671

Passage
Posted on January 6, 2016 by David M Willis

671 thoughts on “Passage”

  1. Jen Aside

    “also I read it in English, which further corrupts the maybe good but misguided intentions of a completely different people in order to further the domination of the white patriarchy but they say I can just sit and be pretty and poop out babies so idk sounds good maybe??”

    1. Jen Aside

      “I mean DANG, equal means being FAIR, don’t it”

      1. Ranthog

        Except that being equal can be both fair and unfair. The individuals involved and the circumstances involves can change what fair is in a situation.

        The catholic interpretation is interesting, and I’ve always wondered if the english translation is bad, the historical context is different, or if they just decided that a very different premise is needed for it not to be terrible.

        1. DarkoNeko

          From what I get, the historical context is that people basically wrote a lot of what their life “laws” were back then into their sacred text.

          One less charitable person would say that it was using religion as a tool to assert power.

        2. Ranthog

          That is what some suspect some of Paul’s letters that were added later are.

        3. Shay

          Quite a few people thing that Paul is a false prophet and that his writings should be dismissed altogether. There’s a lot of information about that with some basic googling (rather than linking it here). Basically Paul never even met Jesus and just had a “change of heart” and decided he was the 13th apostle (there were only supposed to be twelve in all of the prophecies in the old testament, Judas was replaced by Mattias) and then started preaching things that were opposite to what Jesus and the real apostles taught. He even has a huge argument with Paul and Barnabus about what should be taught and they call him out on his shit. Way too much of the new testament is written by Paul or Luke (Paul’s lackey).

          I’m agnostic, so learning about this and putting it into context with the parts of the New Testament I largely disagree with is simply an exercise of interest, but I do find it fairly fascinating.

          So much of the bible has to be taken in context as simply a written account of the laws of the time, and if you think of it from the aspect of what technologies were available to them making a law to not eat pork or shellfish makes sense (the same can’t be said of all of the more ridiculous passages, but bear with) because it would keep people who didn’t know how to clean or cook it properly from getting sick and dying. Parsing out what you shouldn’t do for your own well being and what you shouldn’t do by mandate of a deity can be hard to do with the way that much of the bible is written.

        4. miados

          I want to hear more of what you have to say on this shay. mostly because it isn’t what i hear people say when they talk about this topic.

        5. Steampunk rock

          That could be true, except that the apostles recognized Paul’s writings as scripture, and the recognized him as an apostle. So either he is one, or the other apostles are all false as well!

        6. thejeff

          Which apostles recognized Paul’s writings as scripture and recognized him as an apostle? Where is this documented?

          Acts discusses Paul, but Acts isn’t written by an apostle and there are conflicts between the portrayal of the relationship between Paul and the others in Acts and in Paul’s letters. Authorship of most of the other letters is debatable at best.

        7. Jestam

          I basically have much the same position on Paul.

        8. Ragnaros the Firelord

          Wait my religion teacher (Yeah i go to a catholic high school it sucks) taught me that Acts was written by Luke (the guy who wrote one of the Gospels) and that Acts is a sequel to Luke’s gospel because both Luke’s gospel and Acts was written to a guy named Theophilus. Both first chapters are like “dear great theophilus heres some stuff” and acts is like “well this is the second account to you great Theophilus” Also Theophilus means god lover so its possible that theophilus is just a term for anyone who loves God to avoid drawing attention to themselves when the roman emperors persecuted Christians.

        9. sotonohito

          Well don’t forget that the whole separate but equal bit is an invention of modern Christians. Prior to the mid 1900’s it was standard Christian doctrine that *of course* women were inferior to men and that’s why men had to be the boss. It was always wrapped in language of protection, that seems to be the universal way patriarchy is justified, but the modern Christian discomfort with the rather straightforward Biblical asertion that men are superior and women are inferior is just that: modern.

          The Bible is quite explicit in saying that men are superior, women are inferior, and the reason is given that it’s because a) God made men first (and first is best, of course), and b) that Eve was tricked by the serpent, not Adam, so therefore bongoes ain’t shit.

          1 Timothy 2: 12But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. 13For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. 14And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.

          Modern Christians are embarrassed at how much and how openly the theme of bongoes ain’t shit is expressed in the Bible and try to justify and explain it away and basically pretend it doesn’t really mean that (except, of course, men are still supposed to be in charge and women are supposed to submit to men’s rule, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t equal).

          But for most of history, bongoes ain’t shit, basically summed up the law, common (male) knowledge and wisdom, (male) social attitudes, and it was assumed by everyone (male) that the reason men were in charge was because women were just plain not as cool, awesome, and worthy of being in charge as men.

          And now (some) modern Christians are twisting the Bible into a pretzel to try and get away from that rather than just admitting that maybe the Bible was written by a bunch of misogynists.

        10. Historyman68

          Heh heh bongoes ain’t shit

        11. Screwball

          “To make things equal for all, you all will carry the same amount of weight on each load to the truck, each of you taking your load only from your pile. Now Butch here volunteered to be my test subject, he got 30 kilograms up & on the truck no problems, so that’s what you’ll all be carrying each run…”
          “But sir, Butch is a pro weight lifter on weekends! There’s no way the rest of us can carry loads that much all day…”
          “I’m sorry, but you all have to do an equal amount of work, you all have your own piles & pre-filled boxes, so off you go & get to work…”

          Yeah, not all people are made equal, so equal doesn’t always mean fair. That said, as song as all parties contribute to the best of their abilities, it all work out…

          As others have said, the problem with the Bibles (yeah, there’s a few different versions going around, each with their own version of things…) is they’ve been slowly altered over time by people who want things to go their way, corrupting them not as slowly as you think…

        12. thejeff

          Or the problem with the Bible is that it’s full of well-intentioned ideas (at best) from a very different time and place. Now set in stone and treated as law.

        13. Ellegos

          I think this isn’t so much an either/or situation, so much as it’s both.

      2. TheNinthShader

        Please tell me that grav isnt from an early preview strip.

        1. Lord Stoneheart

          It’s not.

        2. evan

          Its a kickstarter “makeout” pledge

        3. No Name

          Jen Aside does Kickstarter make-outs, Ana Chronistic does preview panels. The fact that they are, in fact, the same person, is immaterial.

    2. gc

      “poop out babies” Thanks to Jen for the reminder that the religious don’t have a monopoly on pathological issues with the human body.

      1. LeslieBean4Shizzle

        Having had a baby, that phrase is not pathological in the slightest. It pretty much feels like you’re pooping the kid out.

        1. gc

          Or maybe you are.

        2. Cow

          Something gestates in an area just below your stomach until enough of it has gathered that your body needs to eject it, in an often long, painful and sometimes violent manner.

        3. Reltzik

          Except this time it’s about the size of a watermelon and passing through a much more sensitive orifice.

        4. Reltzik

          … which brings us, full circle, to the phrase “difficult passage”.

        5. Gigafreak

          Please accept impressed applause and disgusted cringes in equal measure for that wordplay

        6. NelC

          I think you need more fibre in your diet.

        7. altalemur

          there literally is a lot of pooping and peeing involved in giving birth to babies. it was even the main reason why Robin wanted to carry her and Leslie’s babies.

        8. Kryss LaBryn

          I got up about three times to pee while I was giving birth. I didn’t poop at all.

          Mind you, I went into labour at midnight and gave birth at dinner time the next day, having not eaten anything for 24 hours (and then the hospital told me that I’d missed dinner time by half an hour and they couldn’t feed me. At least with the next one, at the hospital in the next town, they saved me a plate because of course they did, idiots; I just gave birth; where am I going?!).

          Anyways. Some women poop and it’s not uncommon but it’s not every one.

          Also if it doesn’t come out of your butt it’s not poop.

          Also it hurts way, way more than even the worst poop, and takes a lot longer.

          Anyways.

        9. Maveric1984

          The fact that your gravitar is Jacob, and you’re talking about giving birth makes me giggle

        10. Jhennaside

          It didn’t feel like pooping to me (I have 3 kids). I mean, I got no problems with the comparison, and it wasn’t terribly different from it, but it didn’t feel like pooping really. Difficult passage, yes.

        11. Josie

          Don’t forget many women actually poop during birth!

        12. c

          Personally I thought the whole process more resembled vomiting in the wrong direction, but the pushing bit really was a lot like pooping. It was uncontrollable like diarrhea, but also large and difficult to get out like constipation. The worst of both poop worlds.

    3. LeslieBean4Shizzle

      I’m not even sure the different people argument works. That’s a pretty shitty philosophy anywhere, anywhen. Other parts of world in the same time period treated women better than that (of course, others parts did it worse, but that really isn’t saying much).

      1. wwwhhattt

        I think part of the point there was that exact translations are impossible, so how that passage comes out in English depends to a large extent on how the person translating it interprets it. So what Joyce quoted was a load of shite, but it could well have a vastly different meaning from what was written 2,000 years ago.
        Then again it’s one of Paul’s, so no point getting hopes up.

        1. David M Willis

          Ephesians is probably not one of Paul’s. It’s one of the about half-dozen letters “by him” that likely were not really.

        2. Nele Abels

          Yeah, I have heard that one before. But it is irrelevant anyway, the letter is a canonical part of the bible, thus it counts.

        3. QD

          Yeah if Paul wrote it it would read something like “husbands? Wives? hahaa what are y’all perverts or something?! stop being distracted by sex and babies jesus is like totally coming back any day now. ANY. DAY NOW.”

        4. hof1991

          Short enough to read
          Forged: Writing in the Name of God–Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are by Bart Ehrman
          http://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622
          Accepted as canon because Paul’s name was attached, but definitely not by him. Get a copy at your local library, rather than paying Amazon.

        5. David M Willis

          i own that book but thank you

        6. Steampunk rock

          Except that Paul’s letters were already being circulated when the apostles were still alive. Don’t you think they would have said something about it if it was not one of his? 🙂

        7. Dean

          There were probably a million pseudo-Christian texts circulating in those days, saying all kinds of stuff. People didn’t have the internet to post their Jesus fan fiction back then.

        8. Captain Button

          I recently saw a Making Light article explaining the Council of Nicaea as fanfic convention. was that around here?

        9. thejeff

          However much was circulating, we have very little from the actual apostles. And it’s not easy to tell which things claimed to be written by apostles actually were. If the apostles were complaining about letters supposedly written by Paul, we might well have no idea.
          2 Peter, which you referred to as counting Paul’s letters as scripture, is not accepted by most scholars as actually written by Peter and probably as fairly late.
          More generally, you can’t rely on internal references in a text like the Bible to prove much about itself. You can infer some things, but it’s far from as simple as “This passage says this other passage is real, so it must be”.

        10. David M Willis

          Um, the fake Pauline letters were likely written in the second century, long after all of them were dead. That’s part of why we know some of them are fake — they tend to address gnosticism, a second-century phenomoneon.

          Also the disciples were, y’know, illiterate fishermen, even if they would’ve still have been alive.

        11. wrog

          Actually, the whole idea that the disciples were illiterate fisherman comes only from the Gospels, which are all variations on Mark, which most nonfundamentalist academics agree HAD to have been first written AFTER the 1st Jewish War (71+ AD — since the notion that Jerusalem has ALREADY been bulldozed is pervasive; the central theme is “Q: how do we properly do the Yom Kippur and Passover sacrifices now that there’s no Temple anymore. A: Not a problem; Jesus was the last sacrifice we’ll ever have to make”). Matthew is sometime later. Luke is clearly a response to Matthew and also can’t be any earlier than 95 AD since he cribs from Josephus. John cribs from all of them and thus has to be 2nd century.

          Paul’s “authentic” Epistles (i.e., the core group of 7 or 8 that share a common perspective, don’t have obvious anachronisms, and are thus the best candidates for having been written by an Actual Paul sometime in the 50s AD) are curious in that they NEVER mention “disciples” at all — Paul NEVER uses the word. Nor ANYTHING about Jesus ever having lived on Earth. Nothing about his family or his ministry. The Lord’s Supper is there but only as a vision and NO ONE ELSE IS PRESENT besides Jesus. The crucifixion is carried out by minions of Satan; the Romans are never explicitly mentioned as being involved. Peter is referred to simply as a fellow apostle; i.e., someone else who has shared the visions of the risen Jesus; there is NEVER any reference to Peter having known an earthly Jesus; the obvious issue that Peter should have known Jesus better never comes up (it’s something Paul would have HAD to address and yet he never does so in any of the surviving texts…)

          Anyway, you should check out Richard Carrier’s latest if you haven’t already
          http://www.nobeliefs.com/Carrier.htm

        12. Baf

          The problem with the “It could really mean anything!” approach is that once you let yourself do that, basically the entire bible can be dismissed on the same grounds.

          Or, well, maybe “problem” isn’t the right word.

        13. Marianne

          I’m pretty sure Leviticus 3:12 is ordering me to eat more chocolate, and give my cat frequent cuddles.

        14. Kim

          Love your avatar!? 🙂

        15. Arianod

          Well, duh. It’s not like Leviticus 3:12 could be read any other way.

        16. Ragingagnostic

          Leviticus 3:12 “If your offering is a goat, you are to present it before the Lord”. Where do you see chocolate in THAT?! :/

        17. Vincent

          The goat, right, that’s something you get milk from. Milk begets chocolate. In some interpretations, God is omnipresent. Thus you present the chocolate to your body, as part of sacrifice to God.

          I mean, obviously it’s simpler to say that the goat can be replaced by any equivalent, but arguing it this way takes more mental hoops.

        18. Captain Button

          Obviously isn’t mean to be taken literally. It must refer to any manufacturer of dairy products.

        19. Historyman68

          Apparently that’s the whole premise of Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas: that you can celebrate it with as much commerce as you want, you can make the bible kinda say it’s okay!

        20. Silly Name

          Of course, there are very few ways you could “interpret” these words in a good way.

          Generally speaking, yes, translations often fail to convey the intended meaning, but it’s unlikely this specific passage of the Bible really means “Husband and Wife are equal, don’t be dicks to each other”.

    4. Roborat

      Well, I was going to say that if you are pooping out kids, you are doing it wrong. But after reading the comments, I changed my mind.

      1. Jen Aside

        see http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=2005

    5. Amazi-Stool

      You know who, according to bible, is responsible that there are so many languages?

      It’s that old dick god himself (Gen 11, 7)!

      It’s your bible, god, and you are omniscient and allmighty, so it’s your job to provide an authoritative translation!

  2. Eric

    Viewpoint shifted.

    1. Captain Button

      I’ve looked at wives from both sides now…

      1. TCS

        From up and down, and still somehow…

        1. Soramke

          It’s wives’ illusions I recall…

        2. neeks

          i really don’t know wives at all.

        3. neeks

          it’s wives’ illusions i recall…

        4. neeks

          one day i’ll learn to refresh the page before i try to jump in on a reply chain. today is not that day.

        5. IRL Name TBD

          It’s okay. I’ve yet to learn that and I’m very much so aware that I need to.

  3. AHR

    So now I’m curious as to how they tried to parse it as not terrible.

    1. Doctor_Who

      “Last time a woman made a decision we got kicked out of the Garden, so we’re just playing it safe.”

      1. Captain Button

        “Next time, we give fire to the woman!

      2. Cerberus

        This Summer.

        Last time, they got kicked out for making a simple decision. Now? They’re coming back for revenge!

        It’s Adam and Eve 2: Sin Harder!

        1. Hazel

          I would watch that movie.

        2. electromagneticDestroyosaur

          Debbie Does Eden?

        3. Captain Button

          If Eve and Lilith talk about God, does that pass the Bechdel Test?

        4. kelticat

          All depends on whether you think God is a masculine or feminine principle. Feminine or ace, yes. Masculine, no.

        5. Amazi-Stool

          That destroys the alliteration!

          Make it “Eva eff’s Eden”

      3. Reltzik

        “Then we gave decision-making to men and they gave us the Inquisition and the Pogroms and the Holocaust, but those were all targeting Jews and I don’t care about them any more, because of Blood Libel even if I did take that back but only after almost two millennia, so I guess the men are still more trustworthy. … oh and the Counterreformation, which I guess was targeting Christians, but they were all FALSE Christians, except for everyone, who are still today a persecuted minority and are… stengthened in their suffering? Maybe? Anyhow, the point is that men are clearly superior decision-makers despite, no, because of testosterone poisoning.

        …. oh, and anyone who asks why I switched from first-person-plural to first-person-singular there is getting bloody piles.”

        1. Reltzik

          … which brings us, full circle, to the phrase “difficult passage”.

        2. Captain Button

          “The world’s a pretty screwed up place.”

          “It’s still here. If we’d left thing is your hands it wouldn’t be.”

        3. StClair

          Thing is, the idea that the 20th century has some special trademark on people being terrible to each other is arrogant myopia; anyone who study history knows that the horrors and monsters of that age are nothing really new, they just have better press and living memory on their side.

          At most, the tools have gotten somewhat better. The people using them haven’t changed. Perhaps that’s the problem.

        4. Reltzik

          If anything, modern times are far better than the past. “If it bleeds it leads” and higher population density gives us an increased awareness of crime and atrocity, and increased prevalence and power of weaponry allow fewer people to cause more damage, but per capita crime rates are actually way down. Same with disease. Lifespans are increasing and freedom of opportunity is up all around. We’ve got some significant environmental issues to work through as a result, but man’s inhumanity towards man is less of a problem today than it’s ever been in the past.

        5. hof1991

          The past was seriously unpleasant. The hellscape that was the Near East in Jesus’s times. Several Roman invasions, which tended to scorch the earth. Kill the men, rape the women, sell the children as slaves. Thousands of crucifixions. One should read the NT in the light of the mass destruction that preceded it and was ongoing during its compilation.

      4. Durandal_1707

        Not to mention the time the alternate-universe version of her opened that damn box.

      5. davidbreslin101

        Margaret Thatcher was the Eve of British politics, then- since her, no party has dared risk run a woman for Prime Minister.

    2. Victor Riley

      I’ve actually heard her excuse several times… “I’m just not explaining it right”.

      If you have something that you need to explain “right”… then it’s probably something that isn’t very good in the first place.

      1. nothri

        I….don’t think that’s remotely true in any way shape or form? Explaining someone “right” to me says “I’m going to choose my words carefully here because I know this can be a divisive issue”. I remember wanting to explain it “right” the last time I articulated my stance on abortion. And I don’t secretly believe my opinion on that issue is wrong in any sense. I simply understand where the other side is coming from and feel a need to articulate my point clearly.

        I dunno. I’m a little biased here cause I’m the kind of guy who likes to talk and hear opinions, and what your saying here sounds a little too much like yet another way to shut a conversation down while reassuring yourself that yours is the only view worth knowing.

        1. Time Sage

          Explaining something right can also mean the diffrence between saying the sun is a “A big light shineinging in the sky, like a giant flashlight or something” or “A big ball of burning gasses that’s millions of miles away and gives us light when we can see it”

        2. Huttj509

          I’ve had similar situations. “this topic can be a minefield, and I don’t think my stance is asshole, but what I think I’m saying and what comes out of my mouth might not match, so I want to take the extra time to scan each sentence before saying it.”

          As a less inflammatory example, when people ask why I don’t drink, and won’t accept “I don’t want to” as an answer. The long version involves philosophy, sense of self, the separation of mental function from the self, and what it means to be me, as well as getting into personal issues that have their own comfort levels.

          The short version can easily come across as me thinking other people shouldn’t want to drink.

        3. thebombzen

          I’ve always phrased it as “It’s a personal choice,” which usually satisfies people. While phrases like, “I don’t need to give you a reason” are true, people never stop there.

        4. DarkoNeko

          > and won’t accept “I don’t want to” as an answer.
          They’re arseholes.

        5. Kryss LaBryn

          I only asked that one time, and that was because I usually put a splash of red wine into my spaghetti sauce, and I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t cause a medical issue.

          Mind you, I said, “I’m just asking because I usually put a splash of red wine into my spaghetti sauce; is that going to cause a medical issue? Or a religious one? I can leave it out if you like but it tastes better with it in.”

          And the answer was, “No, a splash in cooking is fine.”

          And so I made spaghetti sauce with wine.

          The end.

        6. Yet_One_More_Idiot

          People have asked me before why I don’t drink alcohol either. Some people will accept “I just don’t want to”, or “I don’t like it” as an answer, but unsurprisingly some others want a more in depth answer. I usually try to steer clear of anything that would come off as “alcohol is evil and you should feel terrible for liking it”, as I do truly believe that drinking is a personal choice, so I usually just go with “it’s a personal choice”.

          My slightly more personal answer, if I’m really pushed, is quite simply “I can’t stand the smell of alcohol”. It makes me feel nauseated. xD

        7. Victor Riley

          @nothri My apologies, I certainly didn’t mean it like that. It’s not that it’s meant to shut down other points of view.

          It’s more of how when “I’m not explaining it right” is uttered, it’s because they are the ones that waving off the counterargument, as they don’t actually have a good answer for it. So they clearly know they’re saying something that isn’t logically decent… but they don’t want to admit it.

          I think that’s different from having an opinion on a divisive issue, and wanting to be courteous to the other folks involved.

          Clearly, *I’m* not explaining it right. 😉

        8. Bruceski

          The example I like to cite is after my grandfather’s funeral, my mother wanted to visit her old home and we found out that in the *mumblemumble* years since she was a kid the jewish immigrant neighborhood had turned into a black neighborhood, and everything became very uncomfortable. I remember that story as a “you can’t cross the same river twice” thing but if I tell it wrong it comes across as “eew, there’s black people here.”

        9. begbert

          I think the issue with “I didn’t explain it right” is when the person literally doesn’t know a right explanation, but still believes in the correctness of the (horrible) position due to crap reasons, and only believes there’s a right explanation because their conscience and reasoning ability haven’t completely died and thus they can’t quite dismiss the fact their position is horrible.

          This is, of course, something that almost exclusively comes up with inherited beliefs that are held dogmatically. When you just can’t find the right words to explain something, that may (or may not) just be simple inability to word string together goodness.

        10. Reltzik

          I think in this case, Joyce remembers someone ELSE explaining it right, and can’t reproduce that effect.

          The problem is that in this context explaining it right means explaining it in a manner such that the person listening nods their heads and accepts the wisdom of the explanation and is glad that someone put it in such sage and clear terms.

          This says less about the explanation, and more about the listener. The exact same explanation, delivered in the exact same manner, is explaining it right to a ready believer like Joyce but explaining it wrong to a thoughtful skeptic like Dorothy.

        11. Kryss LaBryn

          Yes; sometimes the “explanation” simply boils down to “I believe the person explaining this has more information about this than I do and furthermore is unarguably correct about it, so any failure to fully grasp how what they’re saying isn’t horrible is my own, not theirs or the concept being explained.”

          Plus it doesn’t help that Joyce’s view on marriage from only a few weeks ago would probably be that the man is, you know, the man, and therefore the head of the household, and the woman’s job is to look after him and the household and kids. Hell, she just said that, didn’t she? Certainly while her views on science and sexuality have been challenged recently, her views on marriage haven’t had a chance yet.

          “It makes sense to organize marital duties based on individual strengths.” Yes, Joyce, it does. Regardless of gender.

        12. Captain Button

          So it’s The Emperor’s New Theology?

        13. joy2b

          I am not afraid to say that I cannot explain a topic well.

          For instance, if you ask me what the sun is, I’m likely to waffle between saying gas and plasma. If you ask me what plasma is, I’ll give you the concept, but I’m going to want to pull out wikipedia for a chart. A fun conversation should lead to a few points that aren’t easy to respond to.

          People who know they’ll be asked to explain a topic usually prewrite their words, rehearse, and carry a reference to turn to during the Q&A.

          A sociology question, such as what is marriage, has at least as many answers as there are cultures. All of the answers to that question are likely to sound bad to someone.

          I’m not saying that I agree with Joyce’s point, but I certainly agree with her urge to reexamine the text around that advice.

      2. Cerberus

        That is often the case. Especially when it’s something that’s coming off racist, sexist, homophobic, et al. I’ve had so many discussions with folks who say something awful and then try and argue that no, no, there’s context and they’re just not saying it right, but the underlying assumptions continue to be poisonous and all attempts to explain it away just digs an even bigger hole.

        Hell, Willis had a recent example of that on his tumblr:
        http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/136651045082/the-onslaught-itswalky-sideways77

      3. davidbreslin101

        Mind you, being right and being able to /argue/ that you’re right aren’t always the same thing. I’m not much of a debator, so there must be many murderous whacked-out ranting extremists out there who could whip my sorry ass in an argument.

    3. Spencer

      “Everyone has their set role” is the nicest way I can contextualize what Joyce is saying, and that’s still pretty bad.

      1. TheNinthShader

        Sans is the best.

    4. NerdHerder

      Usually they go with the bit that says husbands are supposed to love their wives in the same way Jesus loved the church (as in, give up their lives for them and maybe die horribly, which still isn’t a great analogy). I think the idea is that the husband is supposed to make the decisions, but from a place of viewing the wife as more important than himself, and he should be willing to sacrifice himself. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s how I explained it to myself when I was still a Christian.

      1. Big

        So its not so much “power” compared to “importance”.
        But its important to remember that over-glorification certain traits is almost as bad as demeaning certain traits (you should be judged on who you are rather than what you are).

      2. Silly Name

        That explanation still ends up making wives subservient to their husbands, though. Sure, you can sugarcoat it by saying that the husband is actually “protecting” the wife, but the bottom line still is ‘women shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions’.

        1. NerdHerder

          Hey, I never said it was a *good* reason. It was just the best fundy me could do at the time.

      3. Historyman68

        Also, it’s the exact same thing Ross said to Becky (“I would die for you”), which still just comes off as creepy.

    5. Leorale

      A different religion, but one just as patriarchal: I went to an Orthodox Jewish middle school, and the teachers said that women have their created role as mothers/teachers/keepers of the home (whereas the men had their role as scholars and God’s-commandment-followers). My female teachers said that they were cool with the woman’s role because it was honored, respected, and important. They did not consider themselves oppressed — everyone followed commandments from the same source (that is, God), but it was gendered which commandments you were responsible for.

      (YMMV, and self-selecting sample. If you bought into your role, and loved raising kids, then yahtzee for you. If you didn’t, well, then that would’ve been tough.)

      Personally, I feel strongly that separate was not equal (and I can back that up at length). It blew my young mind that my Orthodox teachers didn’t feel oppressed. I think a major difference was that they felt that everyone was following God’s laws, not just that the wives were following the husband’s laws.

    6. Dalrint

      That Not-the-oatmeal christian comic guy had a comic trying to explain it right and it still came off awful.

      1. Jhennaside

        Do you have a link? I’d love to see that.

        1. Cerberus

          http://adam4d.com/wives-husbands/

        2. ScarvesandCelery

          That really is terrible. His comic on gay rights is just as bad. Typical “love the sinner, hate the sin” passive aggression.
          The defence of that Ephesians passage that I hear the most is that it’s meant to be describing a “mutual act of submission to God”

        3. modulusshift

          I swear, Christians labeling themselves countercultural is the worst thing. What sort of doublethink leads to “we’re so countercultural, like Christ and the Roman Christians” at the same time as “this is a godfearing nation, if we take “in God we trust” off our currency everything will go to shit, and also we have to legislate Christian morals and only the goddamned atheistic minority is complaining.”

          And I can’t help but think that the message of this comic, even if it would be okay for some couples, completely misinterprets the passage. “submit to your husbands, as to the Lord…” So is your relationship with God mostly between equals? Does he listen to your suggestions? If so, could you let him know that life really sucks for a lot of us down here, and we’d really appreciate some help?

    7. Jhennaside

      Back when I was a church goer, my interpretation of it was that the man is the head of the household and must be willing, as Jesus did for the church, to sacrifice himself for the wife. The wife, like the church, must in turn serve the husband.

      Now I ascribe to my own ideals of being as fair as possible, working together as a team, and being open and honest no matter what. Teamwork is key.

      1. Cerberus

        I love the inherent inequality set there that’s just glossed over.

        You must sacrifice now, constantly, unerringly, in ways that highlight your inequality and role as appliance to me. In return, I offer a vague promise that if the time should come, I totally promise that I’ll definitely “sacrifice” for you. And it’ll be in a big dramatic fashion that would more than make up for all this awfulness day in and day out.

        Hell, theoretical me would literally jump in front of a dark matter bullet fired by time assassins saving you in the nick of time, before I bust out my awesome super kung fu powers I totally think I’d have in a crisis, beating them up before I was erased from time and space. And that theoretically possible instance of over-the-top heroism really means you owe me this service now.

        I mean, fuck, what’s a few “lie back and think of England”s in return for that totally awesome “sacrifice” I’ll totally not be too much in a trauma response to perform when this totally likely threat to your life (in suburban America) definitely occurs.

        1. thejeff

          “I would die for you, Joyce. I would die for you.”

        2. modulusshift

          I’ve never heard of it as a literal, specific sacrifice. That’s pretty dumb. There’s no moral decree to protect your wife from ninjas, one would hope you’d just do it, if you could.

          The actual subtext seems to be “love unerringly and eternally, no matter what, even if she’s horrible to you, and literally murders you. Like the Church, and also Eve, she has no inbuilt morality, and so shouldn’t be trusted with decisions (lest she damn the whole human race again), and since you are a godfearing man, you should be a perfect role model to your entire family. Also, fuck your wife a lot, like I guess Jesus did?!? Also, make her do all the work you don’t want to, and just generally boss her around. Clearly her *not* doing housework is an instance of this lack of morality. Jesus made Martha do housework that one time, and she hated it, and he still said she should do it, so yeah, there you go. For your part, choose the better half, and sit at the feet of Jesus, listening to his every word. Or, actually, no. Go passively watch something in the living room. Like football. There.”

        3. joy2b

          I really love the Martha and Mary passage. As a rabbi, he stepped up specifically to protect both the learning time and the freedom of choice of a female student.

          That’s a really interesting moment.

          The NIV version of that is: 38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” 41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one.[a] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.

        4. Cerberus

          Which brings it back to it being a false equality based on a fake promise.

          Like, oh, the man has sacrifices, totes, well, no one believes he’s actually going to take a bullet for you, but can you pretend he will cause otherwise it looks like you’re relegating yourself to being his property for no good reason.

  4. Cameron

    Haha! This is funny

  5. whataname

    This’ll be an interesting experience methinks.

  6. Victor Riley

    Well, when going logically… Joyce is quite feminist.

    1. Victor Riley

      At least as far as same-sex marriages go…

      Maybe that means she’s heterophobic? (Granted, it’s not a thing… but that doesn’t stop some people.)

      1. Mydnyt

        Oh no I promise you it’s a thing. Generally a heteronormative is a straight hating gay person who believes that there are two types of straight people in the world, Those who hate you to your face and those who hate you behind your back. Brian Kinney from Queer as Folk is a fairly benign example but there are angry violent ones too. Not as many and not as loud as the homophobes but they do exist

        1. Mydnyt

          Why did it autocorrect heterophobe to heteronormative?

        2. Opus the Poet

          Because Damn You Autocorrect…

        3. Reltzik

          When Autocorrect corrects Damn You Autocorrect to Damn You Willis, we will have won.

          …. I do not know WHAT we will have won, but it will be winning nonetheless.

        4. ninja_jesus

          Heterophobia and Homophobia exist on separate plains of social inequality. Homophobia is institutionalized; heterophobia is interpersonal, meaning it varies from person to person.

          Besides, anyone who is “heterophobic” can easily be traced back to being a victim of Homophobia. In that sense, heterophobia isn’t a cause, but a symptom of a worse problem; Homophobia.

          I personally think that “heterophobia” is synonymous with “ignorance”. Maybe that gay person doesn’t like them, not because of “heterophobia”, but because of their own blatant homophobia.

        5. ninja_jesus

          planes**

        6. TheNinthShader

          I read your edit before reading your comment, I was thinking ¨what the hell do planes have to do with that comment¨

        7. realdudeface

          Shitty behavior on the basis of other’s demographic doesn’t stop being shitty behavior because people are shitty to them due to their demographic.

        8. TheNinthShader

          *Shitty people are shittier when other shitty people become more shitty

        9. DarkoNeko

          How about heterochromia ?

        10. Tan

          Heterochromia is awesome, no hate plz.

        11. davidbreslin101

          You’re dead right about the social inequality. I have encountered precisely one heterophobe, and he wasn’t exactly threatening to anyone. Homophobes? Everyone at the school I went to for a start, including me til I learned better and probably a few LGBT people who used “gay” as an insult to fit in.

        12. Aslee

          And that was the day Joyce realized that being gay just made more damn sense.

      2. GuruBuckaroo

        Heterophobic not a thing? Let me introduce you to tumblr.

        Yes, I know I’m a middle aged white cishet man, but I can only see “die cishet scum” so many times before I admit they may just hate me a little, regardless of my beliefs, experiences, and actions.

        1. KPG

          Heterophobia isn’t a thing because these concepts mean institutionalized power. Literally your excuse of heterophobia is a phrase on the internet, clearly not meant literally, and also used by people parodying the concept of social justice. To not be “persecuted” you just have to follow better people on the internet.

          Meanwhile, there are countries I could be killed legally for being gay.

          Different pronunciations of potato, this is not. Heterophobia is not real. LGBT folk being frustrated at being treated like shit is.

          [Think about it this way. “Ugh, the hold time for this customer service always take forever, I hate them.” A. There are definitely times when there are not such long hold times. B. At best you are strongly irritated by the company. C. You definitely don’t hate the random minimum wage worker on the phone line. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a problem with the system, or one of the employees of that company should be acting personally hurt by you telling them you hate them.]

        2. a4lbi

          Yea, this.

        3. madock345

          I don’t think that sounds right. Homophobia is a term for a attitude/belief/whatever on the individual level. I don’t think straight people are oppressed, they’re clearly not. That doesn’t mean I haven’t met other gay people who hold heterophobic beliefs.

          If just that particular word which bothers you, if you believe it implies a kind of oppression or institutionalization, I can work with that. is there another word you would prefer I use for anti-heterosexual attitudes held by a person?

        4. The E-man

          I tend to use “prejudice”. (ex: they’re a little prejudiced against straight people) It’s applicable to many situations where people use the words heterophobia, reverse racism, cisphobia, and misandry. It also avoids the aforementioned list of words which tend to imply a larger movement rather than personal feelings of individual people.

          It’s not perfect (prejudice tends to have a connotation of being in the wrong when many people may have valid reasons to feel that way) but I think it works pretty well.

        5. fairwinds42

          It exists in the sense that the mentality exists for some people(eg that heteronormitive people are shallow, all hateful, unintelligent, and inferior), it’s just not as pervasive a problem to warrant the same breadth of focus that homophobia deserves.

          There are some problems that do exist such as the mob mentality of citizen journalism, Doxing, and harassment, but they’re relatively small. As a loosely related issue, there are also some issues with perception of hetero gender-roles that can be encouraged by the queer-advocacy community, but those tend to be very small issues regarding prioritization.

          This is largely semantic but hey, this is just us being keyboard warriors on the internet so it’s not like this discussion will likely have significant or substantive effects.

        6. Cerberus

          This. And this applies to Mydnyt dude as well.

          Heterophobia is not real in the same way that reverse racism isn’t real in the same way that misandry isn’t real in the same way that cisphobia isn’t real.

          Because marginalized groups do not have institutional power to draw on even if they have prejudice. There is no real impact on the lives of straight people or white people or cis people or dudes by those who do not shares those axes of privilege, no matter how angry or bitter the marginalized group members get.

          And honestly, the fact that the marginalized groups do face constant bombardment by oppression and its negative impact on their life in addition to a large number of privileged people refusing to even acknowledge these inequalities, means that marginalized group members are rather fucking justified in fearing or hating their oppressors.

          When women are frequently murdered by abusive exes if they leave and slammed with “why don’t you leave” if they stay. When black people watch their children get gunned down as “threats” while white men threatening police with guns don’t even get arrested. When gay people can legally lose their jobs for admitting who they love and only recently were allowed the same legal rights of marriage (and that’s not in every country). When trans people are killed this frequently for being trans…

          Well, yeah, some members are going to rightfully feel pretty “fuck off” about it and are rather justified to fear for their safety or feel that interactions with people with power on those axes will go negatively or involve suffering more undue suffering.

          It’s not really the same thing as some straight boy seeing some angsty teen screaming “fuck off straights” on their personal journal webpage and deciding that this somehow equals the systemic oppression they personally benefit from.

        7. madock345

          I guess I perceive the claim that something isn’t real very differently than the claim that it isn’t a major issue.

          I’d definitely agree that none of those things that you mention in your second paragraph are major issues. They don’t cause any kind of wide-spread harm. But to say they don’t exist… I don’t think that’s a good way to phrase it.

          There are people who have these beliefs. There are people who have suffered from them. Not nearly as many as from homophobia or racism of course, which is why dealing with them is not a priority, because they are rare and small scale in their impact, but to say that they aren’t real implies they don’t exist at all.

          This presents a very absolutist kind of mentality, which is never constructive, and dismisses the experience of those who have suffered from these attitudes, however few they are.

        8. Cerberus

          Except who has? Where’s the examples of these minority members who totes for sure have irrational and unjustified hatreds for the privileged classes? Who cannot point to specific microaggressions that make them shy away from specific types of interactions largely because they have historically been unsafe.

          I get a little anxious automatically around drunken straight frat boys. It’s not because I hate them or view them as subhuman. It’s because a drunken straight frat boy casually talked about circling back around to murder me because he thought I tricked his boner with “fake” lesbians.

          Most any examples anyone can point of these reverse bigotries being real often either follow this or are not pointing to anything hateful at all (see MRAs who try and argue that women pointing out rape culture exists is proof of misandry).

          It’s theoretically possible, but it hasn’t been born out in the cases it has been claimed and the argument itself feels off to me. Like, why are people invested in this being a thing other than to use it as a means of trying to lessen or show false equivalence with either institutional oppression or active bigotry?

        9. Spencer

          Pretty much the whole truth.

          While I do view it as “real, just not remotely equivalent or damaging to a point where it might as well be non-existent”, it’s not equivalent to apprehension and fear felt by actual oppressed groups. It’s just a fact, and it’s incredibly annoying even thinking the way I do because “everyone is prejudiced” is so often used as a way to shut down any discussion or acknowledge any power imbalance in society.

          Or in other words: when I was scared coming out to my dad, it wasn’t because I thought his feeble straight mind couldn’t take the radiant beauty of my bisexuality; it was because I thought my life was about to be ruined.

        10. Cerberus

          Yeah. And it’s even worse when one’s life is actually ruined or at least made significantly more difficult because of those issues. Like, I genuinely do hate TERFs (like passionately despise them) and it’s not because I can’t handle their “gender critical” “questions” or because I’m suffering from buried prejudice.

          It’s because a TERF straight up told my parents, repeatedly, that being trans is a delusion and an affront to reality, thus prompting them, or at least my dad, into trying to angle me into reparative therapy and other TERFs have tried to get kids I’ve mentored to kill themselves by repeatedly harassing them and deadnaming them while threatening to out them to their parents.

        11. Ranthog

          Disliking people whose defining feature is their prejudice against trans people I don’t think is unreasonable or irrational. (Sadly, most any large movement will have these elements.)

          I think what people miss is that if someone who falls under the LGBT umbrella hates heterosexuals as a group, is understandable. It likely comes from the discrimination and betrayal of trust they’ve received from others. No one is born or raised to hate straight people. It isn’t a healthy feeling for someone to have. But it also has little consequence for others as a whole.

          On the other hand, homophobia doesn’t generally have roots in others actions. It comes from a common social prejudice. It also has terrible and systematic consequences to a variety of areas (suicide, murder, assault, rape, depression, mental health, employ-ability, average pay, and etc).

          So why no one would say either is a positive feeling to have, their natures are different when you dig beyond that.

        12. Kryss LaBryn

          “Oh, no. Better hide that I’m in a heterosexual relationship or I might lose my job. Better not hold hands with my husband when we’re in public or random people may attack us, either verbally or physically. Better hide that I’m a woman married to a man or Child Protective Services might want to take away my kids. Better not tell my parents that I’m in a straight relationship or they might disown me and hate me forever.”

          -No Straight Person, Ever.

        13. Captain Button

          Do people at least blow up family gatherings by suddenly bringing an opposite gender date?

        14. Cerberus

          Captain Button –

          *gasp* That would be shockingly inappropriate and clearly just done for attention if they did.

        15. not yet

          Hang on, if everyone agrees that prejudice against privileged groups is technically a thing even though it doesn’t matter – a view I completely agree with – why does it always get worded as “it literally has not existed anywhere ever”? Every time I see that it feels like someone I otherwise agree with has either contradicted reality or is using ridiculous definitions, and I have an urge to get into long, pointless, pedantic semantics arguments with them even though we seem to be on the same side.

        16. Cerberus

          not yet –
          It’s not so much that nobody has ever experienced prejudice, fear, and so on towards dominant group members. It’s the way the whole setup is dishonest.

          Lest we forget this “debate” opened with people claiming that heterophobia was a real thing (this implies inherently a system of oppression that is on par with if maybe not to scale of homophobia) and this has since been goalpost shifted to hatred (but a hatred that implies hatred due to a person’s dominant group identity).

          And well, that raises all sorts of bad faith alarm bells because it really seems like there’s an air of “if we can make them admit that the marginalized communities are ‘hateful’ then we can somehow make the terrible experiences of institutional bigotry somehow less because we all hate and we’re just unlucky to hate on the marginalized in ways that make us look like assholes”. This might not happen. But it’s happened enough in these types of conversations to make me wary.

          And it really doesn’t help matters when no one seems to be bringing up any examples of this stuff that isn’t a terrible example of supposed “hatred”.

        17. Spencer

          That’s a good way to put it. I think that, if we are going to acknowledge it’s real, it’s best to describe it in terms of “instances” rather than a persistent, ingrained system of beliefs. I can acknowledge it as long as it comes with a glittering neon post-it about how it’s totally microscopic in the grand scheme of things and that the existence of BET doesn’t mean that white dudes are the new underclass.

          And like, I have had occasional instances of “oh you’re a guy/white/straight(ha) therefore you xyz and must think this way”, but I’d never actually pretend these brief events were in any way equivalent to actual systematic oppression. It’s just a weird thing that happens and then I go on with my life.

          But, yeah, you’re absolutely right. Far too often these “reverse prejudice” examples come off as “this means it’s okay for me to be a bigoted asshole, because they aren’t all what I deem to be perfect specimens of their respective groups”.

        18. not yet

          Cerberus-
          To me, it doesn’t look like the goalposts shifted. I don’t see any difference between an X-phobia or X-ism and “hatred/prejudice based on X”. Fine, you’re using a different definition. I think it’s unusual, but I’ll admit it’s not completely unsupported. But you must realize that the unusual definition is the cause of a lot of this debate, right? If you dismissed “heterophobia” as irrelevant, which it is, you’d be unquestionably in the right, and I’d hope no one would get confused about what you meant. The debate would be clearly defined, and you hopefully wouldn’t still be getting “but it totally does exist” arguments in response.

          You’re not obligated to educate anyone, of course, least of all me. But what do you expect to see happen when you’re using a definition that’s not accepted or understood even by a lot of people who agree with you? You’re insisting on an unusual and (in my opinion) unhelpful definition, which leaves an easy opening to counterarguments, and it’s frustrating to watch so much of people arguing past each other.

          I do agree that the “but people are prejudiced against us too!” argument is usually offered in bad faith. Even if it were true – hell, even if it were just as bad – it doesn’t mean that prejudice against other groups is acceptable. It’s an irrelevant argument but that doesn’t mean the claim itself is wrong.

        19. Captain Button

          I guess I perceive the claim that something isn’t real very differently than the claim that it isn’t a major issue.

          This. In these kind of arguments the distinction between “X is a trivial problem” and “X does not exist” often gets muddled.

          And if not phrased carefully it can look like people are being told things they’ve seen or experienced are hallucinations, or that they are liars.

        20. Buhzim

          Which is why I’m not a fan of the “needs to be an institucionalized power” point of view. You could point out cases where it happened but it will be dismissed an an exception to the rule or anedoctal evidence.

        21. StClair

          So is there a term for hate and bigotry that definitely exists, but without power behind it to translate it into action? (Did I just name it, ie, “hate” and/or “bigotry”?)

        22. Victor Riley

          Thanks KPG, you got to it before I did. 🙂

          It may exist on an individual level (like a “black racist”), because anyone can be anything. But in the primary context, it is about an institutional power. Individual Gay people can hate me all they want for being straight… but it isn’t going to affect me, ultimately. I won’t be denied a job, or be shunned by society for loving who I love, etc.

          Plus, a big difference… I can understand why a gay person would be “heterophobic” against me just for being hetero. Because heteros have hurt them… for several thousand years. Both institutionally and individually.

          I didn’t expect my silly throwaway comment to actually be a subject of actual discourse.

        23. Captain Button

          I didn’t expect my silly throwaway comment to actually be a subject of actual discourse.

          I’ve been online since the 80s and it has always been my experience that the biggest arguments always start like that.

          And then when you carefully craft something serious about a controversial topic it often just drops into the void unnoticed.

          Humans.

        24. Victor Riley

          Guess I better carefully craft my gags from now on. 🙂

        25. Cerberus

          This.

          Also doesn’t usually help the “reverse -ism iz real” types that oftentimes when they are pushed for examples they either cite people pointing out that systemic oppression actually exists in a completely reasonable manner, people who are making an obvious joke, or people who are justifiably bitter about recent bad actions in their life.

          Like, this person just had a terrible week of homophobia and so screamed out “fuck off straights” in frustration. Clearly this is a sign of personal prejudice that we can somehow angle as being the same as casually arguing that gay people are “diseased” or that they are “shoving their sexuality in our faces”.

        26. Lumino

          It’s a dangerous line you walk there. Where is the distinction between what is ‘acceptable’ to be upset about? I absolutely agree that the struggles of the politically and socially oppressed is of no comparison to some Tumblr Warrior lashing out to a Cis-Het Scum like myself.

          But, at its very basic level, that is hatred of someone who is different than you. And I think we can all agree that, no matter the target, that isn’t acceptable. It might not be pronounced, it might not lead to lethal danger, it might be common, but it DOES exist.

          I understand that the trials and problems affecting you are so much greater than any that will be pressed against me for my lifestyle choices, but does that make me an acceptable target for the hatred of your peers? Is hating me OK so long as someone I share a quality with wronged someone you share a quality with?

          I figured that nobody here means anything like this, we’re all decent people here. Just be aware, it’s a slippery slope. Nobody is ‘deserving’ of hatred and bigotry is never ‘justified’.

        27. Cerberus

          I’m honestly not fully sure where you’re coming with this. And I’m not sure it’s helped by the fact that your response is to this particular comment of mine listing the three things I see dominant group members claiming reverse -ism on.

          Especially since you drop a few things that reinforce that. Like the whole “cis scum” thing, which is… well, fucking stupid. But it’s also about scum, about people who are being shitty to trans folk, not all cis people. Usually uttered when someone’s had a shit day because someone cis has been shitty to them. That’s what I’ve seen in the trans and queer groups I’ve mentored.

          And that particular word choice is definitely not helped by the use of “lifestyle choice” later on.

          But with regards to the point I think you are trying to make, I can say, no, you shouldn’t get away with hatred and oppression because you can make up a good reason why the other person deserves it.

          But I think that is far and away a different thing than some marginalized kid being frustrated and impolitic when they’re dealing with an epic shitstorm of societal oppression and gaslighting.

        28. Shiro

          I say this as kindly as I can: sometimes you need to take a step back and realize it’s not about you, it’s about the various cisgendered and heterosexual people the speakers have run into who’ve made them feel less than human. What you should do is strive to not be one of those people.

        29. Shiro

          On a reread, I feel I should amend: not about you *specifically

        30. Buhzim

          Hateful behavior all the same.I don’t think a “DIE HOMO SCUM”-type blog should excuse itself on the grounds that it’s not about you specifically, just the various transgendered and homosexual people the speaker has met.

        31. Cerberus

          Um… dude. Politely? You’ve been referencing this tumblr shit a lot of times in not that oblique ways (yes, we get it, you’re thinking “die cis scum” is your magical bullet). And well…if some kid’s tumblr page feels like hatred, prejudice, and oppression to you, may I politely suggest that you may not really have the life experiences to really understand what being hated for what you are is and feels like*.

          *I’ve been spat on. I’ve been threatened with murder. I’ve been discriminated against and disowned. I’ve had parents shield their children’s eyes from me as if my nature was infectious and might confuse them about the “proper roles” of men and women. I’ve had neo-nazis get up in my face. I’ve been denied meals at restaurants. I’ve had people try and get me thrown out of shops because my existence is “inappropriate”. I live in a world where what I am means I’m in one of the most likely communities to face a hate crime by percentage. I’m constantly dealing with people calling me an “it” or various other slurs.

          When someone says “die trans scum” or “die homo scum” or let’s be honest and drop this false equivalence. If someone yells at me “die (slur for gay man)” or “die (slur for trans woman” not online but in real life or says that people like me are garbage and should die, it plays directly into those actions I listed above. It carries the implicit weight of everything above and a lot more I didn’t even add to that list (yes, that’s the short version of the shit being trans has brought with it, I didn’t even get into the threats of corrective rape).

          It can be taken seriously because in our real world, individuals who say things like that really do regularly kill people because they saw them as gay or they saw them as trans. This is a piece of my reality that I have to keep in mind when I go outside. It’s why I’ve gotten real good, like most trans people, to adopt emotional armor for any task in public.

          In the actual false equivalence of some kid saying “die cis scum”. Well… cis people don’t face any of those realities, don’t have any reason to fear. There’s no danger that a trans person is going to murder them for being cis. There’s no history of that being a real thing that happens. There’s no tying in to societal oppression or that daily array of small injustices that make you think twice about dismissing a specific threat. There’s no PTSD-induced hyper-awareness.

          There’s no genuine belief that those attitudes influence policy on straight or cis rights or will impact one’s life in negative ways. There’s no genuine belief that others will be motivated to violence or mistreatment of you because of those words.

          There’s no hatred. There is no oppression.

          And yet this is a really illustrative example of this type of false equivalence. A kid on a tumblr page feels to a dominant group member like it must be the same as hatred in the same way as an activist being stern must be hatred or people pointing out oppression must be operating from hatred.

          Because for dominant groups, there’s no context for them on what hatred is and how it impacts one’s life. To them, they are used to getting a free pass on X and not having that free pass feels like badness. They are used to people checking their words and choking back their pain, so seeing people on the internet unleash their frustrations feels like it must be similar.

          And yet, by revealing this feeling, it demonstrates rather neatly that no. These situations aren’t equivalent and they are never going to be.

        32. Cerberus

          And also, F you for making me defend “die cis scum” dumbassery. It’s not hateful, it’s just a fucking idiotic joke that lent asshole cis people ammo to play martyr. Kids, just accept the joke failed and move the fuck on.

        33. StClair

          I really don’t feel that some of the people saying it are doing so as a joke. They may not have the power or the will to take it beyond speech, but I believe that the statement and the feelings behind it are sincere.

        34. Doomington

          I’d disagree with you on that one point. You can say it’s not nearly as bad as the alternative and I’ll agree with you, but to say a comment isn’t hateful just because it doesn’t have decades of systemic hate behind it isn’t true. It might not be in the same league, but it’s still hateful. (I see it more as a personal insult, although I admit this type of thing usually comes up for me in racial discussions and not gender discussions. But regardless, even though a personal insult isn’t on the same level as systemic hate, that doesn’t excuse it)

        35. Buhzim

          Nothing like being politely told to go fuck myself. Most people don’t bother with manners by this point.

          First of all, sorry if you took my comment as an insult or a sign of disdain for any trouble you may have gone through. I just don’t agree with the idea that hateful actions and beliefs can be “less bad” depending on the perpetrator and the group they belong to. The poster above me claimed “well it’s not about you specifically” so I felt like pointing out that it doesn’t matter. If simply reversing the roles makes the situation repulsive, then it wasn’t harmless to begin with.

          In any case you’re assuming a lot of things when you say you “get it”and how I “didn’t experience being hated”. No, you don’t get it, you don’t know me, you’ve just read my opinion on a particular subject scattered around a few short posts. Your posts are much more eloquent and detailed than mine and I don’t feel like I know enough about you to pull the AH I SEE YOU’RE ONE OF *THOSE* PEOPLE card whe we disagree on something.

          Secondly, I also happen to disagree with the idea that there needs to be institucional power behind hostility or it “doesn’t exist”. You can only see it as “dumb kids trolling on the internet” because you don’t think it can be “real”. I can’t argue against that in the same way that I can’t discuss the nature of god with an atheist, who rejects the idea to begin with.

          Third, I don’t understand why you felt the need to defend a group you define as “idiotic trolls”, but I didn’t *make* you do anything.

        36. Rutee

          @Buhzim: Yer comparing ‘cis scum’ from like 10 people on the web to actual shit that affects one’s walking around day. It’s a pretty safe bet you don’t know visceral hate too well.

          @Cerberus: Two things. One, watch out for ‘you don’t know oppression’. Poverty is omnipresent, especially amongst Meriken. Be super careful with it.
          Two: Yeah, the whole ‘cis scum’ thing really sends cis people bananas, I can’t say I really get it. At least saying we’re misandrists is still fine.

        37. Buhzim

          No such thing as a safe bet.You too are assuming things about a total stranger you know fuck all about. However I don’t think it would be healthy to start a contest to see who faced the most problems in life just to win an argument on the internet, so beieve what you want.

        38. Rutee

          Oh, I might provisionally be wrong, but given everything you’ve said, you’ve provided no actual /reason/ to think I am. This comes across as standard equivocating, nothing more.

        39. Cerberus

          Rutee- In my slight defense I did say:

          “may I politely suggest that you may not really have the life experiences to really understand what being hated for what you are is and feels like”

          And I stand by that last part most of all. Not because Buhzim hasn’t ever experienced a single axis of oppression (though the defending Ephesians down thread and the “you don’t know me” whining is setting off my edgelord alarm bells, but that might just because I’ve had too may encounters with that particular subgroup). But because I don’t believe you can believe that kids on tumblr (kids who are venting on tumblr because it is not safe for them to be out to their families or their schools) saying some shit amongst themselves in much the same way someone coming home from a bad date might respond to a question about how things are going with “I hate all men” as equal to being hated for what you are.

          And that bit is my major point. “Hatred” can mean a lot of things. And there seems to be this weird… not conflation but deliberate pairing of hatred on the level of “I don’t prefer mushrooms” to well… what I put up with. Dealing day in and day out with the intimate knowledge that people hate me. Want to do harm on me. Would not cry or render aid if I was injured in front of them. And having that backed by institutions.

          It’s not that this is oppression, it’s that hate as a flavor-text is a bit different than hatred. Than having your safety genuinely threatened, than being made to feel actively unwelcome in public spaces, than having to deal with bullshit day in and day out until it feels normal. Than having someone think of you so little that musing about snuffing you out is as meaningless and small to them as a fart.

          And hate in its fluffy bunny definition of “gosh, I hate being treated like shit by assholes” is a bit different than being hated for what you are. See, I don’t have to be a dick to get fuckers in my face. I don’t have to seek out kids on tumblr to feel like a victim. I don’t try and pretend that some kids on a blog with literally no institutional power “literally mean me harm”. I just get it because what I am constitutes in their mind a direct threat to how they’d prefer to view the world.

          A straight person or a cis person does not have to worry about being hated because they are straight or because they are cis. They are allowed to be human beings with complexities even when disliked.

          More often than not, when I am hated in public spaces, it is because of what I am and I know that because I remember how I used to be able to interact with those same public spaces back when I thought I was a cis heteroromantic dude.

          And that’s an experience that I feel most people are ignoring or hand-waving as “yeah, yeah, oppression, we get it”. No. It’s not about it being oppression even though it is. It’s about what actual hatred for what you are feels like and how that fucks up your whole life.

        40. Buhzim

          “Not because Buhzim hasn’t ever experienced a single axis of oppression (though the defending Ephesians down thread and the “you don’t know me” whining is setting off my edgelord alarm bells, but that might just because I’ve had too may encounters with that particular subgroup).”

          But you don’t know me. I don’t know you either. We exchanged a few posts anonymously on a webcomic comment section. “Hearing alarm bells” is just a funny way of saying you’re trying to fit me into a label to quickly dismiss an opinion of mine that you disagree with. You kept assuming things about me even though the only information I shared about myself is that I’m a male. Other than that I’m a complete stranger on the internet, so speculating about my life experiences and how I had an easier time or whatever because I disagree with you on a sensitive matter is naive at best, and the unnecessary snark (“kindly go F yourself”) makes it sound like plain arrogance. I understand this topic is important to you but next time try not let past sour experiences make you jump to conclusions.

        41. Falcon

          Thank you. I remember an online friend explaining once why black people saying the ‘n’ word wasn’t racist the way it was when Caucasians did. It’s not a viewpoint that comes naturally to me, but I found myself convinced. Unfortunately, I subsequently forgot the reasoning, and now I remember.

        42. Bagge

          *slowclap*

          The key-word is oppression. Cis people are not systematically marginalized and discriminated against on a societal level. Trans people are.

        43. Buhzim

          Wasn’t disputing that.

        44. Safgaftsa

          This. This is an excellent comment.

        45. StClair

          I submit that while there is no oppression, there is hatred. That it is not backed by power, but it exists.

          Humans, among our other qualities and abilities, are very good at hating the Other. For lack of one, we will find or even make one up.

        46. Cisco

          I should preface this comment with personal attributes. I’m male, mixed-race, and panromantic.

          I have never been on the receiving end of homophobia and the such, which is more of luck than anything.

          I go to one of the most accepting schools possible. I’d give an estimate of about 1/4 of the school being LBTGQ+. We have a strong GSA. But those people are not at all tolerant.

          Calling the “die cishet scum” thing a joke is inaccurate, at least in my experience. Essentially, the LBGT people I’m near are regualarly stating things like “cis-males should be eliminated from society” or “Straight people should be gay”. They aren’t kidding when they say that. Remember, my area is super tolerant of people of all kinds. The only hatred the majority of them have experienced are either online or they have heard people hate their group of people. I want to make this clear; I agree that the “reverse-racism” type of mentalities aren’t as high impact as homophobia, at least not to the hated on groups. I think the problem those mentalities cause is that they weaken the LGBTQ+ community. They make people in that community, such as me, to be ashamed of it. The people I talked about earlier alienate the majority of people in the hopes of getting them to their side. Let’s face it, white, straight, cis-males hold the majority of power, at least in the U.S. The Tumblr groups and the “Feminazis” are all they and the majority of people hear about.

          My personal problem with these mentalities is that the GSA’s and such should be preaching peace and rights, but instead spread more hatred and alienate the people who might be able to help them.

          Anyway, that’s my position.

        47. Cisco

          Also, I should state that my experience is likely isolated. My apologies.

        48. Lumino

          You said what I tried to much better than I did. That’s what it comes down to, at the end of the day. The hatred on one side might not be to the same magnitude as the hate on the other side, but it is STILL hate.

          How far does hate have to go before it is legitimate? Bryce Williams (a black, gay reporter) murdered two of his straight white co-workers, later citing his race and sexual identity as crucial factors in his decision. Yes, the man was clearly imbalanced, but does that make what he did any less of a hate crime?

          I guess the question I want to ask is, “When does ‘hate’ become legitimate?” How many people need to die, be tortured or openly attacked before we are allowed to qualify it as ‘hate’? It’s been claimed (not by the person I am responding to, I’m just rambling here) that the hate on both sides is not equivalent.

          Well, if you aren’t defining the hate from its base definition of ‘attacking someone because they are different’, then there must be an actual definition when it becomes hate. So what is the body count limit when it becomes legitimate?

        49. Cerberus

          Lumino-

          Hey, finally, a real example of hatred for reasons of identity against dominant group members. Thank you.

        50. Eolirin

          I always wish there were an easier more socially appropriate way to sympathize with stuff like this, as an outsider, in a way that doesn’t risk coming across as diminishing of the rawness of that experience. It’s completely awful that anyone has to deal with that, and it never feels like there’s a good enough way to reach out and show solidarity given the horrifying scope of it all. 🙁

        51. LynziGraye

          *sympathy via light physical contact*

          I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through.

        52. Cerberus

          Eh, it’s just my normal. Which I guess sounds kinda sick when I say it aloud, but… it has become normal to experience. I know when I go get groceries I’m gonna need my armor up and I’m going to get the usual bullshit glances and glares. I’ve got my trans defensive posture pretty much on automatic and I know the usual probabilities that I’m going to have a hypervigilance issue. I know what locations and times out and about are most likely to trigger it.

          It’s still annoying, but it’s like the dull ache of a recovering bruise. And there’s a lot of good in my life that I get to focus on as well, so I just muddle through and do my activism in my neighborhood to try and improve things so the next generation of me won’t have to adopt the same battery of emotional defenses to get food.

        53. Buhzim

          As for defending the Ephesians passage, that was another person. I was trying to clarify what they meant since I thought people interpreted him wrong. The way you thought that was enough reason to lump us together into some sort of subgroup brings me back to the “you assume a lot of things” bit.

        54. Buhzim

          Dammit, how did this end up appearing all the way down here, lol. It’s still technically a reply to the same thread but it was meant for a couple iindentations above.

        55. Doomington

          The problem is when you make a comment like that, it very easily comes across as applying that attribute to an entire group. While said comment may not be directed at you, if you are a member of the group it is directed at, it may come across as an indirect personal attack. “He is attacking all X and I am an X therefore he is attacking me.”

          The “strive to not be one of those people” comment also doesn’t help that matter, because it implies in this context “if you are , you need to actively try to not . I could easily take that comment as meaning you expect that in general, the group of people in question does something bad by nature, and by me being a member of that group, you expect that I also do that thing. If you directly accused me of that, I’d be offended. By indirectly doing so, you are provoking a lesser but still pretty negative response. All because something you said made me think that you think I am a terrible person, when in reality you are talking about one or two jerks in particular who really are terrible people.

        56. Li

          FYI, if you’re a member of a privileged group, you DO need to critically examine your behavior, because you were steeped in privilege growing up, taught to be against those who are oppressed in myriad ways, and it will take conscious effort on your part to fix yourself.

          I’m white. That means I am racist by default. When I read descriptions of what racist white people have done, I take a moment to check my own behavior and remind myself not to do a thing. This is especially helpful with microaggressions, small things we might do or let slide without even noticing.

          Being racist doesn’t make me unfixably evil, but it does mean I need to work to unlearn shit.

          And since your reaction to being told that marginalized people saying “down with cis” is them reacting to pain and oppression is to say “but your making me defensive by not specifying that I’m not personally oppressing you,” you’re unlikely to be doing any of that work.

          You are in fact transphobic / homophobic, and if you actually want to BE a good ally instead of just calling yourself one on the internet, you have a lot of work to do.

        57. Doomington

          I don’t buy the “racist/sexist/etc by default” nonsense. I do think society as a whole has some catching up to do, but on an individual level we should judge people on a case by case basis. It’s wrong to believe that someone you know nothing about is racist just by looking at the color of their skin, or homophobic just by whose hand they are holding. You can believe the system itself is bad without believing that every individual that makes it up is bad.

          I don’t care what your reason for making the comment is, fighting hate with hate makes the conflict go from “good v bad” to “bad vs slightly less bad”. Trying to justify your hate and claiming it doesn’t count (but that other guy’s does because he’s a member of the majority group) is pretty much guaranteed to result in the other guy thinking “I’m wasting my time talking about this”. I should know- I’ve been on both sides of these arguments before, in different topics.

          Thats why I separate the individual and overall arguments. You can point out the problem, but don’t attack potential allies in the process. You don’t judge an individual based on the group they belong to and instead judge them based on their own words and actions. I find making mutual allies with people who share my views but just need a gentle nudge in the right direction to be far more effective than the “you are bad and you need to fix it, but don’t worry it’s not just you” approach.

        58. Rutee

          HAHAHAHA.
          Yeah, sweetie, I’m sure you threw off every societal message about race. Every last one. I considered a response to Li earlier to say “No you’re just default racist”, because I’ve never heard of a black person ignoring all the injunctions against BLACK people, much less against everyone else. But of course, you are the fucking superhero. The prophesied one who will be nonracist. And of COURSE you’re white. Fuckin’ hee-larious, that is.

          It’s not fucking hate, you fucking yob. It’s fucking caution. It is fear, burned into us because we grew up thinking this same shit, that we must be crazy for thinking people are racist, when guess what, y’all fuckin’ are (And so are we, the second we’re around someone with a different ‘race’ as our society measures it).

          And no, you’re not a potential ally if you still need to do this shit to protect your ego. I mean, you are, in that you’re a human who can change your mind, but you’re The White Moderate, who preaches that it is the wrong season, the wrong reason, and the wrong method, not an actual friend who understands the problem in its broad strokes and is trying to stop it.

        59. thejeff

          Let’s see if I can phrase this a little better:
          I believe we’re all racist by default. At least all of us in the US, I can’t speak so well for other cultures.
          That’s like the Christian thing of all of us being sinners. We’re all racist because we grow up in a society filled with racism and we all absorb some of it, often unconsciously – stereotypes and prejudices, at the very least.
          All we can do, individually, is recognize that in ourselves, try to unlearn it and try to overcome it.
          And it’s not just white people either. Black people learn racism too. Against themselves as much as anything else. It’s often more reinforced in whites, but certainly not exclusive.

          The same basic argument applies to sexism as well.

        60. Li

          @Rutee: I mean, specifically because I’m white, I didn’t want to get into the topic of like antiblackness from other PoC, colorism within communities like Japan… I still should’ve been more specific about having internalized white supremacy, so as to not make it sound like white people are the only ones who get saddled with racism or internalized racism.

          Literally nothing said by the person above you merits any response, lol. You handled it superbly.

        61. Doomington

          @thejeff I can agree to that, and I doubt (I hope, anyway) there are many who couldn’t. It really does come down to how you word your argument. The same meaning can have a much greater (or much lesser) impact depending on how it is said. Yours singles no one person or no group of people out, and leaves things open to discussion, while plainly stating “there is a problem”.

          @Rutee This just comes across as extremely condescending. I would imagine I’m no more or less racist/sexist/etc than the people around me by default. I know I have at least one extremely weak point, and I probably have more that I just haven’t realized yet. But I do try to be better about it when I can.

          But my main goal is getting people talking about the issues. That’s why I care so much about how things are worded and said. Because there’s a very fine line between pushing someone to try and be better and pushing them away. There are so many people out there who acknowledge that there is a problem but don’t bring it up because “that sort of thing doesn’t happen around here”. People who would be outraged that their supervisor threw out several applications because “they had one of those foreign names”, but don’t say anything about it because they don’t see it happen. They just meet their new white coworker and go about their day.

          Bringing up the fact that this stuff happens can sway people. But there is a limit in how hard to push. People in general don’t respond well to direct accusations or hostile arguments. All they end up doing is pushing away people who were on the fence (ie- the “that is bad, but it could never happen around here” crowd), and that group is one that you (generally) want on your side.

        62. Li

          Which is exactly what’s wrong with their version of my words.

          White supremacy didn’t come about organically, white peoples created it, through genocide and slavery. To act like white people shouldn’t be “singled out” is willful ignorance.

          Bonus: people can’t be educated against their wills. No amount of niceness or comforting tones will change that. Someone has to decide to own up to their racism and work on it, and frankly coddling them with language that deflects responsibility for their prejudice and complicity in oppression is actively unproductive.

          http://lifehacker.com/5842923/being-the-better-person-will-teach-people-to-treat-you-like-crap

          Put in your big person pants and accept that someone who was “”condescending”” to you still deserves basic human rights, and should still be helped. (And maybe try to understand where that “””condescension””” comes from. Hint: it sure isn’t helped by you talking to them like you know better than they do how to handle ignorant white “allies”, when their whole lives they’ve been dealing with us, and know perfectly well how well your more-flies-with-honey nonsense actually works in practice.)

        63. Buhzim

          “I’m white. That means I am racist by default.”

          Believing that one’s race determines their behavior sounds kind of racist in itself, so I’d say you have a point…but seriously, you should probably describe your point of view differently.

        64. zoelogical

          not so much someone’s race, but their culture. so their ethnicity, essentially.

        65. zoelogical

          white ethnicity in particular. and white privilege, which comes with it. because our ancestors brutally enforced their culture on everyone they came across and punished anyone who went out of line, white people*get to inherit a legacy of unquestioning assumptions, power, and entitlement. that’s privilege. racism/sexism/cisphobia/homophobia is the consequence of those privileges and that brutality.

          I wouldn’t argue that, like, every single white person is racist, but it’s like the #notallmen phenomenon. just because the odds are that one white person out there is the magical non-racist unicorn doesn’t mean that the white people out there actively/passively being racist don’t count. or that white people as a whole don’t need to take responsibility for themselves and the ways they are capable of oppressing nonwhite/noncis/nonstraight/nonmale people. respecting other people’s experiences starts by listening to their experiences and prioritizing their own experience of their experiences over our own.

          *hi i’m white

        66. zoelogical

          …also i should probably not imply that it was only our ancestors because this shit just keeps going on

        67. Rutee

          Oh fucking white people. No, the problem with what Li said is that PoC still learn racist shit that they repeat, both about themselves and other races, not that white people sometimes learn not to be racist! (Which they don’t, nor does anyone else. They learn to do a better job)

        68. Rutee

          Whoops, should be a response to Buhzim.

        69. Li

          Man I wanted to reply to some really terrible stuff but it looks like it’s gone. Hard to be sad about that 😉

          Also more on topic: I love this scene so far. I like when character growth doesn’t happen all in one big lump, and I think Joyce bringing up what she was taught here and her reluctance to have it criticized by her friend is wonderfully IC. She’s feeling fragile enough right now. (At the same time, can’t fault Dorothy’s response, I’d react the same way; and to her credit she does try to change the subject.)

        70. Cerberus

          This. On axes of privilege, there’s a lot of value in just listening and not getting hepped up on the first thing that challenges you. So often, the most annoying crap is when privileged people are so desperate to play martyr and claim injury by the marginalized that they restrict marginalized individuals right to be human, to get upset, to fuck up.

          We shouldn’t all be expected to be token ambassadors from the lands of our marginalizations 24/7. (Hail, ye traveler, from the lands of transia)

        71. Shiro

          Frankly? This is why people don’t bother explaining kindly and gently, because this is always the reaction.

        72. Buhzim

          The “+1, reblog if you agree” format of tumblr (social media in general) encourages the formation of echo chamber hate circles. You’re more at ease to spit out venom against groups you despise if you can rely on a bunch of likeminded people backing you. Best just to report the “die X scum” types and move on.

        73. Jacknoir

          yeah that whole “cis” thing makes no sense.
          supposedly it means “the opposite of trans” but Trans- denotes a state of change of going from one thing to another, to Transport, Transform, Transition. in order to be the opposite of that cis would be something which is unchanging, the Ciscontenental railroad would be a railroad that did not cross the continent, not generally very useful information in a universe where Newton’s First Law is in effect.

          more likely Cis comes from the Greek root word meaning to cut or kill.
          s(cis)sors an instrument used for cutting, In(cis)sion, an exor(cis)m
          http://membean.com/wrotds/cis-cut

          so then in it’s most common usage of “Die Cis Scum” the die would then be redundant as the usage of Cis would already denote people you wanted to kill, to remove from society by cutting.

        74. Captain Button

          I don’t know the history of the terms in the gender context, but I’d assumed it was swiped from chemistry, where cis and trans are used for chemical isomers that have the same atoms linked in the same ways, but in different configurations. Cis isomers have similar sections on the same side of the molecule, and trans isomers have similar sections on opposite sides of the molecule.

          (That’s a sloppy way of describing it, I know. See the link.)

        75. Captain Button

          Or rather, the trans part came from transsexual and when looking for an opposite they went to chemistry to get the opposite from there.

        76. Rutee

          http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=cis-

          Or you’re just wrong.
          And uh, are you implying a signifier is useless if it says the railroad doesn’t cross a continent?

        77. Hollis

          Yeah no,you’re wrong.

          It’s like the chemical terms cis=same side of; trans=opposite side of.

        78. Cerberus

          It’s chemistry and geography not greek. A trans isotope has its chains or functional groups on opposite sides. A cis isotope has its chains or functional groups on the same side.

          The metaphor is that trans people do not identity themselves with the side (gender) they were assigned at birth and “go” in a different way. Whereas cis individuals are fully content with what they were assigned and so are happy to continue on with that “side”.

          And if you were wondering where the “cis” terms are in “the real world”:
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisalpine_Gaul

      3. madock345

        Yeah, as a gay dude I have to say I’ve talked to other gay guys who hold some downright baffling beliefs about straight people. It’s weird. Heterophobia definitely exists, though just by population percents it’s guaranteed to be less common.

      4. Spencer

        It *is* a thing, but it’s not ingrained or as culturally damaging as any other forms of oppression. It’s basically in the same boat as “radical” feminists; it’s real in the sense there’s maybe a handful of completely harmless nobodies who think it.

        1. Rutee

          ….and where it is actually harmful, it’s because it’s backing up something that /is/ a thing (like racism, classism, cissexism, or similar)

        2. Spencer

          True enough.

          It reminds me of guys who say that because there are areas where men are inconvenienced, then that must mean sexism is over forever and bringing it up makes you the real bigot.

    2. Very Good Karma

      Well, Joyce is taking this as a hypothetical situation and accepting the assumptions of the hypothesis. Arguably, she’s just as logical about a Christianity, when you accept the assumptions of *that* hypothesis- there is a being who is the creator of the universe, he’s very concerned that we humans live a certain way, and the bible is the record of his instructions and the consequences for deviating from them.

      I mean, you saw how she was on the edge of a freakout earlier when talking about how maintaining creationism is necessary for the logical integrity of the whole set of beliefs- it’s not that she doesn’t think about these things, or doesn’t think about them logically, it’s that the logical framework she’s been doing the thinking in all her life is insanely convoluted and designed to produce specific conclusions. As a totally secular example, non-euclidean geometry is similarly mind-warping, but it’s absolutely logically and mathematically consistent. Alter one basic postulate, and you literally derive an entirely different universe.

  7. AnvilPro

    Go Team Wifey!

  8. Plasma Mongoose

    Joyce, with your punching skills, you should be the “man” in this relationship.

    1. Mr K

      Who is the seme and Uke?

      (I know real gay couples don’t do that)

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        Are you suggesting that yaoi and yuri has lied to me?

        Blasphemy! 😛

        1. LeslieBean4Shizzle

          Actually, I rarely encounter the seme/uke thing in yuri. There are a few exceptions, but normally that’s a yaoi thing, not a yuri thing.

        2. nothri

          I see Joyce as more likely to have a sword pulled from her chest while Dorothy is more likely to fight a duel for the rose bride.

        3. StClair

          … now someone has to draw Dorothy in a cavalry officer’s uniform. With petticoats.

        4. Gigafreak

          Is there a law wherein the President must be a competent warrior with one or more weapons of their choosing?

          The world would be a slightly more interesting place if we did.

          “The President has defeated the ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to go out for cheeseburgers with the President?

        5. LeslieBean4Shizzle

          **slowclap**

          You win.

        6. Captain Button

          I know I am missing the reference, but this is making me picture the DoA remake of Mai-HiME. Ruth and Billie are Shizuru and Natsuki, Mike is Nagi, and Amazi-Girl is Nao, but who is Akira?

        7. thejeff

          Mai Hime was good, but go watch Revolutionary Girl Utena (the reference you missed).

    2. Plasma Mongoose

      I revise that, a woman is far more likely to get away with punching people than men are these days.

      1. DarkoNeko

        in manga, probably.

    3. Reltzik

      But Dorothy’s going to be president, doesn’t that make HER the man?

      MY GENDER-BASED ILLOGIC IS STRONGER THAN YOUR GENDER-BASED ILLOGIC! THEREFORE IT IS A DRAW!

  9. Stephen R. Bierce

    *plays Eric Clapton’s “Forever Man” on the hacked Muzak*

  10. Mandy

    I wonder how many passages there are in the bible that even people as devoted as Joyce will concede are “difficult”. I’m guessing there aren’t many.

    1. JohnInCA

      Man pays the father of the woman he raped 30 silver and then marries her.
      Moses kills his wayward followers right after getting the 10 Commandments the first time.
      All those passages about slavery.
      The bit about killing your disobedient sons.
      All the parts where you raid other villages, kill the men, rape the women, and ride off on the horses.

      And so-on.

      There is a *lot* of stuff that is “difficult”.

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        And people wonder why so many people reject Christianity and other religions…

        1. LeslieBean4Shizzle

          See, I don’t get that. The bible is fairly fucked up (for various reasons) but OTHER religions (ie, non judeo-christian) typically aren’t like that. Why do people reject all religion just because one group is dumb?

        2. drs

          You may have an idealistic view of other religions.

        3. Leorale

          Sorry, they’re all a mess. Isn’t that neato??

        4. LeslieBean4Shizzle

          Neo Paganism.
          Some of them get a bit hippy dippy, but in an utterly harmless mildly annoying sort of way. Neo Paganism (as a group) hates no other groups, invites all, and (again, as a group) has no issues with modern science or medicine. The religion has no holy documents, being an oral tradition, and thus no terrible passages, contradictions, or hypocrisy to justify.
          There are others, but that’s the one I can talk about.

        5. LeslieBean4Shizzle

          Note: I don’t mean to drag this down into a comparison – I’m just saying that when people say “all religions” they are only ever thinking about judeo-christian faiths (jewish, christian, and muslim) and not the hundreds of other religions in the world.

        6. AHR

          Not entirely true. Neo pagans often have issues with transphobia, anti-semitism, being white supremacists, racism and cultural appropriation. There are plenty of issues in the Neo Pagan community.

        7. AHR

          Oh and since many groups are so small, you can have another issue of people passing themselves off as spiritual high priestesses or gurus or whatever, and use it to manipulate/abuse people.

          http://hevria.com/chaya/how-to-spot-a-sexual-preditor/

        8. Shiro

          As a neo pagan I can tell you that is some bullcrap right there. The things I’ve heard/read my fellow pagans say would make your head spin. There is no religion free of bullcrap.

        9. LeslieBean4Shizzle

          @AHR and Shiro
          In both cases, you are talking about individual dickheads within a group, which is indeed impossible to weed out – all groups have dickheads.
          However, Neo Paganism (of which I am also a member, Shiro) has no central dogma with that kind of crap. We don’t have a bible, so we don’t have four thousand years of bad ideas to live down.
          My point is, the bad stuff you’re describing has nothing to do with the religion and everything to do with “some people suck”. There are plenty of atheists who are all of those things you both just mentioned – that is just individual asshattery.

        10. LeslieBean4Shizzle

          Hell, there are internet fandoms that have the same issues you both described. Any group has jerks – that isn’t a black mark against religions, that’s a black mark against humans in groups.
          The difference is that even the best, most forward thinking Christians still have to deal with passages like the one from the comic sitting around in the bible. They have to deal with problematic crap from thousands of years ago shacked to everything they do. They have to explain away or ignore large chuncks of what is supposed to be the core of their beliefs. And that’s where a lot of very serious problems arise from.

        11. StClair

          Any group has jerks – that isn’t a black mark against religions, that’s a black mark against humans in groups.

          Exactly.

        12. DR_GONZO

          I’d also recommend taking at the less than illustrious career of neo-Odinist/Norwegian Black Metal Musician, Varg Vikernes. A notorious racist anti-Semite, anti-Christian, anti-Muslim/immigrant, historical church arsonist and murderer. Wikipedia › wiki › Varg_Vikernes

        13. EvilMidnightLurker

          And writer of a racist anti-Semite, anti-Christian, anti-Muslim/immigrant, historical fantasy tabletop role-playing game.

        14. joy2b

          Most people feel that their own religion is pretty tolerable and moderate. We don’t really get to say what other religions think of us.

          To a large extent, people come to religion asking for help with facing that which is complicated or frightening, and with topics that don’t have a clear answer. It’s easy for a religion to start as idealistic and simple and incorruptible, but staying that way is another matter.

        15. DarkoNeko

          What, even bouddhism and shintoïsm ?

        16. DR_GONZO

          Depends on which school of Buddhism/Shintoism, the era practiced and the the conditions they exist in.

        17. Leorale

          I’m not well-versed in Shinto history, so I can’t speak to that. For Buddhism, though, I remember my Chinese Religion 101 prof drew a wheel on the board between Buddhism, Confucianism, and I think Taoism. Each religion took a turn being in power, and whoever was in power executed and burned the books of the other two, until it switched and somebody else had a turn.
          Over and over. He said that eventually, and nowadays, there are just tons of traditions and nobody can figure out which ones come from which religions.

        18. Rutee

          That’s not entirely true either though. Chinese syncretism was also a thing. I mean, yes, sometimes they did oppress each other, but as far as china goes, they also ended up being part of each other’s religions (Confucianism is simply not a religion outside the context of chinese syncretism. The works themselves would be purely philosophical without that)

        19. Silly Name

          Well, Shintoism contains some pretty fucked up myths as well.

        20. Rutee

          I’d be more concerned with the /acts/ it justified than whether some myth sounds craaaaaaazy.

          Though to be fair, shintoism wasn’t an organized thing until the 20th century, when western influences grew enough that the Japanese felt they needed to organize prior beliefs. Before you had a more patchwork folklore with local gods and the like, but to the extent there was a common ground besides ‘respect the other gods’, it was borrowed from (Zen) Buddhism.

        21. begbert

          I can’t speak for other atheists, but I reject other religions because they’re all *wrong*. Yes, they may also be morally corrupt, but the fact they’re all silly bad fiction is itself reason enough to dismiss them as far as I’m concerned.

          Though yeah, lots of major religions are super-terrible from a moral standpoint. They’re institutions where people can get power over other people and dictate the others’ beliefs – what could possibly go wrong? And a lot of them are old enough to have developed in cultures where the accepted morality was pretty shitty, so of course the religions would have absorbed that too.

        22. DR_GONZO

          No offense but I find that a very simplistic and reductive viewpoint.

        23. Rin

          Hey there,
          I read your other comment before it disappeared. And I’d just like to say.
          Atheism is truly exists. To be an atheist is to purely no believe in a god, gods or higher power. That does not mean that an atheist can worship. I’ve read a few blogs of different atheist’s who worship many different things, however this is not part of atheism, it is personal choice.
          Also I find it rude, that someone would say, “your “belief” system or way of thinking isn’t real because….” That statement, “there is actually no such thing as atheism,” is exactly like someone saying, “there is actually no such thing as Christianity,” which is both rude and idiotic.

        24. begbert

          Out of curiosity, which part is simple and reductive? (I’ll number them for clarity.)

          1) The belief that all religions are wrong?
          2) The belief that their wrongness makes them unworthy of being taken seriously?
          3) The belief (based on millennia of precedent) that systems that give people power over others are prone to systemic abuse?
          4) The belief that (false, remember) religions are lacking any external force that would prevent them from absorbing the cultural mores of the times?

        25. CJ

          Well, all three monoteistic abrahamitic religions definitely have it.
          Generally, I suppose you get it in any scripture-based monotheistic religion, just because the texts start to be outdated and represent no-longer relevant experiences and social structures. Anything based on oral tradition has a chance to change and adapt the idea to changing experiences and structures. It is difficult to maintain the sun as a benign influence when your surroundings changed from cold mountain to desert.
          Even with polytheistic large religions there is difficult stuff, but through polytheism there never is this absolute truth thing around, because even the gods disagree on things.
          My experience with Wicca and neo-pagans is not recent, but I encountered some transphobic and white suprematist stuff.
          As Starhawk pointed out: if we do not change the structure of the stories we tell, change is superficial, as only roles are reversed.
          The basic stories she identified were “the good vs the bad”, “one man (sic!) has a relevation and gives it to a chosen few”, ” the rise”, “the fall” – I think there were two more, but I’d have to look it up.
          And yes, there are lesbians and gay men who really hate straight people just because they are. This usually is a helpless rage and is met with irritation by most other lesbians and gays. It doesn’t get any “oh yes, secretly we think the same and enjoy you saying it out loud” responses as a lot of homophobia does.

        26. Camcha

          I think that as far as religion is concerned, the problem is less in the documents (they were written thousands of years ago) than with people not admitting that religion is supposed only to give you general precepts to live in a community (like “don’t kill, don’t steal” etc. But also with a lot of shitty things packed in because those were the times).

          The thing is ‘believers’ (people who believe the the bible/Torah/Quran say the whole truth, whether literally or in some convoluted metaphorical way) sometimes (okay, often, if you look back in times) behaved horribly.

          Now all religions (except for a few that could be considered more like ‘spiritual philosophies’) have their bad sides. But if you just pick and choose, you must admit there is at least one or two good things.

          Times evolved, not religious writs, and now, we can actually do away with all that could be seen as superfluous (gendered roles for example). As long as we remember that once upon a time, killing was not so much of a problem to people until Christianity/any other religion that bans murder kicked in.
          In fact, it is not so much religion the problem, but the people who shaped it throughout the ages, starting with those who wrote the books.

          Sorry for the long reply…

      2. Captain Button

        Plus you can’t get raped outside.

        1. Just A. Thinker

          … Not sure where you’re getting that from. But if you’re being raped, and you don’t scream, the rape counts as adultery and you get stoned.

        2. Captain Button

          Yeah that bit.

        3. Commoner

          I remember from reading there was also a “sub-clause” for lack of a better term stating that if it couldn’t be proven that you didn’t scream it was rape.

        4. DinaWho

          I think that might be a scrambled reading of a part that treats rape differently if it happened in a rural or urban area (in an urban area it’s considered consensual if no one heard the victim scream which doesn’t apply outside cities since there’s a very high chance of no third parties being close enough to overhear a hypothetical scream).
          Which is probably the same passage someone else mentioned, just my interpretation of it.

        5. Plasma Mongoose

          Is that like the idea that unless you have at least 2 witnesses to your rape, it’s classed as adultery?

      3. Rabid Rabbit

        I’ve always liked the Moses one. “Uh, dude, I know you found us worshipping a golden calf, but you only just came back with the tablet saying we’re not allowed to worship other gods. At least let us finish the orgy, willya?”

        1. Buhzim

          If I recall, he had already told them not to do anything like that because God wouldn’t approve, the tablets just making it “official”. He presumably told them not to kill each other as well.

        2. Rutee

          Except that the commandment and its original following was laid out surprisingly well in the best-recognized english version. It’s not “other gods don’t exist”, it’s “I’m the best god, so worship me first and foremost”. Early Jews still recognized and worshipped other deities as appropriate.

        3. Silly Name

          I remember reading a book by Freud – “Moses and Monotheism”, IIRC – that pretty much said the same thing. At the start of Hebraism, YHWH was supposed to be the god of the Jews, and the one they should have worshipped, since he was the best god around, but he WASN’T the only god. He was _their_ god.

          IIRC, in the Old Testament there are even a couple of “duels” between priests of other gods and the Jew priesthood to see whose god did the coolest miracles.

      4. Buhzim

        The murder-happy passages aren’t really that difficult to explain at all, customs were obviously different a few millenia ago and nowadays we shouldn’t be expected to murderrapepillage the neighbouring towns like our ancestors. The difficult part is explaining why we can dismiss some passages as “outdated” but not others, like stuff related to sexuality or women.

        1. Rutee

          One would think that with the strongest of gods on their side, the Jews could take the moral high road, but no, their god commanded them to act according to ethical systems he knew would be outdated in a few short millenia.

    2. Just A. Thinker

      If you look up the “Skeptic’s annotated guide to the bible,” you can look up troubling passages on all sorts of topics. Want brutal laws? Look up passages on stoning adulterers. Want genocide? Look up Joshua 10, or some of the passages about the Canaanites. Want contradictions? They have an entire webpage listing those. It’s… saddening.

    3. Viktoria

      My favorite is the parable of Abraham and Isaac. The actual message is “Killing people is fine if God tells you to do it”. And that’s a core part of 3 major religions. Did none of the writers see the problems that would cause?

      1. Dorje Sylas

        Nope, because they wanted to be able to tell people who to kill in the name of God. It was a great idea at the time, got the community organized exterminate the local enemies. Both of the community and of the leaders. Why would you not put this in, if you’re the head of the religion and community?

      2. Leorale

        Adult religious readers very frequently recognize these kinds of passages as highly problematic. There are thousands of years of rabbis, priests, theologians, whatever, wrestling with these passages within religion. They’re *supposed* to be problematic. Finding them problematic doesn’t mean that religion suxx, or that atheists are the first people who notice that hey maybe some of these stories are ethically dubious or worse. It means that it’s time to think about it on a higher level.

        1. Leorale

          — By thinking about it on a higher level, I don’t mean leap-of-faith or whathaveyou, I mean engaging with it in its historical context, considering many alternate explanations, understanding how other people might think, having the story shed light on your own real relationships today, etc. etc.

          A lot of people who smugly dismiss religion basically stopped studying it when they were kids, so guess what, they are stuck with a kids’ view of religion. If you study it as an adult, you will learn things that are way more interesting.

        2. Leorale

          (note, I’m specifically referring to *studying* religion as an intelligent adult, wrestling with it in all its problematic glory. I am very strongly against using religion to legislate, or to be jerks to people in real life.)

        3. begbert

          Of course, it’s possible to study it as an intelligent adult and still find contradictions and terrible morals. Because sometimes the highest level of understanding is “yeah, this stuff was written down when the culture had shitty morals, and the religion sopped up those morals like a sponge in toilet water”, and no matter how long you squeeze the sponge, you still get toilet water.

        4. StClair

          IMO, I do engage with it in a historical context. And my conclusion is that rules that worked well for Bronze Age tribes of a thousand or so (where war and starvation and enslaving neighboring tribes and your own wives and no refrigeration etc etc etc were everyday, unavoidable facts of life) tend to fail badly when applied to Information Age societies, where people can and should have a lot more options.

          The gameboard has changed dramatically, but too many people are still trying to apply the old rules, and make reality fit them rather than vice versa when there is disagreement.

        5. StClair

          (amended: a thousand, at most – likely to be much smaller, not least because of Dunbar’s Number, aka the monkeysphere.)

        6. Reltzik

          There’s even a term for trying to explain that stuff: Theodicy.

          The word always sounds like “the idiocy” to my ears, but it’s impolitic to make anything of that near-homophone.

        7. Liokae

          Impolitic, but not necessarily inaccurate.

      3. Bruceski

        I prefer the interpretation that Abraham *failed* that test, that no matter how unquestioning you are there are some things where “God says so” is not a valid reason, but I’ll admit I have nothing to back that up aside from a talmudic parable where Hillel tells God to go away make the other rabbi argue on his own behalf.

        1. Arianod

          If I may point out just two problems with your interpretation:
          1- It wasn’t just someone telling Abraham to sacrifice his kid “in God’s name”; it was literally the YHWH talking. The alternative would have been to tell God Himself “Dude, I’m not gonna barbecue my son just because you tell me to do it”. Like, to His face.
          2- God rewarded Abraham for his faith. You don’t usually get a reward for failing a test.

      4. thejeff

        As a moral lesson for the generations and an expression of God’s perfect truth, it’s insane.
        As a founding myth meant to explain why the Israelites dropped their previous tradition of human sacrifice, it works perfectly fine. Human sacrifice being a not uncommon thing at the time.
        Much of the Bible makes a lot more sense viewed from that perspective.

    4. Reltzik

      Nononono. You don’t understand. It’s easy to admit that the passages are difficult… in the sense that a triple-black-diamond ski slope is difficult. It’s YOUR responsibility to be skilled enough to navigate it or to recognize that you’re not and go back to skiing down the kiddie slopes.

      Entirely unintentionally, this metaphor explains how Eastern Orthodox Christians were defeated by the moguls.

  11. Brigid Keely

    It’s like that whole “the husband is the head of the family but the woman is the neck and can point the husband where he needs to be” thing that manages to uphold male supremacy while blaming women for when the men screw it up/for not doing it better. One person is the boss of the other person, but the other person can… something something submit.

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      A head and neck without a body is just a decapitated head.

    2. Cerberus

      Yup, and it leads to all sorts of nastiness in that sect, where not only is the woman supposed to submit in all things, but is also blamed for everything. If he cheats on her, if he hits her, if he rapes her or her children, then it’s all her fault for “disrupting the harmony of the household” and not fulfilling her duties to the family. And this of course tends to feed into demands by the church for her to forgive him any trespass and work harder to be so compliant and will-less that he no longer feels the temptation to stray or mistreat. Because clearly the problem is that the woman wasn’t submitting enough.

      It’s honestly a little scary to see it in person or to hear your high school friends try and explain it when they had no idea of just how fucked up it all was. Basically, what I’m saying is I made Dorothy’s Panel 3 face a lot.

    3. madock345

      That’s an interesting way to look at that phrase. I always saw it used to point out how often the male’s role as the head of the household is basically a figurehead position, with the wife making all the real decisions about what’s going on in the house.

      1. Cerberus

        A figurehead that makes all the decisions that matter and has full veto power over the wife.

        But hey. She gets to choose what brand of toilet paper the household uses (so long as the husband approves), so yeah, equality.

        1. altalemur

          it also tells women that the only way in which they should communicate in a relationship is with passive aggressive manipulation. direct communication (commands) are only something the husband can do, in that mind set. i have personally found it very very restrictive as a kid that over and over i was told it was unladylike to be so “blunt,” i.e. that i was direct about my desires and wishes.

        2. Cerberus

          Totally! You can’t possibly just state your feelings or wants. Instead you must use manipulation and hint at it until your partner comes up with it independently and get filled with resentment when said partner doesn’t. Because to do otherwise is to “step out of your place” and be “rude” and “inappropriate”.

        3. altalemur

          i am taking a moment to let you know that you are a Gem.

    4. drs

      Ross’s wife is dead, hence he has no neck.

      1. Captain Button

        +1 Internet

      2. Opus the Poet

        You have just earned a Muttley LOL.

      3. DarkoNeko

        so THAT’s why !

      4. Arianod

        It all makes sense now.

    5. Reltzik

      “Wait, you mean this passage ISN’T saying I need to go down on my wife?”

      “No dear, it is. That’s why I have to remain silent in church. If I don’t they’d catch us.”

    6. Hennerson

      Ephesians is quite interesting because it underlines the transition of Christianity under Paul away from being a subsect of Judaism to the institution we all know and love today…

      What Paul is advocating is actually a milder version of the Roman concept of ‘Paterfamilias’ so although it is horrendously controlling from a 21stC pov it could be considered quite a liberal doctrine for the 1stC.

      It’s kind of the heart of the problem with organised religion really in that the ‘Founding Fathers’ were mainly speaking to their contemporary audiences and not to future generations. It really didn’t help that Paul was also very much a fan of a particularly joyless branch of Stoicism…

      1. thejeff

        That’s actually a pretty common thing with textual religions – religious figure makes small positive step from previous horrendous state, it gets enshrined as unchangeable Will of God.
        What was a good step forward becomes something holding you back.

      2. Silly Name

        Considering Stoicism is the philosophy which considers suicide the best route to take if you ever feel too sad (or even too _happy_), that the best way to live is to avoid any sort of emotion, and that you must never full-fill your needs past basic survival, I can’t picture a branch of it that isn’t joyless.

  12. Kernanator

    I mean I GUESS you can divide duties in a way that makes practical sense, if that’s the sort of thing you’re into.

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      I would call dibs on being the one that stays-at-home, there is nothing liberating about 99% of all employment.

  13. Larkle

    Oh hey, being gay is a loophole? Cool!

    1. John

      Surely you’ve heard of the poophole loophole.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG5Y4VXlk-w

      1. Cerberus

        Heh, that one was super popular with the teens at my high school. After all, anal means you’re still a virgin and so no sin was committed.

        1. Leorale

          Having unprotected anal sex to preseeve your virginity, Dan Savage and his readers coined a term for that. https:// http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Saddlebacking

    2. Very Good Karma

      Well, it’s a loophole for Lesbians- each of them is submitting to the other, you know. But I think gay men have to make all family decisions by running at each other full tilt and smacking their foreheads together as hard as they can.

      1. John

        Yes, smacking their four heads together as hard as they can. Yes.

      2. Just A. Thinker

        AHAHAHAHAHA That’s hilarious XD

      3. Adam Black

        Maybe not …foreheads.
        Have you read any Bara?

        1. Mr K

          Yes. It scarred me for life

      4. Reltzik

        That’s Klingons.

        …. possibly gay Klingons.

        …. is that a thing? For such a supposedly progressive universe I don’t think there’s been anyone in Star Trek who wasn’t heterosexual, except for creature-of-the-week hermaphrodites and past-lives-confused Trill.

        ….

        OKAY! SO I’M A GEEK!

        1. electromagneticDestroyosaur

          We’re here reading the webcomic of the dude who used to run Teletraan I. I think we can handle the occasional geek.

        2. LiamKav

          Unless the babies have caused a major upset, I’m pretty sure DW still runs the Transformers Wiki.

        3. David M Willis

          *eyebrow raise*

          i only “used to run Teletraan I” in that we picked up our Transformers wiki from Wikia and moved it to our own servers (tfwiki.net), where I still run it.

        4. Rutee

          There’ve been some lately. It’s interesting though – apparently Gene Roddenberry was pretty hardcore on our side by the 90s (When writing up Riza, he very specifically said there were gay and lesbian couples running around too, which was written out by the other writers as more of his silly liberal shit), but holy shit, most other Star Trek writers weren’t (I mean, Bashir/Garak was discovered to be a ship, and written out with such hilarious denial as to be giggles on its own merits)

          Oh, and don’t forget Mirror Universe Dax. Because Evil versions being lesbians is such a treat! Or maybe she was bi, been a while since I saw DS9.

    3. sun tzu

      As a matter of fact, that “loophole” is one of the reasons fundamentalists oppose homosexuality – they are rather attached to traditional gender roles.

      1. Just A. Thinker

        What’s wrong with traditional gender roles? The husband hunts meat when he can, and gathers edible roots, fruits, vegetables, herbs, ect, and sometimes takes care of the children. He’s also in charge of scoping out shelter. Meanwhile, the wife hunts meat when she can, gathers edible roots, fruits, vegetables, herbs, ect, and sometimes takes care of the children. She’s also in charge of scoping out shelter. Then both of them die around age 30. It’s the way we did things till than newfangled thing called agriculture came along, and I don’t see why we have to go and change everything!

        1. Cerberus

          *slow clap* Well played. Well played.

        2. Bagge

          Somehow I think Joyce would be quite a fan of Jean Auel

        3. StClair

          Just so.

  14. DWS

    Interesting that they’ve arrived at the right conclusion even though Woe is trying so hard to be good at this.

  15. Tenchan

    I literally loled at this one! So I guess equality in marriage is only for same-sex couples.

    1. John

      Dorothy’s eyes light up and it’s so cute when she realizes that the bible’s lack of definition of same sex marriage makes her life easier.

      All aboard the SS JoyDot!

      1. Tenchan

        With that image of Leslie, it’s like she’s shipping JoyDot!

  16. Taigan

    “The West Wing” did a great segment on this: http://youtu.be/zgDHTldeCuY

    1. Linkara

      The idea of it being metaphor for all humanity being subject to one another certainly makes a lot more sense than gender roles, but I’m not a biblical scholar, so I couldn’t say how accurate Bartlet’s interpretation was. XD

      1. Taigan

        I wasn’t posting it as any great theistic insight, more (much like Steve Rogers and flying monkeys) because it’s one of the few biblical references I’d heard before. ^_^;;

  17. Sam

    That Dorothy cringe, that is how what Joyce said makes me feel.

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      The Doyce ship seems to be taking on water.

      1. Doctor_Who

        We settled on Doyce? I was hoping for Breener or Joyothy.

      2. Reltzik

        If it’s not really floating, that’s just because of the plot ark’s design.

  18. Kraken

    Hooray for eye contact!

    Also, hooray for genuine engagement with the assignment!

  19. Lia47

    just as god always intended, that sly dog

    1. SgtWadeyWilson

      That is the best monotheistic religion theory I’ve heard in a while, high five!

      1. Lia47

        all credit to joyce brown renowned apologist

  20. Doopyboop

    First comment, long time reader, mostly commenting because oh my god. Back in November my Aunt got married (she’s a Wiccan but got married in a Baptist church, go figure) and they mentioned this thing when doing the vows. The guy did ‘insist’ that they were equals, just that the man’s job was to love his wife, and the woman’s was to respect her husband. Made me squint the whole rest of the wedding.

    1. Just A. Thinker

      Reminds me of segregation… “Separate but equal!” “What do you mean, they get worse stuff! It’s the black’s fault they have crappy water fountains – maybe if they took better care of them!” “Oh, so their education has to be equal too.” “Sure, you can be separate but equal.” etc

      1. Cerberus

        Yeah, for some reason, that argument of “inequal but actually totes equal and natural” seems to pop up a whole lot for privileged groups that really don’t want to lose their automatic regard and higher position in society (simply for existing as the privileged class).

        Almost like they were trying to concoct bullshit reasons to cling to the status quo. But that can’t be. If that was the case, we’d see BS attempts all the time to argue that equality movements by the marginalized were actually attempts by the marginalized to demand extra rights and place themselves above the privileged…

    2. Uniqueantique

      I’m Wiccan. We married in a lovely outdoor setting in the woods.
      No equal/not equal vows.
      Simply bonding.

      I have read the Christian Bible, Book of Mormon, and Koran. Based on my readings, I find that although all religions preach as their bottom line “Love they neighbor”, “Treat others as you’d like to be treated”, and so forth: none actually consistently follow them it seems: or they wouldn’t be fighting each other.

      We are taught to be tolerant of all other religions. Therefore: I’d like to remind all that the US formally recognized Wicca as a ‘real’ religion. [Only 1500 years too late based on an actual site of Wiccans in Europe.] We’ve actually been around even longer than that. The US has also recognized the Pagan Symbol as a religious symbol and it can be put on military urns or headstones as of about 3 years ago I think.
      My pagan friends in service are quite proud that now they can be buried in military cemetarys with their ‘real’ religious symbols displayed.

      Religious freedom in the US, anyone?

      1. Uniqueantique

        Forgot the date of Wiccan recognition by US, 1956 or 1957.

      2. Cerberus

        While our relationship is now rather extinct, my mom is Wiccan and raised me secularly because of it and so I always appreciate that and have a soft spot for the faith even though I’m too much of a snarky atheist to actually follow the faith.

        1. ninja_jesus

          Similarly, one of my best friends and (brief) lovers from high school is from a Wiccan family and since then I’ve always held respect for it. If anything, it’s many times more interesting than a majority of Christianity.

      3. Doopyboop

        Nobody seems offended but I figured I’d expand a bit to make sure nobody thought I was dissing Wiccan people or anything. My aunt is Wiccan and so are two of her three daughters, and I have no problem with that. As someone who was dragged to church by her friends (“if you don’t go, you’ll go to hell!” being something I’d hear all the time to scare me into coming with), I’m not very religious myself. I don’t mind people that are, from any faith.

        But what I DO mind is what my aunt is doing, and what my aunt does is pretend to be Christian. Her now-husband’s family are devout Baptists, so she’s gotta hide that she’s a Wiccan. This is…regrettable but okay. Her life, not mine. Where I find it to be a problem is when she takes this sort of uber conservative ‘my amurika’ Christian stuff and put it on her facebook. “We need God in America”, sharing a fake picture of Obama kissing Biden and commenting that she “always knew there was something WRONG with him”. And with that last comment, mind you, her two daughters are both bi. And she ‘supports’ them apparently. But also ‘knew’ something was wrong with Obama and LOL he’s kissing a man???

        I’m just glad this behavior is just my aunt, and not Wiccans as a whole.

  21. Mr. Mendo

    Actually, lesbian marriages are *technically* cool with the Old Testament, depending on how you translate it. Either way, Joyce is either gonna get really good at debating the Bible, or have a nervous breakdown.

    1. Uniqueantique

      You’re speaking for all lesbian marriages?

      Joyce is an expert at debating the Bible. Or was. She was always right and the other person had to be taught.
      Now she’s not quite so sure.

    2. Lord Stoneheart

      But Joyce disregards the Old Testament when it comes to laws. (And apparently there is some anti lesbian passage in one of Paul’s letters. Joyce and Mary mentioned it back when Becky first reappeared)

    3. Plasma Mongoose

      Did lesbian relationships even get a mention in the OT Bible?

      1. madock345

        They did not. Can’t, actually. The OT definition of sex requires penetration. Technically, any non-penetrative sexy stuff it totally okay with the OT as it stands without the weird twisty interpretations that got tacked onto Onan and Sodom. Neither of which were likely originally intended to condemn any form of sex act.

        1. Mr. Mendo

          There used to be a website for Christians who were into bondage and group sex, providing the appropriate Bible verses to prove they were doing nothing wrong. It’s a shame it got taken down, it was a fascinating read…

        2. Captain Button

          How does the duty to knock up your widowed sister-in-law thing work with lesbian pregnancy?

        3. DaveM

          Romans 1:26 (KJV) “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature” would seem to be a condemnation of lesbian relationships (and it’s in the new testament which means the old “ignore the old testament unless it supports my argument/prejudice” rule doesn’t apply).

          From Red Dwarf episode ‘Better than life’
          Newsreader: Good evening. Here is the news on Friday, the 27th of Geldof. Archaeologists near Mount Sinai have discovered what is believed to be a missing page from the Bible. The page is presently being carbon dated in Bonn. If genuine it belongs at the beginning of the Bible and is believed to read “To my darling Candy. All characters portrayed within this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.” The page has been universally condemned by church leaders.

      2. Cerberus

        OT? Ruth and Naomi for lesbians. And David and Jonathan for the gay dudes.

        But for some reason the modern Pre-Millennial Dispensationalist Rapturist Christians only ever seem to turn to the Leviticus stuff.

  22. Uniqueantique

    So I guess Joyce hasn’t QUITE thrown out her entire childhood teachings.

    Just the ones she doesn’t like. Like most of do.

    1. Cerberus

      I believe so far she hasn’t thrown out anything but the “gay is bad” teaching and she didn’t so much throw that out as find a loophole that allowed her to keep her sect’s idea of biblical literalism without having to try and force herself to abandon and hate her homeless friend.

      That being said, there’s serious cracks forming on her faith and I think they’re going to at least double in size before the weekend is over.

      1. Bagge

        Yup, that’s why she REALLY doesn’t want a confrontation with Dorothy (who is smart and perfect and can see straight through her bullshit), hence her shifty eyes during this conversation.

        She knows there are enormous cracks in her childhood belief, she knows people have lied to her her entire life. She is afraid to find out to what extent.

  23. Tommy Fresh

    Adam 4 D is out there somewhere shaking his fists at this [incorrectly used logical fallacy redacted] comic

    1. Gangler

      Adam4d explains it about the same.

      http://adam4d.com/wives-husbands/

      So even if this were supposed to be a statement on his personal beliefs it wouldn’t be much of a strawman.

      1. Gangler

        Oh geeze. Is strawman not the word that got substituted? Then I’m sorry I have no idea what you were talking about.

      2. Spencer

        I like how that comic starts off as about mutual respect for dovetailing right into sheer horribleness.

      3. Cerberus

        Ah, that was the one I was looking for earlier. And yeah… I love just how painfully unaware it is. No, we’re not saying that the husband owns his wife, because we’re not yelling while we do it and instead use religious pressure, bullshit faux-equality language, and passive-aggression to achieve the same ends.

        Also, we’re the real oppressed counterculture rebels for clinging to 19th century gender roles in the modern day.

        1. Tommy Fresh

          Oh no, I meant that Adam is the one that would think THIS is a strawman … even though it’s pretty much exactly what he says all the time.

        2. Tommy Fresh

          My sarcasm wasn’t obvious enough. Curse Adam 4D for being un-parody-able.

  24. DarkoNeko

    …this kinda fees like an answer to that Adam something blog from a while ago, haha.

  25. JessWitt

    Love thy neighbor. That’s my main takeaway from the Bible.

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      But don’t get caught…

      1. SgtWadeyWilson

        …without a Bible verse to defend it?

        1. IRL Name TBD

          I think that’s the general implication with everything prohibited in the bible. There’s nearly endless versions and translations. I’m sure you can find a verse justifying anything.

    2. Buhzim

      “Love thy neighbor. The dude living down the street can go fuck himself, though”

      1. StClair

        “And the ones in the next town over? Yeah, next summer we’re totally going over there to kill and rape them and take all their stuff. As God intended.”

        1. Arianod

          Hamen!

      2. Cerberus

        Yeah, neighbor. Someone just like you. Someone who goes to your church and shares your beliefs. Love that person. Fuck the homeless kid in the alleyway. She’s not neighbor to anyone.

  26. Someone

    Wait, wasn’t that used as the justification for freaking slavery?

    1. Just A. Thinker

      No – there are other passages (in the new testament) that explicitly state that slaves should obey their masters. The bible is a lovely book.

      1. Someone

        Well I mean outside of the bible, before the Civil War, slaveholders would justify it by saying that they were protecting their slaves.

        1. Sam

          Yes, some people who owned slaves did claim they were protecting their slaves from themselves (because they said the slaves were stupid and everyone knows that yes, stupid people can be a danger to themselves, and a lot of people did think black people were stupider than white people at the time).

          But that was something they could only so easily claim about their slaves because they were slaves so couldn’t really contest the point and argue that having a master sucked.

        2. Cerberus

          Not just protecting but bettering. Under “white man’s burden”, the white man took great pains to lift the black man from the “heathen lands” bring them across the sea and by doing so give the glorious gift of western culture and the word of God. And by saving their souls and taking those souls into their care, they were doing such a great service to the world that it totally made up for the ripping apart families, beating people half to death, rape, and that whole owning them as property bit.

          This was also extended to argue that the good Christian men couldn’t let their black slaves go once they’d “saved them” because that would risk their souls because without the “constant hard work” of their white masters, the slaves would return to their “heathen ways” and become damned. So really, it was super awesome and really so much hard work to be owning slaves you guys.

          And yeah, same sort of “are you fucking kidding me” bullshit as this crap, where they try and pretend the person who gets a free house servant told to obey their every whim is the real hard-done one, because he has the so difficult job of making all the decisions and telling her what to do.

      2. gc

        Eh. The subtext is “See, Romans? We’re not a threat to your social order, so please don’t kill us all.” Basically humans are a lovely species.

      3. Ranthog

        Well lets also be honest, the slavery mentioned in the bible is very different from the type of slavery in the Americas. The American slavery was terribly corrosive. An original sin the country may never stop paying for.

        1. Cerberus

          Whereas the slavery in the bible was totes awesome and involved free pony rides.

        2. Captain Button

          Talking pony rides, yet!

        3. Ranthog

          No one is arguing that slavery in the Roman era was wonderful.

        4. Reltzik

          Unless I’m mistaken, the principle way in which American slavery differed from Biblical slavery (as opposed to Biblical indentured servitude — two different institutions that wrongly get conflated a lot, the key distinguisher is that indentured servitude was for fellow Israelites and slavery was for everyone else) — is that in the Bible you’re supposed to be taking slaves from the nations around you, and in American slavery they were going all the way to Africa instead of enslaving the indigenous Americans.

          Otherwise, having sex with slaves? Check. (For male owners and female slaves only, in both cases.) Forcing them into labor? Check. Beating them almost to death? Check. (Though American slavery went further than this.) Buying, selling, and willing them to your descendants? Check. Owning their offspring? Check.

          The Bible was very much used to justify American slavery. Just peruse some of the newspaper editorials of the day. For every abolitionist using the Bible to justify an end of slavery, there were Southern preachers using the Bible to justify its existence and continuation. That’s why both sides of the Civil War were firmly convinced that God was on their side.

        5. Ranthog

          I would suggest looking into the nature of the institution as practiced by the Greeks and Romans. It is a very different institution than slavery as practiced in the Americas when one gets past the superficial fact they were both forms of slavery. There is something crueler, more brutal, and more insidious to the American version.

          Specifically, in biblical times slaves would not necessarily looks significantly different from the general populace. They were not fundamentally different or less than human, which is what you were looking at with American slavery. Even after being freed in America, one could not truly be a freeman, because they didn’t look like freemen. They were still something less. Not to mention neither freed slaves nor their children were necessarily citizens (Dred Scott).

          There are also differences in other areas such as whether or not slaves could be educated, and what legal rights slaves were granted. (Slaves in America were not allowed to be educated.) The fact that a slave could own property or have their own money is certainly different. These are all things that change the way one may think of a slave’s position in society.

          If you don’t believe these differences are significant, then ask yourself how things would be different today if the slaves were all taken from Germany. Would they have been viewed as sub-human? Would there be a highly visible ethnic group that would be actively and easily discriminated against today?

          The truth is, if you’re looking to support something with the bible, you’re going to find it if you look hard enough.

        6. Cerberus

          I’m always genuinely fascinated by the desire of so many to try and pretend that slavery was somehow less awful than it was by focusing on BS side bits as if they excuse the central horribleness of treating other people like possessions and denying them their bodily autonomy and a right to their own lives. It reminds me of the defenders of American slavery who try and say things like, well, they were given “free” housing and didn’t have to pay for food, so really it wasn’t as bad as the history texts make it look.

          Like, dude, it’s okay, we can let early man and the Bible be immoral in this particular strain. And we can accept that America has done great wrong in the name of said holy book, because by accepting that wrong we can strive to not repeat and not try and soften its edges to justify our current immoral actions.

          Or to quote Terry Pratchett in Carpe Jugulum:
          http://brer-powerofbabel.blogspot.com/2009/02/granny-weatherwax-on-sin-favorite.html
          “…And that’s what your holy men discuss, is it?” [asked Granny Weatherwax.]
          “Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin. for example.” [answered Mightily Oats.]
          “And what do they think? Against it, are they?”
          “It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”
          “Nope.”
          “Pardon?”
          “There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
          “It’s a lot more complicated than that–”
          “No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
          “Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes–”
          “But they starts with thinking about people as things…”

          And there’s a lot of truth to it. When you view people as things or people as not really people per se (or at least not as people as those from dominant groups) or start viewing it as okay to take bodily autonomy or demand specific treatment, that’s usually where the bad starts.

        7. Reltzik

          The Greeks practiced helotry, which was pretty dang brutal. The Romans weren’t much better, and slaves were highly prone to abuse and in some accounts even death by drunken beating. Manumission was far more acceptable than in the American south but still quite rare on a slave-by-slave basis. In Greece, outsider slaves would always be barbarians, even once freed, and could not hope for equality. Rome was more cosmopolitan in that regard, at least until the slowing expansion of the Empire dried up the most common source of slaves and stricter laws were put into place to discourage freeing of slaves. The South did something similar when the Atlantic slave trade was shut down. Unlike slavery in the American South, Roman slaves could be put to work in the sex industry, which is another way of saying that their masters could profit off their serial rape extended out over months or years. Educated slaves were pretty common, but mostly because they were already educated once they entered into slavery. The Greeks and Romans weren’t exactly lavishing tutelage on their slaves. And when I say it was common, I mean it was about as common as it was for anyone else be educated, which was pretty dang uncommon. While educated and skilled slaves received better treatment and had a moderately realistic hope of eventual freedom, the vast majority of both Roman and Greek slaves were unskilled and uneducated, and their existences were short and brutal.

          Bottom line, all of these institutions of slavery were twisted and wrong. All had silver linings if you strained hard enough to find them, but those were very small pieces of very large and dark clouds.

          And in any case, all that’s a false equivalence. Greek slavery and Roman slavery were not Biblical slavery, which is what was actually being put forward for discussion. Neither the slavery practices of Greece nor Rome obeyed the rules of slavery as laid out in the Bible… nor were they the same as each other. Just because all occurred within a few thousand miles of each other and within a thousand years of each other does not make them all identical institutions fitting neatly under the same label.

  27. Cholma

    Panel 3 Dorothy is priceless.

    1. TheNinthShader

      Can I buy it?

  28. John

    This is pretty easy, anyway, guys. Dorothy Presidents and Joyce First Ladys and you’ve got staff for all that other inconvenient stuff.

  29. Edupoet81

    Designating tasks based on individual strengths – now we’re getting somewhere. I wonder how long it will take for Joyce to generalize that concept to ALL marriages. Once she does, it will be interesting to see how she rationalizes that, and attempts to mold it to fit her belief system.

  30. Liz

    I still scream a little every time someone mentions Ephesians 5.

  31. Nono

    Crisis… averted?

  32. Arkham

    I was at a wedding where they decided to leave “the obey clause” in the vows. Worse yet, the preacher paused the vows to explain why it was still relevant today. And he kept trying to clarify. I think he managed to convince even the devout that the whole “obey” thing was a very bad idea. (IIRC: “The husband represents The Lord’s will, and it is the wife’s duty as a Christian to obey him as if it were God talking.”)

    1. Huttj509

      I was at a wedding where the first thing the bride said when she got back to the hotel (some of her friends were hanging out in the lobby) was “did you hear that ***** sermon?”

      I wondered if the pastor was running for office. He started by emphasizing how marriage was between a MAN and a WOMAN, ordained by GOD (emphasis his), whole spiel. Was really awkward given the number of non-straight friends the couple had in the audience.

      When he started on “do you promise to love, honor, … ” I was thinking that if he said “obey” I was gonna need to help the couple hide a body.

    2. Cerberus

      I’ve known several straight friends who were harried into a church wedding “for the sake of family” who specifically told the pastor to take out the section on “obeying” only for him to double-down and segue into a sermon on the importance of the woman to obey especially.

      Every last one of them went into an obscenity laced rant after the ceremony was over on how gross and inappropriate that was. Honestly, I think for a lot of gross creepy pastor dudes, seeing a young more modern couple just makes them want to double down on the gross misogyny that made them leave the church in the first place. Though to be fair, the fact that the pastor could look down the pews and see my trans ass probably didn’t help on that score.

      1. Bagge

        Now I kinda hope that means you mooned him.

        1. Cerberus

          I wish I had.

  33. gc

    The “I have to contradict this, but am desperately trying to improvise a way of doing so that doesn’t make us stop being friends” face in panel three is magnificent.

    1. Cerberus

      I think Joyce might be Dorothy’s best training for the tact required to be a politician. Like, if you can navigate the twisted web of her fundie culture and come out with understanding, empathy, and the ability to gently show what is wrong without it seeming like an attack, then you can handle the most “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” constituents with ease.

      1. Bagge

        Between Joyce and Roz, Dorothy will be a great politician.

        Oh, unless her connection to Amazie-girl means she snaps and builds a kryptonite powered mecha suit, but what are the odds?

  34. Wublub

    Oh, Joyce. Maybe Dorothy will manage to talk some sense into you eventually.
    I still wanted to see what happened with Joyce and Joe though.

    1. Uniqueantique

      Me too, but then I think it may have involved blood letting 😉

      1. Wublub

        Actually, now that I think about it, if JOE was her husband I think she’d probably lose the whole “obey and honor your husband” schtick real fast. Heck, even with Dorothy and Walky I could see her starting to think about it more rationally.

        “Dorothy, you’re smart and ambitious and really mature. But I still think you should obey your husband’s decisions when you get married some day.”

        “It’s funny you mention that, because Walky just proposed! He wants us to live in a giant bounce house and-”

        “Dorothy, you need to make every decision in this relationship.”

  35. Adam Black

    Jesus says cocksucking ( pearl-Diving too) is OK—but only if you swallow.
    Hes quite explicit:

    “What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”
    http://biblehub.com/matthew/15-11.htm

    BUttsex is OK too ( provided youve washed first, you sickos )

    “there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man. ”

    http://biblehub.com/mark/7-15.htm

    There you go. Christian Soldiers. Rockon

    1. ninja_jesus

      So… people shouldn’t poop, pee, or vomit.

      1. Arianod

        Nope, but they shouldn’t eat or drink any of that stuff.

      2. Gigafreak

        They can excrete stuff if it’s sufficiently blessed. “Holy shit!”

  36. Trolldrool

    It’s not difficult to explain at all. Men have their roles in society to which they are naturally more able to perform and women have roles of equal importance that they are naturally more able to perform.

    Or so I have been told many times whenever the subject of gender equality comes up in casual conversation. The fact that all the roles traditionally assigned to women are subservient to men is of course conveniently forgotten.

    1. Cerberus

      Yeah, that’s coincidental. In the same way that it’s totally just a weird fluke that jobs that are more frequently performed by men just happen to be more highly paid and valued in society even if that historically used to be a women-dominated field that was looked down upon as facile (*cough cough* programming and computer science *cough cough*).

      With so many weird flukes like that, no wonder that crazy wimmin types think there’s something unfair going on. It’s okay, their tiny brains just can’t understand that this is all random happenstance, which also happens to be 100% biotruth.

      1. ninja_jesus

        Not only that, but jobs that are historically male-dominated become suddenly looked down upon (biology/marine biology, chemistry, psychology/psychiatry) as soon as women start to excel in those fields.

        1. Cerberus

          Yeah, weird how all those coincidences just stack up, isn’t it? Must be our overactive imaginations from too many bon-bons.

  37. Nono

    So what ARE their individual strengths?

    Dorothy: Writing articles, normality, the intoxicating rush of productivity
    Joyce: Supporting friends, getting people to class on time, FALCON PUNCH

  38. DragonStryk72

    Well actually, she ISN’T explaining it right, because Willis thus far has introduced absolutely no positives to having faith, all the way back to the origins of the originals series, so I’m pretty sure HE doesn’t understand it, despite making it the focus of Joyce’s whole character.

    Yes, in all technical, the wife has to obey the decisions of her husband. HOWEVER, he has to love, honor, and cherish her, so to comply with the verse and vow, he can’t just order her around all the time, and has to HONOR her feelings, as well as his duties as the provider for the household. This usually meant a thankless and tireless labor job that he would work six days a week, so that he could have Sunday off for mandatory church going. Abuse is not honorable, nor does it cherish, and it isn’t love, so yeah, we have that covered.

    There are different roles. So while the husband had control of the income, the wife had control of the household, meaning the raising of children, societies, volunteer work, and other items. This also meant that in the rare instance of divorce, the wife got the house, and a stipend from the father for alimony, since her chances of getting remarried had been significantly reduced, and she doesn’t possess a huge derth of career options.

    Now, as to obey/honor, you have to remember that we have much the same relationship with our parents, we just don’t swear an oath to it. Our parents want us to obey, but at the same time, try to be sure that they make certain you understand that they love you. They, in turn, have to limit the USE of that power and authority, because to violate it demeans the relationship at its core.

    1. Cerberus

      Okay, who in the betting pool had 36 minutes for the time until someone in all seriousness defended this toxic crap and accused Willis of not understanding the faith of his entire childhood?

      1. Captain Button

        I always go with 23 minutes because of The Law of Fives.

      2. Lord Stoneheart

        (Looks at my 2 hour bet).

        Damn. Once again I underestimated people’s ability to skip the part that states about Joyce’s background being autobiographical.

        1. Cerberus

          Ah, trusting in humanity. That was your first mistake.

    2. Spencer

      Becky was kicked out of college and literally kidnapped at gunpoint and the worst hit she took to her faith was that nothing that actually mattered was contradicted.

      And maybe just ballparking, but I’m mildly convinced David Willis might know a thing or two about growing up as a Christian fundamentalist.

    3. Lord Stoneheart

      (Looks at Willis’s Twitter feed. Looks again at Dragonstryk72’s comment)

      Out of curiosity, are you that one guy who draws that “The Oatmeal” ripoff?

      1. Lord Stoneheart

        Oh, and as for an actual response, my response is still Dorothy’s response in panel 3. Even after your giant wall of text, my response is still that.

    4. Gangler

      Wait, at the end of your argument do you try to tie it all together by laying out the parent/child relationship as a template for the kind of equality that should exist between husband and wife? As if children exist on equal terms with their parents?

      1. Cerberus

        All he’s saying is that women should be treated like they are children. You know, less worldly, less intellectually capable and mature, and constantly in need of a guiding hand to tell right from wrong.

        It’s not like there’s anything creepy or sexist about comparing grown women to literal children. Especially when you are also planning to have sex with them. Nothing *gag* creepy *ohgodi’mgoingtothrowup* at all.

        1. kelticat

          The irony being that men were generally raised to be children and women were raised to be mothers.

        2. Buhzim

          To be fair, he said “obey/honor”, meaning he wasn’t talking only about the women. He could have worded it better but I believe his argument is that a relationship isn’t necessarily unfair if it doesn’t have a perfect 50/50 split like what Joe and Walky are doing, because the parties can agree on being charged with different tasks.

        3. Cerberus

          “Yes, in all technical, the wife has to obey the decisions of her husband. HOWEVER, he has to love, honor, and cherish her,”

          “Now, as to obey/honor, you have to remember that we have much the same relationship with our parents, we just don’t swear an oath to it. Our parents want us to obey, but at the same time, try to be sure that they make certain you understand that they love you.”

          There is a direct parallel made here with regards to who is expected or “desired” to obey and who has the “equal” charge to “love” in return. Wife = obey. Husband = “love”. Child = obey. Parent = “love”.

          He’s talking about just the women and he’s directly comparing their “role” to a fucking child.

          Also on an entirely separate note since I had to reread that garbage for this, obey in return for “love” as a parent-child dynamic is a little bit grating considering that one day ago in comic time, we saw that play out to its natural conclusion:
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/troopers/

          “Love”.

          You can call it “natural roles”. You can call it “charged with different tasks”. You can call it “separate spheres”.

          Honestly, we’ve been recycling the same bullshit under different names for well over a 100 years by now (if I’m being generous and limiting it to only this particular argument), but the stench is the same and posits an unequal “trade” wherein one side offers real tangible loss of power and the other has a vague suggestion to not “go too overboard”. It’s inherently unequal and I’ve seen it in action to excuse and encourage bad behavior.

          And on a personal note, I’ve got some special loathing of the “child obey, parent ‘love'” mythology given my particular background*. It, much like this twisted idea of “equality” posits the “obeyer” as a possession of a master, to fulfill the important toaster functions or be seen as the one who has done harm to a relationship.

          *As my dad tried to manipulate the rest of the family to hate me, tried to angle me into reparative therapy, refused to treat me as a full person, constantly threw passive-aggressive bigoted hate at me, and threw so much poison at my relationship, accusing my long-term partner of being a sorceress who turned me trans (true story), and so on… He believed with all his heart that he was committing an act of great love to an ignorant and disobedient whelp. He was trying to “save” me and while it hurt him to harden his heart, he knew the only way to make me see reason and see how much he “loved” me and how much he wanted what was best for me was for me to “come home” and “get help”. The result justified the actions after all. And besides, I had committed such “violence” upon the family, that it was only reasonable that they be angry as they showed their “love”.

          And damn right I disobeyed. Because fuck obeying one’s parents. And fuck that sick lie of “love” in return.

        4. Buhzim

          Toedad and your dad have pathological notions of love so I wouldn’t consider it to be the natural conclusion of the ideals. The “husband does this wife does that” and “parent soes this children do that” fail to take into account that one party could be a self serving psycho, but I don’t think this makes them worthless.

        5. Cerberus

          It’s what I’ve seen over and over. The group in power demands obedience and “fulfilling your role”, whereas the group out of it is promised “love” that is so often just a convenient justification for enforcing that obedience. I’ve seen it in friends whose families demand all sorts of BS. I’ve seen it in my friend’s parents when I was a kid when I stayed over for dinners and got to see the “domestic interactions” close up. And I’ve heard what the men in those sects say about the “proper role” of women when they think there aren’t any women around.

          The faux-equality is a like a shiny bauble, pretty to look at but with no real positive impact for the individual it is promised to.

        6. Cerberus

          Also, saying my dad “just did it wrong” runs into the problem of why did he and Toedad in the comic do it in this particular wrong way. Why did they both turn to justifications of love that were about obedience? And that comes to the inherent toxicity in the construction. If all you promise is “love” in return for obedience and inequality, then it’s really just about justifying that your actions are “loving” (and I have no doubt that my dad earnestly believed that he was showing me “love”).

      2. Arianod

        Dammit! You beat me to it.

    5. drs

      “rare instance of divorce”

      Very rare, given that the Jesus of the Gospels repeatedly hates two things, rich people and divorce, and the Catholic Church followed his lead on the latter point.

    6. ninja_jesus

      Daily reminder that Joyce’s character is autobiographical.

    7. WingedBeast

      “Yes, in all technical, the wife has to obey the decisions of her husband. HOWEVER, he has to love, honor, and cherish her, so to comply with the verse and vow, he can’t just order her around all the time, and has to HONOR her feelings, as well as his duties as the provider for the household. ”

      Okay, one way to examine this is, on either side, ask the question “what if they don’t?”.

      The answer is that, if he doesn’t… he might never know. She’s supposed to be submissive and obey him and, in most cases of this kind of “complementarian” logic, present an image of happiness. She has to wait for him to come to her to openly seek out where he’s done wrong. If she disobeys, that’s obvious right away.

      And, when you talk about abuse, you don’t get to act as though what’s abusive is immediately recognizable as such by everybody, particularly the abusers. That’s like arguing there’s no such thing as rape culture because we agree that rape is bad… until we get better at recognizing what’s abuse, that doesn’t fly.

      1. Cerberus

        This. I’m reminded of the Purple Man in Jessica Jones, especially the scene where he denies he did (a specific abusive thing that I’m not saying out loud because spoilers) and she shows him physical evidence that that was the case, because in his head it’s all romantic gestures and “getting carried away”. He even brings up that specific action later as if she’s just addicted to seeing all sorts of “loving actions” as that specific action, even though the things he’s describing are all examples of that specific action.

        Babbly nerdery aside, abusers rarely recognize what they do as abuse and almost always have an excuse to “justify” it, even if they’ll admit to said abusive actions, so long as you don’t call them abuse.

    8. Conuly

      Are you stating that Joyce is the only character to have faith?

    9. David M Willis

      Thank you, everyone, for burying this guy in his own bullshit, but looking at his posting history, this is just the latest in a long series of “saying shitty things and then never taking into account the responses,” because he’s been a skipping record for a while now.

      The latest and the last. He can now go be an asshole elsewhere.

      1. Someone

        My guess is that the people who don’t think you understand your own childhood assume everything in It’s Walky! really happened (with you replacing Joyce) and you had your mind wiped.

      2. Peduncle

        There are two ways to achieve unanimity: persuasion and expulsion. That posting and its responses suggest that the first is not imminent but that the second is not necessary.

    10. Wublub

      Um, did you really just compare the relationship between a husband and wife to that of a parent and a child?

    11. QD

      hahaha, weird how apparently paul was very specifically describing an american nuclear 1950s family in the first century AD? That’s pretty odd!

  39. Huttj509

    If you want a Jewish kid to grow up not being a literalist “what was then is what must be now,” his Bar Mitzvah Torah portion being Pinchas ( http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/2236/jewish/Pinchas-in-a-Nutshell.htm ) is a good start, when his dad’s not Jewish and his mom is.

    Seriously, that portion involves a guy slaying a Hebrew man and a Midianite woman for, well, consorting outside the tribe (2 people one spear, very efficient). He’s then praised for it by G-d.

    It was also my mom’s Torah portion for her Bat Mitzvah.

    1. Wack'd

      The fact that Jewish literalists exist has always been baffling to me given how damn hard arguing is baked into our culture.

    2. Very Good Karma

      My father is Sepharidic Israeli and my mother is English Canadian; I was born and live in the United States. Israeli Judaism is sort of like Italian Catholicism- there aren’t a lot of sects with softer, kinder, gentler versions of the theology, but that doesn’t mean there’s much actual observance of the rules. My dad was highly unobservant even by Israeli standards when I was growing up, and I basically learned nothing about Judaism but abbreviated versions of Hanukkah and Passover.

      When I was in my teens, he suddenly decided he missed religion and started looking for a synagogue, and unfortunately the one in our city that was stylistically most similar to the Judaism he remembered from his childhood was a Sephardic orthodox synagogue. From them I learned that not only was I not Jewish because my mother wasn’t Jewish (Jewishness is matrilinear), but by being a non-Jew my presence at things like a Passover dinner would make them ritually unclean. See, the Angel of Death is, well, not too bright- like, it basically tells which houses to kill people in by who has goat’s blood on the door- thus, it’s very important that you keep all the non-Jews outside so the Angel of Death can kill them in the street, and if you have a non-Jew in your house the Angel of Death might enter in pursuit of them and accidentally kill your entire family! So, no non-Jews at Passover. It’s a life-or-death matter.

      This might all seem horrific and a bizarre ritual reenactment of a tragic, ancient massacre, but don’t worry! It’s not bad that the Angel of Death is slaughtering non-Jewish children, because non-Jews don’t have souls! Non-jews are philosophical zombies- they only /look/ like they suffer. The purpose of the universe is to purify Jewish souls, and all non-Jews are just part of the scenery of the world G-d, in his infinite wisdom, has created for this purpose. We need not consider them!

      The preceding may sound like a bad joke, but I sat in a congregation and saw and heard the Rabbi at the podium explaining all this in a very scholarly fashion and nobody so much as coughed incredulously, to say nothing of standing up and walking out. Years later I talked to another Rabbi in another city who was giving a night class on the Kabbalah, and asked him about what that orthodox Rabbi had said and if I had heard him correctly, and this other Rabbi shook his head sadly and confirmed that I did understand the orthodox Rabbi correctly and that that is a real sect of orthodox Jewish belief and they are horrible people. But then I had already known the orthodox Rabbi was a horrible person just from him acting like an asshole all the time.

      1. Captain Button

        So if you are a non-Jew and convert to this version, do you get a soul issued* at that time? Or do they just not allow conversions.

        * Allow 6-8 weeks for delivery. Some settling may have occurred during shipment.

        (Another technically-not-a-Jew, but one who has never been given flak about it.)

        1. Very Good Karma

          My experience was that these orthodox Jews were very evasive when pressed on their more offensive beliefs, and would often just say something nonsensical and then consider the matter explained satisfactorily, and then go on the offense dismissing you as insufficiently studied in the Torah to understand the explanation, or calling you disrespectful of community elders or someone just seeking to cause trouble.

          Much more saliently though, while they never outright stated that conversion was proscribed, they heavily discouraged it in many small ways. If I had wanted to “convert” they would have made me jump through many, many hoops before they would declare me “Jewish”, and the number of hoops to jump through seems to vary in exponential inverse correlation to how well someone conforms to the orthodoxy’s idea of what a Jew should be. Most undesirables that want to convert get the message and try elsewhere.

        2. Huttj509

          I’m familiar with the tradition of “If someone goes to a Rabbi wanting to convert, the Rabbi should first try to talk them out of it.” But it’s from a direction of “dude, do you know what you’re getting into? There’s a lot of rules, a history of persecution, and you don’t need to be Jewish to be a good person. Seriously, you should have a good reason for pursuing this.”

        3. Leorale

          Granted I’m not Orthodox (I’m Reform, which is often considered the other end of the spectrum), but I was told that somebody who converts to Judaism has always had a Jewish soul and it’s finally getting to express itself. (Also none of this nonsense about nobody else having souls.)

          Also that rabbi and/or his sect is full of it. It’s an extra-special mitzvah (commandment) to welcome visitors to passover — “all who are hungry, come and eat”, “be kind to the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Come on, rabbi-guy, it’s right there in the text.) We’ve got our wingnuts, too.

        4. Huttj509

          My mother’s been finding her new community after my parents retired and moved. She balances between the reform laid back synagogue, and the Chabad group where the women wear wigs and the Rabbi won’t make eye contact with her while they’re talking.

      2. Huttj509

        Kinda conflicts with “let all who are hungry come and eat.”

  40. Cerberus

    There’s so much I love in this one.

    That Panel 1 with concerned Dorothy and Joyce half-realizing that there’s something wrong with the idea she’s communicated, but not fully willing to let go of the idea that there’s good God-ordained wisdom there. This horrible thing I’m saying is just because it’s not in context, let me share that all important context and then she’ll see and I’ll stop feeling this sinking fear that what I was taught was moral is actually kind of fucked up and stop worrying about the fact that my atheist crush’s friend’s philosophy is more moral than mine.

    You can just see the cracks in her faith spreading there.

    And Panel 2. I’ll jump in before the usual motley to say, yes, that is very much the worldview in that sect of the “roles” of men and women and it has some horrifying connotations even above and beyond the obvious problems. And a lot of it stems from the Victorian excuse for patriarchy of “separate spheres”, which…

    Okay, so the deal with that is that no, no, it’s not that women are in an unequal position and expected to do undervalued and unappreciated labor in the home while men get to matter in public spaces, it’s that both have their “proper” spheres where they matter. And it just so happens that women’s “natural” roles are hidden away and unappreciated taking care of children and house, while the man’s is to enjoy voting rights and so on. He would rule in public and she would rule the “moral upbringing” of the household, so long as she recognized that he was the master of the house and his will was to hold sway.

    Joyce’s sect takes that idea and cranks it up to 11, making not only the “wife” responsible for house and “moral order” of the children, but also steward of the husband’s morality as well. But not by critiquing his immoral actions, but rather by being so “pure” and “good” and hard-sacrificing and docile that he is sustained by it and thus never chooses to do an immoral action. And he in turn “gives” her his rule and takes over the actual important decisions and so on.

    So the end-result is he rules every decision and she is responsible for his bad behavior because she wasn’t “godly” enough, i.e. even more docile and hard-suffering. Unsurprisingly, this leads to women being blamed for things like domestic violence or cheating because clearly if she was even more prayer-crazy, then her husband wouldn’t have acted so wrong, so really it is on her to apologize and promise to do better.

    For some strange reason this seems to lead to more abuse and horribleness rather than less… odd that.

    And Dorothy Panel 3 is my spirit animal. That horror across her face battling with her empathy as she struggles to find the most diplomatic way of phrasing just how problematic that is.

    And Panel 4 Joyce still clinging to the hope that she’s just phrasing it wrong rather than her theology is monstrous.

    And that last panel is behind a lot of homophobia. Because for systems like Joyce’s theology, gay marriage is the poison that ruins the argument.

    Cause, if it’s natural roles, man and woman, both world’s apart, inherently unable to possibly understand each other, but perfect components to build harmony but only when put together in the “proper roles”, then the wife has no grounds to complain and nothing must change. After all, it’s a woman’s natural role to be under-appreciated house and sex slaves. And that is chosen by God himself.

    But if gay people can get together, if there is no clear demarkation and requirement of a “man role” or a “woman role” to exist for love, then relationships of equals can exist, where one is not “naturally” the servant of the other. And that terrifies the people currently benefitting from that system.

    A) Because it means their wives may notice their treatment is unequal and unsupported by facts and demand to be treated better, which might require them to interact with their free servants like they were people. B) Because when combined with the notion that gayness is a choice, means that gay marriage is clearly a vastly superior choice and so all their helpmeets will run off with each other and leave them all alone. And C) it means the roles are BS. And that means that instead of a divine plan, there’s just some sexist BS and that can leave you feeling unmoored from the universe when you were counting on that narrative. This is part of why there’s so much effort among homophobes to blend gender and sexuality together and pretend that gayness is just a matter of being confused about your “proper role” and why there’s so much fixation on the notion of there being a “man” and a “woman” role in every gay relationship. Because to admit otherwise is to let this broken system collapse once and for all.

    1. altalemur

      i am just dying to find out how Joyce would rationalize both Walky and Joe being the husband. because she is fine with a union of two wives, where they are equals and domestic duties are based on individual strengths. how would a Christian marriage of two husbands work?

      there are other cultures that do involve male-male love and female-female love, while continuing a very patriarchal marriage system. they even have a system whereby an FTM or MTF person can transition socially 100% and participate in the patriarchal marriage system. (i am mainly thinking of some modern middle eastern cultures, where gay romance for aristocratic teens is the norm, but doesn’t get in the way of marriage.)

    2. Rachel

      I don’t have anything to add, I just need to let Cerberus here know that this post is perfect. A+

  41. detective boomwolf

    Welp, time to go back to that mindset were i start questioning everything i know again. G’night everybody.

  42. Rob

    YEAH FUCK GENDER ROLLS

    1. Kamino Neko

      I prefer sweetrolls.

      1. SgtWadeyWilson

        Dice rolls, that’s what we need more of.

        1. detective boomwolf

          What about swiss rolls?

        2. leftwingfox

          Nicely fuckable.

        3. LynziGraye

          That comment goes really, really well with the Oglaf fox. +1 Internet.

      2. Very Good Karma

        http://explosm.net/comics/2861/

        1. Rob

          fuck, that was clever

    2. Captain Button

      Rolls Royces are gendered?

      1. Arianod

        I know spring rolls aren’t.

  43. Kamino Neko

    Hmm.

    On the one hand, Joyce accepted the ‘both wives’ thing without even a speed bump. Even after getting over her initial issues for Becky’s sake, I didn’t expect that to be so easy.

    On the other…oh, Joyce, Joyce, Joyce… Still a long way to go on accepting the whole ‘written by fallible humans’ part of Bible interpretation…

    1. Cerberus

      She’s working a really old OS. She’s going to need quite a few critical system updates before she’s matching her peers.

    2. john

      Without a speed bump? No, the relevant system update was applied earlier, through considerable research and difficulty. She figured that the only New Testament prohibition against homosexuality is founded on a mistranslation, and she’s still opposed to premarital hanky-panky, therefore lesbian couples e.g. Becky and Dina are simply morally obligated to keep their clits to themselves until the wedding night. That, in turn, trivially implies that marriage should be an option for them.

      Joyce has run ALL the scenarios.

      1. Kamino Neko

        ‘Same sex love is OK’ is not the same as ‘same sex love doesn’t need to be run through a heterosexualizing filter where one takes on the husband role and one is the wife’.

    3. Arianod

      She’s learned to compromise for the sake of… well, sanity; but she keeps falling back to her Biblical upbringing as a default. Old habits die hard.

  44. Big

    The way Joyce should frame it is “important” vs “power.
    For example, when the poop hits the paddle the Secret Service can literally give orders to the President. The President is more important while the Secret Service is in charge but their lives are not as valuable.
    Granted for this to work in marriage one spouse would have to be more valuable or capable than the other. And assume the husband is genius enough to notice.

    1. Lord Stoneheart

      Yeah, the “One spouse would have to be more valuable or capable than the other” sentiment is why even trying to phrase it that way still doesn’t help.

  45. fannypiggs

    Not commenting on Willis’ understanding BUT
    Joyce is not explaining this passage well, at least as it is taught in Evangelical circles

    Women are to submit to their husbands. Husbands are to love your wives, as Christ loved the church. Christ gave up the power of his divinity and died for the Church. So there’s clearly implied sacrifice on the part of the husband.

    1. Wack'd

      Too bad that sacrifice doesn’t involve actual decision-making power!

      1. Gangler

        ♪I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that♪

      2. Cerberus

        God no, that would be betraying “natural law” and a direct sin against God. Instead women should just assume that sacrifice is occurring, you know, in the background somewhere and just let the man keep all his decision-making, valued work, and social regard like a proper dutiful housewife.

        Because otherwise, this would just be some self-serving sexist bullshit and that couldn’t possibly be the case.

    2. Phyrexian Rogue

      Mutual love and respect seem somewhat required in a functional marriage, as well as sacrifices on both sides. Forcing women into submission in exchange for (what should be) normal treatment really isn’t a fair trade-off.

    3. Cizak

      Your very first sentence when trying to defend this verse is “women are to submit to their husbands”. The fact that you’re not just stopping there to go “woah, wait an actual fuck” says a lot.

      But yeah, this so called “sacrifice” on the husband’s part? Total horseshit. It’s just another way of putting down women and placing them under their husbands’ feet. “Hey, he could hypothetically have to SACRIFICE for you, so not submitting to him is incredible rude and ungrateful.”

      It’s a notion that still lives on today in many ways, one example being the idea that a woman owe a man “a chance” just because a man is interested in her. The man might have to “sacrifice” face and pride if he asks her out and gets turned down. And then the woman is a total bongo who put the man in the friendzone and don’t women understand how hard it can be to get rejected? She didn’t respect his “sacrifice”.

      And then Elliot Rodgers happens.

      1. Cerberus

        This. It’s part of this notion that women owe their consent, time, and “duty” in response to faux “sacrifice” and it leads to a culture of entitlement around women’s bodies.

    4. Lord Stoneheart

      And my response is still Dorothy’s response in panel 3.

      One person is being asked to sacrifice their own autonomy. The other is not. That’s not equal.

  46. ninja_jesus

    So it turns out that gay marriages are more equal than straight marriages. Go figure.

  47. DrunkenElfMage

    Yeah, finding out how my church treated the responsibilities of marriage for the man and woman was what ultimately made me question the bible and ultimately my faith.

    The way the priest said it was through the analogy “Husband is to the wife as is God is to the Church”. Immediately in my mind I started questioning that logic, because there is no way that could be construed as “equal” but that’s what the entire sermon was about, how both the husband and wife had “equal” responsibilities. So either he was being hypocritical or was trying to sell the notion that somehow the CHURCH was equal to GOD, therefore making clergy stand on the pedestal above all others.

    My brain broke from the shitty analogy and that started the erosion of my faith.

  48. Killian

    The fundamentalist church I grew up in didn’t even try to make Ephesians 5 not sound terrible. That church still fully believes that women should be subservient to men. My best friend and I were actually told that we couldn’t usher (which at that church involved handing out bulletins only) because it would be emasculating to the men of the church.

    1. ninja_jesus

      Sounds like the men of that church were a bunch of oversensitive whiners.

    2. Guairdean Beatha

      It sounds like the men in your church were already pretty well emasculated if you and your friend serving as ushers was all it took to finish the job.

    3. LordMacDonald

      As a Christian, I’m sorry they believed that. That’s not what the Bible teaches.

      1. thejeff

        I’m sorry, but the Bible doesn’t teach anything. People read the Bible and they interpret it and then they teach things. Those things are always based as much on the people doing the teaching as on the actual text, because that’s how people read text.
        People have been arguing over the teachings of the Bible for nigh two thousand years. Longer if you count the Torah. Often killing each other and sometimes fighting open wars.

        I’ll admit I prefer your interpretation, but that’s my preference. Nothing more. And nothing less.

  49. Leorale

    Man, friggin’ Paul. Christianity would’ve been so much better without him.

  50. Siyajkak

    It comes from a place of “equivalence” over “equality”. The husband is expected to be the decision maker and the provider, and the wife is expected to be the supporter and the homemaker, according to supposedly “natural” dispositions. You’ll then get supporting arguments of other equivalencies, like “Men are more rational, but women are kinder”, “Men are stronger, but women are better at managing domestic issues”, etc. All of these are constructed to give men the qualities which are useful in the public sphere while women are given those that are useful in the private sphere. The public sphere, of course, is the sphere where politics, economics, and social organization take place, so it confers on the husband the ability of the social actor, with personal agency, thus granting him authority. The theory is that both performing their roles results in good feelings for everyone, but like Confucian relationships, while both sides are expected to remain in their role, only one side is granted material power. Thus, if a woman breaks her role, she can be subject to punishment by the husband, but if the husband breaks his role, the woman is expected to continue doing her job and just hope he’ll come to his senses.

    This is why equivalence over equality is often a tempting form of social organiation, but is essentially harmful, as it always ends up accruing power to one side, whether the categories are gender, race, class, etc.

    1. Cerberus

      Or worse, she is blamed for failing her role in the private sphere in being “godly” enough for the man to keep him from breaking his “role”.

      After all, if she kept a “better” home, then he wouldn’t have (been tempted to stray/needed to discipline you or your unruly children/been taking by the temptation of the bottle or the flesh/some random BS way of phrasing him acting terribly and immorally).

      It’s heads I win, tails you lose as a moral philosophy.

      1. Captain Button

        Any problem you have is somehow your fault.

        Any problem I have is somehow someone’s else’s fault.

        1. Cerberus

          See? Equality.

        2. inqntrol

          That’s pretty much how things worked in the Eastern Bloc.

        3. Rutee

          …HAHAHAHAHA

          Because the West has ever graciously admitted to the failings of capitalism XD

    2. Leorale

      agreed with Siyajkak, well put

    3. StClair

      Equivalence, “separate but equal”, etc etc sometimes does get argued from the best of intentions ([i]rarely[/i], but sometimes) – acknowledging that people are different, have different strengths and likes (does “equality” mean giving everyone an equal amount of chocolate pudding, including those who don’t like chocolate and/or pudding?).

      But it always, always fails, because true equivalence is a damnably hard problem/standard to make work as a practical thing (and becomes exponentially more so as more people and their needs and qualities are added to the equation), and even the best initial intentions are quickly corrupted by those who want the power imbalanced in their favor.

  51. Pyr05

    Joyce’s comfort in realizing ‘hey, Dorothy isn’t a guy, so we have to look at this differently’ is astounding. Major props for that.

    1. Cerberus

      All part of the gay agenda. Making the lifestyle so seductive and fair looking that you don’t notice the secret mental homo rays. Clearly Becky has been using her space voodoo gay powers to make Joyce feel comfortable enough with the secret queerbo recruitment. Agent Dorothy is just perpetuating it with her Satanic Atheist witchery in order to fully corrupt her soul as a personal affront against her father to make him feel as he failed to shepherd her faith.

      /Toedad’s reading of this comic, probably

      1. Captain Button

        If evil weren’t nice, nobody’d bother with it. – Mary

        1. Spencer

          Now it all makes sense. Mary had to fight off some evil gay vampires trying to seduce her to secular thought and universal health care.

          You can read all about in Mary’s ongoing comic; Christian Warrior Assqueen.

        2. Captain Button

          Must have been those vampire with the wrist fetishes, then.

        3. ninja_jesus

          Maybe “good” should take notes from evil.

        4. Reltzik

          Yes, but…

          Evil will always triumph because good is dumb. — Dark Helmet

        5. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          What with all the other things that evil apparently is (Evil is Sexy, Evil is Cool, Evil is One Big Happy Family, etc.), what’s the point of being good again?

      2. Arianod

        You seem to imply that atheists are supposed to have Satanic witchy powers. But if that’s the case, how come I don’t get any? And what do I have to do to fix that?

        1. Captain Button

          Play more D&D, duh.

        2. Arianod

          More? Dude, if playing D&D were the way to get Satanic powers, I’d be Anton fucking LaVey by now. It has to be something else.

        3. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          I’m guessing it’s either keeping pet sharks and lampreys or some other RPG.

        4. Arianod

          I’ve played like a ton RPGs for years, so I guess I’ll go with the sharks ^^ I’ll let you know how it goes!

  52. FireWater

    I think I can explain it in a slightly less horrible way.

    The current state of the world, bad and depressing as it may seem at times, is infinitely better than how things used to be. We have, bit by bit, throughout the history of our world stepped further and further into solidifying better ways of life (with some occasional steps backward along the way, like the dark ages, but eventually we ‘stepped forward’ again out of those ruts.)

    Marriage for most of human history was not centered around love. Hell, the very concept of “romantic love” is much less old than most think it is. Looking at old texts we see constant use of words (in various languages) that mean “love” but it is almost always in a familiar sense, or a fraternal sense. People cared for each other, but that wasn’t the driving force behind why two people got together and formed a family.

    Many will tell you that marriage was for most of history not much more than a business contract between two men, passing ownership of a woman from one (the father) to the other (the husband). This basic fact is why so many have a bleak view of the institute of marriage, as well as a bleak view of world history. “Women were property!” Well, yes. They were, but ending your analysis with that statement is incredibly shallow. Things go much deeper than that.

    Query, if a man was ‘buying’ a woman via marriage, why was it the woman’s family that paid dowry to the one receiving the bride?

    It circles back to my original thought, the world used to be a BAD place. The phrase “getting through the day” was much more literal in the past, people toiled and often fought just to live through another day. A woman unmarried and on her own was vulnerable and in danger. Naturally, anyone alive could get by on their own provided they did what it took to survive, which could vary day to day and person to person (that rule is oddly still true today), but a woman under a man’s care was… just that. Under his care. She was protected so long as her man was alive. A woman on her own, well she had to survive the way men did, by doing whatever it took. It was a much more dangerous life.
    Just as a woman would belong to her husband, children belonged to their parents, men belonged to their local lords, etc. And the world was dangerous.
    A woman was a man’s property, but a man was expected to lay his life on the line in defense of his country, his land, his family, and his property. That means that even though his wife and children “belonged” to him, his life was considered disposable when paired next to their safety and well-being.

    So yes, men and women had different roles. Each gained something from the other. They have been referred to as the 3 C’s and 3 P’s. Men received cooking, cleaning, and companionship from their wives, and women received protection, providence, and progeny from their husbands.

    So, tl;dr: Men were the bosses of women because in a much less ‘civilized’ time, men and women had different roles in society, and men were expected to give their lives if necessary to defend their woman. The return payment for that was getting to be the head of the household.

    1. Cerberus

      … Yeah, that’s not any less horrible.

      Though points for finding a new level of awful to argue with. It’s totes equal because if you don’t agree to be my literal property/unpaid servant/sex slave, then some other man will do something undefinedly awful (or rather our society will punish you by denying you any real form of employment outside of sex work if you don’t have the “protection” of some form of male owner), but hey, I’ll theoretically die for you, but not really, in some fucked up patriarchal way, so, even steven.

      Also, can everyone just like stop trying to find the not awful, because it so is not there.

    2. Anna

      But the wife didn’t receive progeny, she provided it (to the husband’s family).

    3. Cizak

      First of all, the “Dark Ages” didn’t exist. It wasn’t much more horrible proportionally to other eras, historians don’t use the term, and it was coined during the Renaissance as a way of saying “Everything sucks since Rome fell”.

      Secondly, no, you could not explain it in a less horrible way. Men being the ones that have to protect everyone else and women being the ones who therefore have to support men are CONCEPTS THAT STILL INFLUENCE SOCIETY TODAY. And it’s fucking SHIT.

    4. Lord Stoneheart

      I think you actually made it sound worse. That’s almost impressive. In a vile sort of way.

    5. altalemur

      um…. dowry and also the woman’s role in marriage is… complicated through history, even if we’re ONLY talking about Western Europe marriage.
      Dowry: the money a bride’s family gives to the bride when she marries. this money is often now under the husband’s jurisdiction but is specifically meant for her well-being and for taking care of future children.
      Bridewealth: money that the groom’s family gives to the bride’s family in order to purchase the marriage.

      some cultures have both a dowry and a bridewealth, which in the best circumstances are large wedding presents from the bride’s parents and the groom’s parents in order to start the new couple out well financially. but these are only loose terms and both dowry and bridewealth are different between, say, rural China in the 1930s, Spain in 1830s, and Nuer in 2030.

      but i am also going to point out that the marriage that makes it into the history books are Aristocratic Marriages. European peasants even during times when royals could not divorce were freely moving into a marriage household, and either the man or the woman simply moving out when they wanted a divorce.

    6. Willoughby Chase

      That’s just a complete load of toss.

    7. Jhon

      I think you folks are being too hard on FireWater. Suppose there’s the zombie apocalypse. Modern tech is fried, the ammo is used up. Would our modern idea of men-and-women-as-equal-partners survive? (Let’s think slightly -more- horrible.)

  53. gonegirl

    its almost like a book written 2 centuries ago when women couldnt be educated and weren’t allowed alone in public was written to address a different socio-economic situation

    just a reminder that the bible was radically liberal for it’s time

    1. Eve

      A century is one hundred years, we’re more in the ballpark of 2000, (well, ok a few centuries less than 2000 before things were actually written down), so that’s two millenia

      1. gonegirl

        woops. yep. tyed a little quick.

  54. Shiro

    Finally, the comic that makes me bother to get a gravatar.

    Fingers crossed that it worked

    1. inqntrol

      I think you new grav fits for this situation.

    2. Captain Button

      Stripped of context, that gravatar makes me think that Walky has just said something horribly hurtful to Dorothy.

      1. Roborat

        To me, it looks like her and Walky are having sexy fun times and he just stuck it in the wrong hole.

  55. MrZombieScordo

    I’m happy that Joyce is snapping out her anger/apathy. She’s being gently forced to think about stuff and talk with her best friend.

  56. Buhzim

    Genuine question, is it gramatically correct to call both women in a same sex marriage “wives” or this is just Dorothy trying to be didatic

    1. Reltzik

      1) Yes, it is grammatically correct to call both women in a same sex marriage “wives”.

      2) It is also grammatically correct to ask if that is grammatically correct.

      3) Asking if it is grammatically correct is probably not SEMANTICALLY correct, as you should instead be asking if it is SEMANTICALLY correct. Grammar deals with sentence structure and spelling, while semantics deals with the meaning of words. Unless you actually meant to ask about sentence structure or spelling rather than whether that’s the right word for what you mean, this is a question about semantics.

      4) It is also semantically correct to refer to both women in a same-sex marriage as wives.

      1. Buhzim

        Yeah, should be semantics I guess. I’m not sure because when the terms wife and husband were coined, they probably didn’t take into consideration that in the future you would have marriages with two women or two guys. Etymology for husband and wife is “master/mistress of the household”, which doesn’t seem appropriate when we have two of them.

        1. Amtelope

          Answering the question I wish you’d asked rather than the question you did ask — some same-sex couples like “husband and husband” or “wife and wife,” some prefer “spouse” or “partner” for both because they feel like there’s a lot of heteronormative baggage around “husband” and “wife.” Asking couples you meet what terms they’d prefer is probably a good idea. Not quibbling over whether the terms couples have decided to use are gramatically or semantically correct is also probably a good idea.

    2. Daibhid C

      Genuine question: What else would you call them?

      1. Cerberus

        “Partners in crime”?
        http://lgbtlaughs.com/post/124452644327/this-is-even-funnier-than-gal-pal

        1. ninja_jesus

          But which one is the feudal lord and which one is the handmaiden?

        2. Rutee

          I hate you.

      2. Buhzim

        Sinners?

      3. Deanatay

        “spouses”

      4. altalemur

        *in deep Klingon voice* parmaqqay!

        1. altalemur

          okay, joking aside, it can be difficult to find gender neutral terms for stuff. Spouse is good if you’re married. but if you’re dating someone and want to remove gender from it, i’ve heard some good phrases:
          love-mate is my favorite.

        2. modulusshift

          Aww, that’s adorable… 🙂 it feels like it would be taken less seriously than partner, though. Mostly because love as a word is so devalued. :/

        3. altalemur

          yes, but when i have a long-term romantic relationship with an asexual man, and i am a genderqueer non-monogamous person, “Love-Mate” really is the best way to describe it. i’m not building a dental practice with him, i’m sharing love.

    3. Pinja

      Shepard: It’s just that if you were human, you would be called her mother, regardless of which one of you gave birth to her.

      Matriarch Aethyta: Well, I’m not human, am I? Anthropocentric bag of dicks.

  57. Falcon

    Great great grandchildren yet to be born, I pray you find some of my beliefs to be barbaric. For if you are no different from me, then we have stagnated. It is progress that allows me to view LGBT rights, gender roles, race, and so many other issues so differently from my forefathers, and if we remain on the course of progress than you too should strive to be wiser than me.

    1. Cerberus

      Yes, all of this. Every time one of my students learns about what life was like for people like me growing up and reacts with horror that anything could be that bad, it means that we’re growing as a nation. That we are replacing step by step the toxicity of the past. That our activism has impact. When new queer kids grow up appalled at the notion that it used to be controversial in literally every state for gay people to exist much less get married, it means we’ve moved from that point.

      I want the next generation and the generation after that to be appalled at the shit we pulled. The things we convinced ourselves were socially okay. Because it means we’ve been pulling it out of ourselves, strand by strand.

      1. Gigafreak

        Some of the bad stuff’s pretty well ingrained into my head that the new and better ways are very uncomfortable to me. Just gotta hope I can keep that stuff to myself so it can die with me, sparing the next generation from carrying it on.

        Better to have my mouth aclog with my foot than to have awful stuff continue to tumble out of it!

    2. Tenn

      Great great grandchildren yet to be born, I pray you find some of my beliefs to be barbaric.

      That’s some extremely concentrated wisdom, beautifully expressed. Is it an old saying or a specific quote, or is it all your own ? Either way, it’s the kind of quote that deserves to be remembered (and misquoted, and misattributed, and misinterpreted, and… 😉 ) for centuries to come.

      1. Commodore Jeep-Eep

        Not necessarily; if we backslide, our progressiveness would be seen as such. Such backsliding is hardly impossible.

        1. Falcon

          Commodore Jeep-Eep: A rule of thumb therefore is whether what we aim for meets the needs of our time, or is simply being pursued because of a rose-tinted idea of what our ancestors did. By itself, lacking context, “Great great grandchildren yet to be born, I pray you find some of my beliefs to be barbaric” can be construed the way you describe. 🙂

      2. Falcon

        It’s something I came up with.

        I’m a fan of history, but also an INTJ personality type. We hold some figures of the past in high regard: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Saladin, were these not all great men? Yet if they were alive today they would have horrifying views on many issues. How are we to reconcile these opposing factors?

        The answer I came up with was that they were great men for their time. They advanced humanity from the standards of their time. So too do we try to advance humanity today in our own little way. There may be clashes, mutually exclusive goals, mistaken beliefs and so on, but the important thing is that our goal be better than what came before. We moved on from “before” for a reason. The past is there to inspire, but striving for exactly what the past was as if it were perfect…every slow decline begins with such a notion.

        Many people believe there is a universal definition of goodness and justice. To me, there isn’t. There’s just us, the world, and what we make of it. We strive for perfection, but have never and will never achieve it. Nonetheless, despite Aristotle’s concerns about infinity, the plain evidence before us is that we have made progress. I want humanity to keep making progress, and be better than I could have imagined. That necessarily means that those who come after me view the world differently than I did.

        On a lighter note, this is why I have some contempt for sharks. If the damn things haven’t needed to evolve since the dinosaurs, then they have wasted several hundred million years simply treading water, so to speak. Dolphins and orcas have been around for a far shorter period of time, but already they have developed group tactics and tool use that far surpasses anything the sharks have come up with, and teach that knowledge to their kids so that they can potentially improve upon it. Go brainpower! Go progress! ^_^

        1. Captain Button

          This reminds me of a bit in a science fiction novel. Possibly The R-Master (rewritten as The Last Master) by Gordon R. Dickson.

          The protagonist says something about how every generation imagines a new future world and starts building the foundation of that future world. Then the next generation comes along, imagines a somewhat different future and starts modifying the foundation. And so does the next generation, etc.

          But he says that now (i.e. the future the novel is set in), this isn’t happening and they are working on the 2nd or 3rd story of the new future because world government has paralyzed the culture (or something like that).

          The other people say that this is a good thing, but the protagonist says no it isn’t, the continual rewriting of the future is how things should be.

  58. ninjazaku

    It’s starting to be cemented just how hard Joyce has hit her denial wall. Things that she was days ago acknowledging were flawed she is now trying to cling to in an effort to rebuild this rose-tinted image of her home life.

    Poor Joyce.

  59. Bagge

    Eye contact achieved! I love how Joyce go from “I don’t want to have to explain yet another piece of my beliefs to Dorothy to” “Oh, loophole! OK, let’s just use common sense and mutual respect instead”

    1. Cerberus

      I know. Right now she’s clinging to these loopholes as a means of trying to resolve the tension between her morality and her faith, but it just puts a background hum of strain on said faith. But yeah, Dorothy is amazingly good at gently bringing up things that really make her think about what she “knows to be true”.

  60. Ardin

    the bible is a shit amirite

  61. Ardin

    I like the new eye colour for Joyce. It looks a bit like a blind eye. She went blind from all the cognitive dissonance.

  62. Cherrypie

    Try this: “The husband’s job is winning the bread. The wife’s job is being support staff so he keeps winning the bread.”

    1. Bagge

      “That’s… not equal.”

      1. Cerberus

        Indeed.

        And it’s also one of those BS things that’s formed by straight up rigging the game to start with. If you limit women’s ability to “win bread” and restrict their access to individual employment and so on and put them under extreme pressure to adopt these “support roles” and tell them that’s all they can aspire to, then yeah, you can then strut and preen afterwards and go, but aha here’s this thing you couldn’t have done without a man, so see, a fake form of “equality” that only exists because of massive societal inequality and disenfranchisement.

        1. Cherrypie

          I am pretty sure nobody will read this.

          No, its not equal. Its not even comparable. They are completely different tasks, requiring completely different skillsets, even in a fantasy equalist world where everyone gets a task to their skills instead of their genders. Somebody needs to man the castle, and somebody needs to man the bandits outside the castle, thats solely what it is.

          A woman working out while the husband stays at home just means the woman is the “husband” in the parabole’s equation.

    2. Cizak

      So: “The husband’s job is one that gives him status and power to use both inside and outside the household. The wife’s job is one that gives her a bit of power inside the household and otherwise none.”

      1. Richard

        The problem is that all too often humans in a position of authority go full Joffrey. What’s even worse is that those instances get infinitely more publicity than the ones who don’t.

        1. Lord Stoneheart

          I mean even if no abuse occurs, I still can’t see why marriage should be a thing where one person is literally the boss of the other. I mean that system is set up to allow for abuse. Just because it doesn’t always happen doesn’t make it right.

      2. Cerberus

        Yeah, that’s sort of the thing that “The Feminine Mystique” spent a lot of time breaking down and deconstructing. Under that 1950s housewife fairy tale, there’s a lot of strain added to the stay-at-home mother and a lot of it is because of exactly this.

        His work is valued by society. It confers status and allows him purchasing power. If he tells others about what he has done, he receives more respect than none. It allows him to dodge out of responsibilities at home (but I work so hard earning the money you spend (by buying groceries and household goods for the house I live in, so how can I be expected to continue to work doing any household task when I get home).

        And he can survive on said work if a split were to occur or his partner was to die (albeit now forced to do a minimum of work at home until he acquires a new free servant).

        Whereas for her, her work is completely devalued and often overlooked unless it is deemed to be insufficient or inadequate, her work is presumed to be easy and less stressful even when that isn’t true, her work becomes never ending with no set ending. She has no purchasing power for herself and so is heavily reliant upon her husband’s largesse (there’s more than a few stories of women who were given insultingly low “allowances” by their husbands for their “work” that were then used by said husbands as a justification for poor treatment (because it was his money, etc)). If he was to run off or die or they split, she’d have to radically shift her life around to be able to survive because while her work was valuable (there have been a number of surveys showing how being married is an economic detriment to women but an economic boon to men, because under traditional roles, men can devote themselves more fully to being company men because they don’t have to do anything for themselves when they got home, thus allowing them to look like more stellar employees).

        And all of that ended up creating all manner of deep depressions, because one of the things about us humans, the thing that makes things like unemployment undesirable even in generous welfare systems, is that we like to view our work as mattering and having value. We want to feel like our lives have impact on our world and are treated as being “worth” something.

        So for those trapped by the “feminine mystique” and this role, all they saw was this token “valuing” for the sake of arguing equality in inequality, but in general, treated like their work was a duty the husband was “owed”. Where their work wasn’t valued socially or economically and there was little connection between performance and pay, leading to absolutely rock-bottom self-image and problems like tranquilizer addiction and extreme depression and trauma dissociation.

        1. zoelogical

          …yeah, this is why Mr. Darcy was such a fantasy prince in Pride and Prejudice. because 1) generous, 2) a really great brother to his sister, 3) loads of money, 4) respecting of Elizabeth as a human being, 5) generous enough with his money that Elizabeth was able to set some aside to give to Wickham and Lydia in emergencies and still have enough for her own needs. ‘slike. being Mrs. Darcy was a fulltime job, and that’s really shown in the visit to Pemberley.

          …Austen doesn’t really discuss that part of her life, but. this is why Austen is protofeminist.

    3. Lord Stoneheart

      “One person is literally the boss of the other person.”

      I still have yet to see an adequate explanation on why that should be the case.

      Why can’t both husband and wife be winning the bread? (I mean in today’s world, and many times in the past this was the case anyway)

      1. Cerberus

        And this point exactly is why sects like Joyce’s are so angry about the notion of women “betraying their nature” to work outside the home and keep sniping at things like reproductive health as a means of trying to force women back into their “proper” roles (even though modern capitalism makes that almost impossible to sustain in America). Because if both are “winning the bread”, then why exactly are the women still expected to complete all the housework and childcare (in their worldview)?

    4. Willoughby Chase

      bollocks

  63. TheNinthShader

    If you focus on panel 3, and remove all the other panels, Dorothy is permanently mid orgasm.

  64. Chris (the other one)

    This is one of the (many, many) things I despise about Religion, right here. The Bible, any version, has many thousands of sections, verses. Yet, one, is used to subjugate women. Word of God, my ass.

  65. Cathy Garrett

    Oh. My. God.

    I think the girl just had an epiphany.

  66. Arianod

    *Facepalm* *Head shake* My God. Joyce has so much common sense as soon as she gets a chance to think outstide the Book.

  67. BenRG

    Well… It isn’t as simple as that, Dorothy, although it is entirely in-character for Joyce (given her social background) not to be aware of the broader precedents and contexts that mean it DOESN’T mean “Do whatever your husband says”.

    1. modulusshift

      I can’t help but feel that less-than-total submission would make the submission rather unlike the one to the Lord.

  68. Cizak

    If you have to constantly go “No no wait I just phrased it wrong” or “No no wait you’re hearing it out of context” or “No no wait the problem is with the translation”, something is probably inheritly wrong with what you’re trying to defend.

    1. Palamdrone

      I think I understand Joyce’s position! You’re supposed to obey your husband, unless he’s a total jerk, then you trade him for your best friend.

  69. Foolong

    Sooo…. what’s your favourite LPer?

    1. ninja_jesus

      Game Grumps, Markiplier, and GaLmHD, generally. Northernlion for Binding of Isaac Let’s Plays, and The Gamerette is an awesome up and coming LPer.

    2. Deanatay

      Aren’t you asking the wrong comic?

      1. ninja_jesus

        Said comic has no comments section.

        1. Roborat

          But it does have a very active forum.

    3. Someone

      yogscast

    4. leftwingfox

      The LoadingReadyRun crew.

    5. Pinja

      Super Best Friends

    6. Spencer

      Darksydephil.

      Dude is just the worst.

  70. altalemur

    i am… a little confused, honestly. this is not sarcasm. i want to understand how Joyce can have the view that a wife should be subservient and obey her husband, as the church is subject to Christ. but… Joyce is a part of a church where her family decides what to believe. her family, her community, created their own church because the local churches didn’t teach the exact thing they believe in. so wouldn’t that suggest, if Joyce as a wife is supposed to act like the church, that Joyce should be making all of the decisions on whether or not to listen to her husband at all times? i honestly don’t see how wife=church=passive in Joyce’s particular expression of Christianity.

    1. ninja_jesus

      Their specific “church” is still headed by men, the husbands who dictate their faith.

    2. Cerberus

      Because it is not the woman’s place to lead in church, because after all, the sin of Eve makes women untrustworthy in moral matters. Her job is merely to ensure her home and her family are a “godly” family by making sure they are always showing up to church and that the kids especially are following the men who lead said church’s wise interpretations of the Bible’s inerrant word on their roles in society.

      This marks one’s fitness as a mother and failure to do so will most definitely lead to ungodliness spreading through your household because of said weakness (leading to one’s husband to “stray” or one’s children to become swayed by “immoral lifestyles”). And so, women are expected to give the church their charity and their time in order to protect against that and ensure that all in their household is receiving proper guidance from the man who actually holds the power.

      And yeah, it’s a weird windy knot when you untangle it and it goes to extravagant lengths to both cling to “your puny lady morality couldn’t possibly be trusted” while also demanding that the women be the pushy killjoys on Sunday morning getting everyone out of bed and “presentable”.

      1. Falcon

        I think the modern church justifies it by saying that Christ didn’t ordain any women and all his apostles were men. Probably at least partly because even most devout Christians don’t believe Adam and Eve was historically accurate anymore.

    3. modulusshift

      There’s a difference between a church and The Church. The second is all believers (that your personal church doesn’t completely hate). So its representative of how a good Christan should feel about Christ.

    4. zoelogical

      well see the churches aren’t making their own decisions. God is, because they prayed a lot about it and then God didn’t stop them from making the decision. having a husband means you get direct information about how to submit; in the church, the role of God gets taken over by the pastor/elders/power of prayer, essentially.

      …I actually know women who believed that they had no right to preach to a man, and would only teach children or other women. who sacrificed so much over and over again because the man was the head of the household and always right. and the dude just. takes advantage of that to get everything he believes that he’s entitled to.

  71. Tomas

    In a more perfect world, this comic wouldn’t be hilarious.

  72. Trolldrool

    The problem with historical context is that it can often make things so much worse. As others have already pointed out, the concept marriage because of love is a modern invention. For the majority of human history, which includes all the centuries and millenia from which the stories in the Bible are drawn, marriage was a business deal. An arrangement between two families to strengthen their position where divided they would fair poorly. And fertile women were the currency. Love, if it happened, was a consequence of two people spending so much time in each others’ company.

    Another problem with the historical context is that the same cultural society from which men were supposed to love, cherish and protect their wives, women were not supposed to speak in social gatherings unless adressed by a higher authority than her husband, such as a priest or the king. This meant that a violent husband could put his wife through all manner of abuse and she was expected to put up with it. More often than not, even if it was discovered, the blame was placed on her. If her husband failed in his marital duties, it was because there was discord in the family. And since harmony came from obedient wives, it meant the wife was the source of the problem, not the husband. It’s a twisted logic that makes sense if the premises are given legitimacy. Which they were.

    It also doesn’t help that historically, powerful women have always been portrayed as untrustworthy, usually manipulating men to commit evil deeds for them. And in the few exceptions, history has usually been rewritten as the local population is conquered and the victors translate their mythology as barbaric and heretical.

    When every story or mythology portray women with authority as selfish and manipulative, it creates a culture where women have no autonomy. Dishonesty is labeled a feminine trait. A man who lies is accused of feminine behaviour. Femininity becomes inherently negative. A woman’s word is considered less credible than that of a man. If a woman accuses her husband of infidelity and he denies the charges, his word is given more validity.

    And that’s the crux of the matter. Historical context doesn’t matter if the same laws that command men to respect their wives, also give them advantages that allow them to neglect their duties. In a culture or society where a woman’s account is questionable by default, there can be no equality.

    Sorry for the long rant.

    1. modulusshift

      No, no, not historical context, Biblical context. I assume she’s referring to the verse that says husbands should serve wives like Jesus served the Church. or that she believes the Bible balances itself out in sum total, because of course it does, because God, duh.

      1. Trolldrool

        In my experience, historical context always finds a way to impose its relevance on other subject matters. It’s like a MRA troll on a domestic abuse discussion. Either way the point still stands. The laws of marriage in the Bible originate from a society where women’s autonomy was considered dangerous and provides one party with exploitable loopholes that allow them to negate other laws on the same subject matter.

  73. smooti

    It’s kind of weird realizing I’ve been both Joyce and Dorothy in situations like this. Back when I followed the religion I’d been raised in I’d find myself having to try and justify passages like this. And more recently, trying to help a friend see the bizarreness of this passage in particular.

    It’s weird going from a place where “yeah this passage is troubling, but if you squint it can make sense because…” to “this is wrong, completely wrong.” For people that say they take the Bible at literal, face value, a lot of fundamentalists try to do this fan-angling around parts like these.

    1. modulusshift

      I believe it’s “finagling.”

      1. Arianod

        I believe you’re right, but I like smooti’s reading too: looking at the thing from a fan’s angle XD

      2. smooti

        Thank you, spellcheck was useless because of how off I was

  74. Alexx

    Seriously man, if you have to spend SO MUCH time trying to find a good way to explain an ancient “rule” that doesn’t make it sound horrible….just close the book and do what works best for you. Plenty of people have been working just fine without an ancient book of rules. TALK to your partner and come to an agreement. Simple as that.

    1. modulusshift

      But God is going to burn my soul in hell for all eternity of i don’t listen to the book!

      1. Cizak

        ^This, but without being facetious. Because it really is a serious problem. The idea that God is always watching gets burned so deep into your brain that the moment you find yourself doubting something from the Bible, your stomach physically hurts and you want to throw up. Because God saw your doubt. And so you strain so very hard in order to keep such thoughts buried in the future, but they keep coming. There’s always something. And each time, you feel just as physically ill. But hey, God forgives, right? As long as you regret, he forgives. But you doubt so much, you’re just a pathetically weak sinner. Will God actually forgive you? …And you just doubted God’s forgiveness. Cue feeling sick.

  75. Kheldan

    I’ve never seen the point in being involved with someone who is so submissive that they literally don’t have an opinion. I admire strength and independence in people, women especially, and find the ability to take care of themselves to be very attractive in women; there is no bigger turn-off and annoyance to me than an adult woman who not only can’t take care of herself, but that expects me to take care of her like she’s some sort of child. Similarly I don’t want or need anyone to take care of me, either. There are certainly exigent circumstances that are the exception to this, but I don’t want (or have the need to be) the ‘boss’ of anyone.

    1. Meh

      I had a peer in a religion class in college who said she was grateful that the Bible had passages telling her what to do or telling her to defer to her pastor or husband on what to do because then she didn’t have to make any hard decisions. She wasn’t being funny or ironic, she was being serious. This was a 40-something woman who had been a SAHM for 25 years and needed to get skills to go into the workforce because she didn’t have kids at home anymore.

      At first when she said it I was just shocked, but then it made me really sad. She felt safer allowing everyone else make decisions about her life for her than she did making any kind of decision for herself. What makes a person come to that kind of conclusion?

    2. HeySo

      If they don’t have a will of their own, you can easier control your environment, take what you want when you want it, and not have to worry about losing what you desire because it’s far less likely to consider leaving you.

      Opposite side of that, humans in general tend to be weak-willed: What differs is the specific things we’re weak willed against, and the severity of it.

      And in reluctance to change, and moreso, risk losing what you believe is good in your life and you lack outside perspective to realize otherwise, and it becomes a truly daunting thing just to get into a reasonable mindset about it.

      And, like the people who come from less progressive nations and move to more progressive ones [Eg, many eastern nations to the usa, the usa to Europe], most people just didn’t realize other options existed in the first place! And so, they tried to adapt as best as possible to the rules they thought were ironclad, and never considered second-guessing.

      1. HeySo

        *Add in reluctance to change, and moreso, the risk of losing what you believe is good in your life and you lack the outside perspective to realize is otherwise

        =O Terrible initial grammar, sorry.

  76. Psychotic Mantis

    I’m really starting to worry about Joyce. It’s becoming apparent that she’s begun reading back into the Bible. I mean, she’s corrected on the subject matter by the end of the strip, but…The long term implications of her reciting and momentarily lapsing back into the thing she wishes to be free of are concerning to say the least.

    1. Phyrexian Rogue

      I think you are misreading something. Joyce quoting bible verses is not a sign of any relapse. Joyce is not (currently) trying to be free of her faith. She is trying to be a good person while being faithful. Her main problem is that those two things are not always compatible.

  77. QD

    I’m guessing half of those sermons were “but in its historical context it was progressive!” and the other half were “he says just like Christ and the Church, but he’s also the SERVANT of the church, so it’s not that bad!”

  78. quietlythundering

    I remember going to church as a teenager and trying my damnest to find Jesus, but by the time I was 16, I was slowly starting to feel like maybe religion just wasn’t my thing. When I began to realize that, I started questioning what the pastor would say. Sermons like this were torture to sit through, because everyone just looked so enthralled with the truth they found in what he was saying, and I was sitting there faking that I cared.

  79. Griffin

    The funny thing is that there are much, much, much worse verses.

    I hate the Old Testament.

    1. Lord Stoneheart

      Joyce’s quote is from the New Testament though? (There’s a lot of screwed up stuff there too)

      1. Griffin

        ‘I hate the Old Testament’ references ‘much worse verses’. As in the OT has a looooottt of worse verses.

  80. Standback

    :-/

    Can we maybe get a *positive* character of some faith at some point or another?

    Not high-priority, I know, but it’d be nice.

    1. Zatar

      Joyce, Becky, and Sierra don’t count?

      1. Captain Button

        Only to 10.

        20 for Sierra.

        Sorry, that’s is an awful and offensive joke. (not really sorry)

    2. Pinja

      Joyce is super positive! She’s a good contestant for my fave character and I’m as atheistic as they come.

      I actually think as many characters are believers as not, they’re just low key about it which is the case with most people.

      Also probably not the best time to say this a day or two after Willis has discovered the Church conned his family out of hundreds of thousands of dollars when he also has two small twin sweet potatoes to pay for…

      1. thejeff

        The problem with Joyce as a positive Christian character is that the whole story is about her positive aspects clashing with her faith and most likely her eventually breaking with that faith.

        1. Gangler

          While Joyce is autobiographical, and we know how this all ended for the author, I’m pretty sure Joyce is gonna be faithful forever.

          She’s just having trouble figuring out the precise nature of her own personal faith as she learns that she doesn’t necessarily share all aspects of the faith she was raised in.

          So far at every step of the way the solution for her has been better faith, not less faith. Today she’s been something to consider about what she was taught about marriage, and I’m sure at the end of it all she’ll only come up with a more fitting vision of what God wants from her in this respect.

          Honestly, this will probably be one of the easier things for her to figure out. Joyce genuinely does want to be a homemaker. She can look up some stuff about “Turning the other cheek” meaning forcing them to face you as an equal, resolve to take no shit from her husband but otherwise enjoy her traditional role in the house. After that it’s just a matter of respecting the choices of friends like Dorothy who might not have what Joyce envisions to be a godly marriage.

        2. Spencer

          That’s kind of an unfair way to look at it. Joyce’s crisis of faith comes from confronting the worst parts of her religion, because she’s been brought up to treat everything as objective fact. Besides that, Becky’s faith hasn’t been shaken in the slightest; she’s just casually rejecting the parts of her religion that can’t be explained away. Like she said, evolution doesn’t contradict anything important.

          Joyce in the Walkyerse had an entire story arc devoted to rediscovering her religion, and it was treated as a positive.

        3. thejeff

          I hope you’re both right in a lot of ways. It would be nice to see Joyce find a better version of her faith.

          At the moment however the story is definitely about Joyce discovering how horrible her religion is. That’s her main conflict. Her story is hardly a positive portrayal of religion. It might get there, but I doubt it.

          Becky is apparently handling it better, but despite her upbringing, she not only has shown little conflict with her religion, but little attachment to it.

        4. Gangler

          Becky has shown little attachment to her parents religion, which she views mostly in terms of the restrictions her parents placed on her growing up.

          It’s not at all uncommon for teenagers and young adults to go through this sort of rebellion, but by and large people usually rebel their way from one sect of Christianity to another, rather than from Christianity to Atheism.

          I hear Mormonism actually breaks this trend. For some reason Mormon youth that leave the church tend to become atheists. I’ve never seen any proper statistics about that but certainly it seems to hold up anecdotally.

        5. Spencer

          Well, I’m not sure if Joyce’s story isn’t a positive depiction of religion insofar as it’s actually about Joyce trying to grow out of the absolute worst aspects of it.

          It’s difficult for Joyce to say “okay fuck this part in particular” because she was raised to believe all of it as objective fact. If one part of it is wrong then the whole thing might as well be just be a gigantic lie.

        6. Standback

          Spencer, I’d love to read that arc. Where might I find it?

        7. Spencer

          It’s in a separate comic called It’s Walky, which is in a different continuity than Dumbing of Age.

    3. Gangler

      Keep in mind that the story takes place in a predominately Christian region, and the author has stated that every character is Christian unless he indicates otherwise.

      Walky, Billie, Amber, Danny, Sarah, Ruth, Mike, Roz, Jacob, Marcie, all Christian. Not sheltered, homeschooled, fundamentalist Christians who’ve memorized a plethora of bible passages and have a crisis of faith when enjoying secular cartoons, but Christians nonetheless.

      Dorothy I believe is the only character who explicitly lacks faith. Joyce has assumed Dina lacks faith because of her interest in evolutionary sciences, but I don’t think that’s been confirmed yet. Could be wrong on that count. Sal has expressed a distaste for catholic school but it’s unclear how much that’s influenced her own personal faith in a Christian God. Ethan and Joe are ethnically Jewish, possibly religiously Jewish as well. I hear there are some atheist sects of Judaism so they could possibly be faithless.

      1. Zatar

        Well not Walky. He’s been pretty aggressively dismissive of religion in general.

        1. Gangler

          I’m pretty sure he’s been dismissive of Joyce’s religion, but it hasn’t gone so far as dismissing the existence of any god.

          Presumably he has a personal faith in a Christian God but thinks it’s stupid to go to church on Sunday and sing hymns and watch Christian Cartoons about Chastity Mice and devote hours out of your day to studying boring scriptures written in Ye Olde Englishe and so forth. At most he probably attends a Christmas Service with the family and past that point his views on God are just informed by the predominately Christian culture he lives in.

        2. Zatar

          Didn’t he call god an invisible sky wizard or something like that? I could be wrong but I seem to recall something along those lines.

        3. Spencer

          He did.

          Walky is an atheist, like Dorothy. He’s just a lot more of an asshole about it.

        4. Gangler

          Right, I forgot about that. So he could be atheist for sure.

          Kind of funny that he happened to end up with Dorothy then. And that the two of them ended up being the people Joyce hangs out with the most.

          That could also be what’s reinforcing the feeling that Joyce is the lone faithful in a world of faithless. She’s the primary protagonist and most of the time she’s walking around with these two.

      2. Captain Button

        Joe had a bar mitzvah, so his family is at least somewhat religious. But from what he said, it doesn’t sound like he is very observant these days.

      3. MiaKitty

        Both Joe and Ethan have mentioned reasons they don’t go to Temple. Joe has stated that Judaism is ‘all downhill after you turn 13’ and Ethan says he would go ‘if he were a better Jew’, indicating that both were raised to be religiously Jewish as well as being so ethnically, but don’t consider their faith a particularly important aspect of their lives. I would say that both consider themselves religiously Jewish and would say so when questioned, but otherwise, it’s not something they think about. Most teenagers who were raised in religious families I feel like fit this same niche, they would say they were Christian or Jewish or Muslim or whatever else, but likely don’t think too hard on it. It’s just a part of their lives, like the color of their hair or the language they speak.

    4. Lord Stoneheart

      Uh, Dorothy is the only atheist character I believe. (Maybe Walky? He’s not portrayed that positively when it comes to matter of faith, with his antagonism with Joyce and dismissing her beliefs as worshipping an invisible sky wizard). All the other characters seem to have some sort of faith.

      (I should copy this onto a clipboard for the next comic that mentions religion. Seeing how this happens every time. I mean I probably should realize I’m never going to get a response from people like the OP but I have to try I think)

    5. Cerberus

      People have already responded pointing out all the other Christian characters in the strip, but I just want to focus on one, because she always seems to be thrown out whenever someone wants to whine that Christians are never shown positively in these comics (like it was Willis’s job to make sure that Christians always be made to look sparkling).

      That character?

      Becky

      I mean, Becky is an amazing role-model for faith.

      She had nothing. No home, no family, nothing but a single pair of clothes on her back and a prayer. She has been abused and shat on and has every reason to say, “yeah, no, I’m done praying to this God who has been used to hurt me” in the same way as Leslie from the other universe. But no matter what she believed.

      And not only did she believe, but she grew her faith because of that belief. She knew she was gay, but that priests said that God hated that, but she knew that her idea of God couldn’t be that cruel, that he would not demand people believe things that are not true or deny aspects of themselves as some twisted self-punishment.

      Hers is a God that answers lesbian prayers, sending dinosaur girlfriends and rescue superheroines, and where she still believes with all her heart in a God that has her back. And that strengthens her.

      She faced the fire and the flame and the awful and she refused to let her faith waver even as she dropped the detritus her raising had attached to it.

      For a Christian minded reader, there could be no better role model for living with faith.

      Unless… well, by “Christian” they mean a narrow subset of Evangelical subculture that is defined by its disbelief in evolution and adherence to all the women-hating, gay-disowning, God has celestial asshole tenets.

      In which case, yes, you’ll never see a positive depiction of it where the awfulness of that philosophy isn’t on display, largely because well, that theology is awful. And Mary, Toedad, and Joyce’s parents are fine emissaries of exactly what that theology begets.

      1. Bagge

        Becky didn’t waver in her faith even at gunpoint. Becky had NOTHING, and one set of lesbian prayers later she got a dinosaur chick girlfriend, a place to live, her father under a pile of cops, the confirmation of her eternal friendship with Joyce and a rad haircut. If that’s not a religious tale of inspiration I don’t know what it is.

        Becky is awesome.

      2. ScarvesandCelery

        Well said. Totally agree.

  81. Legasher

    A big gripe I have with the modern church is their inability to separate what’s actually said with what earlier church “leaders” wanted it to say. The chapter is talking about how to act as an upstanding member of the church and transitions into talking about marriage with “…submitting to one another in the fear of God.” “One another” being other church members as brothers and sisters, but this transitions into talking about marriage with “Wives submit…” The “one another” part is still in play. This is HOW wives submit. Husbands should ALSO submit to their wives. How? “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.” If a man abuses his wife, demeans her, and treats her as a servant and not a partner, he has broken this. Christ’s relationship to the church was as a servant as well as a leader. He washed feet as well as taught. He sacrificed as much as he asked for. Yes, I still believe the “equal but different,” but not as a way for the man to oppress his wife, but the same way heart and head are both important parts of a person’s decision making skills. There are situations when it is appropriate and right to head the direction your emotions tell you, and there are situations where it’s important and right to go the way of logic. To be all of one and none of the other can be disastrous.

    I used to hear all the time girls taking about being a “Proverbs 31 wife.” But half the time they seemed to think this meant the unequal, ultra submissive housewife. They stopped at the part that declared a Proverbs 31 woman to be “For her worth is far above rubies.” Proverbs 31 is talking to MEN saying that a strong, business savvy, intelligent woman is far and away more valuable than anything else.

    Basically, I don’t find anything wrong with what’s actually said. What’s actually said is a lot different than the parts that are cropped and moved to say what men have wanted it to.

  82. Silamy

    Ah, that moment when you state a fundamental truth of your life and someone you respect reacts in shock and horror that anyone could ever SAY that, let alone live it…

    1. Captain Button

      One of the strangest things about the Internet is how many people insist “No one would do/believe/claim X!”

      When paying any attention to the world shows that people are incredibly diverse and there are always people on all sides of any question and always someone who will try something no matter how bizarre, vile, or dangerous.

      To say that you can’t understand why anyone would do/believe/claim X, fine. To say that you think anyone who does/believes/claims X is wrong or stupid or evil, fine.

      But to deny their possible existence … NO ONE could EVER do that.

      Oh, wait…

  83. theevilwriter

    Oh, your church actually tried to explain that one away? Mine embraced it. Paul said it, ladies! You’re essentially the property of men. They were raising a generation of abusers and women who passively accepted abuse.

    And yet somehow, despite frequent lectures about the dangers of woman leaders, I can’t recall anyone ever suggesting we take away the vote. Which I can only attribute to rank hypocrisy.

    I was not raised in a good church. Glad I’m out of there.

    1. Yazu

      >I can’t recall anyone ever suggesting we take away the vote

      Might be they figure that a good wife will vote the way her husband will.

      1. Gangler

        It’s also just a pretty big line in the sand.

        Like how even when espousing racist rhetoric people will often know not to say the N word, because as a society we’ve just accepted that this is pretty clearly and inarguably racist.

        Similarly you start preaching about how women shouldn’t have the right to vote, you probably lose a lot of your audience pretty quickly. Maybe end up on the news, get treated like some sort of social pariah. What’s it even gonna accomplish? Are you gonna try and rally people to repeal women’s suffrage? Uphill battle to put it mildly.

  84. tomjazzy

    I think your church missed the parts where husband were supposed to love there wives

    1. David M Willis

      I think you missed the part where the word “love” does not mean what you think it means when one party is given ownership over the other.

      You can love your dog and you can love your underaged children, but you shouldn’t be loving them in the same way you love your wife — which is what Ephesians 5 is specifically setting up. It says the husband is like Christ and the wife is like the Church, that Christ “loves” the Church, while the Church must still submit to Christ. That’s…. not fucking marriage, that’s like having a fucking dog. No amount — NO AMOUNT — of “oh but the husband has to be nice to the wife and be willing to die for them” makes up for the shittiness that foundational relationship dynamic establishes. It’s exactly like saying slavery is cool because the owner has to be nice to his slaves.

      “I own you but I promise to be nice to you” is NOT marital love.

      1. thejeff

        Well, it kind of was. In the context of Biblical times, women had it pretty rough. Getting married was like being transferred from your father’s ownership to your new husband’s. Not just or even especially in Israel, but in much of the ancient world. Variations in different places, of course.

        As Deanatay says, love wasn’t really part of the deal. Admonishing husbands to love and care for their property was, if not a step forward, at least enlightened for the day.

        Nowadays it’s disgustingly backward. As I’ve said before, something that was a positive step can turn into a barrier if the same text holds while the culture changes around it.

        Equal rights for women, and even more actual equality for women is a very new thing. Coverture, the legal doctrine that a woman’s legal rights and obligations were subsumed by those of her husband, persisted, at least in places and modified form in the US until a Supreme Court case in 1980!

        1. Captain Button

          One of my great-grandmothers prayed to God to send her “a good man, or no man at all.”

          But by that she meant someone who would be a good provider and would not beat her or the children.

          Love, sexual passion, common interests, etc – those things were all very nice to have, but they were not essential to a good marriage.

          (A very good man did show up, and he was very religious, so maybe.)

      2. David M Willis

        To all the new-poster randos who showed up just to wax paragraphs in response to this about the nice parts (“made one flesh”, man must love wife) of Ephesians 5:

        Hey, guess what! It’s SUPER EASY to defend the nice parts of Ephesians 5! Congratulations! If you have something to say about the NOT-nice parts of Ephesians 5… well, still don’t post, because I’m sick of hearing that toxic shit, but at least you’d be more intellectually honest.

        1. Ana Chronistic

          given the liveliness + the trolls coming out, I now wonder how much of your day is spent drawing vs. moderating the comments

          (you apparent masochist)

        2. trlkly

          Okay, so I won’t get into the theology in another post (as I promised in a previous post). The last thing I want to do is make someone feel bad unnecessarily. (It’s required by Romans 12:18, if you’re a literalist reading this.)

          But I will say this much: It’s only intellectually dishonest if you claim to be a fundamentalist and/or literalist. Interpreting the intent of the author by looking at the other things they’ve said is how one must interpret works in general, whether scripture or not. You have to look at everything someone says to contextualize what the person believes and thus what they intended to say.

          What’s intellectually dishonest are those who claim to be literalist but then switch to interpreting intent when they don’t like the outcome. But fundamenalist literalism is only one of many ways of seeing things, and not the most accurate or useful.

          I’m sure because of your comic that you understand this. You made a point of showing other types of Christians–ones who do not get all tangled up in performing mental gymnastics to preserve their literalism. Ones who don’t think like Joyce does–that believing in evolution would tear down their entire faith.

          So I hope this insight will not feel “toxic” to you, even if you disagree.

    2. Deanatay

      To many ancient cultures, marriage was not about love – it was about perpetuating the tribe, and keeping it strong. Maybe thinking of the wife as property made men more likely to defend them? We live in a much different world than they did, so it’s hard to understand why they’d do that. Of course, it’s also stupid to try to live in this modern world using a rule system created thousands of years ago, yet people still try to do it.

      I say, live with someone if you love them, marry someone if you want to own property with them. Sleep with them if you think they’re hot. Mix and match as you see fit.

      1. Cerberus

        “Maybe thinking of the wife as property made men more likely to defend them?”

        No. That’s not how that worked.

        “We live in a much different world than they did, so it’s hard to understand why they’d do that.”

        Anthropology, archaeology, history, sociology. Many cultures also left us their written records for us to understand their justifications for their systems.

  85. Pinja

    I’m worthless trash

  86. Tenn

    I am very amused by the (thankfully very few) commenters who, like Joyce, try to make something awful sound not-awful, and spend multiple paragraphs tying themselves into knots to do so, and fail.

    “No, you see, it’s totally not a master/slave relationship because bla bla bla historical context bla bla bla flowery language bla bla bla love bla bla bla the wife should defer to the husband but not in a bad way, it’s a really important and honorable duty that women are super good at, they’re worthy of all our admiration and respect bla bla bla I’m not losing faith you’re losing faith”

  87. Aslee

    Actually, do you know what? I have an honest comment to make that isn’t 75% me joking: Watching Joyce’s slow struggle with faith is so weird to me because I don’t ever remember going through that.

    (I just know that one day I was writing angry essays about how much evolution sucked and by the next year I was listening to rock music and kissing girls. Who even knows how that happened.)

    I know that a lot of people did, though, so I’m not crying foul or anything, it’s just… Man, I legitimately cannot relate to what she’s going through, and that makes everything less “haha, it’s funny because it’s true!” and more heart-wrenching.

    1. Gangler

      I’m kind of on the same page there.

      Like, I’m pretty sure I remember when I was sixteen feeling like I was lying or at least exaggerating when I gave my testimony at church functions. Yet I’m pretty sure I still believed in a lot of the church’s teachings at this point.

      By the time I was twenty I remember gritting my teeth through church discussions because people kept saying things I disagreed with but I knew it would be improper to voice those disagreements, because fundamentally people had come here to meet with others of similar beliefs. By this point some of these disagreements touched on fundamental stuff like the existence of a god.

      So somewhere between sixteen and twenty is probably where I became an unbeliever but I’d have a hard time pointing to specific moments where anything in particular made me question any specific beliefs. Just like, one day I was all excited to get up early for seminary and then another day I was blowing up on strangers online writing obnoxious atheist rants.

      Though maybe that’s part of it. Maybe my faith was never really as central a thing as Joyce’s, to the point that questioning it would create a narrative arc of my life. Like there’s some point where I was questioning that stuff, but I just remember that the anime club was transitioning into the anime, archery, and anachronism club because that’s what felt more important at the time.

    2. Bruceski

      I’m sympathetic because I’ve asked similar questions, but my particular flavor of Judaism (small-town all-inclusive “piss anyone off and we lose a minyan”) was much more open to those questions being asked, so when I found a spot to settle that was different from where I was raised it didn’t feel like I had to abandon my faith or my family to do so. I’m just very analytic and try to be aware of my own mind, so I went out and asked myself those questions on purpose even though I knew I already had figured out my answers.

    3. Cerberus

      I saw it from the outside a lot, because I was Becky for a lot of my high school friends. They liked me, so they questioned things in their bible and tried to find ways to make things fit and they started noticing the unloving ways their parents treated them. It was slow and they made a lot of mistakes but a lot of them shed their particular faiths for something more supportive to the humanity of others.

  88. Heavensrun

    Yes, the scowl is gone. Use this moment, Dotty.

  89. Wernher

    Religion and gender equality? Willis, moderating must be really fun for you, isn’t it?

    It’s nice that I come down here and never see the toxic comments… I wonder if Willis ever sleeps.

    1. David M Willis

      Well I have twin infants, so no.

      1. Emperor Norton

        [Insert joke about how the twins are already more mature than some of the blocked comments]

        1. Kamino Neko

          Less likely to shit up the place, too.

      2. Bruceski

        As a twin, my condolences. According to the parents we slept in shifts.

  90. Erwin

    Upbringing leaves the strangest remnants in the psyche. I remember my wife, Korean and self-described feminist, going to a ‘liberal’ Korean Catholic church.

    The pastor starts out by describing how the character for husband is ‘sky’ with a dot above it. (with my wife uncertainly translating…) And proceeds to explain how people who claim that the husband is the sky are wrong… (with my wife looking a bit more optimistic…) And, then, proceeds to explain how the dot indicates that a husband is above the sky, and the wife below the earth… (With my wife getting grimmer and more annoyed with each work…)

    …but…and this is the weird part…as she leaves…she curses under her breath at the guy… ‘And this is why you have 4 daughters…’

    1. Griffin

      Yup. I don’t remember what it was, to be honest, but not too long ago I caught a moral from my Christian upbringing blaring in my head when someone violated it, then realised 1) I had no reason to believe that any more and 2) I was being judgey like I hadn’t been in ages.

      And I’m still super awkward about other people talking about sex sometimes.

  91. thomas wrobel

    Bib-splaning?

  92. trlkly

    Whew. I was afraid we were going to lose Joyce a bit. It seemed like the comic was going towards her being completely changed by the gunman encounter. But, no she’s still the same person with extra knowledge who has been through something.

    As a former Fundie myself (thought not homeschooled), I’m glad it went this way. Too many people would have her questioning God Himself at this point, but that’s not my experience.

    It dawned on me when I went to bed after reading the previous comics that this was a direction the comic could go, and I was worried I’d no longer find the comic so enjoyable. Joyce makes the comic for me.

    And as for the marriage thing–pretty much everyone I know has taken that “out,” even in the Fundamentalists. The sexist interpretation is fringe even in the Fundamentalist community. Even my grandparents had a cross-stitched placard that says “Dad’s the boss, as everyone knows, but what Mom says is always what goes.” (Or something like that–I can’t find the exact placard on Google.)

    I could get into the actual theology, but I’ll save that for another post.

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