721

Bestow
Posted on January 11, 2025 by David M Willis
remember you can report comments now, folks

721 thoughts on “Bestow”

  1. NGPZ

    Both.

    You. Can. Be. BOTH.

    1. Heavensrun

      I’m pretty sure that’s what Joyce is saying. Malaya responds to she or they.

    2. CrimsonStorm

      Piggybacking on top comment to post what is probably good context for this:

      https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/pissier/

  2. Ana Chronistic

    oh Dan DEFINITELY wants to suck it

    …Joe’s? dunno

    1. Schpoonman

      Show Dan a photo of Joe posing nude with the head cropped off, then show him the full photo.

      1. ValdVin

        Joe posing nude–on a dragon.

        1. Schpoonman

          Well that’s just cheating.

        2. Jo_cubstar

          Is that a hannelore gravatar?

        3. Taffy

          No.

        4. Michael Steamweed

          Tannelore.

        5. Effie

          “Ladies, look at your man, now look at me…” etc etc “… I’m on a dragon.”

    2. AlexanderHammil

      absoLUTEly joe’s

      in dan’s head they have been married since 4th grade

    3. Spacie

      Possibility of next slipshine?

  3. Animedingo

    Joyce, Joe isnt homophobic or transphobic for not being attracted to trans women. And a list he made like, a year ago shouldnt be held against him the rest of his life.

    1. David M Willis

      the list wasn’t just women he was attracted to

      that was kind of the point of the ratings

      there were some low scores, he wasn’t just handing out tens

      1. Animedingo

        And I used to keep a record of how many times I could nut in a single day. Guys make all kinds of stupid lists.

        1. BBCC

          Sure but I’m guessing you didn’t subsequently post it online with an RSS feed and subscribers so people could make their own cum tallies and compare their ‘scores’.

        2. Animedingo

          The technology didnt exist yet

        3. Taffy

          This mf older than arcade cabinets

        4. Rolf of Many Doors

          Joe didn’t post it online either – it was a word/google drive doc or whatever for his own use that someone else leaked to shame him

        5. Taffy

          Yeah, for his own use and the use of anyone he gave the password to, which was anyone who’d listen.

        6. Taffy

          Serious question, since I don’t know much about computer stuff. Can you have an RSS feed without posting it online? Is that a thing?

        7. BBCC

          From what I can tell, not really. An RSS feed is supposed to help you keep track of your favourite webpages and you can’t really do that without a webpage.

        8. mneme

          You can’t, really, but you can have a password protected RSS feed that’s intended only for you. A rss feed is a list of time ordered html “items” (encoded into XML) each describing a single update; typically they’ll have some free HTML (for text, any image tags, etc), a title, and a link which points to the actual resource they’re an item for (so for a comic the link will point to the page of the comic, or if it’s badly coded, the image itself).

        9. Mark

          Technically, yes. Set up feed; unplug network; et voila! You can enjoy it yourself using a browser on the same machine. The question is: why? For solely personal use a simple text file would be easier.

        10. Thelie

          Ok I’m gonna go a bit against the general opinion here and say yes you can (depending on what you define an RSS feed to actually be.
          Technically speaking it’s just an XML file with a specific format. You can have it on a usb pen drive and hand it out to your friends. Or just keep it for yourself. Depending on how your RSS reader is designed, it will hapilly read it. Them requiring a url from some website that hosts this file is an arbitrary technical descision on the side of the implementor of the RSS reader.
          I am mostly motivated to write this down because of how cool of a concept that is in my opinion. It’s just a plain file. Any webhosting software can send out this file and through the right combination of software it turns into regular updates for whatever you want. How nice!

        11. BBCC

          No, it was not a private doc for his own use. It was online with an RSS fee and subscribers. There was a password for it but he gave it out to people regularly. You don’t set up an option to SUBSCRIBE to your private digital black book.

        12. Michael Steamweed

          The rankings were posted online. Just not publicly accessibly online. Password protected (from 5+ years ago, which is easily obsoleted).

        13. Furie

          Tenner says the right search term brings up at least a dozen of those.

        14. Michael Steamweed

          Look, we had just invented counting. Hadn’t caught on everywhere yet.

        15. Jeremiah

          Okay but that is like, just something about you and what you do in your spare time. It’s kind of very different when it involves rating the psysical apparence of other people, if you were doing it in your head, it would still be a bit weird but it’s whatever, writting it down in a really easy to access document it’s when it gets to creepy territory. That is absolutely the kind of things that should follow you at least for a bit.

        16. Blume

          How many times you nut doesn’t hurt anyone. But the do-list could’ve put the women on it in danger. It wasn’t just Joe’s personal list, he released it publicly.

        17. Charles Phipps

          Joe didn’t release it and it wasn’t public.

          He was, however, shitty for making it and sharing it with any guy he met.

        18. BBCC

          It was semi-public. It had an RSS feed for people to subscribe to. You don’t do that for a private webpage nobody is meant to see.

        19. Taffy

          And he gave multiple people the damn password on-screen. I’ve suspected Raidah of leaking it in particular, since he straight up said “Oh, I haven’t given you the password yet? How remiss!” to her.

        20. Charles Phipps

          I wouldn’t be surprised if Carla turned out to have done it, not really knowing about the number of predators on campus.

        21. Samniel

          I thought it was Danny who leaked it? As a way of “showing Joe the error of his ways”? I remember that when… Rachel? Other Rachel? Someone laid on Joe that publishing a “do” list of all the women in the hall ranked by attractiveness after a sexual assaulter was known, Danny reacted with visible guilt

        22. thejeff

          The visible guilt could have been for helping Joe create it way back.

        23. Mark

          “Public” is a problematic word here. The list was findable by anyone with Internet access — in that sense it was public. It had primitive access control, so in that sense it was private to whoever had the password. Apparently there was only one password, so it was effectively public since anybody who knew the password could share it with someone else, or post it on a blog, or skywrite it for the whole city to see, and Joe had no way to cut off access for those people but not for people who followed his rules. (Assuming he had rules. Considering the sloppy design, probably all he had was assumptions.)

        24. BBCC

          Again, it also had a feed you can subscribe to. You don’t do that for something meant to be private – in the sense of ‘not meant for others to see’.

        25. Michael Steamweed

          Danny set it up when they were in junior high / middle school. Definitely gonna have sloppy design and security.

        26. Zero

          What is your definition of “releasing” and “public” that doesn’t include sharing it with everyone you meet?

        27. Buck Ripsnort

          Call me a hopeless misogynist, but I fail to see how a list of “Who I personally would and wouldn’t do” is literally putting women in danger. It’s APPALLING, it’s TASTELESS, it’s even WRONG, but I don’t see the danger.

        28. Mark

          I don’t think that’s hopeless misogyny. I think it’s the result of asking one’s self, “if bad guys had this information, how would it actually help them be bad?” Everyone knows there are concentrations of women on college campuses. There’s evidence that The List had no pictures, just some fragmentary descriptions that could fit anyone, so it wouldn’t be useful in trying to fake an acquaintance with a prospective target.

          I’m genuinely interested in the threat model that some are using.

        29. BBCC

          Because it’s not meant to be a ‘personally would and would not do’ list. He gives it out to guys to subscribe to. The only reason to do that is so they can use the information on there to try to get laid. As Rachel said, it was basically a roadmap to every woman in the building and as Danny said, in the hands of a real creep it had some potentially worrying information.

        30. Wizard

          What worrying information? Unless the list included sensitive personal information such as addresses and class schedules I don’t see how it would endanger anyone.

        31. BBCC

          Ways to get ‘in’ with them. Like ‘churchy’ gives a way to modify their approach. And as Rachel said, it covered basically their whole building.

        32. Yumi

          I do think it indicated the dorm, which does connect to offering addresses (though the dorm is large). See this strip with Joe and Danny discussing it:

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/skew/

          Not using real names for most people might actually make it worse, depending on the descriptions, since if someone could figure out who it was referring to, they wouldn’t even need to know the person’s name to figure out the dorm. (Many descriptions might not have been that identifiable, but some– like Penny’s– could have been.)

          That’s the most tangible way I could think it might endanger someone. Beyond that, there’s the vaguer issue how it plays into the culture of misogyny that endangers women.

        33. thejeff

          Plays into the misogyny is by far the bigger issue, I think.

          The risk is overstated. From what we’ve seen the description are incredibly superficial and mostly serve to identify them. Like “churchy” is the first thing you’d know about early Joyce and you’d need to already know it to even identify which one he was talking about.

        34. Mark

          Eh, I figured the reason for a list like this was more like “I’m a silly teenager who recently invented sex and I want everyone to know about it.”

        35. BBCC

          Maybe at first, but by college it doesn’t match with trying to get single guys to subscribe to it.

        36. Shiro

          Relevance??????

        37. TheScreenJockey

          I think the relevance is that teenage boys do stupid shit that they regret and would not do again. They don’t all have to be equally stupid.

        38. Bryy

          ….. nowhere near the same motherfucking thing.

        39. Taffy

          Nobody ever needed (or wanted) to know that about you, cowpoke. Not a single person has to know what you do with your own business.

      2. Yumi

        Thank you this, I didn’t want to watch those arguments go around more.

        1. David M Willis

          ha ha ha ha you think they’re not going to still go around today, despite my interjections

          *cries*

        2. BBCC

          *hugs if wanted* Its gonna be a long night.

        3. Yumi

          At least now people can say “As per Willis’s previous comment on this very page…”

        4. Charles Phipps

          Well, I mean, how much does he know really?

          Willis thinks Linda is racist!

        5. Taffy

          Here’s some fitting music, at least.
          https://youtu.be/PGNiXGX2nLU

        6. NGPZ

          https://crowd.gamesdonequick.com/

          super mario world and speedruns for charity happenin for when you need a break from that crap

        7. Bwsab

          H– how though? Like, who is transphobic and keeping up with THIS comic? THIS comic!!!! Like, I could see a misinformed good faith “Okay, I like (dead name), but I’m concerned about (parroted talking point)”, and to have a ton of comments pointing out all the problems with all that, but who the hell is still going out of their way to troll about trans people in THESE comments!? Like, this comic is not big enough to get a real shitstorm going, and the people reading THIS comic for a decade plus probably aren’t about to be swayed by anti-trans arguments. “You know, I’ve been getting invested in Jocelyne for about a decade, and I really care about her, and she seems happy now, but then I saw a comment suggesting (whatever would get a transphobe banned), and I suddenly forgot all of that and now think (transphobic gobbledygook).” Like, is that likely to fucking happen HERE!?

        8. BBCC

          You’d think not, but OOF Patreon was messy last night.

        9. Jeremiah

          Looks like I was lucky that my subscription expired that day.

        10. BBCC

          Believe it or not, it was worse than this. At least one person, possibly two, got banned.

        11. Nicoleandmaggie

          I was going to ask if patreon allowed banning. Also I wonder if the Russian agents (this is a real thing I’ve read legit news stories about) who sow this kind of discontent have started paying for the privilege.

        12. Jeremiah

          Oh it seem Mike Gibson is one of the ones that got banned. Awesome that guy was an asshole.

        13. Nymph

          For. Real.

        14. Bwsab

          WHAT!? Bu– how— WHO THE HELL LOVES THIS COMIC SO MUCH THEY’LL PAY MONEY TO SUPPORT IT, AND HASN’T CLUED IN THAT THIS COMIC IS VERY MUCH PRO DIFFERENT PEOPLES!!!

        15. NGPZ

          as it turns out, being able to pay for patreon subscription doesn’t automatically mean less bigoted, WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?

          9-9

        16. Nymph

          More than one person, unfortunately.

        17. thejeff

          I mean, being able to certainly doesn’t mean less bigoted, but you’d think choosing to do so would. Unless they’re paying money for an early option to troll?

        18. Fart Captor

          Unfortunately it is possible for people who THINK they’re very cool with trans people to nevertheless have remarkably shitty ideas about them and get VERY defensive and resentful when challenged about them

        19. Bryy

          Some people think giving money out mean their opinion is worth more.

        20. NGPZ

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/antagonize/

          believe me, this HARDLY the only time that shit happens ?

        21. Bwsab

          COMMENTS ARE CLOSED EVEN!?!?!? WHAT THE FUCK!? AND THAT’S ONE OF MY FAVORITE COMICS!!! I’ve been using that term “acceptable losses” ever since, it’s genuinely useful to understanding that behavior. How!? Wh- I don’t- How!?

        22. Taffy

          See, some people might say “Come now, you can’t be so shocked by these things, you naive Cockney orphan!”, but I honestly think we (as a species) should be more shocked about that level of nonsense, and then act our best in an attempt to crowd it out and stuff its voice into a matchbox in the corner of the deepest cabinet we can find.

        23. BBCC

          A TERF forum found that one. Closing the comments was necessary, believe me.

        24. Nicoleandmaggie

          TERFs suck so much.

        25. Ana Chronistic

          oh, that one had the comments closed immediately upon going live

        26. TheScreenJockey

          Bwsab . . . Paul Ryan’s favorite band was Rage Against the Machine. He owns all of their releases. And that’s he was the 54th Speaker of the House, not just some rando reading comics on the internet.

        27. Michael Steamweed

          *hugs to you

      3. Jeremiah

        Some people were arguing yesterday wherever there actually was other zeroes besides Joyce, so thanks for the confirmation.

        1. Prior Semblance

          Feels like a retcon given what Joyce had said but at least it’s confirmed one way or the other now.

        2. BBCC

          Joyce never said she was the only zero. Joyce ASKED if she was and Joe ducked the potentially emotional question because that’s what he always does.

      4. Plaaaaaa

        Joyce was the only zero

        1. morleuca

          And negative 1

        2. thejeff

          You know you’re correcting the author here, right?

    2. Charles Phipps

      Lots of transphobes even fetishize trans women.

      Dream Girl’s actress is beautiful on Supergirl but attraction to her doesn’t mean you’re more or less transphobic.

      Just whether you acknowledge their humanity.

      1. Animedingo

        Ok yes but thats not my point.

        He ISNT transphobic for NOT being attracted to someone

        1. David M Willis

          so he should’ve put her on the list with a zero

          instead of not on the list at all

        2. Charles Phipps

          That is true.

          It’s a slight definitely and a deliberate one.

          You have great insight into Willis, Willis.

        3. Taffy

          It’s like he’s got a direct line to the author’s mind. Trippy, but kinda cool.

        4. Shadowsnail

          When you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that Willis chose to draw only one set of footprints.

        5. Rand Brittain

          Wouldn’t giving the one trans woman on his list a zero be pointedly worse than just not putting her on the list at all?

        6. BBCC

          Depends what he says in the description. Could be as simple as ‘not my type, your mileage may vary’.

          Hell, you could even say it’s because Carla’s not into men so don’t waste your time trying.

        7. David M Willis

          joyce herself was canonically a negative zero for a while

        8. Charles Phipps

          “Yes, for the sensible reason of engaging in domestic violence.”
          – From the Committee of Defending Joe Regardless of Logic

        9. NGPZ

          well negative zero IS very much a thing in floating point arithmetic on computer hardware, such as in the widespread IEEE 754 standard such that

          1 / -0 = -infinity

          … not quite sure how that would fit into the specifics of his rating scheme, but neat food for thought i guess XD

        10. Mark

          Also, some architectures use one’s complement integer arithmetic and have distinct positive and negative integer zeroes. Thanks: now I’m wondering if IU still had their CDC Cyber 170 ‘way back when Joe started his list.

        11. TheScreenJockey

          Not on the list = not a chick
          On the list with a zero = a chick I’m not the slightest bit interested in boning

          The former is definitely the more transphobic choice.

        12. Mark

          OK, trying to understand something. “Not a chick” (assuming this is the reason Carla was not listed) is applying a personal definition of “chick” that disagrees with Carla’s. Publishing it would be disrespectful and perhaps hurtful, but phobic? the evidence doesn’t support that.

          Executive summary: so far as I can tell, Joe is not Mary.

        13. Torgamous

          Applying a personal definition of women that excludes trans women is transphobic. It’s the seed from which all other forms of transphobia grow.

        14. Seralyna

          it’s transphobic

        15. Fart Captor

          Mark, like all bigotry, transphobia exists on a spectrum. Not ALL of it is Mary level “they aren’t human and the sooner they’re sent to Hell the better” overt hate

          Not being Mary is an incredibly low bar to clear that leaves plenty of room for transphobia

        16. Bryy

          “Joe is not Mary”

          Mary is a religious bigot that actively tries to kill people.

          Try again.

        17. Mark

          I still don’t see the element of fear.

        18. Mark

          If that’s obscure, I just refreshed my memory from Liddell and Scott’s Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon. φοβος: panic fear, such as causes flight…properly of the outward show of fear….

        19. Torgamous

          Oh Jesus Christ, you’re one of those.

          We’re not speaking Greek. The plain English meaning of transphobia, homophobia, etc. is prejudice against the group in question.

        20. Yumi

          Fucking hell.

        21. Wizard

          Just how comprehensive was this list? Unless it included every other female student in a set that included Carla, then it’s possible she was left off for some perfectly innocuous reason.

        22. BBCC

          It included every other woman in the wing and possibly every other woman in the dorm building if Rachel is accurate.

        23. thejeff

          A little awkward that both Mandy and Rachel say “every woman”, if Carla wasn’t on it.
          Though in both their cases, it could be taken as exaggeration for effect. They’d identified most of the women on the floor rather than checking that literally every single one was. OTOH, that undercuts the implications of Carla not being on it.

        24. Rolf of Many Doors

          He didn’t know she existed at the time, as per his not knowing who she is now

        25. BBCC

          Well, he doesn’t know her by name anyway.

        26. Rolf of Many Doors

          He has seen her canonically a grand total of one time

        27. BBCC

          That we know of. They live on the same floor and she skates down the hallway all the time and at least once (on Patreon) blared loud ass music while she did so for Carla Awareness Week.

        28. Zero

          If he doesn’t know her by name, he wouldn’t know she’s trans.

        29. Zero

          I think it’s fair for Joyce to find this evidence concerning, but it doesn’t prove anything.
          And also this is absolutely the same category of thing that Joe is working on, so he may have just improved. Like Joyce herself.

        30. Needfuldoer

          An important difference.

        31. Nicoleandmaggie

          But yesterdays thing said she hadn’t been introduced yet! So Joe didn’t know she existed. I believed it!

        32. Prior Semblance

          I think the problem is this feels like a retcon. Joyce being a negative zero was special. She even asks Joe if she was the only zero and he deflects instead of answering. Which doesn’t make much sense if zeroes are just a normal thing in the list. She could have just checked and even if she didn’t it would be easier for him to just say she’s not the only one.

          And if zeroes are a special statement of extreme dislike, putting a trans person as a zero because you know they are trans would be much worse than just not listing them because you aren’t personally interested.

          Obviously this isn’t your intention now and Joe was actually creating a pokedex of every woman instead of curating a list of those he had any amount of interest in. But those of us who don’t pay much attention to stuff outside the comic don’t usually see this word of god stuff that changes a lot of the context for past comics. The zero was still seemingly just Joyce.

          Ultimately, I think the whole “list as 0 or don’t list at all” is extremely situational on which is worse and why. But obviously I’m aware of who I’m talking to and you wouldn’t be saying this stuff if you hadn’t decided how this is going to unfold. But you can’t expect everyone to agree on the right choice of action when you have all the details and we’re just guessing.

        33. CrimsonStorm

          I tend to agree with you here, especially your last sentence.

          Like there are 100% wrong ways to react to this strip/situation but also from the audience’s perspective I don’t think there is one true “right way.”

        34. Mark

          Tangent: dunno if it applies to this work, but sometimes even authors don’t have all the details. Sometimes “the tale [grows] with the telling.” When one brings characters to life, they begin to tell their own stories. Even authors can be surprised.

        35. Bryy

          No idea what this even means, especially since this is a very specific context and Willis has said multiple times that it’s Joe being diet transphobic.

        36. Needfuldoer

          Not exactly. He initially gave Joyce a 4, to be “upgraded” to a 10 if/when she slept with him.* He changed her to a 0 after the date Mike chaperoned. He ran away when she figured that out, in order to avoid confessing that he’s attracted to her, not to avoid telling her who other zeroes were.

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/chubby/

          (*Three links will get this post caught in the spam filter, but the title of that one is “Random”, from December 21, 2010.)

          He ranked all the not-Carla women on the floor, including tertiary characters like Other Rachel (who called him a pig for giving her a 3) and Grace, Sierra, and Mandy. Mandy asked Carla if she wanted them to look up her rating, to which she contemplated whether being on the list or not would make her pissier. In the end she didn’t want to know, and we the audience never found out until now. We still don’t know if Carla was the only omission, but that’s probable.

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/pissier/

        37. BBCC

          NEGATIVE zero is special the way Rachel being an eleven was. That does not mean she’s the only zero. And zero does not mean ‘extreme dislike’ it means ‘no interest’. The list was always a pokedex, not a potential partner list or whatever people thought it was.

        38. BBCC

          No, but it IS transphobic to make a list of almost everyone you know (assuming people like his mom aren’t on it) and rank them by fuckability and then not include the one out trans woman in the group of women you know.

        39. BBCC

          Almost every WOMAN you know. I wish this was Patreon with it’s edit button.

        40. drs

          But Joe even know Carla existed?

        41. BBCC

          If he’s genuine about not knowing her, that’s probably his only real way out of this awkward talk. I think if it were true though he’d have been more emphatic about it by now though.

        42. Fart Captor

          Joe knew pretty much every girl on Joyce’s floor existed, and a girl as loud, tall and annoying as Carla would be rather difficult to miss

        43. Animedingo

          Maybe she is on the list but not AS carla

        44. Taffy

          Maybe this will affect the trout population.

        45. zee

          None of them are named, it was all just descriptions. I don’t remember the specifics but it was shit like “hot biker chick, blonde fun die, fat Asian cheerleader” etc. That last one wasn’t my assessment btw I’m just pretty sure he called Billie fat

          Also the literal god of the DOA universe explicitly said she’s not on the list

        46. BBCC

          Zee, that’s not true. Mandy specifically said some were listed under their real names.

        47. Bryy

          You’ve literally been told twice by the author that Joe purposefully left Carla out.

        48. nicoleandmaggie

          And once (and first, in the comic pop-up) that he didn’t.

        49. ThomasQuinn

          On the other hand, it would be pretty hilarious (and in style) for Joe to genuinely know every girl on the floor except for the one for whom a brass band and team of heralds announcing her presence could be considered ‘making a low key entrance’.

        50. Prior Semblance

          It feels dangerous to wade into this conversation with anything other than complete agreement but I think that’s a stretch. If he’s not attracted to trans people the same way he’s not attracted to men or to family then it makes just as much sense to exclude them from the list as anyone else who was excluded. Are we really going to police peoples minds and force them to consider all trans people as potential partners? In an ideal world we wouldn’t even know people were trans but the medical technology just isn’t there yet. You can’t culturally guilt someone into biological attraction.

          I think a lot of this hinges on what getting a low score on his list means. Was he still open to fooling around with girls with low scores? Personally I don’t think he would bother adding someone to the list that he actually had no interest in.

        51. BBCC

          He had other women he wasn’t attracted to on the list. There were zeros. This was not a list of potential partners for Joe. It was a list of women he knew around campus organized by fuckability that he gave out to other guys to help them get laid. If Joe simply wasn’t attracted to her, he’d have given her a zero.

        52. Prior Semblance

          I think being included on the list at all implies a level of interest. Joyce specifically asks if she’s the only zero because she didn’t see any others in the list.

        53. BBCC

          There were others listed on it. As Willis said, if it was only that he wasn’t interested in Carla, she’d just be a zero.

        54. zee

          Joyce was a minus zero, not just a zero. That’s why she asked, there was extra sauce on it to make it unique

        55. Buck Ripsnort

          Oh, UGGhhh. I thought it was just a list of, like, personal opinions, not a “how to” guide.

        56. Mark

          I still think that. Can someone cite a strip where this intent was stated?

        57. BBCC

          He asks Danny if he’s subscribed the second he’s single. It’s not a step by step how to, but the point is for guys to look around and get ideas on who’s hot, what’s hot about them and some of them have their interests listed like Dorothy and books, so that the guys have an ‘in’.

        58. Taffy

          Nobody’s policing minds, nobody’s forcing anyone, nobody’s culturally guilting anyone. It’s not happening. It’s not a real thing. It’s made up. For your own health, it’s best to purge those thoughts from your mind and not worry about things that aren’t, won’t, and can’t happen.

        59. Prior Semblance

          This is a fictional situation we are discussing and we are the ones policing Joes thoughts. Please quit trying to cast me as some sort of trans conpiracy theorist. Trust me, I’m well aware that IRL nobody except my partner cares who I am attracted to.

        60. Taffy

          I’m not trying to cast you as anything, I just genuinely didn’t pick up on the subtext of Joe’s fake thoughts being the policed ones. Although if that’s the case, it makes thought policing Fine, Actually™ because if the thoughts are in a fake person’s head, there’s no possible way to harm that character by circumcising their thoughts. It’s a victimless non-crime.

        61. zee

          It wasn’t a list of people he was attracted to, it was a list of every woman he knew on campus and his opinions on them. There were ones he was very openly not attracted to on there. Willis literally said this shit idk why it’s still up for debate

        62. Queezle

          But Joe did not only put women he was attracted to on the list, he put all the female students on it, or all most all, and left Carla out. Meaning, he does not see her has a woman.
          That does not mean he has to be an absolute shit transphobic person for that, it just means that he might have some subconscious transphobic bias he can work on.

        63. thejeff

          And his approach to it today is pretty shitty as well. They’ve both changed and grown a lot since then, so a “Yeah, that was pretty gross of me, but I’ve learned a lot since then” would suffice, but that’s not what we get. He’s deflecting and excusing.

        64. Yumi

          Yeah, it’s common to get defensive or try to deflect when feeling confronted. It’s not an ideal response, and I hope their conversation gets to a point of actually engaging on the topic.

          Between Joe and Joyce, Joe had to learn about his misogyny, but in pretty much all the other social justice aspects, his views seem to have been more where Joyce was moving too. It might be a new feeling for him to *not* feel like “the open minded one.”

        65. Queezle

          Yes super shitty. I have not given up hope that he will pull his head out off his ass soon (“I am sorry, thinking about the list and how shitty I was makes me really uncomfortable, however you are right…”) but as of right now his behaviour is bad.

      2. Pergola

        We can be absolutely sure that Joe applied his rating scheme consistently and never ever slipped up in any way.

        1. BBCC

          We have a few strips where Joe worries about inflating his numbers so he at least cares about consistency that way.

    3. Marvelman

      It was a year ago for us – not for Joyce.

      1. BBCC

        Yeah, for Joyce the list came out like 4 months ago. It’s still following Joe around.

        1. Bryy

          *finger guns*
          Excellent point.

      2. Nicoleandmaggie

        Only a year?

    4. AlexanderHammil

      i mean i know we’re dealing an extreme case of comic book time, but in-universe the do list went public like, months ago max

      1. AlexanderHammil

        sorry, dropped a word somehow there; that should have been “four months ago, max”

    5. Nymph

      I didn’t see this mentioned because the first part of what you said is objectionable enough on it’s own but “a few months” is hardly “for the rest of his life”. That’s so dramatic. People are within reason to mention something you did literally this school year lmao.

      1. Nymph

        Oh it was mentioned just lower down lol STILL THO

    6. Nobby Nobbs

      Maybe trans women will stop having an opinion on your opinion of their fuckability when you stop sharing that opinion completely unsolicited. It can be an inside thought. Wasn’t that the whole point of the do list storyline?

    7. S.R.

      Leaving the one trans woman off a list that seems to have been “here are all the local women rated by how attractive I find them” isn’t a very good look, and “this is a thing you did somewhat recently” isn’t “I will now hold this over you for your entire life and expect that you’ll never change from when you did this”.

      1. thejeff

        Also, Joe’s not admitting fault and claiming he’s learned better. He’s saying creepy shit about Jocelyne and Malaya to excuse it.

        Joyce would have been far worse, back when Joe made the list, but she’s changed.

        1. Yumi

          Also, it’s pretty much fine here since Malaya *does* use both she and they pronouns, and it’s not the main focus of the strip anyway– but “I think she’s a they now” isn’t great.

          (One time I was in someone’s office while they called someone else to consult or inquire about something for me or something, and the person in the office was saying, “She likes to be referred to as they/them. Those are the pronouns she uses.” Like. Swell.)

    8. Deanatay

      It’s just kinda weird how the argument went from “putting a woman’s name in a ranking list is a terrible thing” to “not putting a woman’s name on a ranking list is a terrible thing”.

      I get it, there are subtleties, it’s just disorienting, for someone having trouble keeping up with the discussion anyway.

      1. Seralyna

        If you make a list of how hot you find every woman on campus, that is a bad thing to do, which is it’s own statement.

        A seperate, unrelated statement is that the choices of who you include or how you rate those people will reveal your own biases towards people if done on a large enough scale, and people will probably judge you based on that.

    9. Jdorr

      It was a list of Every girl in the residence hall exept the openly trans one. Being a girl he wasn’t attracted to would get you a low ranking but still a ranking… unless he didn’t view you as a girl.

      I’m not going to deny that he’s had Alot of growth since then(current Joe would never make the list in the first place), but the exclusion of Carla from a list of all the women in the dorm was probably a bit of subconscious transphobia from him at the time.

  4. Sirksome

    Joe is in to Joe x Jocelyne! The crack ship has some hope!

    1. Yotomoe

      I thought I was the only one that psuedo-shipped it. (Just for a soap opera like drama moment when Joe and her kiss cuz she looks like Joyce and Joyce catches them and now she’s thrust into a love triangle between her boyfriend and her older sister.)

  5. Opus the Poet

    Ditto, Joyce.
    I’m also increasingly disliking this conversation, but for different reasons.

  6. shadowcell

    somewhere across campus, Sal is suddenly pissed off and doesn’t know why

  7. Charles Phipps

    Yeah, gender affirming via objectification is certainly a thing among transwomen (according to my biased three sources) but i think most people would just prefer Joe to keep his opinions to himself.

    1. peng

      hey no more than it is among anybody else

      1. yak

        *very* true. At least half of sexual attraction is wanting to be wanted, I would say.

    2. Yumi

      Weird inverse I had, past hookup ghosted me because he realized he was straight. Being ghosted isn’t the best, but that was a pretty gender affirming reason for it, so on the whole, not terrible.

    3. Nymph

      Right, but her point is “the only info I had on whether you thought of trans women as women implied that you did not”. He didn’t keep his opinions to himself, and they said something to Joyce that she’s trying to talk about.

    4. Falco

      r/ewwphoria

    5. Fart Captor

      That’s not the damn point Charles. Even if the list was gross and misogynistic, it was a HUGE list and seemed to have pretty much every girl on Joyce’s floor EXCEPT Carla. Joyce was on there and had literally been rated ZERO. Carla’s omission reveals the list was also transphobic

      1. Charles Phipps

        I agree it was.

      2. Rolf of Many Doors

        IIrc wasn’t it a “fuckability” list, not an “appearance” list? As in, like, if he could get in their pants or not.

        1. BBCC

          Well, if a guy could/would want to get her pants anyway.

        2. Needfuldoer

          Depends on whether they’d fit.

        3. thejeff

          He was rating attraction, not his chances.

      3. Prior Semblance

        Joyce being a zero was a special situation, that was Joe making a statement about her as a person. I think the lowest proper score we know of is a 3 but I didn’t reread the entire comic to check.

      4. Mark

        I find it interesting that people are ardently arguing, in the name of decency, that Carla should have been included on a list that folks generally agree is gross and disgusting and shouldn’t have existed.

        1. Yumi

          No one SHOULD HAVE been on the list, but some exclusions from it might be questionable under a different focus than that by which the whole list was objectionable.

          Like, I’m not pro-military, but I also don’t think it should exclude openly queer people.

        2. Seralyna

          nobody is arguing that a fictional character Should have been on anything.

          We (and the characters in the story) are discussiong how the only trans woman in the dorm was exclusded from a list of all women, and how that fact reflects on a character in the story, becasue it is an interesting nuance.

        3. Bryy

          That’s not what people are arguing, chief.

    6. morleuca

      Call it ew-phoria

  8. Rand Brittain

    I’m pretty sure anybody who knows Carla is trans ALSO knows that she is, I am pretty sure, at least mostly a lesbian.

    And also that she’s 100% a pain in the neck!

    1. NGPZ

      Carla ardently identifies as an asexual who is very sex repulsed

      1. moor

        you can be a lesbian and also asexual

    2. Charles Phipps

      Joyce didn’t and I think there’s lots of clueless people who don’t realize Carla is famous.

      1. Dawn

        Joe too, probably, considering he doesn’t even know who she is.

        1. clif

          Joe is not a reliable narrator. Particularly when he’s doubling down.

    3. Deanatay

      I think you mean Carla is gynoromantic.

  9. Dawn

    Have Joe and Carla ever been on a page together?

    1. Charles Phipps

      Someone checked and they’ve literally only interacted once and briefly.

      1. Rolf of Many Doors

        Was it before or after the list being revealed and/or his attempts to change his negative behavior?

        1. PedanticJerkass

          They’ve been on less than a handful of pages together, and they’ve never really directly interacted.

  10. Jeremiah

    These two are such a riot.

  11. BBCC

    Joe, please, I am BEGGING you, turn off the nonchalance and get into genuine feelings territory for like ten minutes or this is gonna get really ugly really fast.

    Not being into any individual trans woman (or any individual characteristic) is one thing, but categorically excluding them from a ‘women you could bang’ guide you want people to subscribe to is gonna raise an ugly question. Not that any woman loves being misogynistically objectified but when you’re excluded because the person doesn’t see you as a woman? It’s a horrible rock and hard place.

    1. Charles Phipps

      I feel like Joe absolutely does not want to revisit that period of his life and is grossed out that Joyce is making it a litmus test of his behavior.

      Mind you, I think he’s absolutely ducking the question.

      Because it really is, “Joe, when you were a gross misogynist, did you not consider Carla bangable because of her trans status?”

      1. BBCC

        It’s not even about Joe considering her ‘bangable’ really. It’s about whether or not he considered her a woman and therefore worth ranking, even if some of his subscribers may be interested in knowing how to get with her.

      2. Nono

        Honestly my guess is that Joe excluded Carla for entirely unrelated reasons (maybe he didn’t even know she existed, judging from yesterday’s strip) and Joyce is zooming into ‘it’s because she’s trans, isn’t it?!’ as a possible reason.

        1. BBCC

          I think it’s less “is zooming into” and more “is worried that could be it”

      3. Dawn

        Yeah, Joe might have been transphobic before the gender studies class, it doesn’t mean he is now. He was also a gross misogynist back then, and I don’t think Joyce even knew trans people existed. He also literally might just not have a clue who Carla is.

        What matters is who he is NOW, and he’s 100% chill with Jocelyne and definitely seems to see her as a woman.

        1. BBCC

          Honestly, at this point, somehow genuinely not knowing who Carla is is his best shot at getting out of this.

        2. thejeff

          His comment on Jocelyne last strip was “I’m not gonna be fuckin’ mean or anything”. That’s not exactly “100% chill with Jocelyne and definitely seems to see her as a woman.”
          By itself it wouldn’t be much, but combined with the list and his creepy defensiveness today, we’ve got a problem.

        3. Bryy

          Yeah, that comment was a bit fucked up.

        4. Needfuldoer

          That’s not necessarily a reliable metric, because Jocelyne is his girlfriend’s sibling. That could bias perception toward “she’s one of the ‘good’ ones”.

        5. Needfuldoer

          (Please read the last part in quotes with a generous amount of sarcasm. Just typing it made me want to wash my keyboard out with soap.)

      4. Jon

        Yep, I’m being reminded of other moments in the comic where Joyce specifically has been asked to answer for horrible shit she no longer believes. Interesting (but not surprising) that she’s asking Joe to do a similar thing now.

        1. Nymph

          She isn’t though. She’s asking him IF he believes that Carla is a woman (ofc she IS whether he believes that or not). Joyce is letting Joe speak for himself on a topic she has concerns about. The mention of the list is evidence for WHY she thought he might not be trans positive.

        2. Throwatron

          Well, I mean, her Fundie Panic has been very triggered, today. She has no problem letting go of deliberately following her past doctrines, but she only know how to apply being good under any doctrine, in the same way she always has: Hyper-vigilant commitment to absolute control over any and all of her sinful mindcrimes.

          Joyce’s understanding of “how to be a good person” comes down to “tirelessly follow all the rules, because the rules are an objective force of goodness, which much be adhered to.” So, whenever she gets slightly anxious about anything social or ethical, she uncontrollably falls back into the pattern of absolute hyper-vigilant zealotry towards whatever rule or ethic she was most recently insecure about living up to.

          Joyce’s primary behavioral motivation towards acting properly, is avoiding what she feels as rightful social exclusion. Even though she has shifted to being utterly secular, she still practices secularism in the same way she used to practice religion. So, whenever she’s feeling insecure about those things, her core instinct for assuaging that insecurity, is to double down on aggressively following the rules, to ensure she can avoid any kind of reproach. I suppose that, here, she’s unintentionally projecting her “correct” moral behavior, onto Joe, as an expectation, because that’s her sole coping mechanism when worrying about bad things she fears might happen.

        3. Needfuldoer

          That’s a good point.

      5. Huttj

        Honestly, I’m leaning towards an internal “oh, huh” realization, combined with realizing ramifications, and not having time to process that while being put on the spot and pressured.

        1. clif

          This.

        2. Mark

          This.

      6. Yak

        Yeah. He could do a lot better by saying “Hey, I’m trying really hard to disavow that list in all ways, it doesn’t reflect who I am or my beliefs right now” instead of being annoyingly evasive like this. While Joyce is pretty much dredging stuff up that she’s been letting lie for their whole relationship, he’s reacting in a really defensive and unproductive way.

        1. Mark

          But their conversation today isn’t about the list; it’s about how he views trans people.

          And underneath that, it’s about Joyce throwing her whole being into the task of remaking her self-image.

        2. thejeff

          Yeah, with the list as one piece of evidence.

          And his comments today aren’t exactly showing him in a great light.

    2. Queezle

      Yep, we have to realize and admit our unconscious biases to work on them and become better people.

  12. Alongcameaspider

    To be honest I would assume him not including Carla has more to do with him not wanting to do anything to risk pissing off the child of billionaires before I thought it had anything to do with Carla being trans

    The fact that her not being included would be more likely to piss off Carla specifically is just Joe miscalculation and he is extremely lucky she chose not to look

  13. Amós Batista

    Joe ignoring Carla?? Joyce making Carla uncomfortable.

    1. Throwatron

      GOATed comment buried in the mire

  14. elle

    Joyce is really onto something here. Cis people can go on about preferences but getting treated as an undesirable other actually does suck. It’s especially noticeable if you cis pass and reveal your trans status, guys go from hitting on you to physically recoiling.

  15. Justnobodyfqwl

    Joe: “Not that I’m THINKING about boning your hot sister, who looks like you but older. That certainly isn’t doing things to my brain”

    Joyce: “I shouldn’t have let you meet my mom”

    Joe, biting his lip: “No, you shouldn’t have”

    Mike’s Ghost: “Lots of people met her …at a nickel a piece.. “

    1. Charles Phipps

      Joe’s chemistry with Jocelyn was off the charts.

      When Joyce and Dorothy hook up, Joe should get with Jocelyn.

    2. Amós Batista

      I would be funny if DoA could break the “atheist rule” once or twice and, like, to make ghosts or some other-than-christian entity appears.

      1. Smallmoon

        I mean… Amazi-girl and Amber had Tulpa(?)!Mike for a bit?

    3. Yotomoe

      “Joyce. Do NOT invite me to any family reunions”

  16. Nono

    I’m actually curious what Joyce’s endgame is with this.

    She knows that Joe’s cool with Jocelyne (and presumably other trans people, by definition), but it feels like she’s trying to gotcha him with ‘ha, you’re not actually THAT cool with them, are you!’

    1. Yumi

      She was saying yesterday that she wasn’t sure where Joe stood on trans stuff, and this is something that was in her mind as part of her uncertainty about it. So she’s explaining how the list connected to her views on his views.

    2. Nymph

      Yeah, her trying to have a conversation about a concern is definitely a “gotcha” moment. Definitely not the normal adult thing to do when you have a concern.

      1. Jeremiah

        Don’t you know that everyone is always out to get you all the time for no reason?

        1. Taffy

          Yeah, I take 20mg of escitalopram daily for that.
          Well, I’m supposed to. I take 1mg of guanfacine daily for that.
          Well, I’m supposed to.

        2. FacelessDeviant

          Thats what they want you to think.

        3. FacelessDeviant

          Nope, shouldnt have said that, that was in poor taste.

    3. Fart Captor

      Fun fact: being polite to trans people’s faces is a good start, but even better is actually thinking of us as our gender!

      She’s had to grow a lot as a person. She’s trying to help Joe do the same

      1. Taffy

        It’s sweet of her, really.

        1. Fart Captor

          It would be lovely if more cis people had these kinda conversations with each other! Trans people are so very, very tired of having to hand hold defensive cis people through even the most superficial amount of self-reflection on how they view trans people!

        2. Taffy

          I agree pretty strongly. It’s cool that the conversations happen at all, but golly if it ain’t slow goin’ even nowadays.

        3. NGPZ

          right? i mentioned this a few strips ago and might as well mention it again:

          Social Justice is a verb

        4. clif

          I know what you are saying, that social justice requires individual action. But that’s an awkward way of saying it and technically wrong. To justice, though unconventional, works to describe relivant actions to bring about justice. To social justice doesn’t because social is not an adverb. It would have to be, to justice socially.

          Look, if you take social justice into your own hands, does that make you a social vigilante?

        5. Taffy

          I’m social Spider-Man.

        6. Nymph

          *slams desk* BRING ME PICTURES OF SOCIAL SPIDER-MAN!!

        7. NGPZ

          like we literally talked about this last time, it ain’t about no white english grammar shit

          wat im sayin is Social Justice ain’t about where ya at, it’s about what ya doin and the direction ya goin, about active commitment to making the world a more inclusive place for folk like us :)

        8. morleuca

          Grammar rules are the pirates’ code for language.

        9. Mark

          Grammar rules are how the speaker helps the listener to grasp the structure of the speaker’s thoughts.

          NGPZ, I get it: you’re speaking metaphorically, a different way of expressing structure.

    4. thejeff

      She complemented Joe on how accepting he was, brought up the list/Carla as a reason why she was worried and he’s been digging a hole that makes her more worried. Starting with his first comment yesterday about not being mean.

  17. Wraithy2773

    I’m sorry, I’m sure there’s cogent analysis to be had about this strip and how we approach attraction and gender identity and sexuality because its a really fascinating topic…

    …but I’m just here snickering at “to bestow womanhood with my boner”.

    Smooth as butter, Joe :D.

  18. Charles Phipps

    This weirdly reminds me of the people who argued whether Linda’s mom was racist against Sal because she was darker skinned than her brother even after Willis said, “Oh yes, that was absolutely going on.”

    1. Charles Phipps

      Dammit, not Linda’s mom but Linda.

      Sigh, I second the wish for an edit button.

    2. Jeremiah

      Could I ask what specifically remind you of that?

      1. Charles Phipps

        Basically, it seems very much set up this is about Joe confronting a real issue of his and all the evidence is there but a lot of people want to find an excuse that precludes prejudice being the root.

        1. Jeremiah

          Ah yeah that makes sense. And it would probably be more heated since it comes from a character people actually cares about.

        2. Rolf of Many Doors

          Because we should always assume innocence until guilt is proven. The author out-right saying the character is guilty of the accusation (in this strip’s case, transphobia/transmisia, and in the previous case you refer to, racism) is definitely proof, and arguing it after the fact is dumb for sure, but the people arguing in defense of the character before evidence to the contrary is presented are entirely justified.

        3. Jeremiah

          Okay but that is not what we are talking about. This is specifically about the ones that continue to argue it after the evidence has been shown.

        4. Taffy

          Evidence is for libcuck pronoun SJWs.

        5. clif

          Would I regret Googling libcuck?

        6. Taffy

          You could leave the last word off and assume the answer is always “yes”.

        7. Rolf of Many Doors

          What evidence is there that Joe was transphobic/misic back then? If the author says so either in or out of story, sure, but iirc that hasn’t been established, so assuming the character is/was isn’t fair to the character, and indicates that one might have a predisposition to doing so IRL as well, which is a terrible primary mode of thought to have. It very much is what we’re talking about.

        8. BBCC

          Well, that’s what they’re talking about. Joyce brought up Carla being omitted from the list, despite the presence of everyone else, and how that looks. She’s looking for an assurance he sees trans women as women because the limited information she has on his views may suggest he does not.

          Also… this might just be a difference of opinion but innocent until proven guilty is a legal standard, not a social one. It’s an important legal standard, but nobody needs to hold to it in their personal interactions and sometimes, when it comes to bigotry, it’s safer not to. Hell, even with some crimes, it’s safer not to in day to day interactions. Most rapists never spend a single day in court, never mind jail, so a lot of women are not willing to hang around a man with a credible accusation of rape against them. Sure, maybe the guy is in the slim minority that is really falsely accused but very few are willing to risk their safety to find out.

        9. BBCC

          And also….Joe is a fictional character. I think it’s a little silly to assume that because someone thinks something is okay to do with a fictional character where all the information that exists is in the comics and the author’s comments is automatically fine to do to a real person. I’ve wished pretty grizzly deaths on fictional villains that I would NEVER wish on a real person. Hell, I wouldn’t ship real people or speculate about their inner lives the way I do fictional character backstories, thoughts and personality quirks. They just aren’t the same thing. I do think a lot of people think it would be a stronger narrative and a more thematically consistent thing if this is a real unexamined issue Joe had and so that’s what they think will happen.

        10. Rolf of Many Doors

          It’s an important social standard too – that’s why you ask if someone has views that are socially unaccepted before assuming they do, especially if they’re someone you care about.

        11. BBCC

          If they’re someone you care about that can be important but again, sometimes granting the benefit of the doubt the way that standard demands is actively dangerous. If someone tells me some guy I don’t know is a creep or if that lines up with the little I know about him, I’m not going to risk it to see if that’s true.

        12. thejeff

          Rolf, that’s not at all a social norm. Asking if someone is bigoted is usually taken as offensive and can even be dangerous for the targets of such bigotry
          Plus people lie in response (or are not sufficiently self-aware to recognize their own prejudices).

        13. Nymph

          Wow I didn’t know “gymnastics” was a language now.

        14. Taffy

          Walkin’ through the comments with a boombox, blaring “Entry of the Gladiators” at maximum volume.

        15. zee

          We arent a court of law bongo, I’ll presume the guilt of fictional characters as much as I damn well please

  19. DailyBrad

    I get where both of them are coming from on here, even if, as the alt-text points out, Joyce isn’t really on the steadiest ground passing judgments on this topic.

    I do think it’s a fantastic thing to establish in a relationship where you stand on certain stuff, so I get why Joyce really wants to know here. I also get why Joe is uncomfortable with the topic.

    1. DailyBrad

      For the record, that’s not me saying Joe can’t have had transphobia. DoA is about a bunch of people in their late teens and early 20s and their personal growth, and it’s very possible Carla wasn’t on the list due to him dismissing her for transphobic reasons, I am strictly talking about why Joe would be irreverent instead of engaging with this fully seriously from the word go, since regardless of where he stood, he’s probably antsy about the conversation’s implications, given he’s under scrutiny.

      1. Dawn

        Joe was extremely misogynistic at the beginning of the comic, so pre-Gender Studies class Joe also being transphobic wouldn’t be a surprise to me.
        He’s grown since then and respects women now, and I’d say he definitely respects trans women based on his reaction to Jocelyne.

        1. BBCC

          Well, Joyce knows he’s outwardly respectful of Jocelyne around her. That may not reflect his feelings on the matter more generally and I think that’s what concerns her right now.

        2. thejeff

          “I’m not gonna be fucking mean” is a pretty low bar.

          One that far too many don’t clear, but hardly reassuring.

      2. spriteless aunty

        He was a deflectaholic when the comic started, and old habits die hard.

  20. Marvelman

    When did this list appear? In which strip?

    1. BBCC

      It’s come up many times, but the earliest mention is in the first storyline where Joe asks Danny if he’s subscribed to the list’s RSS feed.

    2. Taffy

      Have
      Have you read the comic
      Like at all

    3. Marvelman

      Never mind, I figured it out. Thanks.

      1. Taffy

        Most excellent. Sorry if my other comment came across as harsh or nasty.

        1. Regret

          Came across? It was. Weaksauce apology.

        2. Taffy

          Respectlessly, it’s not for you.

        3. Nymph

          A perfect answer.

        4. zee

          Nah it was a valid question

  21. Nono

    The more important part of the strip is that my bi Joe dreams remain alive?

    1. Nymph

      He has canonically hooked up with more than one gender. Bi Joe lives and rides eternal!

      1. NGPZ

        Hava Nagila! <3 ^^

      2. thejeff

        Though he didn’t know it at the time. Claiming it as a technicality is a bit off.

        And sexuality is about attraction, not who you’ve actually hooked up with.

        1. Nymph

          I’m comfortable assuming Joe is attracted to Malaya. Thank you, though.

    2. Dante

      NGL this makes me really happy

  22. HueSatLight

    https://www.dumbingofage.com/pissier/ appropriate link

    1. Bobcat2022

      That’s a good link, thank you.

      Similarly, the alt text raises a really good point.

      Interested to see where this story goes. Feel like a lot of very direct invitations from the author to stay silent and be thought a fool rather than speak and confirm it, or however that quote goes.

      1. thejeff

        The alt text does raise a point, but I’m not sure what it really is. If Joe, like Joyce, didn’t know Carla was trans, then obviously it wasn’t transphobic to leaver her off the list. That doesn’t seem to be the direction the narrative is going and would require another explanation for why Carla specifically wasn’t there when apparently everyone else was.
        There could I suppose be other trans women on the floor that neither Joyce, Joe nor the audience know about, but that doesn’t change the concerns about Joe. (Obviously Malaya, but she wasn’t out yet even to herself when the list was made.)

  23. Shakes

    Semi-related tangent, but did we ever find out how the list got out in the first place?

    1. Taffy

      Serious answer: Not yet, no.
      Fun answer: Somebody left the window open.

      1. Tan

        While this is certainly not for/at/involving me in any way, let me nonetheless say that I appreciate the format you have used here for this response. If there’s a next time I call you an asshole, you can and should throw this in my face.

        1. Taffy

          Who are you?

  24. Jon

    As the alt text points out, Joyce is a very interesting person to be bringing this up. Makes sense in the context of two new partners trying to have tough conversations, but Joyce is also asking Joe about a time period in which she herself was only just beginning to escape being a full-on evangelical Christian — and I can attest from very firsthand experience that that crowd isn’t, uh, known for being kind to trans people.

    Joe needs to answer this honestly and admit the implications, but I’m willing to bet that early-first-semester-Joyce would have had some truly awful things to (ignorantly, cheerfully) say if prompted directly. Which I predict will also come up in this conversation.

    Hope these two knuckleheads can be honest and open about this: it’s really hard to untangle some of these prejudices though thankfully they’re both trying to make it work (instead of actively using it as ammo in a fight, etc)

    1. Charles Phipps

      Honestly, I think Joe’s best answer, which I think Joyce should be considering, is that the Do-List is something that was a terrible thing that he is ashamed of in general and he absolutely considers Jocelyn a woman.

      Also, whatshername, the redhead.

      Basically, Joyce is right to call him out but does she realize the Do-List is something he’s disgusted he did in the past? That bringing it up may awaken trauma?

      1. Jon

        I suspect Joyce realizes that it’s not fair to use the Do List as an indictment of Joe’s current feelings: it’s something he actively regrets and has worked hard to live down, and she knows that.

        Whether or not he was transphobic in the PAST, and is willing to admit that, maybe is still on the table as a valid question. Not sure the best way to broach that is to invoke the worst thing Joe has likely ever done, but it’s a fraught conversation and there’s likely no true “good” way to broach it.

        1. thejeff

          This conversation would be going very differently if Joe just said that it was transphobic to leave Carla off the list as well as the list being awful in the first place.
          His actual approach is not making her wonder if he was transphobic in the PAST, but whether he still is. And it’s making me wonder as well.

  25. drs

    https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/joe+carla/

    3 strips in which they both appeared, no actual interactions shown, except I guess Joe lurking while Carla looked at Joyce’s toe… at a time when Joe had moved well beyond keeping his list. Heck, I think all three strips are post-List and Apology.

    1. Rolf of Many Doors

      Let’s see…
      First is Joe barely on-screen, and given the previous strip, likely directing the vast majority of his attention to either Joyce’ wellbeing and/or ire towards Jacob out of jealousy
      Second’s one where they’re in notably separate locations, assumedly with Carla as an observer from afar with Joe’s awareness of it being dubious at best
      Third’s with Carla implied in the background off-screen with Joe’s attention being solely on Joyce
      Conclusion – Joe has little to no awareness of Carla’s existence due to all canonical interactions between them being even less than between Legolas and Frodo in LotR (Legolas had one five-word line in which he spoke to Frodo, Joe and Carla haven’t even had a single word spoken between them)

    2. cachew sequel

      there also don’t exist strips with joe and sal until a scene where he apologizes for the list. and he did rate her. (this is likely also true for multiple other women on there, but sal IS another main character). we just don’t spend every waking moment of their lives with every character.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Can you imagine if we did? We’d probably still be in the first week of the continuity.

    3. thejeff

      What about all the other women on the list that don’t share many appearances with Joe?
      This would be a valid argument if he apparently hadn’t gotten everyone on the floor, except for Carla.

  26. Yotomoe

    I’m just confused. Based on yesterday’s strip Joe doesn’t even know who Carla is. Have they even met? I assumed Joe’s list was just based on girls he’s seen. Joyce even has to describe Carla to Joe. And honestly if you’ve been in the vicinity of Carla you would remember her, even if you were transphobic. The bright red head roller skating and throwing pies and shouting her own name would be hard to miss or forget. Is Carla the literal only girl in the whole school who is not on the list? Is there a quantity of other trans women at this school that are also not on his list. Is there not a quantity of cis women at this school who are not on Joe’s list?
    I genuinely can’t tell if Joyce’s argument is meant to be reasonable or if she’s just being paranoid here.

    1. Nono

      I think on one strip someone in the dorms said about the list, “we’re all on here”. Other than, well we know, Carla.

      But presumably not every woman at the school is on the list, given that Joe didn’t even know the engineering school had women and he only wanted to add Rachel to the list like… months into the semester (when Becky visited).

      It’s entirely possible that Joe was being transphobic and it’s entirely possible that he excluded Carla for other reasonable reasons, Joyce is just very concerned about the first possibility.

      1. Jon

        “Months” is overstating it: I’m pretty sure his Do List got leaked before the leaves changed, and “Season One” (I.e. the first ten years) ended before Halloween. Everything we see in first semester happens in, like, five weeks.

        1. BBCC

          The list was leaked mid-late October, it’s now mid-late January.

    2. Segnosaur

      He might have seen her, and could describe her appearance/characteristics, but he might just not know her name.

      (I think there’s been at least one other person on his list that he described without giving a name.)

      1. BBCC

        He described both Jennifer and Sal without names and it doesn’t seem like he’d had substantial interaction with Sal so he’d have to have literally never even seen Carla walking around.

        1. Nono

          Sal and Jennifer are next door neighbors to Joyce. The Rachels, Mary, etc also all live like very near her.

          Carla’s at the end of the hall. That doesn’t mean Joe couldn’t have seen her, but it makes it possible.

        2. BBCC

          Carla skates up and down the halls all the time and is very loud, doing stuff like playing loud music to get attention. She’s hard to miss.

        3. Thomas

          She was considerably easier to miss when she wasn’t in the comic. Maybe she gradually developed her extravagant behavior? Maybe she incrementally Flanderized herself into the obnoxious redhead that we know and love?

        4. BBCC

          According to Rachel, she’s been an asshole since at least last year. XD Poor Rachel, Ruth, Sarah and other upperclassmen

        5. thejeff

          But also according to Rachel, they sometimes forget.

          Because Carla really isn’t that good at being an asshole.

        6. Needfuldoer

          She’s the tsundre version of an egotistical jerk. It’s the mask she wears to protect herself from the world’s malice.

    3. Taffy

      Joyce seems to be working through some thoughts in real time, tbh. It’s probably better to have Joe here to respond directly, as opposed to her building some kind of story in her head in private and being Weird™ at him for it. The two of them do tend to work out their quibbles best in person.

    4. Wraithy2773

      I’m reading his comments as a bit of a self-conscious dodge, to be honest. That he’s downplaying his actions because he’s anxious about where Joyce is going with this and, while he accepts that he was being a sexist jerkass back then, he’s not exactly eager to add another thing he was shitty about to the pile.

      I don’t think its ever been stated outright if Carla was on the list, but if everyone in the ladies wing of that dorm was on the list *except* Carla, then it kinda does make claims of “i just didn’t know who she was” a fair bit dubious.

      Still, we’re mid-scene. This is the time to comment on funny bits and laugh and let things play out, and save the deep commentariat stuff until we actually know the full facts of the situation.

      1. Yotomoe

        To be fair I get that. I usually deflect with humor when I’m nervous too. And there’s kinda no way to confront people about biases, subconscious or otherwise that doesn’t come across as an attack on their character.
        I think a big issue I see people run into is getting really mad when people don’t wanna admit when they were wrong or have biases they don’t consider cuz in all honesty. It is hard. Your ego almost exists solely to protect you from perceived social harm to yourself. Everyone wants to think they’re s good person when people get fight or flighty when they feel like they’re under attack.

  27. Theozilla

    Wait I’m confused, was Joe even aware of Carla’s existence when he originally made the list? Not that Joe having unconscious transphobic bias is impossible (it certainly is, even for well-meaning people), but if Joe wasn’t even aware of her existence (let alone if she was trans) when the list was made, isn’t that more the primary factor for Carla not even being on the list than anything else?

    1. Jon

      I think if Joe had no recognition at all of Carla, this strip would’ve played out differently.

      From a purely meta level, I think we’re past the point where “Joe didn’t know Carla therefore the question is moot” is going to be the resolution. I think we’re gearing up for a discussion at minimum, and possibly an argument/conflict.

      1. Theozilla

        But didn’t Joe literally just express having no recognition at all of Carla in yesterday’s strip? That’s why I am confused, because so far I haven’t seen anything (or remember anything at the moment) indicating that Joe’s previous lack of recognition of Carla shouldn’t be treated as genuine?

        1. Jon

          Joe probably doesn’t know her name but knows her by sight. I recognized 10x more people than I “knew” at my college campus.

          So when Joyce described her physically in this strip, Joe’s brain likely went “uh oh, Carla must be the trans woman I never took an interest in and didn’t even include on the list, and Joyce noticed her absence. This does not reflect well on past me being good at treating trans women like women.”

          See also Willis’s comment up higher, that Joe marked multiple women as really low or zeroes. Joe isn’t obligated to be ATTRACTED to Carla. But not putting her on a list where he put every other woman, regardless of attraction to them, would have dicey implications.

        2. Theozilla

          If that’s the intended assumption we’re supposed to make (that Joe is familiar enough to recognize Carla by sight, and thus would had the minimal awareness of her an individual to rank when he made his list) then that hasn’t been conveyed very well in the comic so far. Now I agree what you’re describing is easily very possible, but I simply haven’t seen enough apparent textual evidence for that to be my default understanding of the narrative text so far.

        3. Taffy

          There’s a good chance we’ll have some of this answered in the next strip, tbh.

        4. BBCC

          Joe included a bunch of women he didn’t know, like Sal. He just included them under pseudonyms. Even if he genuinely doesn’t know Carla’s name, that wouldn’t preclude him from including her. And Carla is loud, obnoxious and skates around the hallways all the time. It’d be hard to miss her. So that is a pretty surprising turn of events if it’s true.

  28. Charles Phipps

    FYI – I think we’re meant to take that Joe not knowing who Carla is, is something he’s absolutely lying about,

    Especially if she’s his cousin.

    😀

    1. Theozilla

      Carla is Joe’s cousin?

      1. Charles Phipps

        It’s a joke that Carla must be related to Joe and Rachel somehow due to being their child in another reality.

  29. Zamperla

    Snorts quietly at the alt text.

    yeah legitimately like. How could ya actually know that about his bang list, let alone if he knows someone is trans she doesn’t know…? And also, as joe points out here: Literally what would that even mean or not. Its also a list and behavior he dont do and has genuinely grown from so Who Care.

    (she care, bc she’s trying to work out how to deal with being cool with trans people at all)

    I proclaim them both: Dumb Chuckleheads I am very fond of and think are doin ok. I thank them for havng this convo with each other, and bothering no trans people about it.

    1. thejeff

      The list is something he’s grown from.
      If transphobia made he consider Carla not a woman and thus not put her on the list, is that something he’s actually grown from?

      1. Zamperla

        ya probably. if not: seems like he’s in a good position to? He’s a fictional character I’m taking in in like. 10 second to five minute conversation and event slices, and I don’t have access to the Buffer but. I suspect tomorrow he’s not going to go You Were Right Joyce Im Transphobically Not Attracted And I’m Never Going to Change. it’ll probably be more nuanced then that and explored over time.

        tho a bunch of folks here sure are eager to go ‘I, TOO, DO NOT HAVE A BONER FOR TRANS PEOPLE’ so I can see why folks are nervous.

        1. thejeff

          We’ll see, because the question isn’t “does he have a boner for trans people”, but “is he actually going to think of Jocelyne as a woman”.

  30. Segnosaur

    I have to admit (to my shame) I would probably be in the same boat as Joe.

    I recognize that Trans people are fully deserving of the right to be treated as the gender they identify with. They should be allowed to participate in sports, should be provided the necessary medical care. They are people, and in general deserving of dignity. (I don’t know anyone who is trans, at least not that I could identify, but I have been around family who have brought the subject up for some weird reason, and I have defended them.)

    However, I have to admit I probably would not consider one to be a sexual partner. There is a more… primitive… part of my brain that says “this person had/has the genitals that you aren’t interested in”, even though logically I know that that should not matter.

    1. Taffy

      Humans sure are messy.

      1. Segnosaur

        That’s why I prefer dinosaurs.

        1. Taffy

          Pretty sure that violates at least one or two federal laws, heyoooo

    2. Dawn

      Assuming Joe did exclude Carla because she is trans…

      The problem isn’t that he doesn’t want to sleep with a trans woman, you can’t exactly control what genitals you are attracted to and that doesn’t make you transphobic. The problem is that he made a list of women ranked in order of how much he wanted to have sex with them, and Carla should have been at the bottom of the list in that case, not absent from it. Of course, he might have excluded her just because he actually didn’t know who she was.

      1. Taffy

        Why’s it always gotta come down to genitals?

        1. Wraithy2773

          I mean, not everything does, but the context is a list of woman Joe ranked by fuckability, and fucking is probably going to involve genitals at some point, so it does kinda become relevant.

        2. Dana W

          Why does everybody assume everybody trans has a unit? She is an adult of extremely rich parents. Her status is entirely up in the air until the cartoonist says otherwise.

        3. Wraithy2773

          …what makes you think I am assuming that? The only person who might have in this context is Joe, a character in the comic, and whether or not he did and if he used that as part of ranking Carla is the critical factor of this current set of strips.

        4. Dana W

          The assumption here has been made more than once,

        5. Wraithy2773

          I don’t doubt, but when you reply to someone with that kind of line, it comes off as a pretty aggressive and targeted accusation.

          We can take a breath and keep relaxed over it all. This is a suuuuuper leftist space, if there’s a place to assume people aren’t being transphobic dickheads, its going to be in this comment thread.

        6. Taffy

          See, you’d think that, but

        7. Nymph

          People are FREQUENTLY transphobic dickheads in this comic’s comment threads, unfortunately.

          And “take a breath and keep relaxed” isn’t as helpful as you’d think when it comes to topics about personhood.

      2. Segnosaur

        Its possible that she doesn’t know who she is.

        But lets say he saw her enough to at least (in theory) put her on the list. Then you get the question… is it “worse” (more insulting) to include a person on the list but with a low rank or to just leave them off totally (which at least gives some plausibile deinability.)

        1. thejeff

          In the abstract, it’s probably worse to include with low ranking.

          OTOH, if you make a list of “all the women”, including those with low rankings, but leave off the trans women, that’s transphobic. It shows you don’t consider the trans women to fall under “all the women”.

          Of course, it could be worse. He could have included her with a low ranking and gross transphobic comments about why.

      3. RocketRelm

        Am I the only person who thinks Carla not being on the do list was a good thing?

        No, not “the do list was a stupid thing and anybody on it was bad”, but as in, “If Joe decided to keep trans people off the do-list as a policy, that would specifically be a good action with good intentions”?

        Consider the audience for a list like this. A bunch of frat boys in an area that (I could be wrong) leans conservative, where we’ve seen a sampling of several creeps already, and provably has people like Mary. The kinds of people that make jokes about killing trans people, and vote for Trump to enact such hopes, in a society where trans fear was so hyped and popular that less than 31% of voters would get out to vote for Kamala. I think if Joe is aware of the trans issue at all, he might recognize that the purpose wouldn’t be “lets go flirt and get laid”, the purpose would be “rocks and knives”.

        Even if Carla is “so very very out”, it’s spotlighting her and other trans people for every creepazoid that’s had a bad day and wants to look up where the local (derogatory word)s are. Imagine it without the rest of the do-list, a compendium of all the trans people on a campus circling around, among other things, the local white nationalist ring. Obviously the whole thing is a danger, but that feels like an escalation that would take a special kind of ignorance to think up the trans issue and still put it into the hands of these violent people, and the kind of thing that would need its own apology.

        1. BBCC

          That would be true but I don’t think Joe would’ve thought about it so deeply. He didn’t consider the risk to the other girls and didn’t seem all that worried once Rachel brought it up. I think someone would need to point out that risk.

        2. zee

          I mean the do list was a bad thing and everything surrounding it is bad. It’s comes down to trans inclusive radical misogyny vs regular degular trans misogyny combo. The options are affirming her gender in a disgusting way that’s also disrespectful of her sexuality or just straight up implying she’s not a real woman. Honestly I think Carla probably preferred being off the list, it just says things about Joe as a person that he left her off

    3. Yotomoe

      I think genitals DO matter. Not for how someone identifies but in cases of attraction. You are valid in what you do or don’t find attractive so long as you don’t use that lack of attraction deny someone else’s identity.
      The conflict in this case is that Joe should have put Carla on the list just to show he respects her identity as a woman, but he did not. I think it’s honestly a lateral move from “she’s on the list but I rank her a 0 cuz I’m not into trans women” but I do feel like disincluding her is kinda implying he doesn’t view her as a woman at all.

      1. Serendipity

        You have absolutely no idea what’s in a trans person’s pants without asking.

        1. Yotomoe

          Never once said you do. I’m assuming in this situation they’re stating a case in which they do know. In which case I defer to my previous statement. You’re allowed to not be attracted to genitals you don’t like. If you don’t know then it won’t matter until you do know unless you don’t care.

        2. Taffy

          I guess you could pants ’em in public, but that’s generally frowned upon in most circumstances already. It’s pretty much only ever okay if you’re doing it to your friend who wears baggy white boxer shorts with big red hearts on ’em, your jerkwad boss on your way out of the office after a cathartic lambasting in front of everyone, your mermaid ex-wife, or that one little prick at the grocery store. You know the one, he doesn’t work there but he always fucking seems to be there no matter what day or time you go, and he’s always got some odd fucking remark about what’s in your cart and you’re just there for a fucking club soda and some mixed nuts, why does he even have opinions on your snack, Dylan, how about we show the whole fucking store his piss-and-marinara-stained ahegao boxers, see if he’s got a smart fucking remark about that, the little prick

        3. morleuca

          I dunno, if they are baggy they might it stay up as easily as other underwear types, and come down with the outerwear

    4. Dana W

      That;s an assumption on your part, a lot trans people have surgery, but you are 100% allowed to pick who you find attractive.

    5. Prior Semblance

      On a biological level my mind only really cares what it sees down there in the present. However, surgery bothers me a lot (I almost passed out when TALKING to a dentist about getting a tooth pulled).

      Someday we’ll have perfect medical technology where you can’t even tell someone is trans. But having a continuous reminder of such an intimate surgery, especially with a new partner… I don’t think I could do it. Maybe later in life I’ll be more desensitized to stuff and it would be fine. This is all a low stakes issue for me though because I’ve been with my partner my entire adult life.

  31. Suet

    You can’t just bestow womanhood by— You can’t be retroactive by— …fudge it all.

    Report comments, ya say? Report: The Patreon description for this comic is a disaster-level threat

  32. Dante

    I get the feeling Joyce is pretty bad at forgiving herself for the kind of things she espoused at the beginning of the year. She’s changed and she wants people to acknowledge she’s changed because dammit she’s put in the work, and people don’t really let her forget how she was…

    But she can’t let it go, either.

    And since this topic hits her from really up close, she’s kinda judging Joe by the same meter she judges herself, which isn’t usual.

    1. Dante

      Meanwhile we don’t even know if indeed Joe knew about Carla’s existence, as Nono pointed out. Joyce is kinda jumping into conclusions. If he did, though…

      PS: I really like this conversation. It highlights Joe has grown, too. I do think he started paying way more attention to the Gender Studies class after the Do List incident, even though he postured like he wasn’t.

    2. Dawn

      Yep, I think that’s it exactly. She’s judging herself really harshly and projecting that onto Joe, because both of them had some awful views at the beginning of the school year.

    3. BBCC

      As Willis once said, she thinks the best of everyone else and the worst of herself.

      1. Dawn

        And she’s honestly doing really well. She’s only known Jocelyne as her sister for less than a day, when she knew her as her brother for 18 years. That’s a big adjustment, nobody is expecting her to be perfect on the literal first day! Becky has had time to learn, and none of the other characters knew Jocelyne, so of couse it will be easier for them. But she just keeps overthrowing it and keeps being so harsh on herself.

        1. Needfuldoer

          Joyce is expecting herself to be perfect on the first day.

    4. Nono

      Which is funny because one of the most memorable strips from It’s Walky!Joyce in my memory was when she told Walky “they’re my standards, not yours. It would be unfair for me to judge you on them.”

    5. Nicoleandmaggie

      I mean, if he did know she existed and I need to be less trusting of the pop up comic then he probably just needs to say my bad, I should be better in the future. Carla is a woman. (Of course this situation won’t come up again because I learned not to objectify women like that and I’m in a monogamous relationship now, but in other less sexist circumstances.). He can model how to deal with mistakes.

      1. BBCC

        Well, he certainly doesn’t know Carla by name but we know from other strips that he doesn’t need to know someone to put them on the Do List. He didn’t know Sal but she was there as ‘hot motorcycle babe with a spider tattoo’ and said she’d be a ten if she didn’t smoke.

  33. Buddascrayon

    So, weird question here but have Joe and Carla ever actually interacted? I cannot rightly recall.

    1. NGPZ

      https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/joe+carla/

      apparently no,

      not surprising, given Joe’s *reputation* and Carla being openly sex-repulsed XD

    2. Taffy

      Not even once, no.

  34. Yotomoe

    Also even when I think about the idea of him not putting Carla on the list I can see non-transphobic reasoning. Ie. Not including her just cuz he feels like it would be unfair to put her at the bottom based on her gender identity but would be disingenuous to put her higher since its based on personal preference. Joyce only got a -0 for literally beating the shit out of him. I’m playing devil’s advocate of course but it gives very “if you don’t have something nice to say say nothing at all”.
    (Less jsutifiable,ironically, when you remember he made the list as a public service. Cuz at that point you should include Carla and hit it with a “I’m not into her but if you are there ya go” which is morally wrong for other reasons but would be morally…allyship?)

    1. cachew sequel

      the funny(?) part about “playing devil’s advocate” is of course that the devils are doing plenty of advocating themselves. it’s usually unnecessary.
      in this case, cis people every day everywhere are talking up storms about how actually x thing they did or said wasn’t transphobic, not even a little. you might even find some of them in this very comment section!

      1. Yotomoe

        Most people advocate for themselves. Most people like to believe they or people they like are good people. Introspection is hard.

  35. Liara

    Me too Joyce, me too. *looks suspiciously at the comment section*

    1. Taffy

      *hides the sniper rifle behind my back*

  36. Queen Anthai

    Joyce, you were a hair’s breadth from having to Google “how to be normal around trans people” not all that long ago. Don’t pull “that tells a story” on your boyfriend, especially now that he cares about more than just getting his dick wet.

    1. Fart Captor

      She’s fucking right. And JOE only recently started treating women as full human beings. They BOTH used to be worse people, and they’ve both got plenty of room for further improvement. She’s not bringing this up to attack Joe. She’s bringing it up because it’s something she wants him to think about

      1. Yak

        Even if it’s not intended as an attack, it can still have the same effects. Joe is clearly getting defensive, which is not a good foot to be on when thinking about what you believe, and Joyce is partly responsible due to how the question was framed (“I have reason to question what you believe” instead of “what do you believe”)

        1. Fart Captor

          Joe getting defensive about it does not make Joyce wrong to bring it up, especially when she did so VERY gently

          Maybe reflect on the Joe’s feelings that are leading Joe to get defensive matter more than Joyce’s feelings leading her to want to make sure her boyfriend is in fact someone that her sister will be safe around?

    2. Yotomoe

      Glass houses and whatnot. I think that’s why shes trying not to be too accusatory or anything. Just that he echewed her fears

    3. Nymph

      Yes. How dare she learn better and then talk with her boyfriend to see if they agree on a fundamental issue.

      1. Taffy

        [dog with frisbee meme] no grow, only improve

      2. MordWa

        “Fundamental issue”.

        Jeez, Are you Carla’s press agent? She’s not THAT important yo Joe’s fictional life.

        1. thejeff

          No, but Jocelyne’s important to Joyce’s and that makes Joe’s take on trans people important to her.

        2. zee

          Whether or not someone’s transphobic, beyonf just the surface level of being polite and respectful to someone’s face, is pretty fuckin fundamental

        3. Taffy

          You’re terrible at trolling. Just complete dogshit at it. Give up forever and stop trying, you’ll never be good enough.

        4. cachew sequel

          this is a scathing comment coming from Taffy specifically

        5. Nymph

          False, Carla is important in everyone’s fictional life.

  37. TheKelliestKelly

    Reminder on the To “Do” List since it’s been a few years. Joe put basically any woman he saw on the list and rated them from negative zero (Joyce, after their bad first date) to 11 (Rachel, who broke the usual 1 to 10 scale). Some women were on there by name but most were just described or had nicknames. I’m gonna back up what I’m saying with strips

    https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/stinkeye/

    In this strip (early in the storyline) Joe starts to introduce himself to Other Rachel and seems not to know her. However, he has already rated her as a 3.

    https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/chubby/

    There is a confrontation between Joyce and Joe in this strip. She paraphrases several entries of their mutual friends/acquaintances. In the previous strip, she read her own entry to him.

    https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/pissier/

    In this strip, several of the women in Read Hall discuss the list. Mandy says she’s sure it includes every woman in their residence hall. Carla is there. She has not looked at the list herself and prefers not to know whether or not she is on it.

    It’s a shitty, sexist list and Carla’s exclusion from it is transphobic. It’s not just everyone that Joe wants to fuck. He includes women he isn’t interested in. He was rating all women on their fuckability. I’m not saying he has to be sexually interested in Carla to not be transphobic. Excluding her from a list of women – albeit a super gross list – is transphobic.

    It’s not the most transphobic thing in the world but it is bigotry on top of bigotry

    1. Theozilla

      I had forgotten that Joe’s list included that many women that Joe only knew by sight (and not name)c that definitely makes it more likely that Joe back then would have had at least minimal awareness of Carla’s existence to rank her on the list. Though I do think it is still possible that Joe genuinely never even knew Carla by sight at the time when he originally made his list, though definitely less so than before.

    2. Taffy

      Not to be a skank here, but let’s not forget “I’m especially sorry to ‘Bean-bag With Glasses”. So he put that on his publicly-shared list but not Carla, which is just a bad look regardless of the reason.

      I’m assuming “Bean-bag With Glasses” is Purple Rachel, by the by? Not sure why her in particular, but… If she’s a bean-bag though, she’s a damn sexy bean-bag.

      1. morleuca

        One issue I see, is that Joyce isn’t describing Carla in a way that might trigger Joe’s memory. The adjectives she uses are how she sees Carla. If you need a shirt descriptor for the list, “Mouth on Rollerskates” would sound more like something Joe would have put on his list

    3. BBCC

      https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/prediction/

      I’m adding this one because I’m once again seeing people saying that Joe’s list was private and not meant to be seen by anyone else and I need that misconception to DIE.

      1. Taffy

        JOE’S LIST WAS NEVER PRIVATE, FOLKS!!! NOT PRIVATE!!!

        1. BBCC

          You understand me. Never leave, Taffy.

      2. Tan

        I shall further offer https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/boyspizzaretreat/ in support of this statement, wherein he offers it to his gym bro’s girlfriend unprompted. It was intended to be invite-only, but any claims that it was private in the sense of for his own eyes only are pure nonsense.

        1. Taffy

          Oh sweet, that’s the exact strip I was paraphrasing earlier. Based and Raidahpilled, good work.

        2. Nymph

          “And that thing’s got grannies on it” pretty much also puts to bed (if Willis’ comments hadn’t already) the idea that the list was in any way exclusive or discerning in who was on it.

        3. BorkBorkBork

          I really want to get on the same page as everybody else, but I’m just having a hard time believing that, though.

          I mean, that same strip you mention says that Joe “practically excised” Joyce from the list. That wasn’t because she stopped being a woman. That was because he would, under no circumstances, ever consider sleeping with her.

          Same with the strip where he mentions the RSS feed for the first time. That is the point where Dorothy is ADDED to the list. She wasn’t previously because she was Danny’s girlfriend and therefore someone he would never consider. Not because she wasn’t a woman.

          Rachel’s a 3, but he’s still sweet-talking her. The list has “grannies” on it, but honestly, you don’t know what Joe finds attractive. GILF is an acronym that existed before I typed it in this window.

          Like I said, I honestly really really want to get on the same page as everyone else. It’s not fun feeling like a transphobic shitbag cis male. But it just doesn’t add up to me, and *especially* if it’s something distributed as a reference for others, and intended as an objective score.

          Like. If I’m rating cartoon characters by how fuckable they are. I might put Futurama’s Leela mid, and Simpsons’ Marge low, and Sailor Moon’s Usagi high. But I’m not going to add Lilah’s mom, or Simpsons’ Agnes, or Sailor Moon’s Chibiusa, because they are not even on the radar. Just like I wouldn’t add Lumpy Space Princess, or Cheer Bear, or Sandy Cheeks.

          Is Sandy Cheeks fuckable? Probably. What should she rate? Hell if I know. What should I rate her? I honestly can’t. She is exactly as fuckable as an umbrella, or the letter R, or the concept of space time. I feel no sexual attraction nor revulsion.

          If I do not put Sandy Cheeks on my list, does that mean I think she is not a woman, or that she is not a cartoon character? No. It simply means that it is not an exhaustive list, and I am not going to fill it with entry upon entry of disclaimers, simply because someone might see it, get the wrong idea, and think that I was stating that they weren’t women.

          I can’t think of a single reason why Joe would, on a non-exhaustive list, include people that he has zero sexual feelings for, either positive or negative. And as far as I can tell, he has never stated the parameters that everyone assumes here – that it’s a list of every woman that Joe encounters regularly, and that Carla’s exclusion implies that he didnt think of her as a woman – and the evidence posed here, implies many times that there are women not on the list because he doesnt consider “doing” them.

          Please prove me wrong. I want to be wrong. I want to be convinced. But my stupid brain is keeping me up and I can’t let this go. If Willis said somewhere that Joe didnt think of Carla as a woman, or if he said that Joe ranked *everyone,* then I will happily, gratefully, shut my yap and agree wholeheartedly that it was transphobic, because it demonstrated that Joe didnt *really* think of her as a woman, instead of just one that he felt nothing for.

        4. BorkBorkBork

          Oh fuck I’m going insane. I’m sorry.

        5. Taffy

          Me every ten minutes at any given social gathering

        6. Taffy

          Isn’t Usagi Tsukino like 15?

        7. BBCC

          14 to 16 depending what arc you look at.

        8. zee

          Sailor moon is aot of people first childhood crush or awakening or whatever, and I’m of the belief that people tend to revert to whatever age they were when they fell for their cartoon crush whenever it comes up. I mean I’m instantly 14 again whenever I see Marshall Lee or Raven or Ryoga Hibiki

        9. BorkBorkBork

          I haven’t watched Sailor Moon since it was on at 7 AM on Kids WB in seventh grade, so, that checks out.

          BTW, for anyone reading, someone told me that Willis mentioned in the comments that the list included people Joe had no attraction for, and thus trans women were conspicuous. I wish I did a ctrl+F earlier. Everything above and below is stupid nonsense.

        10. BBCC

          You’re thinking of this as a ‘my list’ thing, not a ‘list of women I see ranked by fuckability’. Joe left Dorothy off while she was dating Danny but immediately added her back. He added women he did not know well enough to know their names like Jennifer and Sal. The point of the RSS feed is to establish the public nature of the list and that he did in fact want other men to read it for tips, so his personal attractions only go so far.

          Every other woman in their dorm is on the list. Carla is not some shy butterfly who never comes out – she regularly skates up and down the halls, sometimes blaring loud music, demanding attention from new people she sees. The odds he doesn’t know her at least to the same extent he knew Sal, who is far more reclusive, is, shall we say, unlikely.

          When Joe says “and that thing has grannies on it” it’s as an indicator for how LOW Joyce is that she isn’t being ranked at all. Joyce was a zero minus and Joe was angry when he saw her, so that ‘grannies are on it’ comment is not a positive about the women in question.

          He sweet talks Rachel as a way to demonstrate to Danny how desperate lower scored women are. Not out of attraction. And we know Joyce is not the only zero on there.

          You keep people you’re not into of your ‘potential partner’ list. You don’t keep them off your ‘help guys get laid’ list.

        11. BorkBorkBork

          Did he ever say any tips? Joyce read some entries almost verbatim. If he gave tips on how to approach each girl, I’d assume that would be, like, ten times worse than the ranking, because that’s basically predator behavior.

          If it is Joe’s “Help guys get laid” list, and Joe’s sexual orientation is such that he has zero sexual attraction to trans women – why WOULD he comment on Carla? Everyone else he commented on not because “their gender is female” but because he has attraction to them.

          And yeah, we can say that definitively. I mean, think logically here. What is the difference between 3 and 4? 3 and 2? Attractiveness. We can’t say that Joe is not attracted to Rachel, because he recognizes her as having 30% of something he thinks Joyce has 0% of. And by the way – even at 0, he *still thinks* Joyce is physically attractive. That doesn’t change. He just believes the crazy outweighs any potential positives, like how Sal’s smoking drops her down a few.

          I just don’t know how Joe could rate a person his orientation is not attracted for. That would be like asking an ace dude to rank people on “doability”. They wouldn’t know where to begin. Just like I wouldn’t know where to begin with rating men on a “doability” scale. I can judge when some people are conventionally attractive or not, but it’s really just a general idea, and I’m constantly surprised. Like, John Krasinski, People Magazine’s 2024 sexiest man alive? Would never have guessed in a million years.

          What would Joe even say? “Look, guys, theres one more woman on the floor, but I cannot rate her, but I will not say why out of respect for her, but I do want to acknowledge that she IS a woman, and please consider her for fucking as you peruse the ladies?” Why? Why would he feel some sort of duty to include her? Gender isn’t defining his list, his dingdong is.

        12. zee

          Ffs JOE IS NOT ATTRACTED TO EVERYONE ON HIS LIST. Fuckin Willis himself said so, god damn it

        13. Wilde

          We’re operating off of imperfect information so I understand your confusion. My way of determining this is that Willis is now clarifying in the comments that Carla being left off the list is not explainable in these ways. I think initial misunderstanding makes a lot of sense because I had the same thought. I don’t have a perfect memory for decades old webcomics lore so I was over here like, “was the list that expansive to start? Did the list include all OTHER women except trans women?” It wasn’t clear at first. But the author seems to have clarified now that trans women were a glaring omission, so I will take that as intended and not apply my own interpretation. I think if it were genuinely the case that several women he didn’t know had been left off the list, it would be possible that he simply didn’t know her and forgot. But it sounds like Willis is saying the exceptions to the list were notable, so I take their word for it.

        14. BorkBorkBork

          Did he? OK then, I’m completely wrong, it’s 100% transphobia then.

          Thank you for telling me plainly; I was looking for something like that.

        15. BBCC

          No worries, sometimes we miss stuff.

        16. BBCC

          The tips are things like saying what they’re interested in so guys can get an ‘in’ with them, like noting how Dorothy likes books.

          He notes that Sal would be a ten if she didn’t smoke, thus giving guys who don’t CARE about smoking an adjusted rating. There isn’t a reason not to for Carla because he DOES include women he’s not attracted to. They have lower scores, including some with zeroes. You’re still thinking of this like his personal attraction list and not, as someone aptly put it above, a pokedex for women organized by fuckability.

          Joyce is different because she’s not originally a zero. She was a four. Other zeroes on there were women Joe wasn’t attracted to at all.

          Joe included women he wasn’t into. He did not include Carla. That is what Joyce is questioning.

        17. Nymph

          I am legitimately not reading that. Sorry you feel that way or too bad or whatever works, okay buddy?

        18. BorkBorkBork

          Yeah, no, someone pointed out that my assumptions were wrong and that Willis cleared it up.

          Sorry for my insane rambling. And, uh, in retrospect I see you mentioned Willis in your original post.

      3. Needfuldoer

        It was meant to be seen by anyone and everyone who was not on it.

  38. Woop de doop

    Me here just assuming Joe is speaking in good faith and being completely honest because why wouldn’t I? Idk why people are arguing.

    1. Dana W

      Some people just need to be deeply affronted to function.

    2. Jeremiah

      Because he is a person, and people tend to not like to think about having subconscious prejudices?

    3. Nymph

      It’s a rough topic with a lot of very serious repercussions for trans people when it pops up in real life, so it’s tied to a lot of HUGE feelings.

      Sometimes shit’s worth arguing about idk what to tell you.

  39. Dana W

    He is going to need medical intervention to get the foot out of his mouth.

  40. Bryy

    Some of these posts not only tripping over themselves to defend Joe’s diet prejudice but also his sexism. lol

    1. NGPZ

      like, even when the author of this very comic calls them out both here and on BlueSky

      for reals. just. ugh

    2. thejeff

      Every time it comes up.

      Joe apparently never needed a character growth arc because he never did anything wrong.

    3. zee

      Fake Joe fans dude. Gatekeeping is cringe but like, nah if you’re minimizing Joe’s shitty past behavior I’m keeping the fuckin gate. You’re not a real fan if you refuse to honor his growth by acting like he never needed it in the first place. And clearly he needs to grow some more bc, duh he’s like 18 and only just started being a decent person. Acknowledge your fav is morally flawed like all human beings are, forehead!!!

      For the record (sorry dawg I’m autistic as shit and gotta over explain myself) I’m not saying his shittyness is okay bc he’s a teenager and all people are flawed and at least subconsciously bigoted. Just that, duh no shit he is. It’s denying basic facets of reality to pretend he holds no bigotries. I wrote like a whole essay about it down below

  41. june gloom

    Man, nobody’s allowed to make mistakes in this comic, huh. Wasn’t that long ago that people wailed and gnashed their teeth whenever Joyce showed up.

    1. Bryy

      That’s certainly one way to downplay toxic masculinity and religious fundamentalism.

      1. june gloom

        Show me on the doll where I did any of that.

  42. Fart Captor

    I’m gonna need cis people to stop feeling qualified to express opinions about gender and attraction for a bit

    1. Jeremiah

      But my opinions about groups I don’t belong to and topic I don’t know shit about must be heeeeeeeaerd!

    2. Nymph

      I wish you good luck on this, no one has ever gotten them to shut up before and I don’t rate your chances now, but BEST of luck. 🙁

    3. Regret

      Flawed wording, you’re also implying that cis people don’t get to have opinions about cis attraction.

      1. Taffy

        They don’t. I’m revoking those too. ?

        1. Nymph

          I support this. It’s just for a little while, cis people go grab a juice box and a snack for a bit. You’ll get gender and attraction opinions back soon.

        2. Jeremiah

          Honestly we deserve that. We really can’t be trusted with those

        3. Liara

          I’m gonna support your notion. They’ve shown they can’t deal with it

      2. Yotomoe

        I mean I feel like part of their argument is that there is no cis attraction. Or at least nobody can be attracted or unattached to people based on cis or trans cuz nobody can truly tell whom is what.

        1. Taffy

          Look, I promise I’m not being a shithead here, it’s just that “there is no cis attraction” is a fucking hilarious phrase to read and I’m cackling like a coven of hen witches.

      3. Fart Captor

        Cis people can have opinions once you’ve actually taken time to reflect on how your perception of gender and what bits you find yucky has been heavily influenced by the very transphobic, homophobic, cis-normative, misogynistic, racist and patriarchal society and culture you’ve grown up in, and actually discovered and worked on multiple harmful ideas you’ve internalized without realizing it because they had never really been challenged or presented with an alternative

        Cuz the majority of even well-meaning cis people, and ESPECIALLY white cis men, have at best a superficial understanding of these influences, and like Joe, get defensive when someone even gently suggests they have internalized something unpleasant that they need to unpack and deal with

      4. zee

        I feel like ace people should be the only ones who get to talk about attraction actually

    4. Yotomoe

      But the comic is about two cis people expressing opinions about gender and attraction.

      1. Jeremiah

        If the people on the comic jumped off a cliff, would you do it? Didn’t think so.

        1. Taffy

          What if it was a sexy cliff

        2. Jeremiah

          Ok in that case it’s fine, live your Truth.

        3. Yotomoe

          I might.

    5. Zamperla

      yeah people sure seem really excited to volunteer Their Personal Opinions about how fuckable they do or do not find people based on their Literal Genitals in here, he says in exhausted fucking trans dude.

      1. Taffy

        They can’t wait, dude.

        1. Jeremiah

          It make one want to throw things at someone, dude.

        2. Nymph

          They’ve been so busy having this argument in their heads, waiting for some librul to try and FORCE them to say something nice about [genital configuration] and they just won’t be silenced any longer.

        3. Taffy

          There’s an episode of The King of Queens (starting Paul Blart) where the main guy, Doug, mentions getting a boat. I forget why, maybe he got some money from somewhere or maybe it was hypothetical. Anyway, he has this unusually firm, almost aggressive tone when he says what he wants to name it and why, and his wife is like “Wow, you’ve had this argument in your head a lot, huh.”
          It’s like that, but with hypothetical quantum supercocks.

        4. morleuca

          I’m picturing a quantum supercock as something you can buy in a fallout game, but you have to spend prewar dollars on it

        5. Needfuldoer

          To me “Hypothetical Quantum Supercocks” sounds more like a Steel Panther album title.

        6. Zamperla

          I have to be totally honest I think a lot of people racing to tell us how much they are or are not attracted to trans people because of Hypothetical Genitals are, also, Liberals. There’s like. a FEVERISH desire to confess this stuff.

        7. Zamperla

          Note: I am speaking from lived experience. It’s less of a GROSS I COULD NEVER I etc its more of a DESPITE WHAT A GOOD PERSON I AM AND HOW MUCH I KNOW TRANS PEOPLE DESERVE RIGHTS EXTREMELY TRAGICALLY I COULD NEVER and like

          why. why tell anyone this. why. im not working through this with you.

  43. Dana W

    I think everybody, myself included is really really overthinking this whole thing.

  44. Jeremiah

    Ooh this is going to get toxic isn’t it. Hopefully not “Willis has to nuke the comment section” levels of toxic.

    1. Taffy

      I don’t know if you’ve seen this one but there was once a section so bad, it got completely deleted and replaced with a gif of Bugs Bunny sawing Florida off the continent.

      1. Jeremiah

        Yeah that is specifically what I am referring to, was gonna be more explicit about it but couldn’t think how to phrase it. Hopefully most of the people that caused that had leave since then.

        1. JessWitt

          Which comic was it, if you don’t mind me asking?

        2. Jeremiah

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/antagonize/

          Here

        3. JessWitt

          Thanks.

    2. Dana W

      I’m post op trans, strictly female attracted. My rule is I’m in this till I’m told “I” am transphobic for not wanting a partner with a penis. The rate this conversation is going that’s about 25 more minutes. A precision orbital strike on this whole comment section will probably be the only way it stops.

      1. Yotomoe

        Haha ok I was worried it was just me. I feel like you’re allowed to have genital preferences. I’m not implying that everyone psychically know what’s going on in everyone else’s pants. But if we’re talking attraction and coupling you’re valid to say “oh sorry not into that. Thank you for your time.”

        1. Zaxares

          I’m kind of the same on this topic. It’s fine to not be attracted to trans people sexually (as long as that’s your genuine reaction upon meeting them, not some pre-formed “if they’re trans I don’t want them” attitude), as long as you don’t treat them hatefully or negatively because of it. People honestly cannot help what they do or do not find attractive. It’s an instinctual reaction that happens pretty much within split seconds of meeting someone.

        2. Yumi

          Right, so if it’s that instinctual attraction we’re talking about, how would you know that you’re not attracted to trans people? If we’re talking a lasting interest, yeah, that can change as new information is learned; it might be worth considering why different types of information change your feelings of attraction and if that’s something you feel okay about internalizing or not. Like, if I think someone’s attractive and then learn they’re a MAGA supporter, I no longer find them attractive, and I’m okay with that. I might also lose some attraction on finding out someone is Christian, and I’m less okay with that because there are tons of ways to be Christian, and while I wouldn’t be interested in those who follow certain beliefs, there are also those who engage with their faith in a way that I have no problem with.

          People keep bringing “attraction to trans people” back to genital preferences like that’s the same thing, and it’s not. It’s not when we’re talking about first meeting someone (who you don’t know whether or not they’re trans), and even if you learn their trans (when you don’t know their genitals). If at some point you learn they don’t have the genitals you’re interested in, then genital preference becomes relevant in attraction.

        3. Wilde

          I think the confusion people are having is that saying “not attracted to trans people” is different than “once I find out a person is packing genitalia I don’t want to interact with, I’m out”. Chances are good if you’re a cishet person you’ve still salivated over a hot trans person with zero idea. You were attracted. If then you looked up their nudes and discovered they had genitalia you weren’t attracted to, and that changed your attraction level, I think most people aren’t raising issues with that. It’s just people making sweeping statements that trans people are unattractive to them that becomes a problem, because those aren’t the same thing.

      2. Taffy

        Kinda feels like there’s some level of mystique being/been built up around the private parts thing, yeah? As if it’s difficult to learn the information (literally just ask if you find a good spot in the conversation!) or requires wacky sitcom espionage. Like, if you’re super into somebody and learn they’ve got something downstairs you’re just not into, that’s going to require tact and an adult conversation.

        Y’all know what else requires those things?
        Literally every single other aspect of dating/courtship/fuckaroundery. All of them. If you can’t be normal about where the pee comes from, your partner can’t trust you to pick what to eat for breakfast, they can’t trust you to choose what music you’ll play in the car on the way to the bookstore, and they most definitely can’t trust you to help them up out of a chair you got a little too comfy in.

        1. Yotomoe

          Dating someone for a year and you find out they love Sword Art Online and not .Hack/Sign

        2. Taffy

          I want to agree with this. I really do. I adore .hack//, I love it to bits (okay the first 3 games which is all I’ve played ($200-$400 for the fourth game is fucking unreasonable)), but SIGN is boring. It’s boring. Nothing happens and they never shut the hell up about it.

        3. Yotomoe

          Should I have said Serial Experiments Lain then haha.
          Can a Konosuba girl love an Overlord boy?

        4. Taffy

          Having never seen any of those, I will assume at least two of them are generally regarded as Good™.

        5. Yotomoe

          Serial Experiments Lain is a mindfuck sci-fi series made back when the internet seemed weird and magical. Its been 20 years and I still don’t fully “get it”

          Konosuba is “what if the protagonist of your isekai was a dipshit loser and all his party were also useless and stupid”

          Overlords is “what if isekai but you’re the final boss” (so think. Truth be told I haven’t watched overlord)

        6. Taffy

          The first one sounds groovy.
          Is it just me (probably not), or does media about the Internet seem to have more interesting things to say about it before about 2008?

        7. Yotomoe

          It definitely falls into the metal gear solid 2 category of video assists saying “wow it’s like they predicted modern day!”

    3. NGPZ

      well like,

      this is why the “Report comment” button exists

      and why he reminded us that it exists

  45. Amelie Wikström

    You know what, Joe, it’s fine. I’ll say the same thing I’ve said to the terfs since a few years ago when they made up this type of trans woman to be mad at; one who tells you you’re a transphobe if you aren’t attracted to her:

    It’s fine if you aren’t looking for a woman to have a relationship or some sort of connection with, but rather a set of tits and a par of legs with a fuck hole between them.

    In other words, if you made Joe’s Do list, I wouldn’t expect to be included on it. Now, if you wanted reassurance that your ideas about women, relationships and trans people are all fine despite defending that decision I may have worse news.

    1. Amelie Wikström

      And if there seems to be a lot of space in between treating women as objects and desiring intimate meaningful relationships with any possible woman, yes, that works the same way as the difference between finding women attractive and needing trans women to know you find our bodies repulsive (but you’re still totally one of the tolerant people).

      That is, you can keep it between yourself, your loved ones and your therapist. These nuances of your personal wants and needs are rarely meaningful for public discussion and will usually just embarrass you and frighten women.

  46. Charles Phipps

    Hypothetical Joe entry for Carla:

    “Rollerderby”

    Pros: Redhead, Tall, Rich

    Cons: Not into dudes, loud personality (+++), Pie fetish

    Joemmentary: Transgirl, which isn’t my thing but I aint one to judge. Super duper famous rich parents. Gets in your face.

    Rating: N/A (not into dudes)

    —

    Ugh, I felt awful writing that

    1. Yotomoe

      Sounds authentically pre-timeskip Joe. Would have added a section mentioning cream pies and then Joe clarifying he means the literal dessert.

      1. Charles Phipps

        He would absolutely include that, yes.

  47. Riley

    i feel like people are glossing over the fact that it isn’t just Carla that was excluded from the list but *any* trans people at IU of which there, both in real life and in comic, are likely dozens if not hundreds

    1. Riley

      so, you know, whether or not he knows who Carla is is irrelevant to the point Joyce (and Willis himself) are making

      1. Yotomoe

        I mean that’s sorta what I’m asking. Is Carla the only trans girl on that floor (narratively she’s the only one we know about) or are there others that were neglected. Joyce didn’t even know Carla was trans until yesterday. Does she know of any other trans girls on her floor? Would she recognize their names or descriptions? I’ll believe word of God but this is an ongoing conversation and I wanna feel it out.

      2. Yumi

        Whether he knows who Carla is or not is kind of relevant in if he knows Carla is trans. Also, he may have included trans women on his list without knowing they’re trans women, but that doesn’t address the question of “did he intentionally exclude (or include) trans women (to his knowledge) on his list of women.”

    2. Taffy

      Is this a fair point to bring up? Not defending the dumbass list here, but how many of those dozens-to-hundreds of people can we reasonably expect Joe to have encountered in his daily routine, take notice of, and then rate? I don’t think it’s quite as comprehensive a list as you’re making it sound here. He’s an idiot and a skeeze for making it, yes, but he’s one idiot skeeze.

      1. Taffy

        And yes, I realize “Well hang on, surely he hasn’t covered the entire campus!” is not a very strong defense.

        1. Yotomoe

          It’s sorta my gripe. I wanna see more narrative but I feel like the comment section is pushing the idea that what Joyce is saying must be true or else she wouldn’t be saying it. Which like…as a reader I’m prone to ask questions and see where this is going and I feel like a lot of people see that as bad faith defense.

        2. Taffy

          I’m gonna laugh my perfect ass off if tomorrow we find out Joyce is just wrong about this entirely. Everyone taking as gospel the spoken dialogue of characters who are constantly proven to be fallible little dipshits (AKA teenagers), and then Joe pulls up the list and is like “Oh wait no, here she is. 7/10, redhead with glasses #2” and these two go get ice cream or whatever the fuck straights do.

        3. Jeremiah

          An the word of Willis up there that confirms that the point is a valid one.

        4. Taffy

          Bah, what would the author know about the characters?

        5. Yak

          I don’t think Willis is quite at the level of that lady that wrote Harry Potter.

      2. Riley

        i think “at least one” is a pretty reasonable assumption

        1. Taffy

          If we assume even distribution (I will), then you’re probably right.

    3. thejeff

      That seems largely irrelevant, unless it can be shown that Joe knowingly included some other trans woman.
      Sure, it’s a big campus and there certainly multiple other trans women on it, but there’s no evidence Joe’s list includes all women on campus, so whether he happened to include any of those trans women doesn’t really matter. There is a claim on the table that it does include all the women on Joyce’s floor except Carla. The only (known?) trans woman being the only one missing is where the issue comes in.
      If that claim isn’t true and either Carla is on there with no name and a description Joyce doesn’t recognize or a bunch of other women from the floor are also missing, then it becomes much less of an issue.

  48. Dana W

    Oh this is futile, I’m going to quit before this really melts down, happy bickering! 🙂

    1. NGPZ

      PeaceDisappear.gif

  49. Reaver

    Boy am I glad to be AroAce! I get to opt out of this whole conversation and focus on how much I really like the details like their breath coming out in lil puffs to represent the temperature~!

    Great, love it, chefs kiss Muah!~

    1. BBCC

      I love that too! It’s very relatable to me and my Canadian winters.

      1. Reaver

        Also just now noticed Joyce’s salmon colored jacket and how it really draws attention to her eyes and teal frames! Very pretty color choice~

        1. BBCC

          Salmon and teal is such a pretty colour combination! Our neighbour has the PRETTIEST turquoise garage door and I really hope they paint the other pink one day.

        2. Reaver

          That reminds me of the neighbor that had every new boyfriend she had repaint the trim of her house-

        3. Taffy

          If a man can’t paint your trim properly, he ain’t worth nothin’ ’round these parts.

        4. BBCC

          Ooooh, what colours did she pick for the trim of her house?

        5. Reaver

          There was bright pink, puke green, brown, black, white and purple from what I remember..

        6. BBCC

          Nice. She had taste.

        7. NGPZ

          salmon… dammit now i want to eat it XD

        8. Reaver

          NO FISH FOR YOU!

        9. NGPZ

          but then what am I gonna have with my horseradish? :/

        10. Taffy

          Horse

        11. Nymph

          Radishes

        12. BBCC

          You made me laugh out loud so take your upvote in the form of a comment.

        13. Jeremiah

          Suave that make you stupid

        14. BBCC

          Revoking salmon is a hate crime against Canadians.

        15. Jeremiah

          Come one, everyone knows Canadians aren’t people.

        16. BBCC

          I’m not?????

        17. NGPZ

          all i know is i am denied fish and i am hungy ;-;

        18. BBCC

          It’s okay, we’ll adopt you as an honorary Canadian and then you legally can’t be denied salmon.

        19. NGPZ

          awe thanksies :-;

        20. Reaver

          It’s revenge for their *geese*

        21. NGPZ

          What’d they ever do to you?

        22. BBCC

          Canadian geese are the devil’s servants. They are evil.

  50. Warmth

    I think that Joyce wasn’t as bothered by the inconsistencies presented by Joe or his insensitivity. But by the fact the conversation was suddenly about Joe and Dan and not about anything related to herself.

    1. Bryy

      The whole “look, I have trans people! I’m half-bisexual for sleeping with an NB!” joke was super shitty.

  51. Tan

    As of this particular moment, all evidence is not looking good for Joe.

    I do wonder if it was a factor that, to rate Carla honestly, he would have to include the fact that she is trans, and not wanting to publish that, even about someone as out as Carla is. But the more I think about it the more it sounds like post hoc rationalization at best. Also as others have mentioned, he doesn’t actually know what’s in her pants, so if penis is a dealbreaker for him, he could just put “insufficient data” as he did for Asma (presumably for different reasons) (citation: https://www.dumbingofage.com/chubby/ )

    I also wonder if, for example, Dina was on there, who I don’t believe Joe particularly considered a sexual being until significantly after the Do List was shut down. Which wouldn’t actually make Carla’s exclusion better, it’s just another thing I tangentally wonder.

    Really, short of finding out there was another trans woman on the list who Joe knew was a trans woman at the time, I think the best we can hope for is some self-reflection that it turns out that there was yet another in the multitude of ways that the Do List was a shitty thing.

    1. NGPZ

      like, not including Carla was inevitably still a transphobic thing to do, for literally the same reason why the list itself was a bigoted thing to do,

      it all boils down to,

      “how DARE a woman ever exist in any way outside the ideal package for pleasing men”

    2. Nullset

      I think Asma was “insufficient data” because her clothes obscure her body.

      …which makes me realize Joe is probably gonna see Carla later in the story and notice her boobs got bigger since he discounted her.

  52. Taffy

    Gonna say this just to say it, Joe performing a transphobia in the past doesn’t doom him to the forever box of permanently performing transphobia. He can knock it off and stop that, and everyone in-universe and out can still admit he did it without saying he’s doing it now. In fact, it’s actually a good thing if he stops it and doesn’t do it anymore. This applies to real people too, but real people aren’t people so we’re not talking about them right now. It’s fine and not illegal to admit the character who isn’t currently misbehaving did misbehave previously.

    1. Yak

      Yeah. Step one would be owning up to his past actions and understanding a new way on which they were bad.

      I pretty seriously doubt that’s gonna happen here, this conversation is already unsalvageable. But hey, maybe in-universe tomorrow (so in like a month?) we’ll get to see Joe do some pondering about it.

      1. Taffy

        You think it’s unsalvageable? Nah, you got too little faith in these kooky kids. They’re good at talking through stuff.

        1. Yak

          Yeah maybe I should be more optimistic about my (now second-favorite) ship

        2. Taffy

          What’s your first-favorite? These two are pretty darn good.

        3. yak

          Their loss in rank is not due to the events of the last few strips; rather, it is due to the fact that Sarah and Tony had such an A+ quality meat-cubemeet-cute.

    2. thejeff

      The problem here is that they’re not really talking about him performing a transphobia in the past. They’re talking about now and Joe isn’t winning any points.
      Starting yesterday with “I’m not gonna be mean” and rolling into not owning transphobia in keeping Carla off the list and then into reducing the question to fucking Jocelyne and Mayala.

      Maybe he can redeem himself tomorrow, but this is ugly.

      1. Taffy

        Humans are ugly sometimes.

  53. ian livs

    Not about Joe specifically but anyone who says “it’s not transphobic of me to not be attracted to any trans people ever”–the only thing all trans people have in common is being trans. Genitals you’re squicked by? Not all trans people of [x] gender have those. Other arbitrary feature you’re not into? Again: not every trans person has that, even if it’s the stereotype. People are people, and we all look different.

    Literally THE. only. thing. they’d all have in common is being trans.

    I’m definitely not saying anyone who’d say that HAS to go and hook up with a trans person–in fact, nearly all of us wouldn’t want to hook up with someone who’d make that statement to begin with–but when the one and only universal factor in common is being trans…. yyyyeah, I mean. Ya might wanna unpack the stereotypes/latent bigotry you might have going on there.

    1. ian livs

      (Obviously this doesn’t apply to ace people or people who wouldn’t be attracted to *cis* people of a certain gender, either. It’s the crowds of people who come out any time the subject is even brushed against to proclaim “I’d never date a trans woman” or “I’d never date a trans man” while being perfectly happy to chase cis people of those genders. As if anybody actually asked.)

      1. Axel

        yes to all of this, and I’m glad someone (possibly someones, if more posts above/below) already said it

        1. ian livs

          I don’t have the bandwidth to wade through the whole comment section on *this* subject to see if anyone else said it first (in which case, sorry to them) but I’m glad somebody appreciated it ^_^

        2. Axel

          yeah I gave up on it

        3. morleuca

          I really look forward to this comic and the comment section. Skipping the comments always feels like I’m missing something. And not having this part of my morning routine is going to throw me off for the whole day, but I might have to skip a week. And I’m really sad about that. But I’m feeling like I wandered into a reddit sub that isn’t in the safe zone and being discussed like I’m not really human

        4. ian livs

          Yeah, sometimes there’s such good analyses in the comments, and I enjoy reading those. But there’s some strips (or even some characters) where you just know the comments are going to be a trashfire and it’s best to not bother, for our own mental health. Please take care of yourself!

  54. Furie

    This whole thing has me thinking that maybe Joe isn’t covering by not knowing who Carla is. I can’t think of a single time they’ve interacted, especially before he tried to reform himself. To him, she was probably nameless girl on the sidelines. Of course, we don’t have his list to see if say “girl with blonde hair” is on there or other similar descriptors. Unless… Has someone compiled it?

    1. cachew sequel

      most girls aren’t on there by name. Sal was “chick with spider tattoo”, Asma “hijabi front desk girl” etc. (Notably he and Sal had also never interacted onscreen before, their first shared scene is one of Joe apologizing for the list.)
      If you want to see more about it, it’s easiest to look through the chapter “The Do-List”.

  55. Arianod

    *I* am increasingly disliking this conversation ^^u

  56. SvenTS

    Ooooh first fight incoming? I don’t think Joe is actually transphobic. Seems like he’d probably be fine if he found out a girl he was with was trans. But I think him being flippant about it is not going to work well with Joyce.

    1. SvenTS

      (Ah, missed Willis saying it *was* something for Joe to address so jury’s still out on the first part as well)

  57. Antsan

    I get that Joe has rated women just on sight, but if he did that with Carla, how would he then deliberately exclude her from the list for being trans? He could only do that if he knew who she was.

    1. Nullset

      People don’t have to know me to tell I’m trans. I do not pass well, and I certainly get judged on sight.

    2. thejeff

      It appears that Joyce is basically the only person who didn’t clock Carla on sight. That feels off to me from the impression in earlier strips, but recently it’s seemed like everybody knew and just never mentioned it on panel.

      1. Astariel

        I think everybody knew more because she was part of a nationally famous court case and on the cover of Time magazine, and less because she doesn’t pass.

  58. Doopyboop

    I don’t differentiate my attraction to people based on gender (partially because I’m a sex-repulsed asexual) but you know what WILL make me decide real quick that you’re not attractive? Being a bigot. I’ve known far too many women who look the other way when their boyfriend or husband reveals himself to have some fucked up views because “teehee well… we can’t agree on everything”. So I appreciate Joyce bringing this up to actually discuss it at length with Joe!

  59. SDGlyph

    #not touching the rest of the discussion#

    Wait, The List was a (password) shared non-consensual ranking of female students’ hotness, with a news feed and subscribers, inviting Joe’s pals to review & compare scores…

    How did I not click that Joe invented OG Facebook? (Ironically his tech / inventor stuff mostly went to Carla herself in this universe!)

    1. Taffy

      Is that what Facebook was before it became “that thing nobody shuts the fuck up about”?

      1. SDGlyph

        Yup, or at least the project that gave rise to it. Zuck wasn’t some tech genius with a new vision for social media, just a college creep who started off with stolen photos from the student intranet.

    2. Chubseus

      I suppose he sort of recreated ratemyface or HotorNot, both of which preceded and yet influenced social media. Joe was listing like it was 1999.

  60. IntangibleMatter

    I feel like there’s a fight between these two coming on. I’m unsure how cleanly it’ll resolve, or in how timely a manner.

    I’m appreciating that Joyce cares, though, even if she’s still just figuring it all out.

  61. Lightpunster

    What I’m learning from these comments is that trans people won’t be truly liberated until men objectify them equally.

    1. Taffy

      Honestly? Kinda. It feels weird to say it that way, but like…a little bit, yeah.

  62. Kyulen

    I checked the 3 strips with Joe and Carla, and based on them it seems very likely that Joe and Carla never met each other. I’m assuming when Joe was making his “do” list back then, he only included people on campus that he had actually met.

  63. Androiddreams

    I hate to say this but I fundamentally disagree with Willis. Joe was making a list of people that he might consider sleeping with, then ranking them on the likelihood. Does not considering sleeping with trans-women make you transphobic? Sure he should be given a moment to say “yeah my bad” if he’s told that it looks trans-exclusionary, but we haven’t had confirmation whether there’s married women on the list, people Joe’s never met on the list, et cetera. Just because there’s grannies on the list means that for even a split second joe weighed up whether he’d sleep with a granny. This is just yesterday’s conversation about gender preference with the catch that his sex list might now be considered trans exclusionary because it got published

    1. Taffy

      It’s fine.

    2. Pseudowolf

      That’s where I’m having a problem with this strip as well. Joyce is basing this claim on Joe only having ciswomen on the list, which seems like an unfair leap. Not listing them means he didn’t consider them as someone he’d sleep with. It does not necessarily follow that he also doesn’t consider transwomen to be women.
      I mean, yes, maybe that is what Willis is trying to go for here, but it is coming off (at least at the moment) that if you are not attracted to transgender people as much as cisgender people, then you are transphobic.

      1. BBCC

        The misunderstanding here is that the list is not ‘Women Joe wants to sleep with’. He included women he was not attracted to, at low ranks or zeroes. It’s a list of women Joe’s seen around on campus ranked by fuckability. He did not know Sal when he added her to the list, but she was still there. Everyone on their floor is listed except Carla, which is why it’s a glaring omission.

        1. Androiddreams

          Sorry, I don’t think a good marker on whether Joe respects your gender is whether he considers your worth as a sexual conquest. I don’t think exclusion from a bonk list means that Joe deadnames you in private. Your worth as a woman isn’t whether some dude is sexualising you

        2. thejeff

          “Here is a list of all the women I know, with rankings of how much I want to fuck them. You are not on the list.”

          It’s got nothing to do with your worth as a woman, but it does have to do with whether Joe thinks of you as one. Which is his problem, not yours, but it is a problem.

    3. Bryy

      You’re disagreeing with Willis on a specific situation that he wrote.

      k.

  64. FacelessDeviant

    This looks like a conversation that needs to happen, but in a stressfree environement and with very clear communication.

    1. yak

      yeup, but instead they’re exchanging critiques of each others’ behavior and Joe is falling back on the old “I couldn’t have done a transphobic thing because I’m not transphobic” line of reasoning.
      I just wish it wasn’t so realistic ;_;

  65. Nicoleandmaggie

    It looks like the stupid anti-trans comment I saw was deleted (good!), but I wanted to note that *because of it* I donated $25 (doubled to $50) to help get books about trans kids (and other diverse books) into a school library in Kentucky. https://www.donorschoose.org/project/culturally-diverse-books-and-library-fri/8846010/

    1. Nicoleandmaggie

      It got fully funded!! Thank you!!!

  66. zee

    Look. Joe is a teenage boy who grew up in the Midwest and up until extremely recently, was super macho with very specific ideas of gender. My man has transphobic tendencies. There’s literally no way he wouldn’t. Because of how media socializes us and media was and is very transphobic, especially in the 2000s, transphobic tendencies is the unfortunate default for most people who aren’t actively raised against them. It’s not an attack on you or your fav to point this fact out.

    This isn’t about Joe not wanting to fuck a trans woman. As has been pointed out, several fuckin times by now the list isn’t a list of people he’d fuck, its a list of everyone he knows that he considers a woman, and whether or not, and how much he would want to fuck them. There were women he was entirely unattracted to on there. The implication of not being on the list is not being a real woman. Nobody’s even saying he was like, rubbing his hands together saying “I’m going to exclude that tall trans redhead from my list ON PURPOSE because I’m a TRANSPHOBE, MWAH HA HA HA HA!!!” Like the vast majority of systemic bigotry it was probably subconscious. Carla probably never even came to mind when he was thinking of people to add to the list, and that’s the problem.

    Idk why people can accept Joyce’s bigoted tendencies but refuse to acknowledge they exist in any other protagonist. Is it because Joyces upbringing was anomalous? Joe’s was more normal, closer to yours? Does acknowledging Joe’s unconscious bigotries make you fear you might have some too? Cuz you probably do, or did. Everyone does. I did. It’s by design. It’s all about learning and improving above the socialization of wider, bigoted society.
    It especially pisses me off when people do this with Joe. Fake ass Joe fans trying to negate his whole character arc by saying he was “never that bad”. Smh

    1. zee

      This was just meant to be a paragraph but I’m mad lol

      1. zee

        I definitely still have subconscious bigotries btw I’m realizing I don’t like how I wrote that. It’s a journey fighting against societal programing to hate and it’s takes a lifetime to fully get there, but you push yourself as damn close as you can in the meantime

    2. thejeff

      I think people would be a lot more sympathetic if Joe was admitting that was why he left Carla off and saying he’d either improved or would work on it.
      Rather than deflecting and talking about hypothetically fucking Jocelyne.

    3. Fart Captor

      EXACTLY

    4. NGPZ

      I concur, it’s clear this is a result of the bigot/non-bigot binary which proves itself unproductive at best and counter-productive at worse

      the focus shouldn’t really be about personal flaws and punishing the guilty but about growing social awareness, about understanding how the past affects the present and the widespread pervasive influence of long-standing social institutions which govern our lives and critically thinking about how to address them

      thus in today’s framing, there are several shades of bigot, and there’s commitment to anti-bigotry. there is no “non”-bigot

  67. TerribleTransit

    Okay, so what are we working with here?

    Option 1: Carla is on the list but Joyce thinks she wasn’t. This is unlikely for a number of reasons, not the least of which is Willis stating as much in comments. It’s also fairly unlikely that Joyce would be unable to point to a description of Carla and not recognize Carla in it. Plus, no-selling this entire conversation would be a very odd story choice. So that leaves…

    Option 2: Carla was not on the list. Why? A) He didn’t know of her existence. Unlikely, given how extremely visible Carla makes herself at all times, and how much Joe interacted with members of that wing. It beggars belief that he wouldn’t have noticed her at least enough to rank her. B) He knew about her but didn’t include her for a benign reason, such as not wanting to upset her because he knew she was famous. Untrue unless he was lying out his ass in yesterday’s strip, and unlikely given how thoughtless he was with everything else to do with the list. And of course C) He knew about her and excluded her because she was trans, as Joyce suggests… and I’m inclined to agree that’s the most likely answer.

    He’s leaned and grown a lot since the list incident, so it’s entirely possible his beliefs have changed, and he’s just reacting poorly to being unexpectedly grilled about it by retreating into deflection and crass jokes. Understandable, given the situation, but if that’s the case hopefully he stops digging himself a hole and responds in a more thought-out way, either immediately or by telling her he needs to collect his thoughts on the matter before he can respond.

    It’s also possible, however, that he hasn’t changed as much as it appears on the surface, and he was in fact just being polite to Jocelyn rather than actually accepting of her. I really hope this isn’t the case, but it’s understandable that Joyce would worry about it and want to make sure.

    1. thejeff

      He basically said yesterday that he was just being polite to Jocelyne

      1. TerribleTransit

        That’s definitely a valid reading of what he said. Hard to say it’s the definitive one until we get more context though.

        1. thejeff

          Not definitive, but everything he’s said since makes me lean more and more towards reading it that way.

  68. Amós Batista

    Joyce, don’t let Joe win this: be bisexual, too. You already have Dorothy.

  69. Hof1991

    No one’s mentioning that Joe brought up possible sexy times with her sister, then brought up Malaysia and ended by saying Suck it Danny?

    Whole load of bad decisions there Joe.

    1. thejeff

      Yeah, he’s really digging himself a hole here. Part of why I’m not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt here.

  70. Charles Phipps

    To repeat the Magic Words of the Great God Willis:

    “It’s not that Joe doesn’t want to bang Carla, it’s that he didn’t recognize her as a woman he didn’t want to bang.”

  71. superglucose

    Whole lotta cis up in here telling on themselves, I tell you what.

    1. Taffy

      That [cis] boy ain’t right

  72. EnerPrime

    Considering that she didn’t even know Carla was trans, it’s real bold of Joyce to assume that all the women on the list were cis.

    1. Maddie B

      The hover text agrees with you.

  73. Pergola

    Is there such a thing as ‘transdar’? Of course there is! Google tells me so.

    Suppose you are repulsed by [ ] but your sense of fairness requires you to treat them like real people?

    Maybe Carla was left off the list because Joe was sloppy about list keeping?

  74. Fart Captor

    Pro tip for cis people: You HAVE at some point in your life, internalized crappy ideas about gender that will impact how you view queer people, and especially trans people! Yes, even if you try to be accepting and polite to our faces! It’s hard to avoid! I didn’t accept that I was trans until I was 37 because of crappy ideas I’d absorbed from American culture and media! Identifying and uprooting this stuff requires a conscious effort and willingness to accept that you may find unpleasant flaws you didn’t realize you had

    The alternative is remaining like Joyce before college. Thinking she was kind, doing her best to be kind, but often being incredibly bigoted and shitty to people

    1. Yotomoe

      I think a big problem is that people often don’t respond well to “thing you think is bad, actually”. It makes them feel like they’re being called a bad person and they get defensive about it instinctively. On one hand it’s mindful to learn when to just say “oh guess I did, I’ll do better” but honestly I hate even doing that. It sucks having to constantly humble yourself and change yourself, even if it is for the better. Especially when you’re like Joe and you’ve been trying to right your wrongs only to be told “yeah, but you’re still not right about THIS wrong”.

      Change is hard and nobody likes feeling like the bad guy. And everybody is so frustrated that it turns into screaming matches and everyone ends up doubling down. It’s kinda why I stopped coming here to the comment section.

      1. thejeff

        OTOH, it sucks for other people when you’re still wrong about one thing, even if you’ve improved on other things. Joe improving on his sexism doesn’t give him a pass on transphobia, even if it sucks to get called out on it.

        1. Yotomoe

          Oh I agree. It’s sorta why I think Joyce’s gentle approach is good. She hasn’t actually called him out or even implied he’s a bad person yet. I doubt she’s saying “you’re actively a hateful transphobe” and more “hey, here’s some biases I witnessed that may be indicative of a bigger problem, just so you know”. In the same veneer you might notice your SO is eating too much Mcdonald’s or something.

      2. Jeremiah

        Well, sometimes you are being an asshole or have shitty views that deserve to be called out without being sugar coated, and it is the mature thing to be able to recognized.when that’s the case without getting defensive. It’s not other people responsibility to never make you fell like a bad person, but yours to be able to handle that felling and wherever or not it’s justified.

        1. Yotomoe

          “It’s not other people’s responsibility”
          It’s not, It really isn’t. Nobody ever has to be nice, or kind, or patient, or understanding or love you or like you or help you in any way shape or form ever. There’s no obligation.

          But I think people are a lot more fragile than they may first appear, they want to be reassured. They want to feel loved. They want to be understood. And that patience required can be taxing and difficult and futile at times but changing a mind can be slow stressful and arduous process. The more abrasive the interaction the harder the resistance tends to be, people hate to self introspect and if you leave it up to them they’ll often just take the easy way out and assume they’re perfect.

        2. Jeremiah

          Okay I think you severely missed my point. It has nothing to do with being nice or loving you or.anything you said. Complete strangers not wanting to treat someone who is being insensitive or outright bigoted with kiddy gloves so they can “change their mind” is not being unkind. That is a very strange way to look at this.

        3. Yotomoe

          That’s sorta my issue. I’m just tired of the arguments, the “you don’t owe anyone anything” style. It’s true. And it’s good for your mental health to not interact with every bad faith bad actor in the world. But I’m just sick of it. Exhausting fighting over everything. It’s just venomous and it’s why it’s easier to just not talk to people.

          I truly wanted to discuss the nuances of the scenario as presented but it’s not a discussion. It’s an indictment. Us vs. Them once again. I’m admittedly not the smartest person in the world which is why I share my feelings, my thought proccess, my method and I adjust it over time. But it’s exhausting. Exhausting trying not to have hurt feelings or hurt others feelings. I’m sure the response to this will be to tell me I’m a bad person, I make bad comments, I shouldn’t talk over disadvantaged people or I don’t know shit about fuck and that’s like a rainbow of true.

          It’s kind of why I rarely post here nowadays. I mostly came to this comment section cuz I actually really liked this strip.

        4. Jeremiah

          I mean, you shouldn’t talk over disadvantaged people, that is just basic common sense and decency. Honestly maybe you really shouldn’t comment very often if you get like this over it. (Was gonna say something nicer but I am tired and not actually care that much)

  75. Borg

    I’m curious how many aces and lesbians were unintentionally included on the list; if it’s suitably small, Joe could have a viable claim (not that he knows it currently so far as I remember) that he left her off because he sensed it’d be a pointless effort.

    1. Sere

      Or maybe outting someone is a line for him, since he gave reasons for his rankings. Not wanting to write “0 because she’s a lesbian/trans/ace or whatever, so she’s literally unattainable for me”.

  76. Roe

    I can’t believe carla’s not a natural redhead

  77. Yeet

    yeah it seems like joe is a bit off about this
    If I was the kind of douche to make this kind of list I wouldn’t put someone rich enough to send me to a gulag about it on there but it seems like early joe was thinking with his dick so I doubt that’s relevant to him

  78. elfroyalty

    as a #lore guy who has re-read this comic too many times, not only are massive swaths of this comment section wrong about continuity/lore/etc but also y’all seriously can’t seem to pause and consider the Themes and Messages of the chapter.

    “well we haven’t seen every single name on the list so we don’t know his true intentions -” it doesn’t matter, joe is a fictional character!! he doesn’t have intentions because he’s not real!! this conversation is happening because WILLIS is interested in discussing transphobia (and transmisogyny specifically) and how people exhibit these beliefs, how often these things are unconscious and innocuous, and how we identify, deal with, and grow from these beliefs. Willis is making it extremely clear that, yes, joe could’ve left her off for any reason, but he didn’t – he left her off for this one. this is supported by previous strips, but even if it wasn’t, it’s what this strip in front of us is saying now because Willis is interested in having that conversation. if they didn’t want to have that conversation, then joe would’ve simply given one of those possible reasons as the punchline of yesterday’s strip.

    if this conversation is making you uncomfortable, if it’s making you feel defensive, then maybe you need to stop and think about why it makes you uncomfortable, not look for plausible deniability through a fictional character.

  79. cachew sequel

    “kind but doesn’t want you to /know/ it” is such a sweet thing to say about Carla. there’s a lot of ways you can describe her personality & it’s cute that that particular bit stands out to Joyce so much that’d she mention it here

  80. misanthropope

    you cant simultaneously advance the positions ‘sex and gender are not the same’ AND ‘carlas absence from the do list HAS TO come from joe’s views on her gender, because there is no other consistent filter he might have used to exclude her’

    1. Jeremiah

      Willis confirms up there that is the reason.

    2. Taffy

      Some people aren’t gonna be satisfied until we see the Do List in its entirety, and then some people will definitely keep fucking arguing.

    3. BBCC

      There IS no other consistent filter.

      Not attracted to her? Other women he wasn’t attracted to were on the list, at low ranks and zeroes.

      Doesn’t know who she is? He didn’t know Sal either and she was on the list.

      Every other woman in the hall was on there.

  81. HueSatLight

    Maybe Joe hadn’t met her yet. We only see them crossing paths a couple of days later. So October 9th Joe may or may not have considered her a woman, but since Mandy said she was sure it was all the women in the residence hall, October 9th Mandy didn’t consider her a woman.

    1. Taffy

      October 9th Mandy is the real villain here

  82. Taffy

    Everyone shut the fuck up, I just had the most important idea in the history of humankind. An episode of Sesame Street where the monsters are all acting like parodies of modern celebrities, so we can have Machine Washable Telly* rapping about laundry.

    *A parody of Machine Gun Kelly

    1. Jeremiah

      I think you need to cool it with the stupid sauce.

      1. Bryy

        Unless someone to saying something incredibly prejudice or mean, I don’t think you really need to take other users comments that seriously.

        1. Jeremiah

          I am making a reference to their avatar.

        2. Taffy

          This is what’s called “dramatic irony”. In Episode 4 of The Amazing Digital Circus, the cast are essentially roleplaying as fast food employees, with various NPC customers. One customer demands a sandwich with “the sauce that makes you stupid”, and when Ragatha, the ragdoll character in my icon, goes to make the burger, the stupid sauce comes out in a spurt and some of it splashes into her eye. She spends the rest of the episode basically high off her ass, but nobody else saw it happen so they think she’s drunk or huffing paint on the job. The bit here is that I’ve said something a stoned person would say while using this avatar (inspired by Jeremiah’s reference to it above), and so it seems like I’ve been hitting the sauce.

        3. Jeremiah

          Very based btw.

  83. Woof McGee

    Around the same time as the list, wasn’t Joyce trying to save Ethan from the Horrors of Gayness through her strong Christmas woman love? Yes. Yes she was. She doesn’t get to throw rocks at anyone for not being enlightened enough.

    1. Bryy

      The difference is that Joyce is growing. Joe is doubling down.

      1. Woof McGee

        You don’t think Joe has grown?
        That’s cool. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but we have really irreconcilable takes on this comic then.

        1. Yumi

          We’re talking about this specific issue, sheesh.

        2. Bryy

          Joe’s response is to make a joke about how he is not bisexual due to having slept with an NB person.

        3. Bryy

          * now

        4. NGPZ

          heckin the funny part is that there’s literally no rule stopping him from identifying as bisexual like that,

          it ain’t like the Vegan Police from Scott Pilgrim XD

  84. missystrange

    if you’re one of the people angry over not wanting to have sex with a trans person, i have a super fun life hack for you: give me 20 dollars. if you give a trans person money then nobody will think of you as being a bad person, this is a 100% true fact and you should totally do it right away.

    1. missystrange

      oh of course i’m malaya.

    2. Taffy

      Well, we can’t let them do that with also giving me $20, just to cover their asses on specifically the nonbinary front. This is people’s morality we’re talking about, here. Can’t be leavin’ this stuff to chance.

      1. Axel

        sorry it’s up to at least $60 bucks to not be transphobic now

  85. Theluxland

    Retroactively bisexual is CRAZY.
    (I love it, i made me laugh a lot)

    1. Thing2

      Not entirely sure what you mean. But I’m definitely retroactively bisexual.
      Born in a time when bi wasn’t even recognised and gay/lesbian was unacceptable. Same sex advances vehemently rejected, opposite sex advances enthusiastically accepted… this is brainwashing to someone bi, to think themself het.
      It is a bit of a revelation to realise that this is a description of oneself!

  86. Bullfrog

    Joe, please, dig up

  87. Thing2

    I find this an important discussion to have. And to have in the detail in which it is being had. Perhaps less repetition would be good, but even repetition is informative. I was born in the ’50s (just for context) and note that may cis folks will not have thought about it in this depth. Not their fault. Just not something that will have occurred to them. I know this because I thought I was a cis folks for most of my life because I was trained to be by society, until I found out that I wasn’t and hadn’t been. So I have been sat here, reading, and reading. Learning and thinking. Assimilating. Admittedly cis folks need to be quiet and do that. But it will only be after they have that there is any chance for radical change, and only after they have that they can really be blamed for not having changed. I mean: Yes, Willis, I get the point. I get what Joyce is saying. I get why she is exploring this. I get why she didn’t instantly know this yesterday. I get why Joe is troubled, I get why he needs space to absorb this extra depth. I also love the shorthand of “conferring womanhood with my boner”.

    Because the word transphobia has the word phobia in it, even tho we use it to mean rejection of other humans. And phobia means irrational fear. And that is what we see so much. The fear (often in males) that they will be sexually attracted to someone female who has a penis, because they would either be massively embarrassed, or terrified that someone (themself?) might think they are gay, cos, you know, end of the world to be gay! Yet it seems to me that, by the boner remark, Joe has actually understood the point too.

  88. Kaz

    The only story it would tell is that he has an attraction, which is normal, for everyone. Just because someone isn’t attracted sexually to trans people doesn’t make them transphobic, that’d be like saying a guy not being attracted to other guys is homophobic, that’s not how it works.

    1. BBCC

      He included other women he was not attracted to. This wasn’t a ‘list of potential partners’ it was a list of women he saw around organized by fuckability.

  89. Charles Phipps

    It’s been repeated a dozen times in this thread the issue is Joe not considering Carla a woman, not that he didn’t want to screw her and plenty of people have ignored it.

    1. Bryy

      Never before has the “these are fictional characters” meme been more appropriate.

  90. Jammy

    Who could have guessed that discussing your boyfriend’s former objectifying dirtbag behavior would end up not being a fun topic, especially when you’re disappointed he wasn’t generous-enough with the sleaze?

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