289

Awkwardness
Posted on October 7, 2024 by David M Willis

289 thoughts on “Awkwardness”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    Carla’s downstairs situation is two maids, a butler, and a number of chefs on rotation

    …

    oh, in her PANTS? heiress money and a robot hand perpetually flipping the bird

    1. Doctor_Who

      She needs multiple chefs on staff, they provide the pies.

      A fresh shipment arrives on campus from home every day. They’re delicious, students whose meal plans are running low have taken to intentionally annoying her.

    2. HeatherJean

      And her upstairs situation seems to have been expanded recently.

    3. MordWa

      And a creampie – to the face!
      Amiright?!

      Oh wait… that’s ‘Shortpacked’ Carla…

      1. Jamie

        Oh, it’s this Carla, too.

    4. ValdVin

      “My chauffeur, butler, cook,
      They’re foreign and they’re old.”

      (H/T Lily Garland)

    5. Deanatay

      That’s just on the ground floor. In the basement, she has the chemical laboratory, the flight laboratory, and the large, dangerous experiment laboratory. And LIAM’s room.

      Stay out of LIAM’s room. You have been warned.

  2. RoyanRannedos

    I grew up religious, so I didn’t know my wife’s downstairs situation on our wedding night. She had to give me an anatomy lesson.

    1. Laura

      Ooh, ouch!

      1. MordWa

        It was the chalk and pointing stick that made it awkward.

        1. AMagicalDuck

          Hey some people are into that

        2. Michael Steamweed

          The PowerPoint presentation was formatted nicely, though.

        3. Lysbeth

          In the spirit of Darths & Droids, I have to say the PowerPoint is the most evil part

        4. Michael Steamweed

          I agree with you! I’ve had far too many of them in previous jobs.

    2. Jeremiah

      I assume that is the case in many occasions. Kind of inevitable when you promove abstinence as the only good choice and disapprove of actual sex education.

      1. Felian

        almost as if you can’t flip a switch from “sex is evil and dangerous and you may not even THINK ABOUT IT or you’ll go to hell” to “you are married now, GO AT IT LIKE RABBITS”….. the shame doesn’t simply go away, it sits too deep 🙁

        1. Psychie

          It’s not just the shame, it’s also a matter of mechanics. Before I got sex ed I always pictured girls with the same junk as me or like barbie dolls. Granted, I got sex ed with basic diagrams in like the fifth grade, but imagine never getting that. If nobody ever talks about there being holes or how to actually DO the sex, then it makes sense some people would get there and be like “what is that and how do I sex it”.

    3. Yumi

      Sometimes people don’t even know the anatomy of their own downstairs situation. (Talking “wait, how many holes do I have?”)

      1. ian livs

        Seriously. My trans sister had to tell a cis girl friend of ours how many holes vagina-havers… well, *have*. because we live in one of those states that doesn’t teach you anything except shame and “used tape” analogies.

        1. Felian

          yeah sure, women are like tape, that checks out. ugh. this is depressing.

        2. Taffy

          Women are more like a Duel Disk. You fasten them to your wrist and place playing cards inside them at regular intervals.

        3. jflb96

          Is that what I’ve been doing wrong?

        4. Meeks

          In us ignorant ladies’ defense, the pee hole is not talked about, and also pretty hard to spot, even when doing a self-examination. But mostly I blame the public school system.

        5. Yumi

          It’s also not something people are even encouraged to think about– like, yeah, you might have questions about peeing with a tampon in if you’re confused about holes, but maybe you’re too busy getting messages that the whole area is super awkward to consider to get to those questions or actually ask.

        6. Psychie

          Honestly, the diagrams my school system used made me genuinely think the urethra let out INSIDE the vagina because of how poorly drawn they were. wasn’t until years into adulthood that that particular misconception got corrected. Granted, I’m a dude so it’s not like I have one and I only got hands on experience with one relatively recently, but I can see how some women might have similar confusion considering it’s not exactly placed in a spot that’s particularly convenient to look at on your own body, I figure it must be like trying to count the zits on your butt, mirrors and going by touch can help, but it’s gonna be a pain getting a proper look and using touch you might misinterpret the sensory information.

      2. Laura

        Amen! I was one of those who did NOT know…

      3. BBCC

        Reaaalllllyyyyy glad my school taught us that. I’m trying to remember if that was the secular elementary one or if it also came up in the Catholic high school. I feel like it also came up in high school but it’s hard to remember at this point.

      4. Yumi

        Adding on to this to once I was working at a summer camp for LGBTQ+ kids and kids from LGBTQ+ families, and I had a cabin of cis female campers around age ten or so. It was a fairly sex-positive, body informed place, so when the topic came up in the cabin one night, I was able to just explain the presence of and difference between the urethra and the vagina, and it’s kind of awesome to be able to teach kids accurate sex ed material.

        1. Clif

          But did you teach them enough guilt and shame to make sex attractive and exciting?

  3. Synnerman

    Damn Joyce… I guess it could be worse.

    Now it’s time for Jocelyne to return.

    1. vulcanodon

      She will die a thousand deaths of autistic self-cringe in years to come, and not only from this incident.
      For some people it can develop into relentless s******l ideation and be a major problem late in life.

      1. Mr D

        Ah the secret autism pain. Finally managing to deal with it, and then flashing back to the cringe of the past.

  4. Jeremiah

    The road to self improvement can be painful. Usually for you but sometimes for the people who have to be near while you do it.

  5. Sarah

    Carla’s downstairs situation is a mechanical hand ready to flip you the bird or pleasure her girlfriend from another room. It only has those two modes.

    1. John Campbell

      She’s working on a “throw a pie at you” mode, but hasn’t cracked the pie storage problem yet.

      1. Clif

        Heresy! Carla has no shortage of pies.

        1. Needfuldoer

          But where to keep all those pies?

        2. Marianne

          Nowhere? Her robot hand is also a super experimental rapid 3D pie printer.

  6. Ninjazaku

    Damn, we haven’t seen Dorothy this frustrated with Joyce in a hot minute. Though, I probably would be reacting the same way Dorothy is.

    1. Jeremiah

      Her patient is being really tested right now.

    2. Nono

      It’s easier to be patient with people when their ignorance is only affecting themselves.

      Less so when it can actually be dangerous for other people in the process.

    3. furubatsu

      There’s a big difference between “Wait a second, gay people should be able to love who they want” Joyce Journey vs whatever this Joyce Journey in TransRights involving clumsily outing Carla to a carpark.

    4. Bryy

      Yeah. Accidentally Extremely Transphobic Joyce vs. Control Issues Dorothy. This is going to be very, very bad.

      1. Psychie

        I feel like labelling well meaning, but ignorant actions as transphobic is detrimental to the goal of acceptance. I know I’ve had moments where I was trying to learn and be accepting and felt less inclined to BE accepting after someone treated me like a bigot for being ignorant, I eventually got over it and continued trying to resolve my ignorance, but it can be an uphill battle sometimes. Recognizing the difference between ignorance and bigotry gives the opportunity to provide education where it is clearly necessary, meanwhile lumping ignorance in with bigotry just means you have more bigots when you didn’t need to.

  7. Laura

    “Pleased to meet you! Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins.”

    “Homer Simpson, smiling politely.”

    (What I thought of when I saw Sarah. You can tell how hard this is for her because she narrates everything when she does it.)

    1. Queen Anthai

      …That episode is twenty-eight years old.

      IT HAPPENED TO MEEEEEEE

  8. Masha

    It’ll be a miracle if Sarah makes it through the week without developing a stomach ulcer.

    1. Nono

      I think you mean day.

      1. Opus the Poet

        Are you talking her time or our time? Because in this comic one week IRL can sometimes be one hour of comic time.

        1. vulcanodon

          There was a planet like that in Interstellar

      2. Bryy

        It’ll be a day, given comics time.

    2. NGPZ

      it concerning how she keep up that face

      sure hope she ain’t in the sunken place

      T_T

  9. Nono

    Sometimes the most patient you have to be with someone is when they think everyone is in the same level of learning as they are.

    Joyce is on step 1 of learning about trans people when everyone else is on step 15.

    1. Wraithy2773

      She’s had a full Gender Studies class that she did really well in.

      That at least graduates her to Step 5 or so.

      1. Michael Steamweed

        Ah, but there is a vast gulf between studying the thing and living the thing.

  10. Jo_cubstar

    Joyce, this is not how you show support.

  11. Wraithy2773

    Ye gods, Becky’s right, this is the post-Gender-Studies version of this talk, imagine Joyce pre… all that…

    1. Jeremiah

      No i don’t think I will thanks you very much.

    2. True Survivor

      That version of Joyce would have “known” her downstairs situation, because you know, she thought she would be going downstairs.

    3. John Campbell

      Honestly, it might be better. She’d still be standing in the hallway with one of those expressions frozen on her face instead of yelling stupid shit at Carla in public.

  12. RassilonTDavros

    JOYCE NO

    1. Theluxland

      I hated this whole interaction, especially as a non-binary person

  13. Dday

    I wonder what part of Leslie’s class had everyone shouting I WELCOME YOU TO MY GENDER at people while discreetly not outing them.

    1. Yumi

      My agender ass handing back cards on which I have checked off “Decline to Attend.”

      1. Regret

        Isn’t everybody’s ass agender? I mean, there are some sex differences in what shape is likely, and sexual preference differences in how you want others to interact with it, but gender-wise all your ass can do is be a canvas for sartorial choices.

        1. Yumi

          Aside from this being a dumb joke, I would say that some people might consider every part of them to be the gender that they are.

    2. Risky

      There was definitely an earlier suggestion (and even one by Carla) that you’d have to be living in a cult bunker not to know who Carla is, including that detail.

    3. Michael Steamweed

      Is arriving in gender an RSVP thing? Like, you gotta opt-in? Or is it assumed you’ll attend, and you have to opt-out?

  14. Yumi

    Fuckin’ hope Carla was out of earshot for panel 1.

  15. Taffy

    There should be a second Joyce, with green skin and orange hair, who does the same kind of stuff Joyce does, except in the opposite direction. Green Joyce (legal given name) is extremely knowledgeable about science and queer people, but highly ignorant of fundamentalist American religions, and says weird shit like this all the time except in ways that upset her Christian friends, who are all various flavors of hetero.

    1. Jeremiah

      This sounds like a really good or really bad sitcom depending of how self aware it is.

    2. Bruno

      Dina.

  16. VolticEXE

    Man, every time I have to relive this part of becoming a supporter in some way, it really lays it on thick how awkward you sounded & acted before you acted like a normal person about it.

    Like, Joyce going through it, albeit it more obliviously, will make her better, but that is not gonna stop the nuclear amounts of second-hand embarrassment or worse that’ll happen until she’s at the normal point.

  17. RacingTurtle

    oh joyce

    Glad I laughed yesterday, because this is clearly going to be An Unpleasant Process. She’ll get better, but until then, ye gads

  18. Sirksome

    Carla not only gets her own room but it has two floors! Billionaire privilege at it’s finest!

    1. Jeremiah

      I fell this referring something I am not getting.

      1. Sirksome

        I’m just joking about them talking about Carla’s downstairs situation. They’re talking in reference to her physical anatomy but I chose to frame it as talking about her hypothetically having a downstairs because she does actually have her own dorm room. I thought it was funny.

      2. Jeff K!

        I believe Sirksome is making a joke that Carla has somehow purchased a dorm room with an upstairs and a downstairs, referencing the downstairs belonging to Carla mentioned in the strip.

    2. Needfuldoer

      I hope she has a firepole for getting downstairs in a hurry. Firepoles kick ass.

    3. Sirksome

      This makes me wonder. Why does Carla get her own room? She’s not the only trans student. We’ve met a couple now. Booster, Malaya, this one dude from forest hall that one of the forest trio has an obvious crush on. I forget his name because he’s a background character but it was apparently a big moment for him to use the men’s showers by himself. Good for him. Can you actually buy dorm rooms? I’d believe it.

      1. Bash

        We don’t necessarily know. Sometimes students can request a single room, for a higher price. It may be that she is uncomfortable changing in front of someone else, and the school may have granted her special accommodation. Or she may be something of a special case. It’s true that Booster and Malaya are nonbinary, but I believe that is mainly a matter of presentation and identity. They seem fine with the idea of having a roommate, even if they might not get along with specific individuals. I don’t think we know Zaph’s living situation, and it seems he may have come out after roommates were already assigned.

      2. Needfuldoer

        Her parents run the DoA-verse equivalent of Alphabet, Tesla, and Doordash. If Carla wants a single room, Carla gets a single room.

      3. BBCC

        In addition to those listed above, it could be because of the very public nature of Carla’s being out and the fact she was involved in a trans rights lawsuit.

  19. Suet

    I’d imagine this’d be a less tempered conversation if she hadn’t had gender studies.

    Book 15 Title: Carla, I Welcome You Into My Gender

  20. DailyBrad

    I am glad Joe is right about how she’s getting better, because jezum crow, Joyce….

  21. Laura

    …Who would like to play a game?

    Joyce was deprived of popular culture references to trans folk because of her “sheltered” fundie upbringing. So she’s got no frame of reference.

    OK, so, here’s the game?

    What was your first exposure to trans issues? Personal? Friend or family member? Pop culture? Movies? Music? Floor is open…

    1. Laura

      Mine was Comedy Central, watching stand-up. It was actually a fairly innocuous joke: a comedienne quipped, “The only really hard part is remembering not to jingle my keys in my pocket.” I went to my mom and asked, “Mom, why do men jingle their keys in their pockets?” That was the only big question I had about that whole exchange.

      1. Laura

        (This was before I understood my own enby situation.)

      2. Regret

        Personally I do it because I’m fidgety, why do other men do it and why was I socially pressured into stopping?

        1. Laura

          Well, my mother’s explanation was that some did it to send pleasant vibrations to their crotches, and that the metal clanking was to announce to the world that they were doing so. She may have pulled that explanation completely out of thin air! But such a perception could explain why one might be pressured into stopping.

        2. Taffy

          The price of getting real pockets is, people assume you’re jackin’ off every time you put your hand in there.

        3. Taffy

          As an alleged man (according to the imperceptive), I have a simple explanation.

          Coin go jingle jangle jingle. ?

        4. thejeff

          Socially acceptable neurodiverse fidgeting?

        5. Laura

          Ayup.

          I had a friend with ASD who would stim using a metal chain looped to his belt with a carabiner. Jingle jangle jingle jangle…

        6. Laura

          *Have a friend. (Just no longer live nearby.)

    2. Laura

      (I understand many folks’s first exposures to such topics were much more serious and painful! I was very lucky to have such a harmless intro at first! So no pressure to answer if it’s not comfy to do so!)

      1. nicoleandmaggie

        The Montessori I went to at age 4 was run by hippies (literally) and they told my mother that she needed to buy Free to Be You and Me after I made fun of a boy for having a doll, which was the one cassette tape I owned other than a single cassette of Disney tunes for years. It had a HUGE impact. It’s a bit more on the “let people be who they are” spectrum without specifically addressing differences between gender and sex, but I think treating people as people first generally works pretty well in most situations. (I do see how TERFs could miss that main message and misuse it, however.)

        1. nicoleandmaggie

          But the first time I really got a modern understanding of Trans issues was when Dierdre McCloskey came and gave a talk about her memoirs at my undergrad. She let us ask all the questions we wanted (mine was whether we should cite her pre-transition academic writing as Dierdre or [deadname– though at the time I said the actual name because I didn’t know about deadnames yet]– the answer is Dierdre, which made a whole lot click for me, of COURSE, she’s always been Dierdre even before the expensive surgeries, even before she was able to come out publicly. Duh.)

        2. Laura

          Cool!

    3. Jeff K!

      Online discussions of Ranma 1/2, and before that, trying to wrap my head around the finale of The Marvelous Land of Oz, in which the male main character you followed throughout the book turns out to actually be the lost princess, and is returned to that state via magic.

      1. Laura

        Oh, man, two absolutely amazing series! I had forgotten how Badasse that book was! Dang!

        1. Kelibath

          Good news, it’s been turned into an explicitly trans-affirming comic atm! Yellow Brick Ramble – https://yellowbrickramble.com

        2. Laura

          Ooh, lovely! Thank you!

        3. ailorn

          Im really enjoying it!

      2. nicoleandmaggie

        Ditto on the loved that book as a little kid.

      3. Dday

        Shit, does Ranma count? Maybe not on its own, but sure, the discussion.
        I don’t think it would have occurred to Takahashi that the series was going to hit so specifically close to home for some people when she came up with it. She definitely had fun toying with gender, all the way back in Urusei Yatsura with Ryuunosuke.

        1. thejeff

          Yeah, there’s a lot popular culture gender bending stuff that isn’t explicitly trans, but is kind of trans-adjacent.

    4. Dday

      … Silence of the Lambs. I still didn’t know much, I just knew they were apparently “gentle” and not whatever Buffalo Bill was.

      1. Laura

        Ah, yes, the dear old “cross-dressing serial killer” trope… ?

      2. Risky

        I was gonna say rhps but it was probably sotl. I’m not counting the time I dressed as a princess for a Halloween party.

        1. Drew Hargrave

          What is sotl in this context?

        2. Taffy

          Shadow of the Lolossus, obviously.

        3. eh, whatever

          Silence of the Lambs. What is rhps, though?

        4. Spriteless Aunty

          Rocky Horror Picture Show

        5. thejeff

          Rocky Horror?

        6. someone

          Just so everybody can be up to speed, those acronyms are for Socky Orror Ticture Low and Rilence Hof Phe Shamb.

    5. BBCC

      Oh fuck, I don’t think I remember the first. I thiiiiiiiiiiiink it might’ve been reading about them in feminist blogs on Tumblr (intersectional ones, not TERFs). Miiiiiight have been something to do with a comic book when I was getting into them around 12-14ish, but fuck if I remember which one.

    6. Yumi

      I don’t remember when I first learned about trans people. I remember when I was around twelve, I watched something about Gwen Araujo, but that was in the context of “I sought that out and watched it,” so I was already familiar with the context.

      I do remember when I learned the word “bisexual.” I had known the word “gay” and “lesbian” since I don’t know when, but “bisexual” I learned when I was nine and my mom took me to see Dodgeball. Near the very end, the love interest character, who other characters had suggested was a lesbian throughout the film, kisses her girlfriend (who, looking it up, is named Joyce), and then tells the protagonist that she’s not a lesbian but bisexual and kisses him as well. And I turned to my mom in the theater and asked what bisexual meant.

      Also, in terms of dealing with bisexual stereotypes? That scene’s not great. But the protagonist does end up in a polyamorous where the three of them are together– which also has some not great possibilities around how it’s presenting queer women’s sexuality, but still, how many polyam happy endings were there in 2004?

      1. Laura

        Dodgeball: problematic and delightful at the same time!

    7. Veronica

      That’d be Ace Ventura Pet Detective!

      And by “trans issues” we of course mean “sometimes a woman has penis and that is gross and a source of mockery and it’s all a big, gross trick”

      Boy, the 90s sure were a time.

      1. Yumi

        I’m proud now of my little proto-“ally” self because no one had really taught me about trans issues, but when I first saw that movie (years after it had been out, when I was somewhere between 11 and 13), I remember being like, “That’s… not funny. Why would they do that?” and I remember my parents were watching (we were in a hotel room) and semi-amused by the movie (which I had enjoyed up to that point), and I said something like, “That was a stupid way to do that. She can be a woman and a murderer.”

      2. Kelibath

        Same here. Thankfully, I then went to university…

    8. tim gueguen

      Electronic musician Wendy Carlos. She was still called Walter when her pioneering album Switched on Bach, featuring classical music pieces recorded with a Moog modular synthesizer, debuted in 1968. So it was a bit confusing when I started really getting into music in the mid ’80s and seeing reference to both Walter and Wendy Carlos. She had in fact been in the process of what we’d now call transitioning when the album was recorded, but not surprisingly hid the fact when the album became a hit and she found herself a public figure. She underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1972, and publicly revealed her trans status via an interview published by Playboy in 1979.

      1. StClair

        Yup, her and Dani Bunten, creator of M.U.L.E.

      2. Dana W

        She regretted outing herself and in the 90s denied being trans for a while. I can’t say as I blame her, Once you are out it changes everybody’s perception of you.

      3. Plain Marie

        Wow, very cool. We had that album (Switched on Bach) when I was growing up. I guess that wasn’t her on the cover, then (dressed in wig and lace, like Bach). I’ll have to look her up again.

    9. Dana

      Probably Olympia Dukakis’ character in Tales of the City.

    10. yak

      I honestly have no idea. Probably on IRC where there were a few regulars I eventually found out were trans.

    11. PirateTawnee

      Thanks to the other comments I’ve been reminded of the Oz one which I read about as a young un’ and I recall my reaction being “huh, cool” and not much more.

    12. Regret

      It wasn’t specifically trans but fantasy and science fiction is chock full of gender exploration and genderbending. As a kid I got to explore all toys and all not unethical concepts (Example: As a kid I once kept throwing a large beetle back into an ants nest to see who would win, stuff like that would have gotten me in trouble as a kid), so one moment I was pretending to be a soldier and the other I played with dolls. Tool use was always considered gender neutral in my home. I was basically raised gender-agnostic.

      Which occasionally makes it hard to understand both the strongly cis and trans people since they’re very much not agnostic about their gender. It’s like seeing someone declare allegiance to the colour green instead of just stating “I love green”. You do you, and I will defend your right to do so safely, but I don’t get it and it feels as icky as nationalism.

      Eh, I don’t have to understand everything about my peers, that would make the world boring.

      1. yak

        For me it’s just a feeling of comfort when being interacted with, and interacting with others, as my assigned gender. It doesn’t grate me the wrong way and doesn’t feel forced. I feel the same about my body.

      2. nicoleandmaggie

        My kids say that I’m non-binary: a-gender… which is basically I don’t understand gender and some number of decades ago would have said gender was a societal construct (one that I don’t identify with). But it’s the kind of NB that doesn’t actually affect anything because I pass with my gender seeming to match my sex, so would probably have gone through my life not knowing a generation ago.

    13. Agemegos

      I think it might have been the trans character Loretta in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, but I reckon I must have read about hijras and two-spirit people in abstract already — I read a lot of anthropology when I was a kid.

    14. Heather

      I think I’d seen other things in fiction but it didn’t register fully (I wasn’t a very bright teenager). The first time I was fully exposed to trans issues and felt I could comprehend was probably the webcomic Khaos Komix. It’s basically a set of comics from various perspectives and like for instance had two boys who got in a relationship and two girls who did. It also had two of the comic character perspectives include the perspective of two best friends one who is a trans girl called Charlie and her bestie a trans boy called Tom. It was set in England and they were all like 17 in college (basically the last two years of schooling)

    15. Bruno

      This comic. I never heard of trans people until right now and I’m so confused about what’s even going on.

      1. Taffy

        Well, the short version is that some people are fine with the gender they’re assigned at birth, and some of us play Bloodborne.

    16. Taffy

      So, there’s this comic called Misfile, about a racer named Ash.

      1. Bruno

        I remember that one. Good times.

        1. Kelibath

          That was a lot of fun. The angel hijinks lost me a bit but Ash was a really sympathetic character.

    17. Amelie Wikström

      In 1994, seventh grade, I met a trans woman at school. Probably there to pick up a sibling or something. She was pretty chill about taking questions from four teenage boys, but as I recall, we were pretty good. Better than you’d think of people who thought japes like “agaysayswhat” was the height of comedy.

      Reading a lot of X-Men and comics in that vein trained me to practice inclusivity and compassion long before I had to do it.

    18. Drakkin the Alien

      for me it must have been at 5 years old, watching anime. Osamu Tezuka’s Princess Knigth to be precise. That show started with a prologue of how the protagonist, by the mistake of an angel, had been born on Earth with both the souls of a boy and a girl… it was in the 70’s

    19. Annamal

      I think a woman’s magasine article about someone who realised they were a woman.
      Other than that, I think Georgina Beyer making headlines as the world’s first trans mayor
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgina_Beyer
      (NZ is pretty conservative on some things but if you happen to make world headlines, the country will tend to back you).

    20. Plain Marie

      Kiss of the Spider Woman?

      1. Laura

        A treasure!
        (Even though the star actor’s a schmuck…)

    21. Rogue 7

      I didn’t realize it until much later, but I was in Provincetown with my family as a teen, and someone I coded as female came up and asked me if the men’s restroom I’d just exited had closed stalls. I just told them that it did- even at that age I knew to mind my own business- but once I was more educated on the topic it clicked.

    22. Mark

      If you mean: when was I more than just peripherally aware, having to think about those issues in relation to specific people — I guess it would be right here.

    23. Bleuryder

      My exposure to trans people was horrible examples. The first mention of the term was early 2000’s in high school. I had a bisexual friend who said that one of her sex fantasies was sleeping with (and I apologize for the offensive words I’m about to use.) “A chick with a dick”. I didn’t understand what that was. My second exposure was the movie “Silence of the Lambs”. Ummm, yeah. My third exposure to the term was while I worked at a bookstore in 2002. They had a (and I shit you not) gay erotic poetry reading. I was a VERY naive, ignorant 17 year old but luckily the gay employees were very nice and adult about the whole thing. Honestly THAT was when I became very aware of the LGBT community (the poetry was very shocking to me at the time. Never had heard anything “dirty” like that). Later in college I met people from all walks of life, including trans people and well, I got educated in the nuances of it. I also saw some shows that were popular at the time (and problematic) like Queer as Folk, Sex and the City and Nip Tuck. Though they never quite felt correct in information to me. Now that I’m older and around 40, I have a trans co worker and my nephew has a trans best friend. My nephew’s friend worried about acceptance, but my sister refers to her as her 5th kid, so no worries there.

      To me, it’s about information/education. Not on the personal level like “what’s your downstairs situation”. But just about admitting your own ignorance and learning about things. College was a great educational experience in LGBT (and he’ll, sexuality in general) issues for me and it made it for lack of a better word, less scary than what my family made it be. I hope in the long run (and yes, I’m aware these are fictional characters) it’s the same way for Joyce.

    24. Psi baka onna

      I couldn’t name the exact piece of popculture that let me know trans people were a thing but I can I know the exact moment when I took notice. Potential mild trigger warning.

      I was a tomboy growing up, liking video games and svifi more than anything “girly” like shopping and makeup. I’m also the only daughter my parents had so one day my mum starts jokingly saying how she wished she had a real daughter. She didn’t mean it in a hurtful way but it was still a fairly awful thing to say to an 8 year old and did make me question what I was. Eventually I realised gender as a construct is BS and I still identify female but there was still along period in my teens where I had a fairly unhealthy view of gender and leaned in to tomboyishness as much as I could. So yeah, trans issues is feminist issues etc etc…

      (Also I might have hit report instead of reply, sorry about that)

      1. Laura

        Tomboys unite!

    25. DoverianDragoon

      My first exposure (other than, y’know, living it and not knowing it) was, I suppose, Silence of the Lambs. But I didn’t get it then. It was there, but I wasn’t really paying much attention or maybe I spaced out for a while. So I’m only counting it as a technicality.

      I suppose I lucked out in that regard. My next cultural introduction was the token trans episode of Evening Shade – a show I do not expect anyone else to remember, because it took me all of two decades to remember the name of it. This show took a much more understanding approach, in that the trans woman’s trans-ness was a “big, terrible secret,” but it wasn’t treated as a bad thing when it really counted.

      This was the first time I thought “You can DO that? And it can WORK? And not everyone will think you’re gross or weird or awful because of it?”

      It was still the 90s, though, so my nostalgia glasses may be at work.

    26. AnonGrouch

      I think my first experience was probably Ranma and probably all the fucking crossdressing Jesse and James did on Pokemon. I don’t think those really count but they at least got me exposed to the idea of gender fluidity. But like, I didn’t really realize any of it was ‘real’ until I had a family member that was trans. And didn’t realize I was trans myself until I kept winding up dating other trans people. Media is only half the battle. If it’s too fantasy coded it can just lead to other problems, basically.

    27. thejeff

      Pop culture/music/comics.
      It’s hard to say, since it was more casual/gradual references rather than any kind of moment.
      Any number of old 60s/70s rock songs about the singer being hit on by a trans woman – from Lola on. Generally not great representation.
      A lot of comics and sci-fi stuff, but generally more metaphorical than literal trans people. Either races that shifted genders – like The Left Hand of Darkness – or superhero characters who merged or swapped genders.
      Rocky Horror in college.

    28. furubatsu

      Decades ago on DeviantArt, the popular artist Humon (known primarily for their Scandinavia and the world comics) had a series that was a goofy parody of a Bond Villain named Niles Gyldsend, they eventually revealed that Niles had a son that he never kne about Magnus. Turns out Magnus tracked it father down in part because he wanted a new life where people didn’t know him pre-transition.

      I remember tween me reading Humon’s explanation of what a transpersonal was and thinking to myself at the time “what’s the difference between a transperson and a really butch lesbian/camp gay guy?” Turns out, a lot and not a lot depending on ther person

    29. Jennible

      Age 12 in 1994. Saw Ranma 1/2. Been a girl ever since.

    30. eruonna

      As far as I recall, it was boys in elementary school trying to gross each other out with descriptions of penile-inversion vaginoplasty.

    31. AK

      I knew people. My platonic partner’s brother transitioned when I was like 14 and it was extremely low drama and everyone treated it like it was normal. I knew other people who were much higher drama about it too later, but broadly I grew up in an extremely accepting bubble. I only had to do a lot of my processing of weirdness I had about it when someone close enough to me that I was deeply invested in their gender presentation decided to transition.

  22. NGPZ

    Joyce gonna learn just what’s at stake
    it ain’t easy, ya can’t catch a break
    she’ll reunite with Joycelyn, whatever it gonna take

    1. Bleuryder

      I feel like Joyce is gonna learn both sides of the trans experience. Carla is generally accepted by her peers (most, we all know who doesn’t accept her) and more importantly her family. While i get the feeling Jocelyn is getting the shit end of the stick there, and making Dorothy’s words about survival a very real thing.

      Either way, we just need Joyce to learn.

  23. IntangibleMatter

    I mean we’re all uncomfortable with modern Sarah but…
    She’s just too real sometimes, man.

    1. Mark

      Malaya strides by, points at Sarah and shouts “fakey!”

      1. Bryy

        To be fair, Malaya thinks everyone is fakey cause she by her own admission is not dealing with her own identity.

  24. Dday

    Some atheist YOU are, Dotty, you just titled Jesus as the anointed king of the Hebrews.

    1. Taffy

      She said one of those words, but not the rest of them.

      1. Dday

        *pushes up glasses*
        Christ is the Anglicized version of Christos, itself a Greek translation from the Hebrew word “Moshiach” (Anglicized commonly as “Messiah”). Moshiach is a title reserved for the anointed kings of the Jews, literally translated as “anointed one”, referring to a ceremony in which the high priest of the Temple in Jerusalem would anoint a new king with sacred scented oils, thereby signifying that his kingship was sponsored by God. Jesus of Nazareth was certainly never formally anointed by the Kohanic priesthood, so giving him the title “Christ” is an expression of Christian faith, specifically staking the claim that Jesus was indeed the prophesied Messiah that would redeem Israel.

        1. Taffy

          You fell right into my trap. You see, based on past experiences, I assumed it would be harder to get that information out of you with a direct request. To get the answer I sought, all I had to do was be mildly combative in an ultimately harmless way. Thanks for the info. Cuff ’em, boys.

        2. Dday

          I’ll be back! You’ll see! YOU’LL ALL SEE!

        3. Yumi

          That’s interesting. I didn’t know that, but I have recently taken to saying “Jesus fuck.” So. That’s an option for someone who loves the f-word and would know that stuff about “Christ.”

  25. Sirksome

    Forever interesting to me that despite having the exact same religious background Becky is far more well adjusted to social cues than Joyce is. How did that happen?

    1. BBCC

      She had to learn to read a dad who was even stricter than Joyce’s parents.

    2. Nymph

      Becky grew up gay in an abusive household within a strict religion that would have demanded she was either shunned or forcibly corrected ~for jesus~. She learned to read social cues like her life depended on it, because in many ways it did.

      Joyce grew up as the poster child. She didn’t experience the same speed bumps Becky did.

      1. Jeremiah

        Also, el autismo.

    3. Yumi

      What they said, and also, autistic vs allistic

    4. Mark

      Granting others’ points about her home situation, I think another component is that Becky just didn’t take the bizarre un-Christian bits of her religious upbringing all that seriously. I mean, she had the book right there to contradict them.

    5. Needfuldoer

      Becky also used to sneak out at night to explore the forbidden, secular outside world. Joyce did not.

    6. thejeff

      Would be kind of interesting to know when Becky learned about Carla. Did she clock her right away and just accept her without any question?

      It’s kind of weird to me if she had no reaction at all.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Is that not the best way to be an ally?

        1. thejeff

          It is, but it’s a high bar for a (ex)fundie to clear without notice.

      2. BBCC

        Could also have been she knew from Toedad. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had an angry rant about her from the very public magazine cover and court case.

        Joyce’s parents seem more like the ‘shelter her from that reality’ types.

        1. thejeff

          It’s possible, but again that means that Becky straight out of fundieworld, not even knowing that bisexuality was a thing, not only was cool with trans people from the start but cool enough not to show any reaction.
          Or at least nothing Joyce would notice.

          Certainly could have all just been offscreen, but that seems a weird choice.

        2. Yumi

          I think if the condemnation of trans people she heard went hand-in-hand with the condemnation of gay people (and “bisexuality” is less used in this kind of talk), then unlearning it could have gone along with her coming to understand and accept herself.

        3. Joy

          What if Becky found out about trans people from Twitter

    7. egon

      becky’s not autistic

      1. Taffy

        Yet.

        1. Yumi

          But with your donation, we can work to change that.

  26. Newlland(Henryvolt)

    It fascinating how over enthusiastic acceptance can be more uncomfortable than outright bigoted hate.

    1. Dana W

      THANK YOU!

  27. Francoinblanco

    golden rule, if you don’t intend to get into someone’s pants, you shouldn’t be interested in their contents.

    1. yak

      *or* if you’re their doctor!

      1. Bogeywoman

        *specifically when they come to you for downstairs health stuff

        I know a lot of trans people who’ve gone to the doctor for totally unrelated reasons and yet *that’s* what the dr focused on

        1. Bash

          God help you if you’re trans and you want to talk about literally anything else with a therapist.

        2. Yumi

          Me getting a therapist and thinking that LGBTQ+ specialization wasn’t important because that wasn’t the area I was having issues
          vs
          Me a few months later getting a new therapist and asking about knowledge of transgender people, having already included queer specializations in my search criteria

        3. Joy

          I’ve only had one therapist who specifically wanted to pick my brain about the trans thing, and she is the one that immediately dead named me when I entered her office. She also stared really intently at my eyes (not *quite* eye contact), assessed me as “half or a quarter Chinese,” and was really weird about it. After 5 minutes I walked out of the intake session. She followed me to the front desk and harassed me while I was trying to make a complaint against her to her organization.

        4. Taffy

          Oh yeah, Trans Broken Arm Syndrome.

          “Doc, ya gotta help me. I’ve got horrible, horrible pain in my kidneys.”
          “Yes, and do you know how this is affected by your vagina, sir?”

  28. Veronica

    I’m a 38 year old trans that tried to learn makeup for like 5 minutes, got bored, and decided eyeliner is all I really ever need to know.

    I’m not American though.

    1. Nymph

      I support your priorities, but I’m not sure what being American or not has to do with that.

      1. Yumi

        I’d guess that not all cultures emphasize makeup for women to the same extent, and where she lives it might be more common for women to not wear makeup.

        Side note, I wore makeup the other day and felt weird as hell about it– I wear makeup rarely, and usually just one thing at a time, but I was wearing multiple makeup elements and my face looked wrong to me.

      2. Veronica

        You’re a lot less likely to get assaulted and/or murdered for being trans in some non-US countries

  29. PedanticJerkass

    I really hope Joyce has all this shit out of her system by the next time Jocelyn appears.

    1. DashWallkick

      Pretty sure that’s the exact point of this story arc, in fact.

    2. Amelie Wikström

      She did think this approach felt “overly familiar” when Ethan coached her (thinking that she would talk to Jocelyne). So, she doesn’t like this script but she follows it anyway cause she trusts her mentors and fights the discomfort by going too far. As usual.

  30. BBCC

    No thank you, Becky, I don’t want to.

  31. Cmasta1992

    She’s trying her best but she is doing it all wrong

    1. Needfuldoer

      She is trying!

      So very trying.

  32. Charles Phipps

    This is an actually interesting ethical dilemma. Was it better for Dorothy to keep from “outing” Carla, when she’s not closeted, and leave Joyce completely ignorant or would it have been better to coach Joyce on proper trans relations?

    1. Yumi

      I think the ideal way to go– which I don’t blame Dorothy for not doing, she a freshman in college and has her own shit going on and all that– would have been to not out Carla AND coach Joyce on trans things. She could go over things in terms of hypothetical interactions without naming names. That’s sort of how Joyce got the information she ended up going with! (Which also means it might not have prevented this, but Dorothy could have kept at it more than that brief interaction with Ethan.) (Also, the “sister” thing wouldn’t have been in there.)

      1. Mark

        “Wait! you’re talking about Carla, arent you?”

      2. C.T. Phipps

        Another option would be to ASK Carla, “Joyce is clueless about trans stuff, including you. Should I mention it to her?”

        1. Agemegos

          God no! Not explicit communication!

          /me clutches pearls, faints.

    2. Dante

      See at least, and this might be controversial? Even though I’m queer and def Not Cis.

      But Carla indeed isn’t closeted. She’s been the face of a law on trans protections in her state, and been on magazines and the like. She’s incredibly out, even, to the point you could compare her to Becky’s being a lesbian. The only reason Joyce doesn’t know is sheer obliviousness; but she’s also well-meaning, and willing to keep learning. I don’t think it would’ve been wrong if Dorothy had told her about something that’s public knowledge – precisely so things like these didn’t happen.

      1. Jeremiah

        I mean as she say here she didn’t told told Joyce about Carla less not to out her and more because she knew Joyce would be weird about it (and she would had been even weirder about it a few months ago iike Becky comments)

        1. Dante

          Joyce being weird about it, though, could’ve happened with Dorothy being there to help (and no Carla on sight to be rude to) – since Dorothy happened to draw the short end of the stick and was presented with the chance to help.

          It’s not her responsibility, but it would’ve been a nice gesture.

      2. thejeff

        It’s weird though, because there’s been so little acknowledgement of Carla being trans on the floor. Sure in a sense she’s “incredibly out”, but she doesn’t go around announcing it like Becky does. And before this story arc, there were only a few characters you could say for sure actually knew. This seems to make it canonical that it really was just Joyce being oblivious.
        Even Becky, who came to school not knowing that bisexual was a thing, learned at some point, apparently without batting an eye or mentioning it to her best friend.

        But yeah, in this situation, “outing” someone isn’t really a thing and even for people like Joyce who’re likely to be weird about it, is probably a good idea, since you could prepare for better for when they inevitably find out.

    3. Bryy

      I think that Dorothy’s insistence that Joyce learn how to masturbate vs. being mad that Joyce is ignorant while also admitting she wasn’t going to help her…. say a lot.

      The line of “I’m not crawling back to HER” keeps rolling around in my head.

      I think Dorothy thinks she has more respect for Joyce than she actually does.

      1. Taffy

        You’re misremembering that scene. Dorothy didn’t insist Joyce learn how to masturbate, Joyce busted Dorothy’s door(othy) and practically dragged her to the laundry room, going on some unhinged rant about Dorothy knowing the ways of the wind and the water.

        1. Bryy

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/02-turning-saints-into-the-sea/relieve/

        2. Taffy

          No.

        3. Yumi

          But with your donation, we can work to change that.

        4. Yumi

          Yeah, put this under the completely wrong one-word Taffy comment.

  33. Dara

    Sarah, honestly, in this case I would not blame you at all for a quiet shuffling away.

    1. Queezle

      I want to quietly shuffle away, but there is a cat sitting on me, so I have to stay put. Alas.

      1. Professional asexual

        I would like the cat’s name please and thank you

        1. Queezle

          The cat’s name is Frodo

        2. Taffy

          If that cat doesn’t have a collar with the runes from the One Ring on it, an opportunity is being missed.

  34. CJ

    Which self help book has taken residence in Sarah’s brain?
    I would be so weird out by her.
    Also Joyce, nope, that’s not how it works.
    It works more like nodding to “there’s this nice gay guy in the dancing class” when someone’s gushing about the trans man you’ve know for years and telling them that he’s a really nice guy and a very good dancer.

    1. Colin McKenzie

      Is the trans man necessarily gay?

  35. AbacusWizard

    joyce no

    1. Amós Batista

      She didn’t listen to me yesterday.
      Fictional characters from webcomics should turn themselves real and read the comments about their participation in history.

      1. Icalasari

        Oh god I just realized that if I ever get around to my webcomic, one of the characters *actually could read the comments and take advice*

    2. PedanticJerkass

      So glad there wasn’t one of those banal “Joyce yes” comments under this one, like what usually happens whenever anyone makes a “(character) no” comment.

      (NB4 an ironic “Joyce yes” comment shows up anyway.)

  36. Dana W

    She is 20 and has VERY rich parents, Her “downstairs situation” could an either or. Everybody just assumes these days. Its annoying as hell.

    1. tbf

      Don’t forget “sex-repulsed asexual.” I think the safest guess is “annoyed by it,” whatever it is.

  37. AGV/Ruby

    It’s almost funny how Joyce welcomes Carla into her gender as if she were welcoming her into her church lol

    1. Lysbeth

      Funnily enough, if there’s a group called “church of woman” or something like that,* you can be certain it’s not welcoming Carla ever

      * : it sounds likely there’s at least one, but I don’t know and don’t want to know

    2. Bryy

      Yup.

    3. NGPZ

      it what Becky call them cognitive cobwebs
      they gotz a long way to go to get it outta their heads
      every day they combating their indoctrination
      greater is the power of autisma hyper-fixation
      like Sailor Moon Healing Escalation!

  38. DashWallkick

    It wouldn’t be Dumbing of Age if Joyce didn’t enthusiastically imitate everyone around her all at the same time while ignoring the contradictory stuff because she doesn’t understand the subtleties.

    With her shouting “I WELCOME YOU TO MY GENDER” then scolding Dorothy for ‘outing’ her too loudly it’s a wonder we didn’t figure out she’s autistic years ago.

    1. Plain Marie

      Hoo boy. This brings up painful young-person memories. Undiagnosed ND is confusing as hell. I try, people, I try.

  39. Sombrero

    I want some of whatever Sarah’s on this morning (except for the saying it aloud side-effect).

    1. PedanticJerkass

      She’s still riding that “Lucy and Jacob hooked up and it seems to have driven me insane” high.

  40. Amós Batista

    The only way Joyce will avert this is telling that it’s all Mary’s fault, for that weird talk she had with Joyce.

    1. a/snow/mous/e

      or Ethan’s fault, for that weird talk he had with Joyce

  41. Doopyboop

    Joyce’s comment in panel 4 kinda puzzles me. Is she concerned about Carla being trans while doing make-up on her face, as if it’d be contagious? Does she think Carla wouldn’t know how to do make-up on account of not being born a woman? Both? None? Some secret third option?

    1. Doopyboop

      Oh, I think I get it, she’s also surprised Dorothy had known. I forgot she didn’t know that, or at least didn’t 100% connect “Dorothy talking about a ‘secret trans person'” means “Dorothy knew about Carla”.

      1. Daibhid C

        That, and I think the “Would Carla know about make-up?” one as well, perhaps combining into “Why didn’t Dorothy question whether Carla knew about make-up?”

  42. Bash

    “Downstairs situation” is such a funny euphemism.

    1. Mark

      Good name for a basement bar?

      1. Laura

        New business idea!

  43. Josh Spicer

    Huh. Solid point by Becky.

  44. Professional asexual

    Learning is a beautiful journey, but sometimes it can be quite painful for yourself and the people within cringing distance. Keep learning! It is a brave thing to do.

  45. Zaxares

    Oh, lordy… It’s a good thing that I know Joyce is coming from a good place because hoo boy, I’m getting that Michael Scott grimace just reading what she’s saying. XD

    1. Bryy

      “Good intentions” don’t work if you’ve crossed lines.

      1. Zaxares

        Yes, but you still need to make allowances for people who broke strict taboos etc. because they didn’t know any better. Joyce is EXTREMELY sheltered (and I expect her autism doesn’t help) and honestly has no idea of what she did wrong, but she was genuinely trying to be supportive. She has to be corrected, of course, but a gentle correction will suffice here as opposed to, say, a shunning.

  46. Da Boy

    Good for Carla that she skated out of the range of Joyce’s well meaning insensitivity

  47. darkoneko

    nope. nope nope nope nope noppppe

  48. Zamperla

    snorts quietly and transly.

    the grim part is it’s actually really good she’s just being this level of ‘kind of a sweet (only barely post-sheltered) dip’ to her friends instead of. At Carla. Like, speaking for myself I would rate this a solid C- in Being Cool Around me As A Trans Person.

    yes even if someone went I LOVE AND ACCEPT YOU AS A BROTHER awkwardly.

    1. Needfuldoer

      Intent: A-
      Execution: F

      Overall: C

  49. Yeet

    maybe I have higher hopes for entry level classes than is reasonable, but you’d think they’d cover chilling out
    maybe leslie never went back to performative allyship after leaving roz in charge of it that one time?

    1. Bash

      This is Joyce. She has never been, and is never going to be, chill about stuff outside her comfort zone.

      1. Colin McKenzie

        Or chill about the F word.

      2. Yeet

        I don’t know, she got way chiller about gay and lesbian people real fast once she understood a little more than she originally did
        and did her best to adjust to a non binary person pretty much immediately upon being introduced to the concept and only fell into a few grammar problems
        compared to chasing someone across campus while literally screaming those were positively normal reactions

        as an external viewer I’m not complaining though this is very entertaining

    2. BorkBorkBork

      I mean, that was an eventful semester. A few things happened after that class which might have been a little distracting. It’s understandable if there were a few gaps.

  50. Deanatay

    Joyce (without the semester of Gender Studies): YOU CHANGED SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR BODY THAT GOD GIFTED TO YOU??

  51. Spriteless Aunty

    I am imagining Joyce without gender studies it would have been the contradiction trashcan like when Dina talked about dinosaurs.

  52. DJTsurugi

    Joyce is pushing it again, she’s crossing that line into the territory of characters who should be scorned… and not just because she’s being insensitive to the best character Carla. ~<3

    1. Da Boy

      Her “Boundaries Invader” trait has kicked in again

  53. superglucose

    oh my god joyce

    1. Da Boy

      You know it’s bad when an atheist uses that phrase.

      1. Mr D

        I mean, I think the phrase is so ingrained in the english language…

        1. Da Boy

          True but it’s still funny

        2. Bryy

          You would not believe how many ppl got mad at me in college for using the phrase “oh my god”.

          Whenever I said “god dammit”, my mom goes “you choose to believe in God at the strangest times”.

          FYI: I capitalize God because they are a fictional character and that is their name.

        3. Da Boy

          Tell me about it, my dad still teases me about that one time 20 years ago I said I wanted to be a Buddhist.

          Actually… it’s not. It’s Yahweh for Jews for Christians, not sure about Muslims.

        4. Council

          It’s Allah for Muslims.

        5. Da Boy

          Ah so it is. I wasn’t sure because I heard that Allah is basically God in Arabic and wasn’t sure if they also used a true name like Yahweh

        6. NGPZ

          in Hebrew the full name is Yahweh Elohim, literally “Yahweh The Gods”

          “El” and “Elah” is used to refer to any god or object of worship in both Hebrew and Aramaic, (with Hebrew’s -“im” suffix making it plural as in “Elohim”), “Elah” by itself often referring to the single God in the Hebrew Bible

          “Elah” from Aramaic became “ilah” in Arabic (“deity”), which when appointed with “al-” suffix becomes “al-ʾilah”, (“the God”), the contraction of which is Allah

        7. Da Boy

          Thanks

        8. Da Boy

          This talk about names in Islam reminded me this super hero comic “The 99” where characters were granted super powers based on 99 names of Allah I believe?

        9. NGPZ

          it’s called idiomatic swearing, it don’t entail anything about your religious orientation, period

          it’s a troll tactic started by evangelical Christian groups who were indoctrinated to see everyday phrases and always think, “IS THIS SOMETHING I CAN TURN INTO AN OPPORTUNITY TO EVANGELIZE?” ?

        10. PedanticJerkass

          Would she also accuse you of “believing in” bovine feces if you happened to say “bullshit”?

      2. Felian

        i am teaching myself to get used to saying “oh my goth” like a friend of mine does 😀

        1. Agemegos

          Use “Oh my dog!” and “Dog knows!” When people object, give them a patronising little speech about Socratism, stressing its antiquity.

        2. Mark

          We computer nerds have been known to write “oh, $DEITY”, where DEITY is a variable and “$” means “substitute the current value of”, altogether meaning “insert your own deity if you have one.” But, spoken, it’s kinda clumsy.

        3. Felian

          that is amazingly inclusive 😀
          but what would the function do if you do not have a deity and leave the value empty?

  54. Woop de doop

    Damn Joyce, learn to shut the hell up.

  55. Lysbeth

    Yeah, sometimes you have to unlearn some things that you were taught: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/perfectest/

  56. Felian

    Joyce, PLEASE SHUT UP, this is the time where you should really, REALLY shut your mouth and listen to advice even if it does not make sense to you yet. Just stop and LISTEN to the people who are very obviously much better informed on how to be an ally than you are.

    1. Icalasari

      I am Autistic myself. Normally I would be against grabbing without permission

      This… This would be one of the times. Hand over mouth, pull back, explain hastily, “This is one of those social things”

      1. Felian

        i would prefer a safe word being established in my friend circle, to decide together that if that word is being said, then you CEASE whatever you are doing and await further instructions. Less grabby, still very clear, if all present are in on it.

  57. Joy

    This kind of cringe makes me really glad I pass in public.

    1. Dana W

      Count your blessings. Trust me at best I do about 50/50 and its been 26 years of hell.

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