn’t give a reason that Joyce can follow from her fundamentalist viewpoint, it could just turn into ‘you’ll lose friends, but they’re all sinners and bad for you anyway’ (again, especially with Dorothy since she’s already a dreaded atheist).
Maybe, but Joyce doesn’t seem to have that “I’m proud to shun you sinning bastards, hahahahaha!” attitude. Joyce makes an active effort to reach out to others, and (aside from the occasional mental breakdown) hardly slows down when it’s revealed to her that they’re Teh Evil in one way or another. (Jewish, atheist, mormon, and gay, so far.) If she were going to decide to categorically dismiss a person based on their thoughts or reasoning, she’d probably have shown signs of it by now.
This is not to say there aren’t theists who operate on that sort of self-aggrandizing isolationist thinking, but Joyce really doesn’t seem to be one of them. She’ll argue rather than sneer, and thereby may eventually understand. (Though with this gay thing, I suspect she understands already.)
Of all the arguments Sarah could make about why this is a very bad idea, she went with the one with the least moral weight but that would cause the most fear. Huh.
Makes sense though, considering the type of person that Joyce is, trying to challenge her on a moral level would likely make her dig in further with her own established morality. Challenging Joyce with a less abstract argument is probably more likely to make her rethink her own morals. For example, if you recall from previous strips Joyce’s friendship with Dorothy is making her uncomfortable with the idea that her religion’s precepts condemn Dorothy to Hell.
All moral arguments depend on having a (at least partially) shared morality. But fundamentalists believe that the only valid moral argument is “it says so in the bible”. If you want to convince them, you have to base your argument on scripture, and (unless you have studied the bible a lot) they’re usually better at it than you. Just saying “this will lead to suffering” isn’t going to convince them if they think the suffering is justified.
I’m pretty sure it’s been shown that atheists know more about scripture than evangelical Christians. is just one of the links that came up in a simple Google search.
Then, you’re not going to yell that he’s gay to the whole world now are you, Joyce? I know it’s hard to keep a secret because sooner or later, it’s going to come out especially by some asshole who wants to use it to blackmail you or something.
If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you’re supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn’t. Odds are you just think whatever you’re told.
The other alternative would be that you independently considered every question and came up with the exact same answers that are now considered acceptable. That seems unlikely, because you’d also have to make the same mistakes. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them. If another map has the same mistake, that’s very convincing evidence.
Like every other era in history, our moral map almost certainly contains a few mistakes. And anyone who makes the same mistakes probably didn’t do it by accident. It would be like someone claiming they had independently decided in 1972 that bell-bottom jeans were a good idea.
If you believe everything you’re supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn’t also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s– or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have.”
Me too, but not because I’m opposed to homosexuality or anything. I just have a real tendency to always sound like an asshole no matter what I’m saying.
Only if you think it’s wrong. In which case, yeah, you’re going to have trouble expressing that in a way that doesn’t make you sound like an asshole, because that’s an asshole opinion to have.
Common “arguments” against gay marriage:
1.) “Traditional marriage is between a man and a woman and I don’t want to redefine that term!” = wrong. Traditional marriage is lots of things, but a monogamous two-person heterosexual relationship it isn’t and never has been. The church also performed same-sex marriages up until about the 14th century.
2.) “What’s wrong with calling it a civil union?” = history-blind. Separate but equal is never really equal. Fine in theory, crap in practice.
3.) “Ugh, marriage is a stupid heteronormative thing and the sexual revolution was supposed to bring an end to that expectation!” = if you don’t want to get married, YOU DON’T HAVE TO, but please don’t deny other people the right. If you think same-sex marriage won’t help to normalize same-sex relationships, you’re wrong; and if you think there’s no value in normalizing same-sex relationships, you’re also wrong. Seriously, let’s focus on making it legal first, and *then* you can worry that your parents are pressuring you and your long-time boyfriend to get hitched when neither of you is the marrying type.
4.) “Once gay marriage is legal, gay men will abandon the fight for queer civil rights and marriage is not the most important thing to me personally!” = it sure sounds like you are assuming that someone else is going to stop fighting for your rights and responding to it by preemptively refusing to fight for *theirs*. Be less of a jerk.
I’m leaving out the “sin” and “icky” arguments, because I think these are the only ones anyone can even vaguely expect to not be the arguments of an asshole.
I think the ‘you’ll lose friends’ approach might help Joyce, but I’m afraid the ‘you’ll lose Dorothy’ will just drive home the idea of Dorothy being a bad ‘temptation’ (not in the lustful way, just in the evil is attractive way) and just drive Joyce further into her own views.
(Response to both since they’re similar) I see her face that way, too, but I feel like that’s more a knee-jerk/initial reaction. I meant more down the line that it could become a problem.
Right now, Joyce and Dorothy seem to have something of an understanding (not really the right word, but close) and Joyce really does like Dorothy, so Sarah bringing up Dorothy makes total sense. I’m just worried that putting that much emphasis on Dorothy will strengthen the idea of Dorothy being Joyce’s philosophical foil more to the forefront of Joyce’s thoughts. That could change things from a gradual opening up to new things to just shutting out everything, which I feel would be bad for Joyce.
I get you. But both are variations of fear motivation (you’ll lose friends/ you’ll lose Dorothy), so I think both might have a negative impact on Joyce. Pretty soon Ruthless won’t be the only one we haven’t seen in days…
Reading the comments, I feel alone in my view of the two of them.
Ethan feels trapped by being gay, specifically that one facet of him is magnified and focused on. It’s something that takes time to process and accept, and he is still growing into this fairly new, and life altering, part of him. By having a ‘normal’ relationship, it allows him to still have that old part, the childhood nostalgia, while becoming a new person.
Joyce feels temptation, and does not want to give in to it. She still wants to get out there, and experience life, even considering what happened a week or so ago (in-universe, assuming the only time skips are those stated). Does she think she can change him? Possibly, that being based on her upbringing, to which she seems to already be attempting to reconcile, that things she felt were evil, or wrong, may in-fact, not be. Even if she ‘fails’ with Ethan, her time spent with him is safe, since she does not have to fear of giving into temptation, or having herself be taken advantage of by him. It allows her to expand her horizons on interacting with others, and to become more accepting. Which one can say already happened, since she’s ‘dating’ Ethan, who’s Jewish.
Baby steps into the world, isn’t that part of what college is?
Except their “normal” and “safe” relationship involves the two of them willingly and unhealthily repressing parts of their own identities and insecurities. Their relationship doesn’t allow them to really address their issues it simply tries to smother them.
Hear, hear. It’s just a part of growing up. I think the “you’re not invited to my birthday party” threats that are being directed at Joyce and Ethan are much more damaging than their very tame relationship could ever be.
You’ve made your case and myself and others have made ours. Without crawling into Willis brain-meats, I think we can still safely say that based on the implications in the comic thus far it will not work out that this is a smooth beneficial thing.
Oh i’m sure they’ll both learn from it. But not in a happy, stryfe free way.
You have a point about baby steps forward, but it feels like Ethan and Joyce are taking baby steps back.
Yes, Ethan needs time to process and accept being gay. Being in a straight relationship with a devout Fundamental Christian who has erotic dreams about him and firmly–if sympathetically–believes that his being gay is both an avoidable choice AND sin that he needs to be “saved” from isn’t going to help.
Joyce needs to find a way to reconcile her religious beliefs with her sexual urges, not shove the latter away into a box of nightmares. Dating a poor lost soul that it is her moral obligation to reprogram and convert is not going to do anything to lesson the “burden” she feels because of her faith. It is also not going to do anything to challenge her view of homosexuality as a choice. And if she’s still dreaming of meeting her perfect soulmate, settling down with him, and starting a family, she has to look for someone who she trusts who is *also* attracted to her on some level.
Basically, this relationship is neither sustainable nor conductive to growth.
Man this is relationship is going to end in a way that makes a 747 full of grandparents crashing into a train full of blind orphans and rainbow colored bunny rabbits look tame
Yeah, that’s pretty tame. I mean, if it was a Starship Enterprise full of Terminators crashing into a USS Enterprise full of demented serial killers riding gunpowder-black and blood-red ligers, that’d be pretty un-tame. Your scenario: totally tame.
Man, I actually feel really badly for Joyce right now. Pretty much the minute she finds out Ethan is gay, he tells her that he wants to continue their relationship and that he thinks being gay is horrible. Joyce doesn’t have the life experience to understand why Ethan’s view on his sexuality is completely fucked up. What she does understand is that Ethan is in pain and she thinks she can help.
Now she’s got Sarah telling her that everyone else will hate her for her and Ethan’s relationship but Sarah isn’t telling her WHY that is.
I do think Joyce and Ethan’s relationship is nothing good, but honestly, I put the blame more on Ethan. He knows Joyce has never been in a relationship, he knows her religion views and he knows how sheltered she is. He was on the one who hatched this “hey, maybe I can just stop being gay” plan, not Joyce.
She’s terrified because she thinks Sarah will be angry with her. The only reasons she’d have to think that are if she a) knows what she’s doing is wrong, or b) realizes that people would think what she’s doing is wrong.
Other reasons why she’d have reason to think Sarah is angry with her:
1) Sarah pretty much constantly yells at her about everything.
2) by now, Joyce probably knows that tone of voice and body language from Sarah that just screams that Sarah’s going to yell and get angry
3) i don’t know about you, but you sure as hell can feel guilty the moment someone starts questioning you like that, even if you are dead sure you’ve done nothing wrong. you start second guessing yourself, /especially/ when you’re socially stunted.
She only got guilty and tentative when Sarah prompted her to admit she was going to try and “save” Ethan; she was fine in panel 1 and the previous comic. (Also there’s little indication that Sarah is yelling at her, or even speaking loudly until panel 3.)
It seems clear to me that Joyce is well aware that “save him” means “screw around with his gender identity” in non-fundy-land.
I can’t help putting most of the blame on Ethan, too. Joyce is saying “Sex is scary, maybe I can have romance without it?” which is naïve, but understandable, given what’s happened to her. Ethan is saying “I don’t want to deal with myself: help me pretend it isn’t true!” which seems much worse.
I saw “save him” and my reaction was an elaborate combination of sighs, head waving, facepalms and groans. It was really quite beautiful. I think I’ll perform in public areas and when people ask me about what it’s about, I’ll yell, “YOU DISSAPOINT ME MORE THAN DANNY, JOYCE” without any context and then I’ll press on as people throw trash as opposed to change at me for scaring and scarring all the children and people named Joyce and Danny. Did I mention I should probably be in bed now?
I would come watch you perform, and then when you appear to be winding down, I will just gently whisper “Save Him” and you’ll start up again. It will be beautiful
Most of them will be lost like the matching sock for the only clean one you have, but Dorothy will be lost like the matching sock for the only clean one you have which you just made by hand, so it doesn’t even have a matching sock. That’s how lost Dorothy will be.
So… I read this today. My mind: a little blown. I’ve had lotsa mormon friends and I support them doing their thing… I’ve had lotsa gay friends and I support them doing their thing… but this is an intersection I never would have thought I’d be okay with. But… it’s cool for them, so it’s cool for me.
Yeah, sorry, but I found every single part of that depressing, not the least the comments, many of which are Christian people going, “FINALLY, THANKS FOR PROVING THAT ALL GAY PEOPLE SHOULD JUST REPRESS THEIR SEXUALITY FOREVER.” I found it especially unconvincing that neither of them has ever even had another girl/boyfriend. They literally cannot judge what they are missing because they have never even remotely tried it.
There are also several comments from gay men who did the same thing, right down to the having-kids-together-that-we-both-love, and their marriages still disintegrated and were painful and damaging in the long run.
I mean. If they’re happy, then hooray, but they are beating INCREDIBLY long odds if so, annnnd of course when properly translated there is nothing in the Bible that actually condemns homosexuality.
So. It’s just deeply, deeply unnecessary, no matter how devout a Christian you are, to spend your entire life in a marriage with someone you will never be physically attracted to.
“Unnecessary” is actually a really good word for it. I thought a big point of that piece was that it was very much his choice to live the life he’s living? It’s not necessary and it doesn’t have to be?
I kind of interpreted the author as being biromantic (I hope I’m not unnecessarily dipping into tumblr-speak), since he obviously loves his wife, so his being in a relationship with her and having sex with her isn’t too different from an asexual person having the same (which happens all the time!). Except of course that he’s giving up something else, but that’s okay, too–plenty of bisexual people end up in monogamous relationships with a person of one gender or the other without ever having dated anyone of the other gender, and some of them tend to be okay with that! This isn’t that different.
I have no problem with his choice because, based on what he wrote, he made it carefully based on what he wanted and what he thought would make him happy. There’s nothing depressing about that.
Again, the comments are where most of the ex-gay sentiment is manifesting.
The most depressing part is the comment thread where someone BEGS them to add an addendum reassuring other gay Christians that they aren’t evil for not marrying straight people — IN TEARS, this person begged for their help, because this person knew many gay people in their parish who would read this and feel like shit, or whose friends would read it and use it as an excuse to harp on them —
and got
no
response.
Even though they DID deign to reply to other comments lower down.
So uh. Sorry, I think you are wrong about their message.
Honestly, I don’t think I’m wrong about what this author was trying to say. It wasn’t written in code, and I read it as carefully as you did. Maybe he didn’t say enough for you, which is too bad. Try to remember that this author isn’t trying to put himself in a position of authority where he can say what’s right and what’s wrong–he struggled with a difficult issue and found something that makes him happy. The end. If he doesn’t respond to every cry for help, it’s because it isn’t his place to make sweeping comments about what is and is not acceptable within the context of one religious doctrine. It makes me sad that this guy put himself out there with an extremely thoughtful, well-put, and accepting article and you’re upset about the comments section.
Are you wrong about what the author was trying to say? Perhaps not.
Are you wrong about the effect his words have had on hundreds of people who have read it? Yes.
You say, “He wasn’t trying to put himself in an authority where he can say what’s right and what’s wrong. […] It isn’t his place to make sweeping comments about what is and is not acceptable within the context of one religious doctrine,” but you are completely ignoring that to silence — complete stony silence — is in itself a sweeping comment about what is and is not acceptable.
Josh and his wife can’t just unring the bell of “gay people can live a happy heterosexual life if only they try hard enough, for I am proof”. They said that. And people heard it, loud and clear.
People read this post when it came out, and they read it today, and they DO take Josh and his wife as an authority because they are speaking from a place of authority. As a gay Mormon man with his straight Mormon wife who are successfully following all the commandments of that religion, of COURSE they are perceived as an auhority.
It would be easy to dispel that illusion; literally all they would have to do is respond to even ONE of the comments on that page to say, “We’re glad you enjoyed this post, but remember that this is just something we wanted to share with our readers; we can’t speak for all gay people or all Mormons on what they should do with their own lives.” That’s all it would take, but in its absence, people keep taking them as an authority, and they are culpable for that.
“[My dad] had just finished firing a psychologist who wanted him to leave my mom so that he could live the lifestyle he was in the psychologists opinion, meant to live. I’m soooo glad he didn’t listen to that idiot.”
“Those who tried and ‘failed’ to find success dating the opposite sex and have found long term lovng same sex partners will be judged as ‘not trying hard enough’ by others who [read this post and] don’t understand. What can you share that would be helpful to families of gay kids and adults who choose to forgo a heterosexual relationship?” (This person expressed concern because SHE KNEW PEOPLE IN HER OWN CHURCH WHO WERE READING THIS POST AND WHO WERE GOING TO TRY TO APPLY IT TO OTHER PEOPLE SHE KNEW. http://www.joshweed.com/2012/06/club-unicorn-in-which-i-come-out-of.html?showComment=1339134229159#c4632793805194080171
This thread breaks my heart, especially with the silence from Josh and his wife.)
Again, if they didn’t feel comfortable giving these people an actual answer, all they had to do was actually reject the authority they were being given, but no. It is irresponsible. “Not enough” for me? Of course it’s not enough for me.
(Do I sound upset, by the way? Because it is very, VERY difficult not to be. I hate that post. I hate that they made it and apparently did not have the common decency to take responsibility for their own words. I extra special hate that it is being linked here, again, as an “eye-opening” read.)
So go on. Dismiss all of this as “the comments section”. I call it, “the effect their words have had on the people they announced it to.” Which, for anything POLITICALLY CHARGED, is much
much
much more important than the good intentions of the people who made the statement.
Sure, they try to dodge this responsibility with some (frankly) bullshit about how it was just ~easiest~ to come out to all their family and friends by using their apparently-quite-popular blog! But if this was really just PERSONAL, and they didn’t want to create ripples that affected all religious gay people everywhere, the simple and obvious solution is to actually talk to people individually.
Which, not unlike responding to individual comments by people who have obviously been deeply affected by their words, would have required more effort!
So yeah. Again. Hard for me to judge these people as anything but irresponsible.
He didn’t say that all gay folks should repress their sexuality. He said that it’s working for him and he’s happy. Depressing? Hardly. He’s not on a soapbox saying homosexuality is wrong — to the contrary, he says that he’s got nothing wrong with gay people in homosexual relationships — it’s just not for him.
But of course there is something wrong with homosexual relationships, read more carefully: they can’t let him be a good Mormon.
Sure did enjoy the way he pretended to think his friend’s adoptive family was fake, while really feeling that way about the thought of adopting his own kids. (He put it in similar wording: that having his own biological kids is just “what HE wanted, for him”, as if that is a neutral choice. It’s not.)
Also, see my comment above. I’d forgotten about that lovely gem. No, the author isn’t off the hook either. Ignoring that tearful plea for help in their comment section makes them assholes.
See what comes of being a prat Ethan? You could have been a positive influence on Joyce, maybe taught her that being gay is ok and that the social bogeymen her parents told her to fear aren’t all that scary. Now all she’ll ever associate you with is fear and anger. Guess that’s what comes with a complete inability to assert yourself in any shape way or form.
Ethan’s pulling a major dick move, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not really his responsibility to be a positive representative of the gay community. He’s a human being with his own problems, not some magical sprite created to give wisdom and life lessons to the sheltered Fundie kids of the world. His only responsibility is to treat Joyce with common decency (which he’s failing at by dragging her into a sham relationship, but y’know, road to hell, good intentions, etc).
It is not Ethan’s job to educate Joyce, or anyone else, about homosexuality. I think this relationship is a terrible idea, but it’s not because Ethan is failing in his duty as a good gay role model.
Please forgive me, I’m kind of an ass when it comes to things like this. Especially in fiction I tend to be a lot more forgiving of characters like Joyce because of my own forced role modeling. My instincts tend to shout, “young kid who’s incapable of understanding the world, must protect. Must teach her about the world.” Thank you very much my own childhood.
Not every gay person comes out of the closet self-assured, confident and able to defend the cause of gay rights everywhere. Coming to terms with such a pivotal aspect of your identity is an incredibly personal and sometimes conflicted process – especially for people who grow up within or around the repressed social mores Willis evidences in his work and, evidently, in his personal background. Joyce isn’t the only ingenue here, and it’s unfair of you to expect one messed up, confused kid to be some sort of experienced guide for another just because he happens to be a larger gay male and she’s a demure, religious fundamentalist female.
How can Ethan “teach” Joyce anything about how OK being gay is when he himself hasn’t really dealt with it in any capacity other than identifying it within himself? Joyce doesn’t have a monopoly on social inexperience, nor in the need for compassionate guidance.
Did you miss the update where we flashed back to prom night and immediately upon discovering his distaste for sex with women the ghost of Alan Turing appeared and appointed Ethan ambassador of the homosexual peoples?
Lo, did Alan Turing, King-Magistrate of all things homosexual burn onto Ethan’s chest the mark of the chosen one and say “It is a great responsibility I entrust to you Ethan. I do this because the blood of the great Thadeus Siegal who first ventured into Olympus and stole the Tiara of Same-Sex Relations from the gods flows through your veins. Wearing the tiara until the end of the days he was imbued most thoroughly with homosexuality’s might and now only you, Ethan Siegal are gay enough to remind humanity of the power of Sodom in time to protect them from the coming invasion, for the gods are a long-lived patient people and the time is almost upon us that they will return to take back what was stolen.”
I understand that Sarah was being blunt in a way to help, but it bothers me a bit that Dorothy could potentially end the friendship over this. This relationship isn’t abusive and they both consented to this idea. Is it healthy? Probably not, but it doesn’t seem like a reason to cut a friendship off when it is only Joyce and Ethan’s business.
I think Sarah is either trying to scare Joyce straight (no pun intended) or has a much harsher view of Dorothy than we do. I don’t see Dorothy ending her friendship with Joyce over this, but I can see a very heated argument in the future. Followed by making out in the rain (we get that at least once a universe right?)
I don’t think Dorothy is all thunder and lightning, but she would leave. If this were real life, it’d be simple: she’d make an excuse to stop hanging out, and they’d drift apart. Everybody does it when somebody gets too hard to spend time with, and it’s the best way to resolve a platonic relationship that isn’t working out. Hell, except for the gay boyfriend part I’ve done this exact thing to Christians when I could no longer handle their constant evangelism.
Of course, this is a comic strip and hinges on stories, and “the story about how two friends slowly drifted apart, never to see each other again” isn’t exactly on the Times’ Best Seller list.
Yeah, it would be less “I hate you I hate you I hate you!” than, “Sorry, I can’t stay here and watch this happening, any more than I could sit and watch you training a puppy to enjoy pain. Call me after everything goes to hell and you break it off, assuming either of us remember each other by then.”
“Yes. I am the hard, edgy, intolerant one. I’m not going to do anything about this, but your kinder, more tolerant friend will dump you to the curb if you try to confide and/or try to get advice. Now, begin keeping a major life secret which will gradually rip open a rift between you two.”
I fail to see the basis for what she claims–with Joyce believing it being mostly attributable to gullibility–and her skipping over the ‘why exactly this would be seen as socially unacceptable’ phase cuts out the option to challenge the conclusion, unless Joyce asks ‘Why?’ next instead of taking it on faith.
I wonder if that person knows what she’s doing in setting up this situation, and what’s going through her head…
“I’m not going to stick my nose in this drama, but let me make up what someone I don’t even know that well is going to do and use it as a threat against you.”
I can see Dorothy going “WTF?” over this. But “you *will* especially lose Dorothy”? Sarah’s not a fount of timeless wisdom, she’s an asocial cynical sophomore.
She knows Dorothy well enough to think Dorothy’s a decent person. Bear in mind that Sarah’s the person who irreparably harmed her relationship with a dear friend when that friend was engaging in harmful and unhealthy behavior. It seems likely to me she’s projecting. She thinks that were she a decent person this would be a point of conflict that could spell the end of their relationship. Instead she stands by while her friends hurt themselves in order to preserve her own peace.
Or at least insomuch as she can bring herself too. The last year’s probably changed her less than she thinks it has. The “but” in that third panel sounds a lot to me like “I’m not racist but” or “I’m sorry but”. It’s the kind of but that leads into a statement that reveals the untruth of the lead-in statement.
I thought it was obvious why what Joyce is doing would be socially unacceptable, and it follows that a more socially conscious person (Dorothy) would be more upset than Sarah. The relationship perpetuates Ethan’s harmful delusions that his homosexuality is something he can ignore. That’s a bad thing to do, regardless of whether it’s consensual.
Remember that Sarah lost her entire circle of friends last year over a controversial decision. I’m seeing a whole lot of projection here in her expectations of how this will play out.
Remember, Joyce and Ethan aren’t the only ones with issues.
On the other hand, Dorothy’s an atheist political activist who (belatedly) crushed her relationship with Danny because she thought that it was bad for both of them. I have no doubt she would be very aggressive in trying to get Joyce and Danny to stop this much more damaging relationship yesterday-if-not-sooner. Possibly to the point of being unable to talk about anything else.
*thinks* Prediction senses are starting to tingle.
Why do I see Mary eventually becoming involved in this drama that will unfold? And in a bad way? I recall seeing her facial expressions at Joyce and Ethan when they went to the church. =/
Doubtful but I know she’s going to appear again. Only a matter of when, where and why.
It’s entertaining how this storyline turns notions of intolerance on their head. Not that long ago, “it’s bad for society,” “it’s not natural,” “they’re hurting themselves,” “they’re making bad choices,” and “I know what’s best for them,” were all things that people commonly said about ordinary gay relationships.
Oof… man, that last facial expression really hit me hard. Joyce looks devastated
I’m sure Dorothy wouldn’t just drop her like a hot potato. A serious sit-down and talk at the most (I would hope)
Assuming Joyce is correct in what Ethan wants from her, ie help, then she could simply say that
“He ASKED me to help him. I like him the way he is and God loves him because he created him that way. I’m not trying to change him because my religion says homosexuality is wrong. I’m trying to help a friend who is suffering with no one else to turn to.”
On the other hand, maybe Ethan simply needs a real friend right now and a fresh start. Dorothy was a great friend, but she needs space. Joyce meets both qualifications.
Wait wait, so why will she lose her other friends? Is it because they’ll think she’s stupid for dating a gay guy, or because they are so PC brainwashed that wanting to “fix” a gay guy is the most horrible thing ever ever, even though Ethan’s pretty much on board with it? (Note that Ethan’s being an idiot too and gay guys don’t have anything wrong with them nor can be “fixed”, I only refer to the intolerance that Joyce may receive for being a traditional-values idealist that is harming nobody. Forgive me for going there, I’m just wondering about Sarah’s logic here.)
She’s literally trying to force him into being gay. She’s also trying to covert him into a Christian. Sarah’s saying that even though Ethan’s okay with it, he’s still trying to ‘find’ himself. Since Dorothy’s an atheist, she’s not going to have any religious problems with Ethan being gay and would probably be mad that she’s trying to ‘save’ him from being gay. But that’s just my opinion as a straight female.
As far as we know, Ethan just wanted to live an impossible dream where being gay wouldn’t define him as much as he’s found that it does when people know about it. Joyce is the one who’s twisted this into her mission to save him from the gay and also the jewishness. Ethan either doesn’t understand that or doesn’t think he can get Joyce to understand, and maybe doesn’t care as long as he can have this pretend platonic relationship.
Now if Ethan wanted to be “cured”, we could get on Joyce’s case for exploiting a mentally ill guy in need of counseling. But he hasn’t shown any sign of being unable to cope with his sexuality; just the frustration of getting used to being someone different than he used to think he was
I do not have time to read the full comment thread, but I would like to add my input. I apologise if this has been covered already, but in what I read I didn’t see anyone else mention this.
Someone mentioned that Ethan can’t be attracted to Joyce because he’s gay. This is not necessarily true at all. There are two completely different axes of orientations – romantic orientation, and sexual orientation. They are often associated with one another, however, they are NOT the same. The vast majority of heterosexuals are also heteroromantic, and the vast majority of homosexuals are also homoromantic. For this reason, the separation of romantic and sexual orientation isn’t often brought up by either group. In the asexual community, however, this is something that’s more well-known. Many asexuals are aromantic, but it’s not a vast majority – there are also many asexuals who fall somewhere else on the romantic scale. It’s much rarer, but this doesn’t just apply to asexuals. There are heterosexuals who are homo or biromantic, and homosexuals who are hetero or biromantic.
That explanation out of the way, it is very easily possible that a relationship between Ethan and Joyce could work out long-term if Ethan is, in fact, biromantic, panromantic, etc. It is a pretty regular thing among asexuals who aren’t aromantic. Given that such a small percentage of people are asexual and experience romantic attraction, asexuals often end up with non-asexuals for partners. Most commonly, either the asexual will have sex to satisfy their partner or the the partner will forego sex. It’s a compromise, but they are still perfectly capable of a happy, healthy relationship regardless. This, of course, applies to a homosexual with a romantic orientation that allows for an attraction to the opposite gender just as much as it does to asexuals.
So, yeah. This relationship is perfectly capable of working out in a healthy manner, if the author wants it to. “Gay” doesn’t always mean both homosexual and homoromantic. Ethan seems to have been romantically attracted to Amber, but also to have been confused by discovering his homosexuality.
They weren’t happy. Amber, especially, was not happy. DOA!Joyce would similarly be not happy, while DOA!Ethan would not even be as happy as he is in this alternate universe, because here in DOA land he knows he is gay and is i>trying to repress it.
So, yes. Some people can be happy in relationships without sex. I would argue that relationships based on repression are always going to be less happy, but Ethan and Amber (and even Joyce) all have serious sex drives and are provably not happy when they spend the rest of their lives in sexless marriages.
Some people are heterosexual and biromantic, or just straight-leaning bisexual, but Ethan is not one of them. He is just gay.
First, it is my understanding that there is no direct link between the characters here and the same characters in his other webcomics. Similarities, yes, but not the same characters. As such, it is completely irrelevant to the discussion and I will be disregarding any speculation or points brought up as a reference from other webcomics.
Your points about their potential happiness are based entirely on another webcomic. Regardless of their high sex drives, they can still be happy in a relationship. You said they “are provably not happy when they spend the rest of their lives in sexless marriages”, but in reality there is no proof of this, at least not in this particular Willis universe.
You say that Ethan “is just gay”, but you do not back this up with any reason whatsoever. He realised immediately that he was homosexual when it came to that point with Amber. But he did not have any such realisation about being homoromantic while he was in a relationship with her. There is no evidence in the comic to suggest that he did not have any romantic feelings for her – the relationship ended because of his homosexuality, but not necessarily because he was homoromantic. To the contrary, the evidence suggests that they had a close relationship. It is entirely possible that Ethan is homoromantic, of course, but it is far from a hard fact like you say it is.
Me if I ever see Tony Hawk: Hey you’re Tony Hawk the famous skateboarder. That’s right I recognise you. Won’t be able to get any content out of this will you, you piece of shit
How to read all 28 issues of my Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane run on Marvel Unlimited:
1: The first four issues were published as the miniseries "Mary Jane."
www.marvel.com/comics/serie...
today in #9chickweedlane i learned we have to be shown children learning and relearning what sex is, for Reasons, even though they already clearly know and have prepared nuanced questions about it!
also that Gran must hate, if she's still alive, how Old Juliette is the same but with gray hair
one of my favorite things is when a commenter explodes WHEN DO THESE CHARACTERS GET THERAPY but directed towards a character who canonically has a regular therapist
Hot Toys Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith 1/6 Scale Darth Vader Deluxe ($495) & Standard ($315) is up for preorder at Sideshow - shrsl.com/4wcx6 #ad
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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 ⋅ 2d
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 ⋅ 3d
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?"
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 2d
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 3d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 12d
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ouch
Dat gravitas.
I thought gravitas came from the bat. Or possibly the Bat, it’s hard to tell in an allcaps comic and assuming the Dark Knight is involved amuses me.
Ah, I love the smell of moral dilemma in the morning.
But does it smell as good as napalm?
Nothing smells as good as napalm…from a distance.
Hey, does this rag smell like chloroform to you?
Why yes it does, why do you a-
Napalm is what I use when my lips feel napped.
I hate it when my lips fall asleep. Makes my face look like a squinting robot.
squinting robot or a duck face?
What if ducks are squinting robots…?
That’s nabalm.
and the bacon?
Is still delicious, so life on Earth can continue.
Still gross. Get it away from me.
It smells like Jelly Babies
The 4th Doctor would be all over that then.
And yet it tastes like snozberries
It’s not really a moral dilemma –Joyce isn’t conflicted because of an internal moral quandary. She’s conflicted because she has been made to realise that this aspect of her already-problematic (but still steadfast) moral framework is absolutely incompatible with her much-needed social and emotional support network.
Thank you for sharing your completed your thesis for your MSW – but I didn’t think using a comic strip instead of live beings was allowed!
Ah well, not everyone is into subtextual reading I guess
If both Ethan and Joyce are ok with this effort/experiment , why is anyone else’s opinion matter, it’s none of their business!
They can just keep their noses out of Joyce’s & Ethan’s business- Just as they demand others keep their noses out of their business.
Life is a continual learning experience, let them learn in their own way.
Truth hurts.
Military scientists were working on a secret project to weaponize truth. It was deemed inhumane and the project was cancelled.
The quest to weaponize jokes however, lives on
we found that out last week with the flu shot LoLz
I can’t be the only one to want this relationship between Joyce and Ethan to work out, can I?
Sarah’s just a big meanie.
Appropriate gravatar is appropriate.
Why would you want it to work out? It’s been made abundantly clear that Ethan and Joyce are just using each other in a tragic show of mutual repression. I mean, they may actually like each other as, I dunno, good pals or something, but other than that…?
Because it’s exactly what each needs right now. It would be different if one of them was taking advantage of the other, but seems very unlikely considering the circumstances. Meanwhile you’ve got Amber and Sarah and Raidah’s pet goldfish trying to tear them apart.
The only way I can see this being good for them is that it will tear these faulty ideas from their minds and crush them in the most violent way possible. Crude. Painful. But it will make them better in the end so long as they don’t get hurt too bad along the way and have their fragile psyches smashed in just the right way so that they get the right lessons out and not the wrong damage. But it could far more easily go horribly wrong.
So you think they should just keep on with the relationship up to a certain point? You at least concede that any kind of long-term relationship would fuck them both up, yes?
Also, I’m skeptical of that claim. Maybe what they need is safety, but their mindset going in is fundamentally flawed in a very harmful way. In fact, it seems that any benefit they’d derive from the experience would be so much smaller than the detriment as to be negligible.
They do need safety, but they could get that from, y’know, not dating anyone for a few months, during which they could work on their issues and get stronger. Instead, they’re putting themselves in a position that only perpetuates/enables/worsens each other’s issues. They’ll have no incentive to heal, and every incentive to keep the status quo so they can keep each other.
I mean, Joyce and Ethan are never going to get married. That’s a given. (Besides, how else would she wind up with Danny, her ultimate ship. *Crossing fingers.*) In the short term, though, they get what they need and might learn a thing or two to boot.
Seriously, you must have had a friend in a long-distance relationship that you wish you could shake and say, “You’re wasting you’re time! It’s never going to work out for you both.” Or maybe a friend you wish you could tell that her boyfriend just isn’t right for her.
They’re just teenagers. And as far as I’m concerned, as long as the relationship isn’t toxic (e.g. an abusive one), then I’m rooting for them.
Conversion therapy *is* toxic.
This. It’s been pretty much established at this point that Ethan and Joyce are going for a full “lifestyle” change.
Not if he requested it.
It’s not like he thinks being gay is wrong. And it’s not like he’s hiding it, either. He just doesn’t want to be defined by one characteristic of himself, and I can sympathize with that.
Nopes, it’s toxic even if he requests it.
People can totally request things that are bad for them.
He might not think it’s wrong, but he sure thinks being straight is preferable.
Reread what he says when angsting about it. He doesn’t want help working out how he’s going to deal with it, and finding out what kind of person he is. He wants help pretending it isn’t real, even to himself.
There’s also this tiny chance that they do fall for each other, for reals. Funny thing is you can still be straight and fall for a guy under very unlikely circumstances (quite rare, but it can happen as sexuality isn’t 100% genes or 100% upbringing – it’s a tad more complicated and funny then that), or fall for a girl if you’re a gay guy. Marriage? Hell no. Satisfying relationship that eventually ends at some point due
to various reasons? Not impossible.
Even if above isn’t likely, having each other understand could still be very good for them – even if it will most likely crash and burn in a glorious way sooner or later. But hopefully the trauma thereof will force them to learn some valuable lessons.
Really, either option is likely to lead to character growth – so I’m ok with it.
^ The entire reason your argument doesn’t work right there.
What? Whoah, who brought up conversion therapy?
Ethan wants to be in this relationship because it would be much easier if he were straight, and likes the idea that Joyce can, essentially, “cure” him. And likes the idea of calling it temptation because that makes it seem “easier and more manageable”. When he was talking to Joyce, he said about being gay that he wanted to lock it up and ignore it forever, and Joyce wants him to learn to resist “seemingly overwhelming temptations”.
So yes. Conversion therapy is basically what they’re trying to attempt.
This, conversion therapy is toxic… But calling this conversion therapy is a mite pushing it.
Conversion therapy would be trying to force a square peg in a round hole, they’re not at that stage yet, it’s still at a stage of “I wonder if this square peg can fit in this round hole?”.
Basically, this hasn’t even come close to the escalation of conversion therapy yet.
^ It’s working under the same harmful premise, though.
True, it’s a bit early for me to be throwing around that term. I do think that’s where this is heading, though, and I think it’s going there quickly unless somebody puts a stop to it. Guess we’ll have to see!
Oh it is heading there alright, that’s just storytelling 101.
What Joyce and Ethan are discussing is not conversion therapy. Conversion therapy is when you take an LGBT person and try to make them straight. What Joyce and Ethan are discussing is refusing to indulge in a particular desire. There is a huge, huge, huge difference between those.
This argument is predicated on the notion that Ethan doesn’t want to be straight, which I would say is inaccurate.
If all Ethan and Joyce wanted to do was repress their sexual desires, they wouldn’t be dating.
Using a long distance relationship as an example of a terrible choice is a funny thing to do on the site of a webcomic artist who married his long distance girlfriend.
Just saying.
This whole conversation is evidence of what Sarah says in the second-to-last panel. People in mainstream American society are NOT tolerant of anyone who deviates from the norm, whether that’s as an asexual, a gay person who voluntarily represses or changes, or a flying jellyfish with pancakes shooting out its face.
No one is tolerant. Everyone wants you to conform to their accepted lifestyle. It’s something I learned in the church, it’s something I learned in the LGBT community.
The end.
Sorry about the harsh things you’ve learned. They’re not really applicable here, though. Sarahis saying that most people think what Ethan and Joyce are doing is harmful, not that people aren’t tolerant of nonconformity.
Ethan struggles with his sexual orientation being the most prominent thing about him and with how hurt he is by the Amber situation. Joyce wants to have sex, but she has been brought up to believe that that’s wrong, so she faces an internal conflict. This isn’t about nonconformity at all; neither is choosing to do what they’re doing because it’s what they want. They’re just trying to avoid difficult problems.
As for your difficulties with the church and the LGBT community and nonconformity, I’m deeply sorry. In my neck of the woods, people aren’t like that; they’re very accepting, in fact. So please try not to make generalizations like “No one is tolerant.” That’s as dramatic as it is inaccurate.
“Sarahis saying that most people think what Ethan and Joyce are doing is harmful, not that people aren’t tolerant of nonconformity.”
In many cases–and I think this is one of them–that’s simply an expression of intolerance. I mean, heck, one of the religious right’s go-to arguments against gay marriage is that it’s harmful–to kids, to traditional marriage, etcetera.
It’s not intolerance.
The end.
It’s not that we don’t tolerate those people–I won’t tolerate people who DON’T respect them.
It’s that we get upset when somebody is so far in denial that they’re hurting themselves.
If you’re gay/lesbian, or asexual, or ANYTHING, and you deny that part of you, refuse to accept it, that’s harmful.
“a gay person who voluntarily represses”
The only reason I can think of for somebody to voluntarily repress is because of religion. Ethan is not religious (or at least, not devoutly), and he isn’t interested in changing himself to please God. He wants to ignore his sexuality.
As far as I can tell, neither of them are trying to refuse their sexual desires because they’re being oppressed for them, so this doesn’t seem to be an issue of homophobia.
If Willis comes in and says that it’s homophobia, okay then the following is null, but -assuming that it’s not-…
I honestly see no issue with refusing to indulge sexual desires. Not only are we perfectly supportive of refusing to indulge other everyday desires, like eating meat or eating greens or being loud or even more violent fare, but on an anecdotal level, well, it seems to be working hella fine for me, compared to how much pointless drama my sexually active friends always seem to be going through — at the very least, I’ve never had to pretend to convert to a religion to impress someone, or stopped talking to someone completely because of hurt feelings.
Anecdotal, sure, but I fail to see how a choice that is not forced upon oneself and is done voluntarily can be claimed to be “inherently toxic”. Maybe I’m actually naturally asexual instead of just choosing to be, is how I get away with it, I dunno.
I think that Ethan’s motivation here cultural, not religious. It sounds like he’s afraid being openly gay would dominate his new circle of friends’ perception of him.
I suppose you could argue that the reason it would potentially be a big deal to his friends would be religion, but the underlying rationale probably matters to Ethan less than the effect on his relationship with them. It’s not *his* religious beliefs that are the issue here.
Whoops, I misread your second paragraph. We’re actually a lot more in agreement than I thought at first regarding Ethan’s lack of direct religious motivation.
We don’t know what Ethan’s coming out experience was, other than that it was rough. We do know that he made a conscious decision to get himself another straight girl like Amber but this time just keep lying forever.
And by the way, it’s a huge stretch to claim that Ethan’s reasons are “cultural, not religious”. His reason is that being gay is seen as abnormal, and that is because of religion, nothing else. Specifically it’s because Judeo-Christianity is so deeply embedded in our society that we can hardly even see the distinction sometimes.
Since when have we needed religion to declare a minority group “abnormal”?
I’m with you. I’m asexual, and I’ve found even those from supposedly ‘tolerant’ groups are convinced I’m deluding myself. If Ethan thinks this will make him happy, who are we, or anyone else, to tell him that it’s not a way in which he’s *allowed* to be happy? You can say ‘I really don’t think this’ll make you happy’, but the comments here aren’t saying that, they amount to ‘If you’re happy doing something we disapprove of, you’re not really happy. It’s not allowed.” Whatever happened to ‘*I* am the master of my fate; *I* am the captain of my soul.”
Sure. But you know, pattern recognition + the hover text on the strips where Joyce and Ethan got together? Those tell a different story.
Ethan isn’t asexual. He’s a gay man with a substantial sex drive, and we have all the reason in the world to think what they are doing is noooooot going to turn out well.
I wouldn’t say that no one is tolerant, but your point is certainly valid. If your way-of-life doesn’t follow the norm – whatever that norm may be – then your choices are deemed unusual, weird, or even harmful. People are entitled to make their own choices, whether or not those choices seem “right” to anyone else. Especially when those choices don’t actually affect anyone else.
“No one is tolerant. Everyone wants you to conform to their accepted lifestyle.” – it’s also perfectly normal, even wise, for a human being.
That sed, there are boundaries that come into play here. Thankfully, in this society only close friends get to have a say in such matters, so it’s much more manageable then the whole town having a say in it, the way it was handled just a few decades ago.
As far as I’m concerned it’s fine for the character’s friends to have a word with them, but not the whole damn world.
I suppose my point was that the quote is needlessly cynical. You’d want your friends to CARE, right? (If not, that’s a whole other can of bad worms that I won’t go into right now) Not so much so that they stop you
from doing shit, but enough to pinch in when they feel you need them to. In-comic I doubt anyone else will even know this is a thing, so a non issue there.
“Because it’s exactly what each needs right now.”
That is what they want, but it is not what they need.
These things have a habit of sorting themselves out, especially since it’s most likely not a sustainable [b]want[/b].
Exactly. This relationship is inevitably going to end badly, since it’s based on “I want to no longer be the thing I am and want to make it go away” and “I want to date someone who I know nothing will ever happen with (and save him from Teh Gay)”, and we know people will react with “WTF?!” when they see it. It’s as healthy as the plague.
That might be true. I don’t think it’s necessarily true, though. To argue that the relationship is doomed because they’re not attracted to each other is to essentially call any relationship not based on sex doomed.
But it IS based on sex. Specifically the repressing thereof. And also based on lies, e.g. the lie that being gay is wrong and that you can or should change your identity in order to be happy.
And relationships based on lies, especially ones we are telling ourselves, do not have a great track record.
Which I’d be inclined to agree with. Doomed without sex that is, save for asexualls, which they are clearly not.
Even so, a little bit of happiness now and some trauma later will likely be good for them in the long run. Have at it kids, he’s a flamethrower. Go nuts.
Technically… she could provide butt-sex inside the dorm if they used a sheet of plywood with a glory hole, and stuffed her mouth with a sock. She’d still be “virginic” and he’d still be hetero… with his eyes closed.
I mean, if you’re going to pretend you’re both doing each other a service, then at least provide the services!
I agree with buttsecks. ALWAYS. NO EXCEPTIONS!
You might be actually.
It won’t. It’s based on a desperate need to fit in on one side, a poor understanding of the world on another, and the delusion that one can willingly change their sexual nature all around. The only thing down this road is pain. Horrible, horrible pain.
But that’s just the thing. It’s not a relationship. It’s a gay guy with a measure of self-loathing trying to excise part of himself through amateur “ex-gay” therapy administered by a well-intentioned (in the “road to hell is paved with” sense) fundamentalist girl who’s also trying to use him to aid in her sexual repression. This is not healthy. It never can be and never will be. The only way this ends is in tears.
But that’s never been their intentions at all. Ethan’s never wanted to be straight, he just wants to be an “internet-addicted, robot-collecting geek.” And Joyce doesn’t want him to be straight, either. (Well, it’s not her main objective anyway.) She just wants a guy friend that isn’t going to take advantage of her or slip her a roofie.
Just because the roots of their actions are obvious to outside observers doesn’t mean that it is to them. The scapegoat of trying to make Ethan straight will hurt them. There is no good here. Only pain.
Horrible, horrible pain.
Pain is good. Builds character. Also calluses.
This is untrue, and all you need to do to see that is look back to panel 2 of this very strip.
All Joyce says is that she wants to “save” Ethan. That might mean that she wants to change is orientation… or maybe it means what she actually said.
The thing is, this relationship isn’t giving either what they want, neither now or in the long-term.
If Ethan wants people to stop obsessing over his sexuality, he’s not going to get that with Joyce. Not only is she sexually attracted to him (as evidenced by her erotic dream/nightmare), she believes it’s her duty to “guide” him back to heterosexuality. Panel 2 in the comic above? It’s a nicer way of saying “save his soul from eternal damnation because homosexuality is wrong.” You can bet that Joyce will be hyper-aware of his sexuality and how he faces “temptation” from now on. And dating someone who believes with every core of their being that being gay is a sin (no matter how nicely they word it) is hardly a good way of fixing Ethan’s problem of feeling bad about being gay.
As for Joyce, she has platonic guy friends. What she wants is a boyfriend. Scratch that, what she wants is a college sweetheart, who she’ll go steady with all four years and then marry and settle down and raise kids with. Joyce does not do short-term. Ethan is “safe” because he’s gay and not attracted to her sexually. Unfortunately, being gay means he’s not romantically attracted to her either. When Joyce realizes that no matter how hard she tries, it won’t work, she’ll be devastated. And even if she gets over it, I doubt a non-romantic, non-sexual relationship will somehow give Joyce experience in how to handle a real one.
Aaaaaaaaactually… no, he really wants to, and I quote “ignore the annoying stuff going on in [his] pants… just shut it up and lock it away forever.” At the very least, he wants to pretend he’s straight forever.
If Ethan was just asking for a beard, that’s what this would be. A guy faking it to focus on other things and a girl who could point to a “man” to ward off other, possibly more predatory parties.
But you need to reread. That’s not what either is actually doing.
Ethan is talking to himself about managing “temptation” implying an out and out sexual orientation suppression. He’s not just talking about his public presentation, he’s talking about his internal feelings. Joyce likes the idea of suppressing her sexual nature, but her entire problem is that she’s discovered in college that she HAS one and the genie is out of the bottle. She’s going to inevitably want things from Ethan he can’t give her. And not just sex, but intimacy in other ways. Oh, he could be her friend, and a good friend. But that’s not what she’s looking for and eventually it won’t be what she’s asking for. Her goal is something only a man who likes women can provide. And because of her religious beliefs, she’ll be looking for marriage in this deal as well.
Trying to fight your own inherent nature, going “no no no bad thoughts” 9 times out of 10 just means you think about it infinitely more. and Ethan.. Ethan has Jacob as a roommate for fucks sake.
Both will have horrible cognitive dissonance and anxiety/stress as they not only try to surprises what they feel and fail, but likely guilt for letting themselves AND their partner down.
The best case scenario is that they make no progress at all. but as long as they are trying to be together in this way, neither will make any meaningful progress to working out their actual issues.
@kagato 23 I think Joyce is simply misinterpreting what Ethan wants help with. Ethan DID say “Just shut it up and lock it away forever”, but Joyce said “we were tailor-made for each other. I have the patience to guide you…”. My point is that it looks to me like Joyce is trying to be a real friend to Ethan by helping him at this horrifically difficult point in his life.
Joyce just said that Ethan thinks that Joyce can “save him”. He is freaking suffering so much that it aches, why does that mean Dorothy is trying to “fix” the problem rather than helping Ethan live his “new” life?
When Ethan wished he could lock it up and throw it away, he knew when he said that that he CANNOT simply change that part of himself.
I think that Sarah is misinterpreting how Joyce plans to help Ethan. Sarah thinks Joyce is trying to “fix” his homosexuality, but I do not think that is what Joyce is trying to do. YAY wall of text.
Yes, she’s scared of external sexual desire, of the men that crave her. So Ethan is perfect for her. BUT she’s also afraid of her internal sexual impulses. We’ve seen her desire for Ethan, in the sexual dreams, in the dates, and she’s been explicit in how badly these desires terrify her.
Ethan is not her “guy friend”. Ethan is her boyfriend, and she wants to “save him”. From where she’s standing, he wants to be straight. I’d argue that he really does want to be straight; while it may not stem from a desire to have sex with women or anything, he craves the normalcy he sees in heterosexuality.
Senator Michelle & Marcus Bachman (her “fit the STEREOTYPE of what he hates” husband) could cure Ethan!
It even says so right here! http://goo.gl/6hju7
I’ll bet if she were aware of this story arc, she’d write Willis and ask him to attend a few sessions to see how it is done, and how successful they are!
Gosh, Golly, Gee! I sure do hope Michelle becomes President of the United States one day, so I have a definitive reason to refer to, when I decide to go to North Korea for 4 years!
If Dennis (Denise) Rodman was welcome, then a straight, cynical white dude with no respect for the THEN current president — who can also pre-qualify his mistress choices for new Dear Leader (or a harem of mistresses the happy couple can make use of!) then I should be truly welcome!
…*raises hand* I wanted it to work out well too…
I wonder if people would still say Sarah was a jerk in a strip if she like, saved a kitten from a burning building or something.
Sarah being Sarah, she’d probably do it by punting it out the nearest open window.
And I’d laugh. And then I’d feel like a terrible person.
Man, Sarah and Mike should date. They’d form a singularity of cynicism and misanthropy and implode the entire universe.
Pretty sure it would implode into sex. Cynical, cynical sex.
Wow, Sarah’s oddly forgiving.
She’s also awful foreboding.
Not really. She’s certainly willing to give Ethan a free pass, which seems a bit odd since a) he’s the one who asked Joyce to save him and b) he’s… you know, actually been in a relationship before and knows what the hell he’s doing.
Remember Joyce, you have little life experience, no idea what a relationship entails and only the dimmest idea of what homosexuality entails, but everyone is going to blame YOU for this relationship.
I meant that Sarah doesn’t seem to mind what’s going down here, or if she does, she’s using a very indirect way of expressing that.
There’s nothing odd about. Sarah doesn’t want to get sucked into other people’s drama, as doing so ended up screwing her in the past.
>>I meant that Sarah doesn’t seem to mind what’s going down here…
whoa, Whoa, WHOA! There’s been no ‘going down’ as of yet between those two! For Ethan? Well, he’s got more experience to have them both covered, so that whole “sheet of plywood” thing works to their benefit!
(but let’s be honest – it has to be the furniture grade, on both sides, type – the most expensive sheets, so nobody gets any splinters. If you’re gonna cottage, make it realistic! Hang a toilet paper holder on both sides!)
And when the relationship is over, they can sell it to former Idaho Senator Larry Craig, for him and HIS wife to use!!
THINK OF IT!
I’ve already got my foot tappin’ – tappin’ to a song someone’s a hummin’… just tap-tap-tappin’ along!
If Ted Haggard can do it (which ‘it’ are we talking about here?? Reform or Cottage?? I guess BOTH! ), Ethan can too!
WoooHooo!
Willis – no royalties necessary for these arc enhancements! Just run with it!
You are incredibly unpleasant.
There’s a difference between forgiving and indifferent. What does she care if Ethan wants to be stupid? And she’s informing Joyce of the consequences so she won’t have to deal with that drama either.
Harsh, yes, but I think this is a reality check that Joyce needed.
Unless the Bank of Joyce bounces it somehow.
She has a recycling bin for this type of information.
Or Joyce could just reject reality and substitute her own.
…next on Muffbusters…
Not nearly harsh enough. Oh please let Dorothy set her straight (pun not intended).
Gotta love these Joyce faces you keep making.
My college life didn’t have nearly this much drama. But….I suppose a webcomic about my college life would be pretty boring.
Not mine. It’d be about awesome parties, babes, beer, and all the other stuff I’ve never experienced.
Much familial drama. Although it would be spaced out much more than this. What, it’s like the third week here, right?
Yeah, this storyline is a bit over-the-top. When I dated a fundamentalist christian in college to suppress my growing awareness of not being straight it wasn’t *nearly* this exciting.
… Yeah, there is basically no way this will end pretty, period.
*Munches popcorn*
It’s gonna be messy for sure. *slurps soft-drink*
I am settled in for the denouement of this arc, however painful.
*pops another cookie dough bite*
Oh my god, I love those things.
Does anyone who buys cookie dough ever bother cooking any before they finish it off?
I do.
Egads!
Egads indeed.
Everyone always freaks out when I eat raw cookie dough cuz I could get…salminela or some junk. ROCKY ate raw eggs and they only made him stronger.
While it has been years since I last ate a bowl of choc-chip cookie dough, I still prefered it in its doughy state tastewise.
@yotomoe If you are eating raw pasteurized eggs (which eggs at major stores typically are) the salmonella is really not an issue.
Rocky & Eric Burden didn’t have access to ozonated/oxide eggs in 1976 or 1966 (respectively) – nor was gamma used for eggs either – until early 2000s.
Stallone would have been better off with 12oz of milk than 3 raw eggs.
Remember kids, Salmonella is a gram-negative bacteria, therefore the organism can easily be killed by being extra cheerful, and complimenting the egg and the Salmonella – using POSITIVE energy! In fact the face of Joyce below, all positive, is enough to kill most gram-negative bacteria! So before you consider using raw eggs for anything but THROWING, save a life, maybe even your own! Bombard those bacteria with POSITIVITY!
Junior Mints, anyone? Or do we all have enough movie-going snack foods to go around?
I think Sarah is officially my favorite character now.
I don’t think Dorothy would encourage it, but I doubt she’d leave Joyce.
She’d leave her for a fundier christian. Just you wait. Dorothy and Mary’ll be hangin’ out before you know it.
Cos as you know, you cannot have fundamentalist without FUN.
or mental.
That’s half the fun!
She’ll leave Joyce for a more casual Christian she can just make out with occasionally without any stress or dysfunction.
That would make her an atheist sinner!
I think she would absolutely stop talking to Joyce over this. My guess is that Dorothy considers the whole ex-gay thing tremendously emotionally damaging to gay people. Even though Ethan’s volunteered to become emotionally damaged, it would just feel really awful to be buddies with the person egging on his torture, you know?
Assuming Dorothy stayed long enough to get the full story, I think Dorothy would be more upset at Ethan than Joyce. Ethan is, after all, the one who asked Joyce to save him. She didn’t approach him, he asked her to.
I think she could find plenty of blame all around. She’d doubtlessly rip both of them a new one, and break off contact with both because there would be no way she could be polite about it in its presence.
I would be surprised if she stayed. Conversion therapy, no matter how well-intentioned, is a big deal, and rightly so.
This really isn’t conversion therapy though. That term actually has a set of associated behavior modification techniques.
This is just “fake it and want it really, really hard.” Neither party has enough competency in conversion therapy to pull off an attempt. Also, I suspect what the comic will give us instead will be funnier, albeit equally effective (which is to say not)
Verbal shortcut, my apologies. It’s damaging either way.
the matching gravatars make this look so gollum-ish
I don’t think Ethan wants Joyce to “convert” him to hetero, I think Joyce is simply misinterpreting what he wants help with. I also do not believe Joyce has “bad” religious reasons for trying to help him; someone she cares deeply about is really struggling and suffering. Joyce wants to do whatever she can to help him. Ethan needs help, however I do not think Joyce is trying to “help get rid of his homosexuality”, I think she is trying to be a good person in her own way.
Check out the International Healing Foundation and tell me how that’s any worse than smoking–something with countless studies proving its unhealthy effects–and yet we all tolerate smokers. We don’t “cease to hang out with them” because they smoke.
Smoking is physically damaging–but I don’t hang out with smokers WHEN THEY SMOKE.
This kind of thing is emotionally damaging, to the point where people sometimes kill themselves over their repressed feelings.
Smoking might kill you, but it’s not going to send you into a depressive spiral where you feel so hopeless and alone because there’s something WRONG with you, and you hate yourself, and why can’t you just be like everybody else and not have to deal with this, and you just CAN’T HANDLE IT.
a) Some people do. Especially if they’re asthmatic.
b) It’s not equivalent. I don’t stop hanging out with my friends who are destroying themselves with cigarette smoke (though I stand upwind when they’re actually doing it), but if I were to find out that one of my acquaintances were actively trying to get other people hooked on cigarettes, I would at least give some deep and serious thought as to whether they were the type of person I wanted to associate with. Similarly, I wouldn’t stop hanging out with Ethan over this.
We can’t foist this all on Joyce. Ethan literally asked for this.
Yeah. And if one of my friends decided to start smoking, I’d try to convince them otherwise. But it’s their life to live, and their choice to make. And I wouldn’t abandon them as a friend; that’d be counterproductive.
Honestly, I wouldn’t abandon Joyce, either. But that’s largely because I’ve watched Joyce grow up in another universe, and I know that underneath that shell of ignorance, naïvety, and brainwashing there’s a fundamentally good person with a strong moral compass trying to get out. She wants to do the right thing; she just doesn’t know what it is, and is only starting to get the sense that maybe the things she’s been told all her life might not be entirely accurate.
But while she’s not, yet, and maybe not ever, the sort of person who can reject the idea that virtuous atheists like Dorothy or Dina are damned to Hell, much less take the position that a God that would do so is a bad god and not worthy of her worship, she’s at least the sort of person who is seriously troubled by the idea.
(After having watched all the pain and suffering that other Joyce went through to learn these lessons, and come out the other side as a good and strong woman, sometimes seeing this Joyce, who has all of those lessons still ahead of her, makes me unutterably sad.)
The reason those same-sex attractions are unwanted is because religion hates them. I don’t know why homophobia became such a prominent feature of the major religions, but that’s just how it happened.
I’ve seen you post in the past, and I’m glad you’re happy with your life and the way it’s turned out. But what I think is more tragic than anything is that you and other people have to feel like those attractions are wrong for no real reason, other than you grew up being taught that they were. And then people like you perpetuate it, and the cycle continues, the whole time resenting the way your body makes you feel because you believe a higher authority wills you to resist the temptation.
By the way, where do I go for unwanted opposite-sex attractions?
I think you become a nun or a priest.
Doesn’t seem to work out so well for the priests.
So when do Sarah and Joyce kiss
During Webcomic Sweeps Week??
I want Sarah to take the protective mentor relationship stuff and push even further into the shonen anime hero “I will protect you” relationship with the love interest
I heard the call of duty…
And you have gone above and beyond it.
First the Joyce/Dina art and now this? You are a true treasure.
I didn’t choose the fanart life. The fanart life chose me.
I still can’t get over just how CUTE that image is. Like, the art style is already adorable, but Sarah kissing Joyce on the forehead? oh my GOOOSSHHHHH
Another reason WHY I love Sarah so much. Sticking the harsh reality to that bible thumper.
When ever I hear “Bible thumper” I think of a person who bangs bibles. Is that wrong?
Yes, it’s a lustful thought, and that is one of the seven deadly sins!
Damn that Rule 34.
I’d draw this…but I don’t feel like I’m equipped…mentally
When you wrote ‘bangs bibles’ I didn’t realise you were using the term in the sexual sense until I read the replies. Is that wrong?
Yes. You’re not corrupted enough. You need to spend more time on the internet. Not much more though; it’s potent.
Someone who bangs bibles would be a bible humper. It’s not considered a good idea. You might get paper cuts or get stuck in Deuteronomy.
A bible thumper, OTOH, sounds to me like a particular kind of percussionist.
That’s an “about to snap and murder everyone” face if I ever saw one.
I figured it was a ‘oh s—, I dug myself into a ten mile hole, and I can’t leave because then this water main will pop.’ Of course, the main will pop anyway, but luckily if she doesn’t drown the coincidence of the disasters will carry her to the top, and she’ll be back to where she started.
Really? That looks more like sadness and fear. I’d even buy heartbreak and despair. Anger and murderation? Not so much
Because people have NEVER gone homicidal out of heartbreak and despair…
Can we get the last panel as a stand alone please?
Always have had Sarah right up there as a favorite. She may not be right about who will stand for it and who won’t, but there is no way this is going to work out for either Joyce or Ethan. If they back off, start again as just friends, then they could probably help each other.
But Joyce gotta have her drama or she wouldn’t be Joyce.
Man, Sarah, way to not give the reason why people might dislike her for this development and thus potentially leave her to assume her actions are doubleplusungood for any number of reasons.
Because it’s a dick move. There ya go.
Joyce already knows it’s wrong. In panel 2 she’s expecting to get smacked.
Or she knows that her opinion is not a popular one to hold among the people she’s associated with up to this point.
In which case Joyce knows the reason why people might dislike her for this development, and thus Sarah hasn’t potentially left her to assume her actions are doubleplusungood for any number of reasons.
I halfway agree. It’s generally clear to us why this would be viewed as a ‘bad thing’, and it should be clear to Joyce. But I’m a bit afraid that down the line (especially when it comes to atheist Dorothy) that it’s not going to be ‘oh, this is wrong for these reasons that kinda make sense’, but instead turn into ‘this is wrong to you because you’re a sinner, so I just need to not listen to you about it.’
I’ve seen it happen. If you can provide reasoning that doesn’t require a common viewpoint, it’s a lot easier to get a specific point across. Like I said somewhere else, Sarah taking the ‘you’ll lose friends’ approach is good because Joyce really does want friends, but if she doesn’t give a reason that Joyce can follow from her fundamentalist viewpoint, it could just turn into ‘you’ll lose friends, but they’re all sinners and bad for you anyway’ (again, especially with Dorothy since she’s already a dreaded atheist).
Maybe, but Joyce doesn’t seem to have that “I’m proud to shun you sinning bastards, hahahahaha!” attitude. Joyce makes an active effort to reach out to others, and (aside from the occasional mental breakdown) hardly slows down when it’s revealed to her that they’re Teh Evil in one way or another. (Jewish, atheist, mormon, and gay, so far.) If she were going to decide to categorically dismiss a person based on their thoughts or reasoning, she’d probably have shown signs of it by now.
This is not to say there aren’t theists who operate on that sort of self-aggrandizing isolationist thinking, but Joyce really doesn’t seem to be one of them. She’ll argue rather than sneer, and thereby may eventually understand. (Though with this gay thing, I suspect she understands already.)
Of all the arguments Sarah could make about why this is a very bad idea, she went with the one with the least moral weight but that would cause the most fear. Huh.
Makes sense though, considering the type of person that Joyce is, trying to challenge her on a moral level would likely make her dig in further with her own established morality. Challenging Joyce with a less abstract argument is probably more likely to make her rethink her own morals. For example, if you recall from previous strips Joyce’s friendship with Dorothy is making her uncomfortable with the idea that her religion’s precepts condemn Dorothy to Hell.
All moral arguments depend on having a (at least partially) shared morality. But fundamentalists believe that the only valid moral argument is “it says so in the bible”. If you want to convince them, you have to base your argument on scripture, and (unless you have studied the bible a lot) they’re usually better at it than you. Just saying “this will lead to suffering” isn’t going to convince them if they think the suffering is justified.
I’m pretty sure it’s been shown that atheists know more about scripture than evangelical Christians. is just one of the links that came up in a simple Google search.
Then, you’re not going to yell that he’s gay to the whole world now are you, Joyce? I know it’s hard to keep a secret because sooner or later, it’s going to come out especially by some asshole who wants to use it to blackmail you or something.
Or some asshole that has a predilection for moms and nickels.
Mike is above monetary compensation for secrets.
Only the tears of the other characters’ suffering can sate him.
He will also accept punching you in the face.
It’s really hard to state your opinion on homosexuality without sounding like a complete asshole.
^(pun unintended)
It’s also really hard to state your opinion on interracial couples without sounding like a complete asshole.
Er, that was really passive-aggressive, I do apologize. In any case, that was kind of a random comment to make in the context of this strip…?
Hey, you’re just stating your opinion. No need to apologize.
What’s there to say. My opinion on interacial couples is that they’re awesome and I’d like to see more of them. Let’s all mate together!
Agreed.
Ditto.
My pants are already off, Yoto, take me now!
In a big pile or should be break into smaller groups?
I don’t find that to be the case.
If I can’t state my opinions on something without sounding like an asshole, I usually consider that a hint that maybe my opinions are asshole-like.
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
“Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?
If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you’re supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn’t. Odds are you just think whatever you’re told.
The other alternative would be that you independently considered every question and came up with the exact same answers that are now considered acceptable. That seems unlikely, because you’d also have to make the same mistakes. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them. If another map has the same mistake, that’s very convincing evidence.
Like every other era in history, our moral map almost certainly contains a few mistakes. And anyone who makes the same mistakes probably didn’t do it by accident. It would be like someone claiming they had independently decided in 1972 that bell-bottom jeans were a good idea.
If you believe everything you’re supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn’t also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s– or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have.”
Me too, but not because I’m opposed to homosexuality or anything. I just have a real tendency to always sound like an asshole no matter what I’m saying.
You jerks.
The Danny avatar just doesn’t fit…
Clearly you haven’t read Roomies.
Only if you think it’s wrong. In which case, yeah, you’re going to have trouble expressing that in a way that doesn’t make you sound like an asshole, because that’s an asshole opinion to have.
Common “arguments” against gay marriage:
1.) “Traditional marriage is between a man and a woman and I don’t want to redefine that term!” = wrong. Traditional marriage is lots of things, but a monogamous two-person heterosexual relationship it isn’t and never has been. The church also performed same-sex marriages up until about the 14th century.
2.) “What’s wrong with calling it a civil union?” = history-blind. Separate but equal is never really equal. Fine in theory, crap in practice.
3.) “Ugh, marriage is a stupid heteronormative thing and the sexual revolution was supposed to bring an end to that expectation!” = if you don’t want to get married, YOU DON’T HAVE TO, but please don’t deny other people the right. If you think same-sex marriage won’t help to normalize same-sex relationships, you’re wrong; and if you think there’s no value in normalizing same-sex relationships, you’re also wrong. Seriously, let’s focus on making it legal first, and *then* you can worry that your parents are pressuring you and your long-time boyfriend to get hitched when neither of you is the marrying type.
4.) “Once gay marriage is legal, gay men will abandon the fight for queer civil rights and marriage is not the most important thing to me personally!” = it sure sounds like you are assuming that someone else is going to stop fighting for your rights and responding to it by preemptively refusing to fight for *theirs*. Be less of a jerk.
I’m leaving out the “sin” and “icky” arguments, because I think these are the only ones anyone can even vaguely expect to not be the arguments of an asshole.
“The church also performed same-sex marriages up until about the 14th century.”
Citation needed (seriously, I just wanna know where that came from, because it’s the first time I’ve heard it).
Last panel: I had that face when I found out they made a live action movie of Dragon Ball. Nearly killed that poor guy who mentioned it to me.
I saw that movie! Mine was better.
Don’t you start with me on that abomination (“the movie”, I mean. Not your movie)
I actually like how Sarah is managing the truth right now, she seems to be better at delivering right now.
I think the ‘you’ll lose friends’ approach might help Joyce, but I’m afraid the ‘you’ll lose Dorothy’ will just drive home the idea of Dorothy being a bad ‘temptation’ (not in the lustful way, just in the evil is attractive way) and just drive Joyce further into her own views.
That’s not what the look on Joyce’s face says in the last panel. She looks sad and mortified at the prospect.
Rather then “So I should dump Dorothy” I think she’s more likely to go “So… I can NEVER tell Dorothy”
(Response to both since they’re similar) I see her face that way, too, but I feel like that’s more a knee-jerk/initial reaction. I meant more down the line that it could become a problem.
Right now, Joyce and Dorothy seem to have something of an understanding (not really the right word, but close) and Joyce really does like Dorothy, so Sarah bringing up Dorothy makes total sense. I’m just worried that putting that much emphasis on Dorothy will strengthen the idea of Dorothy being Joyce’s philosophical foil more to the forefront of Joyce’s thoughts. That could change things from a gradual opening up to new things to just shutting out everything, which I feel would be bad for Joyce.
I get you. But both are variations of fear motivation (you’ll lose friends/ you’ll lose Dorothy), so I think both might have a negative impact on Joyce. Pretty soon Ruthless won’t be the only one we haven’t seen in days…
Ahaha
Forced to choose between a gay boyfriend and an atheist best friend.
We’ve all been there, am I right?
Reading the comments, I feel alone in my view of the two of them.
Ethan feels trapped by being gay, specifically that one facet of him is magnified and focused on. It’s something that takes time to process and accept, and he is still growing into this fairly new, and life altering, part of him. By having a ‘normal’ relationship, it allows him to still have that old part, the childhood nostalgia, while becoming a new person.
Joyce feels temptation, and does not want to give in to it. She still wants to get out there, and experience life, even considering what happened a week or so ago (in-universe, assuming the only time skips are those stated). Does she think she can change him? Possibly, that being based on her upbringing, to which she seems to already be attempting to reconcile, that things she felt were evil, or wrong, may in-fact, not be. Even if she ‘fails’ with Ethan, her time spent with him is safe, since she does not have to fear of giving into temptation, or having herself be taken advantage of by him. It allows her to expand her horizons on interacting with others, and to become more accepting. Which one can say already happened, since she’s ‘dating’ Ethan, who’s Jewish.
Baby steps into the world, isn’t that part of what college is?
Except their “normal” and “safe” relationship involves the two of them willingly and unhealthily repressing parts of their own identities and insecurities. Their relationship doesn’t allow them to really address their issues it simply tries to smother them.
Hear, hear. It’s just a part of growing up. I think the “you’re not invited to my birthday party” threats that are being directed at Joyce and Ethan are much more damaging than their very tame relationship could ever be.
I dunno. Repression isn’t healthy.
You’ve made your case and myself and others have made ours. Without crawling into Willis brain-meats, I think we can still safely say that based on the implications in the comic thus far it will not work out that this is a smooth beneficial thing.
Oh i’m sure they’ll both learn from it. But not in a happy, stryfe free way.
You have a point about baby steps forward, but it feels like Ethan and Joyce are taking baby steps back.
Yes, Ethan needs time to process and accept being gay. Being in a straight relationship with a devout Fundamental Christian who has erotic dreams about him and firmly–if sympathetically–believes that his being gay is both an avoidable choice AND sin that he needs to be “saved” from isn’t going to help.
Joyce needs to find a way to reconcile her religious beliefs with her sexual urges, not shove the latter away into a box of nightmares. Dating a poor lost soul that it is her moral obligation to reprogram and convert is not going to do anything to lesson the “burden” she feels because of her faith. It is also not going to do anything to challenge her view of homosexuality as a choice. And if she’s still dreaming of meeting her perfect soulmate, settling down with him, and starting a family, she has to look for someone who she trusts who is *also* attracted to her on some level.
Basically, this relationship is neither sustainable nor conductive to growth.
Welp, there ya go. Sarah speaks for those of us who went into “NOPE” mode a few weeks back.
Sarah is the embodyment of “NOPE”.
Grumpy Sarah?
Let’s get her some goggles and a hardhat.
Man this is relationship is going to end in a way that makes a 747 full of grandparents crashing into a train full of blind orphans and rainbow colored bunny rabbits look tame
Yeah, that’s pretty tame. I mean, if it was a Starship Enterprise full of Terminators crashing into a USS Enterprise full of demented serial killers riding gunpowder-black and blood-red ligers, that’d be pretty un-tame. Your scenario: totally tame.
Someone needs to animate your scenario
Man, I actually feel really badly for Joyce right now. Pretty much the minute she finds out Ethan is gay, he tells her that he wants to continue their relationship and that he thinks being gay is horrible. Joyce doesn’t have the life experience to understand why Ethan’s view on his sexuality is completely fucked up. What she does understand is that Ethan is in pain and she thinks she can help.
Now she’s got Sarah telling her that everyone else will hate her for her and Ethan’s relationship but Sarah isn’t telling her WHY that is.
I do think Joyce and Ethan’s relationship is nothing good, but honestly, I put the blame more on Ethan. He knows Joyce has never been in a relationship, he knows her religion views and he knows how sheltered she is. He was on the one who hatched this “hey, maybe I can just stop being gay” plan, not Joyce.
Look at panel 2, and tell me that Joyce doesn’t already know that her situation with Ethan is fucked up.
She looks naive and terrified.
She’s terrified because she thinks Sarah will be angry with her. The only reasons she’d have to think that are if she a) knows what she’s doing is wrong, or b) realizes that people would think what she’s doing is wrong.
Other reasons why she’d have reason to think Sarah is angry with her:
1) Sarah pretty much constantly yells at her about everything.
2) by now, Joyce probably knows that tone of voice and body language from Sarah that just screams that Sarah’s going to yell and get angry
3) i don’t know about you, but you sure as hell can feel guilty the moment someone starts questioning you like that, even if you are dead sure you’ve done nothing wrong. you start second guessing yourself, /especially/ when you’re socially stunted.
She only got guilty and tentative when Sarah prompted her to admit she was going to try and “save” Ethan; she was fine in panel 1 and the previous comic. (Also there’s little indication that Sarah is yelling at her, or even speaking loudly until panel 3.)
It seems clear to me that Joyce is well aware that “save him” means “screw around with his gender identity” in non-fundy-land.
Gender identity? Now I have to ask if you know what “Save Him” means in non-fundy land.
Bah, sexual identity. You know what I meant.
C) Sarah is frequently angry.
I can’t help putting most of the blame on Ethan, too. Joyce is saying “Sex is scary, maybe I can have romance without it?” which is naïve, but understandable, given what’s happened to her. Ethan is saying “I don’t want to deal with myself: help me pretend it isn’t true!” which seems much worse.
I saw “save him” and my reaction was an elaborate combination of sighs, head waving, facepalms and groans. It was really quite beautiful. I think I’ll perform in public areas and when people ask me about what it’s about, I’ll yell, “YOU DISSAPOINT ME MORE THAN DANNY, JOYCE” without any context and then I’ll press on as people throw trash as opposed to change at me for scaring and scarring all the children and people named Joyce and Danny. Did I mention I should probably be in bed now?
I would come watch you perform, and then when you appear to be winding down, I will just gently whisper “Save Him” and you’ll start up again. It will be beautiful
Most of them will be lost like the matching sock for the only clean one you have, but Dorothy will be lost like the matching sock for the only clean one you have which you just made by hand, so it doesn’t even have a matching sock. That’s how lost Dorothy will be.
So… I read this today. My mind: a little blown. I’ve had lotsa mormon friends and I support them doing their thing… I’ve had lotsa gay friends and I support them doing their thing… but this is an intersection I never would have thought I’d be okay with. But… it’s cool for them, so it’s cool for me.
Man…whoa…that’s a perspective changer if I ever saw one.
Yeah, sorry, but I found every single part of that depressing, not the least the comments, many of which are Christian people going, “FINALLY, THANKS FOR PROVING THAT ALL GAY PEOPLE SHOULD JUST REPRESS THEIR SEXUALITY FOREVER.” I found it especially unconvincing that neither of them has ever even had another girl/boyfriend. They literally cannot judge what they are missing because they have never even remotely tried it.
There are also several comments from gay men who did the same thing, right down to the having-kids-together-that-we-both-love, and their marriages still disintegrated and were painful and damaging in the long run.
I mean. If they’re happy, then hooray, but they are beating INCREDIBLY long odds if so, annnnd of course when properly translated there is nothing in the Bible that actually condemns homosexuality.
http://hoperemains.webs.com/
So. It’s just deeply, deeply unnecessary, no matter how devout a Christian you are, to spend your entire life in a marriage with someone you will never be physically attracted to.
“Unnecessary” is actually a really good word for it. I thought a big point of that piece was that it was very much his choice to live the life he’s living? It’s not necessary and it doesn’t have to be?
I kind of interpreted the author as being biromantic (I hope I’m not unnecessarily dipping into tumblr-speak), since he obviously loves his wife, so his being in a relationship with her and having sex with her isn’t too different from an asexual person having the same (which happens all the time!). Except of course that he’s giving up something else, but that’s okay, too–plenty of bisexual people end up in monogamous relationships with a person of one gender or the other without ever having dated anyone of the other gender, and some of them tend to be okay with that! This isn’t that different.
I have no problem with his choice because, based on what he wrote, he made it carefully based on what he wanted and what he thought would make him happy. There’s nothing depressing about that.
Again, the comments are where most of the ex-gay sentiment is manifesting.
The most depressing part is the comment thread where someone BEGS them to add an addendum reassuring other gay Christians that they aren’t evil for not marrying straight people — IN TEARS, this person begged for their help, because this person knew many gay people in their parish who would read this and feel like shit, or whose friends would read it and use it as an excuse to harp on them —
and got
no
response.
Even though they DID deign to reply to other comments lower down.
So uh. Sorry, I think you are wrong about their message.
Honestly, I don’t think I’m wrong about what this author was trying to say. It wasn’t written in code, and I read it as carefully as you did. Maybe he didn’t say enough for you, which is too bad. Try to remember that this author isn’t trying to put himself in a position of authority where he can say what’s right and what’s wrong–he struggled with a difficult issue and found something that makes him happy. The end. If he doesn’t respond to every cry for help, it’s because it isn’t his place to make sweeping comments about what is and is not acceptable within the context of one religious doctrine. It makes me sad that this guy put himself out there with an extremely thoughtful, well-put, and accepting article and you’re upset about the comments section.
Are you wrong about what the author was trying to say? Perhaps not.
Are you wrong about the effect his words have had on hundreds of people who have read it? Yes.
You say, “He wasn’t trying to put himself in an authority where he can say what’s right and what’s wrong. […] It isn’t his place to make sweeping comments about what is and is not acceptable within the context of one religious doctrine,” but you are completely ignoring that to silence — complete stony silence — is in itself a sweeping comment about what is and is not acceptable.
Josh and his wife can’t just unring the bell of “gay people can live a happy heterosexual life if only they try hard enough, for I am proof”. They said that. And people heard it, loud and clear.
People read this post when it came out, and they read it today, and they DO take Josh and his wife as an authority because they are speaking from a place of authority. As a gay Mormon man with his straight Mormon wife who are successfully following all the commandments of that religion, of COURSE they are perceived as an auhority.
It would be easy to dispel that illusion; literally all they would have to do is respond to even ONE of the comments on that page to say, “We’re glad you enjoyed this post, but remember that this is just something we wanted to share with our readers; we can’t speak for all gay people or all Mormons on what they should do with their own lives.” That’s all it would take, but in its absence, people keep taking them as an authority, and they are culpable for that.
“[My dad] had just finished firing a psychologist who wanted him to leave my mom so that he could live the lifestyle he was in the psychologists opinion, meant to live. I’m soooo glad he didn’t listen to that idiot.”
“Those who tried and ‘failed’ to find success dating the opposite sex and have found long term lovng same sex partners will be judged as ‘not trying hard enough’ by others who [read this post and] don’t understand. What can you share that would be helpful to families of gay kids and adults who choose to forgo a heterosexual relationship?” (This person expressed concern because SHE KNEW PEOPLE IN HER OWN CHURCH WHO WERE READING THIS POST AND WHO WERE GOING TO TRY TO APPLY IT TO OTHER PEOPLE SHE KNEW. http://www.joshweed.com/2012/06/club-unicorn-in-which-i-come-out-of.html?showComment=1339134229159#c4632793805194080171
This thread breaks my heart, especially with the silence from Josh and his wife.)
Again, if they didn’t feel comfortable giving these people an actual answer, all they had to do was actually reject the authority they were being given, but no. It is irresponsible. “Not enough” for me? Of course it’s not enough for me.
(Do I sound upset, by the way? Because it is very, VERY difficult not to be. I hate that post. I hate that they made it and apparently did not have the common decency to take responsibility for their own words. I extra special hate that it is being linked here, again, as an “eye-opening” read.)
So go on. Dismiss all of this as “the comments section”. I call it, “the effect their words have had on the people they announced it to.” Which, for anything POLITICALLY CHARGED, is much
much
much more important than the good intentions of the people who made the statement.
Sure, they try to dodge this responsibility with some (frankly) bullshit about how it was just ~easiest~ to come out to all their family and friends by using their apparently-quite-popular blog! But if this was really just PERSONAL, and they didn’t want to create ripples that affected all religious gay people everywhere, the simple and obvious solution is to actually talk to people individually.
Which, not unlike responding to individual comments by people who have obviously been deeply affected by their words, would have required more effort!
So yeah. Again. Hard for me to judge these people as anything but irresponsible.
He didn’t say that all gay folks should repress their sexuality. He said that it’s working for him and he’s happy. Depressing? Hardly. He’s not on a soapbox saying homosexuality is wrong — to the contrary, he says that he’s got nothing wrong with gay people in homosexual relationships — it’s just not for him.
No, he didn’t.
The people in the comments did.
But of course there is something wrong with homosexual relationships, read more carefully: they can’t let him be a good Mormon.
Sure did enjoy the way he pretended to think his friend’s adoptive family was fake, while really feeling that way about the thought of adopting his own kids. (He put it in similar wording: that having his own biological kids is just “what HE wanted, for him”, as if that is a neutral choice. It’s not.)
Also, see my comment above. I’d forgotten about that lovely gem. No, the author isn’t off the hook either. Ignoring that tearful plea for help in their comment section makes them assholes.
Dear sweet fucking christ, is that ever depressing.
See what comes of being a prat Ethan? You could have been a positive influence on Joyce, maybe taught her that being gay is ok and that the social bogeymen her parents told her to fear aren’t all that scary. Now all she’ll ever associate you with is fear and anger. Guess that’s what comes with a complete inability to assert yourself in any shape way or form.
Ethan’s pulling a major dick move, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not really his responsibility to be a positive representative of the gay community. He’s a human being with his own problems, not some magical sprite created to give wisdom and life lessons to the sheltered Fundie kids of the world. His only responsibility is to treat Joyce with common decency (which he’s failing at by dragging her into a sham relationship, but y’know, road to hell, good intentions, etc).
I know he isn’t, I came out a bit harder against him then I should have.
It is not Ethan’s job to educate Joyce, or anyone else, about homosexuality. I think this relationship is a terrible idea, but it’s not because Ethan is failing in his duty as a good gay role model.
Please forgive me, I’m kind of an ass when it comes to things like this. Especially in fiction I tend to be a lot more forgiving of characters like Joyce because of my own forced role modeling. My instincts tend to shout, “young kid who’s incapable of understanding the world, must protect. Must teach her about the world.” Thank you very much my own childhood.
Not every gay person comes out of the closet self-assured, confident and able to defend the cause of gay rights everywhere. Coming to terms with such a pivotal aspect of your identity is an incredibly personal and sometimes conflicted process – especially for people who grow up within or around the repressed social mores Willis evidences in his work and, evidently, in his personal background. Joyce isn’t the only ingenue here, and it’s unfair of you to expect one messed up, confused kid to be some sort of experienced guide for another just because he happens to be a larger gay male and she’s a demure, religious fundamentalist female.
How can Ethan “teach” Joyce anything about how OK being gay is when he himself hasn’t really dealt with it in any capacity other than identifying it within himself? Joyce doesn’t have a monopoly on social inexperience, nor in the need for compassionate guidance.
Did you miss the update where we flashed back to prom night and immediately upon discovering his distaste for sex with women the ghost of Alan Turing appeared and appointed Ethan ambassador of the homosexual peoples?
Lo, did Alan Turing, King-Magistrate of all things homosexual burn onto Ethan’s chest the mark of the chosen one and say “It is a great responsibility I entrust to you Ethan. I do this because the blood of the great Thadeus Siegal who first ventured into Olympus and stole the Tiara of Same-Sex Relations from the gods flows through your veins. Wearing the tiara until the end of the days he was imbued most thoroughly with homosexuality’s might and now only you, Ethan Siegal are gay enough to remind humanity of the power of Sodom in time to protect them from the coming invasion, for the gods are a long-lived patient people and the time is almost upon us that they will return to take back what was stolen.”
Well, I guess I know what my epic DoA fanfic will be about now.
> … long-lived patient people …
In long aeons, even those who lie in the Eternal Hospital must (not) die?
I understand that Sarah was being blunt in a way to help, but it bothers me a bit that Dorothy could potentially end the friendship over this. This relationship isn’t abusive and they both consented to this idea. Is it healthy? Probably not, but it doesn’t seem like a reason to cut a friendship off when it is only Joyce and Ethan’s business.
It’s the principle of the thing. At the very least, Dorothy would try and force them to see what they’re doing is wrong.
Yeah, I’m not sure Dorothy would go to outright cutting off ties, but I doubt anyone would approve at this point.
Though, if she learns of this and decides to rope in Amber to help talk them down… that’s how she learns of Amazi-girl’s secret identity as Dina?
People, we have the conclusion of this storyline!
I think Sarah is either trying to scare Joyce straight (no pun intended) or has a much harsher view of Dorothy than we do. I don’t see Dorothy ending her friendship with Joyce over this, but I can see a very heated argument in the future. Followed by making out in the rain (we get that at least once a universe right?)
I don’t think Dorothy is all thunder and lightning, but she would leave. If this were real life, it’d be simple: she’d make an excuse to stop hanging out, and they’d drift apart. Everybody does it when somebody gets too hard to spend time with, and it’s the best way to resolve a platonic relationship that isn’t working out. Hell, except for the gay boyfriend part I’ve done this exact thing to Christians when I could no longer handle their constant evangelism.
Of course, this is a comic strip and hinges on stories, and “the story about how two friends slowly drifted apart, never to see each other again” isn’t exactly on the Times’ Best Seller list.
Yeah, it would be less “I hate you I hate you I hate you!” than, “Sorry, I can’t stay here and watch this happening, any more than I could sit and watch you training a puppy to enjoy pain. Call me after everything goes to hell and you break it off, assuming either of us remember each other by then.”
“Yes. I am the hard, edgy, intolerant one. I’m not going to do anything about this, but your kinder, more tolerant friend will dump you to the curb if you try to confide and/or try to get advice. Now, begin keeping a major life secret which will gradually rip open a rift between you two.”
I fail to see the basis for what she claims–with Joyce believing it being mostly attributable to gullibility–and her skipping over the ‘why exactly this would be seen as socially unacceptable’ phase cuts out the option to challenge the conclusion, unless Joyce asks ‘Why?’ next instead of taking it on faith.
I wonder if that person knows what she’s doing in setting up this situation, and what’s going through her head…
“I’m not going to stick my nose in this drama, but let me make up what someone I don’t even know that well is going to do and use it as a threat against you.”
I can see Dorothy going “WTF?” over this. But “you *will* especially lose Dorothy”? Sarah’s not a fount of timeless wisdom, she’s an asocial cynical sophomore.
She knows Dorothy well enough to think Dorothy’s a decent person. Bear in mind that Sarah’s the person who irreparably harmed her relationship with a dear friend when that friend was engaging in harmful and unhealthy behavior. It seems likely to me she’s projecting. She thinks that were she a decent person this would be a point of conflict that could spell the end of their relationship. Instead she stands by while her friends hurt themselves in order to preserve her own peace.
Or at least insomuch as she can bring herself too. The last year’s probably changed her less than she thinks it has. The “but” in that third panel sounds a lot to me like “I’m not racist but” or “I’m sorry but”. It’s the kind of but that leads into a statement that reveals the untruth of the lead-in statement.
I thought it was obvious why what Joyce is doing would be socially unacceptable, and it follows that a more socially conscious person (Dorothy) would be more upset than Sarah. The relationship perpetuates Ethan’s harmful delusions that his homosexuality is something he can ignore. That’s a bad thing to do, regardless of whether it’s consensual.
To say nothing about the absurdity that it’s something he SHOULD ignore.
Remember that Sarah lost her entire circle of friends last year over a controversial decision. I’m seeing a whole lot of projection here in her expectations of how this will play out.
Remember, Joyce and Ethan aren’t the only ones with issues.
…I had entirely forgotten that. That’s a really good point; no wonder Sarah is jumping straight to “you will lose them.”
Thank you. You’ve answered the question I had before I asked it.
That makes a lot of sense. At first this comic seemed disjarring to me, but it makes sense in the context you’ve offered.
Sara’s still being a dork, though.
Her best friend is obviously lost and confused on an issue bigger then her, and needs input, not fear mongering.
Joyce is Johnny-5?
You take that back!
On the other hand, Dorothy’s an atheist political activist who (belatedly) crushed her relationship with Danny because she thought that it was bad for both of them. I have no doubt she would be very aggressive in trying to get Joyce and Danny to stop this much more damaging relationship yesterday-if-not-sooner. Possibly to the point of being unable to talk about anything else.
But Joyce and Danny arnt in a relationship, unless… Joyce is Amazi-girl! It all makes sense now!
LOGIC-SLAP! Sarah don’t take crap!
She flings it?
Just to be clear, MOST of this is Ethans fault.
Yeah. But Joyce is still not thinking things through.
I’m just picturing “Edge of Madness” from Persona 4 playing over the last panel there.
Glad to know I wasn’t the only one.
*thinks* Prediction senses are starting to tingle.
Why do I see Mary eventually becoming involved in this drama that will unfold? And in a bad way? I recall seeing her facial expressions at Joyce and Ethan when they went to the church. =/
Doubtful but I know she’s going to appear again. Only a matter of when, where and why.
It’s entertaining how this storyline turns notions of intolerance on their head. Not that long ago, “it’s bad for society,” “it’s not natural,” “they’re hurting themselves,” “they’re making bad choices,” and “I know what’s best for them,” were all things that people commonly said about ordinary gay relationships.
So, Joyce needs to stay in the closet?
Breaking the cutie dose not end well
It usually involves tears, a cloak tower, and a HPR.
Okay, now I’m shipping JoyceXDorothy
Welcome aboard, sailor. Here’s your complimentary Jorothy hat, t-shirt, and coffee mug. NOW MAN THE MAIN SAIL, YE SCURVY DOG.
Aye, Sir Gave Up Waiting For The Bus And Obtained Other Transportation!
May I recommend loading the cannons, and preparing to fight off the JoyceXSal, JoyceXSal’s_Motorcycle, and JoyceXSalXSal’s_Motorcycle shippers?
Anyone else thinks that in the third panel it would fit better for Sarah to say no and keep the rest of the dialogue the same?
Yep — I had that thought.
Aww man, I thought we were about to have an amaizing drama trainwreck.
We need a gravitar of Joyce in that last panel.
I love this comic. Everybody is terrible in their own little way, but they’re all great, so I love them all.
Oof… man, that last facial expression really hit me hard. Joyce looks devastated
I’m sure Dorothy wouldn’t just drop her like a hot potato. A serious sit-down and talk at the most (I would hope)
Am I the only one who wonders if Dorothy will care?
Also did Ethan not Kiss Joyce TWICE voluntarily.
I remember being that person for advice… and this is a moment I just facepalm at people’s meaningless concerns. *sigh*
Not meaningless… more like pointless. Alike and different in ways.
Call me crazy, but I don’t see whats wrong with their relationship and whats to “not stand for it”.
I see the transparent color!
Assuming Joyce is correct in what Ethan wants from her, ie help, then she could simply say that
“He ASKED me to help him. I like him the way he is and God loves him because he created him that way. I’m not trying to change him because my religion says homosexuality is wrong. I’m trying to help a friend who is suffering with no one else to turn to.”
On the other hand, maybe Ethan simply needs a real friend right now and a fresh start. Dorothy was a great friend, but she needs space. Joyce meets both qualifications.
Wait wait, so why will she lose her other friends? Is it because they’ll think she’s stupid for dating a gay guy, or because they are so PC brainwashed that wanting to “fix” a gay guy is the most horrible thing ever ever, even though Ethan’s pretty much on board with it? (Note that Ethan’s being an idiot too and gay guys don’t have anything wrong with them nor can be “fixed”, I only refer to the intolerance that Joyce may receive for being a traditional-values idealist that is harming nobody. Forgive me for going there, I’m just wondering about Sarah’s logic here.)
She’s literally trying to force him into being gay. She’s also trying to covert him into a Christian. Sarah’s saying that even though Ethan’s okay with it, he’s still trying to ‘find’ himself. Since Dorothy’s an atheist, she’s not going to have any religious problems with Ethan being gay and would probably be mad that she’s trying to ‘save’ him from being gay. But that’s just my opinion as a straight female.
As far as we know, Ethan just wanted to live an impossible dream where being gay wouldn’t define him as much as he’s found that it does when people know about it. Joyce is the one who’s twisted this into her mission to save him from the gay and also the jewishness. Ethan either doesn’t understand that or doesn’t think he can get Joyce to understand, and maybe doesn’t care as long as he can have this pretend platonic relationship.
Now if Ethan wanted to be “cured”, we could get on Joyce’s case for exploiting a mentally ill guy in need of counseling. But he hasn’t shown any sign of being unable to cope with his sexuality; just the frustration of getting used to being someone different than he used to think he was
I do not have time to read the full comment thread, but I would like to add my input. I apologise if this has been covered already, but in what I read I didn’t see anyone else mention this.
Someone mentioned that Ethan can’t be attracted to Joyce because he’s gay. This is not necessarily true at all. There are two completely different axes of orientations – romantic orientation, and sexual orientation. They are often associated with one another, however, they are NOT the same. The vast majority of heterosexuals are also heteroromantic, and the vast majority of homosexuals are also homoromantic. For this reason, the separation of romantic and sexual orientation isn’t often brought up by either group. In the asexual community, however, this is something that’s more well-known. Many asexuals are aromantic, but it’s not a vast majority – there are also many asexuals who fall somewhere else on the romantic scale. It’s much rarer, but this doesn’t just apply to asexuals. There are heterosexuals who are homo or biromantic, and homosexuals who are hetero or biromantic.
That explanation out of the way, it is very easily possible that a relationship between Ethan and Joyce could work out long-term if Ethan is, in fact, biromantic, panromantic, etc. It is a pretty regular thing among asexuals who aren’t aromantic. Given that such a small percentage of people are asexual and experience romantic attraction, asexuals often end up with non-asexuals for partners. Most commonly, either the asexual will have sex to satisfy their partner or the the partner will forego sex. It’s a compromise, but they are still perfectly capable of a happy, healthy relationship regardless. This, of course, applies to a homosexual with a romantic orientation that allows for an attraction to the opposite gender just as much as it does to asexuals.
So, yeah. This relationship is perfectly capable of working out in a healthy manner, if the author wants it to. “Gay” doesn’t always mean both homosexual and homoromantic. Ethan seems to have been romantically attracted to Amber, but also to have been confused by discovering his homosexuality.
Yeah, but it won’t. Here’s Ethan in another universe, married to Amber, the girl you say he is “romantically” attracted to.
http://www.shortpacked.com/2012/comic/book-14/07-leslie-nopes/gayinthisuniverse/
http://www.shortpacked.com/2013/comic/book-14/09-same-planet-different-dimentia/downer/
http://www.shortpacked.com/2013/comic/book-14/09-same-planet-different-dimentia/god-3/
http://www.shortpacked.com/2013/comic/book-14/09-same-planet-different-dimentia/nocomment/
They weren’t happy. Amber, especially, was not happy. DOA!Joyce would similarly be not happy, while DOA!Ethan would not even be as happy as he is in this alternate universe, because here in DOA land he knows he is gay and is i>trying to repress it.
So, yes. Some people can be happy in relationships without sex. I would argue that relationships based on repression are always going to be less happy, but Ethan and Amber (and even Joyce) all have serious sex drives and are provably not happy when they spend the rest of their lives in sexless marriages.
Some people are heterosexual and biromantic, or just straight-leaning bisexual, but Ethan is not one of them. He is just gay.
First, it is my understanding that there is no direct link between the characters here and the same characters in his other webcomics. Similarities, yes, but not the same characters. As such, it is completely irrelevant to the discussion and I will be disregarding any speculation or points brought up as a reference from other webcomics.
Your points about their potential happiness are based entirely on another webcomic. Regardless of their high sex drives, they can still be happy in a relationship. You said they “are provably not happy when they spend the rest of their lives in sexless marriages”, but in reality there is no proof of this, at least not in this particular Willis universe.
You say that Ethan “is just gay”, but you do not back this up with any reason whatsoever. He realised immediately that he was homosexual when it came to that point with Amber. But he did not have any such realisation about being homoromantic while he was in a relationship with her. There is no evidence in the comic to suggest that he did not have any romantic feelings for her – the relationship ended because of his homosexuality, but not necessarily because he was homoromantic. To the contrary, the evidence suggests that they had a close relationship. It is entirely possible that Ethan is homoromantic, of course, but it is far from a hard fact like you say it is.
I’m confused with Sarah’s behavior in his strip.
When this happens, people will find this strip.