284

Murdering
Posted on December 12, 2021 by David M Willis

284 thoughts on “Murdering”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    I thought you said you were DONE with learnin ?

    1. Ana Chronistic

      also p sure Jason would have words about being a “boy”

      1. Agemegos

        You come back to it. Doesn’t have the racist implication in British English.

        1. Clif

          Yes, but not typically when applied to a Brit.

        2. Agemegos

          What?

        3. davidbreslin101

          In Imperial times, it was common to call any non-white male servant “boy”.

        4. Mydnyt

          I think he’s just more the type to correct “I am a young man thank you. I stopped being a boy years ago”

        5. Thag Simmons

          “Boy” is one of those words that is very context sensitive. Depending on how it’s used it can be a demeaning insult or a term of endearment

        6. Common Sense

          And thats todays “How humans make language overly complicated for dumb reasons. Thank you and have a good night”

          Seriously its like the eternal discussion if it is okay to refer to black people as “black”

          The best that could happen to humanity would be a complete memory wipe so that all language can start back at zero and no one can get offended for stupid reasons.

        7. Decidedly Orthogonal

          Fascinating. To be clear, yes it doesn’t seem to have the racist connotation _in Britain_, however, the word “boy” is likely racist specifically when refering to african american men. This is because of its history of being used to denigrate the addressee as inferior to the speaker.

          When used to address a white person, especially as in the context between Joyce and Jason, it is not racist. Possibly sexist, as there may be read something derogitory in Joyce’s meaning, but even that is a big stretch.

          TIL – errors in the understanding of the issues here are my own, but not intending harm.

        8. thejeff

          Or ageist, but really completely overblown here, I think.

          Most of the time, especially when dealing with relatively young adults, “girl” and “boy” are used casually with no negative implications.

          Also note that she used “boy” last strip (and “girls” in both of the last couple) with no one raising objections. Nothing really different here. No racist of sexist connotations. She’s just using “girl” and “boy” as casual terms for herself and her peers, which is very common at that age and even considerably older.

      2. Reltzik

        1) TBF, she’d already learned the definition.

        2) Jason knows to shut his mouth around people like Ruth rather than invite the inevitable putdown that would result from protesting. (Or… at least he should… if he’s smart… crap.)

      3. Doctor_Who

        Jason identifies as a “bloke”.

      4. Rose by Any Other Name

        I mean, I’m pretty sure he answers to ‘fuck boy’ at this point, so…

    2. Pylgrim

      Here we realize that what she really meant was “I’m done with having my worldview shaken.”

      1. KerPop47

        She’s had her epiphany! And because the universe is just, all epiphanies give you a more truthful understanding of the world! Now she can live her life uncritically agan

  2. The Wellerman

    “She’s with a BOY now.”

    AAAAANNNDDD????

    1. Clif

      Well, that explains it then.

    2. JA

      Boys have cooties and are gross.

      Source: am boy

      1. Adept

        Your gravatar is too perfect for this comment

  3. Thag Simmons

    It seems Joyce knows what Bisexuality is but does not truly understand it

    1. The Wellerman

      Basically American public education in a nutshell though.

      1. Reltzik

        Specifically, a peanut shell. ONE of the peanuts learn it but mostly doesn’t understand it. The religious-conservative nutcasing manages to keep that separate from the OTHER peanut, which doesn’t learn it.

        (Yes, I know peanuts aren’t nuts, shaddup.)

        1. MacareuxMoine

          And here I was going to point out that the nutcasing is not designed to separate the peanuts – they touch each other -, while totally ignoring the not-a-nut issue

      2. drs

        Joyce didn’t get public education.

        1. Jamie

          Indiana University is a public university.

        2. Decidedly Orthogonal

          A “public education” is typically used to describe someone’s learning received in grade-school through to high-school graduation.

          A university or college being publicly funded does not make the education one receives there, “public education,” since one must still pay tuition to attend. There is a financial barrier that restricts access to the general public.

        3. Needfuldoer

          Joyce was homeschooled. At least some of her older siblings went to public school, but by the time she was school age, Carol was too extremist to enroll her. And of course since this is Carol we’re talking about, you just know she didn’t instill critical thinking skills and only taught the bare minimum of science classes in order for Joyce to pass, telling her to “not believe it just know the right answers to say to these questions”. The coursework probably came from fundamentalist Christian institutions, with a healthy dose of skepticism against the typical boogeymen and plenty of “every day is Sunday school” thrown in.

          Freshman year at IU is literally the first secular education experience Joyce has ever had.

        4. jmsr7

          Exactly. THE WHOLE POINT of homeschooling is to mentally cripple your children to prevent them from ever leaving your religion (whatever it is – fundagelicals aren’t the only ones who do it). They are carefully taught WHAT to think and carefully prevented from learning HOW to think beyond rote memorization.

          And yes, i know that there are some homeschool curricula available that are of much higher quality, that actually give a good education, better even than you would get in some school districts, which is why those parents choose them.
          Those are exceptions. The vast majority of children being homeschooled are being done so to keep the child in the religion.
           (that link was just something funny i found, but it seems to describe fundy homeschooling pretty well)

        5. Mano308gts

          There are considerable numbers of homeschool students who fall either into “dropped out of school, technically-but-not-really homeschooling to keep out of legal trouble”, and “expensive preparatory schools are expensive, so let’s provide a better-than-local-public-school education for far less cost, in order to get the SAT scores that we desire for our kids”.

          Neither of these extensive swaths of the homeschool world have anything to do with religion by definition, yet both are nearly as common as the religious call to homeschool. Both also frequently overlap with the religious call to homeschool.

          They are both increasingly more common, the lower the standard of local public education is, as a share of the local homeschoolers. For instance, a local city school district has a roughly 40% high school drop-out rate, plus extensive earlier ed dropout rate. Almost all of the homeschool students from that district belong to one of the two non-religious groups.

        6. Wizard

          Plus, there has been a massive increase in home schooling during the current pandemic. The utter failure of many US public school systems in the face of the pandemic has driven many parents to turn to alternatives such as home schooling and learning pods because it’s the only way their kids are going to get an education.

        7. The Wellerman

          The point is that American Public schools have this god-aweful habit of getting kids to memorize stuff and pour it into quizzes just to forget about it and barely understand it afterwards.

        8. Norah

          But this class was taught by Leslie. I don’t think Leslie teaches like that.

        9. ValdVin

          Tangent on Leslie’s class as attended by a homeschooled soon-to-be-ex-fundie:

          When Joyce said “attraction to both your own gender and a different gender”, she didn’t say “males and females/boys and girls/men and women”. Was that on purpose? Did she go from basically zero knowledge to understanding at least a bit about non-binary gender, thanks to Leslie’s class?

          (Sorry for any inartful wording. I’m older than Willis and frankly would have loved to taken a gender studies elective back in my college days, but it wasn’t offered back when I was studying the newfangled voice modulation of radio waves for my BSEE.)

        10. Peep

          I’m thinking the implication is that the definition of bisexuality she’s parroting verbatim was deliberately worded that way by Leslie specifically to be inclusive of non-binary genders. And Joyce probably sort of understands that there are non-binary people out there. But she doesn’t have the real-world context to translate that nuanced definition into ‘hey ppl can legit like girls AND boys’. Taking a wild stab at it, I’d guess any understanding she has of what a non binary person actually might look like in the real world is probably also pretty warped, but she’d be fully ready to defend to the death their right to fit exactly into her perspective of what they SHOULD look like

        11. Z

          Supa queer non binary person here-

          Yep all of this. Because the class has to be inclusive and safe for the queerest folk, it means Leslie kind of launches people like Joyce into way more advanced waters than they can understand.

          I suspect Joyce couldn’t really say what a gender actually is, just memorized the definition.

          A lot of people assume that other genders are basically just flavors of gay. Joyce may be thinking you can be a woman who is attracted to both lesbians and dykes or a man who is attracted to both fags and fairies. (Sorry for the crude language, we are talking about ignorance)

          I cannot remember if Joyce is aware of Carla and Booster or what her opinions of them are. I kiiiinda suspect Joyce sees Carla as a cisgender girl with a weird label and her brain might explode to realize Carla was born with a penis. I would be shocked if Joyce genuinely considered Booster to in no way be male and doesn’t just think Booster’s a guy whose pronouns are a quirk like Walky:s and Billie’s nicknames.

        12. Needfuldoer

          Joyce just knows Carla “gets a single room all to herself for some reason”. She might think it’s because Carla’s parents are billionaires who just pay extra. This comic goes back a while, but I don’t think this has been explored any further since then:

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/introductions/

          Joyce also started using masculine pronouns for Booster by default, then used neutral pronouns when she was corrected. However nobody actually said “Booster is nonbinary” to her, and she just took the correction at face value and steamrolled onward without asking questions. You’re probably right, she does just think their name and pronouns are a quirk.

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/uses/

        13. Spencer

          She does say she’ll google it later (by which she means she’ll bug Sarah about it).

        14. ValdVin

          Good stuff. Thanks all.

        15. Tomn

          In fairness, this is true of many parts of the world, especially Asia where it isn’t commonly thought that learning through rote memorization is at all a bad thing (especially since some of the languages, like Chinese, can really only BE learned through rote memorization).

          The basic problem is that “this student comprehends the subject” is hard to quantify and demonstrate and put out on a press release boasting about your accomplishments as a principal/administrator/politician/whatever, but “average test scores are super high!” IS. As a result most schools throughout the world, especially public schools where they need to justify themselves to the general public, have an incentive to teach to the test.

        16. eh, whatever

          some of the languages, like Chinese

          You mean the writing systems of Chinese and Japanese. The languages are languages like any other.

        17. Z

          I have auditory processing issues so I can’t hear the tones in Chinese dialects so it actually would be remote memorization for me as well.

          Unsurprisingly I dropped Mandarin after one semester.

        18. Sam

          In addition, Chinese characters are made up of components that actually make sense in a strange way to make the meaning of the full character.

          Japanese doesn’t follow these rules, except when they do.

        19. Ana Chronistic

          Hanzi/kanji are actually a sort of pictogram

          The general meanings for each symbol are more or less intact between Chinese (Mandarin) and Japanese, but the pronunciations are completely different, and some meanings are added based on context

          I had a (white) sensei who mentioned that her husband had taken the time to learn all the kanji only based on the symbols themselves so even if Sensei didn’t know something, her husband did, so between them they could decipher anything, which is pretty wild for someone with no formal training

        20. Z

          Kanji follows it. Katakana and Hiragana don’t. Japanese kanji are literally just Chinese characters. Katakana and Hiragana are japanese-specific characters that work more like the English alphabet, each symbol represents a sound.

        21. khn0

          Well it’s like tests for mental health.
          Under the pressure of anglo-saxon reviewing of studies; it morphed open question unto easy to correct quizzes.
          It’s not that anglo-saxon ruined tests, but that they were more advanced toward standardization of tests in order to achieve proletarization of intellectual work and managing work.

        22. zee

          From my experience that’s not just public education that’s the entire education system

    2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      Did the kind of private christian schooling she got teach her to “learn how [thing] is supposed to work, in order to pass the required test, but don’t actually believe it is true or describes the real world”?

      1. Alyssa

        I think it did for evolution.

      2. zee

        She was homeschooled

        1. Needfuldoer

          Homeschooled by Carol, so the answer is probably “yes, exactly that”.

          :\

  4. Nobonesforever

    Ok tbf I also don’t see the appeal

    1. Agemegos

      My gays friends used to tell me that “you have to be bi to get by. Doubles your chance of a date on Saturday night.”

      1. Agemegos

        Typo. “Gay friends”.

      2. Bicycle Bill

        In my case, it would just double the certainty of getting shot down in flames.

      3. HeatherJean

        That’s an old Woody Allen line from the ’60s, in case you didn’t know.

        1. a/snow/mous/e

          ew woody allen

    2. Rose by Any Other Name

      Of Jason?
      Of bisexuality?
      Of Boys?
      People above guessed option 2, but honestly your original statement could have applied to any of the above.

      1. Nobonesforever

        Boys broadly, Jason specifically. Busexuals don’t get guff from me

        1. Nobonesforever

          Busexuals get guff from me, actually. Bisexuals on the other hand r fine

        2. RacingTurtle

          Mmm, check out that bus

        3. Nobonesforever

          Damn Busexuals always making me late for work with their passionate, long held gazes into the local route 4’s headlights.

        4. Delicious Taffy

          Reminds me of an old-ish podcast episode I listen to a lot. One of the hosts recalls a bizarre phenomenon on his school bus as a teen, where somebody had carved a hole in one of the bus seats and so other people started fucking the bus seat during rides to and from school. I’d say that falls under the umbrella you’ve laid out.

        5. Nobonesforever

          Hey Taffy, I really appreciate ur contribution to this conversation but wtf now I have to scrub my brain w steel wool

        6. Opus the Poet

          I used to have a 20 mile one way trip to school, I can understand this one.

  5. DarkoNeko

    Someone’s brain is not working

    1. anon

      that, or she’s heavily repressing her own bi-ness lol

      1. jeffepp

        Expressing. I think she’s finally admitting to herself that she might be a bit into girls. With glasses.

        1. Needfuldoer

          Can’t blame her for that one, honestly.

          (Unless they’re “50s school lunch lady” glasses.)

  6. RassilonTDavros

    So close, and yet so far.

    1. Clif

      To be fair, Joyce has a history of hearing things after she says them. This may be a case in point.

  7. Spencer

    Now, see, this is actually a “Joyce being as hardline as she used to be, but in the opposite direction” moment, which is made much simpler since she’s not being “hardline” to her fundie death cult.

    With Booster, it was simple: she misgendered them and she was corrected, so she immediately acknowledged fault, accepted that Booster knew better than her and she had to follow their lead. Whatever Joyce thought didn’t matter, her ignorance was not up to par with Booster’s experience, she accepted not knowing.

    For fairly obvious reasons, the prospect of accepting she does not know something is not crossing Joyce’s mind at the moment, except her wealth of information she used to rely on as the inerrant facts of the universe that defined human morality up to the origin of life was replaced by that same information and the realization that it was all bullshit. She’s as stringently devoted to her truth as she used to be, but her truth is that it was all lies and, so, obviously the real truth is the opposite of what she was told.

    Ruth likes girls and also boys, and so dating a boy means she’s not doing the thing Joyce’s fundie upbringing insisted was wrong. To Joyce, that means Ruth is making a mistake, that her salvation lies in being with a girl because it’s the opposite of what she was told, and so she’s taking ownership of Ruth’s sexuality the same way she took ownership of the fundamental immorality of pre-marital hanky panky and that everyone she loved was going to burn in Hell for all eternity; of course I know what I’m talking about.

    1. ADLegend21

      oh god if she misgenders booster and lectures them about it there’s gonna be a riot.

      1. Thag Simmons

        She did misgender Booster and she apologized for it and corrected herself

        1. alongcameaspider

          Yeah she actually reacted fairly well for someone who had never heard of nonbinary people before

        2. ADLegend21

          I mean in her new “I know everything about everything cuzz I think god is fake” state. Like ho Ruth is “”””backsliding”””

        3. Wizard

          Geez, calling Ruth a ho seems a little harsh. (Sorry, I really try not to make fun of typos. But sometimes they strike me as a little too funny to resist.)

      2. Spencer

        That was her first strip meeting them. Walky told her that Booster used they/them pronouns and wasn’t a guy, and so Joyce immediately went “I don’t get it, but I’m wrong all the time so you know what you’re talking about and I won’t attempt to claim otherwise.”

      3. Joyfulldreams

        I genuinely dont see how misgendering and then lecturing would ever happen? More likely would be her OUTING them and then lecturing them on why that shouldn’t make them uncomfortable.

        1. Leorale

          Oof, cringe for Joyce imaginarily outing people.

          Luckily, Ruth and Booster are out to everyone. Joyce isn’t aware that she knows any closeted people.

          …okay, Joyce, please do not learn about your sister and stupidly out her. (I don’t think such a plotline would be timed right for DoA, plus Jocelyne is so carefully closeted, the whole point of not telling Joyce/Becky is probably so that they can’t out her. So, not actually gonna happen. But can you imagine? That would be hard for the audience to forgive.)

        2. Regalli

          Agreed. Jocelyne’s been very very careful her parents don’t find out until and unless it’s safe for her to do so, and I could see Joyce even when not in Total Absolutism No Fucks Mode struggling to keep it a secret from Hank because she’s not great at lying, either. (Too bad Mike’s not around to derail with another Hail Satan. That was probably the best and funniest act of jerkbaggery he had in DoA. The one time I felt he was using it for good a la attending Blaine’s funeral in party gear.) In her current state? Unless Jocelyne has finally decided she is ready to Try and Come Out To Hank, having firmly blocked Carol from all things ever, I doubt Joyce is getting let in just yet. (The good news is that I doubt Joyce is speaking to Carol, either!)

        3. v.gay.person

          Well here’s hoping this is not the direction she goes with her sister cos hoo-boy

        4. Paradoxius

          Oh no. It was just established that she’s trying to contact Joyce a few strips ago…

        5. Leorale

          Somewhat more likely — in the midst of another conversation, Jocelyne cautiously, casually, skillfully explores, to see whether it’s safe to come out to Joyce yet. Jocelyne has probably been testing this for many years. She’ll wait as long as she has to.

          Unless Joyce learns a whole lot beforehand, she does not pass Jocelyne’s safety test at this time. Jocelyne remains closeted, and the audience WEEPS.

          (Granted, it’s less dramatic than Joyce stupidly outing her sister… but it’s still damnable enough to be a possibility.)

        6. thejeff

          Seems to me that in Booster’s case, it would be really easy to caught in a bind between misgendering and outing them.

          Except that they’re essentially far enough out publicly that outing them isn’t a concern.

      4. zee

        Nah cuz that’s exactly what her church would’ve wanted her to do

    2. PB

      Salvation am lost in Bizarro World.

  8. ADLegend21

    What a dumbass, she should’ve been punched.

    1. Reltzik

      Dumbass, yes. How would punching make anything better?

      1. Kyrik Michalowski

        It would make people feel better, and it might just teach Joyce a lesson.

      2. King Daniel

        It would allow Ruth another addition to her femur collection ?

      3. Azhrei Vep

        It would make me laugh, and that improves every situation.

  9. RassilonTDavros

    …really curious as to whether the Gender Studies class covered trans people. I know Leslie’s class got super derailed by all the plot twists that happened in it, but it seems like a fairly important thing to cover. Especially where Joyce is concerned.

    1. Thag Simmons

      It probably covered it, but I suspect Joyce has the same problem there, where she knows Trans people are a thing that exists, but hasn’t thought about it that hard and has yet to really understand the topic

      1. The Wellerman

        For real though, if Joyce knew right now that her fundie Crimestop was still working THIS well, she’d be sent into utter AGONY.

    2. Joyfulldreams

      Methinks the fact that she described bisexuality as “attraction to your own gender and a different gender” means that the curriculum was inclusive of trans and also nonbinary people. Additionally, when Jennifer started going by Jennifer, she was pretty strict on the “call people what they want to be called” thing, and TRIED to be respectful of Booster even though she went way overkill with it.

      So I’m pretty sure Joyce knows about trans people. She’s just still new to the idea of actually interacting with them and using the knowledge that she has, and the same probably goes for bisexuality. Which is maybe what the next few strips are going to elaborate on a bit.

    3. Rectilinear Propagation

      Her saying “own gender and a different gender” and not something like “both genders” strongly implies they covered that there’s more than 2 genders. I’d be surprised if they talked about people being non-binary but not transgender folks.

      1. Rectilinear Propagation

        Dang it, I swear Joyfulldreams’ comment wasn’t there when I was writing mine.

      2. Yumi

        Especially since many nonbinary people are transgender.

        1. khn0

          I’m sincerely curious about the data – I don’t know of such studies here (sexual orientation or race data is forbidden, and gender isn’t really recognized for know, administration still uses “sex” as a given and genders everyone as they see fit).

        2. Yumi

          I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “the data” in response to my post. I brought up my point because while I understand that phrases like “transgender and nonbinary people” are useful as not all nonbinary people identify as transgender, it can also give the idea that being being nonbinary excludes being transgender. The vast majority of people I know who identify as nonbinary, myself included, are transgender and view their nonbinary identity as being under the transgender umbrella.

        3. Clif

          Words are used as words are used, and I would be extremely reluctant to attempt to police how people feel comfortable describing themselves. Still there is a logical distinction between some of both male and female, neither male nor female, and a definate male or female gender different from the one assigned at birth.

        4. Yumi

          Sure? That doesn’t mean those can’t all be under the transgender umbrella. You could specify binary trans people if you wanted, but that’s not the default of what transgender means.

        5. khn0

          data may have been the wrong word. I’m intrigued by the word “many”.
          I know numerous non binary transgender persons, but I have no idea what proportion of non-binaries are transgender.

      3. thejeff

        OTOH, it seemed to be an entirely new concept when she got introduced to Booster.

        Possible it got covered but didn’t sink in like what apparently happened with bisexuality.

    4. Reltzik

      Leslie expressed unhappiness that she hadn’t had time to cover ALL of the genders… which implies that she covered some, which in turn implies she covered transness. …. is transness a word? I think it’s a word.

  10. fridge_logic

    Joyce is comfortable with the concept of bisexuality, “in theory.”

  11. Doctor_Who

    Had to be done.

    1. The Wellerman

      Fucking PERFECT!!! ???

    2. RassilonTDavros

      Brilliant!

    3. David M Willis

      ha ha ha ha ha ha

    4. whatevsman

      there really is a spongebob meme for any situation, ain’t there

    5. Spencer

      Bellissimo.

    6. Regalli

      Thank you.

    7. NinjaNick

      Hilarious!

    8. Keulen

      This is great.

    9. Michael Haneline

      Almost perfect, except you put “either gender”

      1. Delicious Taffy

        Considering the subject bis Joyce as portrayed through Patrick, I’d say it’s fitting.

  12. thakoru

    Oh yeah, I and seemingly everyone else in the comments completely forgot that Joyce had been in a gender studies class when trying to piece together whether Joyce was aware of bisexuality.

    1. Jamie

      See above comment about American public education system.

    2. Thag Simmons

      I don’t think people forgot, just assumed Joyce hadn’t picked up on it (or it hadn’t been covered)

    3. thejeff

      And yet here we are. She may be aware of it, but she definitely doesn’t seem to be grasping the concept.

      1. Opus the Poet

        There is a difference between awareness and understanding. I am aware of polydimensional Euclidian geometry as a concept, but I do not understand polydimensional Euclidian geometry and I don’t think anyone else does either.

        1. The Wellerman

          Not even math professors?

          I get where you’re coming from, in that our 3D brains haven’t evolved to imagine 4D shapes.

          However, it is also true that our brains have not evolved to comprehend the shear vastness of million or billion year timescales, but does that prevent us from understanding the processes of evolution that operate on said timescales?

  13. BBCC

    And here we see the difference between something coming up in class AND it being covered in depth AND the student understanding.

    1. Regalli

      It’s honestly kind of impressive how she memorized this without really internalizing or comprehending it at all.

      Guess there was the whole ‘learning arguments for evolution to parrot for standardized tests/refute’ thing.

      1. khn0

        We don’t use standardized tests here (it’s sadly in progress) and I always have had students parroting what we wrote down dueing lessons.
        What was problematic since: 1/ I was bad at teaching 2/ I taught mostly literature and languages, where the notion of correctness is… non-binary

  14. Raen

    Joyce has completed her intellectual growth into Patrick Star.

    1. Doctor_Who

      A SECOND excuse to link this? Hurah!

      1. StClair

        “How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, young woman?!”

  15. Grimey

    She’s pointing like a little kid telling on someone.

  16. newlland(Henryvolt)

    Why is it possible to be aware and accepting of how certain things in life works and yet still…this?

    1. Reltzik

      Because the human brain is an evolutionary kluge and Joyce comes from a background that taught her ALL the wrong ways of using it and she’s only managed to unlearn SOME of them.

    2. Jamie

      Is “this” referring to the comic, or to your comment?

      1. newlland(Henryvolt)

        Joyce I guess?

    3. Needfuldoer

      Joyce is still too entrenched in binary thinking to automatically handle a third sorting category yet. Her line of thought could be “Ruth is bisexual, but she’s closeting herself by dating a guy”, as nonsensical as that sentence is at face value.

  17. AlexaSpuds

    see, I agree with her point but her method of execution is as awful as a real execution.
    like dang, I agree that it’s weird she’s dating a Jason, but you could at least be normal about it.

    1. Yumi

      Yeah, but she’d presumably think it’d be weird for Ruth to be dating any boy, not just Jason.

      1. The Wellerman

        As far as I know its a 50/50 chance between that and her fundie crimestop still working overtime.

        1. Yumi

          It can be both.

        2. The Wellerman

          I can’t believe I didn’t think of that!

          I guess I was just so caught up in the agony of Joyce’s indoctrination that I forgot about Ruth’s nature.

    2. Norah

      I think Joyce may be prone to black-and-white thinking. Possibly due to her upbringing, or possibly her brain is wired that way. Or maybe just because she’s 18 and more immature than some (which again may be because of her upbringing.)

      1. Leorale

        Joyce’s community presents everything as black and white – it’s all Good vs Evil, Heaven vs Hell, Christians vs scary non-Christians, and so on. Anything that goes against that black-and-white narrative is probably a trick from the Devil.

        I feel confident that this community didn’t encourage Joyce to develop nuanced views.

        (Becky was more able to live in the grey area, in part because she saw many important things that refused to fit that strict good-and-evil narrative. Like, her mom is good, but suicide is bad. Her dad is “good” and she loves him, but he’s also a controlling jerk and maybe she should sneak out of her house from time to time… Becky developed a flexible worldview, which could be taken piecemeal, while Joyce bought that there’s this dichotomy. Joyce still believes there is a system to be figured out, and that she should do it Correctly.)

        1. Needfuldoer

          Yup. Joyce built her entire worldview around the strict “fAcTs” she was taught. Now that they’ve been exposed for what they actually are, she’s desperately searching for a new foundation to rebuild on.

  18. Imogen

    Bisexual lesbian here, only ever dated girls, but I have some serious salt. This is actually a really common idea, and it’s way more widespread among leftists than I think a lot of people think.

    Every time someone makes fun of straight girls for dating guys, they’re also by extension making fun of bisexual girls who are “choosing” to “downgrade” to guys. Honestly, a lot of “lol why would you even date a guy” jokes verge on this. I felt genuinely uncomfortable with my bisexuality and my best friend’s bisexuality for a long time because I felt like if I tried to date a guy, I’d be “dating down” or being “less queer”. Funny enough, this led to me developing some weird hangups about who I dated, even with trans guys. And I already had enough to deal with as a bi trans girl.

    I honestly don’t want to hear “straight girls can take it” or “dudes deserve to be mocked”. Sure, fine, whatever. But just recognize that when you set out to mock straight girls and dudes in this way, you’re often catching us in the crossfire. I really did not like a few jokes Becky made a couple chapters ago for this exact reason.

    I make the jokes too, for the record. This isn’t a perfect 100% “never ever do this”. Just, like, be aware.

    1. Imogen

      I’ll just stress one more time: I make these jokes too. It’s not that big a deal. It’s the ubiquity that bugs me–these jokes are made so often, I think some people genuinely believe them to be true.

      1. Imogen

        (Also, I realized after posting all this that some people may not know the basics? So to contextualize a little bit, the queer community has a troubled history with its treatment of bisexuals, and lesbians in particular because of the influence of “political lesbians” (straight women who declared themselves lesbians as a “feminist” stance, because lesbianism is totally defined by a hatred of men and not a love of women) and “gold star lesbians” (lesbians who pride themselves on their willingness to slutshame other lesbians who’ve been with men at any point).

        Basically, some people think that you stop being bisexual if you’re dating someone of the opposite gender. Yes, this is stupid as hell. That’s probably what Joyce is assuming here.

        1. khn0

          I’m not sur where we’re going there.
          The same treatment rarely apply to bi guys choosing to date straight girls (yeah, bc beyond bi erasure, which is a real thing, there is still the thing that bi can choose, which is some kind of privilege that can justify some anger in my opinion). So I guess there is some double standard based on the oppression’s nature, giving men the possibility to get away while refusing it to women.
          But I don’t really think it’s as simple as “radical lesbians are wrong to consider men as enemies”.
          First of all, the notion of “enemy” and what you should do with him is, most often, not a hate of this or this person you know, but of the global oppressor, as a reflect of being part of a system (the same way I can get someone hating me for being from an imperialist country, or for being white). I’m fine with this, and it is my job to prove that I am a valuable ally. Beyond this, there is a whole “radical lesbians hate men” argument scene that derives from an old but ingrained attempt to discredit their fight – which is, tbh, what drives me to try my hand at clearing what you exaclty meant there.
          Secondly, the notion of left varies also. If you mean marxists (which encompass a wide spectrum of different options), I believe materialism uses the “free labor” definition to define man/woman couple as directly producing oppression of the woman, since she can’t earn as much or freely, does domestic labor which enables the sale of the man’s workforce, “produce” an heir that gives also a part of labor (that part may be essentialist) – all that definition ends up making the gap between men and women in their traditional gender roles beyond any repair in a capitalist society. If you mean other leftists for which the sex war and sex classes are distinct from the capitalist use of them, it is more or less the same direction of thought. If you mean other leftists, I fail to know enough about them to classify them as left (the right – left axis being questionable and questioned by people labeled as left).

          We’re far beyond Joyce here, but I don’t think Joyce is anywhere near “left” here, so it seems that we can further discuss.

        2. khn0

          Failde to mention it anywhere, but I’m a bi guy myself, who, while having had “affairs” with men, was/is totally unable to be in a couple with any of them, bc I know how most of them were raised and function.

        3. Spencer

          The same treatment rarely apply to bi guys choosing to date straight girls (yeah, bc beyond bi erasure, which is a real thing, there is still the thing that bi can choose, which is some kind of privilege that can justify some anger in my opinion).

          I am willing to acknowledge it as a “privilege,” in that I can walk down the street holding a woman’s hand with less cause for concern from the majority than I would with a man.

          But, fun fact about that; if I enter a Queer space, well, suddenly, I wonder who the majority is now, and whose judgment I have to consider.

          I refuse to consider that something that can cause any kind of justified anger. That’s just punching down, hoss.

        4. khn0

          It’s a false equivalence, since you have much less queer space than straight ones AND that the power of queer circles is much lower.
          Never met someone who got beaten or killed or immolated by queer people, either for been bi.
          And even then. Patriarchy is a system, as a system, you can’t equate violence by the oppressed and violence by the oppressor – unless you think there is a systemic shift in the oppression.
          It doesn’t make it cool to get called names, or refused as an ally, or even acknowledged as a part of the oppressed, but therein lies the global violence of it.

        5. Spencer

          I can equate that violence I am a minority in a larger minority community getting dunked on for being the wrong kind of queer by their tastes.

        6. khn0

          Still false equivalence in my book, unless queer people have instigated a system where they are the majority, which, to be so, would required several aspects such as: economic power, governance, means to the said system to make it reproduce itself, and so on.
          Majority vs minority isn’t the systemic oppression, it’s a question of power.

        7. Spencer

          Or: straights think I’m just some weird thing, but it’s queer spaces that make me feel wrong when I act on the bi part of bisexual.

        8. thejeff

          There very definitely are radical lesbians who hate men, and that includes many of the “political lesbians”, and very much a lot of the terfy side of radical feminism.

          Certainly doesn’t apply to most lesbians, or even most radical feminists, but it’s definitely there.

          More to Imogen’s point though, those women who decide they’re lesbians because of their problems with men, rather than because of their attraction to women are just messing themselves up, along with messing with others. Like anyone denying their sexuality for social or political reasons.

          And the “gold star” lesbian thing is just gross. In addition to being obviously bi-phobic.

        9. khn0

          Living in another country may explain a different experience and position, but I don’t agree with you. When someone thinks a members of a gender endangers her life by being a systemic predator, that goes beyond sexuality’s denying.

        10. thejeff

          Beyond, but still includes. If someone feels the need to avoid romantic/sexual contact with men because she perceives them as dangerous predators, that’s one thing, but attempting to find a romantically/sexually fulfilling life denying your orientation for those reasons doesn’t work any better than doing so for more traditional social reasons.

          More broadly, treating “lesbian” as a choice women should make for the sake of feminism runs counter to much of the LGBTQ rights movement.

        11. khn0

          There is a line between fulfilling and empowering, I guess, while it could well be a thin one.

          For the last paragraph, I think I don’t master enough english language about this subject to find any link between what I intended to say and what you answer to, I’m sorry for that.

    2. Rose by Any Other Name

      Fuckin preach it, girlfriend! Wooo!

      (And by that, I mean, very well said – a fellow bisexual woman married to a bisexual woman approves your message).

      1. Leorale

        Yep, this bisexual nonbinary person, who is marrying a straight man*, also approves your message.

        *straight except for me, because it turns out I’m not a lady after all

        Smashing the Patriarchy involves taking down the system of oppression. You know the one: there’s a wack hierarchy in which one gender is the best, another gender is bad, and the rest don’t exist. If we just keep the exact same hierarchical thinking, but put men on the bottom of it, that’s not smashing the Patriarchy, that’s just renaming it.

        1. Leorale

          …granted, probably people don’t think that men don’t exist.

          But I’m just trying to sleepily explain, gender hierarchies are basically the opposite of feminism, let’s not do them to anyone

    3. K

      This. I’m bi too, but that’s not really where those jokes hit hardest for me- it took me a verrry long time to realize I was actually a guy because “wait, isn’t that the enemy???” I’ve heard the same thing from a lot of other trans guys and NB people looking to lean into masculinity a bit more. It honestly felt like I was betraying all of my friends by coming out- got some bonus biphobia too when they started making the “lmao ur a straight man now!!” jokes. Nope, still bi. Nice try though.

      1. Imogen

        ooooof yeah, I wish I’d taken the time to acknowledge that trans dudes also get fucked over by the “screw all men” attitude a lot of the time. I especially love the half-assed “oh, we just meant all cis men” disclaimer.

        1. K

          lmao its my favorite, I actually prefer it when people leave out the “just cis men” part- like you’ve also been saying, when you make the “ugh men” joke once in a while, that’s ok! You’re making a joke that punches up, and that’s fine. But when you add the “but not you/not trans guys” disclaimer, it simultaneously feels like it’s both no longer a joke and also invalidating trans guys at the same time. idk if that made any sense lol, I am burnt out from studying for exams

    4. zee

      As a bi who has only dated guys bc my country is Evil and is very happy in a relationship with an ace guy, THANK you for this I’ve been having constant identity crises since i was like 15 because of this shit.

      (Add being Aceflux on top of that and my sexual identity is just one big mess of erasure and imposter syndrome)

  19. Owlmirror

    I think I get it.

    It’s not that Joyce doesn’t know about bisexuality. It’s that she has Ruth pigeonholed in her head as “lesbian”.

    How dare Ruth try to get out of her pigeonhole!

    Or maybe Joyce insisting that Ruth be with girls is a way of sublimating Joyce’s own attraction to Dorothy. Hm.

    1. Imogen

      We Jorothy shippers (and starboarders, in my case) are getting more bold, more persistent. We’re hungry for blood. Give it a couple months more and we’ll be overrunning the WIllis Co offices demanding to see the pictures.

      1. Rabid Rabbit

        The fact Willis already released one means that there must be others!

    2. Owlmirror

      When Joyce yelled “Hell isn’t real, and so you can love whoever you want!” last strip, was she yelling at Ruth, or was she yelling at her own repressed self?

      1. The Wellerman

        This might be a total crapshoot, but maybe she wants to prove to herself internally that she’s not being controlled like a puppet by her fundie cult by supporting things she knows they can’t stand?

      2. Nova

        Hands up, who wants to see what Becky will do if she ever gets the information that Joyce is A) bi and B) dating dorothy?

        1. The Wellerman

          Or even just the IMPRESSION that’s the case? Yeah I’d dig it.

        2. Rose by Any Other Name

          Oh. Oh my.
          I have this image in my head now of a frustrated Joyce just suddenly, out of nowhere, passionately kissing Dorothy. And then there’s this pause, with Dorothy looking nonplussed. And then Dorothy is like “well, I suppose it is good to try new things at least once.” And then Dorothy kisses Joyce back and the two of them fall over onto the bed they’re sitting on and things progress from there.

        3. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          That could get ugly…

        4. alongcameaspider

          Given I’m not 100% convinced Becky got over Joyce I’m fairly certain that might drive a wedge even worse then their argument yesterday did into their friendship

        5. Thag Simmons

          Pretty sure Dorothy’s straight, but Becky already seems to suspect that Joyce feels a way about Dorothy that she doesn’t about Becky, and she is very obviously jealous. Can’t imagine she’d take outright confirmation of that well, even if it wasn’t reciprocated.

        6. Axel_Grease

          Becky is already insufferable about Joyce and Dorothy, so no, I do not want to see that.

        7. Needfuldoer

          She’ll collapse into herself like an angsty neutron star.

        8. justin8448

          There have been a few vague indications that Becky is aware that Joyce might be legit attracted to Dorothy. In one comic she said she finally understood Joyce’s attraction to Jacob when she realized that Jacob is a male version of Dorothy.

          Of course, the difference for Becky between having a few vague suspicions and having such a scenario actually come true would probably be… intense.

    3. mrnoidea

      +1

  20. Mr. Random

    Knowledge versus Understanding

  21. AY

    I’m chalking this up to “Joyce knows Ruth as being with girls” so seeing Ruth with not a girl is a ‘bad’ change. Nobody is allowed to change. Too much is changing too fast, and we already know Joyce is afraid of how she, herself, is changing (per Booster’s role,) so she’s pushing back against things that she thought were set in stone (despite logic) and ‘safe’ from change.

    1. Autogatos

      To me it’s pretty basic biphobia. Far to often people will acknowledge that bisexuals exist and that we are attracted to more than one gender, but consider a bi person in a straight-passing relationship a betrayal or conforming to normalcy (or sometimes as some “proof” that the person was “never really bi”).

      Joyce may be new to the whole “accepting gay people” thing but she’s also clearly big on overcompensating for her past beliefs right now so it’s not surprising to me that she dove headfirst into the “bi women dating men are doing something wrong, instead of just being themselves” myth.

      1. Joyfulldreams

        I think it’s very much just like. Sure, bi people exist, but only when they aren’t in a relationship. The moment they enter a relationship, their sexuality now changes to align solely with the gender of their partner.

        Ruth is allowed to be bi if she’s single, but when she was with Billie she was a lesbian, and now that she’s with Jason she’s suddenly become straight.

        Thus how it’s “backsliding”, because being a bi woman who dates a man just somehow literally erases their queerness in the minds of people who think like this.

        1. Queezle

          I feel like a lot of ace people share that struggle.

        2. Queezle

          nope. Sorry Ethan

        3. Queezle

          okay last try-

        4. Sunny

          It’s all going from bad to worse for your gravatar, isn’t it?

        5. Queezle

          oh yeah. It’s bad. That last one had me rage quit.

        6. Autogatos

          Yeah this exactly. I made a joke further down in the comments that it’s Schrödinger‘a bisexuality.

    2. Opus the Poet

      Joyce is basically 1st and 2nd season Sheldon Cooper, trying to evolve into 7th season Nobel Prize winner Sheldon Cooper. It took a long time for Sheldon to understand sexual attraction, among other things.

  22. alongcameaspider

    Yikes Joyce, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt the past couple strips but this ain’t a good look

    1. Lexi

      I’m going to take a stab at Joyce’s mental process. Note, I am bisexual, so there may be weird bias here.

      Being attracted to the same gender is “bad” while being attracted to the opposite is just “normal.” If you were bisexual, and attracted to both, you’d probably want to pretend to be “normal” so as to avoid persecution. So if your attraction to the same gender was so strong that you’d risk Hell and Social Ostracization for it, when you could have just played it safe, then that must be the more powerful desire. After all, you could just stick with the “correct” gender all along, but chose the harder option.

      It’s like seeing someone eating a perfectly done steak with all the trimmings, and the next time you see them, they’re eating a grilled cheese sandwich. One of these is Expensive and Difficult and Rare, so it must be what you’d prefer to eat all the time. When in fact, both meals are just delicious, and the comparison is more like a grilled cheese sandwich vs a ham and cheese one. Or a steak vs lobster.

      But in Joyce’s mind, why would Ruth go through the “extra effort” of dating a girl if that wasn’t really her preference all along? Is she now just trying to blend in?

      Or Joyce is just weird and didn’t quite manage to apply the theory of bisexuality to real humans yet.

      1. cbwroses

        I think that’s a nice and worthwhile interpretation of Joyce’s thought process.

      2. Autogatos

        Oh this is a good way of putting it! Yeah I think it can be that or seen as a “betrayal” of the LGBTQ+ community by “picking the easy road.”

        Or maybe like Nobonesforever is saying, maybe she’s pulling a Billie and is having trouble grasping that while bi people *exist*, some of the women she knows who she’s only dated women are in fact bi because she’s mentally categorized them as lesbians already.

    2. Nobonesforever

      I think that Joyce genuinely thought Ruth was gay, not bi (to her credit so did I until the whole British guy thing happened) and is having trouble making the logical leap to Ruth being bi, because it runs counter to her previous understanding of the situation. She knows what being bi is, it just wasn’t relevant when she jumped over the table to talk to Ruth because Ruth was firmly in Joyce’s “Lesbian” pile. She’ll come around

  23. Huehuetotl

    I dunno folks. I’m with Joyce, Ruth can do better.

    1. Bagge

      She gets that a lot.

    2. Nobonesforever

      Tbf so can most women with male partners.

      1. Thag Simmons

        Oh hey Becky

        1. Nobonesforever

          No no not even in like a “why would u date men” sort of way just in a “Men as a social category, and husbands as a subset of men, do not bear their fair share of the burdens of relationships, and most women in relationships with men deserve more than their partners are giving them”

        2. Nobonesforever

          Scratch husbands and sub in like “male partners” narrowed the category too much there

        3. Nobonesforever

          Don’t get me wrong I can and will do the “lesbian superiority complex” schtick any day of the week, but I’m not doin that here. Like misogyny and patriarchy strike deep within the heterosexual dynamic, and women are generally forced to bear much more of the work of their relationships than men. They deserve better than that. I am very happy for any woman with a man who finds their relationship is an equal one cuz hooooo buddy that is not really the norm!

        4. Autogatos

          This yes. I love my husband and feel very lucky to have found him but hooo boy whenever I read stories of internet dating I’m just like “I am so glad I’m done with that!”
          I do not have the energy for trying to weed out all the problematic men anymore. It’s unsettling how normalized it is in our culture to just…be totally fine with toxic relationships.

        5. Regalli

          Heteronormativity really does hurt EVERYONE. In part by normalizing this absolute horseshit.

        6. Nobonesforever

          There’s a reason one fo the greatest victories for women was the legalization of no fault divorce. Helped to unshackle them from the legal structures that kept em stuck with horrible men. Unfortunately the culture around it is still WOEFULLY negative and toxic so many women end up just being shamed and forced into staying with horrible men through social force rather than legal force now

      2. Rainhat

        Honestly most women with female partners, and men with partners of all descriptions too.

        1. Axel_Grease

          There’s a lot of toxic relationships in society. I’m not sure that getting married and making a lifelong commitment should be so normalized. It seems like it keeps a lot of people trapped in unhappy situations.

    3. Segnosaur

      Umm… why do you think Ruth can “Do better” than Jason?

      Jason seems to be a fairly intelligent individual. Although he did make the mistake of having sex with Sal, he was not the instigator (so it is not likely a pattern for him), and he did take steps to ensure that the relationship would not affect her grades. And although he may not be a great T.A., he did seem to have some genuine concern about his students.

      He may not be perfect, but he is a better partner than Billie/Jennifer (alcoholic who pushed Ruth to drink after her depression diagnosis).

  24. Slartibeast Button, BIA

    I am wondering if this relates to Joyce’s upbringing holding that attraction is something you aren’t really supposed to care about that much when making decisions about sex. Which she isn’t entirely over.

  25. Bagge

    “Thanks for not murdering her”. Dorothy is a great Joyce-handler here.

    1. Regalli

      It’s wonderful.

      1. The Wellerman

        Hey Regs (mind if I call you that?), sorry for the tangent, but just wondering, how often do check the comments of the prior strip?

        1. Regalli

          Not always, but when I make a late comment, sometimes. Having now read said preceding comment, yeah, I can totally see that being a deeply troublesome thing – dismissiveness sucks, especially when it’s used to deny your experiences and agency. But I also started reading this strip regularly pretty early on, and I watched Dina go from ‘kind of gives neurodivergent vibes’ to ‘gives very, VERY specific autistic vibes’ in realtime in response to autistic readers seeing ourselves in her, which is a big part of why I’ll say she’s autistic-coded and Joyce is just ‘generally neurodivergent, autism being one possibility of several but one Willis has singled out too so I single it out myself.’ I’m not diagnosing Willis, so I try not to diagnose Joyce. But Dina feels more intentional. Dina occasionally gets the REALLY niche traits like ‘casual joint hypermobility’ that suggest research, not just the special interest-not catching social cues-vague sensory stuff like samefoods and avoiding eye contact triangle. (Having been diagnosed with joint hypermobility not long before the Accurate Dino LARPing means subluxating your elbows strip ran by doing just that at an orthopedist’s, I found that strip oddly hilarious, but yeah, there’s a specific link being studied between EDS and autism. There is some early research it also co-occurs with ADHD, too, but I haven’t read as much on that one, and Dina DEFINITELY does not give me ADHD vibes even as a probable autism/ADHD combo myself.)

          I get the trauma, and it’s definitely a shitty thing people do to dismiss us as our disabilities and neurodivergences, not people. Nonetheless, yeah, Dina reads very specifically autistic in a way even Joyce doesn’t to me, and I saw her get WAY MORE specific over time, which is why I say ‘coded’ or the like and not ‘could be this, could be that’. Plus, y’know, non-stereotypical representation, we are starving, and so ‘undiagnosed but significantly and actively given these traits’ means a lot to people.

        2. The Wellerman

          Thanks once again for being so thorough!

          I definitely agree that non-stereotypical representation is very much needed for neurodivergents of all kinds, and it’s especially effective for all of us if it’s done through traits instead of our currently limited selection of labels!

          If I’m to be accepted as a neurodivergent though, I definitely want to decide for MYSELF how I’m gonna be accepted by others, preserving all my unique neurodivergent stripes, instead of having others decide how they’re gonna accept me.

          Speaking as a Gender Fluid / questioning Bi, for me it’s kinda like how you don’t assume / decide for another person what their gender or sexuality is, and address them by their preferred pronouns.

        3. Regalli

          Certainly so. But fictional characters aren’t going to have their feelings hurt by headcanons – there’s no actual harm in reading Joyce as bisexual if that hasn’t explicitly been made text yet, and no harm in commenters continuing to call Jennifer bisexual even while she’s very blatantly in denial (since her bisexuality is also Word of Willis’ed.) There’s harm in ignoring the text (like refusing to acknowledge that Ruth’s been established as bisexual, or that jerk who didn’t believe in DID and therefore insisted Amber and AG are the same person despite pointing out they aren’t being written that way and didn’t share memories,) but headcanons that add representation, so long as they aren’t contradicting explicit statements otherwise, are generally considered fine in most fandoms.

          Dina’s unlikely to get diagnosed – it’s a long, involved process, and heavily biased against AFAB people, adults, and people of color. But we can point out she’s been written consciously in ways that map more specifically to autism, much like Amber and AG got more specifically plural over time. AmbG as a system isn’t formally diagnosed either, but by this point the text is really clear that that’s what’s going on. Dina’s not quite that unambiguous, but she’s still mapping really closely in very specific ways. I’m not going to apply a label to you, but I’m allowed to read whatever characters I want as like me because they aren’t real people. I’m not using autistic as a perjorative, and neither are the other autistic commenters who hang around here and read Dina and Joyce that way. It’s just a part of us that we see in these characters. If you’re not okay with characters being headcanoned specifically then, and I say this without judgment or malice, the comments here probably aren’t a great place for you. This is a public space, and there’s a lot of autistic readers who read ourselves into two characters with really specific traits, which we’re allowed to. If Willis asked us to stop, that’d be one thing, because he’s the author and also moderator. But he doesn’t, and it’s a space where ‘autistic commenters headcanon characters as autistic’ is a known and accepted phenomenon. I have a lot of compassion for the label being used against you, but we’re not headcanoning fictional characters as autistic at you, and we’re not doing it with malice or as a derogatory term. We’re doing it because we see ourselves in these characters, things we like about ourselves as well as things that are sometimes troublesome for us. We’re allowed to headcanon.

        4. The Wellerman

          You certainly are allowed to headcanon! I definitely didn’t mean to imply that there was any malicious intent among you fellow neurodivergents, and I’m sorry if I caused you any stress ??

          I still lost on whether you read my trauma story, but I just tend to get real sensitive and self-conscious about the autism label in particular because it was used to subject me to decades of relentlesss physical, emotional, and psychological abuse from people around me, even my own family. The worse part was that the abuse and insistence on this label that covered up my whole identity still wouldn’t stop even after I got an *official* diagnosis ?

          But regardless of what I went through, if I ever found myself using that as an excuse to take good things away from good people, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself anymore.

          I’m glad to see that autistics and all other kinds of neurodivergents here see themselves in characters that aren’t just some tired media stereotype, and that lots of autistics around here have had their lives enriched by a label that I was only ever fed a poisonous version of.

          Regardless (not to call you out on anything though!!!), I still feel pretty inclined against labels in general, or at least just CURRENT labels, not only because of the BAGGAGE associated with them, but also that their definitions and relationships are changing A LOT these days (a necessity, given how this kind of science came out of a REALLY bad place) and labels and the way we use them now may not stay relevant for very long.

          I just don’t like how current labels are “all or nothing” in their nature, and I personally would like it A LOT better if neurodivergence could be presented like gender or sexual identity, where you could say a combination like “I’m a NB biromantic pansexual”, preserving all your unique stripes and leaving no room for overgeneralizing assumptions.

        5. Regalli

          I have but at 2 AM with no spoons, that nuance didn’t come across.

          I will say, the big difference between gender/sexuality and neurodivergence is that with the former, the things needed are removing barriers and discrimination. With the latter, even with the things that are only disabilities because society doesn’t accommodate for them, that still ends up needing accommodations… and we are, ultimately, disabled, if only because society doesn’t accommodate us. They should be normalized and easily available, but even on a desert island, executive dysfunction issues would still be disabling. I have significant issues with the medical model of disability, and I don’t think autism should be cured, but I’m still disabled, in some ways because I’m autistic specifically. Denying that fact just makes my life harder. (And then there’s the ‘related conditions that frequently co-occur with autism and are unambiguously forms of disability.’ Dyspraxia, for example. Or the physical conditions that often coincide – while there are definitely risks having an on-paper diagnosis, it’s helpful to be able to tell the cardiologist ‘I’m an autistic with joint hypermobility, we’re waiting to be assessed for Ehler’s Danlos but we’re also concerned about POTS even if the symptoms don’t necessarily seem like it’s that.’) So there’s a value in labels to me if only in providing the framework from which to base accommodations, especially since society won’t provide them unless they’re directly proven to be necessary and legally required to do so. They might need severe work thanks to the ableism of doctors, but that’s not a problem with the existence of labels, it’s a problem with the existence of ableism in the medical field, as well as a lot of other prejudices. (As you indicate by describing gender and sexuality using what are ultimately labels.) We need rid of medical gatekeeping, but doing away with diagnostic labels seems way more likely to screw over disabled people who need accommodations, at least right now.

          But we’re also derailing the thread and I’ve REALLY derailed my sleep schedule, so I’ll read whatever you reply but this’ll probably be my last comment on the subject for a bit.

        6. The Wellerman

          Sleep is important, I respect that.

          You make a very important point about labels like this being necessary for accommodations, in terms of help for disabled people.

          But when it comes to stuff like Autism, ADHD, OCD, SAD etc, are a lot more complicated than just having a broken limb and a wheel chair, where people can clearly see HOW you’re disabled, and put in a ramp for you and all that.

          These things are largely invisible, and exist in what is perhaps the most complex organ, the most complex structure in the KNOWN UNIVERSE, where people figuring out just HOW to accommodate for them is a lot more complicated.

          The way you describe me using “labels” for gender kinda misses the point of what I’m trying to say. For me, “labels” are more about putting people into increasingly generic categories and making assumptions about them and how to treat them.

          I mean, I guess I’m OK with a “label” system as long as it’s nuanced ENOUGH to the point to which you don’t leave people to fill in too many blanks with their preconceptions.

          In terms of gender and sexual identity, there are just SO MANY different ones you could be a combination of that it definitely feels less like “labeling” and more like “having a wide variety of words to choose from to describe who you are” or having a lot of stickers to express yourself.

          It would be more like “labeling” to me if, say, you could only choose between “straight” and “queer”, and have people make assumptions about you with the shear BAGGAGE that comes with either.

          In terms of the broken bone metaphor, “labeling” would be like people thinking “oh we should just give them a cast and not take actually look at them and what they need” and “we shouldn’t bother inviting them to the tennis tournament because they can’t use their arms and we don’t wanna make them feel bad”.

          Things get even messier with neurodivergent labels because these are things that influence how we express our emotions, our behavior, our relationships, and if these labels are so broad and sweeping it can make it very hard for people to tell the difference between our disabilities and our PERSONALITY when we’re just being ourselves. They think things like “oh they’re too fixated on dinosaurs and I feel bad that they can’t quit even when they want to” and “should I point out their routine? would that make things worse? I feel like I’m walking on eggshells around them”.

          I know that ideally these can be fixed by encouraging people to just ask them and telling them NOT to think this way, but in my experience, people’s monkey monkey brains just can’t help but think this way, automatically using big labels like this to extrapolate impressions of someone and STICKING to those impressions because of their need for internal consistency with what they think they know.

          At least with a system much more specific like what we have with gender / sexual identity, there’s much room for their imagination to take over, you know?

          I’m fine with seeking acceptance among people and even mild assistance on one occasion with a more SPECIFIC label like “socially-challenged neurodivergent savant”, but again, big sweeping terms like “autism” and “aspergers” just seem to have this way of generating hurtful assumptions in primate brains that they just can’t help, in much the same way they can’t clearly see the beauty of stars and planets in a galaxy if there’s too much LIGHT POLLUTION, you know?

          For instance, I have (still have?) savant-syndrome, where I can focus on a restricted range of subjects (usually a physical science) for a long period of time and feel really good and soothed and eurphoric about it. I haven’t been able to engage in this behavior or felt like this for a few years now, and my being out of my element like this I think is a big part of why feel so DEPRESSED these days.

          Anyway, a thing that REALLY saddens me is how people seem to ADAMANTLY combine autism and savant syndrome into the same generic category, where they assume that savants like me are ALWAYS autistic and autistic people are ALWAYS savants. Just for the record, only half of all savants are autistic, and less than a tenth of all autistics are savants.

          The point here is that I really want to refind that savant part of myself, and it doesn’t feel good identifying with it if I can’t do so without people’s brains automatically going from

          savant -> autistic -> hurtful assumptions

          That a given, it really soothes me that socially-challenged savants like me can be represented in comics and stuff without necessarily being autistic, while at the same time having TRAITS that neurodivergents of ALL different flavors can relate to.

          Anyway, sorry this is going on so long, I’ll just use the rest of this post to THANK YOU SO MUCH for taking the time to talk to me about this stuff, helping me discover new things about myself and rediscover parts of myself that have long been repressed! ?

        7. The Wellerman

          *At least with a system much more specific like what we have with gender / sexual identity, there’s much LESS room for their imagination to take over, you know?

          I. Hate. Typos.

          I just want people understand me clearly, you know?

        8. eh, whatever

          Accurate Dino LARPing means subluxating your elbows

          Not at all, why?

          For some of them, overstretching your wrists would help, though.

        9. Regalli

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/palms/

          This would be the strip, for reference.

    2. Neeks

      I could definitely have used Panel One Dorothy several times in my youth, I’ll admit. And also probably now, but I generally catch myself in the act of being an asshole and apologize immediately (or double down, as needed).

  26. C.T. Phipps

    Joyce: Listen, Dorothy, Ruth is an atheist and a redhead and if she’s a lesbian she can be my new Becky. One that isn’t dumb and believes in gods that are good rather than authoritarian as all religion is.

    Dorothy: Joyce…you sound like Reddit.

    1. Spencer

      I wonder, specifically, how someone is meant to take umbrage with a lifetime of personal suffering caused by their Christian upbringing as well as the infusing of Christian power bases across all of North America where the yanks have started paying folks in Texas to sell out their neighbours for having abortions, the last POTUS had protestors gassed on the way to a photo shoot where he could hold a bible upside down, and the current one meticulously denies any efforts to weaken Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and back in the 80s made a very inspiring speech about how the US would create Israel themselves had it not already, I wonder how someone can bear witness to all of that and not “sound like Reddit.”

      Canada, where I live, is currently playing hide and seek with the mass graves of Indigenous children at Christian reservation schools, and Quebec instilled laws about religious symbols that, in application, exclusively target its Muslim population, because letting nutbar white dudes blame their problems on a small minority has never gone wrong in the course of history.

      So I am asking you, specifically you, what is meant to be felt about that. Not done, that’s a later conversation after we establish some kind of solidarity that moves beyond Canada only making a major effort into banning conversion therapythis very fucking week, I’m asking you what level of anger is appropriate to feel at something that makes life worse for the marginalized and where the Good Christians, however you want to define it, don’t seem to want to tackle the problems within the institution they happily reap the benefits from. I need to know, for certain, because I prefer saying this like “oh, faith should be respected as a matter of personal decency,” and I’m starting to chafe under that when respecting faith has been turned against me as #NotAllChristians. Yeah, I know it’s not all of you, some of you just passively tolerate it, that’s the problem.

      1. Nobonesforever

        Remember Spencer, you’re only a good person if you quietly conform urself to other peoples demands of your conduct. You feel anything resembling a messy emotion and you go right to the “Bad Person” zone

      2. Rocket Relm

        I think a lot of the issue is that religion in general is incredibly dumb and nonsense, and leads to a lot of bad ends. But that criticism and calling out of how absurd it is is something people take personally, because it’s a parasite that survives by getting people to invest so much into it that debasing a religion = debasing a person.

        Combined with the fact that religion is a tool that has done (and continues to do) quite a lot of good for society along with the bad, makes it a very tricky conversation to have. I hold the opinion that when groups under the banner of religions do unbelievably shitty things it’s okay to hate them to the fullest extent you find appropriate, but at the same time there are wide swaths of people, many of whom don’t participate or even have awareness of said horrors, that will take it as a personal attack.

        And the solution to that largely depends on whether you care if their feelings are hurt by your anger, how much you’re willing to say “these people are good despite their religion”, and which grievances you care most about, to what degree they are bad, happened, and so on.

        It’s a very complicated social issue writ large.

      3. Eric

        Heeeeere’s the thing. I can dislike religion all I want, but the free practice of it is directly secured by the 1st amendment to the Constitution. So getting shitty at people for their religion not only won’t help anything, it makes me a hypocrite. _Separating_ the influence of that practice from the public sphere entirely is where the discussion needs to be.

        1. Spencer

          I don’t dislike religion in the slightest. I don’t have faith, but that just means it’s something I don’t get and, more importantly, don’t have to get to respect it exists. Moreover, a powerful religious institution, on a macro level, is the same as any powerful institution: it’s something that takes to expand its influence. That’s not a religion-specific thing, and it’s only a Christian thing in the context of countries where they’re a reigning cultural influence. I wouldn’t be saying the same thing the same way f I lived in, say, South Korea or India, for example.

          But, bluntly? No one but annoying children has ever gotten “shitty at people for their religion” in the context of “being mean to the American Christian” solely for that reason. I’m “shitty at people for their religion” because it ruins the lives of people like me all the time, I’m okay being shitty at that, and I’m okay being shitty at someone who exists and thrives within if, specifically, they don’t make micro-scale changes where they can to better the lives of the marginalized who get stomped on by that institution they ascribe to. If they don’t want to be called shitty for that, an act that probably does not measure up too much to, y’know, any amount of actual pain that’s ever occurred in history, well, tough cookies.

          TLDR: It’s just #NotAllMen for Jesus. The Good Christian still lives within a system that benefits him and where his voice is afforded power and influence, horrible political policies are made by scum voted in by people extremely convinced of their Good Christianhood. If the worst that Good Christian will ever experience is some backtalk on the internet, then let him consider himself blessed.

        2. Nobonesforever

          The only good Christian is one waging war against the political structure of Christianity. (This is hyperbole my actual views are more complex)

  27. Judas Peckerwood

    That’s the problem with book larnin’.

  28. Antonio

    Hey look the bisexual experience ?

    1. Autogatos

      Schrödinger’s bisexual.

      Your sexual orientation is only determined when your dating is observed. XD

      (As a bi person in a hetero relationship and therefore assumed to be straight, I sympathize with Ruth here)

      1. Nep

        Hard same. I’ve even done it to myself sometimes.

        1. Autogatos

          I spent 33 years doing it to myself and tbh I still forget I’m bi often because I’m so used to portraying as straight and being perceived as such, having only dated, and being married to a man. I’m more attracted to men, so sometimes I doubt my own bisexuality and wonder if I imagined it, until I see someone like Ruby Rose and go “ohhh right, I am actually bi.” XD

  29. NinjaNick

    I know. I’m just as disappointed as you, Joyce.

  30. chuckroast

    God, this is painful.

    1. chuckroast

      One more try. God, no.

  31. Chris Phoenix

    After a decade of Ruth, this is the first time a strip has been titled “murdering”?

    1. King Daniel

      “Murdering“ yes, but “murder” no: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/murder/

  32. Osaru Sensei

    That’s an oversimplification of bisexuality Joyce, but… close enough? It really doesn’t have to be 50/50 either-or, like I’m bi but prefer girls – I’ve had people trying to correct me that makes me a lesbian, but no, I am bi.

    Anyways, rant over.

  33. Reaver

    I’d tell a joke but it sparked long posts about the benefits of dieting yesterday so now I’m afraid to.

    1. milu

      nooooo i’m sorry i’ll behave. please do a joke =3

      1. The Wellerman

        I notice now that I have also made yet another social error of that nature.

        I will gladly refrain so you shall commence with yet another tasty joke ?

        1. Reaver

          A grasshopper walks into a bar, the bartender looks up and grins.

          “We have a drink named after you!”

          The grasshopper’s whole face lights up.

          “You have a drink named Steve~!?”

      2. JBento

        Did you hear about the time Lois caught Superman cheating on her with her sister, and tried to pass it off as a traffic violation?

        “A traffic violation?”, I hear you ask.

        Yes, he claimed he got distracted and got in the wrong Lane.

  34. Eldritchy

    Ah yes the ideological
    “I accept that you can make your own decisions but if I don’t like those decisions I’ll take away your group rights.”

  35. Rabisch

    Joyce is very good with the theory, but appears to be really bad with the practice. She will learn. After all, the practice is always the hardest part.

  36. foducool

    I think we’ve reached 115 facepalm per minute
    didn’t think that was possible

  37. Amós Batista

    Hey, is it possible to get a low grade in Gender Studies, or similar in high school or college??

    1. foducool

      all you have to say is “there is only two genders” and you’ll get an F

    2. milu

      i mean it’s an actual academic field, so i don’t see why it would be less possible to get a bad grade as it is in, say, a history class.

      But yeah, i don’t think rote learning is the sort of thing Leslie insists on as a teacher, especially in first year, that’s not her vibe. She’s clearly more interested in getting students to engage with the subject and discuss it. I can well imagine a large part of the grade being her subjective appreciation of the student’s engagement and participation, if so Joyce would def have gotten a high mark on that

    3. Rainhat

      In general, you can fail any course. In specific, Leslie’s thing looked more like a freeform discussion thing than anything else, and those aren’t really strictly graded.

    4. Axel_Grease

      I’d imagine you would fail if you refused to do the assignments and didn’t study for the tests.

  38. Romanticide

    I am sure this certainly not a case of not understanding bisexuality, but a case of Joyce deciding that Ruth has to be a person interested in girls only because the image of Ruth she made in her head includes that stat. She has no trouble processing Sierra, because she is over that bridge already since some time back, with Ruth she hasn’t, and of course doesn’t realize other people lives are not for her to decide according to what look better to her.

    1. Axel_Grease

      She clearly knows the textbook definition of bisexuality but I’m not sure the concept has really penetrated her brain.

  39. TheFlamingonator

    *Its Always Sunny theme* “Joyce is biphobic “

  40. Lone Duck

    The thing about a lifetime of fundamentalist Christianity is, even if you become an atheist, unlearning years of moral superiority and judgement requires constant self-examination. Being an undeniable extrovert, this doesn’t come naturally to Joyce. She’ll get there though.

  41. thumb

    Huh, looks like a whole bunch of questions and assumptions were addressed in the immediately following strip.

    1. Spencer

      I remember when I was catching up all I had missed, I reached those strips where Danny finds out Amber’s dating Walky so he angrily runs to go hit on Sal.

      And I was aghast. Noooo, Danny, how could his character backslide so! This is terrible! I can’t believe he was engaging with this behaviour I thought he was totally, 100% done with!

      Then the next strip was Sal and him having a larf over how silly he’s being. That was probably a good learning opportunity for learning that an individual installment of a story will, eventually, lead into another, it probably shouldn’t have been when the succeeding strip was a button click away and was like a year old maybe at that point.

  42. Raven

    I don’t think we have enough evidence yet to be sure if this is biphobia or “things are changing and that scares me”. Or both. It could easily be both.

  43. Keulen

    Wait, so Joyce knows what bisexuality is. So why is she acting like she doesn’t know what it means?

    1. Sam

      Knowing the words doesn’t mean actually understanding them or how that may look in practice. And she is probably thinking what Ruth is doing is backsliding like Jennifer or Ethan did before a.k.a. hiding attraction to people like her by dating Jason in an unhealthy way instead of it being an actual attraction she has and she is not being less herself or hiding parts of herself.

    2. StClair

      Per some comments above, it’s possible she knows, but thinks that Ruth is (only) lesbian.

      1. thejeff

        But you’d think that would provoke a “what does that have to do with Ruth” to Dorothy’s asking if she knew about bisexuality.

        1. Nobonesforever

          Tbf I don’t think Joyce is being nearly self aware enough to connect the question to her conduct

    3. Robert Thompson

      An interesting point, but has anyone mentioned Ruth being bi to or around Joyce at this point? Like there was a lot of discourse around Ruth and Billie being disaster lesbians and whatnot, so I can see Joyce (the absolute queen of needing things spelled out for her and to be in little boxes so she knows how to engage with them) needing to be explicitly told Ruth is Bi so she can move Ruth from the lesbian box to the bi box and engage appropriately.

      None of which is a good plan, or anyone’s job but Joyce’s, but that would explain the total disconnect here.

      1. Nobonesforever

        Honestly I thought Ruth was a lesbian til British guy happened so like I’m gonna project that onto Joyce until proven otherwise

        1. King Daniel

          Sexuality remains constant between universes, and Walkyverse!Joyce is happily married (with at least one child) to Walky–and they were both very, ah, passionate when they first had sex (“Man of steel, woman of steel, bed of kleenex” was how it was described in-universe). Hence, whether or not she is bisexual Joyce is definitely not a lesbian.

        2. Yumi

          …That wasn’t, ah…wasn’t being claimed….

        3. Spencer

          I think they meant Ruth being a lesbian, not Joyce.

          Which, Ruth slept with Ryan in a flashback in the Walkyverse.

        4. Nobonesforever

          I think you’ve misread my comment which is fine, I’m saying I’m projecting my misunderstanding of Ruth’s sexuality onto Joyce’s behavior. (Also as someone who has never read its Walky the whole. “Things r constant between the ‘verses” stuff has left me without some information, so bear w me)

        5. King Daniel

          My sincere apologies, then. I realized like half a second after posting my comment that I might’ve misread you (and so I did), but there’s no way to edit comments in this section. 😛

  44. Beau Kirin Maysey

    Ah, the wide gap between the trapezes of ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Acceptance’

  45. cmasta1992

    The biphobia in the comments is real

    1. Adept

      Bloody depressing is what it is

    2. Nobonesforever

      U got any specific examples cuz this has been an incredibly respectful comment section wrt bisexuality. Unless there’s a secret section unknown to mine eyes

  46. Tan

    I simultaneously respect this definition for its nonbinary inclusiveness while also loathing this definition’s prescriptivism. Most people who self-identify as bisexual mean that they are sexually attracted to persons on both ends of the gender binary with usually at least some amount of inclusiveness in between/off that scale. Holding tightly to the stated definition of bisexuality is one step removed from telling people their self-label isn’t valid, that they ‘must’ identify instead as pansexual, which I know is not the intention behind it but at the same time I’ve seen it used that way.

    It just sucks the lengths some people will go to to invalidate other people’s chosen labels, I guess. Maybe Leslie’s class covered all this and Joyce has a deeper understanding of what the label means to people who choose it than her test-answer definition indicates. Maybe I’ve just had to deal with too many probably-bad-faith arguments and am oversensitive. I wanted to bring it up anyway.

    1. Spencer

      Well one, it’s hard to be “oversensitive” when it is, in fact, a sensitive subject to you. You’re allowed to say what you feel when shit matters to you.

      Otherwise, I understand the frustrations of some palooka trying to control our labels. It comes with this undercurrent of fighting against a right answer; that if we don’t agree with them then we’re letting someone else down who needs that same inclusivity we do, that saying something understandable like “attraction to the same and other genders” feels like we’re capitulating to them not because it’s a wrong definition or even one we can’t use, but that it’s one they insist upon.

      I’ll say I like guys and girls all I want, ’cause there’s a lovely technicolour rainbow in between.

  47. Heather Hunter

    Ah the perils of rote learning.

  48. Sprite less Auntie

    Hey, any long time fans of Willis who can point me towards comics written when he was at this point? Asking for a friend….

    1. Regalli

      This would likely have been the early Shortpacked/Joyce & Walky era, I think. Shortpacked does deal with sexuality even in the relatively early phases (this is partly why Ethan is gay,) but uh, warning that some of the material there does not age well. (In particular, there’s some ableist slurs and some Mike being edgelordy that were more societally acceptable on the 2005ish internet, but which Willis has clearly moved away from.)

      Or maybe some of the It’s Walky stuff around the introduction of, uh, half the queer female background characters in this strip, I don’t know the exact point Willis fully had the break with God as opposed to the ‘meeting gay people and realizing they aren’t evil so what else was the church wrong enough’ aspect. Also old enough to not age super-well, as Willis admitted in that introduction. (Well-meaning intent: Add more female characters! Down the line: Add female characters who aren’t straight, while establishing this relationship is meaningful! End result: Add more female characters Joe’s on a squad with. Establish that Grace and Mandy’s relationship was meaningful while also killing them tragically. There were some apologies in the rerun commentary.)

      The It’s Walky sidebar brings you to the non-Shortpacked Walkyverse stuff, which is at times a really INTERESTING look at an author’s storytelling skills developing while the author reflects on it fifteen years later and goes ‘God, what was I thinking here.’ (Especially in Roomies. Roomies is rough.) Shortpacked begins after It’s Walky ends, but for much of its life it stood alone enough that it’s remained on its own site even when the Roomies/It’s Walky/Joyce & Walky reruns got a more functional one, save two storylines that are more IW!-styled. We’re currently wrapping up the tail end of the second, which is also in my opinion one of the best storylines in the entire Walkyverse (but also leans heavily on being a Shortpacked storyline, it just also happens to wrap up a plot thread from J&W Willis later regretted.)

      Shortpacked is probably the best one to try if you’re interested, or start with It’s Walky and come back to Roomies once you’re invested in these versions of the characters. (I went from Shortpacked to Roomies, but I’d already binged Shortpacked and I was at least invested in Joe, a bit. And it wasn’t too long until Mike showed up.)

  49. James R

    Anyone else miss the “Us” in the first panel, and thought Dorothy just screamed “Goodbye excuse!” Ala, “Oh look over there, a distraction!”?

  50. Roborat

    I know it is just the way it has been drawn, but the perspective in the last panel makes Joyce’s right arm look about 20 feet long.

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