401

Gutted
Posted on August 19, 2024 by David M Willis

401 thoughts on “Gutted”

  1. NGPZ

    Yup. Called it. ?

    1. Jo_cubstar

      You were absolutely right.

      I hope Joyce handles this ok

      1. NGPZ

        Either way I hope Dina gives Mary a complimentary chiropractic adjustment in the form of breaking her fucking neck

        1. Beef

          Not that I’m against her getting in on it but why Dina specifically?

        2. Icalasari

          Dina would get away with it, thus avoiding a prison arc

        3. Taffy

          Dina’s hot, violent women are hot*, therefore we have 100% of the reasons we’ll ever need.

          *(see the documentary known as Mortal Kombat for more information)

        4. Decidedly Orthogonal

          See also: Street Fighter, Dead or Alive, and D.E.B.S.

        5. GingerMadman

          OMG, another person whose heard of D.E.B.S.!

        6. Devin

          If you want more people who have heard of D.E.B.S., just go to tumblr

        7. Dara

          LOVE D.E.B.S.

          D.E.B.S. is the Shego fic we deserved but never quite got.

        8. misanthropope

          “please punch me in the face private Vasquez”

        9. Corronchilejano

          She can go in, do the deed, and leave undetected.

        10. Stanistani

          Tony Lazuto says hello.

        11. Regret

          I’m pretty sure Dina considers chiropraxy to be unscientific.

        12. Amelie Wikström

          “You know what they call chiropractic techniques that work? Physical therapy.”

        13. NGPZ

          Very good point.

          “Chiropractic” here is a euphemism for a fuckin ass whoopin XD

      2. Kat

        50/50 between Joyce fumbling it or saying out loud that she thinks Carla’s even cooler now, and making Mary very mad. I’m obviously rooting for the latter option for a list of obvious reasons, but the former might have an interesting payoff in the future, so I’m not fully ready to discount it.

        1. Bryy

          I’m rooting for Joyce not giving Mary the response she wants.

      3. Wereg

        I’m sure Joyce is going to handle this in a very well-meaning but accidentally insensitive way, and Carla will be mildly annoyed but know that Joyce of all people isn’t going to purposefully be an ass to her. Hijinks will ensue, we will all laugh.

        1. Psychie

          Honestly, I expect Carla to know she’s well meaning, but *pretend* to be super offended just to mess with her and also get Joyce to realize the mistake and correct it WAY faster than the other times she’s done that.

        2. Needfuldoer

          I’d be disappointed if Carla doesn’t do that as a teachable moment. Face-blindness aside, she does seem to like Joyce more than most of the other freshmen.

        3. Jimbotherisenclown

          I think we are going to have a heartwrenching moment where Carla essentially says, “I thought you knew.”

        4. PedanticJerkass

          Yeah, I really want this to eventually end up with Joyce and Carla scheming together to get proportionate revenge on Mary.

      4. anon

        considering dorothy was like ‘ i don’t have one/stop staring’ let’s hope the next shower visit won’t be too awkward

      5. Paradoxius

        My money’s on “she tries too hard to be supportive and makes it weird”

        That or “Dorothy barely restrains Joyce from becoming a chaser”

  2. Nono

    Mary meant that the secret penis is having sexual relations with Carla.

    1. Thag Simmons

      I don’t think Carla would be interested in that.

      1. Dante

        Carla was specifically REALLY grossed out by the insinuation when Jennifer thought it could be the reason Mary bullied her.

        1. C.T. Phipps

          I mean, a lot of fundamentalists sexualize the people they hate.

          Ditto racists but also fundamentalists.

          And transphobes, but also fundamentalists.

          So it wouldn’t remotely be out of character or in any way redeeming.

        2. Azrael

          IIRC there was a study showing that many homophobic men were actually excited by homosexual porn. And it’s well known that trans porn is one of the more popular genres of porn.

          They sexualize what they hate because they want what they hate, on some level or another. Either they’re self-hating raging homosexuals in denial, or transgender people in denial. I know I have a couple family members that when they get caught in a gay bar I won’t be surprised. One cousin that I won’t be surprised if he turns out to be a she at some point, if they ever break out of the cult indoctrination.

          Also, racist, transphobe, homophobe, and fundamentalist are pretty much synonyms. They are also synonyms with “raisin balled jabroni”.

        3. Taffy

          Why’s it always come back to “if you hate X you’re secretly a X fetishist”? Can this society please just collectively rinse the cum off its brains and think normal thoughts?

        4. Marianne

          Think how many transphobic conservative influencers have been caught with trans porn. Or how many transphobic conservatives end up being chasers. I’ve had a TERF hit on me before, with full knowledge that I’m trans. It was so gross. So, so very gross. Point being, it’s a well known phenomenon that keeps being repeated. People, usually men, whose hatred for a group actually comes, at least in part, from their own insecurity and deep shame at being attracted to said group.

        5. Taffy

          Here’s another apparent failure of mine, I guess. I don’t keep up with any “influencers”, let alone specifically conservative/transphobic ones. I can’t really call that information to mind at will, because I’d have to look it up in the first place to know even one example.

          Like, I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, I’m just sick to death of “ooooh they jackin’ it” being the first thing in everyone’s minds. I’m a very horny person, sometimes to the point I feel I should dial it back, and some of y’all are just on a different level entirely.

        6. PedanticJerkass

          This isn’t a recent “influencer” thing. This has been a thing for literal decades. Or centuries. Think of all the stories of very vocal homophobes turning out to have been in the closest all along, or white slave owners who were impregnating their slaves while simultaneously decrying anyone of African descent as being subhuman, for example.

        7. Solarn

          Hatred of something completely normal and fetishization of it are two sides of the same coin. A person who thinks a normal amount about trans people or gay people or people of other races or… (you get my point) will not develop a seething hatred of them. Bigots’ minds are constantly occupied by the people they hate, so it’s not unusual at all that the porn they look at would also involve those people. That doesn’t mean that homophobes are secretly gay or transphobes are secretly trans, it just means that they get off to the targets of their hatred.

        8. VicMortimer

          How about rinsing the religion out of society’s collective brains instead.

          The religious nutjob closet case is very much a real thing. And hatred takes energy, indifference doesn’t. Why would anybody bother wasting energy on even thinking about trans people if they weren’t secretly fetishizing them?

          Thinking about sex IS normal. Hating yourself and others because of the sex you want is NOT.

        9. C.T. Phipps

          One thing Trump showed is that religion is the frame around the racism and misogyny. When asked to choose between a guy who absolutely had no qualities their religion supported, they all fell in line behind it. Religion is meaningless to a huge chunk of the conservatives in America.

          An excuse.

          They’ll say it says whatever they want it to say.

        10. Taffy

          This is nonsense to me. I can’t even get into the mindset. Sure, thinking about sex is normal, that’s a very reasonable thing to say. But this constant 24/7 societal goon session over everything even slightly related to genitals is excessive and nasty.

        11. NGPZ

          @C.T. Phipps, so much for not taking the name of god in vain.

        12. Decidedly Orthogonal

          Because we are quite literally animals, barely a step out of “ugh, gronk.”

        13. GingerMadman

          So, the Republican convention crashed a gay hookup app. Because of so many users using it at one place. Just something to think about.

        14. Taffy

          LMAO okay that’s pretty good I gotta be honest. “Republicans: Too Gay To Fuck”

        15. Morleuca

          they seem to do it on a regular basis

        16. Call Me Deacon Blues

          Yeah, my understanding is this happens basically every Republican national convention

        17. PedanticJerkass

          Nah, they all just happen to have “wide stances.”

        18. thejeff

          I think there’s a big difference between homophobes/transphobes often being closeted/in denial queers and transphobes often being chasers and fetishizing trans women.
          Like chasers exist, aren’t actually trans and often really are bigoted. Just like men into lesbian porn aren’t necessarily allies. It’s a fetish. Says nothing about how you think about those you fetishize as people.

        19. PedanticJerkass

          Think of it kind of like white slave owners in the 1800s who were busily impregnating their black slaves while simultaneously calling them subhuman.

    2. ESM

      Two lovers♪
      Forbidden from one another ♫
      A dorm divides their people♩
      And a grandpa keeps them apart♪
      Build a path to be together♫

      …Yeah, I forget the next couple of lines, but uh then it goes

      ?Secret Penis! Secret Penis!?
      Though the mountain!♩
      Secret secret secret secret penis! Yeah! ♫

      1. Drew

        This one got me

  3. Erica

    I’m surprised Joyce picked up on that so fast!

    1. Jeremiah

      Go Joyce, catching those dog whistles like nobody’s business!

      1. Vanessa

        Learned them at her mother’s feet poor girl.

        1. PedanticJerkass

          Yeah, I’m not sure that it’s necessarily a good thing that Joyce picked up on it so quickly in the particular instance, to be honest.

          It would’ve probably been better (not to mention funnier) if Joyce had just kept going “I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about, Mary” for the next half dozen strips or so, as Mary got more and more frustrated and more and more explicit. (Especially if it had turned out later that Joyce had been doing it on purpose.)

        2. PedanticJerkass

          *this particular

    2. Amelie Wikström

      It helps that Mary is as bad at insinuating her bigotry without saying anything specific as, well, any transphobic activist I’ve talked to.

    3. Dr. Sharks

      I honestly did not understand what Mary was insinuating until Joyce clocked it. Secret penises invading? Listen to yourself. You’re an insane person.

  4. butts

    GO TO HELL, MARY

    1. Theluxland

      Seconded.
      Since i’m myself trans, i’m not really looking forward what can happend. I’ve got caugh recently multiple times in internet argument that agender people don’t exist and I always forget that it’s pointless to debate on it: It just make me bitter and angrier.

  5. Sirksome

    Gross. Very gross of Mary here.

    1. Vanessa

      This. This is why Mary is loathed. It’s none of her business and Joyce knows that. Mary is trying to incite hatred and harassment against Carla for something that is literally none of anyone’s business.

      1. Taffy

        Presumably it’s Carla’s business, but I’m curious if there’s any convincing way to argue otherwise.

        1. Clif

          It takes a village to raise a Carla.

          Or something like that.

        2. Reltzik

          Carla doesn’t seem to be performing transactions to generate revenue and net profit from said hypothetical-plumbing, so no, it’s not her business.

      2. Comic.phile

        Also Mary said “fucking” and saying that was a big thing for Joyce breaking away from Christianity.

    2. PedanticJerkass

      Par for the course for Mary, in other words.

  6. Jeremiah

    In case there was even a shadow of a doubt of what Mary was on about. She just can’t do subtle, it’s not in her programming.

  7. Animedingo

    Lol

    And i cannot emphasize this enough

    Lmao

  8. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

    So many callbacks to past plotlines. So many.

  9. Laura

    This. Ugh. Stomach-sick time.

    1. NGPZ

      ?

      1. Laura

        Thank you friend. I’m kind of spiraling with this. ?‍?? Thank you for being kind.

        1. NGPZ

          ?? no problem, friend

    2. Dante

      I’m sorry to hear you’re feeling so awfully, fam. [internet hugs?]

      1. Laura

        Thank you, Dante.

        (( <3 ))

        Always up for internet hugs! ❤️‍?

    3. Theluxland

      SAME. I didn’t think a plotline (or even the suggestion of one) could make me feel bad, but here we are.
      We’re all in this together

      1. Laura

        That means a lot.?

  10. not someone else

    Jacob and (secret 4th option) Ethan

  11. Ty34er

    I can picture Joyce reacting the exact same way she did when she found out Ethan was gay: “But you look so… normal.”

    …oh crap, forgot about her sibling until I was going to hit Post Comment.

  12. Nono

    I have the desire to see Malaya own Mary again.

    Which may be the most positive thing I can say about Malaya.

    1. Jeremiah

      Malaya is an asshole but they are no bigot. (Plus they have an Iguana, that just make them objectively better that you. It’s called science).

      1. Clif

        That the Iguana is objectively better than me, we can take as a given. That Malaya is objectively better is not so straightforward.

        1. Jeremiah

          Because of transitive process by being the care taker of the iguana the “better that you” status pass to them too. (Plus they give it the name Fuckface. Enough said).

      2. anon

        pretty sure she’s also nb, if not ‘gender non conforming’ with her binder or so

        tho other than making her carry her luggage when she first moved to the dorm i don’t really remember any specific ‘owning’ tho malaya prolly wouldn’t give a shit/not bother unless it was sal

        1. HueSatLight

          The life drawing class strips were pretty wicked.

  13. IntangibleMatter

    Okay so first of all good on Joyce for picking up on the Dogwhistles as dogwhistles, and good on her for having a progressive opinion.

    Second of all, I was not expecting to see Mary say “fuck”

    Thirdly, excellent Joyce face in the last panel, and I’m unsure as to what’s going to happen next.

    1. 3oranges

      Mary has never cared about avoiding bad words the way Joyce did. She’s always been superficially polite as a ploy. Here the ploy is gone, so the polite mask is too.

      I trust it’ll be very satisfying when she joins the list of villains we no longer have to worry about.

      1. Wereg

        Think there’s a chance that Mary does something that’ll warrant expulsion?

        1. Reltzik

          You mean like blackmail the RA, or dump a bunch of transphobia on a fellow student who also happens to be the daughter of rich and powerful business magnates?

        2. Mark

          I can see an awkward scene between Joyce and Carla; Carla wondering what brought that on all of a sudden; suspicion and investigation; Carla discovers that Mary is poisoning the well again; Carla unleashes a battalion of lawyers to keep Mary so busy we don’t see her for the rest of the semester.

          Plus wacky gadgets!

    2. Dana

      Mary was on the f-bomb list already, including this instance that garnered a perfect scolding from Carla

    3. RassilonTDavros

      Not actually Mary’s first f-bomb. Though it is only her second.

      (Thanks to the ever-useful counter here.)

      1. IntangibleMatter

        Oh my god that website is amazing

        1. Deanatay

          I love that Sal is #2 on that list primarily because of that one time Danny’s DS ran out of charge while she was jonesing on MarioKart.

      2. Leadsynth

        That IS amazing. I have a question: Is there somewhere the text of each strip is archived in a searchable way, that would facilitate keeping a count like this?

  14. Bryy

    On this,
    the day of my birth,
    Mary does a TERF.

    Well, no, it was yesterday, but it rhymes today.

    1. NGPZ

      ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

      Happy Birthday to you!

      The world is a zoo!

      We wish you a great party!

      And some sweet presents too!

    2. Laura

      https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/birthday.png

      Happy ? ? ? ? ? ? to you!

    3. Reltzik

      She was also doing a TERF yesterday.

    4. anon

      happy b-day

      wouldn’t she just be a transphobe? b/c outta all things i doubt there’s much ‘feminist’ about mary/she prolly wouldn’t rly give a shit about cis /nonchristian/ women

      1. NGPZ

        the “”feminist”” aspect of TERF is really only a front to justify transphobia, it’s not a real philosophy but rather a euphemism designed to legitimize bigotry

      2. Wren

        There’s honestly not a lot that’s actually feminist about most terfs and terf talking points nowadays. It’s all wrapped up in gender essentialism, which has historically been not a feminist take. It’s also about throwing a variety of women under the metaphorical bus to attack transfolk and GNC folk (especially GNC women).

        About Mary specifically her language has been terf language. She’s been talking specifically about men being predatory, leading into them invading women’s spaces, because the concern wasn’t about men at all. It’s a terf dogwhistle. Whether she actually believes any common terf ideology or if she’s using it because it’s convenient is irrelevant- that IS the language she’s using.

      3. jflb96

        ‘Radical feminism’ has only slightly more of a relation to actual feminism than ‘National Socialism’ does to actual socialism. The original radfems saw the stereotypical man-hating caricature and thought ‘Yes please, that’s what we want, not equality but burning down the world so long as a woman rules the ashes’.

    5. Bogeywoman

      Why was Bryy born so beaaautifuuul
      Was was Bryy born at aaaaalll
      Because Bryy had no saaaay in it
      No say in it at aaaaalll

      (Idk what pronouns to use but single syllable name works)

  15. Jonah (firelight_waltz)

    my trans gf: what’s happening in yr fave webcomic rn??

    me: *sweats nervously*

    1. AGV/Ruby

      Tell her that she’s invited to the “we want Mary’s head on a pike uruk hai style” club if she wants

      1. Needfuldoer

        We don’t have jackets, but there’s no jacket required here anyway.

        1. NickG

          Carla has a warehouse full of jackets, with her name on them.

        2. thejeff

          And drones to deliver them.

          Would you like one?

        3. Needfuldoer

          Are they inside out?

          Never mind, I don’t wanna know. Who said I would?

  16. RassilonTDavros

    Man, and here I thought the secret maybe-penis-having-person was gonna turn out to be Spider-Car. This twist came right outta nowhere.

    In all seriousness though: Go fuck yourself, Mary.

  17. Sirksome

    There’s something funny about the idea of penises intruding on things. Like they just hop off your groin to invade the women’s bathroom or sneak onto private property. A thief penis breaking into a jewelry store to steal diamonds in the night. A Solid Snake penis breaking into Shadow Moses.

    1. Illjwamh

      Wasn’t there a South Park episode kind of like this?

      “Eek, a penis!”

      1. Laura

        Or like that ’90s song, “Detachable Penis”…

        Reminds me of an intersection in eastern Washington, near the Idaho border:
        https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Images/johnson_cut_off.jpg

    2. cbwroses

      There’s actually a D grade horror movie about a penis that hops off and attacks people.
      Or maybe it was a low budget porno movie.
      Regardless, it starred Ron Jeremy, so it could be either or and maybe even both.

      1. Dante

        I know not of this movie you talk about but in turn, I was immediately reminded of Killer Condom, by legendary B studio Troma.

      2. Queen Anthai

        Oh yeah, One-Eyed Monster. I have that. Bought it for Amber Benson. Now I can’t watch it anymore because Ron Jeremy is a friggin’ rapist and I really want to offload the DVD and no one else wants it either. :/

        1. cbwroses

          Yeah.
          I never looked him up until just now while trying to find the name of the movie.
          Apparently dude won’t even go to jail.
          According to Wikipedia, he’s too messed up in the head to stand trial, like can’t even take care of himself, so the courts dismissed all the cases against him.
          That’s bs.

        2. Marianne

          The man’s mind is rotting into soup. The only reason the judicial system isn’t punishing him is that nature got there first. I despise rapists, having been the repeated victim of one as a child, but I’m ok with this one not going to jail. His rapidly failing mind is his jail now.

        3. cbwroses

          What I’m saying is bs is that there’s no official record vindicating the victims as having their rapist recognized by the system.
          Some people need that while others don’t.

    3. Fart Captor

      THEY’RE COMING IN THROUGH THE WALLS

      1. Taffy

        Silent Hill 2 boss room be like:

      2. ESM

        FROM THE WINDOWS
        FROM THE WALLS
        DISCONNECTED FROM THEIR BALLS

        1. Sirksome

          SKEET SKEET SKEET! (If you know you know)

    4. StClair

      !

  18. Davus

    there is a bunch of ways Joyce could react here, and I don’t know which one she we’ll choose.
    My personal hope is either: “Huh, I wouldn’t have guessed.” or “Oh, and you were being transphobic to her back then, weren’t you?”

    Joyce: “Fuck you, Mary”

    1. Wren

      I’m hoping for something truly odd. Like “is that why she likes roller skates?” (I’m really hoping that’s not an actual line of thinking, it has to not be in order to work.) Just something so completely divorced from any opinions on trans folk that Mary BSODs out of confusion.

      1. Bogeywoman

        Considering the abundance of skating trans communities, that’d be funny.

        1. Bogeywoman

          Ooh, now I wanna do a fanart of Tran Skater Boyfriend and Carla highfiving

        2. Wren

          Okay, since Joyce definitely wouldn’t know that it WOULD be funny as long as Mary also didn’t. Joyce accidentally hitting upon A Thing but not a transphobic thing and it confusing the hell out of Mary would be a good way for Joyce to be clumsy about it!
          (I think she will be clumsy, it’s new territory and she often is in new territory. But she also keeps trying to do and be better, so… I’m hopeful that clumsy is the worst we’ll see from her.)

        3. Bogeywoman

          Joyce would probably be pleased and start overcompensating with following trans people on socials and referencing niche injokes.
          Just rubbing Carla and saying “pickles, amirite”

        4. Bogeywoman

          ***RIBBING***
          *POKING JER IN THE RIBS, NOT RUBBING HER PICKLE JFC

        5. GingerMadman

          Thank you, I needed that geegle. (It’s like a giggle. but weirder)

        6. Taffy

          Joyce making Chris-Chan jokes at Carla? Yeah, I could see it.

        7. S.R.

          (context for anyone confused: HRT rather commonly makes people crave pickles.)

  19. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

    “Nuts to you” is a *fantastic* comeback to a transphobic ciswoman.

  20. Dot

    Why is everyone calling Mary a terf. She’s not a radical feminist, she’s an evangelical Christian. Terfism is a specific strain of radical feminism, not just any transphobe.

    1. Ragnarok101

      TERFs use the exact same rhetoric of ‘men are awful and their penises are the root of evil, therefore trans people are awful’.

      All Mary’s really doing is parroting their BS.

    2. Taffy

      The distinction isn’t useful.

      1. Bryy

        Yeah, let’s really not “yeah but” transphobia.

        1. Bysmerian

          I mean I get it. Mary has been a transphobic monster from day 1 but The exact choice of words here feels different than what I would have thought.

          I suppose it’s just easier to remind myself Mary is a p-zombie pez dispenser of hate and move on

      2. Gwyn

        I think it used to be useful, but TERFs have stopped pretending to actually care about women on any fucking level and have completely allied themselves with evangelical christianity. So yeah they’re one and the same at this point, but it wasnt always the case

      3. Derek

        disagree, it’s useful to know the distinction if we want to fight back against transphobia. know thy enemy and all

    3. Wraithy2773

      I mean, the vast majority of TERFs in general aren’t feminists at all, they just use feminism as a smokescreen for their bigotry.

      1. Dot

        This is not correct. Radical feminism is a particular strain of feminist thought with roots in the 1970s feminist movement and it being bad and incorrect does not make it not a form of feminism. Feminism is not “goodism.” There are bad feminisms. People need to be more comfortable with this notion. Dworkin, MacKinnon, et al. were undeniably feminist figures.

        1. Wraithy2773

          Two things can be true:

          TERFs began as an offshoot of a specific brand of feminism.

          Modern TERFs are mostly bigots trying to launder their hatred of trans people using Feminism as a smokescreen.

          Terms evolve over time, especially when bad actors do whatever they can to poison them. There’s a reason why “Radical Feminism” rarely comes up in the public sphere these days without the TE leading the way.

        2. Dot

          Except the bigotry was always there! “The Transsexual Empire” was published in 1979! Are we to assume that the racist feminism of many first-wavers wasn’t actually feminism either? This is just a refusal to acknowledge that radical feminism is in fact a part of the feminist tradition and engage with what that means for feminism as a whole and how it intersects with trans rights and experiences. If you can’t honestly acknowledge the analytical framework being used by your enemy, how on earth can you ever hope to defeat them?

        3. Jeremiah

          You know we just gonna keep calling Mary a TERF anyway right? It’s handy, it give the point across of the rethoric she is using. Arguing semantics it’s not really useful for anything here.

        4. Clif

          Is this what they call a TERF war?

        5. Jeremiah

          Nah that is significantly more stupid and involves a lot more call out videos.

        6. Taffy

          Do you think https://www.dumbingofage.com is where these enemies will be defeated? They’re not even here. They can’t be engaged at all, much less “defeated”. If not here, where do you imagine these interactions are happening? Do you assume they’re not? Are you under the impression that comprehension of the freaks’ rhetoric isn’t happening? Why do you seem to think that calling a fictional character a TERF means anything for the broader implications of anyone’s mindset, behavior, or communications?

          Plainly, what the fuck are you even talking about with this “defeat them” babble?

        7. eh, whatever

          If you can’t honestly acknowledge the analytical framework being used by your enemy, how on earth can you ever hope to defeat them?

          You can point and laugh.

        8. thejeff

          No, you’re missing the point. The point is that that the trans-exclusive branch of radical feminism isn’t really feminism because it’s bigoted, it’s that the vast majority of people calling themselves TERFs and organizing using the particular strand of transphobic rhetoric that came from early transphobic radfems aren’t radical feminists anymore. Or even feminist at all. They’re not doing any of the feminist stuff that radfems did. They’re not concerned about feminist issues. The only “women’s rights” they talk about are excluding trans women.
          The label stuck, even though the meaning of the acronym doesn’t really apply. They keep it (despite sometimes also calling it a slur) because pretending to be feminist and speaking for women is tactically useful.

        9. Dday

          Oh god I looked that up on wikipedia. The writing truly lives up to all the stereotypes of seething, buzzword-punching feminist screed, it literally reads like parody:

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transsexual_Empire

          Personally I thought it was amusing, but even what’s briefly quoted and summarized on the wiki page could be really upsetting/sickening (which is why I didn’t just copy/paste the text) so please be warned.

        10. Dante

          I do agree that it’s useful to know the roots of the TERF movement. It’s history you can’t deny, and the “No True Scotsman” stuff is how you repeat the mistakes of the past.

          On the other hand, I think it’s completely valid to – as society changes, and the meaning of words too, go “y’know? By your behavior I’m taking away your feminist card. Fuck you. You’re no sister of mine.” And use “TERF” as shorthand to talk about the dogwhistles TERFs use, that in this modern world with Internet access, are now being used by the fash as new fodder (for they’ve integrated together, indistinguishably.)

          It’s what they deserve anyway.

      2. Amelie Wikström

        I’ll just paraphrase an anonymous post I like here:

        You can’t reconcile the feminist idea men and women are equal with acting like they’re different species; the feminist idea that women are more than their reproductive systems with the one that womanhood is defined by a reproductive system; the feminist idea that women don’t need to adhere to arbitrary standards of femininity with the one that they aren’t women unless they do; the feminist idea that women are allowed to have body hair and be tall or muscular with the one that they’re to be scrutinized if they are; the feminist idea that women as equals to men should be allowed to compete with them with the one that they must always be separated. I can’t consider terfism to be feminism in any fucking way. It’s not “no true Scotsman.” I don’t consider terfs feminists for the same reason I don’t consider the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea a democracy. I’ve yet to meet a terf that cares about women more than about hating on trans people. There’s no feminist belief that can come from someone who views women as vaginas with legs that are too frail to do anything men do.

        1. Charlotte

          Wow, this sums it up fantastically! Thank you!

        2. Dante

          Excellent summary!!

          But also as I said in a previous comment, you do gotta acknowledge the origin, at least for awareness of what you DON’T have to do. Like yeah, if someone asks, I’ll say I’m a huge commie. But also tack on that I think Stalin was a fucking bastard who soiled the word forever – Just like one says “Intersectional Feminist” to avoid the immediate association with this small yet horribly vocal hate group.

    4. Jeremiah

      A lot of people already explained it better yesterday but basically:, TERFs has basically forgone any semblance of actual feminism to cozy with the alt right on their gender essentialist belief and general hatred of trans women. (It’s a bit more complicated than that just that is how I can explain it).

    5. jmsr7

      THANK you. TERFs hate men, evangelical christians hate everyone. Important difference.

      1. Nymph

        TERFs hate trans women (who are definitely not men). They might also hate men (they certainly flip between hating and grossly pitying trans men) but you can’t just outright deny that TERFs hate plenty of women who aren’t performing gender the way they demand.

        1. Nymph

          I mean, I guess you CAN but it’s makes you wrong and silly.

    6. 3oranges

      Terfs aren’t actually feminists, they just appropriate their language…for a recent example see famous Terf J.K. Rowling attacking cis women at the Olympics. I have seen some people take to calling them ters or farts instead to make that clear.

    7. Fart Captor

      To be fair, terfs never even put that much effort into seeming feminist, and use the same style of bullshit pretending to be concerned about women’s safety. I can’t really blame people for not differentiating between the different flavors of brain rot when they all end up turning into the same kinda sad, angry, divorced weirdos who spend all of their time online and turn every discussion towards trans people no matter the subject

      1. Marianne

        Can’t believe you’d call out Graham Linehan so brutally ?

    8. C.T. Phipps

      Mary becoming a feminist and remaining a bigot is entirely within character. Lots of characters are undergoing arcs after all. I’m sure she’s very much about women having all the rights and opportunities that men do as long as they’re..

      White, Cis, Het, Fundamentalists.

      You know, the Karen Way.

      Mind you, that’s my experience with evaneglical ladies. They’re all for people like them being protected….until they’re not EXACTLY like them.

    9. Wren

      A LOT of people are talking about how terfs aren’t feminist- although not going into depth about it. There’s a lot of information out there if you’re interested in how terfs are distinctly not feminist (gender essentialism, fighting for traditional gender roles, punishing people for not fitting into those roles, not to mention ties to the far right…)

      But I’m going to expand on something else about the title, and that is that terfs actively target feminists and feminism. There’s a feminism to terf pipeline- needless to say nowhere near all feminists go that way, but terfs do target feminism and feminist spaces and use careful language to get the people who are more inclined to listen to, well, listen to them. If you can, I highly recommend listening to people who were drawn into terf movements and managed to get out and see how they were drawn in to begin with- it’s incredibly illuminating, and usually… it was through talking about feminism in a way that was derogatory towards men. Mary basically just speedran the whole thing- imagine if Joyce had been targeted with those talking points slowly, when she was more vulnerable, over months instead of less than a minute. It would have been so very easy to have drawn her in- because that’s how it works.
      I’m rambling and not fully awake but I hope I’ve made sense.

    10. Shiro

      Whether or not Mary would personally call herself a feminist, she is using specifically terf rhetoric in the “invading women’s spaces” line and “evil predatory men” and all that

      1. Charlotte

        Yeah, this. It doesn’t matter if Mary is a terf herself exactly, the fact is that the rhetoric and the crass obsession with pivoting any conversation at all towards trans people are very specifically terfy.

        1. thejeff

          As I said yesterday, a lot of basic TERF rhetoric has crossed over into US right wing circles. You see it in a lot of GOP talking points when they’re trying to ban trans healthcare or keep trans kids out of sports. Or things like Matt Walsh’s “What is a Woman?” propaganda film.

          Mary can easily have picked up some of the rhetoric while still staying a fundamentalist Christian.

    11. Tan

      I obviously can’t speak for everyone, and the above replies make some assortedly good points, but speaking only for myself: I was explicitly not calling Mary a TERF. Mary is your bog-standard rightwing fundie transphobe. Mary was attempting to recruit Joyce as a TERF, in order to turn her into an ally against Carla.

      It’s not “this is my new ideology, join me sister”, it’s “here’s an ideology that’s probably palatable enough to you that’ll get you to help me abuse my chosen victim”

  21. Taffy

    Speaking in this dumbass code didn’t work out very well for her, did it? Took Joyce several tries to start understanding what Mary meant, and even then she had to spell it out at the end. Almost like “people” who talk this way don’t have functioning brains, souls, or anything resembling sapience. And if they’re reading this and get upset about it, they can meet me in the parking lot behind Denny’s.

    1. Jeremiah

      Honestly Denny’s is too good for them.

      1. Taffy

        They’re not invited inside, I just get hungry after beating someone’s ass.

        1. Reltzik

          Still too good for them.

          There’s a AAA parking lot that’s a proven beatdown-venue for the most despicable of antagonists, and it’s located conveniently next to a McDonalds.

        2. Taffy

          Ew, a McDonald’s? Sorry, I don’t eat sewage.

        3. Schpoonman

          Hey, I take offense to tha–nah, you’re right, I need to stop eating at McDonald’s.

        4. Taffy

          It’s not even The Cheap Option anymore. They think they’re fine dining now and it’s embarrassing.

        5. Reltzik

          I can understand that for your normal dining decisions, but this particular conversation is about the quality of quasi-food establishment these people deserve to get beaten up next to.

        6. Taffy

          I guess I’m just picky, because once their shit’s been pushed in, I’m gonna be hungry, and if the closest food is friggin’ McDonald’s, I’m hurting them a second time for the inconvenience.

        7. Jeremiah

          You if might be worthy because you get to beat them up again with even more justification.

        8. Reltzik

          …. so definitely by the McDonalds, then.

  22. jmsr7

    I can’t remember – who did Joyce think the trans woman was again?

    1. cbwroses

      She didn’t have a clue and only considered Dorothy because Dorothy was the one who told her there was a trans woman in the first place.

  23. Illjwamh

    God dammit, Mary.

  24. moon

    oh no she is a FART

  25. Dante

    TERF talking points are indistinguishable of evangelical right wings. It’s just a repaint. That said!

    I kind of get the feeling that either Mary has been hanging out in very particular online spaces (pipeline’d from otaku to altright reddit feels like a natural progression for her)…. Oooor she broke up with Peter and the sheer strength of her scorn got her outright recruited into TERFism.

    1. 3oranges

      She was saying things like how Billie should “let her have” Carla to get rid of long before Peter showed up.

      1. Dante

        Believe me, I remember. That was so fucking disgusting. I just wonder if her already present transphobic zealotry has undergone any change – Can’t quite explain it but some dogwhistles here feel more TERF that Classic Fash.

        1. Wren

          You’re right about the dogwhistles. 100% terf language. But tbh she could have been pulled into that fairly easily but how much she’s obsessed with her hatred for Carla- complaining online could have seen her pulled into the right spaces to learn the language. She didn’t seem to before, that’s for sure.

          Of course the alternative is that she didn’t use the language before simply because it wasn’t in common use before, and how Willis wanted to write her transphobia had evolved as the more common ways of talking about transfolk has evolved.

        2. thejeff

          It could mean something in terms of a change in Mary, but it could also just be that TERFs and Classic Fash have gotten a lot closer together, both organizationally and in rhetoric than they were back in the first storyline.
          Even religious US transphobes have picked up some of the language UK TERFs have been exporting.

      2. C.T. Phipps

        I do think Mary desires Carla but in not any redeeming way but a fully sexualized fetish horrid way.

  26. ESM

    Oh. Well. I guess that explains why Mary was being blatant to the point of 4th wall breaking yesterday; this isn’t a Mary storyline at all, she was just here to be rude, deliver some exposition to Joyce, and will presumably jump out a window tomorrow to leave the scene. See you in three years, Mary, I look forward to seeing you be an incel or something next time.

    1. Jeremiah

      It’s what she deserves ?.

      1. ESM

        It’s hard to think of Mary as “deserving” anything because it’s hard to think of Mary as being a character in this comic at all. I see her less as “a TERF kid” and more as a plot device to make Joyce aware that Carla is trans.

        I guess to some extent *all* the DoA villains are just plot devices for the heroes to react to. No one actually cares about Joyce’s mom. But it’s way more noticeable with Mary because we see her way more often so we no she’s literally never not being an antagonist, whereas Amber’s dad presumably went bowling or something before forming a costumed Legion of Dad to kidnap everyone.

        1. ESM

          *So we know

        2. Jeremiah

          I don’t know what to tell you. She is what she is.

        3. ESM

          She’s significantly less than what she is. She isn’t anything. She’s not even a sentient creature and exists solely to cause problems for people who are real.

        4. Jeremiah

          There, there.

        5. Thag Simmons

          It’s a comic, none of these are sentient or real people. They’re characters, and some are going to be simpler than others.

          Mary isn’t a particularly deep character, but she’s sufficient for purpose.

        6. Taffy

          She’s not causing real people problems, aside from you. That’s your own fault anyway.

        7. HueSatLight

          she could be developed more, but there’s more to her than just a cardboard cut-out. She’s seemingly there to get an art education, but is holding herself back. She’s got a kink where she makes her boyfriend strip in public, I don’t know what that’s called. public humiliation by proxy?

        8. HueSatLight

          Also, not Asher. Asher is a villain who is not merely a plot device for other characters to react to.

    2. Taffy

      She’s gonna show up in 2027, “suddenly” addicted to League of Legends (assuming it hasn’t been outlawed). Don’t be personally affected.

      1. Jeremiah

        As someone who’s been into league of legends (the lore and spin off not the actual game), it might be too progressive for Mary.

    3. Thag Simmons

      I feel like Mary being a transphobic piece of shit is pretty well precedented?

    4. Florence

      Mary: I am now into the block chain Joyce! The blockchain!

      1. Nymph

        This feels like some modern Seinfeld shit.

        1. Florence

          Mary really is bigot framer, just jumping in with a new horrible extreme

  27. JA

    Whoa, so Amazi-Girl did really fuck him up.

    Also Joyce’s flat “Wat” lol.

    1. John Campbell

      That wasn’t Amazi-Girl.

  28. Wraithy2773

    Okay, I fully understand why no one else is paying a lot of attention to this, because Mary’s undisguised and unrestrained bigotry is coming at us full blast here…

    …but its strikes me as a little unexpected for Mary to be dropping the f-bomb like that. She’s sworn before in the comic, sure, but not all that much all told, and usually in more heated circumstances than this.

    …feels like I’m pointing at a suspicious package on the roof of a building that’s completely consumed by flames, but still, something a little odd seeming…

    1. Taffy

      Nah, she’s always been a naughty cuss girl the instant someone doesn’t give her what she wants.

    2. Bryy

      I suspect it’s to show, once again, Mary’s sense of superiority.

    3. Dante

      No no no it IS intriguing, actually. And it’s why I say Mary’s now been around (yikes) like-minded people for long enough to slip like that. The clothes seem more… Stylish? than her usual? too

      1. thejeff

        Mary’s long been pretty stylish. Don’t think that’s a change

    4. ESM

      It’s a change, but I’d be seriously surprised if we ever got the backstory for it. Willis will never going to be a Mary-focused storyline where we do some kind of character study on her, no one cares. That’s simply not the kind of story he wants to write and he’s been very clear on that and I don’t think the fanbase is particularly upset over the lack of Mary development. Mary is evil and that’s all you need to know, and any vague hints of non-evil personality traits or tragic backstory are there for people so inclined to glom on to and write their fanfiction about how poor Mary is only evil because she’s a sad little traumatized woobie who needs a hot man and/or lesbian to fix her.

      1. Jeremiah

        Okay this legitimately made me laugh.

      2. Mark

        I can’t speak for the rest of the fanbase, but I would like to know how she got this way. Not, how Other Evil People spread their evil, but what makes someone able to believe the garbage in the first place.

      3. Rabisch

        I would love a story about Mary’s artistic ambitions and a growing sense of inferiority whit Malaya and, maybe, even with Joyce.

        1. ESM

          Why? What’s there to tell?

    5. Drain

      I was thinking this too, she’s changed in big ways during this timeskip

      1. ESM

        Pre-timeskip she was so defanged and silly that she was turning into an evil version of Galasso, so she needed to change if she was going to stay in the comic. I was hoping she’d be a sinister manipulative villain, which would give her a niche that none of the various dads can fill, but she’s basically just Mary Classic again with a fresh coat of buzzwords.

      2. Thag Simmons

        I really don’t think she has? Her rhetoric has evolved but that’s a product of the sliding timescale, this is just how reactionary evangelicals talk about trans people nowadays.

        1. thejeff

          Yeah. Really not seeing this huge change people are talking about.

        2. Drain

          Yeah it’s an understood pipeline. The core of her hasn’t changed but she’s presenting her updated rhetoric with swear words and a leather jacket. it struck me as being done with engaging in respectability politics except when weaponizing it against marginalized people

  29. Icalasari

    Now Joyce, remember to be a good person

    Now Mary, remember to forget breathing

  30. DailyBrad

    I know Mary is despicable, but even knowing exactly what’s coming (I’ve been in trans spaces for way too long to have been blindsided here), it’s still a gut punch.

  31. AbacusWizard

    not cool, Mary

    (also your swearing makes Baby Jesus cry, Mary)

    1. DailyBrad

      She doesn’t really care about swearing, though given one of the first times we ever really saw her, she was hanging out in her room topless in red panties, she doesn’t really fit some of the expectations we’d have of horrid conservatives, just all of the rhetoric.

      1. C.T. Phipps

        I think Mary is more Alt-Right than fundamentalist, which is a bit like the antithesis of Punk/Goth.

        They’re related with overlap but not identical.

        1. NGPZ

          fundamentalists drink the kool aid

          alt-right aims to produce as much kool aid as possible, and act like they drink it but they don’t

        2. eh, whatever

          They drink all of it – while saying it’s “ironic” somehow.

        3. Taffy

          Irony is when I base my personality around something and engage with it in exactly the same way as somebody earnest, right?

        4. Schpoonman

          I remember in 2016 after the Electoral College stole the presidency from Clinton a video made the rounds of the alt-right guy (I’ve forgotten his name, he got punched on live video a few weeks/months later, it was great) was at a small conference or something and he said “Hail our victory!” and people in the crowd started throwing Nazi salutes. They definitely drink it.

        5. thejeff

          Richard Spencer.

          The leading alt-right types may or may not have actually drunk the kool aid.
          For them it’s at least partly grift. They’re making money and getting influence from it whether they believe it or not. The marks they’re exploiting definitely believe.
          Of course, that’s true of fundamentalists as well.

        6. Schpoonman

          Yeah, that’s a name I wanted to remember.

        7. NGPZ

          when i say drinking kool aid, what i mean is believing in bullshit, that anti-trans propoganda is actually IS about “safety” and “feminism”

          fascists who mix the kool aid know what it’s actually FOR, to them the scapegoat is but one of the ingredients for the fascist process; the specific social identity of the scapegoat isn’t as important as the ability to harness existing prejudices against them and using them to redirect class resentment that would otherwise threaten the hierarchal, militaristic paradigm they intend to (re)establish.

          when they can no longer burn a given witch, they move unto the next:

          1960s) “It’s the [N-word] lovers that’ve done this to you!”

          1970s) “It’s the hippies that’ve done this to you!”

          1980s) “It’s the Satanists that’ve done this to you!”

          1990s) “It’s the gays that’ve done this to you!”

          2000s) “It’s the Arabs that’ve done this to you!”

          2010s) “It’s the Mexicans that’ve done this to you!”

          2020s) “It’s the transgenders that’ve done this to you!”

        8. Tofusmith

          Not really. She’s written as modern evangelical but not especially fundamentallist, which is a weird additional direction for US christians

    2. Mark

      I question whether Mary actually cares what Jesus thinks. She doesn’t act like someone who believes anything He says.

  32. moon

    what if we talked about where penises Do belong. I’ll start. the pelvis. hole. hand. the “dickbutt” meme. thrussy

    1. Taffy

      Park bench. Apple cider. Bucket of ice. Rock wall. Derek. Wisconsin. Parody cartoons. Shower curtain. Ant hill. Ear. USB port. Carburetor.

      1. Bryy

        wait

        apple cider

        1. Clif

          Specifically apple cider vinegar. There are quacks that tout it as a penis enlarger and claim it fights erectile dysfunction. Personally, I’d think twice before dunking my sensitive parts in what is an acid.

        2. Taffy

          Ooh, I forgot perchloric acid. Thanks!

    2. Uly

      Mostly inside of pants, unless everybody agrees that this is an outside of pants situation for penises.

      1. Bash

        +1

      2. moon

        so true +1

      3. John Campbell

        Skirts also acceptable.

        1. Nymph

          or skimpy bikinis.

    3. moon

      i promise im not that horny im just not very creative lol

  33. Jeremiah

    Also I find the “Boy amber gutted Infront of the residence hall” to be kind of hilarious. It fell like a noodle incident (something that is alluded but never show for comedic effect) but we actually see it happen.

  34. DailyBrad

    Also, a quick demonstration of part of why Mary sucks:

    Carla is out, and as Dorothy has mentioned in the past, it was a news event, like her parents went to court for her rights, and it is part of why she is a known figure on campus, along with just being Carla and very extra.

    But, when Dorothy was aware Joyce did not know who she was talking about, she did not elaborate because she saw that it would, in even some small way, be outing someone without their consent, even if I doubt Carla would have been terribly torn up about it.

    Mary has no such hesitation, obviously enough, and has engaged in hateful behavior towards her before. She is actively trying to pull Joyce into her shittiness, seeing her as being a potentially sympathetic party to what she’s peddling. I truly hope she is incorrect in that assessment, as TERFs very often are, wildly overestimating the true acceptance of their idealogy, when in reality, most are either against them or too morally weak or indifferent to have any sort of stance one way or the other.

    1. Jeremiah

      Thanks god Mary is incompetent.

    2. ESM

      The thing about Mary is that 50% of the evil she does is out of malice and 50% of the evil she does is out of incompetence, thus allowing her to plausibly claim that she didn’t know blackmailing Ruth would make Ruth attempt suicide and if you don’t count that against her then blackmailing Ruth wasn’t THAT out of pocket compared to what the other kids do, or whatever, maintaining the illusion that she’s a character with any depth.

      1. ESM

        Of course, Mary is never actually reasonable and never has a side that should be taken seriously, it’s all illusion and slight of hand to bait weird losers in the comment section.

      2. Jeremiah

        I don’t think there is any illusion or whatever it is you are saying. She doesn’t have depth, she is written to be a Hate sink and that is what she is. There an entire cast of fun character with complexity and depth, I don’t really get why you seem so focused in the one that doesn’t. Part is starting to wonder if it’s a troll thing.

        1. Straximus

          You put what I was thinking much better than I could have.

        2. ESM

          Pretty much all of DoA’s villains are hate-sinks, but they’re at least able to be threatening. Time spent on Mary is time not spent on any of the real characters or even a hate sink that can actually do something to one of the real characters.

          The comic will sometimes gesture towards Mary having something more to her than Toedad but that made me think there might be a story here of Mary trying to seduce Joyce to evil using alt-right techniques, or a looney tunes-esque storyline where Mary repeatedly tries and fails to offend Becky and goes nuts over it (like the Hollywood storyline gestured at), and really that’s on me because I am a fool who deserves to be mocked

        3. Jeremiah

          I mean, wouldn’t say deserve to be mocked but thinking Mary would had entire storylines dedicated to her IS pretty foolish. (Though some of the stuff you said were too weird to take seriously.)

        4. Queezle

          She can do something to one of the main characters, as you pointed out, she did something that resulted in a suicide attempt.

        5. ESM

          Yeah, but she didn’t know it would go that far and it was a bit of an accident.

          Which is not a defense of Mary, to be clear, it’s a criticism of her. Amber’s dad was evil, but he dressed up as a cartoon supervillain so he was evil in like a fun way. Even Toedad was kind of fun because of how far he went. Mary isn’t quite full Skeletor, she’s only 99% Skeletor, but instead of making her interesting that miniscule reduction in her evil compared to the other villains downgrades her to “just kind of unpleasant to watch”. Once Joyce’s mom was introduced Mary became completely redundant and I think the only reason she’s still in the comic is because she was in Roomies. Like, yeah, she lives in the dorm which none of the dads do, but that doesn’t really do anything for her any more, and she hasn’t really been a foil for Joyce in years. She just comes in, says slurs, and leaves.

          She has what wrestling fans call “X-Pac heat” with me, where I’m not booing her because she’s a bad guy and I want to see her get her comeuppance, I’m booing her because I legitimately just don’t want to see her any more. If I wanted to see a robot that says slurs I’d follow Elon Musk on Twitter.

        6. Jeremiah

          You are like the only person I seen who have any kind of issue with that so I think this might be just a You thing, rather that any problem to how Mary is written.

        7. ESM

          I don’t know why you’re defending Mary’s honor, dude. She’s not real.

        8. Nymph

          It definitely feels like a troll thing tbh

        9. Jeremiah

          Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t had goaded them, it probably made the comments more annoying for others. My bad.

    3. Carla's #2 Fan

      Yeah intent is important. It’s never okay to out someone even if they are out. I remember recently Variety magazine tried to out Billie Eilish for being queer. She was already out, but they were treating it like a secret. And frankly, it worked in their awful favor. I saw a lot of folks doing the “why does this queer celebrity need to draw attention to themself” rhetoric. Now, Carla loves attention, but not Mary attention.

  35. C.T. Phipps

    Are we sure that Mary is as fundamentalist as Joyce or just a bigot who justifies it all with religion?

    Hair splitting as that may be to some.

    1. Bryy

      Yes. She is a pure fundie.

      It’s easy to say she’s just using it as a cover, but literally every interaction with her is geared towards religion.

      1. C.T. Phipps

        Until now.

        But point taken.

        1. Regret

          To Mary gender is very much about religion too. If religion is the fundament of your world, then everything is about religion.

        2. Taffy

          See, that’s why I can’t even consider joining a religion, cuz then my life has to revolve entirely around that now and there’s no room for me anymore.

        3. Da Boy

          To be fair it depends on the particular religion or its denomination and the people involved. I’m a Catholicism-raised European and the American attitude towards religion terrifies me. It’s pretty understandable considering that people like Puritans got kicked out of Europe for being religious extremists.

        4. C.T. Phipps

          I think that a lot of people who hate religion are confused when they encounter non-Fundamentalist Christianity.

          Like, there’s religions without gods and religions without afterlives.

          And religions that worship nature and believe all religions are true to some degree.

        5. Taffy

          Can’t help what I was raised in. I don’t even have the framework to intuitively know where or how to find anything that doesn’t sound existentially terrifying.

        6. Charles Phipps

          Yeah, I doubt I’d be religious today if my first experience with it wasn’t Star Wars.

    2. anon

      she’s hardly approving of roz either. surprised roz hasn’t scheduled a weekly gangbang, recorded or not just to get mary to transfer rooms or so

      but yeah it’s basically a ven diagram but she does also go to church and the like rather than just passive aggressively quote bible versus at ppl

    3. Uly

      Mary calls herself a Christian and attends church regularly. Barring a scene where she cackles madly while hailing Satan, I think we have to accept that she is what she says she is.

      (Actually, we’d have to accept it even if she didn’t attend church regularly. Lots of Christians don’t.)

      1. Schpoonman

        Always sets me on edge when religious people try to No True Scotsman their peers. Both of them still give tribute to Santa Claus, just because one of them doesn’t think Santa gives coal to naughty children doesn’t mean that they aren’t grouped together.

        1. C.T. Phipps

          I mean, it’s STUPID to lump them together but I assume you know that. If you say ISIS and Muhammed Ali are the same then you’re just a bigot.

        2. thejeff

          It’s one thing to say there’s a lot of diversity within Islam or within Christianity.

          It’s another to say “Those people aren’t really Christian”.

        3. C.T. Phipps

          While true, there’s also a vast difference in what they believe that is fundamentally incompatible too. Like, “Jesus believes in pacifism and giving away wealth” versus “Jesus believes everyone who doesn’t believe me in me is damned.”

          But you’re correct, saying, ‘Anyone who doesn’t believe X isn’t Y’ is a stupid attitude and why the GOP has gained so muich power by making no one willing to give them pushback from liberal circles.

  36. Queen Anthai

    Mary I hate you so much oh my god please get expelled

    1. Zamperla

      We can hope. We can hope.

    2. ESM

      She should pick a fight with Amazi-girl and we never see her again.

      1. Uly

        Amazigirl has a great deal of self-control, that’s her whole thing

        1. ESM

          It’s okay for Batman to kill the Joker if the Joker is lame.

        2. Taffy

          It’s not okay to kill someone for being unable to walk.

    3. anon

      she’s just jealous trans girls don’t have to deal with periods 8D; (Tho i’ve heard hrt gives you similar symptoms but i would hope there’s not as much blood to clean up)

      1. LeafletErin

        Can confirm. Het not only go es you the symptoms of the menstrual cycle (sans the bleeding obvs.) But I usually sync up to my roommate as well so their are two awful feeling bongoy badass women in a small apartment for a week lol.

        1. anon

          hopefully you’re still allowed to take aspirin/other pills too rather than “taking X will cancel out HRT”. or at the very least get drunk or so but that might make things worse, not that that’s stopped ppl from making bad drinking/drug decisions to begin wtih lol

  37. Zamperla

    I think what’s grimly the funniest part here is that all this “sneaking and IMPOSING” talk is like.

    Carla is Wildly Out. Carla is, all evidence indicates, the kind of publicly out that it takes a personality like hers to SURVIVE. There is no Secretly Sneaking here. JOYCE only doesn’t know for the same reason Joyce probably doesn’t know much about ninja turtles.

    Like I know that’s not really what this kind of rhetoric is about, its pearl clutching weird transphobic BS that doesn’t need or cater to an internal logic, but also. Lol. lahmao, even.

    Mary remains a shitty little weirdo. Carla remains The Greatest. such it go.

    1. Jeremiah

      Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

    2. anon

      well, joyce prolly also had to get an explanation about booster too but i wouldn’t be surprised if it never rly came up in her church before

    3. Amelie Wikström

      Carla was out on the cover of Newsweek. Mary just think it’s dishonest to be transgender since she has decided that’s not a real thing but boys pretending to be girls. And all of history and medical knowledge and society as well as the personal experiences of trans people disagreeing with her opinion is just runaway decency “equality gone off the rails”.

    4. thejeff

      It’s long been unclear exactly how out Carla is, at least among her peers. Yes, it was a big news story years ago and anyone who went looking could find out, but that doesn’t mean all her floormates know. Not a lot of college freshmen were reading Newsweek years back and remember all the details now.

      Only a handful of characters have been shown to know and iirc at least Jennifer was surprised to find out. It’s not just Joyce who’s ignorant here.

      And Carla never brings it up. For all her talk about herself, that only comes up when it has to.

  38. mindbleach

    Looking forward to Joyce laughing in Mary’s face vis-a-vis the not-feminine-enough individual in question being… Carla.

    And subsequently fumbling her next interaction with Carla, because of course she’s gonna.

    1. anon

      Esp since a while ago joyce was like “Does carla seem…bigger? to you” or something like that XD

    2. mindbleach

      Joyce is gonna assure Carla she’s cool about it and hint that it’s led to some questions about her sexuality.

      Carla’s gonna point out she already went on a date with Dorothy.

      We’re gonna see this panel again.

  39. Fireprincesslily

    Look I’m not saying that Amazigirl should defenestrate Mary… but I’m not not saying it either.

    1. Jeremiah

      Defenestration is a great word as well as a great action.

    2. ESM

      I’m saying it (“He says what we’re all thinking!”). Mary sucks in every way imaginable.

    3. Da Boy

      If they call Ruth over they could do a Double Lariat

      1. FireprincessLily

        NOW WE’RE COOKING WITH GAS!

  40. HueSatLight

    I like to think Joyce’s train of thought between panels three and four went through this station.

  41. egon

    i still don’t get why dorothy didn’t just tell joyce it was carla since literally everyone else knows

    1. ESM

      Dorothy didn’t want to out Carla. Even though there’s a 99.9% chance Carla wouldn’t care, Dorothy correctly didn’t want to assume.

      1. egon

        that’s dumb. carla literally said the penis drawn on her white board was a hate crime, she’s out

        1. Wren

          Speaking as someone who is Very Out- if someone was unsure I’d rather they err on the side of not outing me. If they then told me I’d be like “as long as it wasn’t actually putting me in danger I don’t care, do it,” but also I’d be grateful that when they weren’t sure they erred on the side of… doing right by me. It’s not like NOT telling someone was doing wrong by anyone. It just put Joyce in an awkward situation when confronted by someone with the opposite of a desire to do right by trans folk.

        2. Taffy

          It may be a little dumb, but it’s also harmless. A real person not wanting to out Penny “Snapcube” Parker to their friend is completely fine.

          Incidentally, I always read Carla’s lines in that YouTuber’s voice, even before I’d picked up on all the Blue’s Clues about Carla’s secret girliness. Maybe that was another paw print the whole time.

        3. ESM

          We know Carla’s out because she’s a fictional character and a fairly cartoonish one at that. Dorothy doesn’t 100% know Carla would be okay with Joyce finding out and shouldn’t presume.

        4. egon

          ?

      2. C.T. Phipps

        I think Dorothy not “outing” Carla is more to do with Dorothy than Carla.

    2. Bash

      Pretty sure the literal line was, “I’m not going to tell you if you’re going to be weird about it.” I mean I love Joyce, but she’s not exactly chill about things outside her comfort zone.

      1. HueSatLight

        that’s what her face in the last panel looks like to me. going from being cool with something in the abstract to a flood of thoughts including “don’t be weird don’t be weird” and “time to catalogue all the times I was rude”.

        It takes time to change one’s reactions. It starts with wanting to change, but it can take a year or two. Joyce isn’t going to be all Kurzon Jadzia, my old friend.

      2. BorkBorkBork

        That’s 100% the reason, not “you don’t out someone who already nationally known for being out.” That’s a fair general rule, but it was clear that Dorothy was doing that based on how Joyce was acting.

        There is an adjustment period that every single person has who grew up understanding gender as fixed and binary has, when they go to understanding gender as a spectrum and differentiated from sex. It’s a complete changing of worldview. Dorothy recognizes that Joyce understands *in theory* that trans women are women, and is fully behind that idea, but hasn’t ever had to apply that to a real life person. Much less someone who she has already seeing as a woman for half a year.

        That is the face of someone who is literally having a flashback of every single interaction they’ve had with the person and comparing that to their idea of male-ness vs female-ness and going, “Wait, how did I not notice?” It’s just simply a gut reaction, and she’ll get over it.

        … this is probably just me, but for Joyce’s sake, I’m relieved it’s happening this way. She was never going to be able to avoid this moment; far better for it to happen now, where she has some time to digest it, in the presence of someone who’s opinion matters less than a squirrel fart, than in a conversation with Carla or in a larger group setting. Just kind of like how she really needs to have this full adjustment period with Carla, before she can give support to Jocylene.

        1. Bash

          So what you’re saying is that Mary is actually helping.

        2. BorkBorkBork

          Help implies intent. Mary is helping in the same way that smashing your car into a tree prevented it from falling down the ravine just beyond. SOMETHING needed to stop the real disaster from happening.

          What I am saying, is that if Dorothy really understood where Joyce was right now, it should’ve been her. Not to “out” Carla, but to help Joyce adjust to the idea and trust that she’s just trying to learn how to be an ally. Because by telling Joyce the info she did, but not the full story, all she did was give her enough rope to hang herself with.

        3. thejeff

          I have long hoped that Joyce’s first time learning of an actual trans person would be Jocelyn in a confrontation with Carol, just so Joyce could speed run from awkward confusion to “I will fight for her” in a single panel.

    3. thejeff

      “Everyone else knows” is an assumption. Carla certainly doesn’t tell people. She seems to pass well enough. What teen is going to remember a Newsweek story from years back?
      Some would search all their acquaintances online, which is about the only way most would find out.

      1. HueSatLight

        Being mentioned in Newsweek is an example of how common the knowledge is, not the extent of coverage it got. For example, I expect a lot more people know about Musk’s estranged daughter from her situation being common knowledge than from reading a particular article.

        1. thejeff

          That’s fair, but it’s still not really clear how common that knowledge is.

          Like, how high profile are the Ruttens anyway? Are they Musk level? (Pre-Twitter Musk or Post-Twitter Musk?) Not everyone seems to instantly make the connection between Carla and the big tech company.

        2. HueSatLight

          Knowledge at least this common: https://www.dumbingofage.com/flashpoints/

  42. Regret

    This song is very applicable here:
    The Lonely Island – Semicolon
    https://youtu.be/M94ii6MVilw?si=NupO041E_y1GEfPd

  43. DashWallkick

    At least we’re finally getting an answer to the hanging question back when they were “doing laundry” and Joyce noticed Carla was looking a bit curvier and was too uncomfortable to ask questions. She was developing on HRT and Joyce legit didn’t know!

    1. Taffy

      Joyce was just heterosexually noticing Carla’s magnificent rack, as far as she knew.

      1. DashWallkick

        The comic has been pretty clear that even if she has like a 1% gay fiber in her body, the 99% is *vibrating* with its boycrazy. Let the shippers ship imo.

        1. Nymph

          Who was stopping the shippers from shipping?

  44. Bogeywoman

    Secret Penis!
    Secret Penis!
    On our dorm floor!
    Secret, secret, secret penis!

  45. Opus the Poet

    Apropos of nothing I’m back in rehab after a bad fall Monday of last week. I was bending over to pick something up and my back went into spasm and launched me across the room and into a walk-in shower and I spent 10 hours lying on my back on a loofah bath mat and only got out because I managed to wiggle around and got a foot on my walker and pulled it over and tipped it over to get my phone and call 911. The bath mat scraped a bunch of skin off and I have soft tissue damage over my tailbone and it’s a toss up which hurts worse, but it was bad enough to get IV morphine every 4 hours right up until I got transferred to rehab from the hospital. Now I’m back at the rehab I just got released from 2 weeks ago. Some days you can’t win for losing, but at least I didn’t lose much fitness at the hospital, I walked almost as far during my intake assessment as I did for my release assessment when they cut me loose last time. I just have to heal up these nasty injuries and maintain my fitness.

    1. Wilde

      Oof, harrowing. Hope you heal well!

    2. Adam Black

      o man! I got trapped in my bathroom last week too.
      ( little differnt it was an incompetent installed doorknob with scrw heads too small, it broke off locking me in to die, but i had to choose betwee tunneling through the wall or the door, and luckily the internal doors in this shithole are as crappy as knobs)

      wait Loofaf bathmat? this doemst sound fun. Why does that exist?

      1. Opus the Poet

        Because you have to really work hard to slip on one. They’re basically brown AstroTurf. Really good for us people with bad balance.

    3. HueSatLight

      egads

  46. Raja

    uuuurg gross. Someone dropkick Mary please

  47. Serendipity

    The correct action is removing Mary from the campus permanently.

  48. Jay

    God dammit willis you finally did it.

    I’m subscribing on patreon to see tmrs page cause i NEED joyces reaction to this

  49. Wilde

    All I want is for Joyce to catch herself and cover this reaction well enough, so she doesn’t give Mary anything. I want her to save processing her emotions for later, and right now just say “Anyways, bye” and leave this interaction ?

  50. VolticEXE

    I know people are worried about Joyce’s reaction here, but ultimately I feel like she’s gonna be fine at the end of the day; she’s just caught off-guard by it being someone she knew & she never realized but everyone else did.

    Now Mary’s not gonna be fine once I lodge this boot up her spinal cord-

  51. Acher4

    Joyce’s shocked faces have really mellowed down during these last months. :O

  52. Maddie B

    I hope someone’s about to summon Bloody Mary.

    With their fists.

  53. CianM1301

    For some reason, I hear the duck quack sound effect for that last panel with Joyce’s stunned face.

  54. Amós Batista

    F Ryan.
    (or not, let it slide (six feet under))

    1. LeafletErin

      No no. His name is druggo mcstabbed. We shall not give him the dignity of a human name.

  55. ADLegend21

    cannot wait for something bad to happen to Mary.

  56. ValdVin

    Just offscreen, Sierra is mad at someone and nobody everybody knows why.

  57. Lamppost

    I don’t understand the people saying TERFery is out of character for Mary, in my experience religious bigots has no issue parroting “feminist” talking points as long as it serves their bigoted needs – and vice versa. It would seem unlikely from a purely logical standpoint that lesbian “feminists” collaborate with the worst regressive religious bigots, but it is unfortunately the truth in my home country. They like to dress up their language in ways that are “for” something – they SAY they fight FOR women’s rights/women’s spaces/traditional values/the innocence of the children, but frankly they have no problem going against these values if it means hurting trans people and they frequently do. Mary trying to parrot feminist talking points because she (correctly) assumes Joyce will not be responsive to religious talking points is extremely realistic because Mary is not first and foremost a religious person nor a feminist. She is a bigot, and bigotry and hypocricy go hand in hand.

    1. crys

      agreed, all this! I’ve also noticed that some bigoted conservative/religious/fundie women relish parroting anti-trans ideas because it gives them a conservatively acceptabld way to criticize “men”. They may feel an undercurrent of resentment for the rampant misogyny from their communities, husbands, churches, etc, but because they choose to be loyal to bigotry, they can’t verbalize anything resembling feminist thought. but through TERF-dom they can redirect those feelings to an acceptable right wing boogeyman.

    2. Chubseus

      Yes. This. There is no logic, no consistency, and no real argument. Their identity/talking points are just a delivery vehicle and window dressing for the core message of intolerance. They will proudly contort and contradict themselves and their identity in order to advance their cause. Some may even see open hypocrisy as a feature not a bug.

  58. Veronica

    “What? The secret transgender is the tallest girl I know who also complains about never being able to find shoes in her size? Impossible!”

  59. eh, whatever

    Uh… yes, alt-text, she did. Punctuation is a (very crude) way of writing intonation. A semicolon means the voice goes down; a comma means it goes up.

    People who taught you commas have something to do with pauses were lying to you for decades, if not centuries.

    1. Serendipity

      I thought a semicolon meant that it could function either as a period or a comma without being grammatically inaccurate

  60. staszu13

    Hmm. Bigger surprise: Mary says the F word or Joyce didn’t think Carla was a trans woman.
    Guess it’s no contest. But who DID Joyce think it was? Oh wait, Jocelyne

    1. Schpoonman

      Mary’s always been a hypocrite, she’s been on the f-bomb list for years. I think the first time she did was when Carla pied her.

    2. Nymph

      Joyce didn’t know. We saw her have a conversation about it.

  61. Adam Black

    this is a little BIT off: ( speculation , because oddly the topic in this comic has never ever come up. yet )

    What if this is Horny to Joyce? ( yeah some people might find that offensive or fetishizing. ) . Very , VERY Horny to Joyce ….

    ( I am not fetishizing; but ive known people who have pro trans erotic as part of their sexuality. and that is OK. I can see Joyce fitting into this puzzle piece )

    theres multiple textual reasons why Joyce might see Transgender Ladies as Suddenly very extra attractive.

    She’s super repressed about loving the D. ( Dingdong bandit ! ) and if Joyce has a fetish… its Saphic lady homo-socialism.
    ( Win-Win! )

    I can see this conversation 100% backfiring on Mary and she just made a outragous new erotic potential, real and immediate to Joyce:

    I know this from lots of personal experience, There is something wildly electric about Queer sexuality—when it moves from some kind of abstract hypothosis to ‘OMG its real, its immediate, its tangible. i can reach out and touch it. have it.’

    and funnier because she cant . Carla is Ace.

    ( hmm. Carla XDina ? Darla? Redhead+ asian girl pairing. I can see this happening. but at this rate not until next semester. )

    Plus , Carla is basically awesome.

    She’s cool, smart, is a woman Joyce admires, and has literally rescued Joyce when she was kidnapped.
    There is no way I see joyce having Bigotry to Carla.

    But I do see Joyce maybe being a little weirded out that she ( might) suddently have discovered a new thing about herself. Plus there is the whole general social awkwardness Joyce has around sex.

    Shes been very clearly Bicurious ( and repressed over it) the whole comic; i can see her Bicuriousness exploding into Trans-curiousness.

    ( I Feel bad for Joyce on this last part : Literally the last person I would want anyone to have a queer realization around is Mary. YUCK.

    But this is also a thing too: sometimes phobic people actually ironically transmit queer sexuality by being vocal and outing queer people and spaces.

    Normal People ( non assholes) usually arent obsessed with queer people and places and they may go unnoticed. Complain about queer people and spaces= advertising them to a clueless person and actualize an occasional new queer person

  62. Yumi

    Okay, Mary’s clarified her concerns for everyone now; she can go get lost in the woods or something for the rest of the comic.

    1. Arianod

      Like we would be so lucky

    2. NGPZ

      with any hope she’ll come across a certain Cabin in the Woods XD

  63. PB

    Wow. Good job calling it, everyone. Now may I recommend we all puke (preferably on Mary’s shoes).

  64. vulcanodon

    Any conversation with Mary is risky. It’s best to clam up around her.

  65. nicoleandmaggie

    So if I give $25 to Donors Choose to support getting books about trans kids to teachers every time I see something anti-trans on the internet… does Mary count?

    1. Yumi

      1. If you want it to.
      2. I did something similar, but just directly as I’m a classroom teacher– when I encounter different bigotries (but out in the world; I couldn’t afford it if I was counting online), time to buy a book that features the groups being targeted and add it to my classroom library.

    2. TulipKitten

      Aww shit, don’t look at the comments section of any post that says “transgender” or has Imane Khelif.

      1. nicoleandmaggie

        Yeah, so in 2023 it was almost $3K at $25/pop– so almost 1/3 days. There’s a lot of transphobia out there.

  66. C.T. Phipps

    I’d like Mary to change a bit but not become a better person. Just demonstrate that she’s being affected by college as well.

  67. Caro

    “What do you mean it’s not a secret? She’s never talked about it.”
    “She was national news for, like, half her childhood.”
    “Oh, my parents didn’t let me watch leftist news like you did, Mary.”
    “Wh- I don’t watch leftist news!”
    (roz slowly sliding in from the corner with a knife cat look on her face)

    1. Alyssa

      ok THAT would be funny

  68. thumb

    “What? I didn’t draw Carla a penis!”

    1. TulipKitten

      Joyce definitely drew Carla a penis. She thought it was a hate crime at first, but then saw it was on everyone’s board and thought it was hilarious.

  69. Yeet

    goddammit mary

  70. Colin McKenzie

    All these comments, and no one has approached the question that first occurred to me: Who DID Joyce think the penis-haver is?

    1. Yeet

      she had no idea per an earlier conversation with dorothy (and, partially, carla)
      dorothy refused to tell her because she was acting a bit weird about it, as one might expect of someone with joyce’s cultish upbringing

    2. RocketRelm

      Oh, now I remember. For a moment I thought that was a hint at her knowing about the secret of her sister. But this makes sense too.

    3. HueSatLight

      I think she accepted that it’s none of her business.

  71. UrsulaDavina

    First off Mary is a bigoted idiot.
    Second: When Carla creates a spectacle Carla wants everyone to know that she created the spectacle Mary should know this when Carla created the machine so Mary is a double idiot
    Third there was no pie to the face involved again Mary should know this as well.
    Mary is triple idiot an idiot cubed so to speak.

    1. Bryy

      I absolutely loved when Carla said to her “the worst thing I could do to you is exist”.

  72. bcb

    I hope Joyce gets some serious growth on this front, and I hope she has a serious talk with Jocelyn.

  73. J

    Who’s fucking Carla?

    1. Taffy

      Mary, preferably.

      1. Jeremiah

        Carla would rather throw herself in a wood chipper holding a sign saying Ultra Car sucks.

        1. Taffy

          The wood chipper is painted to look like Robo-Monkey or whatever the fake cartoon is called.

        2. HueSatLight

          Simulation Simian

  74. Amós Batista

    My fear is not exactly Mary. Is whoever she’ll bring to this shit, and I’m afraid she could bring Joyce’s family on that.

  75. :0

    So it’s finally time for the transphobia arc. Been waiting for it really.
    *grabs popcorn*

  76. Smooti

    Ok so it IS coming out of the worst person in the comic’s mouth, but the phrase “X? It’s fucking Carla.” Is a wonderful phrase that I feel like I’m gonna get a lot of mileage out of.

  77. Jess

    Would Carla like that Joyce hadn’t caught on until she was outright told? Or would she be offended that all knowledge of her awesome isn’t known by everyone around her. I could see both approaches from her and it could be interesting either way.
    More growth for Joyce. Good for her.

  78. Waffliesinyoface

    quick, someone get ruth, we need some femurs removed

  79. Charles Phipps

    Joyce needs to confess to being the Ding Dong Bandit.

  80. Felian

    100% of cases where a perpetrator had a penis, the problem was the PERSON, not the PENIS.
    It’s ridiculous how people blame stuff on penises they’ll likely never see, instead of on people (mostly cis men) who are actually a problem.

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