That actually can be a thing. My it’s complicated’s mom back when she came out as bi, said that it was clearly just a phase, because she had those sorts of attractions for a roommate once but was able to “grow out of it”.
So, basically because she was bi and hid in the closet about it, then clearly that was an acceptable and ideal path for her daughter to take as well.
a snow ʍousɐ
Pronoun vagueness! My inner editor is coming out… (No pun intended)
*Back when my it’s-complicated came out as bi, her mom said that clearly …
Good lord. I’ve surpassed grammar Nazism.
AgentKeen
One day, you wake up in a daze at your computer, your screen covered in red marks…
a snow ʍousɐ
Gods, what have I done! I can’t control my urges to edit anymore…
Heh, it’s a fair cop. I think my head cold might be interfering with my head thinky box stuff.
Bahlal
…unless the mom actually was just experimenting, and thinks that’s what her daughter is doing? It’s not right to impose upon your child that your experiences are what is “acceptable and ideal”, but that’s probably not what the mom thinks she’s doing.
Yeah, this is why Becky is all sorts of selflessly. To help Joyce she went willingly to a home and a community that was very likely to pull this exact stunt and she’s in for a long weekend of passive-aggressive comments and probably at least one “intervention” for her soul. Perhaps on Sunday when they go to Church (oh dear Bob will that be a mess).
She’s incredibly brave and strong, but this weekend is going to be even rougher and more dehumanizing for her than it will be for Joyce.
This. Becky’s behaviour in panels 1,3,4, and 5 is particularly telling after readers were calling her tactless and thoughtless just for saying hi to Hank. She’s clearly showing the self awareness she’s been accused of lacking pretty much since she became a regular cast member. In panel 1, she’s happily greeting Mrs Brown, clearly wanting to stay on good terms with her as well as Hank, and also clearly trying to be her usual happy go lucky self while Joyce is in the room. Panels 3 and 4 are, I think, a rare glimpse of the Becky beneath that persona. She’s clearly nervous around Carol, and is holding back, trying to be withdrawn to avoid drama or a confrontation (not that she should have to). And her expression in panel 5 is just a picture of disappointment, at Mrs Brown for being that awful passive aggressive through a smiling facade type of Christian, and quite possibly at herself for hoping she could get through this weekend without having to put up with this BS.
Toes14
Please research “paragraphs”. They make reading long posts so much more enjoyable for the rest of us!
3-I
Loosen the bow tie, I think it’s restricting bloodflow.
Gamaran Sepudomyn
Well, it is generally difficult to read long paragraphs, especially when they become ridiculously thin and compact due to the comment system.
Sebastian Temples
There are probably paragraphs there.
They’re just hard to distinguish because this system requires double enters for paragraphs to be easily visible and that’s not necessarily intuitive.
I like “passive aggressive through a smiling facade” enough to acronymize it. Mrs. Brown is a PATASF Christian, I just came back from a cringeful dinner at my PATASF in-laws where they spent the whole meal pleading with us to have lots of unprotected sex in order to make grandchildren for them to spoil, etc.
Maybe Fran was FtM? I mean I know that’s not usually the case when that sort of joke is made, but to be fair, they don’t really clarify.
Also I’d like to believe that the Flight of the Concords are better people, not to mention better comedians than that, because I like them. :l
K^2
That’s the way it came across to me. It makes more sense in context that it’s Fran’s discovery of gender identity. Or at any rate, at least the excuse of such discovery used for breakup.
Huttj509
It actually wasn’t until 8 hours after the parent comment that I realized an interpretation other than FtM.
Unfortunately, watching the video and its visuals and I just went back to double-check that I wasn’t being unfair, we’ve got a picture of Fran looking like a punky, but tall cis woman and then she goes inside and it’s “lol” out steps a much older man with longer scraggly hair (which isn’t even the same color), wearing a slightly feminine shirt and then shrugging.
Now, trans men are totally allowed to have long hair, but by the framing, it’s pretty clear the intention of the joke is “lol, predatory trans women are just trying to trick you into dating men by wearing wigs and makeup” and are “actually men”.
Which is, sadly, a very common “joke”. So common, I would say it’s one of the 5 core stereotypes* of how trans people are typically depicted in fiction.
But it’s also transmisogynist as fuck.
*1) noble victim who teaches the cis characters or audience a thing about life and vaguely not being awful to those ciphers of a character (think Rayon from Dallas Buyer’s Club, they usually have almost no characterization compared to the other characters)
2) sexual predator who is just a man who is using their “transness” to spy on the “opposite” gender or buy entry into single-gendered spaces, usually for the purpose of being a creeper while there
3) the tragic brick who will never “pass”, so their protestations of being a woman are encouraged to be laughed at, because look at their football player physique or deep voice or hairy arms, how absurd, right?
4) the deceiver, like in this one, she looks so cis and passes so cis, but later they’ll be a reveal where she takes off her wig or reveals or is revealed to have junk and then everyone can make a big show of how disgusted they are by her and her “deception”
5) the psycho/killer, whose psychotic murdery ways is clearly foretold by their scary “deviant” behavior dressing up in the “wrong” gender’s clothes, and who is physically dangerous to be around. May also apply to trans men characters who are depicted as becoming dangerous abusive bullies due to “testosterone poisoning”, flying into uncontrollable rages and so on.
Corasan
I think you’re mishearing the lyrics. “Fran ran, Bruce turned out to be a man” – they’re two different people. Also, since it’s a song about how all his past lovers have left him, it seemed to me that it was Bruce who broke it off.
Ok, fair cop, but “Bruce” is definitely still presented in a way that’s typically more a presentation of trans women by transphobes than trans men, right down the scraggly long hair, slightly feminine button-down shirt, and the being played by a cis dude. Which still makes that character at least transmisogynist as fuck and actually even worse than I heard it the first times because “Bruce” doesn’t even get her real name, just this dead name and a joke about her being a dude.
And hell even if it that part was about a trans man, the song is still titled Carol Brown (Choir of Ex-Girlfriends) and the “choir” scenes “Bruce” is in are referred to directly as a choir of ex-girlfriends so even if we were to extend that much undeserved credit, the singer is still misgendering the “Bruce” character.
And now that I’ve been through the whole thing 3 times, I will also point out that it definitely did leave me feeling gross as fuck, which is also pretty common for transphobic “jokes” in popular media.
Hannah
The fact that you keep putting the word “joke” in quotations makes me think I hit a nerve. I’d like to clarify that I’m trans myself, MtF no less, so I know how seriously friggin annoying, insulting, demeaning, belittling, etc etc etc it can be to hear/see/read that type of thing over and over again. Like I said though, it’s not really clarified what they meant. While I admit that it’s probably more likely they were going for a cheap laugh, from what I’ve seen of Flight of the Concords in the past, they seem a little bit more high brow than that, so I’d rather give them the benefit of the doubt for now rather than jump the gun and just assume the worst.
Nah, it wasn’t directed towards you. But as for your point:
I guess, I’m just having a hard time believing that it’s about a trans man because the visuals in the music video (though I guess my major potential flaw here is assuming that they have any creative control over the videos) use so many visual shorthands that scream trans woman analogue. There’s played by cis dude, long hair, slightly open, feminine cut shirt, and so on. Now, a trans dude can totally have all of those (minus maybe the being played by a cis dude) and all power to him being a damn badass, but the visual shorthand would not easily lend itself in that direction in the video at least.
That all being said, I’m not going to say anyone should not enjoy the song or the band because of a problematic moment. We all enjoy problematic entertainment material all the time and it’s downright easy for a creator to slip up and make an “easy” joke and not be aware of how that comes off to someone marginalized.
As you say, you enjoy the Flight of the Concords and they have a higher brow type of comedy. That isn’t diminished or removed if they have a video with a single messed-up visual joke in the same way that Willis’s excellent track record wouldn’t be ruined if he fucked up and wrote something accidentally transphobic in a panel.
I don’t want to defend this song too much (it clearly has issues, namely making a cheap and fast choke about trans persons without reflecting the implications), but i also got the impression that it’s about FtM, so Bruce is his real name now and “Ex-Girlfriends” implies “persons that were his girlfriends in the past” – allowing the interpretation of “when Bruce and i were in a relationship, we both assumed that his sex/gender was female. Turned out we both were wrong”.
Ana Chronistic
I’m not going to try to speak for the creators, but my impression was “I wanted to ask out this hot-looking woman, but when I got a chance to ask her out, it turned out she was a man named Bruce, and since I am a straight man, it wasn’t going to work out.” Doesn’t have to have any trans implications, just simple mistaken identity. If they meant otherwise, I have no idea.
merbrat
Amazi-Stool, that’s how I thought it went. “Brenda” left Jemaine, and is still finding himself (Bruce).
Jason
True story- when I first had any exposure to trans issues, I asked my mother and she said “transsexuals are gay men who pretend to be women to sleep with other men.” No joke. It was backed up by the sort of media my parents consumed too.
Small wonder I needed to really distance myself from them before I could start my own transition…
A little joke is immediately transmisogyny. That’s a bit of a sad statement. Plus if you listen carefully, he sings “Bruce turned out to be a man” which is just a joke on Jemaine rather than on Bruce. Bruce is the manliest name there is is.
Well, yeah, jokes can be transphobic. Just like jokes can be racist or sexist or homophobic or ableist. In fact, jokes that are variations of that tend to be super common because they tend to become core “jokes” that are very easy to throw up for an easy laugh from a cisgender audience (and most of your audience can be presumed to be cis).
The “whoops, trans, lol, clearly a dude, right” joke is a very rehashed one, often because to people who don’t understand what they’re doing, it seems a silly visual to think of a woman who’s all dudely. It’s a cheap visual gag to “punch up” a bit and can be a way to lol at the protagonist who was so “dumb” or “unmanly” to sleep with a “man”.
And the thing is that this has genuine real life consequences. A huge number of the trans women murdered every year tend to be because a guy tried to “defend back” his masculinity after being attracted to or in a relationship with a trans woman by murdering said trans woman to prove that he is still “manly” and was merely tricked by an evil deceiver. And jokes that reinforce that idea of “lol, you slept with a trans woman, ha ha” end up being a large part of why cis dudes who murder trans women feel they need to do that, because Bob damnitt, they’re not going to be made into a joke by some (slur for a gay man).
I know that makes me a bit of a killjoy to say, but how we shape humor matters a lot to how people are treated in the world.
Carol would just say he wouldn’t have ‘had to’ go that far if Becky hadn’t deviated from his interpretation of God’s plan.
begbert
I’m afraid you have me; I don’t think Becky has the philosophical inclination to point out that a god’s plan that includes threatening murder is a false god, and thus Ross and Carol are both apparently satanists.
Heavensrun
I don’t disagree with your general stance, but I don’t see your rationale on threatening murder having anything to do with God being real or false. God could be real and just be a psychopath.
yeah, its odd how that sort of possibility doesn’t get traction.
Its either “loving god who has to do stuff we just dont understand” or “no god”.
“arsehole god”
“absent god”
“god who was just fucking about and we are all accidents”
“god who is allpowerfull but incompetent”
and “god who, you know, tries his best”
The problem is that this sect of Fundamentalist Christianity worships asshole God. They know God is down with killing, God has killed before, God has ordered killing before, and his wrath to stop Satan and sin is brutal and terrifying. These are the type of people who think God would send terrorists to bomb buildings or giant natural storms just to protest the number of abortion clinics or gay bars in a city or because a country has too many atheists.
They believe in a ticking time bomb of a deity and they’re just scrambling to stay on his good side before he hits the fuck-it switch and raptures up the only few who could cling to his long laundry list of hate and self-denial properly so they can be denied the shit-show of his orbital target practice against humanity and the demonic hordes.
begbert
Firstly I want to clarify that by “false god” I didn’t mean “no god”. Becky is probably still a christian and thus probably still believes in god. However as a fundie-raised christian, she was doubtlessly also raised to believe in the actual existence of other gods, who do exist but are wrong to follow: golden calves, Baal, Satan, rock & roll and so on. So anyway it’s entirely possible that the bad parents are worshiping something real, just something that’s not THE god and thus isn’t right.
And to Cerberus’s point I can only say that Joyce sure thought she believed in a decent god, and I doubt that she’d agree that her god endorses collateral damage or threats thereof in the pursuit of taking their child. (Heck, she probably doesn’t reeeeally buy into Deuteronomy 21:18-21’s explicit endorsement of murdering just the rebellious child.)
Which is not to say that Carol believes in the same god that Joyce does. It seems likely at this point that Joyce got some of her beliefs from her father, who similarly doesn’t appear to embrace the psychopathy that the bible is marbled with.
Gamaran Sepudomyn
Who cares whether they’re a false god? Regardless of godhood, if you’re going to be an asshole, you deserve to be punished and have it explained to you exactly why you should stop.
Suitora
If you say that, then you don’t love your own daughter. You think murder of your daughter is more acceptable than sexual deviancy.
Well, of course, she does, a murdered daughter simply goes to Heaven and we’re all going to Heaven soon thanks to the Rapture. Whereas a “sexual deviant” daughter will be thrown out of the kingdom of Heaven to suffer in Hell for all eternity due to her sin. And even her having a “sexual deviant” friend is a major risk because that friend could corrupt her enough to deny her her sweet meal ticket to the hereafter when the Rapture comes.
… and I really wish this was not literally what people like Carol frequently believe. And yes, it is terrifying to live around. Especially when you have the reputation as the “weird queer kinda atheist” kid.
begbert
There is no truer love then murdering all your babies the second they’re baptized, because only at that moment can you be sure they haven’t sinned again yet and imperiled their salvation.
Mormons have it easier – they can murder their kids anytime up until they kids are eight years old and the kid will be guaranteed the highest level of heaven. If they wait any longer than that they’re gambling with their kids’ souls, and is that really a risk they should be taking?
Znayx
You and Cerberus, what you are talking about is something that irks me so, so deeply about religion. It’s painful to even think about. The fact that people don’t kill their newborns to make sure they get to heaven untainted though is something that confuses me. It makes me think they be hypocrites… I don’t know what makes me more angry, the fact that people say these things about what they believe and they don’t actually act on it, or that somewhere in their beliefs there is such a thing like this that they can justify it to themselves.
In other words:
If newborns are pure and sinless, why don’t the parents make sure they remain untainted and just “send them to heaven”? and;
Why is the religion written in such a way that people could present this as a reason to kill their children?
TachyonCode
I can’t answer the first question, but as far as “why is the religion written in such a way”: You have to consider that the early adherents of this religion (if we’re talking strictly about the material from the Ancient Hebrew sources) lived a generally nomadic lifestyle, with few reliable, stationary resources – especially once you introduce the problem of migratory livestock and seasonal rains playing roles as primary resources. You can read plenty about the lifestyle here: http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/culture_nomads.html
To summarize, however: the tribe’s ability to function as a peaceful society of about 25-50 people, most of whom were related, was a responsibility that rested upon the shoulders of darn near everyone in it.
In such a situation, you would have had to consider how to collectively approach, manage, and survive the following problems:
⦁ (Poorly-understood) communicable diseases
⦁ The tangible resource cost of wastefulness
⦁ The inestimable cost of insubordination (up to and including “schism or collapse of the tribe”)
⦁ Conflicts with enemy tribes and predators
⦁ The dangers of slavers to individuals and the tribe as a whole
⦁ Hospitality towards non-enemies encountered while on the move (remember, the environment itself was basically hostile towards the ill-equipped, so a tribe that could provide shelter and sustenance was expected to do so, especially if it had a stable grip on its territory)
⦁ Behvaing in accordance with the superstitions accompanying the tribe’s religion, so as to avoid provoking a Wrath of God scenario
Given all of these and more variables, there was not really a whole lot of room for “well I don’t agree with your ideology, dad, so I’m going to do things MY way” within the tribe. Insubordination could very easily get you or someone else killed if you went against your elders, and it wouldn’t necessarily even be a scenario where anyone wanted it to happen; you could accidentally give a tactical advantage to an enemy tribe, or lose or destroy some or all of the tribe’s food or manufacturing resources, get the whole tribe sick, and so on and so forth.
Take that together with the notion of “religion-as-lifestyle-guide”, and the sort of ad-hoc-but-hand-me-down religion that encapsulated the majority of an average nomad’s basic understanding of the world, and it becomes clear why “because this is what God wants” might have been the explanation the tribe came up with for darn near everything they saw or imagined the need to have happen.
—
Of course, none of the above excuses child-killing in the modern age, but back then it would have been an acceptable option to prevent a possible disaster for the tribe. Nowadays, in our far more populous and stable society, individuals having a distorted and very-far-removed-from-context understanding of such ancient religions are the primary reason that beliefs such as the ones begbert and Cerberus mention are even possible.
And unfortunately, this is a better explanation for the behavior of modern “Christian” believers than for Mormons.
I mean if you knew anything about Judaism, you’d know that it actually encourages not only questioning but actively arguing with God.
Our crappy translation of part of one of their holy books != Judaism.
Li
The comment above was written in haste. Comment in haste, regret at leisure.
What I should’ve said is: generally-speaking, atheists in America are really only familiar with Christianity, and a lot of the things that we hate about “religion” are actually kind of unique to it.
Not all of them. But a lot.
And while we tend to know no more about Judaism than we do about, say, Shintoism, we think we do, because we “know” the Old Testament. And we believe, wrongly, that it’s “basically the Jewish Bible”.
I was totally in that exact same place, for most of my life. The only Jewish people I had ever met were atheists. (And since it’s, y’know, an ethno-religion, very much unlike Christianity, there are a lot of Jewish atheists.) Only very recently have I started talking to Jewish people about Judaism, and antisemitism, and so on.
:\ So I took this very superior tone with you, and it wasn’t at all warranted, and I’m sorry about that. If it helps at all, my tone was not really about you. Reading your comment made me really mad at myself, and what I used to think I knew. That plus the fact that I was running out the door… yeah. It’s not a great defense, and again I’m sorry. I’d delete the original comment if I could.
Emperor Norton
Hey, Li, just want you to know that at least one person did see your first reply… But also has now seen the reply to the reply, which clears up a lot, and also contains what I think of as a proper apology.
As someone who really hates non-apology apologies, I’m really happy for that second reply. And the first reply is, in my head-canon, considered to never have happened.
TachyonCode
Li, saw both your replies. The nesting feature of this comment system abruptly slamming into the right margin and screwing everyone’s comprehension of it up past a certain level of hierarchy unfortunately makes it unclear whether you were replying to me or not, but presuming that you were, all I have to say is this:
I wasn’t commenting on Judaism specifically. Rather, I was commenting on the common “Christian” understanding of the material borrowed from it, and the distortions of it that have become commonplace since Christianity co-opted and disseminated that admittedly limited range of material.
I would also like to point out that I was not engaging in high scholarly discourse. I was simply making note of the fact that the common practitioners of religions that have survived from ancient times, in particular those of Christianity, have many reasons why their perspective might be too far removed from their religion’s original context to have a functional understanding of some of its historical tenets, or even of its related anecdotes.
That said, I am in no position to be pedagogical about Judaism, and would love to hear you elaborate on the topic if you so desire.
My intent was to provide a reference to a resource that I felt was reliable enough for basic discourse on the lifestyle from which it arose. I’m sorry if I’ve failed in any regard.
Nonono. “Sinner” doesn’t quite encapuslate the “your whole ordeal is your fault rather than the gun-toting monster-dad’s fault” element of it.
Znayx
Then Willis speaks, in the loving words of Andrius:
“I will re-unite [her] broken family. I will give them all the hope in this world. I will bring peace and love into their hearts… Then I will destroy them. And, truly, a sheep’s meat is sweeter when it is blindly led to greener pastures. Fear and suffering only sours it. Do you not feel the hope up there on the ship’s deck? This vessel is drowning in it. Let these humans marinate in their hope. The most delicious meal of [my] life awaits,” says Willis as he prepares to feast on our happiness as our empty husks begin to whither.
Dio
This not true!!!! Willis would never…. ::runs and sobs in the corner while drinking straight from a bottle of very strong alcohol::
I’m honestly wondering how likely it is that Joyce’s mom and dad will still be together in five years. Sure, Hank was not terribly nice about Dorothy at first, but HE got over it, and he’s certainly racking up the points so far since his return. How similar ARE he and Carol at this point, anyway? Is it possible that only doctrine has really been keeping them together?
The fact that it is in a different font makes it seem like a more likely possibility, somehow. That’s what I’m hoping, at least 🙂
JustCheetoDust
Actually I picked that up from other sites’ comments sections which use that particular font for sarcasm, but I really wouldn’t be opposed to the idea of a Slipshine anthology with the forty/fiftysomethings.
Disloyal Subject
Ehh. The anthology I saw was a little disappointing; snapshots are by nature less well-developed than full scenes.
734 thoughts on “Icebreaker”
Ana Chronistic
“idk, can you really be sure you’re het at YOUR age, and is it worth your family FEELING like they’re in prison??”
Carol Brown, just take a bus out of town
(we’re hoping that you won’t stick around)
Thor
It’s possible that Carol had to check to make sure she was het. Isn’t that what college is for?
Doctor_Who
Not Anderson, apparently. Or maybe it’s an extracurricular, and the problem was Becky didn’t register for it.
tim gueguen
Imagine the bombshell if it turns out she’s not straight, but has spend the last 2x years acting as if she is.
Dana
Your mother was weregay all through college, and I still turn gay under the light of the full moon.
K^2
That’s a movie right there. Although, possibly one that’s only shown on cable after midnight.
Boyke
That whole sketch would be hilarious (if a non-sequitur) as the conclusion to the storm brewing on the (fairly close) horizon.
Sam
Hahahaha
MrJackdaw
Good lord Saturday Morning Breakfast cereal!
Cerberus
That actually can be a thing. My it’s complicated’s mom back when she came out as bi, said that it was clearly just a phase, because she had those sorts of attractions for a roommate once but was able to “grow out of it”.
So, basically because she was bi and hid in the closet about it, then clearly that was an acceptable and ideal path for her daughter to take as well.
a snow ʍousɐ
Pronoun vagueness! My inner editor is coming out… (No pun intended)
*Back when my it’s-complicated came out as bi, her mom said that clearly …
Good lord. I’ve surpassed grammar Nazism.
AgentKeen
One day, you wake up in a daze at your computer, your screen covered in red marks…
a snow ʍousɐ
Gods, what have I done! I can’t control my urges to edit anymore…
a snow ʍousɐ
I’m a monster… A were-editor!
chiscii
oh thank you, i was gonna ask cerberus ‘bee, what kind of modern family do you have where you have an it’s-complicated mom?’ ??
a snow ʍousɐ
#wincest?
Cerberus
Heh, it’s a fair cop. I think my head cold might be interfering with my head thinky box stuff.
Bahlal
…unless the mom actually was just experimenting, and thinks that’s what her daughter is doing? It’s not right to impose upon your child that your experiences are what is “acceptable and ideal”, but that’s probably not what the mom thinks she’s doing.
Flimsyfishy
This house is a fucking prison.
Cerberus
Yeah, this is why Becky is all sorts of selflessly. To help Joyce she went willingly to a home and a community that was very likely to pull this exact stunt and she’s in for a long weekend of passive-aggressive comments and probably at least one “intervention” for her soul. Perhaps on Sunday when they go to Church (oh dear Bob will that be a mess).
She’s incredibly brave and strong, but this weekend is going to be even rougher and more dehumanizing for her than it will be for Joyce.
ScarvesandCelery
This. Becky’s behaviour in panels 1,3,4, and 5 is particularly telling after readers were calling her tactless and thoughtless just for saying hi to Hank. She’s clearly showing the self awareness she’s been accused of lacking pretty much since she became a regular cast member. In panel 1, she’s happily greeting Mrs Brown, clearly wanting to stay on good terms with her as well as Hank, and also clearly trying to be her usual happy go lucky self while Joyce is in the room. Panels 3 and 4 are, I think, a rare glimpse of the Becky beneath that persona. She’s clearly nervous around Carol, and is holding back, trying to be withdrawn to avoid drama or a confrontation (not that she should have to). And her expression in panel 5 is just a picture of disappointment, at Mrs Brown for being that awful passive aggressive through a smiling facade type of Christian, and quite possibly at herself for hoping she could get through this weekend without having to put up with this BS.
Toes14
Please research “paragraphs”. They make reading long posts so much more enjoyable for the rest of us!
3-I
Loosen the bow tie, I think it’s restricting bloodflow.
Gamaran Sepudomyn
Well, it is generally difficult to read long paragraphs, especially when they become ridiculously thin and compact due to the comment system.
Sebastian Temples
There are probably paragraphs there.
They’re just hard to distinguish because this system requires double enters for paragraphs to be easily visible and that’s not necessarily intuitive.
Cerberus
I think you’re very much correct on that!
Nicknack Paddywhack
I like “passive aggressive through a smiling facade” enough to acronymize it. Mrs. Brown is a PATASF Christian, I just came back from a cringeful dinner at my PATASF in-laws where they spent the whole meal pleading with us to have lots of unprotected sex in order to make grandchildren for them to spoil, etc.
JonRich
Nice reference there.
vonniesaur
WOW, I heard that song on the radio forever ago and forgot to look it up, THANK YOU
HoneyThistle
I love this response with all of my bitter little soul.
ButtonMarkedErase
you know, i’m feeling the sentiment there, but i’m not too enthused about the transmisogyny in the song.
Cerberus
Clicked through to the link… yeaaaaah, this.
Hannah
Maybe Fran was FtM? I mean I know that’s not usually the case when that sort of joke is made, but to be fair, they don’t really clarify.
Also I’d like to believe that the Flight of the Concords are better people, not to mention better comedians than that, because I like them. :l
K^2
That’s the way it came across to me. It makes more sense in context that it’s Fran’s discovery of gender identity. Or at any rate, at least the excuse of such discovery used for breakup.
Huttj509
It actually wasn’t until 8 hours after the parent comment that I realized an interpretation other than FtM.
Maybe I just hang out with the right people.
Cerberus
Unfortunately, watching the video and its visuals and I just went back to double-check that I wasn’t being unfair, we’ve got a picture of Fran looking like a punky, but tall cis woman and then she goes inside and it’s “lol” out steps a much older man with longer scraggly hair (which isn’t even the same color), wearing a slightly feminine shirt and then shrugging.
Now, trans men are totally allowed to have long hair, but by the framing, it’s pretty clear the intention of the joke is “lol, predatory trans women are just trying to trick you into dating men by wearing wigs and makeup” and are “actually men”.
Which is, sadly, a very common “joke”. So common, I would say it’s one of the 5 core stereotypes* of how trans people are typically depicted in fiction.
But it’s also transmisogynist as fuck.
*1) noble victim who teaches the cis characters or audience a thing about life and vaguely not being awful to those ciphers of a character (think Rayon from Dallas Buyer’s Club, they usually have almost no characterization compared to the other characters)
2) sexual predator who is just a man who is using their “transness” to spy on the “opposite” gender or buy entry into single-gendered spaces, usually for the purpose of being a creeper while there
3) the tragic brick who will never “pass”, so their protestations of being a woman are encouraged to be laughed at, because look at their football player physique or deep voice or hairy arms, how absurd, right?
4) the deceiver, like in this one, she looks so cis and passes so cis, but later they’ll be a reveal where she takes off her wig or reveals or is revealed to have junk and then everyone can make a big show of how disgusted they are by her and her “deception”
5) the psycho/killer, whose psychotic murdery ways is clearly foretold by their scary “deviant” behavior dressing up in the “wrong” gender’s clothes, and who is physically dangerous to be around. May also apply to trans men characters who are depicted as becoming dangerous abusive bullies due to “testosterone poisoning”, flying into uncontrollable rages and so on.
Corasan
I think you’re mishearing the lyrics. “Fran ran, Bruce turned out to be a man” – they’re two different people. Also, since it’s a song about how all his past lovers have left him, it seemed to me that it was Bruce who broke it off.
Cerberus
Ok, fair cop, but “Bruce” is definitely still presented in a way that’s typically more a presentation of trans women by transphobes than trans men, right down the scraggly long hair, slightly feminine button-down shirt, and the being played by a cis dude. Which still makes that character at least transmisogynist as fuck and actually even worse than I heard it the first times because “Bruce” doesn’t even get her real name, just this dead name and a joke about her being a dude.
And hell even if it that part was about a trans man, the song is still titled Carol Brown (Choir of Ex-Girlfriends) and the “choir” scenes “Bruce” is in are referred to directly as a choir of ex-girlfriends so even if we were to extend that much undeserved credit, the singer is still misgendering the “Bruce” character.
Cerberus
And now that I’ve been through the whole thing 3 times, I will also point out that it definitely did leave me feeling gross as fuck, which is also pretty common for transphobic “jokes” in popular media.
Hannah
The fact that you keep putting the word “joke” in quotations makes me think I hit a nerve. I’d like to clarify that I’m trans myself, MtF no less, so I know how seriously friggin annoying, insulting, demeaning, belittling, etc etc etc it can be to hear/see/read that type of thing over and over again. Like I said though, it’s not really clarified what they meant. While I admit that it’s probably more likely they were going for a cheap laugh, from what I’ve seen of Flight of the Concords in the past, they seem a little bit more high brow than that, so I’d rather give them the benefit of the doubt for now rather than jump the gun and just assume the worst.
Cerberus
Nah, it wasn’t directed towards you. But as for your point:
I guess, I’m just having a hard time believing that it’s about a trans man because the visuals in the music video (though I guess my major potential flaw here is assuming that they have any creative control over the videos) use so many visual shorthands that scream trans woman analogue. There’s played by cis dude, long hair, slightly open, feminine cut shirt, and so on. Now, a trans dude can totally have all of those (minus maybe the being played by a cis dude) and all power to him being a damn badass, but the visual shorthand would not easily lend itself in that direction in the video at least.
That all being said, I’m not going to say anyone should not enjoy the song or the band because of a problematic moment. We all enjoy problematic entertainment material all the time and it’s downright easy for a creator to slip up and make an “easy” joke and not be aware of how that comes off to someone marginalized.
As you say, you enjoy the Flight of the Concords and they have a higher brow type of comedy. That isn’t diminished or removed if they have a video with a single messed-up visual joke in the same way that Willis’s excellent track record wouldn’t be ruined if he fucked up and wrote something accidentally transphobic in a panel.
Amazi-Stool
I don’t want to defend this song too much (it clearly has issues, namely making a cheap and fast choke about trans persons without reflecting the implications), but i also got the impression that it’s about FtM, so Bruce is his real name now and “Ex-Girlfriends” implies “persons that were his girlfriends in the past” – allowing the interpretation of “when Bruce and i were in a relationship, we both assumed that his sex/gender was female. Turned out we both were wrong”.
Ana Chronistic
I’m not going to try to speak for the creators, but my impression was “I wanted to ask out this hot-looking woman, but when I got a chance to ask her out, it turned out she was a man named Bruce, and since I am a straight man, it wasn’t going to work out.” Doesn’t have to have any trans implications, just simple mistaken identity. If they meant otherwise, I have no idea.
merbrat
Amazi-Stool, that’s how I thought it went. “Brenda” left Jemaine, and is still finding himself (Bruce).
Jason
True story- when I first had any exposure to trans issues, I asked my mother and she said “transsexuals are gay men who pretend to be women to sleep with other men.” No joke. It was backed up by the sort of media my parents consumed too.
Small wonder I needed to really distance myself from them before I could start my own transition…
Marcel
A little joke is immediately transmisogyny. That’s a bit of a sad statement. Plus if you listen carefully, he sings “Bruce turned out to be a man” which is just a joke on Jemaine rather than on Bruce. Bruce is the manliest name there is is.
Cerberus
Well, yeah, jokes can be transphobic. Just like jokes can be racist or sexist or homophobic or ableist. In fact, jokes that are variations of that tend to be super common because they tend to become core “jokes” that are very easy to throw up for an easy laugh from a cisgender audience (and most of your audience can be presumed to be cis).
The “whoops, trans, lol, clearly a dude, right” joke is a very rehashed one, often because to people who don’t understand what they’re doing, it seems a silly visual to think of a woman who’s all dudely. It’s a cheap visual gag to “punch up” a bit and can be a way to lol at the protagonist who was so “dumb” or “unmanly” to sleep with a “man”.
And the thing is that this has genuine real life consequences. A huge number of the trans women murdered every year tend to be because a guy tried to “defend back” his masculinity after being attracted to or in a relationship with a trans woman by murdering said trans woman to prove that he is still “manly” and was merely tricked by an evil deceiver. And jokes that reinforce that idea of “lol, you slept with a trans woman, ha ha” end up being a large part of why cis dudes who murder trans women feel they need to do that, because Bob damnitt, they’re not going to be made into a joke by some (slur for a gay man).
I know that makes me a bit of a killjoy to say, but how we shape humor matters a lot to how people are treated in the world.
begbert
“And my dad threatened to murder your daughter. Even if you don’t care about that, the police do. He put himself in prison.”
Disloyal Subject
Carol would just say he wouldn’t have ‘had to’ go that far if Becky hadn’t deviated from his interpretation of God’s plan.
begbert
I’m afraid you have me; I don’t think Becky has the philosophical inclination to point out that a god’s plan that includes threatening murder is a false god, and thus Ross and Carol are both apparently satanists.
Heavensrun
I don’t disagree with your general stance, but I don’t see your rationale on threatening murder having anything to do with God being real or false. God could be real and just be a psychopath.
thomas wrobel
yeah, its odd how that sort of possibility doesn’t get traction.
Its either “loving god who has to do stuff we just dont understand” or “no god”.
“arsehole god”
“absent god”
“god who was just fucking about and we are all accidents”
“god who is allpowerfull but incompetent”
and “god who, you know, tries his best”
Cerberus
The problem is that this sect of Fundamentalist Christianity worships asshole God. They know God is down with killing, God has killed before, God has ordered killing before, and his wrath to stop Satan and sin is brutal and terrifying. These are the type of people who think God would send terrorists to bomb buildings or giant natural storms just to protest the number of abortion clinics or gay bars in a city or because a country has too many atheists.
They believe in a ticking time bomb of a deity and they’re just scrambling to stay on his good side before he hits the fuck-it switch and raptures up the only few who could cling to his long laundry list of hate and self-denial properly so they can be denied the shit-show of his orbital target practice against humanity and the demonic hordes.
begbert
Firstly I want to clarify that by “false god” I didn’t mean “no god”. Becky is probably still a christian and thus probably still believes in god. However as a fundie-raised christian, she was doubtlessly also raised to believe in the actual existence of other gods, who do exist but are wrong to follow: golden calves, Baal, Satan, rock & roll and so on. So anyway it’s entirely possible that the bad parents are worshiping something real, just something that’s not THE god and thus isn’t right.
And to Cerberus’s point I can only say that Joyce sure thought she believed in a decent god, and I doubt that she’d agree that her god endorses collateral damage or threats thereof in the pursuit of taking their child. (Heck, she probably doesn’t reeeeally buy into Deuteronomy 21:18-21’s explicit endorsement of murdering just the rebellious child.)
Which is not to say that Carol believes in the same god that Joyce does. It seems likely at this point that Joyce got some of her beliefs from her father, who similarly doesn’t appear to embrace the psychopathy that the bible is marbled with.
Gamaran Sepudomyn
Who cares whether they’re a false god? Regardless of godhood, if you’re going to be an asshole, you deserve to be punished and have it explained to you exactly why you should stop.
Suitora
If you say that, then you don’t love your own daughter. You think murder of your daughter is more acceptable than sexual deviancy.
Cerberus
Well, of course, she does, a murdered daughter simply goes to Heaven and we’re all going to Heaven soon thanks to the Rapture. Whereas a “sexual deviant” daughter will be thrown out of the kingdom of Heaven to suffer in Hell for all eternity due to her sin. And even her having a “sexual deviant” friend is a major risk because that friend could corrupt her enough to deny her her sweet meal ticket to the hereafter when the Rapture comes.
… and I really wish this was not literally what people like Carol frequently believe. And yes, it is terrifying to live around. Especially when you have the reputation as the “weird queer kinda atheist” kid.
begbert
There is no truer love then murdering all your babies the second they’re baptized, because only at that moment can you be sure they haven’t sinned again yet and imperiled their salvation.
Mormons have it easier – they can murder their kids anytime up until they kids are eight years old and the kid will be guaranteed the highest level of heaven. If they wait any longer than that they’re gambling with their kids’ souls, and is that really a risk they should be taking?
Znayx
You and Cerberus, what you are talking about is something that irks me so, so deeply about religion. It’s painful to even think about. The fact that people don’t kill their newborns to make sure they get to heaven untainted though is something that confuses me. It makes me think they be hypocrites… I don’t know what makes me more angry, the fact that people say these things about what they believe and they don’t actually act on it, or that somewhere in their beliefs there is such a thing like this that they can justify it to themselves.
In other words:
If newborns are pure and sinless, why don’t the parents make sure they remain untainted and just “send them to heaven”? and;
Why is the religion written in such a way that people could present this as a reason to kill their children?
TachyonCode
I can’t answer the first question, but as far as “why is the religion written in such a way”: You have to consider that the early adherents of this religion (if we’re talking strictly about the material from the Ancient Hebrew sources) lived a generally nomadic lifestyle, with few reliable, stationary resources – especially once you introduce the problem of migratory livestock and seasonal rains playing roles as primary resources. You can read plenty about the lifestyle here: http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/culture_nomads.html
To summarize, however: the tribe’s ability to function as a peaceful society of about 25-50 people, most of whom were related, was a responsibility that rested upon the shoulders of darn near everyone in it.
In such a situation, you would have had to consider how to collectively approach, manage, and survive the following problems:
⦁ (Poorly-understood) communicable diseases
⦁ The tangible resource cost of wastefulness
⦁ The inestimable cost of insubordination (up to and including “schism or collapse of the tribe”)
⦁ Conflicts with enemy tribes and predators
⦁ The dangers of slavers to individuals and the tribe as a whole
⦁ Hospitality towards non-enemies encountered while on the move (remember, the environment itself was basically hostile towards the ill-equipped, so a tribe that could provide shelter and sustenance was expected to do so, especially if it had a stable grip on its territory)
⦁ Behvaing in accordance with the superstitions accompanying the tribe’s religion, so as to avoid provoking a Wrath of God scenario
Given all of these and more variables, there was not really a whole lot of room for “well I don’t agree with your ideology, dad, so I’m going to do things MY way” within the tribe. Insubordination could very easily get you or someone else killed if you went against your elders, and it wouldn’t necessarily even be a scenario where anyone wanted it to happen; you could accidentally give a tactical advantage to an enemy tribe, or lose or destroy some or all of the tribe’s food or manufacturing resources, get the whole tribe sick, and so on and so forth.
Take that together with the notion of “religion-as-lifestyle-guide”, and the sort of ad-hoc-but-hand-me-down religion that encapsulated the majority of an average nomad’s basic understanding of the world, and it becomes clear why “because this is what God wants” might have been the explanation the tribe came up with for darn near everything they saw or imagined the need to have happen.
—
Of course, none of the above excuses child-killing in the modern age, but back then it would have been an acceptable option to prevent a possible disaster for the tribe. Nowadays, in our far more populous and stable society, individuals having a distorted and very-far-removed-from-context understanding of such ancient religions are the primary reason that beliefs such as the ones begbert and Cerberus mention are even possible.
And unfortunately, this is a better explanation for the behavior of modern “Christian” believers than for Mormons.
Li
Nah.
I mean if you knew anything about Judaism, you’d know that it actually encourages not only questioning but actively arguing with God.
Our crappy translation of part of one of their holy books != Judaism.
Li
The comment above was written in haste. Comment in haste, regret at leisure.
What I should’ve said is: generally-speaking, atheists in America are really only familiar with Christianity, and a lot of the things that we hate about “religion” are actually kind of unique to it.
Not all of them. But a lot.
And while we tend to know no more about Judaism than we do about, say, Shintoism, we think we do, because we “know” the Old Testament. And we believe, wrongly, that it’s “basically the Jewish Bible”.
I was totally in that exact same place, for most of my life. The only Jewish people I had ever met were atheists. (And since it’s, y’know, an ethno-religion, very much unlike Christianity, there are a lot of Jewish atheists.) Only very recently have I started talking to Jewish people about Judaism, and antisemitism, and so on.
:\ So I took this very superior tone with you, and it wasn’t at all warranted, and I’m sorry about that. If it helps at all, my tone was not really about you. Reading your comment made me really mad at myself, and what I used to think I knew. That plus the fact that I was running out the door… yeah. It’s not a great defense, and again I’m sorry. I’d delete the original comment if I could.
Emperor Norton
Hey, Li, just want you to know that at least one person did see your first reply… But also has now seen the reply to the reply, which clears up a lot, and also contains what I think of as a proper apology.
As someone who really hates non-apology apologies, I’m really happy for that second reply. And the first reply is, in my head-canon, considered to never have happened.
TachyonCode
Li, saw both your replies. The nesting feature of this comment system abruptly slamming into the right margin and screwing everyone’s comprehension of it up past a certain level of hierarchy unfortunately makes it unclear whether you were replying to me or not, but presuming that you were, all I have to say is this:
I wasn’t commenting on Judaism specifically. Rather, I was commenting on the common “Christian” understanding of the material borrowed from it, and the distortions of it that have become commonplace since Christianity co-opted and disseminated that admittedly limited range of material.
I would also like to point out that I was not engaging in high scholarly discourse. I was simply making note of the fact that the common practitioners of religions that have survived from ancient times, in particular those of Christianity, have many reasons why their perspective might be too far removed from their religion’s original context to have a functional understanding of some of its historical tenets, or even of its related anecdotes.
That said, I am in no position to be pedagogical about Judaism, and would love to hear you elaborate on the topic if you so desire.
My intent was to provide a reference to a resource that I felt was reliable enough for basic discourse on the lifestyle from which it arose. I’m sorry if I’ve failed in any regard.
LimeSheep
thanks mom
inqntrol
Wow Carol! That’s a very subtle way of saying “sinner”.
Reltzik
Nonono. “Sinner” doesn’t quite encapuslate the “your whole ordeal is your fault rather than the gun-toting monster-dad’s fault” element of it.
Znayx
Then Willis speaks, in the loving words of Andrius:
“I will re-unite [her] broken family. I will give them all the hope in this world. I will bring peace and love into their hearts… Then I will destroy them. And, truly, a sheep’s meat is sweeter when it is blindly led to greener pastures. Fear and suffering only sours it. Do you not feel the hope up there on the ship’s deck? This vessel is drowning in it. Let these humans marinate in their hope. The most delicious meal of [my] life awaits,” says Willis as he prepares to feast on our happiness as our empty husks begin to whither.
Dio
This not true!!!! Willis would never…. ::runs and sobs in the corner while drinking straight from a bottle of very strong alcohol::
T Campbell
I’m honestly wondering how likely it is that Joyce’s mom and dad will still be together in five years. Sure, Hank was not terribly nice about Dorothy at first, but HE got over it, and he’s certainly racking up the points so far since his return. How similar ARE he and Carol at this point, anyway? Is it possible that only doctrine has really been keeping them together?
Doctor_Who
Well, the sex is also mind-blowing.
JustCheetoDust
Someone's angling for a slipshine.Historyman68
The fact that it is in a different font makes it seem like a more likely possibility, somehow. That’s what I’m hoping, at least 🙂
JustCheetoDust
Actually I picked that up from other sites’ comments sections which use that particular font for sarcasm, but I really wouldn’t be opposed to the idea of a Slipshine anthology with the forty/fiftysomethings.
Disloyal Subject
Ehh. The anthology I saw was a little disappointing; snapshots are by nature less well-developed than full scenes.