Hey, I can totally put that image on the left there! It’s no worse than the original strip‘s amount of nudity, eh?
Anyway, today’s the day the next Dumbing of Age Slipshine goes up! It’s about Sal and Jason, set in the past a few weeks (their time), and it’s sixteen whole pages! It’s totally up right now! Go subscribe to Slipshine and you can view it and any of the other five Slipshine comics I’ve done! They’re starting to pile up over there.
And here’s the trusty ol’ Walky Performs A Sex FAQ, pertainable as always.
Meanwhile over in the clean world, there’s four days left in the Dumbing of Age Book 4 Kickstarter!
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“I was saving myself for a woman made of breasts.“
So, like the genetically modified chickens they make into McNuggets?
Joe: “That’s the dream, my friend. That’s the dream.”
When Becky and Joe find out what they have in common, Joyce will explode. Dumbing of Age will end, on account of Indiana University now being a crater.
Oh, they’re out there, but they’re all saving themselves for genetically modified men.
Made entirely of dicks, I assume.
It’s the breast possible outcome
Don’t you mean a women made of bests?
…I’ll see myself out.
But breasts are best
Tell that to a male who’s probably about a 5
Okay, sometimes they’re pretty, but they’re not really sexy
like, there’s no sexiness at all
but then, I guess I’m really kinda demisexual too
Is there a way to make a “white meat” joke without insinuating that Becky is racist? Because I can’t think of one and the setup for the pun is perfect but that insinuation is really not what I was going for.
I often have a very similar problem of an almost funny joke missing an important piece.
You could call it light meat
Not that that couldn’t be racist, but it’s less obvious
Make sure you have some freshly squeezed mango juice for the next morning.
So… Have you read “Unsounded“? 😀 (It’s actually really, really good, but yeah, there’s the “titty-bird”, Lady Il-Gan-Yas. She probably fits the bill).
“Bisexual Capital of the Universe”?
No wonder…
And here I thought that was Oberlin, Ohio.
My money was on Miami
The now poorly-named Sandusky, OH.
That name’s been tainted for eternity. So ashamed that I paid that school a year’s worth of tuition way back when.
It’s like being a Hitler.
On a related note: the Hitler family were among the German immigrants to America that settled the Ohio area.
And yes it’s the same Hitler family.
I can’t believe me it’s taken me this long to realize that there has been more than one Hitler.
“You’re just like Hitler! …Georg Hitler, the nice man down the street.”
Your post Mr or Ms drs is the reason why this comments section needs an upvote button.
Hey, Hitler Georg is an outlier and should not be counted.
The nazis ruined a lot of nice things, like Charlie Chaplin’s moustache, eagles with spread wings, and cool Hugo Boss-type uniforms.
Oh yeah, and manji.
And here I thought it was the letter B.
Honestly, pretty much anywhere between Columbus and Cleveland pretty much counts. North East Ohio is a pretty popular place for LGBT individuals.
As for Indiana U, I always got the impression that it was the level of repression there that caused Kinsey to back-lash and do his research.
Really? I work there. Can’t say I’ve noticed any overt signs of the Kinsey Scale being skewed away from the statistical norm. Just an abnormal number of antique stores.
Maybe Indiana U is the bisexual capital of America, but definitely not the universe. We have a similar one over here, Bristol University is the unofficial LGBT capital of Britain. 😛
(One of the guys in my class was so happy that he’d been accepted to Bristol University which was his first choice. Then he was told it was like the centre of the LBGT scene for uni students, and that gave him kind of a downer on going there for a few minutes. Then he thought “Ah well” and enjoyed himself anyway! ^^)
Bristol is good, though it does seem to have a few too many “Second Wave” style feminists – people who think that the Lesbian Sex Wars was a good thing (Lesbian Sex Wars! Entirely real, entirely not as fun as that sounds…)
I googled it, but I was worried about the potentially pornographic results. Fortunately I just got Wikipedia.
I never really thought about where it would be, but I guessed Amsterdam, with gay pride, and me living nearby, and the general consensus of acceptance there.
Why am I not surprised that there are other Obies who read this strip… though Oberlin these days is also the transexual capital of the universe, as well as asexual, pansexual… We Obies are quite fond of all the different flavors of Queer.
I read that as Bisexual *Captain* of the Universe at first and suddenly I was picturing Captain America or Captain Marvel or someone as bisexual in the comics or movies and it was a glorious utopia for a second xD
I can get behind this utopia.
Let’s all live there, it sounds nifty.
Amber’s way ahead of you.
The only thing it lacks is a naptime.
Captain Canuck =D
I’ve heard stories about him and Tony Stark, so…
So is this foreshadowing for Dorothy marrying Joyce ?
Ehh, Dotty is probably right in her assessment. If she’s not a 0, she’s a 1 or 2 at the most.
Joyce on the other hand…
Joyce would make an interesting First Lady.
I guess she could help to get the votes from the religious people? Yes, I am sure it would work.
Man, if Joyce gets big into the megachurch evangelical circuit after college, she’d be fantastically useful to Dorothy in her run. Imagine the first openly atheist presidential candidate getting an endorsement from Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell. Guaranteed 50 State win.
Hahahahaha Pat Roberston endorsing an atheist president, oh my gods, that is the funniest thing I have read all day. I can’t even imagine that happening in a parallel universe. XD
That’s easy. You just have to convince Robertson that God told him to do it. As for how to accomplish that, may I suggest watching the 1985 movie Real Genius? Bonus points if you can somehow fill his house with popcorn at the end of the scam.
Ooh, sounds like a fun thought-project for the weekend! And I’m not even saying that sarcastically, I seriously have nothing better to do.
Great movie.
Tell Pat to stop touching himself for me.
My wife says that our lawn needs cutting this weekend (hint, hint)
Nah, Robertson would never fall for that. He’d stop listening as soon as God commands him to stop touching himself.
Filling someone’s house with popcorn would be an excellent way to convince them to do almost anything.
Diabeetuuussss
I know one word that sums up the necessary requirements for this amazing and unlikely event to occur:
Money.
The thing about ol’ Pat is that his faith in Jesus is nothing compared to his faith in the dollar. Specifically, his faith that said dollar should be in his hand.
Well, ol’ Pat already believes in evolution and that the earth is as old as peer reviewed science says it is.
Satanic evidence based reasearch!
“The test tubes and the scales, get that all out of here”–Steely Dan
Watches Danny leave because he wants to hear from a 3 or 4
I think you hit the nail on the head. Danny doesn’t want to read Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Danny just wants somebody to tell him that they know how he’s feeling, and it’s fine to be confused and take his time to work it out.
That’s also what I thought Danny meant. I don’t think that Danny knows anybody outspokenly towards the middle of the scale, though. He could read about it on the internets but hearing from bi-unaware Becky is gonna be much more fun to watch.
So is he going to go to the Questioning meeting or walk around campus asking everyone if they are a 3/4 on the Kinsey scale ….
He should have a chat with Billie.
“…you again ? I told you, no second chance !”
…. I’m not quite sure how to respond to that…
I have a response: Eh.
**grin**
So Becky is four times as homosexual as Richard Simmons?
she just wants a menage a forty
Don’t we all?
huge pile o’ lesbians
Lesbian swimming pool. Brings a new meaning to “muff diving.”
“When I said we needed dikes to hold back the water, this isn’t what I meant.”
Oh, so THAT’S why the Dutch were trying to lure over lesbian immigrants!
Next Slipshine. Plz.
She’s 4x as Lesbian as anybody else ever! Hm, Is the only lesbian she’s knowingly known been her roommate at Anderson?
Nobody is more homosexual than Richard Simmons. He has his own planetary system of gayness.
… Danny and Billie are going to have a Conversation at some point, aren’t they.
Unless Danny knows American Sign language and Sal introduces him to Marcie at some point, I would say that there is a good chance of that.
They could exchange phone messages.
It saddens me that the idea of writing notes on actual paper is as outdated as carving cuneiform on a clay tablet these days.
Well you could pass notes in cuneiform; it would not be hard to learn a very restricted sign inventory( or Ugaritic) for transcribing English.
But where do we get a reed to use as a stylus?
Whittle a chopstick! No, seriously. Or you could write the notes on paper.
The cuneiform seems like a needless bother at that point.
Using paper kills trees.
No. Making paper kills trees. Using the stuff that’s already made doesn’t kill a thing.
I haven’t seen a good breakdown on what the resource stream looks like for the hundreds of millions of text-sending personal electronic devices the world makes each year, but I bet it isn’t pretty. And paper recycles pretty well. Electronics don’t.
Of course, clay tablets are even more green, aren’t they?
Clay tablets are more of a grey or brownish color.
Becky is four lesbians combined into one super lesbian? Man, Combiner Wars is producing some pretty interesting material.
All that budget was pulled from the Clone Project.
She is Lesbian Voltron (if you pretend that Voltron was mse of four lions, not five).
Y’know, I don’t think any of the lions had manes so they could probably be lionesses.
.
.
.
That’d make Voltron the first female combiner. Years before the new Victorion female combiner that Hasbro is gonna make. Ok maybe I should get some sleep. My mind is going on random tangents.
Victorion is actually Becky, Daisy, Mandy, and Grace as limbs, and Leslie as the head and torso.
Coming soon to Slipshine.
“Form feet and legs!”
“Form arms and body!”
“And I’ll give the head!”
“… … …”
“…FORM! I mean FORM the head!”
Fly with me, lesbian Voltron 🎶
She’s the Lesbian Power Ranger.
No, no, you all have it all wrong. Voltron is not the proper model, here; it’s clearly Dragonball Z. Becky is the result of four lesbians who have performed the fusion dance–first to form two Super Lesbians with Kinsey scores of 12 each, then again to form Becky. Obviously, this is a magnificent result, but there are risks. It’s said that if the Lesbian Fusion Dance is performed incorrectly, you end up with Faz.
Dude. Callin your ex a zero? Harsh, man.
Sorry, Danny, Dorothy is the only person on campus who knows what bisexuality is.
All the other actual bisexuals are just as confused and scared as you are, Danny.
Or passed out drunk.
Billie seemed to have a fairly good handle on it, and Ruth has by her own admission bigger problems.
ll these kids need to form a little group and go see leslie already
Dorothy: Hi, Leslie! A few of my friends are having a crisis of sexuality, could you help me out?
Leslie: Sure! Where are they?
Dorothy: Guys, you can come in now!
*All of Clarke wing enters classroom*
Mike immediately gets thrown out because he just came to mock. Joe leaves after realizing there’s no orgy in the offing. Dina was unintentionally dragged along with the group. Mary is furiously taking notes on everyone else’s behavior.
This.wins.all.internets.
Roz gets kicked out a short while later for trying to usurp Leslie in a failed coup.
“Possibly homosexual. Must investigate further.”
Walky will skip because he’s Walky. Sierra will stay because it turns out she wants help with a cripplingly-expensive shoe fetish addiction (“They’re not for walking on!”).
Dorothy quietly slips out immediately after the meeting starts. She heads back to the nearly-empty dorm, grabs Walky, and they can do their next Slipshine scene in peace without Sierra camped outside the room staring hungrily at the footwear of people passing by. Alternately, they decide to try lounge for a change of scene and get caught by Mike when he returns early after being thrown out by Leslie.
Ah! I thought it was foot fetishism, but shoe fetishism makes more sense…
I’ve started watching Parks & Rec, and I’m pretty sure Ron Swanson was having an orgasm when his shoes were being shined.
Given Becky’s previous comments, I’m not quite sure this is the best choice of an alternative you guys.
What could possibly go wrong?
Besides, she’s got to deliver the invitations to the dorm party.
It’ll be good for Becky, at least.
Agreed ^^;
yay, they can both learn about bisexuality at once! Efficient!
Convenient Becky is quite convenient.
Wait, who else needs to learn about bisexuality? I mean… Joyce isn’t here, is she?
On the other hand, if Joyce never realizes bisexuality is a thing, maybe she’ll think that Billie must be a lesbian, and then that she must have a girlfriend, and then she’ll actually learn more in her ignorance?
*grabs popcorn* THIS IS GONNA BE GOOD
http://i.imgur.com/WE0DRqN.gif
But hey if you average them together you get 12 and a half…which is still pretty gay. Sorry Danny.
I think the number you’re looking for is 24.5
12.5 is the average of Becky and Dorothy together.
But Becky is sooooo gay she actually underestimated her rating by half.
When Becky said 24-25, she was referring to her gaydioactive half-life.
So in 24-25 years she’ll be half as gay as she is now?
Even a half as gay Becky will still manage to be a danger to the structural integrity of any nearby closets.
Fair enough
Willis, why you make Jason’s nipples smaller?
At least he actually has nipples now, instead of just areola.
Man, slipshine days bring out some really weird random comments.
Nipples are a privilege not a right.
🙂
I’m wondering Who your grav is today? I’m curious whether she’s ‘out of it’ or is focused on someone/thing out of view. I can’t decide which I think. Also, looking at some comics from 2011/12 I came across someone who had just figured out your M.O. and asked you who your grav is .. I mean who it was on that day … which it no longer is … I’m not sure what tense to use for things like this: you were taking to him then about a grav which has since been replaced by one from the future … um, now. Fascinating.
Just click on my gravatar and it will link you to who is featured on my gravatar that day as well as my previous gravs since early this year.
You’re missing the important question : in the end, was it to scale ?
I love how your say that with Penny as your Gravatar. She has definitely seen them, and she wouldn’t be afraid to scold Willis for getting them wrong.
This just gives Danny a new reason to talk to Billie.
Your grav brings new meaning to the phrase, “I swear by my pretty floral bonnet, I will end you.”
It’s practical, too. Just think how many pouches worth of utility belt gadgetry you can pack into a pretty floral bonnet.
Not the most up-to-date model of sexuality, but a great place to start for these kids! Ah, Becky’s gonna get to brush up on it too, that’s great!
Dotty may or may not be leaving it out for practical reasons (she’s just starting him out for his own sake, not lecturing a class, after all) but don’t forget good ol’ group X for asexuality! We have decades of history of being recognized by researchers of human sexuality and it’s sometimes nice to have those receipts to rub in invalidating assholes’ faces (though we shouldn’t have to, everyone should be trusted with how they describe their own orientation).
Becky’s line in the last panel made me laugh out loud. For no particular reason I feel like she and Danny could make a funny duo.
With Kinsey’s fondness for scales, you’d think he might have realized that asexuality is a scale too. Ah well, no one’s perfect, especially when they’re pioneering in their field.
maybe the X value 0 to 6 is hetero-/homo- but the Y value is a-/pan-
If I understand correctly, asexuality isn’t the opposite of pansexuality, so I guess there’d have to be a y and a z, if not many more. Kinsey’s Tesseract!
Yeah, my understanding has always been that pansexuality is similar to bisexuality, so much so that the line between them is a bit blurry. As for an opposite term to ‘asexual’, the only one I’ve heard is ‘allosexual,’ though the meaning of the term is a bit in dispute.
Not certain if this counts exactly but here is a diagram:
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a300/candiussell/graphics/Genderbread-2_1.jpg
sorry so used to pan = ALL therefore pansexual = ALL THE SEXENGS
sorry I’m behind in my neologisms
you could have pansexual=all sexings, polysexual=multiple sexings, but then what if you want to have a finite, continuous spectrum for your sexings?
Personally, I like that “pan” accounts for being attracted to people who identify as neither gender or some combination/hybrid of genders. Though I also dislike that it makes “bi” sound more exclusive by comparison, because there shouldn’t be anything wrong with identifying as such.
…Identity is so complicated.
The most important thing is to accept and honor the labels that people choose for themselves. They are telling you how you feel and to deny that is to deny that their feelings are valid.
It is unfortunate that sometimes bisexuality gets reduced to meaning only being attracted to the binary male and female. That definition never really made a lot of logical sense to me from a feelings perspective. It would be better to define it as attraction to more than one sex or gender.
The difference between bi and pan to me is that one is implicit and one is explicit about being attracted to non-binary gender identities. Pan also has stricter in that it requires all gender identities without exception. Being explicit rather than implicit is probably important to some. And not everyone who is bisexual is going to be attracted to all gender identities.
So while there are some differences, the confusion comes that there is a lot of overlap between the two. It is just kind of a complicated thing.
Ranthog:
Hmmm, I don’t exactly agree with that. Definitions have meaning, a meaning that’s independent of the feelings of individuals about them. There’s a whole swath of people who call themselves “men who have sex with men” to avoid being called “gay”, because gay sadly carries bad connotations in some parts of the world.
Or the high-school-fame kind of bisexuality, when some claim to be bisexual because it’s perceived as “cool”, while not really being attracted to more than one gender.
I’m more of the opinion that sexual behavior fits in a definition (or one of the multiple variations inside a group) that a definition you choose define your sexual behavior.
These words do have meanings, although sometimes we don’t agree with what they are. These are words to describe our capability to feel attracted to someone of a specific gender identity in relation to our own gender identity. These are words that are fundamentally about how one feels.
Someone who has never been sexually or romantically active can still be heterosexual, gay, bi, pan, and etc, despite a lack of behavior. A bisexual person who has only ever had a relationship with the opposite gender is no less bisexual.
“Though I also dislike that it makes “bi” sound more exclusive by comparison, because there shouldn’t be anything wrong with identifying as such.”
And what’s wrong with having an exclusive sexual orientation?
It’s needlessly divisive of a sexuality which is in need of mental health resources and public support. It’s totally incorrect (just because I’m bi doesn’t mean I won’t date someone who isn’t perfectly placed on the gender spectrum). And the addition of an implicitly inclusive term is confusing – what if you were a Kinsey 0 who is attracted to an NB person because of certain traits about them both physical and non-physical? Would that make you pan? Bi? Something else?
Having labels is just so that people can get a quick idea of what you’re naturally into – boys or girls or both. NB people just don’t factor into discussions on sexuality. They can’t! Attraction to them is so individual that you can’t give someone a label based on whether they’re into NB people or not.
Following the definition of being bisexual as being only attracted to (cis) women and (cis) men and no other gender identities, some people perceive being bi as being trans-phobic.
That’s no more valid than regarding being a gay man as misogynistic. People aren’t entitled to your attraction, full stop.
Random: Oh, I agree. I was just saying this is how some people see it.
Saki, that is a very narrow definition one has to take for it to be trans-phobic. It is also a definition that the majority of the bisexual community would probably reject. Bisexuality can be defined without falling into gender binary terms that would potentially be hurtful to those who fall under the T in LGBT.
Yes, I know. I do not share the view I described, nor agree with the definition of bisexual I gave. Again; I was just explaining that that is how some people see it.
Ah, yeah. That is a really hurtful way of viewing things though, I think for both sides. Certainly a lot of pain in that sort of view.
I identify bisexual, and for me this means attraction to
1. people who are my own gender and
2. people who aren’t my own gender.
two things! = bi.
(Technically, sapiosexual might be more accurate, but most people haven’t heard of that, so ‘bi’ does just fine.)
Be careful attaching any value to how exclusive one’s sexuality is. A bisexual is not inherently a better or worse person than a heterosexual, for instance.
Well, I actually forgot because I got overexcited to mention group X, but Kinsey’s scale relied more on history than most modern conceptions of asexuality, I think. So that’s not really surprising. He probably scooped up some people who might have identified as asexual into the 0-6 scale and put some non-asexuals into group X. But, my point is, people have known there are people who aren’t interested in sex and/or don’t experience attraction for longer than many people realize.
You’re absolutely right, I was being–or trying to be–clever more so than accurate. As far as I know, he never really studied the conditions under which desire appears for various individuals except as relates to gender/sex. It’s easy to see how grays and demis would get lumped into one or the other category.
(might have identified as asexual if the concept was around in the 50’s which I don’t think it was, is what I meant; urgh, someone tattoo “reread for ambiguity before posting” inside my eyelids)
Kinsey began the exploration. It’s up to you to finish it.
And people who aren’t on the gender binary, too, but one concept at a time for poor Wondering Wonderbread, here. 🙂
That would be on a totally different scale though, sexuality and gender I mean.
True! Gender is not sexuality. I was picking on the scale, because it requires that you are a man or a woman, who likes men or women or men-and-women.
I like to think that Kinsey would have been so excited about all the concepts that are being publicly codified.
Wondering Wonderbread needs to meet the Genderbread Person.
Ask me my pronouns, as we are conversin’
S/he can’t match me, I’m the Genderbread Person <3
Well, I like the Kinsey scale, I think that to measure sexual attraction towards gender, it’s pretty usefull and accurate, and also, HANDY.
People forget sometimes how important it is for scientists to have handy measurement tools. The Kinsey scale might not mention all the other type of sexual attractions, but when you’re trying to compare the sexual attractions of people from 10 different social classes and 10 cultural background along 20 years, it’s very, very handy.
And also, most people can locate themselves on the Kinsey scale instead of saying “Yeah I like my own sex mostly, but I also tried with some very cute opposite sex, and at the time I’m in a relationship with opposite sex so it depends I guess?”. Rhetorically speaking, that’s handy too^^
There’s something to be said for being simple to understand and easy to use, as long as the existence of off-scale sexualities is kept in mind. Sexuality is more complex than Kinsey realized, but his work still provided a pretty solid foundation for advancing an almost unexplored field of study.
Yep, useful concepts & measures are useful for what they can deal with, so long as you realize that useful isn’t ontological, so long as you don’t reify them and use them like the bed of Procrustes OR deny the existence of people who fall outside their range.
That’s probably the greatest danger to simplified models of sexuality, yes.
Isn’t Dina asexual? It isn’t explicitly stated but it seems to be that way.
She expressed a clinical interest in experimenting with sex a while back, which threw Amber for a loop. It sounded more like intellectual curiosity than anything, but most things Dina says that aren’t dinosaur-related sound that way.
Dina said she hasn’t experienced “inclinations” towards sex, which could mean a lot of things but probably indicates she could be asexual or ace-spectrum.
Willis hasn’t said anything as far as I know and she hasn’t explicitly expressed an identity, so I would call her “likely to be somewhere on the asexual spectrum” rather than any particular identity.
Carla is explicitly asexual.
24: Joycesexual, may sub other woman if she can imagine theyre Joyce
25: Joyce and another woman if Joyce invited them.
Ask them to wear a Joyce mask?
Kinsey 3 representin’ 😀
I feel like I say this a lot, but it’s the *greatest* thing in the universe to have this comic with not just one but multiple bisexual characers who are all so different and multi-facetted and it just makes me so, so happy. Representation matters, you guys <3
Reading just the first line of your comment I assumed you were going to say “It’s the greatest thing in the universe to be bisexual”
As did I. It is pretty great.
Oddly, I’ve know a few people who thought that I was a 6 – completely homosexual; including the deputy manager at my first job. When she commented on this (she assumed it because I never showed any attraction to any of her female friends who were always coming into the shop), she was completely thrown (and possibly a bit insulted) when I just laughed it off and explained that no, I’m actually as straight as can be, I just didn’t find any of her friends attractive. O well. I’ve even taken the Kinsey test and scored exactly a 0.
But it wasn’t the first or last time that a person has made that mistake about me. Hmm.
Confusion happens. I’m Kinsey Zero and preferentially monogamous myself but back in my school days I had enough poly friends that there seemed to be a widespread assumption amongst the broader community that I was more of a Three.
For Zeroes I think a bit of confusion may be a good thing. Having to spend time politely explaining what you are and aren’t into is about as close as you’ll get to personally experiencing what it’s like to constantly have your sexuality questioned and doubted by people. Which, admittedly, still isn’t very close.
Confusion seems to follow me well – for years, every forum I went on, people mistakenly believed I was a young (often teenaged) girl. This was so far from the truth I found it utterly hilarious (I’m actually a guy in my 30s). These days, I avoid that particular oddity by introducing myself on forums as a 30-something guy.
I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m clearly giving some kind of confusing signals out; somehow. Mostly I just find it funny. Like when people mistake my mum for my wife(!). xD Or when people meeting me in person think I’m in my 50s. It never ends. 😛
okay Danny and Becky are in the same comic together. Everyone take a nice calm breath and please don’t let this comment thread become a huge hate-fest. nice and calm people- OH MY CHEESE PUT THE TABLE DOWN!!!
┬─┬ ノ( ゜-゜ノ)
Flip it. Fliip iiit.
ヽ༼ ツ ༽ﾉ ︵┻━┻
What if it’s flipped so hard that it lands back on its legs?
…Well, I know what I’m practicing this weekend.
Heh. My ex-hubby was drunk and tried to flip an old table
in the garage. It righted itself twice! He was so frustrated!
I laughed until I cried.
If Roz enters, the comment section will collapse in on itself out of pure unneeded hate.
And we get a neutron comic?
Yes. It will become incredibly dense, with absolutely no filler. It’s effectively identical to terminal Butt’s Disease.
I at least think the Roz-hate has some merit at this point. Danny hate comes from an entirely different comic taking place in another universe entirely and Becky hate is all about idiots not realizing that friends aren’t always gonna be perfect human beings.
Roz-hate is at least genuine dislike of Roz. She is the sort of loudmouthed, sophomoric, overly opinionated brat that behaves in the most sanctimonious of ways when other people screw up but throws a damned hissy fit if she even thinks some one has the gall to judge her.
To surmise: Roz is the sort of person who would waste their time typing up a lengthy post about how much of a fuck up she thinks Danny and Becky are.
There is no reason to think this. Roz was arrogant towards Joyce, who legitimately was close-minded and prejudiced when they first met. Roz also volunteers for Planned Parenthood to help people have safe and healthy sex, has made education such a habit that she either unconsciously or intentionally worked a quick lesson on orientation into her banter with Riley, and put aside her anger towards Joyce to offer resources when she realized something bad had happened.
Roz would immediately and seriously bury Danny and Becky in resources and try to help them. She would get a little patronizing and savior-y about it, maybe, but she would not rip a strip off scared, confused gay/bi kids.
Plus she gave Joyce a pamphlet to what I assume was a therapist
Eh Danny was really only a jerk in Roomies! He became much more like able in its walky! It maybe that he doesn’t show up enough to get sick of him.
Gee Becky, ever heard of knocking ?
I mean, it’s not like they were discussing something private & important or anything in there.
Has any character ever knocked on a door in DoA? And the only locked door I can remember was Ruth’s, which Billie promptly kicked apart. All the dorms I lived in were like a maximum security cell block on lockdown compared to this place.
Maybe there is knocking and inviting-in that happens offpanel and isn’t included for word bubble space/blocking reasons (“blocking” in the stagecraft context, I mean, like where to put stuff in a scene)
I’m pretty sure Danny just stood quietly outside of Dorothy’s room for an hour before she happened to open the door.
The idea itself made me chuckle, then I realized what avatar you have and now I just cannot stop smiling… Dina is so perfect for that answer 🙂
Maybe he scratched the door while whimpering.
Joyce knocks on doors as far as I remember.
I want to say Walky does as well, since the few times he’s visited Sal or Billie they’ve always greeted him at the door or doorway.
Billie has!
Of course, then she followed up by going all Chun Li on it.
You mean the girl whose troubles began when she failed to lock her door and someone barged in. Maybe she’s hoping to barge in on someone else in flagrante delicto.
“Becky! Close the door!!”
“Ok.”
“From the outside!!!”
This is Becky we’re talking about. She probably barged in without a second thought. Becky seems to get ahead of herself when she’s excited. No wonder she’s the best friend of Joyce.
Ok. But what would she do if she did just barge in on some hanky pankying, unintentionally? As for Becky and Joyce both having enlarged excitement glands, wow: that gave me an image of them torquing each other up, through sympathetic vibrations, in a runaway positive feedback loop. Which I guess they were starting to do around DORM PARTY before Sarah applied some braking.
Probably get flustered and apologize, then either leave, offer to leave, or get halfway through one of the other options before getting distracted by hot lesbians.
Danny raises a good point, it’s easier to accept something as A Thing when told from the perspective of someone who actually lives it.
Case in point every time someone claims something in DoA is unrealistic, which claim is immediately debunked by someone who has experienced it. Which is often.
dangit, I was afraid constantly refreshing Slipshine would eat into my free time =p
why was that a reply to Neeks \=’
w/e
Ok, that makes more sense, lol. Comment plugin shenanigans.
Sorry, I have no idea what you’re referring to unless that’s an innuendo about Jason’s allegedly giant dong.
Alright then, what about masked vigilantes ? 😀
Well, there is totally a RL “costumed hero” community, so. There’s that. I mean that’s totally been a thing for probably decades, I believe there’s even a documentary about the phenomenon of non-superpowered people wearing costumes and fighting crime/doing good deeds outside the context of comic books.
Though I’m not sure whether or not my pointing that out proves my point, since I’m not speaking from personal experience beyond having a former roommate who would have had that as a life goal if not for his chronic back pain issues.
Oh, I was merely jesting. But I’m enlightened nonetheless. Woah, they do exist in the US 😮
Yeah, and they’re kinda crazy.
Do wholly sane people even exist?
Arguably not. The binary sane/insane model is even less useful for understanding mental health than Kinsey’s one-dimensional scale is for understanding sexuality.
My brother had a masked vigilante persona going on for a few years before he died. In the end he was basically just a children’s superhero who showed up to community events and helped at charities, but it was the same idea and definitely born from the masked vigilante idea
aw, he must’ve been a kind fellow.
Yeah, I’ve definitely come across people feeling this way before. It feels a little weird to me for it to show up in a situation like this, because I usually see it stemming from a frustration at the lack of understanding of outsiders, and Danny hasn’t had a chance to deal with that. But that’s just my personal experience, and I’m willing to believe that Danny’s reaction here isn’t all that strange.
Having your personal experiences validated by someone who shares them lessens the likelihood that they’re just humoring you or speaking hypothetically. I guess that’s what I was getting at.
Yes, but even that has limits. Jesus: You guys aren’t just humoring me are you? The Apostles: Absolutely not Lord!
“I’d rather hear this from a non-zero”
Tut tut, Danny. Emic superiority isn’t supported by modern anthropology. XD
Actually, by the way she’s acted in this comic, Dorothy’s probably the second best person to talk to after Leslie. But somehow I think Danny won’t make it that far.
The best person for Danny to talk to right now is someone he trusts and who is accepting. Dorothy is probably his best choice right now. Joe would have been a great choice if they weren’t already fighting.
Leslie would likely be a safe and knowledgeable choice, but she probably doesn’t have his trust the way Dorothy does.
They’re already fighting about this.
Is it possible to score a -14?
Only for Joe.
Joe won’t stop until he scores a -69
wasn’t Joe confused as to what iind of hreesome he engaged in once? (not horrified, mind)
I’m talking about the time Danny pointed out his shirt sbout digging boners
That was a Thing That Happened, yes.
I’m pretty sure that takes you into the self love portion of the scale.
I fail to see the connection to heterosexuality.
A purely binary system is boring. We need more qualifiers. So, for example, -6 means the right hand is the only lover the subject wants. Any number followed by an i indicates an individual of the given sexual preference who shows a strong desire for scissoring…
Oh, so you don’t even want a scale in the first place. Otherwise, you’d be saying that heterosexuality taken to an extreme is self-love, which makes no sense.
Well, mostly the whole “up to eleven” nonsense grates on me. There is no way to be more exclusively heterosexual than being exclusively heterosexual. Joe’s not special, he’s just a zero with poor impulse control. If we’re going to add numbers, they might as well actually mean something.
Becks gets a pass because she’s kinda high on her coming out, and she’s a kid who doesn’t know any better.
Well, “11” is a joke from the mockumentary This is Spinal Tap.
“… the character Nigel Tufnel, played by Christopher Guest. In this scene Nigel gives the rockumentary’s director, Marty DiBergi, played by Rob Reiner, a tour of his stage equipment. While Nigel is showing Marty his Marshall guitar amplifiers, he points out one in particular whose control knobs all have the highest setting of eleven, unlike standard amplifiers, whose volume settings are typically numbered from 0 to 10, believing that this numbering actually increases the highest volume of the amp (“It’s one more, ain’t it”). When Marty asks why the ten setting is not simply set to be louder, Nigel hesitates before responding blankly, “These go to eleven.”, again.[2][3]
Yes, I know.
? So does the joke grate on you OR people, like Nigel Tufnel. who believe that dividing a pie into 11 slices increases the quantity of pie over dividing it into 10 slices ?
So despite my complaints yesterday, I really appreciate how Dorothy is being informative and inclusive, even bringing up the possibility that she herself might not be a solid 0 on the Kinsey, but also phrasing this in a way that works for Danny’s particular queries with his orientation, and then ending up with Danny motivated to seek another “non-zero” who can help him out some more.
So, yeah. Go Dotty.
I also love how familiar she is with Becky despite their awkward start.
Go Dotty!
I’m beginning to question Becky’s math skills just a bit.
She’s all about substracting the clothes.
And dividing the legs.
I always get kinda excited (usually not sexually) when I hear someone mention Kinsey by name. I may have serious issues.
I’m more of a Virginia Johnson fan myself.
This is going very smoothly. It’s making me nervous.
How bad was the Kinsey film?
I actually love that film. *shrug*
I liked it, but I have terrible taste, so I’m not the best judge.
The book was better. Not Kinsey’s book, but the fiction book by Boyle, The Inner Circle. The movie made Kinsey kinda a saint of enlightened sexuality, but reality is a little more mixed and messy. Yes, I’m on my way to work at a library, where I will tell people that just about any book is better than the ensuing movie.
Safe bet. You’re going to be right about that most of the time.
Indeed. But, I learned a lot from the Kinsey movie. The Inner Circle is the kind of book I probably would not have read on my own. So, I’m grateful to it for that.
There are a couple of biographies of Kinsey out there as well. And if you really want to binge on sexologist life stories, Master of Sex was a decent read – can’t say if it was better than the TV adaptation though, never caught the series.
I kinda want to know what a 24 or 25 would actually be.
More than 11?
It’s ridicolous. It’s not even funny.
If Becky was a drill, her rating means that she could Pierce The Heavens!
So Becky has to fight the Anti-Spiral?
Depends on if the Anti-Spirals are females or not.
The dreams of the gays that have fallen and the dreams of the bi that will follow, that’s how a Kinsey works. MY KINSEY IS THE KINSEY THAT CREATES THE GAYDAR!!
Next slip shine!
She’s only interested in engaging in f/f/f/f/f 5-ways.
Now I’m envisioning Faz walking in with charts and explaining Dorothy’s point in entirely too much detail.
Finally Faz can use his graphs for good instead of evil 😛
Later, he gets delivered to Ruth, wrapped in a grappling hook, by a grimacing Dorothy.
Oh cool! two of my favorite really awesome, but unfairly hated characters in the same comic.
Might have to subscribe to Slipshine to find out if Sal leaves her gloves on (Cue Randy Newman: Suspicious minds are talking…). Or is that a given, given her (presumed) scar? Do love their faces.
(warning : Joyce censorship) Tumblr previews says she does.
Wouldn’t that what Sal is doing there be hard to do in biker gloves? Surgical gloves, sure…
Pretty much the only time we’ve seen her gloveless is when the Walkerton parents visited. but she kept her scarred hand behind her back at all time.
Dorothy could point him to the only other out non-zero on campus (at least the only one I can think of right now), her gender studies teacher, but I don’t know if Danny will find a (presumed) 6 any more helpful than a 0…
Leslie is an educator with years ahead of Danny; she’s required
*not required, but more than qualified.
Leslie! Right. I keep forgetting her name. And of course she’s qualified, I didn’t phrase my thing properly, I just meant to say I didn’t know if Danny would think so before hearing her out. 🙂 Danny seems like the type to not think someone can help him until they’ve actually helped him haha.
Well, Billie seems pretty comfortable admitting that she’s been attracted to/had…interactions… with ladies, but she doesn’t seem to even be acquainted with the term ‘bisexual,’ or else doesn’t like to use it, so she may not be the best resource.
The way I understood it she seemed to more out as bi-curious. As in, she had no problem with people knowing she’d experimented, but it wasn’t clear if she was actually attracted to girls as to men or if she was just being, well, bi-curious.
? Billie had a relationship with a girl in high school, and now with Ruth, and she teased poor Daisy, right? She was willing to do Danny when he appealed to her bruised ego, but do we — meaning anyone but me — know of any guys she’s had sexings with?
So maybe Billie’s more like a 4 or 5, but that still makes her bisexual.
Billie has had sexings with guys in the Walkyverse, and the sexual orientations are supposed to map 1:1, so there’s some evidence there, I guess?
I have some ethical qualms with using lack of experience as a qualifier for orientation. I wish society would trust a person’s assessment of themselves a little more.
Willis also used Billie, Danny, and Ruth when he did that ‘bisexual visibility day’ image, so….
(Also…gah…so much yes to your last paragraph.)
She’s had no qualms with flirting with dudes whom she finds attractive, like when Ethan got his haircut. But yeah, people know what gets their attention whether or not they’ve acted on their attractions.
Kinoko: Yes. AND also vice verse. I asked about Billie’s experience, rather than her orientation because I was interested in her experiences/history, not to use it as a surrogate for orientation. There are MANY reasons why orientation and experience are not a simple mirror of each other. NOR was I looking for evidence to use to “validate” or “invalidate” her self perception/identification — as if that or I could do that.
But the way people talk about the Kinsey scale confuses me. I read Kinsey’s introduction to the scale, in which he says that its based on/calibrates experience (in a particular period of life). But people since Kinsey, including here, seem to say that its a scale of orientation. So??
They had an actual relationship? I didn’t know that. I thought they were just really close friends, and as such had tried out some stuff.
I got the strong impression that Billie may have felt that way after the fact, but that it was an important and dramatic relationship for Alice.
Besides, all of this is unknown to both Danny and Dorothy.
I think i might rate a 5 currently. I don’t want to discount all women, I just have particular types.
One, here. I get that.
Yeah, 1 here, also. Particular types are definitely a factor. Lately I’ve been thinking of myself as a combination of heterosexual + bi-romantic, which is dialed down a lot from the 2 or 3 that I thought I was a few years back.
Hormones are real. You might have been a 2 or 3 at that time, but that doesn’t mean you would always stay that way.
The first time I heard of the Kinsey scale I rated myself a 0.5 but since I have slowly found myself drifting towards (without having yet reached) 3… I’m having trouble figuring out how much of not being a three is because of subconscious mental blocks caused by heteronormativity and some past experiences and how much of the not being a 0 is actual attraction to girls and not me subconsciously wanting to be part of a community… Stupid complicated brain.
I guess I’m technically a 5 because I have had crushes on women before. Only two of them, and I was a young teen at the time, but since five is “incidental heterosexuality” I guess I still qualify XD
Dammit, Drew Barrymore, you’ve ruined my perfect score!
…And this was supposed to be a reply to JessWitt right above you. Sorry.
Yeah, I kind of guessed. No worries. 🙂
Right there with you buddy. I try to be completely honest with myself, but I’m not sure that’s possible. Who I want to be will inevitably affect who I think I am.
it’s perfectly natural for sexuality to drift back-and-forth. It can make things really confusing.
You probably already know that, sorry if I’m being condescending or stating the obvious.
No worries, I didn’t take it as condescending at all. You’re right after all. 🙂 That first paragraph completely applies to me too. It’s hard cause I don’t really have any experience with either gender beyond getting a crush and never acting on it. I’m the type that won’t know for sure until I actually, seriously, fall for a girl, so until that happens I think I’m stuck with not knowing. Which I’m mostly okay with, it’s not like I’d let my sexuality define me in any way. But I don’t like not knowing things.
(not yet having really talked about this to anyone made me write more than I intended haha. Sorry. ^^”)
No worries. I have a tendency to ramble. You weren’t rambling. Your reply was as precisely as long as needed.
It’s just that at first I only intended to say I could relate to that first paragraph but then I ended up developing and… Well let’s say I’ve realized I needed to talk about this more than I’d thought haha. 🙂
Thank you for understanding.
I can totes relate to the “not sure if attracted to girls or just want to be part of the queer community.” Especially since I’m ace spectrum, and am rarely sexually attracted to anyone, but my past girlfriends have accused me of being secretly straight.
What I’ve deduced is that people who are totally straight don’t spend as much time as I do trying to figure out their sexuality, and even if I don’t like girls often it doesn’t make me less part of the community. “Questioning” is a queer identity, too. And even though there’s some jerks who will say you’re “not queer enough,” a Kinsey .5 who ID’s as lgbtq has just as much right to be there as a Kinsey 6.
Huh. “Questioning is a queer identity, too”… I hadn’t thought of it that way. That… that’s interesting… I feel a bit calmer now… Which is weird because I hadn’t realized I was anxious about this haha. Thanks a lot for sharing.
Hehe, I sure wish I could attend that meeting Joyce wanted to get Ethan to. I should ask some friends if they of any similar meetings in my area. (this thought seriously only just occured to me despite every other comment here since Joyce found that flyer being about how Danny should attend one)
Asking around sounds like a great idea! If you’re near a college campus or city there should be something. I live in the same town as Willis and we have something like 20 lgbtq groups on my campus, so I’m a bit spoiled. I was lucky to find a group geared toward people who were neither straight or gay, and though we had members who were, it ended up being really accepting towards people all over the spectrum, or not even on any spectrum. I really hope you can find something supportive like that too 🙂 this stuff does have a way of making you anxious without even noticing it, haha.
I’ll definitely do that! Thank you a lot for your advice and good wishes! 🙂
I’m really happy I decided to try talking about this here. ^.^
Dotty is a 0? Joyce is now subconsciously disappointed by this fact even without hearing it.
That, or she feels very relieved.
‘Whew, now when we get married, no hanky panky’
But Joyce wants the Post-Marital Hanky Panky.
We already know that Joyce is “If I had to pick a girl.”
http://thechampioneternal.tumblr.com/post/116403925000/inspired-by-this-i-dont-really-know-how-to
Eee, I love these renditions. Especially Joyce!
I think Dorothy is probably one of the most informed of the cast on sexuality regardless of her 0 score. Being the same score doesn’t mean you understand the whole thing any better then Danny does. Seems pretty silly that any info from a 0 isn’t worth listening to… But then I can understand his desire to communicate with someone he can identify with. Meh
I don’t think he’s saying “you’re a 0 and therefore unhelpful”, especially since he’s just now learned of the Kinsey, but I think he’s trying to go about it like “so if I’m a non-zero, then another non-zero should know what I’m going through, whereas Dorothy is talking about it as something she has no personal experience with.”
Dorothy is invaluable for helping setting him straight and giving him some names to ascribe to his feelings, but she doesn’t have all the answers.
Right now, Danny just wants somebody to tell him what’s going on.
“Setting him straight” hahahahaha… ha… Yes I’ll see myself out now.
Dammit that is the second time I’ve done that.
Don’t ever stop. It’s too funny.
I think he’s just feeleing very inconfortable and is trying to temporarily run away, rather than dismissing her for the 0.
You’re totally right that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with rating a 0 on the Kinsey scale- it doesn’t reflect on a person’s understanding of LGBT issues anymore than being a 6, a 3, an X, or anything in-between (or off the scale).
However, we also live in a veeery heteronormitive society. I think that part of the reason that Danny feels so uncomfortable here is because he is used to perceiving heterosexuality as “normal.” Now, not only has he begun to question the heterosexual identity that he previously felt secure in, but he’s identifying with an orientation that, until moments ago, he hadn’t even known was a possibility. Majorly confusing. Knowledgeable though she may be, Dorothy’s security in her 0-rating (an orientation with which Danny previously identified, that society as a whole depicts as “normal”) is increasing his feelings of abnormality- at least in terms of having this conversation with her.
Becky isn’t bisexual- but her own non-heteronormitive idenity gives she and Danny common ground that Dotty lacks. I wonder if her lack of knowledge about bisexuality, rather than upsetting Danny, might comfort him; it would supply further common ground. Having a fellow “non-0” to learn alongside could help him to feel considerably more normal.
It’s way too early to make assumptions, but it’d be pretty cool if Danny and Becky became friends. I’d like to see them go to the questioning meet/greet together. It’d be a great place for both of them to get information, resources, and meet new people.
This would also work really well because these characters have a lot of potential to bounce off each other well. Both of them are still learning but doing so in opposite ways. Danny is often to coutius espeshally about his sexulity and Becky’s dive in head first style of exploration could help him. On the other hand Becky’s rather reckless personality could be tempered with his caution.
Plus they’re both at there funniest when interacting with characters who are very different from themselves.
In other words, Becky is the best person for this based solely on comedic value. Which is the only value that matters in DoA.
If I understand why Danny wants to find a non-0 to talk to, its because he isn’t at all sure that he believes Dorothy about Bi being a valid orientation, rather than something to freak about, and so he wants to talk to somebody else who themselves is attracted to both girls AND ALSO at least 1 guy at the same time. Which seems eminently reasonable. But I think that he wants to talk to someone who can tell him, yes, I am Bi, there are lots of us, you’re not a freak. I THINK that Danny knows about and accepts both straight/0 and gay/6, but fears that he is some freakish combination of both — analogous to a hermaphrodite, maybe, if that’s something that would worry you. IF that’s right, I doubt that Becky is going to provide what he wants first of all, why he was about to leave Dorothy’s room. (Also, Becky doesn’t seem to be the least bit questioning, even if she has a lot to learn — she’s totes cocksure … on which note I’ll leave.)
I actually really like how Danny is developing in this ark, very cautiously putting feelers out about the subject and trying to find someone who shares his experience.
Let’s just hope he can finish it before the flood strikes ;3
This is a Willis comic. Why do you assume there will be only one flood?
On the Madarame Scale, I would class myself as a 2.3.
…It’s kinda sad that my first thought upon reading that was “What about Genshiken ?)
Why is it sad when that is indeed the Madarame that I was referring to with his 2D complex:
2.0: Only 2D no 3D
2.5: Like 2D and 3D equally
3.0: Has no interest in 2D
…oh !
Genshiken is highly underrated.
Except the revival. That stuff’s lame.
01:03
…am I gonna be refreshing Slipshine on the hour all day =|
YESSSSSSS
Hmmm. We need some shenanigans. Cue Becky!
Ah yes, the Kinsey Scale, which doesn’t allow for separation of romantic interest & sexual interest and excludes some sexualities as a result.
Yeah, and it really doesn’t have a place for asexual. But, hey, it’s better than what came before.
I don’t know if this is a new thing, but I believe there was an “x” marker for people who don’t experience sexual attraction?
The scale is wrong but people argue bisexuals don’t exist NOW.
And to think when I was much younger, I was taught that if you weren’t at least 95% gay or straight, you were bi…
Is it even meant to measure those? I had assumed that it was a quantification of sexuality in particular, and disregarded romance.
It was intended solely as a measure of your sexual experiences and desires to date. Romance, gender identity, and other factors weren’t considered separately, although he was aware that they could change the types of experiences you had.
Kinsey worked in a era when any non-heterosexual identity was either criminalized, treated as a mental disorder, or both. You might cut him some slack for his work being less than perfect by modern standards.
What’s odd is that we’re still talking about Kinsey. Like people who trash talk evolution by talking about problems with Darwin, or sociology and Durkheim. If there is a Kinsey Institute then they’ve been following up and modernising the ideas right? This sort of thing makes me wonder where they are now and how they’ve been handling all this stuff that Kinsey wasn’t exposed to.
The Kinsey Institute is still going strong. I suggest checking their website for a list of their publications over the years – it’s the best indicator of what they’ve been researching. Last work I saw from them was a study of condom use and misuse in conjunction with a sex ed program I was involved with. I’m not sure how much work has been done to modernize Kinsey, but the Klein Grid (which is also fairly old work) was a deliberate expansion of the Kinsey Scale.
Compare them to the Masters & Johnson Institute, which closed down for good in 1994.
Darwin and Durkheim, too: path breaking work; both their paradigms are alive and fruitful — Durkheim’s more than ever — and lots of their particular findings are still things to know about.
On the plus side, you can explain the Kinsey scale in just a sentence or two and have most people using it on themselves immediately. Very portable.
Woo enter the Becky! This’ll be interesting, as she knows as much about Bisexuality as Danny did. *grabs popcorn*
I attended the same high school that Kinsey graduated from. He scale was mentioned in our psychology and health classes.
That’s not unique to your school. The guy’s famous. Arguably one of the top three pioneers in sex research in history, alongside Johnson & Masters.
Danny: This calls for a non-zero
Becky: My presence is needed
Her lesbian senses are tingling.
And yet, the editor of the school newspaper remains a very frustrated woman.
Danny wants a non-0 / non-6: he knows about heterosexual AND homosexual; he was freaking because he was both or neight; Dorothy told him he’s “bi-sexual”, nothing to worry about, but she’s a 0; so Danny wants to talk to someone else who is attracted to girls AND AT LEAST ONE guy, so he can see that he’s not a chimera.
Somewhere, Vegeta is yelling “IT’S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAND” and doesn’t understand why.
He probably does it on a weekly basis now, just in case.
Vegeta, what does the Kinsey Scouter say about her sexuality?
IT’S OVER NINE THOOUUUOUSSAAAAAND!
Yeah, Becky? We’re gonna need you at a five or six.
Personally a -20. It’s probably a small reason Becky rubs off wrong on me. I’m just matter of fact about it. It’s so extreme for me it’s just a part of who I am. Like riding on the bus… the girls have details and color. I notice when I share a train car with the same girl several times. Guys? Just couldn’t tell you… not because I hate them or because I’m particularly attracted to this girl or that, but because the boys/men/guys just fade away… I can’t force myself to notice. Becky does the opposite approach. She kinda forces people to see the way she sees. “Gay?! Why yes, I’M gay.” Me? I’m just over here. Being me. If you’re a girl, you have my attention, I’ve noticed you and cataloged in some corner of my brain the things I like about you, the things I don’t, if you are particularly attractive to me, if you have interesting style, haircut, accessories, if you tell the person sitting next to you about your job, pets, living arrangements… It’s a little tiresome, but it’s how I see the world, an odd type of colorblindness. She’s so in your face about it that it’s like religious nuts that aren’t satisfied with having a belief system that makes sense to them, it’s only worth having if you can make other people like yourself.
… And then I realize that Becky’s parents are religious nuts and it all makes sense…
Wow, I hadn’t thought about it like that. But yeah, it makes a lot of sense XD
I’m still trying to figure out how negative numbers fit on the Kinsey scale…like, “VERY VERY STRAIGHT” or are we talking like…antisexual, or what?
Well, that’s actually just 0, but people like exagerrating 🙂
Your ability to be completely silent about your sexuality without having it assumed to be anything other than what it is is… straight privilege.
So resenting Becky for broadcasting what for you is just always assumed with zero effort on your part is pretty illogical.
Trust me: if she could just scope out women and be read as gay without having to do any work, Becky would.
And I bet that if you had to endlessly correct people who were assuming you were gay every minute of every day, you’d be louder. :|a
I don’t try to score with everyone whose genital plumbing is different from mine, but I don’t think that just because I’m not banging people like a porn star anyone believes me to be gay .
Or maybe they are, but I just don’t give a damn about it one way or the other.
Um, yeah, I know they don’t. That is my point: you never have to worry about anyone getting your sexuality wrong, so you have the luxury of being quiet about it.
Assumptions about sexuality are contextual. I’ll agree that het privilege is the norm in US society overall, but being Kinsey Zero doesn’t make you entirely immune to misunderstandings. I spent a fair amount of time in college explaining to people all over the scale that I was not bisexual simply because I spent a lot of time with friends of mine in the poly community. One of my old classmates went into reproductive medicine after school and his patients frequently assume he’s gay or bi, apparently just because he’s a bachelor.
Point being, straights rarely have to worry about people getting their sexuality wrong, but “never” is an overstatement.
@neeks – Like Danny, I’d never heard of the scale until this comic. But I put -20 because I understood the scale to be concerned primarily, if not exclusively with sexuality. For me, it goes beyond that to platonic relationships and even down to general social awareness.
Some background – until I was four, the only other kids I was around was the neighbor girl and her sister. Then we moved, even though I made a number of male friends, I often ended up interacting with their sisters unless video games were involved. I’ve really only had a handful of close male friends, and more than half of those were grounded in a shared hobby (Video games or Magic: the Gathering). Essentially, my entire life I’ve socialized as a girl. I’ve had a few personal gender identity issues, but I’ve never had a moments doubt about my level of interest in guys as much more than background noise. That’s why I rate myself so low.
@Li – I don’t resent Becky. I think she’s overly loud and pushy about it. She doesn’t respect that she has caused Joyce to reconsider something pretty fundamental to who she is (and is lucky it’s the second time, not the first, as I think standing up to her parents about Dorothy was a similar “crisis”) and that it may take a moment for her to adjust. She isn’t doing it as a way to attract new people, but generally declaring it to random people she meets. She’s also using it as an excuse to be loud and pushy. I don’t resent Becky at all, her attitude and volume on the subject are just one item on a list of reasons I just can’t respect her.
Also, as I said, I’ve socialized as a girl my whole life. I apparently set off every gaydar in the zipcode. I don’t have to “endlessly correct” people, because I rarely give a hoot. It was pretty funny one time though when my friend Sarah dragged a girl I was talking to (that Sarah was friends with, not a random stranger) out of the bar to let her know that I’d been hitting on her for an hour and was interested.
Okay, so. Sigh.
It is *different* to live in a world where the universal default for everyone is not-your-sexuality, and depending on where you live there are penalties for not being your-sexuality.
You cannot compare that to people making silly harmless assumptions about you that you know are wrong. You just can’t. It’s fundamentally different.
You especially cannot compare your experiences to Becky’s, since she’s spent her life in an extremely intolerant situation where she couldn’t even admit her identity to herself.
You have no ability to judge her loudness because you apparently can’t even sort of imagine what she is going through, so maybe now would be a great time to stop trying.
(And yes, I invited the comparison, but I thought you had a better imagination and would make some effort to flip the whole scenario, instead of cluelessly telling me “oh I set off GAYDAR all the time tee hee it’s no big deal”.)
What you said was: “And I bet that if you had to endlessly correct people who were assuming you were gay every minute of every day, you’d be louder”
My response is that people still get it wrong, and I have no need to defend my sexuality, because who the hell cares if I’m not trying to get into that person’s pants? I’m not judging her for being gay, I’m turned off by her for being obnoxious. Becky isn’t being discriminated against and defending herself, she’s not correcting anyone who got it wrong innocently or otherwise. She absolutely has “the luxury of staying silent about it.” She’s volunteering information to people who don’t care and using it as an excuse to be obnoxious.
No, I have no idea what it would be like to be Becky. I can’t imagine what she’s going through. But personally, I’d be more concerned about fixing the homeless, unemployed and broke situation to have too much time to worry about the other adjectives describing me.
I don’t understand why you are blowing what I’m actually saying out of proportion. I’m saying I don’t care for Becky, that I find her annoying and pushy, which are negative, but rather mild and passive. Resent and judge are active and aggressive. I do resent being told that because I’m straight, I’m not allowed to have any opinion about someone who isn’t. I think I’ve stated pretty clearly that it’s not her being gay that bothers me. If she acted like this about being ginger or Christian or from Indiana, I’d feel exactly the same. In fact, I said I think she’s like this about being gay because her parents are exactly the same about being Christian.
By coming out to people as she meets them Becky is actively defending herself from people automatically assuming that she’s straight, which is the default assumption of you are not in a location that explicitly targets the LGBT+ community. Also the people she has come out to are those closest to Joyce, whom she will be spending a lot of time around. Its important to her that she can be out as the current environment isn’t anti-gay unlike her home life where she clearly needed to be in the closet seeing how her father reacted.
Becky is currently giving these people the information that they need so they know the truth and cannot make false assumptions. She isn’t being obnoxious she’s being practical and proud of her identity now that it no longer needs to be a secret.
I’m bisexual and I recently returned from a bear run (a gathering primarily for Gay, large, heavy, muscular men). While I was there it was easier to partially closet myself and let people assume I was gay as opposed to bisexual. This was because there are people in the gay community that believe bisexuality isn’t real and I didn’t want to defend myself. There were a few people that saw my profile and learned that I was Bi and it only came up briefly as was talking about my coming out and he reacted positively. Looking back I wish I more open about my identity but everyone handles this situation differently.
I guess her actions were a little exaggerated in my mind. I remembered her going to people she wasn’t introduced to, by herself and volunteering the information. I went back through the archive for what I remembered and found no such thing. I’m not sure how this information is necessary to the people around her in order to engage with her as a fellow human being, but that’s definitely a personal preference and she can engage with others however she likes as long as she doesn’t cause them harm. As I said below this, I, and everybody, are allowed to like and dislike whoever they want for whatever reason, so long as it doesn’t lead them to harm that person. I don’t care for Becky. That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have a job, a safe home or a significant other. If I was a boss/father/politician, it would be my responsibility to treat her fairly and with dignity and afford her all her rights. It still wouldn’t be my responsibility to like her.
Wish there was a preview or edit option. I didn’t mean it to sound as if she is hurting anyone or would be in the wrong by approaching random strangers. If she chose to, that would be her prerogative too. I just thought I remembered her doing doing so when you said that she only “outted” herself to Joyce’s friends, but you were correct.
Becky does have a very strong personality so it’s understandable that memories of her can be exaggerated. So far as I am concerned liking Becky is not required, so long as the reason is for actual flaws and not just because she is out and proud.
Like you said in your replies she did thrown Ethan out of the room and she is always very rude to Dorothy and can be abrasive in the same ways Joyce is. These are some of her flaws that rub people (myself included) the wrong way and hopefully at some point her character can move past it.
One reason your comments are not being well-received is how similar they sound to the way homophobes frequently claim not to have an issue with gayness per se, it’s just that “they’re shoving it in our faces”! …by holding hands in public, by wearing rainbow things and holding Pride parades, and just generally by not appearing “normal” i.e. hetero. Be aware of the world into which you’re sending your words.
Ok. I can understand where the argument sounds similar. But I’m for gay marriage for the exact reason that nobody should force someone to live under a code that doesn’t belong to them. I think it’s wrong that Christians have changed the laws to deny non-Christians the right to live as non-Christians. Marriage doesn’t belong as an institution to the church. Every society and religion on the planet has a form of marriage. I understand parades and media as a way to change the laws that restrict rights. I understand parades and media to prevent someone from losing their job for something that’s no one’s business. I even understand the excited outburst of being able to say it out loud for the first time as she did in “Just Becky.” Becky irks me because she is parading and advertising herself in my eyes for the ability to crash with Joyce without any sort of plan for changing her situation. I see her using it to bully Ethan and harass Billy. That’s why she annoys me.
I’m the way I am. I spent years twisting myself this way and that to try to figure out what people wanted me to be and I always ended up being me. I’m done hating myself for that and I feel really bad for whoever is going through the same thing. I feel bad for Ethan not being able to just say that he is gay without so much fear. I feel bad for Danny not understanding who he is exactly. I even feel bad for Becky feeling like it’s not safe to go home. But people are who they are, and I’m not required to like all of them. I hope you like me, but if you don’t that’s ok. Even better, I hope you tell me why, like right now, so I can evaluate whether your criticism is valid. I will consider how I could have better worded my statement.
So, you’re saying that people don’t have to — can’t? — out themselves if they’re 0/straight? Isn’t that discriminatory? Against straights/0s.
Although, I once worked at a resto where all but 2 of the waiters were gay. First time I went drinking after work with a couple of the waitresses, one of them asked, just to make sure, “You’re straight, aren’t you?” Which I admitted. I’m not sure why she wanted to know, but I wasn’t ashamed of it.
Most of society automatically defaults the orientation of a person they just met as straight (especially when they are not in a space where the core demographic is not LGBT+ such as a gay bar). If your sexuality matches the assumed default you are not hiding/closeted and thus cannot be or come out. When you declare that you are not part of the norm or if others are told about you, then you are out or outed.
In the environment of a gay bar the assumed default orientation is homosexual, and if you are straight(0 on scale) you can come out or be outed in that environment because you don’t match the environment’s assumed default.
A book that takes a good look at this is “The Cross in the Closet” by Timothy Kurek. The author is a straight, religious man who was taught the to separate himself from the gay population. When he finds out a close friend is excommunicated from her family after coming as gay, he starts to question his upbringing. He decides that the only way he can better understand her pain is to go into the closet and come out as gay to everyone in his life to see for himself how the label will impact his life. Throughout the book he gets very involved in the LGBT+ community while being in the closet as straight and worrying about being outed to the LGBT+ community.
This book is a very interesting read because it’s a very different growing, coming out, closeted experience story. When I heard the premise of the book it ruffled my feathers but I’m glad I gave it a chance because the author truly wants to understand and confront everything he was taught about the community.
Interesting, hadn’t seen that one before. Will have to get the local library to hunt down a copy to read.
Turbanous, I like the way that you put that. The default/norm for waiters at that restaurant was gay and while I faced no hostility or animosity, it was interesting and even a bit enlightening being the “deviant” amongst the waiters, and having the waitresses think they knew that I was, but feeling the need to make certain by asking me outright, not for a particular reason, like, was I sexually available, but ‘just’ to have everyone properly categorized, AND ask myself if I was concerned that people might assume that I was gay because I was working at a place where the default/norm was gay.
After the last few days I am mildly wondering if a majority of DoA commenters are 1-6.
YESSSS SAL AND JASON PORN YES
COME ON WALKY THIS IS YOUR SISTER !
omg this is weird now XD
what if you get off to the idea that your sibling will be the one to grant your parents grandchildren, thus freeing you up from having to endure the hassle
[/suspiciously specific fetish]
Kinky: Walky watches incest porn.
More like watching his sister’s sex tape, Jason is not a relative of hers. Still kinky, but not incest porn as such.
AND SAL IS OKAY WITH THIS?
Meh. If I were my avatar (which I’m not) then Sal would have already seen Dorothy and Walking going at it. Only seems fair to reciprocate if he wants to be equally prurient.
I labeled watching your sibling do another guy is “incest porn”, though, I see that watching your sibling do another relative — or anyone doing a relative of theirs — might have a better claim to the title. Um. Okay. Getting too serious about this?
Nah, I’m game if you want a serious discussion of the vernacular of porn subgenres. I worked in a video store way back when, and categorizing adult films used to be just one of those things I had to do at work.
My definition of “incest porn” would involve a story framework where the characters are related – often siblings, sometimes parent or step-parent and adult child. I can’t claim extensive personal knowledge of the subject, but the ones I’ve seen all combined fairly uninspired vanilla sex with threadbare plots, the extra titillation apparently coming from the taboo nature of the relationship.
A character watching an (in-story) sibling or other relative have sex isn’t incest porn in my book (YMMV) but it’s certainly skirting the edge of the taboo. I’d file it under the “extremely kinky voyeurism film” category if it stops at just watching, especially on tape. Pretty much just another take on the “peeping tom” trope with an added wrinkle.
There are probably some slightly more ambitious films out there where the story transitions from sibling voyeurism to incestuous participation, but I’ll leave finding an example to someone else.
In all cases, if we’re talking about actually watching a real-world relative have sex or worse, participating with them, well, yeah, that’s way past the point where I’m creeped out. That is not a safe, healthy, or even legal kink to act on in real life. If it was, the fictional version wouldn’t be so taboo.
See? Not a joke in the whole post.
Once again, the more you learn, the more you know. And I do admire your ability to render that account without giving in to the temptation to joke, EVEN once. It’s odd, though: your analysis of incest porn as porn depicting incest, versus the subgenre of voyeurism dedicated to bothering a relative, makes perfect sense, and there’s no arguing about the categories at the video store. Yet the idea of Walky (Watchy … I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist!!) Subscribing to Slipshine to watch Sal & Jason triggers the word INCEST! In my little brainy brain. The idea of watching your hot twin do sexy things feels incestuous, as if watching her do sexy sexy is akin to (no pun) doing sexy sexy with her. That may not be logical, but there it is.
My avatar is having a sex without me. And with Sal. Damn.
Willis Enterprises is developing the technology so that Dumbing of Age readers can experience what their avatars experience in the story–total immersion web-comics! Its gonna be so cool. Except if your avatar isn’t dong so good. Yeah, so, What you mean this is Dumbing of Age??
Shit, this is NOT going to make me very popular.
???
Given her recent advertising campaign, Becky’s statement isn’t all that surprising.
It can be very frustrating to get off of work and check the latest update, only to read a few posts and realize that most of your “Clever” first thoughts have been trumped before you can post them.
Try camping the page for a few minutes before the update, reading the comic, then realizing that you have nothing in particular to say about it and watching the first 7 or so comments roll in.
Of course, if your workday sucked, that’d compound things.
Hang in there. I hope you have a wonderful day today.
I’m only sexually attracted to females, but I find that I can often appreciate the male form from a purely aesthetic point-of-view. Am I a 0 or a 1?
The scale only looks at experience and desire. Unless your aesthetic appreciation includes at least a bit of sexual interest, Kinsey would call you a zero.
This is my first post and English is my second language. German has no German words for most of anything gender-related, is if it seems my mind got stuck somewhere, this just might be true.
Maybe Danny should get some time to wrap his mind about the non-complex concepts of bisexuality before he starts on gender expression and distinctions between romantic and sexual attraction. Poor guy.
I even believe him when he said, he didn’t remember ever hearing the word. The mind plays tricks.
@moongoose: Thanks for the diagram. Seem like I’m totally out of the loop where modern concepts for gender topics are concerned.
My definition of androgynous always was “neither typically male or female in behaviour”, i.e. not doing/expressing anything that is part of the male/female stereotypes rampant in my youth(long time ago). The gender expression-scale defines it as strongly being both with agender or gender-neutral being what I always though of as androgynous. Interesting.
I have a long history as being labeled by others as butch (only do this if you want to annoy me) and tend to be very annoyed when asked to scale myself somewhere on that spectrum, because there is no term that seems match me. In the nienties, when I asked people what they meant by butch, answers covered very different topics and didn’t really match up in a way that I really knew what someone was trying to say be labeling me or themselves in this way.
Which reminds me, Dan Shive just was on this topic: http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=2046
That is a good link: I need to start reading EGS. (Und, ihr Englisch ist sehr gut (aber meine Deutsch ist sehr schlect).)
Recycling a comment from yesterday:
“To Infinity and Beyond!”
Sooooooooooo does Dorothy’s “zero” comment mean that she’s super-straight, or asexual?
Straight with no significant attraction to the same sex.
Not sure why Kinsey ran the scale from 0-6 instead of 1-7, but 1-6 wouldn’t be balanced.
I think it had something to do with simplifying his work when he was averaging numbers for statistics. Awful lot of zeroes in the era he worked in, or at least people who wouldn’t admit to being higher.
Prediction: upon learning about the Kinsey scale, Becky holds onto the lingering hope that the prospects of Joyce coming around aren’t doomed after all.
Dorothy’s estimate is well researched. (But further studies are needed)
Where do asexual people stand on the Kinsey scale?
He assigned “no sexual experience/desire” a non-numerical value of X, which is a close as he got. The scale is not without its flaws, obviously.
flaws or limits? If that scale is a simple scale of which sex people sex with, running from 100% the same sex as them to 100% not the same sex as them, then no-sexing is, logically, off the scale. EXCEPT of course that someone could be asexual in desire or orientation and have had sexual experiences. And the Kinsey scale doesn’t measure satisfaction, does it? As Mike “recommended” to Ethan, if he stayed in the closet he could have lots of “unfulfilling” hetero-sex.
Fair point. Limits is probably a better term.
I bet she goes up to eleven.
Ho, boy I bet no one’s made that joke before I did.
Tonight the part of Lenny and Squiggy will be played by Becky.
“Hello!”
Wonder how many people don’t get the reference?
Hilarious. Youtube’s locator function auto-completes the “Lenny & Squiggy hello” search term.
I always considered Lenny and Squiggy’s “Hello” to have been inspired by the way Maynard G. Krebs would pop up with “You rang?” whenever his name was mentioned on Dobie Gillis.
Dammit, you knocked my nostalgia bump and now I’m streaming Dobie Gillis episodes. Ah well, better than the Three’s Company episode I forced myself through the other night.
And next you can watch The Monster that Ate Cleveland.
I’m a 4, girlfriend is a 5.
Is the Kinsey scale a self-evaluation scale — in other words, you put yourself on the scale based on where *YOU* think you belong — or are there a series of questions to determine placement like the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator test?
from what i have read, i think that the kinsey scale was originally a measure of your romantic/sexual history (e.g. how many of each gender you have had relationships with/banged) moreso than a self-evaluation thing, but over time people adapted it towards how they identify and represent the spectrum of sexuality. However, I could be wrong on that front. For myself, I see it as a useful tool for my own sexuality. I am a kinsey 4, which means that I find myself more often attracted to people of the same gender (in this case female-identified people) than other genders, but this does not mean that I don’t experience attraction to people of other genders. Bisexuals can have a preference towards certain genders and still be bisexual. Wow this message is long sorry for ranting:P
It’s a self-evaluation, there are no questions. Google “Kinsey scale institute” and you should get a link to their page on the subject as the first hit.
Becky is over 9000!!!
My number is boobies.
“On a scale of 0 to 6, my interest in the ladies is 5318008!”
Becky breaks scales as effectively as she does closets.
My own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. (J B S Haldane)
is it bad that becky reminds me of miley cyrus?
Yes. Anything reminding anyone of that waste of genetic material is a bad thing.
Now if only DoA had 100% more Liam Neeson than the Kinsey Film.
Pretty sure that has been updated now. Broader scale also including us asexuals.