well, even tho it’s a big part of her identity i think most ppl would think of her as “That one girl on rollerskates” as opposed to “the trans character” as like some mouthpiece/representation or so, like how Booster is also a psych major that probably over steps boundaries a bit (tho it is interesting how booster shares a room with walky and carla has her own dorm unless that was part of the ‘lawsuit’)
Nonbinary don’t have to identify as trans, but we are under the umbrella, and plenty of us do identify as nonbinary trans people. I think Booster is nonbinary trans as well.
Yee, genderfluid folk like Malaya fall under the trans umbrella as well ^^
Concolor44
Yeah, my daughter’s spouse is a trans guy who identifies as nonbinary.
Wren
Non-binary folk are under the trans umbrella and it’s an important part of identity to some of us.
I’m guessing your point is that we have no reason to think Booster has transitioned medically, which may have been the reason Carla got her own room. Or it might be the level of social transition- if Booster presented as considerably more femme, they might have also been offered their own room. We don’t have enough information to say, but it’s probably to do with the level of transition.
Carla’s probably more comparable to- I think his name was Zac? A trans guy who had recently come out in Billie’s new, uh, area. (I forgot the right word.) He was extremely recently out when we saw him and implied to still be living with girls- if he’s not allowed a solo room then it’s either specifically because Carla’s a trans woman or because her parents are rich.
Thag Simmons
Zaph, which I only remember because he was a Shortpacked! carryover.
Wren
That’s it! I remembered him being from Shortpacked! but he was so minor a character I was really fuzzy on his name. Clearly.
Also I realised that there’s another option to Carla having her own room and not other transfolk and that’s having transitioned legally- which I think she very likely has.
Psychie
I’m pretty sure solo rooms just cost more at IU, I was never in campus housing, but I did briefly look into it for the sake of curiosity and I don’t recall seeing anything about specific accommodations for trans people regarding single rooms (or in general, really, not that I looked for it since I’m cis, but still). Zaph might still be in the female wing because he came out after being assigned the room and it will take time to move him, or it might be left up to the individual to decide which wing they’d rather be in.
It might also be a legal thing, a friend of mine who came out and transitioned a couple years ago had her birth certificate legally changed after she started medically transitioning and had her legal name changed, so it could be that IU recognizes whatever gender is on your legal documents when assigning a wing, so if Carla has had her documents changed to reflect her gender identity and Zaph hasn’t, that could explain it.
As for Booster, would a non-binary person care which wing they are in? I get that might sound flippant, but I mean it as a genuine question, since as neither a man nor a woman, wouldn’t being put in the men’s wing or the woman’s wing be equally good or bad or whatever? That’s the kind of thing I assume would have personal variance, but like, in general would it make a difference?
BorkBorkBork
I think we’re way, way overthinking it here. This is a university, and this is clearly a rooming policy. Therefore, it has nothing to do with what makes sense or not, and is instead 100% based on public image.
Whether or not you get a solo room, would be entirely based on what will or will not get the school into scandals with donors. And that 100% has to do with whether you’re rooming with someone whose sex assigned at birth is the same as your own.
Booster may be nonbinary trans, but if their sex assigned at birth was male, then there’s no rich conservative donors clutching their pearls if they room with Walky. Same with Zaph, who was on a women’s floor the last time we saw him.
Carla, however, has a big giant freaking spotlight on her like the queen she is, and I’m sure that the single room was a concession that was made by the school when the Ruttens enrolled her.
Yumi
I’d also note that there’s an issue of change in policies over time– when the strip started, housing accommodations for trans students were less common. I started college in 2012, and there was a big push for it going on in my campus LGBTQ+ then. Now, my college has more options relating to gender and on-campus housing. I don’t know the exact situation for IU, but I think that might be a factor here as well.
Also, yeah, singles cost more.
Uly
It may not have even been a concession. They have the money to pay for a single room. They may have not even considered the question.
Oz
Why does everyone assume Booster is amab tho? they could just as well be afab. actually don’t they have a same age twin sister? it they are identical twins that would imply Booster is afab (they could be fraternal twins, not sure if something has been said abouit that)
Wren
“Would a non-binary person care which wing they were in?” That’s an answer which will vary widely. Some would care for safely reasons; some would care for identity reasons; some would do everything they could to look for gender neutral options. And some genuinely wouldn’t care.
“Non-binary” just means someone who falls outside the gender binary. Some lean more masc, some more femme. For example being perceived and treated exclusively as female caused me massive gender dysphoria- being perceived and treated exclusive as male does not. But I’m not male, I’m non-binary. My spouse is agender and doesn’t much care about gendered language unless it has specific connotations that don’t feel right to them. However, if either of us were housed in female-exclusive areas we’d both be deeply uncomfortable because neither of us look female and we know that things would be… awkward at best.
I know someone who’s gender fluid and would find being in gendered housing at all to be uncomfortable. I know someone who is transfemme (NOT female) and transitioned and presents fairly femme but doesn’t care about passing in large part because they are not female. I know or have known non-binary folk where I couldn’t guess where they would fall on gendered housing- but honestly, the most common question in that situation is “where would I be safest”. And we’d definitely care that we need to put our safety over having our identities respected, cause that doesn’t feel good.
Apologies for the ramble. About Booster specifically, it’s unclear how they feel, but iirc (I might not and I just woke up so I haven’t looked) Booster did express a measure of discomfort when they thought Amber was suggesting they hook up with Ethan because he’s exclusively into men, which Booster is not. That implies that they would definitely prefer a gender neutral option were it available to them.
Tatterhood
Thanks for rambling. It means I don’t feel compelled to, because you shared everything I’d want to see covered 🙂
Psychie
Thank you for the answer, there is admittedly a *lot* I don’t understand about the non-binary spectrum and finding answers to my questions has proven challenging.
I learn best by arguing, if something doesn’t make sense to me I’ve found the most efficient way to learn what I’m missing is to argue with someone who knows what they’re talking about, pointing out what look to be logical holes to me, so they can identify what I’m misunderstanding and correct that, but it’s really hard to do that without coming off like I’m attacking them and that is decidedly *not* my intention so I mostly just don’t so I can avoid causing unintentional harm, but it’s difficult to always be respectful when I’m ignorant since I don’t know enough to know what is and is not respectful.
So thank you for taking my question in the spirit I intended and giving a blunt answer, that is exactly what I needed. Although your answer *does* leave me with more questions since it mentioned some stuff I had never heard of before, I figure this probably isn’t the place to get into the nitty gritty and pester you with more questions.
Wren
I mean, I’d be happy to answer questions, but you probably won’t even see this now since the second page after this one will be going up soon! If you do see this uh… feel free to ask? Learning is good.
Theluxland
Again, it depend on the person. I’m agender and consider myself trans, my bestie is genderfluid and don’t really consider themself trans. I guess it’s on the perception of things and the way you wanna handle this?
Kerry Ann
The way I’ve always interpreted it is that if you were assigned a gender at birth that does not match your own gender, you are transgender.
Using this rubric, theoretically, an intersex person could identify as cisgender non-binary.
S.R.
I’m not sure that’s necessarily the case. Pretty sure most parents of intersex kids don’t go “okay, you’re nonbinary”. They usually seem to assign either ‘he’ or ‘she’.
S.R.
Unless they were assigned NB at birth, they’re (arguably) trans. Some NB folks don’t identify as trans, but that’s personal choice rather than the word outright not being accurate.
This is how I react to both Booster and Carla. They both annoyed me long before I learned anything about their gender and continue to annoy me for non-gender-related traits.
I’m pretty OK with telling people to be more like Joyce. Say what you will, but she really came in with both her own beliefs and a sincere desire to learn. She was, and is, constantly being confronted by choices and her usual instinct is to learn how to make the best one without losing her sense of self. And, along the way, she’s able to understand her sense of self ever more deeply, embracing the things she wants to be, and leaving behind the things that get into the way of that.
She’s still learning. She’s boorish about it sometimes, but it’s sincere and from a desire to get away from behavior & beliefs she once embraced and now rejects.
I think she’s going to be agitated for a bit, and I hope Carla isn’t nearby during that, but she’ll get her mind around it. Considering the timeline, she’s growing and changing as a person at a remarkable, if not perhaps unrealistic, pace. And the only way for her changes to be believable, she needs to fumble along the way.
Actually, I don’t think Joyce will fuck it up much, if at all. She has realized that everything she has been raised to believe is thoroughly wrong and has been working like crazy to change her behavior and beliefs.
I might even go so far as seeing Joyce and Carla becoming friends over this.
Azhrei Vep
I fully expect her to be extremely, loudly awkward and weird about this in an uncomfortable yet funny way at least once.
Young baby Carla had very light blue past filter hair. Maybe it was blonde or maybe it was light blue to imitate Carla’s second favorite cartoon Mega Boat. (You’ve never heard of Mega Boat or its lost media pilot because it’s creator lost a lawsuit with Hasbro for looking too much like Depth Charge. Yes I’ve made this all up.)
Dear Prior Joyce, God created you nekkid, and yet you changed that by *gasp* wearing clothes! SINNER. Shave your pits? SINNER. Put on makeup or deodorant? SINNER. Shame on you, Prior Joyce. SHAME.
Google also says it was about preventing people from wearing a certain type of garment reserved for the clergy rather than a moral ruling, but that’s five seconds research so take it with a grain of salt.
Not to mention the types of people who use Leviticus to justify bigotry definitely don’t care about the original intent or context and just ascribe moral judgment to it anyway…
Cholma
They also conveniently “forget” or disregard that if they consider themselves followers of Jesus, then most of the Old Testament rules were thrown out in favor of His teachings. (I’m not a religious student, but I believe everything except the Ten Commandments were overruled by the New Testament)
ThomasQuinn
Matthew 5:17-18: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” and “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” respectively. Which makes sense, as Christianity was a Jewish sect until at least the time when Paul decided to cast a wider net. So no, your assertion is patently untrue – which doesn’t mean that Christians haven’t simply dismissed or explained away any passage that was inconvenient at the time.
Cholma
I think I learned that the Old Testament rules were no longer valid because of the Last Supper: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” but I freely allow that I’m not a scholar and haven’t even looked at a bible in almost 40 years.
jeffepp
One of the issues facing Judaism then (as always) was the questions of what was “the Law” (and wasn’t), and what was the interpretation of “the Law”. Each sect, including “the Way” (early Christianity) had (a) different answer(s) to this.
In the present, different sects of both still argue about the same kind of questions and answers. We just tend to follow some version where someone has or is yelling their version very loudly, because that’s how we determine who’s right. Then everyone else is a godless heathen.
jflb96
There is also Acts 10, where God says to Peter ‘Excuse me, idiot, which of us is the Creator? Who are you to call my creations ‘unclean’?’
thejeff
It’s complicated and what we see in the NT is essentially the argument 1st century Christians were having about whether followers of Jesus (or at least Gentile converts) needed to keep Torah Law or whether Jesus’s death and resurrection superseded that. Paul’s faction won out. Cynically, because it was easier to get converts if they didn’t have to get circumcised.
But it left us with conflicting passages in the NT, because the authors were part of this argument. They shouldn’t really be reconciled, because they’re saying different things and the idea that the Bible speaks with one voice hides what the individual authors thought.
dinajoyce
yup! thejeff has it right! It’s unclear whether or not ethnically Jewish Christians should still follow Torah Law or not, but Paul definitely wins out on deciding that Gentile converts do not need to convert to Judaism and follow the Law to be Christians. Some segments of modern church have kinda lost sight of the fact that there has always been debate in biblical interpretation. Once you start to see the Bible as containing large sections of debate about how to interpret the teachings of the Law and/or Jesus’ teachings, it gets way more interesting.
thejeff
But understanding the Bible that way conflicts with seeing it as the inerrant authoritative Word of God.
Mark
Nah, it’s easy: in the NT the Word of God is quoted in red, and everything else is history or commentary.
thejeff
[Looks in my copy. Sees no red. Tosses book.]
Not sure when the “red letter” thing became common, but it’s hardly universal.
Also, even that is really something that a later author claimed Jesus said and since none of them had recordings or even transcripts, even the words in red are shaped to the later authors theological agendas.
Yeah, Joyce had no clue and only picked up on anything because other people were acting weird. That makes sense given that she didn’t guess when Dorothy started talking about it, even though Carla came in at the time.
Also, Jennifer and Dorothy were correct to keep that from her. She wasn’t ready yet, but she probably is now.
Doesn’t she also make a comment after some break period where she notices Carla is bustier than she was before? (Likely because of HRT.) I wanna say it was Dorothy with her?
I think NGPZ meant that the fact that she’s cringing at a flashback of a thing she said in the past means she’s grown since she said it and this is a relatable experience for a lot of people. Personally, I don’t tend to cringe at memories of my past, even if I have said a lot of things I no longer agree with, but I don’t tend to cringe in general and I don’t have much in the way of an episodic memory, so I don’t have a whole lot of memories that I relive in that way in the first place.
280 thoughts on “Redhead”
Ray
No additional wind resistance as she skates by??
ValdVin
Carla showers with her skates on?
Lumino
That’s probably the most gender affirming thing Joyce could have said.
She never noticed Carla as anything different than who she claimed to be.
staszu13
Awww
anon
well, even tho it’s a big part of her identity i think most ppl would think of her as “That one girl on rollerskates” as opposed to “the trans character” as like some mouthpiece/representation or so, like how Booster is also a psych major that probably over steps boundaries a bit (tho it is interesting how booster shares a room with walky and carla has her own dorm unless that was part of the ‘lawsuit’)
Enkrod
Afaik Booster isn’t trans, they are non-binary
Yumi
Nonbinary don’t have to identify as trans, but we are under the umbrella, and plenty of us do identify as nonbinary trans people. I think Booster is nonbinary trans as well.
Nathan
Yeah, I’m not sure if it’s come up, but I would guess Booster self-identifies as trans
JR
They do. They told Walky to get rid of Carla for them and framed it as trans allyship.
NGPZ
Yee, genderfluid folk like Malaya fall under the trans umbrella as well ^^
Concolor44
Yeah, my daughter’s spouse is a trans guy who identifies as nonbinary.
Wren
Non-binary folk are under the trans umbrella and it’s an important part of identity to some of us.
I’m guessing your point is that we have no reason to think Booster has transitioned medically, which may have been the reason Carla got her own room. Or it might be the level of social transition- if Booster presented as considerably more femme, they might have also been offered their own room. We don’t have enough information to say, but it’s probably to do with the level of transition.
Carla’s probably more comparable to- I think his name was Zac? A trans guy who had recently come out in Billie’s new, uh, area. (I forgot the right word.) He was extremely recently out when we saw him and implied to still be living with girls- if he’s not allowed a solo room then it’s either specifically because Carla’s a trans woman or because her parents are rich.
Thag Simmons
Zaph, which I only remember because he was a Shortpacked! carryover.
Wren
That’s it! I remembered him being from Shortpacked! but he was so minor a character I was really fuzzy on his name. Clearly.
Also I realised that there’s another option to Carla having her own room and not other transfolk and that’s having transitioned legally- which I think she very likely has.
Psychie
I’m pretty sure solo rooms just cost more at IU, I was never in campus housing, but I did briefly look into it for the sake of curiosity and I don’t recall seeing anything about specific accommodations for trans people regarding single rooms (or in general, really, not that I looked for it since I’m cis, but still). Zaph might still be in the female wing because he came out after being assigned the room and it will take time to move him, or it might be left up to the individual to decide which wing they’d rather be in.
It might also be a legal thing, a friend of mine who came out and transitioned a couple years ago had her birth certificate legally changed after she started medically transitioning and had her legal name changed, so it could be that IU recognizes whatever gender is on your legal documents when assigning a wing, so if Carla has had her documents changed to reflect her gender identity and Zaph hasn’t, that could explain it.
As for Booster, would a non-binary person care which wing they are in? I get that might sound flippant, but I mean it as a genuine question, since as neither a man nor a woman, wouldn’t being put in the men’s wing or the woman’s wing be equally good or bad or whatever? That’s the kind of thing I assume would have personal variance, but like, in general would it make a difference?
BorkBorkBork
I think we’re way, way overthinking it here. This is a university, and this is clearly a rooming policy. Therefore, it has nothing to do with what makes sense or not, and is instead 100% based on public image.
Whether or not you get a solo room, would be entirely based on what will or will not get the school into scandals with donors. And that 100% has to do with whether you’re rooming with someone whose sex assigned at birth is the same as your own.
Booster may be nonbinary trans, but if their sex assigned at birth was male, then there’s no rich conservative donors clutching their pearls if they room with Walky. Same with Zaph, who was on a women’s floor the last time we saw him.
Carla, however, has a big giant freaking spotlight on her like the queen she is, and I’m sure that the single room was a concession that was made by the school when the Ruttens enrolled her.
Yumi
I’d also note that there’s an issue of change in policies over time– when the strip started, housing accommodations for trans students were less common. I started college in 2012, and there was a big push for it going on in my campus LGBTQ+ then. Now, my college has more options relating to gender and on-campus housing. I don’t know the exact situation for IU, but I think that might be a factor here as well.
Also, yeah, singles cost more.
Uly
It may not have even been a concession. They have the money to pay for a single room. They may have not even considered the question.
Oz
Why does everyone assume Booster is amab tho? they could just as well be afab. actually don’t they have a same age twin sister? it they are identical twins that would imply Booster is afab (they could be fraternal twins, not sure if something has been said abouit that)
Wren
“Would a non-binary person care which wing they were in?” That’s an answer which will vary widely. Some would care for safely reasons; some would care for identity reasons; some would do everything they could to look for gender neutral options. And some genuinely wouldn’t care.
“Non-binary” just means someone who falls outside the gender binary. Some lean more masc, some more femme. For example being perceived and treated exclusively as female caused me massive gender dysphoria- being perceived and treated exclusive as male does not. But I’m not male, I’m non-binary. My spouse is agender and doesn’t much care about gendered language unless it has specific connotations that don’t feel right to them. However, if either of us were housed in female-exclusive areas we’d both be deeply uncomfortable because neither of us look female and we know that things would be… awkward at best.
I know someone who’s gender fluid and would find being in gendered housing at all to be uncomfortable. I know someone who is transfemme (NOT female) and transitioned and presents fairly femme but doesn’t care about passing in large part because they are not female. I know or have known non-binary folk where I couldn’t guess where they would fall on gendered housing- but honestly, the most common question in that situation is “where would I be safest”. And we’d definitely care that we need to put our safety over having our identities respected, cause that doesn’t feel good.
Apologies for the ramble. About Booster specifically, it’s unclear how they feel, but iirc (I might not and I just woke up so I haven’t looked) Booster did express a measure of discomfort when they thought Amber was suggesting they hook up with Ethan because he’s exclusively into men, which Booster is not. That implies that they would definitely prefer a gender neutral option were it available to them.
Tatterhood
Thanks for rambling. It means I don’t feel compelled to, because you shared everything I’d want to see covered 🙂
Psychie
Thank you for the answer, there is admittedly a *lot* I don’t understand about the non-binary spectrum and finding answers to my questions has proven challenging.
I learn best by arguing, if something doesn’t make sense to me I’ve found the most efficient way to learn what I’m missing is to argue with someone who knows what they’re talking about, pointing out what look to be logical holes to me, so they can identify what I’m misunderstanding and correct that, but it’s really hard to do that without coming off like I’m attacking them and that is decidedly *not* my intention so I mostly just don’t so I can avoid causing unintentional harm, but it’s difficult to always be respectful when I’m ignorant since I don’t know enough to know what is and is not respectful.
So thank you for taking my question in the spirit I intended and giving a blunt answer, that is exactly what I needed. Although your answer *does* leave me with more questions since it mentioned some stuff I had never heard of before, I figure this probably isn’t the place to get into the nitty gritty and pester you with more questions.
Wren
I mean, I’d be happy to answer questions, but you probably won’t even see this now since the second page after this one will be going up soon! If you do see this uh… feel free to ask? Learning is good.
Theluxland
Again, it depend on the person. I’m agender and consider myself trans, my bestie is genderfluid and don’t really consider themself trans. I guess it’s on the perception of things and the way you wanna handle this?
Kerry Ann
The way I’ve always interpreted it is that if you were assigned a gender at birth that does not match your own gender, you are transgender.
Using this rubric, theoretically, an intersex person could identify as cisgender non-binary.
S.R.
I’m not sure that’s necessarily the case. Pretty sure most parents of intersex kids don’t go “okay, you’re nonbinary”. They usually seem to assign either ‘he’ or ‘she’.
S.R.
Unless they were assigned NB at birth, they’re (arguably) trans. Some NB folks don’t identify as trans, but that’s personal choice rather than the word outright not being accurate.
Ana Chronistic
and of course I can’t read threaded messages, so your post is DIRECTLY above mine and contradicting what I said, figures =B
Ana Chronistic
Not to speak for others, but my understanding is nonbinary IS trans, bc nobody is “assigned NB at birth”
BadRoad
This is how I react to both Booster and Carla. They both annoyed me long before I learned anything about their gender and continue to annoy me for non-gender-related traits.
geno
Carla’s parent are also super rich and probably paid extra
thejeff
Not merely paid extra, but also were rich enough to mount legal challenges if necessary.
Mark
Legal challenges? “We’d like to endow a Chair of Gender Studies, with the condition that our daughter gets a single dorm room until she graduates.”
thejeff
Carrot and stick. 🙂
But it also depends on how much they just want Carla treated well and how much they want to affect university policy
GreyICE
Dina has some observations about that.
Rose by Any other Name
I was just thinking that. The only ‘off’ thing to Joyce was that OTHERS were treating Carla ‘weird’.
“More people should be like Joyce” is not a sentence I expected to write today, but there you go.
Now don’t fuck it up, Joyce. You done good – don’t fuck it up.
Bash
That just means that Carla passes well. Let’s see how Joyce reacts now that she actually knows.
S.R.
I somehow doubt it’s going to be anything particularly bad. Awkward, probably! But well-meaning awkward, I gotta imagine.
Abdomino
I’m pretty OK with telling people to be more like Joyce. Say what you will, but she really came in with both her own beliefs and a sincere desire to learn. She was, and is, constantly being confronted by choices and her usual instinct is to learn how to make the best one without losing her sense of self. And, along the way, she’s able to understand her sense of self ever more deeply, embracing the things she wants to be, and leaving behind the things that get into the way of that.
She’s still learning. She’s boorish about it sometimes, but it’s sincere and from a desire to get away from behavior & beliefs she once embraced and now rejects.
I think she’s going to be agitated for a bit, and I hope Carla isn’t nearby during that, but she’ll get her mind around it. Considering the timeline, she’s growing and changing as a person at a remarkable, if not perhaps unrealistic, pace. And the only way for her changes to be believable, she needs to fumble along the way.
WillowD
Actually, I don’t think Joyce will fuck it up much, if at all. She has realized that everything she has been raised to believe is thoroughly wrong and has been working like crazy to change her behavior and beliefs.
I might even go so far as seeing Joyce and Carla becoming friends over this.
Azhrei Vep
I fully expect her to be extremely, loudly awkward and weird about this in an uncomfortable yet funny way at least once.
vulcanodon
I’m here for it. Growing up as a cis white male, my manhood was under constant scrutiny
Sirksome
Oh yeah, Carla’s blonde actually.
WillowD
Is this canon? I love learning trivia about Carla.
Sirksome
Young baby Carla had very light blue past filter hair. Maybe it was blonde or maybe it was light blue to imitate Carla’s second favorite cartoon Mega Boat. (You’ve never heard of Mega Boat or its lost media pilot because it’s creator lost a lawsuit with Hasbro for looking too much like Depth Charge. Yes I’ve made this all up.)
https://www.tumblr.com/dumbingofage/148077389327/this-months-patreon-bonus-strip-poll-winner-was
morhek
“She also appears to have grafted the rollerskates directly to her feet and nobody is sure how she did it.”
Kazuma Taichi
have bionics gone too far?
staszu13
Well, she ISN’T a natural redhead ?
Cholma
Dear Prior Joyce, God created you nekkid, and yet you changed that by *gasp* wearing clothes! SINNER. Shave your pits? SINNER. Put on makeup or deodorant? SINNER. Shame on you, Prior Joyce. SHAME.
Cholma
…and I just saw the Alt Text. Dagnabit! Missed an obvious one!
anon
isn’t there actually some bible verse where you can’t wear clothes made of certain/mixed materials? XD;
James
Leviticus 19:19.
Google also says it was about preventing people from wearing a certain type of garment reserved for the clergy rather than a moral ruling, but that’s five seconds research so take it with a grain of salt.
Not to mention the types of people who use Leviticus to justify bigotry definitely don’t care about the original intent or context and just ascribe moral judgment to it anyway…
Cholma
They also conveniently “forget” or disregard that if they consider themselves followers of Jesus, then most of the Old Testament rules were thrown out in favor of His teachings. (I’m not a religious student, but I believe everything except the Ten Commandments were overruled by the New Testament)
ThomasQuinn
Matthew 5:17-18: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” and “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” respectively. Which makes sense, as Christianity was a Jewish sect until at least the time when Paul decided to cast a wider net. So no, your assertion is patently untrue – which doesn’t mean that Christians haven’t simply dismissed or explained away any passage that was inconvenient at the time.
Cholma
I think I learned that the Old Testament rules were no longer valid because of the Last Supper: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” but I freely allow that I’m not a scholar and haven’t even looked at a bible in almost 40 years.
jeffepp
One of the issues facing Judaism then (as always) was the questions of what was “the Law” (and wasn’t), and what was the interpretation of “the Law”. Each sect, including “the Way” (early Christianity) had (a) different answer(s) to this.
In the present, different sects of both still argue about the same kind of questions and answers. We just tend to follow some version where someone has or is yelling their version very loudly, because that’s how we determine who’s right. Then everyone else is a godless heathen.
jflb96
There is also Acts 10, where God says to Peter ‘Excuse me, idiot, which of us is the Creator? Who are you to call my creations ‘unclean’?’
thejeff
It’s complicated and what we see in the NT is essentially the argument 1st century Christians were having about whether followers of Jesus (or at least Gentile converts) needed to keep Torah Law or whether Jesus’s death and resurrection superseded that. Paul’s faction won out. Cynically, because it was easier to get converts if they didn’t have to get circumcised.
But it left us with conflicting passages in the NT, because the authors were part of this argument. They shouldn’t really be reconciled, because they’re saying different things and the idea that the Bible speaks with one voice hides what the individual authors thought.
dinajoyce
yup! thejeff has it right! It’s unclear whether or not ethnically Jewish Christians should still follow Torah Law or not, but Paul definitely wins out on deciding that Gentile converts do not need to convert to Judaism and follow the Law to be Christians. Some segments of modern church have kinda lost sight of the fact that there has always been debate in biblical interpretation. Once you start to see the Bible as containing large sections of debate about how to interpret the teachings of the Law and/or Jesus’ teachings, it gets way more interesting.
thejeff
But understanding the Bible that way conflicts with seeing it as the inerrant authoritative Word of God.
Mark
Nah, it’s easy: in the NT the Word of God is quoted in red, and everything else is history or commentary.
thejeff
[Looks in my copy. Sees no red. Tosses book.]
Not sure when the “red letter” thing became common, but it’s hardly universal.
Also, even that is really something that a later author claimed Jesus said and since none of them had recordings or even transcripts, even the words in red are shaped to the later authors theological agendas.
Davus
Yeah, Joyce had no clue and only picked up on anything because other people were acting weird. That makes sense given that she didn’t guess when Dorothy started talking about it, even though Carla came in at the time.
Also, Jennifer and Dorothy were correct to keep that from her. She wasn’t ready yet, but she probably is now.
Vanessa
Fingers crossed that she understands it’s other people being weird about things that aren’t any of their business that’s the problem.
GoblinBagsSumo
Doesn’t she also make a comment after some break period where she notices Carla is bustier than she was before? (Likely because of HRT.) I wanna say it was Dorothy with her?
NGPZ
Nothin says growin up like cringe flashbacks, am i right? :p
anon
i odn’t think anyone will ever grow outta cringe flashbacks lol but comedy/story telling wise it is entertaining
Psychie
I think NGPZ meant that the fact that she’s cringing at a flashback of a thing she said in the past means she’s grown since she said it and this is a relatable experience for a lot of people. Personally, I don’t tend to cringe at memories of my past, even if I have said a lot of things I no longer agree with, but I don’t tend to cringe in general and I don’t have much in the way of an episodic memory, so I don’t have a whole lot of memories that I relive in that way in the first place.
Michael Steamweed
Been there; done that. (toodangmanytimes)
Casi
Oh boy, this arc is gonna be interesting. Is it possible for me to hate Mary more?
Jeremiah
Sky is the limit baby!
tim gueguen
She turns out to be Toedad in a really clever disguise?
Council
It wouldn’t be Toedad if the disguise was clever
the man had scant few virtues and brainpower wasn’t on the list
Leadsynth