I wonder how much crap she gets from Mary for being the condom girl. How does Mary feel about condoms? (Barring Walkyverse jokes people)
Ross
Mary isn’t Catholic, so in terms of family planning, condoms should probably be okay? Although I’ll bet she’s the type to refer to birth control pills as “abortion pills” and talk at great length about shirking Eve’s curse.
LeslieBean4Shizzle
Huh? What does that —
You know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know what that means. My sanity will thank me for not learning the answer to that question.
I read it more as periods, since birth control can let you have some control over old aunt flow, and in some cases skip it entirely.
…yours makes more sense
TweeBopALula
Too bad for your innocence! Depending on the sect birth control pills can be both preferable to condoms and evil abortion pills! See, if you aren’t having sex then severe periods are gross and icky and distasteful unto the Lord. Gotta get that weird lady-business hidden and under chemical control! Once you’re having sex, though, anything that even maybe sort of possibly intentionally blocks fertilized eggs is a murderous no-go. Plus without marriag. you’re a harlot. Unmarried people shouldn’t use birth control because failure rates and STDs and interfering with GOD’S PLAN. Married couples have it a bit different. Condoms, spermicide, and diaphrams are kind of ok for married folk because it’s all pre-fertilization cockblocking and because typical failure rates are high enough to say it’s in God’s hands (note the hypocrisy). No IUD sin-sticks for anyone. Vasectomies and tubal ligation are studiously not talked about. All this was covered in great depth in my “progressive” fundamentalist sex-ed and puberty books, and now you know it, too!
ChrisHerself
Hormonal birth control doesn’t “block” an already-fertilized egg. It keeps the eggs in the ovaries. No ovulation = no fertilization happens = no conception = not an abortion. It’s “pre-fertilization cockblocking” (lol!) for women. So yes, massively hypocritical.
Not sure from your phrasing if you already know that and were being illustrative, sorry if so. 🙂
Wanderso
To quote Kevin Swanson, host of Generations Radio:
“Swanson: I’m beginning to get some evidence from certain doctors and certain scientists that have done research on women’s wombs after they’ve gone through the surgery, and they’ve compared the wombs of women who were on the birth control pill to those who were not on the birth control pill. And they have found that with women who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.
Peeples: We’ve actually heard on both sides of that. We’re researching that and want to make sure we speak correctly to that in our second film. But we have medical advice on both sides of the table there, so we want to make sure that we communicate that properly.
Swanson: It would seem, and I realize that people are a little split on what are all the effects of the birth control pill, but it would seem that there’s a tremendous risk in the use of it for the life of children.”
It’s a newer tactic in the culture wars over birth control and abortion. Hormonal birth control pills *primarily* work by preventing ovulation. But as a secondary effect/backup feature, they also make the uterus inhospitable to implantation in the unlikely event that an ovum is released and fertilized. Thus, we get anti-choice activists yelling about how Obamacare supposedly restricts religious freedom because it forces the health insurance plans covered by companies like HobbyLobby to provide access to “abortion pills” to their employees.
ChrisHerself
Welp THAT is something I hadn’t run into and I’ve done a lot of looking into both sides of it, and that’s certainly not been mentioned by my doctors in the past. (I’ve not been on hormonal BC for several years though.)
If true, it doesn’t change my stance on it personally, but I’d be interested to check out some links if you have some relevant ones on the average frequency of occurrence compared to non-BC users, or if/how the uterus reacts differently when on BC than it would without. (Even with no form of birth control, a fertilized egg does not always successfully implant.)
Not as interested in sources using “baby graveyard” type of rhetoric but I know it’s a topic people feel strongly about. Appreciate the new info; it’s good to be up to date.
Christine
Everywhere I see discussing it points out that the pill works strictly by blocking ovulation. EXCEPT for the inserts in the packages, which assure you that, even should ovulation and fertilization happen, implantation is unlikely. (Anecdotally there does seem to be a higher miscarriage rate for women on the pill, so that might make sense? However this could also be due to women not realizing how high the miscarriage rate in general is.)
TriplePhase
Registered just to say that the content quoted by Wanderso is utter and absolute BS, for anyone that is wondering. (They may have already known that, but I didn’t see a sarcasm marker.)
TweeBopALula
Right, ChrisHerself. Hormonal contraception blocks sperm and egg from ever meeting. Columbia University has a really excellent site called GoAskAlice with more information for anyone who’s interested.
Shiro
@Wanderso: That quote is legitimately my favorite bit of ridiculous fundie wtf. It’s like…(addressing Swanson, not you) no one told you that. No actual scientist made that claim at you. You just made that up out of your own head and banked on no one knowing how ludicrously scientifically inaccurate and impossible it is. You strange little man.
It’s seriously like something a small child with no understanding of…anything would say.
Lumin
My doctor told me essentially what L!ghtn!ng said: that the main effect was to prevent ovulation, but that it also made implantation less likely if fertilisation did happen to occur.
My assumption is that it reduces the thickening of the lining of the womb: my periods have certainly got progressively shorter and lighter through my child-bearing years, especially in the period of time after I stopped having children, and so was on the pill without a break. This is unlikely to be solely the result of aging, seeing my youngest was born when I was 26.
So I believe that both effects exist.
ChrisHerself
I agree Lumin, what I’m most interested in is the statistics of the frequency of a fertilized egg being rejected in HBC versus non-HBC users. And the risk of such an event occurring in HBC users.
If it’s significantly higher, then that certainly gives me insight into the ongoing suppression of women’s right to birth control. If it’s not, then to me it’s simply another scientific fact re-purposed into anti-choice propaganda. Good information to have either way I think. 🙂
doomprix
*reads all the information, goes back to TweeBopALula* Wait did you just use the word harlot? I don’t think that word has been used since 1911. But hey since we seem to be sliding back in time maybe that word is going to be back in fashion again. Ooo! maybe, we can use prithe and thee and thou and Scoundrel!
SomeGuy411
Forsooth, there is no need to be so formal as you use thees and thous. Prithe and scoundrel are informal, and thus may be used by today’s miscreants
No Name
For the record (and in case you didn’t catch Erik’s message way at the bottom of the page) thou, thee, thy, thine are second person informal singular form. That’s why they are used to refer to God (which is probably where the air of formality is coming from); Medieval European Christians liked to think of Him as a friend they could be palsy with. The Germans still do, too, using du, dich, dir, dein to refer to Gott, and well as friends, family, children and animals.
Buzzed
Like No Name said, “thee”, “thy” etc. are informal, not formal. That’s why you refer to royalty as “your majesty”, not “thy majesty” and judges as “your honor”, even in period pieces.
Bicycle Bill
As of 1 Jan 2014 there were something like 1.025 million words in the English language. So there’s lots of words like ‘harlot’ and ‘trollop’ and ‘strumpet’ (a couple other good ones that are also underutilized or ignored today) out there we could — and should — be using.
onetwoduck
I know you don’t live in Indiana by that statement, that’s all I’m saying.
SmilingNid
Given Mary’s previous comments she probably hate Roz for being “catholic” almost as much as she hates her fo hanging sex posters in her room.
SmilingNid
Actually on reflection being stuck in a room with Roz explains a lot about Mary.
That Damn Rat
Yes, the two couldn’t deserve each other more. Satan’s ironic punishment team have outdone themselves this time.
Nah. Roz is slightly more redeemable than Mary. Satan only knows what Mary’s reaction to hearing about what happened to Joyce at the party would have been. Probably something that would make me want to reach through the fourth wall and strangle her till rigor mortis set in
EvilMidnightLurker
“I don’t understand! James Coco went mad in fifteen minutes!”
“More.”
roz fan
Why does everyone hate my favourite character?
roz fan
Roz seems to have the right general idea and she genuinely cares about and wants to help people. I know some people get into activism to chase power, but I don’t think she’s one of them.
Her execution isn’t perfect and she can be abrasive, but she doesn’t deserve the backlash she gets from Leslie. I know that she can be frustrating to watch. But man, that’s so not the way to deal with an exceptionally passionate student.
I can understand Roz’s frustration at…having to take that class, tbqh, as well as Leslie’s frustration at having Roz in her class. But even though Leslie may be marginalized cuz she’s gay, she’s still much older than Roz and, as her professor, has a lot of (institutional) power over her. In a lot of their interactions it seems like Leslie is trying to put Roz in her place, which is Not Okay.
In fact, I’d argue that it’s entirely because she’s roomed with Mary that’s responsible for her weary take-no-shit, fuck-off-with-your-fundie-bullshit approach to Joyce that makes the comment thread freak out at her.
When your regular exposure to fundie culture is the likes of Mary and her constant slurs and hating on your baby sister for being related to you and picking fights with anyone she views as walking too loudly past her door…. well, is it any surprise she went off on Joyce and has a low threshold for fundamentalism in general?
Especially when you also note that she blames that general culture for the electoral success of her sister.
3-I
Thou art truly wise.
Sovnyavitch
Mary’s only been in one fight with someone due to what they were doing outside her door, to my knowledge, and it was Carla who picked it.
I’d have imagined Roz and Mary could at least bond over their shared predilection for nudity
We’ve seen her do this half-head poke out for a number of other hallway disturbances, one of which to the even more quiet example of Billie sneaking her laundry basket into Ruth’s room which served as the basis of Mary’s blackmail plan against Ruth.
And Carla picked jack shit. She did some skating on carpet and didn’t immediately kowtow to Mary’s demands. That’s not “picking a fight” though Carla did commit the fatal sin of being *gasp* rude to a person who fundamentally does not respect the existence of queer individuals and especially trans individuals as we saw later.
Sovnyavitch
Here’s every Mary head-poke, either around a door or a panel, the most reasonable assumption for why she’s doing so, and what happens next:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/clinkclink/ Mary wonders what there could possibly be so many of in Billie’s bag to make such a clatter. Bottles do make a lot of noise when packed together, and it is unlikely that Mary has encountered a post-binge garbage run before. She gets an answer and the joke ends.
Oops, I missed (http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/joke/), where Mary goes to the door of her room because she, like other humans, might like to be invited to a party. Slight rudeness back and forth; Mary’s gauche, then rejected by Roz and Becky, then makes a snarky comment, possibly to hide her hurt feelings.
It’s actually hard not to see Mary’s ‘attack’ as upping the ante, having previously sunk to Carla’s level of childishness by first lying down in the hall and then gluing her skates.
We’ve all been guilty of, in the heat of an argument, saying something deliberately spiteful that had no relation to the topic of dispute other than to make the other person feel awful, which feels a little like winning until you realise what you’ve done.
Mary is not a nice person, but to treat Carla as some sort of martyr of blithe-spirited transsexual youth bullied by a bigot is pretty innacurate
Sovnyavitch
So sorry, Mary is absolutely a bigot. What I meant was that she was nasty to Carla for other reasons than pure bigotry, even if her attack was expressed purely as bigotry.
Sovnyavitch
It seems that I’ve been moderated. My sincere apologies for breaking the chat rules; could someone tell me where to find them so I don’t do it again?
Did you have a comment with multiple links? Those tend to be temporarily moderated and approved by Willis when he wakes up. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
Sovnyavitch
Thanks. And I like your site!
Danuisrodriguez
Actually, it depends. Some strains of American fundamentalism are very ‘be fruitful and multiply’ heavy.
Yeah, fundies tend to hate condoms because, as best I can remember, having condoms or teaching safe sex is actually temptation to have sex and implanting the demonic idea of sex before marriage and so a person, and especially a woman who has condoms is a (slur for sexually active woman) because she actually planned ahead for sexual intercourse and so planned to sin instead of being carried away by Satan’s influence.
Shockingly, this also leads to one hell of a rape culture where showing any sign of actually being interested or enjoying sex as a woman was basically the equivalent of putting a sign over your head saying “I am a sinner and I’m going straight to Hell now”.
So yeah, between that and the premarital hanky panky, Mary’s got reasons for days to despise her. Not that Mary needs much help to hate someone.
Christine
I once saw somewhere that linked to CCLI (couple-to-couple league, a Catholic family planning group), with the caveat that the site they were linking to was excessively birth-control friendly. So yes, when the conservative Catholic approach to family planning is considered too birth control friendly, condoms are definitely not going to fly.
(Of course, as I write this it occurs to me that condoms tend to be associated more with safer sex than with birth control, so there might be a bias against them. On the other hand, all the public health stuff you get after having a baby tends to work against that, and having babies earlier would be more common, so who knows.)
There’s also a not insignificant number of fundie types that hate condoms because they see them as “defying God’s plan” to punish (perjorative for sexually active women) women who think they can have sex without receiving the punishment of childbirth promised to women in Genesis (according to their world views).
And more horrifyingly, as defying “God’s plan” to wipe out the queer folk through the “righteous plague” of HIV.
Anti-sex activists tend to be scary fucks that way.
A fact they exploit in order to expand their anti-abortion campaign more transparently into a general anti-contraception campaign.
WikiDreamer
Despite having read ALL of Shortpacked and still keeping up with DoA, I’ve gotta admit I’m a wee bit surprised to learn Mary ISN’T hardcore Catholic. I’d appreciate any and all insight into this character’s mindset OTHER than raging c*nt.
Romanticide
I bet Mary calls birth control pills “whore-pills”
G.I. Joe…?
(that isn’t a question, that’s my attempt to finish that phrase/soundbite, but with a questioning tone due to the fact that you put a “not” in front of the phrase).
/explaining the joke
501 thoughts on “Measuring”
Wheelpath
Oh shit, I do feel sorry for Roz
Cholma
So say we all.
Wheelpath
I wonder how much crap she gets from Mary for being the condom girl. How does Mary feel about condoms? (Barring Walkyverse jokes people)
Ross
Mary isn’t Catholic, so in terms of family planning, condoms should probably be okay? Although I’ll bet she’s the type to refer to birth control pills as “abortion pills” and talk at great length about shirking Eve’s curse.
LeslieBean4Shizzle
Huh? What does that —
You know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know what that means. My sanity will thank me for not learning the answer to that question.
tim gueguen
I assume Ross is referring to the idea that child birth is painful for women as punishment for Eve eating the fruit in Eden.
tim gueguen
Sorry to be mean and tell you.
de Combys
I was curious so I’m glad
TheAmazingBlueJ
I read it more as periods, since birth control can let you have some control over old aunt flow, and in some cases skip it entirely.
…yours makes more sense
TweeBopALula
Too bad for your innocence! Depending on the sect birth control pills can be both preferable to condoms and evil abortion pills! See, if you aren’t having sex then severe periods are gross and icky and distasteful unto the Lord. Gotta get that weird lady-business hidden and under chemical control! Once you’re having sex, though, anything that even maybe sort of possibly intentionally blocks fertilized eggs is a murderous no-go. Plus without marriag. you’re a harlot. Unmarried people shouldn’t use birth control because failure rates and STDs and interfering with GOD’S PLAN. Married couples have it a bit different. Condoms, spermicide, and diaphrams are kind of ok for married folk because it’s all pre-fertilization cockblocking and because typical failure rates are high enough to say it’s in God’s hands (note the hypocrisy). No IUD sin-sticks for anyone. Vasectomies and tubal ligation are studiously not talked about. All this was covered in great depth in my “progressive” fundamentalist sex-ed and puberty books, and now you know it, too!
ChrisHerself
Hormonal birth control doesn’t “block” an already-fertilized egg. It keeps the eggs in the ovaries. No ovulation = no fertilization happens = no conception = not an abortion. It’s “pre-fertilization cockblocking” (lol!) for women. So yes, massively hypocritical.
Not sure from your phrasing if you already know that and were being illustrative, sorry if so. 🙂
Wanderso
To quote Kevin Swanson, host of Generations Radio:
“Swanson: I’m beginning to get some evidence from certain doctors and certain scientists that have done research on women’s wombs after they’ve gone through the surgery, and they’ve compared the wombs of women who were on the birth control pill to those who were not on the birth control pill. And they have found that with women who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.
Peeples: We’ve actually heard on both sides of that. We’re researching that and want to make sure we speak correctly to that in our second film. But we have medical advice on both sides of the table there, so we want to make sure that we communicate that properly.
Swanson: It would seem, and I realize that people are a little split on what are all the effects of the birth control pill, but it would seem that there’s a tremendous risk in the use of it for the life of children.”
L!ghtn!ng
It’s a newer tactic in the culture wars over birth control and abortion. Hormonal birth control pills *primarily* work by preventing ovulation. But as a secondary effect/backup feature, they also make the uterus inhospitable to implantation in the unlikely event that an ovum is released and fertilized. Thus, we get anti-choice activists yelling about how Obamacare supposedly restricts religious freedom because it forces the health insurance plans covered by companies like HobbyLobby to provide access to “abortion pills” to their employees.
ChrisHerself
Welp THAT is something I hadn’t run into and I’ve done a lot of looking into both sides of it, and that’s certainly not been mentioned by my doctors in the past. (I’ve not been on hormonal BC for several years though.)
If true, it doesn’t change my stance on it personally, but I’d be interested to check out some links if you have some relevant ones on the average frequency of occurrence compared to non-BC users, or if/how the uterus reacts differently when on BC than it would without. (Even with no form of birth control, a fertilized egg does not always successfully implant.)
Not as interested in sources using “baby graveyard” type of rhetoric but I know it’s a topic people feel strongly about. Appreciate the new info; it’s good to be up to date.
Christine
Everywhere I see discussing it points out that the pill works strictly by blocking ovulation. EXCEPT for the inserts in the packages, which assure you that, even should ovulation and fertilization happen, implantation is unlikely. (Anecdotally there does seem to be a higher miscarriage rate for women on the pill, so that might make sense? However this could also be due to women not realizing how high the miscarriage rate in general is.)
TriplePhase
Registered just to say that the content quoted by Wanderso is utter and absolute BS, for anyone that is wondering. (They may have already known that, but I didn’t see a sarcasm marker.)
TweeBopALula
Right, ChrisHerself. Hormonal contraception blocks sperm and egg from ever meeting. Columbia University has a really excellent site called GoAskAlice with more information for anyone who’s interested.
Shiro
@Wanderso: That quote is legitimately my favorite bit of ridiculous fundie wtf. It’s like…(addressing Swanson, not you) no one told you that. No actual scientist made that claim at you. You just made that up out of your own head and banked on no one knowing how ludicrously scientifically inaccurate and impossible it is. You strange little man.
It’s seriously like something a small child with no understanding of…anything would say.
Lumin
My doctor told me essentially what L!ghtn!ng said: that the main effect was to prevent ovulation, but that it also made implantation less likely if fertilisation did happen to occur.
My assumption is that it reduces the thickening of the lining of the womb: my periods have certainly got progressively shorter and lighter through my child-bearing years, especially in the period of time after I stopped having children, and so was on the pill without a break. This is unlikely to be solely the result of aging, seeing my youngest was born when I was 26.
So I believe that both effects exist.
ChrisHerself
I agree Lumin, what I’m most interested in is the statistics of the frequency of a fertilized egg being rejected in HBC versus non-HBC users. And the risk of such an event occurring in HBC users.
If it’s significantly higher, then that certainly gives me insight into the ongoing suppression of women’s right to birth control. If it’s not, then to me it’s simply another scientific fact re-purposed into anti-choice propaganda. Good information to have either way I think. 🙂
doomprix
*reads all the information, goes back to TweeBopALula* Wait did you just use the word harlot? I don’t think that word has been used since 1911. But hey since we seem to be sliding back in time maybe that word is going to be back in fashion again. Ooo! maybe, we can use prithe and thee and thou and Scoundrel!
SomeGuy411
Forsooth, there is no need to be so formal as you use thees and thous. Prithe and scoundrel are informal, and thus may be used by today’s miscreants
No Name
For the record (and in case you didn’t catch Erik’s message way at the bottom of the page) thou, thee, thy, thine are second person informal singular form. That’s why they are used to refer to God (which is probably where the air of formality is coming from); Medieval European Christians liked to think of Him as a friend they could be palsy with. The Germans still do, too, using du, dich, dir, dein to refer to Gott, and well as friends, family, children and animals.
Buzzed
Like No Name said, “thee”, “thy” etc. are informal, not formal. That’s why you refer to royalty as “your majesty”, not “thy majesty” and judges as “your honor”, even in period pieces.
Bicycle Bill
As of 1 Jan 2014 there were something like 1.025 million words in the English language. So there’s lots of words like ‘harlot’ and ‘trollop’ and ‘strumpet’ (a couple other good ones that are also underutilized or ignored today) out there we could — and should — be using.
onetwoduck
I know you don’t live in Indiana by that statement, that’s all I’m saying.
SmilingNid
Given Mary’s previous comments she probably hate Roz for being “catholic” almost as much as she hates her fo hanging sex posters in her room.
SmilingNid
Actually on reflection being stuck in a room with Roz explains a lot about Mary.
That Damn Rat
Yes, the two couldn’t deserve each other more. Satan’s ironic punishment team have outdone themselves this time.
invisiblemoose
Aaand the Roz hate crew didn’t take long today…
Scar Man!!!
Nah. Roz is slightly more redeemable than Mary. Satan only knows what Mary’s reaction to hearing about what happened to Joyce at the party would have been. Probably something that would make me want to reach through the fourth wall and strangle her till rigor mortis set in
EvilMidnightLurker
“I don’t understand! James Coco went mad in fifteen minutes!”
“More.”
roz fan
Why does everyone hate my favourite character?
roz fan
Roz seems to have the right general idea and she genuinely cares about and wants to help people. I know some people get into activism to chase power, but I don’t think she’s one of them.
Her execution isn’t perfect and she can be abrasive, but she doesn’t deserve the backlash she gets from Leslie. I know that she can be frustrating to watch. But man, that’s so not the way to deal with an exceptionally passionate student.
I can understand Roz’s frustration at…having to take that class, tbqh, as well as Leslie’s frustration at having Roz in her class. But even though Leslie may be marginalized cuz she’s gay, she’s still much older than Roz and, as her professor, has a lot of (institutional) power over her. In a lot of their interactions it seems like Leslie is trying to put Roz in her place, which is Not Okay.
Cerberus
Yup.
In fact, I’d argue that it’s entirely because she’s roomed with Mary that’s responsible for her weary take-no-shit, fuck-off-with-your-fundie-bullshit approach to Joyce that makes the comment thread freak out at her.
When your regular exposure to fundie culture is the likes of Mary and her constant slurs and hating on your baby sister for being related to you and picking fights with anyone she views as walking too loudly past her door…. well, is it any surprise she went off on Joyce and has a low threshold for fundamentalism in general?
Especially when you also note that she blames that general culture for the electoral success of her sister.
3-I
Thou art truly wise.
Sovnyavitch
Mary’s only been in one fight with someone due to what they were doing outside her door, to my knowledge, and it was Carla who picked it.
I’d have imagined Roz and Mary could at least bond over their shared predilection for nudity
StClair
Yyyup.
Cerberus
We’ve seen her do this half-head poke out for a number of other hallway disturbances, one of which to the even more quiet example of Billie sneaking her laundry basket into Ruth’s room which served as the basis of Mary’s blackmail plan against Ruth.
And Carla picked jack shit. She did some skating on carpet and didn’t immediately kowtow to Mary’s demands. That’s not “picking a fight” though Carla did commit the fatal sin of being *gasp* rude to a person who fundamentally does not respect the existence of queer individuals and especially trans individuals as we saw later.
Sovnyavitch
Here’s every Mary head-poke, either around a door or a panel, the most reasonable assumption for why she’s doing so, and what happens next:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/05-media-rumble/survey/ Having had several visitors, Mary overhears yet another one musing directly outside her door, and gives her information, first in the hope that Dorothy will leave, then more in the form of venting
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/clinkclink/ Mary wonders what there could possibly be so many of in Billie’s bag to make such a clatter. Bottles do make a lot of noise when packed together, and it is unlikely that Mary has encountered a post-binge garbage run before. She gets an answer and the joke ends.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/unsuspicious-3/ Mary, who happens to be in the corridor, observes Ruth shoving Billie to the ground and looks worried.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/sterling/ Mary gives Amazi-Girl her alibi, as requested
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/clear/ Ruth just yelled at Dorothy, Walky, and Joyce, then slammed her door. Mary looked out to see what was the matter and found unexpected gloating material.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/expelled/ Ruth and Billie had a loud argument in the middle of the hall, which also attracted Agatha’s attention. Admittedly, she was attempting to observe the goings-on between Billie and Ruth (see http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/lead-2/ , off-screen), but she, like Agatha, left her room for the show
None of these involved any altercations
Sovnyavitch
Oops, I missed (http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/joke/), where Mary goes to the door of her room because she, like other humans, might like to be invited to a party. Slight rudeness back and forth; Mary’s gauche, then rejected by Roz and Becky, then makes a snarky comment, possibly to hide her hurt feelings.
Sovnyavitch
(A longer one’s being moderated)
I absolutely fail to see how Mary’s making imperious demands in http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/skff/
She wonders what the annoying noise is, like in http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/clinkclink/, observes that Carla is making it on purpose, begins to ask her to keep the noise down, and gets shut down.
As regards Mary’s attitude, she and Carla had never previously spoken to each-other. Mary had only mentioned queer individuals once, to subtly accuse Billie of hypocrisy http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/dvr/ and Carla was not part of that conversation.
It’s actually hard not to see Mary’s ‘attack’ as upping the ante, having previously sunk to Carla’s level of childishness by first lying down in the hall and then gluing her skates.
We’ve all been guilty of, in the heat of an argument, saying something deliberately spiteful that had no relation to the topic of dispute other than to make the other person feel awful, which feels a little like winning until you realise what you’ve done.
Mary is not a nice person, but to treat Carla as some sort of martyr of blithe-spirited transsexual youth bullied by a bigot is pretty innacurate
Sovnyavitch
So sorry, Mary is absolutely a bigot. What I meant was that she was nasty to Carla for other reasons than pure bigotry, even if her attack was expressed purely as bigotry.
Sovnyavitch
It seems that I’ve been moderated. My sincere apologies for breaking the chat rules; could someone tell me where to find them so I don’t do it again?
Cerberus
Did you have a comment with multiple links? Those tend to be temporarily moderated and approved by Willis when he wakes up. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
Sovnyavitch
Thanks. And I like your site!
Danuisrodriguez
Actually, it depends. Some strains of American fundamentalism are very ‘be fruitful and multiply’ heavy.
Cerberus
Yeah, fundies tend to hate condoms because, as best I can remember, having condoms or teaching safe sex is actually temptation to have sex and implanting the demonic idea of sex before marriage and so a person, and especially a woman who has condoms is a (slur for sexually active woman) because she actually planned ahead for sexual intercourse and so planned to sin instead of being carried away by Satan’s influence.
Shockingly, this also leads to one hell of a rape culture where showing any sign of actually being interested or enjoying sex as a woman was basically the equivalent of putting a sign over your head saying “I am a sinner and I’m going straight to Hell now”.
So yeah, between that and the premarital hanky panky, Mary’s got reasons for days to despise her. Not that Mary needs much help to hate someone.
Christine
I once saw somewhere that linked to CCLI (couple-to-couple league, a Catholic family planning group), with the caveat that the site they were linking to was excessively birth-control friendly. So yes, when the conservative Catholic approach to family planning is considered too birth control friendly, condoms are definitely not going to fly.
(Of course, as I write this it occurs to me that condoms tend to be associated more with safer sex than with birth control, so there might be a bias against them. On the other hand, all the public health stuff you get after having a baby tends to work against that, and having babies earlier would be more common, so who knows.)
Cerberus
There’s also a not insignificant number of fundie types that hate condoms because they see them as “defying God’s plan” to punish (perjorative for sexually active women) women who think they can have sex without receiving the punishment of childbirth promised to women in Genesis (according to their world views).
And more horrifyingly, as defying “God’s plan” to wipe out the queer folk through the “righteous plague” of HIV.
Anti-sex activists tend to be scary fucks that way.
Danuisrodriguez
Agreed
DarkoNeko
Uh, it’s kinda problematic to call them that since there are, like, actual abortion pills.
Shiro
There are fundie types who literally do think that contraceptive pills are on par with abortions, I think that’s the point here.
ChrisHerself
There are also plenty who think Plan B (“morning-after-pill”) is a form of abortion which couldn’t be further from how the pill actually works.
Cerberus
A fact they exploit in order to expand their anti-abortion campaign more transparently into a general anti-contraception campaign.
WikiDreamer
Despite having read ALL of Shortpacked and still keeping up with DoA, I’ve gotta admit I’m a wee bit surprised to learn Mary ISN’T hardcore Catholic. I’d appreciate any and all insight into this character’s mindset OTHER than raging c*nt.
Romanticide
I bet Mary calls birth control pills “whore-pills”
Danuisrodriguez
Does that make Condoms into ‘sex pipes’?
Scar Man!!!
nah, that’s bongs
Willoughby Chase
Sex socks
LeslieBean4Shizzle
**nods**
So way we all.
Aaron
So say we all!
gkheyf
not knowing is half the battle
LeslieBean4Shizzle
G.I. Joe…?
(that isn’t a question, that’s my attempt to finish that phrase/soundbite, but with a questioning tone due to the fact that you put a “not” in front of the phrase).
/explaining the joke
ChrisHerself
PORK CHOP SANDWICHES!
SunshineTheif
Who wants a body massage?
ChrisHerself
Hey kid, I’m a computerrr.
SomeGuy411
I believe COBRA!!! is the appropriate response for NOT knowing
Mr. Random
This is going to be both fun and illegal, isn’t it?
gkheyf
define “be”
JustCheetoDust
Also, what the definition of “is” is.
JetstreamGW
I’m thinking this is the whole of the vengeance scheme here.
Clif
Part 1
caesaria82
Measuring for a casket or……?
Cholma
Reminds me a scene from one of Clint Eastwood’s “spaghetti westerns”. Fistful of Dollars, or maybe Few A Few Dollars More?
Ross
Fistful of Dollars is one of the most overrated westerns, but that scene is wonderful.