Also the best dang job I ever had. Unlike my current workplace, Chickfila employees actually DID their jobs (aka had a work ethic). Nobody there really cared about the gay thing as we all knew it was just a political ploy to try to grab votes.
Seriously, I know it’s just played up for laughs and triggers some drama, but Christians aren’t like that.
Well, err… mixed bag there. I mean most? Sure, they’re not. But is there a sizeable and vocal minority that are? Also yes. I mean I’m close friends (fellow combat vets) with some pretty intensely homophobic and xenophobic guys who are absolutely sign-carrying members of that group. There’s room for everybody, I figure.
So played up for laughs, but also effective humor because it accurately reflects a portrayal that is not made up.
Yeah, dude, Christians are totally like that. Not all of them, but you know what? Christians who AREN’T like that (like, I’m assuming, you) really need to start fucking acknowledging the existence of the ones that ARE like that. I’m not saying you’re responsible for what everyone calling themselves a Christian does, but you can at the very least not pretend that there aren’t bigoted assholes proudly flaunting your chosen title.
In regards to one of the most well known of the offenders
“The Baptist World Alliance and the Southern Baptist Convention (the two largest Baptist denominations) have both denounced the (Westboro Baptist Church)WBC over the years.[11] In addition, other mainstream Christian denominations, such as the Methodist Church, Baptist Church, Reformed Church, and Evangelical Church have condemned the actions of the independent Westboro Baptist Church”
He looks…actually yeah, he looks a bit like my dad, whose name is Trevor. White, thinnish angular face, grey hair and beard, glasses. Yup, he’s Trevor. xD
… Here I was, constantly pronouncing it as “chick-fill-ahh” in my head. Only now I realize: “fill-a” –> “fillet”. Duh.
This comic is the first and only place I’ve ever heard of that restaurant chain in my life, by the way, so I hope to be forgiven. I’m a Canadian just around twenty, lived in three provinces in my most remembered part of my life, so I’m guessing it is tiny or nonexistent north of the US border.
Because he kind of looks like Trever, the gay best friend from Phantasmagoria 2, an obscure Adventure Horror Game from the 90s that nobody would even remember today if Spoony hadn’t done a funny Let’s Play of it?
I remember Phantasmagoria, the first one, and trying to get a glimpse of whatsername in the shower. Surely there had to be this secret combination of keys and whatever. I even wrote DOS interrupt handlers to capture it. Totally pathetic. Never figured it out. I would have done better to get a job at a fast-food place.
Thank you, Void. Nobody will ever read this, but today I was continuing to read through the Shortpacked! backlog and came across the Les Bean episode. Definitely fraught. I put in an order for 3-4 more brain cells. Happy New Year, Void.
I can’t think of the name “Harold” without the phrase “On ‘is ‘horse, with ‘is ‘awk in ‘is ‘hand” … for which you need to read the best poem ever written about the Battle of Hastings: http://www.funnypoets.com/poetry/thebattleofhastings.htm
I met someone who worked at a chick fil a while at a con once. She was gay and there during the protests and she felt hated by both sides. The ones super pro would make snide/rude comments about gays and she had to smile because well its what the paycheck is for and the anti chick fil a people tried to tell her she wasn’t a true lesbian because she worked there. She was so happy when the protests/anti protests *depending on your view* were over.
Funny, at the Chickfila where I worked, we received no “hate comments” from either side. And it’s not like I hid in the back or anything. I was practically crowd surfing trying to get orders out. (Strangely, I find maneuvering through crowds of people fun, actually.) Any comments I did hear were about how it all started, why it was so ridiculous, and that was pretty much it.
The most we got out of anyone was how politicians were making power grabs and making (very empty) promises about hindering Chickfila’s growth. (Of which, by the way, denying a person their right to build a store Is Illegal here in America.)
All of the hate comments that I did find were purely online and most of them were against Chickfila, not gays.
I would much rather no one who is gay worked at Chik-fil-A, but to criticize someone for earning a basic income because that’s the job that’s available is a pure asshat move. Unless the critic is literally willing to pay the worker’s bills, they should just shut the fuck up, or better, commiserate about the situation.
I just kept most of mine. They’ve been worth more as reference books than the $10, $20, “hahahano we’re switching to a new edition next year” I would have gotten for selling them. The only ones that actually had a reasonable resale value were the ones that were really useful references.
I wish I could at least use mine for reference but I changed majors when I moved to a different state so now I got a crap ton of books that I can’t even use for reference.
Well, i don’t majored in anything and i still have many many books about pretty much anything like law, medicine, surgery, IT, electronics, algabra, biology, and a shit load of even more in the future for all kinds of career imaginable, then again, am a moth to a light when it comes to knownledge xD
I majored in English. A lot of my textbook lists was “Buy these seven novels and these three play scripts.”
I kept all of those. I still lost a ton of money on the useless, hundreds-of-dollars textbooks that couldn’t be sold back that I did buy.
I majored in electrical and computer engineering. Our English textbooks were a worthless paperback of excerpts and snippets, and a Russian novel that I literally could not read. I would turn the pages and my eyes would travel over them, but the words would just kind of slide off my brain without lodging. The bookstore wouldn’t take either of those back.
The calculus, physics, circuit analysis, and microprocessing textbook with the Z80 reference in the back have all been handy since, though. (The calc book they wouldn’t take back anyway. The author was head of the math department, and they had a new edition every single year.) And not necessarily for work! I have weird hobbies.
The best part about textbooks is walking into the book store at the end of the semester, having them offer you $20 for a book they are going to put back on the shelf with a $125 price tag, heading outside, saying “I got Linear Algebra 3, any takers?” and getting $100 while the people at the used counter ten feet away gnash their teeth.
I know nothing about what college is like these days, but this sounds like a job for a social media swap group. Or there could be an app for that, I suppose.
As a student in University, I can definitely confirm that there are Facebook groups dedicated to buying/selling used books. Or at least, the canadian university I’m going to has a Facebook group for that.
Mind you, at most colleges I’ve seen, the people working at the bookstore were other students, who weren’t so much ‘grinding their teeth’ as ‘silently cheering’. The store manager? Grind city.
I had a professor who wrote his own (terrible) book, because the ones on the market didn’t cover the material in the order he wanted.
It wasn’t math or some other additive subject, so we could’ve just… read chapters out of order from some preexisting textbook.
Which we did anyway, since apparently he had changed his mind regarding the proper order since writing it.
l didn’t even need to get textbooks, they just put some on the list for my course because the university required it. Unfortunately I found out after I started so I have 3 unused textbooks sat in my room at home
Becky’s not really got the whole gay thing down yet, huh? Loads of enthusiasm, closet thermo-nuclear detonation, but she’s a few classes with Leslie shy on the philosophy
I did not intend it so, but DN has a good point that there are some unintended nasty resonances to either the Holocaust or to the sort of place Ross may have planned to send Becky to “cure” her.
I took the Captain’s post to be satirical on the idea that there is a unanimous “gay agenda” conspiracy. Those who know a few dozen gay persons find this idea a real knee-slapper.
nowadays there are online LGBTQ+ certification courses, anyway. although if possible it’s best to go to local workshops on deck building and proper uhaul techniques, as of like 5 years ago those are electives rather than requirements for the Lesbian license. it gets a bit more complicated if you’re doing a cross-certification course, such as Lesbian and Transgender. honestly, it’s easier to just go with Q+ certification and choose your own online courses based on interests. i was halfway through both an L and T certification when i realized i already qualified for the Q+ license.
What exactly is the philosophy of being gay? Isn’t it just having a sexual interest in people the same gender as your own? (Okay I may be oversimplifying some things there. But I’m not seeing where in this strip Becky doesn’t understand gayness)
why has no one before my last refresh mentioned their tongues out/touching/kissing/something picture for Ross though? Also how is she sending it to him?
Well someone else has mentioned it so I can move on to something else. And why has the only place I have seen a similar display (tongues out and touching) been in Japanese porn? Has Dina been reading hentai manga for her Nihongo practice? 😀
She’s going to print it as big as she can, hire one of those billboard trucks, and drive it back and forth in front of the jail. Or airdrop a thousand copies over the prison yard from a crop-duster.
He looks like a Brian to me. And Not Hiring would violate Anti-discrimination Laws. No assurance as tot eh work environment, but I’m sure they’d hire Becky.
Interestingly enough, Indiana doesn’t have that for queer folks. There’s an executive order prohibiting state level discrimination, but private businesses are totally allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity:
So, the only question is, would this Chik-fil-A be considered partially state property because it is on State University property, or would it still be considered a fully private institution because the school is only renting the space to a private company to use as they see fit?
That would entirely depend on the terms of their rental contract with the university. There probably is some non-discrimination clause in the contract to avoid there ever being any questionable middle grounds like that on their property, but I truly don’t know that for a fact.
But the University is in Bloomington and Bloomington does have local laws preventing employment discrimination against LGBTQ people.
OTOH, I’ve lost track of how the religious freedom law thing played out, so they might still be able to discriminate if they claimed it was for religious reasons. That was intended to override such local protections.
Bloomington and IU both have anti-discrimination protection for LGBT employees. however, we are a “right to work” state. what most often happens is that an employee is fired for “no reason” when an employer finds out they are LGBT. i know that most LGBT people in Bloomington who stay in the closet for just this reason, and to avoid the technically legal bullying and social exclusion that happens in the workplace.
the state of the religious freedom act is such that a shop owner can say “my religion doesn’t like your kind, so get out of my shop.” which is a really unnecessary law, since we already had a law saying that a shop owner can kick someone out of their shop for NO REASON. if i were a small business owner, i could kick someone out of my shop because their favorite doctor was Tom Baker and mine is David Tennant.
Technically, that’s not “right-to-work”, but “at-will” employment and applies nearly everywhere. Right-to-work deals with unions, not other employment issues.
But you’re basically right about how the anti-discrimination laws played out. It’s really hard to win a case, unless the employer is really blatant about it.
You really need to be able to show a pattern – which pretty much means a large employer and a class action suit.
The same applies to racial or gender discrimination.
That said, it does help, even if it’s not sufficient. There’s still a difference between having to hide your intentions and be careful about what reasons you give in the hiring and firing process and just being able to hang a “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish” sign on the door. It also gives more sympathetic employers in prejudiced areas an excuse: “Well, the law says I have to …”
As for the RFA, I wasn’t able to see why it wouldn’t apply to employment, but I haven’t heard of cases where it was used that way.
Oh yeah, hadn’t thought about local laws and the complexity of how they apply with the RFRA. And definitely hear you on the loopholes angle. It was really sad realizing that non-discrimination laws are about as much protection as tissue paper armor.
There’s actually no federal law preventing employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (or gender identity, for that matter), and *checks* Indiana’s law only covers the public sector. So without even getting into the difficulty of actually proving discrimination aside, it would be legal for them to refuse to hire Becky because she’s gay. *shrug*
There is also this. Companies also have really codified ways to get around non-discrimination laws even when they do exist. My state has a non-discrimination policy that includes gender identity, but my company at the time still felt pretty comfortable discriminating against me so long as they never actually used the words “we’re firing you for being trans”.
On the nose. And Chick Fil A apparently doesn’t even bother trying to hide their discrimination sometimes:
“According to the lawsuit filed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Brenda Honeycutt began working at a Chick-fil-A in Duluth, Ga. 1991 and was promoted to a general manager in 1997. But Jeff Howard, the restaurant’s owner and operator, ‘routinely made comments to [Honeycutt] suggesting that as a mother she should stay home with her children.’
In April 2011, Howard hired a man named Bill Green as a general manager and began holding management meetings with him and two other male managers but excluded Honeycutt. In late June, Howard fired Honeycutt, telling her and other employees that he did so so she could be a stay-at-home mother.”
Which, i guess, shouldn’t be much of a surprise given the way the chain is run. Forbes has an article on Chick Fil A that’s downright chilling. They call it a cult and it’s easy to see why:
“‘We tell applicants, ‘If you don’t intend to be here for life, you needn’t apply,’’ says [the owner/founder of Chick Fil A, Samuel Truett Cathy], who opened his first restaurant in 1946.
That’s not the only company mandate. Chick-fil-A’s corporate mission, as stated on a plaque at company headquarters (and by Cathy), is to ‘glorify God.’…
The company might face more suits if it didn’t screen potential hires and operators so carefully. Many Chick-fil-A job candidates must endure a yearlong vetting process that includes dozens of interviews. Ty Yokum, the training manager for the chain, sat through 7 interviews and didn’t get the job. He reapplied in 1991 and was subjected to another 17 interviews–the final one lasted five hours–and was hired.”
But they have found at least one way to keep some of their employees long term despite their low wages. Like the Forbes article says, they run group foster homes and funnel kids in their care into their restaurants as employees.
That’s basically never a thing. Walmart doesn’t have a blatant “lifer” policy, the way Chick-fil-A does (at least, they didn’t when I worked there back in 1998-2000), but they very much encourage the “lifer” mentality once you’re employed there. I left, in part because my managers repeatedly ‘suggested’ I quit college and work at Walmart for the rest of my life, and when I repeatedly told them no, that was not going to happen, they started scheduling my hours over days when I had made it known I needed off to study for exams, and when I started calling in, I finally got the “you need to be at work when you’re scheduled” talk. It was near the end of my shift, so I said, “Sure, no problem,” finished my shift, went home and typed a letter stating my two weeks’ notice (except, unfortunately, I would not be available for work for the next two weeks), took it right back to work and taped it to the time clock with the manager’s name on it. No regrets – I have no intent of ever working for them or any other Walmart again.
Me, my gay brother, all my cousins worked at Chickfila at one point or another. (we jokingly called it the right of passage to adulthood). We all received only one interview before being hired. Fact is Chickfila even had to let a few people go, not because of any political reason, but because they were very VERY bad at their jobs. (I mean yelling at their fellow employees in front of all the customers bad. Although even if it wasn’t in front of the customers, it’s bad, but you get the point.) My favorite manager’s wife worked there until she had her baby, then she decided to became a stay at home mom. She still brings her kids to visit their dad at Chickfila. Trust me, raising kids is not a cake walk. One of my cousins only has one child and she only officially works 3 days a week. She’s exhausted just from being a mother.
People can make claims like these all they want, but in the end it’s all just cherry picking. And if it’s not cherry picking it’s taking things way out of context.
Let’s take the “If you don’t intend to be here for life, you needn’t apply” thing you mentioned. Many of my fellow employees were only there for the summer. Chickfila still hired them. Some employees only work once a month. I personally had a part time job there for six years before deciding that it would be best if I left. While looking for a new job, I learned that there are Many Many people who apply for jobs with absolutely no intention of working as said jobs, let alone being hired. They do so in order to exploit legal loopholes. It’s gotten so bad in our country that most companies don’t hire on location anymore and use places like Simon to hire people instead. It Seriously Sucks.
Panel 1: Becky’s ability to mine joy and emotional strength out of all the terrible inflicted upon her is beautiful. Her dad threatened to kill all her friends to drag her away and “fix” her and she’s finding the joy in it. She’s texting her dad selfies of her licky-styling with her girlfriend and showing no shame. She has won her life and now she is living that and that speaks so unbelievably powerfully.
And (ace?) Dina here, only half focusing on the tongue kiss and half-focusing on the wanted ad. It’s just so beautiful.
Panel 2 and 3: Becky here, that conflict of mind, that uncertainty about putting her economic survival first or her self-respect. And worrying realistically about the possibility of discrimination (fun fact, it’s 100% legal in the great state of Indiana to fire someone/ refuse to hire someone because they are gay). Also, “totally lezzers”. 😀
And Dina just being all, um, why would you want to work here. She’s just so principled in her quiet sort of way and you don’t fully notice it until someone attacks a value of hers or involves hatred of one of her identities. The way she was bothered by the group thinking she was too neuroatypical to be sexual, the way she growled at Joyce hating on evolution, and her statement here. She has thought about her beliefs for a long time and stands up for them when it comes up.
Panel 5: Oh Becky and her wonderful Beckyisms. When the series wraps up at the heat death of the universe, I totally want a neural-interface dictionary of them all.
Though I don’t know if Dina is ace or demi as much as preoccupied with dinosaurs, and inclined to rigorous scientific investigation more than – though not excluding of – lust or romance. I imagine in due time she’ll determine her exact level of enthusiasm for smooches and then maybe give it a label.
Yeah, nothing is official yet, so I put in the question mark because either of those possibilities is definitely on the table with the information we’ve seen so far.
The Gay Agenda(tm), revealed at last. Damn you, Willis, you exposed our most secret of operations: Project Working at Places Owned By Homophobic Assholes to Ensure Their Money Ends Up in Gay Hands!
I dunno, he looks like a Bruce to me, just like all those professors at the University of Austrailia, but without the digger hat and the corks on threads.
She’d probably get hired on the spot if this Galasso is anything like the one in Shortpacked. All he wants from his subordinates is loyalty and willingness to succumb to his will. Nothing else matters.
Neil Gaiman said that he likes to drop distinctive characters into his backgrounds, so that if he needs ’em later, they’re there. So yes, this dude definitely needs a name and a major. Also it’s nice to see a background character who is well-adjusted about being gay.
common & beardy: Alan, Charles, Richard, Ted (I once knew a mostly-gay beardy economist named Ted).
uncommon & beardy: Pietrov, Stephan, Fallon, Hunter. (Also Erikk Ironfoundersson but that’s a bit *too* beardy.)
He also has a minor in art history or jazz or something. ::shrug::
Homer is totally a bearded gay guys name. Like the poet. Had a beard according to statues and was Greek (aka gay). And he’s majoring in classic Greek drama (gay and homery)
Okay at the risk of getting hated on I have a couple questions, sort of. I think.
I’m straight. My best friend’s brother was gay. My bf, her brother, myself and my brother hung around together from grade school thru HS.
We all knew he was gay since about age 13 or so. This was long enough ago that probably 95% of gays stayed in the closet.
Knowing him all those years and his preferences, was not a thing any of us dwelled on: we knew. We loved him. He was our friend.
I never had any problems with whatever sexual preference anyone has: it is so personal and no one should worry about anyone else’s choice of partner’s.
And I think that this is where the question comes in: as said, it is a very ‘personal’ choice. I just don’t understand why anyone would want to push their choice of sex into the public eye.
I don’t care if your gay/bi/trans or not. It is your choice. It’s not what I base life choices on. I like or don’t like people for actions not life style choices.
I know that, at one time or another, just about every group of people in this country (US) has been -or is-discriminated against for race, religion, gender, sex and whatever can be found to discriminate against.
Polling for change, protesting, writing Congress, boycotts and all that is the way to bring change. Sometimes it works.
I guess I just don’t like PDA of any type between any persons. So, while I love Becky, she is strong, intelligent, and brave. I don’t like that she keeps running around hollering ‘I’m Gay’. In real life I would avoid her for that.
I don’t like anyone running around hollering ‘I’m Gay”. It’s your business, keep it your business. Treat the discrimination as a project that needs to be addressed and keep your personal sex life out of my face.
I’m really good at pissing people off, and I’m not trying to do that.
I guess I’m just a very private person, who tries to live and let live, and sometimes doesn’t do a good job of it.
I like reading comments here, some have opened me up to new thoughts. I like Willis strip. Very well done.
Nah, I’m totally with you, and I’m bi. I generally keep to myself, I’m out, but hardly anyone i work with knows my sexuality. Not because I hide it, it’s just not relevant most of the time.
Becky is a total extrovert, it’s her character. Extroverts tend to do that kinda thing.
That being said, heterosexuality is rather hard to ignore in our culture (at least in the states). Commercials, billboards, hollywood films, cartoons, comics, are all predominantly straight. And straight sex is shoved in everyone’s faces.
If you’re not a fan of that as well, then you’re opinion is totally justified.
It’s when people single out gay people, where problems arise.
Caitlin Moran made a very useful comment about sexism: If it’s something that only one gender has to worry about, it’s likely sexism. The same idea could be applied to homophobia.
If straight people hold hands and kiss in public, people usually ignore them. If they’re really enthusiastic, someone might say “Get a room!”
if gay people do the same thing, depending on where they live, people might curse them, beat them up, or even kill them.
If you see a straight couple kissing and think “Why do they put their choice of sex into the public eye?” then go ahead and think it about gay couples too. But if your reaction is different, then consider that it may actually be fueled by homophobia you didn’t know you had.
And it was really obvious how much the same actions were treated when I was assumed to be a cis dude on a date with a woman then when I was a trans woman on a date with a woman.
I’ve been berated with someone literally telling me “excuse me, there are children present” when I was simply putting my arm around the shoulder of my partner whereas when I presented as male, I could kiss and make out in public and I was more likely to get a chuckle and an “oh you kids” than any type of actual pushback.
And those can be best case scenarios. Another memorable situation of hugging my girlfriend and kissing the top of her head on a street corner while waiting for a light lead to an individual musing about whether or not to circle back and kill me because of this public display.
I mean, we can see it in your reply.
I mean, look at the comic. It’s a lesbian and her girlfriend doing a quick tongue kiss selfie while fully clothed.
Here’s how you read it: “personal sex life”
And that’s really telling. Because that’s how queer people just existing are viewed in society. We as a society automatically associate queer people with sex. No matter what they are doing. Holding hands with a partner? We call that sex. Buying a house together? Sex. Going on a date? Sexity sex. Just being out on the job and not lying and making up a fake differently gendered partner? OH MY BOB, WHY ARE YOU SHOVING YOUR SEXBITS IN MY FACE?
And that comes with real world consequences. It reinforces discrimination, it’s used as justification for violence, and it erases domesticity, love, connection, and all the rights that straight people take for granted*. And I mean that strongly. I’m pretty sure a good 50% of my discrimination as a trans teacher is because people automatically associate trans people with sex and so “sex+children=get rid of the monster” goes the bigoted calculus.
*It’s staggering how in our face straightness is at all times. At workplaces, all the straight people have pictures of their loved ones all over the place. They make constant comments about their boyfriends, husbands, wives, or girlfriends. They trade sexist assumptions about the behavior of men and women and expect everyone to nod their head and agree. They talk endlessly about kids or marriages or pregnancies or remark on how X or Y actor or actress is so attractive.
And that’s not a luxury queer people are afforded. If we try and talk about our partners, our lives, our loves, our plans for the future, this is often treated as a gross over-sharing of personal life and just inappropriate.
And that’s because we are used to being smothered in straight sexuality and heteronormative society and we’ve regarded the mere existence of anyone else as “inappropriate” and completely indistinguishable from “sex”.
I used it in my own comment, but I detest the word.
I think its about time we abolish the word “Straight” .
Its a buzzword like …”traditional values”, when people mean hate.
Heterosexual /= “Straightness”
“straight” is shorthand for “morally straight’
Whenever a hetersoexual calls themselves “straight” Its an implied insult and slur, to non het.
Its a declaration of Heterosexual -Sexual Orthodoxy; with an included appropriation of Morally-Correct sex.
People say they are “straight” when they are not doing something wrong, when they are not committing crimes , and when they are not doing hard drink and drugs.
When a person says “i’m straight” they are saying they are NOT a drunk thieving , scamming, slutty, junkie addict , gay person
Everytime a person says : “I’M straight” its an open declaration of sexual- orientation-supremacy. Most heterosexuals I know are not really “straight” anyways. They are Curvy, or kinky some are white bread, but save the pre pubescent virgins they are not actually ‘straight’ .
Heterosexuals, find another short word. This one is awful.
How about Syzygy? thats an awesome word? Oppos? Comps?
Lets look at Syzygy: a conjunction or opposition, especially of the moon with the sun.
“the planets were aligned in syzygy”
a pair of connected or corresponding things.
“animus and anima represent a supreme pair of opposites, the syzygy”
Its fucking perfect. Its the about the cosmic celebration of male and female.
Notice it it celebrates what special about heterosexuality without supremacy o hate, or claims of being the “normal one” .
Former, loveley “straight-people” ; tomorrow , please come out to your friends and loves ones , as ‘formerly straight’ yet hetereo. Explain you really are Syzygy -sexual : as it perfectly encapsulates the beauty of your sexual orientation, without hate.
and for Everyone else for whom Queerness was too ..Queer-Theory, Gayness too wedded to Camp Aesthetics, I offer you the wonder, the talent,the Flair, the knack of **Bentness** Be Bent! Get Bent!
Let see what the Dictionary says about “Bentness”?’
1.a natural talent or inclination.
“a man of religious bent”
synonyms: inclination, leaning, tendency;
NOtice how its either neutral or straight-up praise. They all seem related too?
Whats your Bent? Bent Is My Bent
Do you have a Gift, flair, aptitude ,talent , inclination, oreientation for Homosexian? Then you are Bent.
We have more
3.BRITISH informal ( formerly derogatory: we are taking it back)
homosexual.
We Knew.
4.adj Bent
determined to do or have something.
“a missionary bent on saving souls”
synonyms: intent on, determined on, set on, insistent on, resolved on, hell-bent on; committed to, single-minded about, obsessed with, fanatical about, fixated on
Are you intent on Homosexian? Are you committed? Are you determined?
You are not just gay or queer, you a committed Knight of the Cock warriors , Determined to fight. You are Queen Raptor of the Terrible Lizbians, protecting your pride .
4.Verb
direct or devote (one’s attention or energies) to a task.
“Eric bent all his efforts to persuading them to donate some blankets”
Bent means management of ones self-mastery. Thats a perfect word for Homsexian. Thats what we do. We devote our energies to it and we do it right. Thats the kind of homosexian makes you proud. Its a job well done.
3.force or be forced to submit.
OK Def 3 implies some S&M. Not for everyone, but its here if you want it .
“they want to bend me to their will”
synonyms: mold, shape, manipulate, direct, force, press, influence, incline, sway
“they want to bend me to their will”
To some up:
***Bentness*** means Your Talent, your style , Your character , your aptitude, your determination, your will , your focus, the management of your selfmastery .
and out of all these positive affirming ways of being and doing Homosexian , Bentness only has 1 is negative:
2.
BRITISHinformal
dishonest; corrupt.
“a bent cop”
That definition is just straightness-supremacist Propaganda . We can toss it out, as hate-flawed.
We end “straightness” and Bentness is our alone.
They can be Syzygy, we have bentness and be double trouble .
First, let’s get this out of the way: neither sexual orientation nor gender identity are choices. You can do a quick Google search to confirm this, or I’ll be happy to provide you links to a few good resources. Moving on.
If you want a crystal clear picture of why coming out is so important, you need to watch Milk. (Warning: you’ll want a box of tissue.)
But the short version is this:
Coming out is powerful. By coming out, LGBT folks let the people around them know that the boogey-gay stories told by the religious right are lies. Coming out gives straight coworkers and friends and family members the chance to realize that gay people are just people, like anyone else.
And consider what you’re really asking when you say “keep [being gay] your business.” Every time you mention your wife or girlfriend (or your husband or boyfriend, if you’re a woman) you are coming out as straight. You are making your straightness other people’s business. And yet you are asking LGB people to keep those exact same public aspects of their personal lives (who they date, who they marry, who they have children with) a secret. You are reducing all of that into a “choice of sex.” You are reducing their families to a sex act.
Yes. When you don’t know any people in [category] it is easy to think they are all the same and that that their membership in that category is the central pole of their lives*. Which it almost never is.
ObDoA: Ethan. He doesn’t want being gay to be the most important thing about him, that colors every other aspect of his life. Instead of really important things like his taste in cartoons and Transformers.
* I don’t think it is a coincidence that I started becoming more enlightened about gay people right around the time I first knew some socially. Or rather that I first knew some who weren’t in the closet socially.
“By coming out, LGBT folks let the people around them know that the boogey-gay stories told by the religious right are lies. Coming out gives straight coworkers and friends and family members the chance to realize that gay people are just people, like anyone else.”
And this is the biggest thing.
Gay rights have gained leaps and bounds in the last 40-50 years, going from a time where being gay was literally illegal, resulting in jail time to a place where marriage at the least is legal in all 50 states. How did this happen?
People took the hard risk and came out. They came out to friends and family. To coworkers and employers. To society as a whole. And a lot were killed for it, were thrown out on the streets serving as a good chunk of our homeless population, were beaten and driven to suicide for it. But because they were out, because they were “inappropriate”, because they “shoved it in people’s faces” and made them realize that straight people are not the only people in the world and gay people are not monsters under the bed, but people who love and live just like 99% of anyone else (shout out to the aromantics).
This is what means a gay child in one of my classes is less likely than the last generations to be thrown out of their homes. To be forced into the streets. To be driven to suicide. To be beaten by their peers. To fear and hate their own attractions.
They get to be kids in love, who don’t have to think of themselves as less than their peers. They don’t have to fear as much or live in self-loathing and feelings of shame.
This matters. This matters more than anything else in the world.
And if you’ve never experienced this, maybe I can’t fully help you understand. But for many it’s the difference between cuddling cutely with their girlfriend on the couch and being found the next morning with a razor and a bathtub full of red.
For some people, not coming out publicly feels like lying by omission, especially if you’ve been trying to live straight for a long time. For others it’s the thing that lets you give yourself a definite label after months or years of not knowing what the hell you even are. Sometimes this kind of thing is very necessary to heal after a lifetime of feeling broken. It’s therapeutic, being able to sing it out, unafraid.
For me, the whole concept of coming out just feels gross. It’s something that shouldn’t matter, so I don’t pretend I should make a big deal out of it. I won’t lie if it comes up, and I’m not afraid to talk about it to strangers, but I’m not going to make a whoop-de-doo over it.
Of course, this has the unintended side-effect of never knowing what a friend/family member’s reaction will be when they learn. Actually Coming Out at least lays all the cards on the table, whereas the casual method just lengthens the conversation until you start to forget who knows and who doesn’t, and worrying about whether now’s a good time to clarify that yes your date is with another man, or no he is not just my friend.
(I totally feel you on PDA’s though. I used to have a BF who really liked to hold hands in public and it just always felt forced and weird. It turned into one of those Hundred Little Things that eventually all contribute to the breakup.)
PS–Most people who experience some brand of queerness don’t feel like it’s a choice or a lifestyle. In my experience, it’s about as ingrained as the color of my skin.
It can also be the thing that lets you stay alive.
Imagine, straight people, if you could never talk about your wife and instead, when everyone asked about relationships, you had to vaguely make noise about your boyfriend Miguel. How much that would make you feel alone and empty. How it would separate you from everyone else and leave you feeling disconnected and like you should be ashamed for having a wife. Like your love was worth less than what everyone else was having. This is what it’s like to be a lesbian who is forced to be closeted. And when that combines with society telling you that you are literal dog shit for being so (like say Becky has been), it often leads to bad places (queer teen suicide rates tend to be several times higher than their compatriots, largely because of social stigma around queer relationships).
And that’s before we get to subjects like being trans. I don’t know if I can adequately express the horror of being a closeted trans person, forced to present something you are not day in and day out. How that leaves you feeling suicidal every single day and like you are nothing. How it feels like if you could just take a cheese grater to your skin to get this horrible costume off, it would be necessary relief.
Let us just say that being able to be out in the world matters. Most of all because it forces cishets to grow the fuck up already and deal with a world where people other than them exist. Fully. As full human beings, equally allowed to participate with the world as anyone else.
I know it is not the same thing, but it works as a metaphor. I was not allowed to read comics. My father hated tham. I still read them and had to hide them outside where they were constantly ruined. No comic posters or t shirts either.
As soon as I moved out of home I became super comic guy. I read comics everywhere. Had special boxes built so I could store and acces them in shared areas. I wallpapered my room with posters and rarely talked to anyone about anything else. That phase lasted a couple of years.
Now multiply that by a thousand and you have Becky’s experience.
While I agree and find people who purposefully go around letting everyone know their sexual preference is extremely annoying (worked an office job with a guy like that, stereotypically flamboyant, like, made Big Gay Al from South Park seem subtle), I’d also like to clarify something to you: It’s not a “choice”. You do not choose who or what you are attracted to, your body just clicks to it. You don’t just suddenly decide “I’m gonna like big boobs now” and suddenly that’s what turns you on. Male or female, it’s just something your body naturally reacts to, hardwired inside of you.
But, it is their choice on how loud they are about their orientation and preferences. Nobody needed to know how fine you find that booty, random loud dude in the Burger King.
the best metaphor i’ve heard for comparing gay and straight PDA. straight PDA is like a bikini and gay PDA is underwear. they both cover the same area of skin (in fact, my underwear covers more skin than my bikini), but only the bikini is seen as appropriate attire for the public. gay PDA isn’t inferior to straight PDA. and maybe you really do find straight PDA just as disgusting. but more than likely as a product of the environment you grew up in, you subconsciously think of gay as “that thing we just don’t talk about in polite company.”
i don’t know you personally, so i don’t know if you really are anti-PDA or if you are kinda anti-PDA, but aren’t being self-critical about your own aversion to gay PDA. but if you really DID love your gay friend, you’d care more about HIS HAPPINESS than about your discomfort.
IDontcarenomore, I’ll try not to repeat what the other commentors have so eloquently stated, but I do have a question for you. You’ve been commenting on this comic for a while, right? Have you ever complained when any of the straight couples hold hands, kiss or do anything else in a space other than their dorm rooms? If you haven’t complained about that, I would ask that you re-examine your reaction to Becky and Dina.
Also, part of the reason (and this has been somewhat touched on by others) is that straightness is assumed by the general public unless you specifically state otherwise. As a bisexual, cisgendered woman, I find this especially true for me. I’m married, so *of course* I must be straight. I find I must be very open about the fact that I’m bi in order for people not to make false assumptions about me. You may think, “why does it matter?” But it can be extremely annoying to be constantly barraged by people’s unthinking false assumptions of you.
(Related note, false assumptions aren’t just limited to GLBT issues. Religion, politics, social mores, practically everything has a “mainstream default” that can put frustrating assumptions on you. When I met a new neighbor once, her question to me was, “Have you found a church [in the area], yet?” She didn’t ask if I was Christian. Christianity was assumed.)
As someone who’s not part of mainstream culture in many ways, my whole life I’ve been expected to be polite and cognizant of the fact that everyone is not like me, so therefore, I must be sensitive to the mainstream’s feelings and try not to offend them. This is incredibly frustrating to live with constantly. When I got married, I had a Korean ceremony and a Caucasian ceremony. A white friend took me aside and whisperingly asked me if maybe I shouldn’t use the term “Caucasian ceremony” because it might offend all the white people/Americans. I asked her what I should call it instead. She suggested that it was just a normal wedding ceremony, so it didn’t need a special term. ARgh! Well, A) the Koreans there were American, too; B) No it’s not just a “normal” wedding ceremony. It’s the wedding ceremony of a specific culture. White, heterosexual, Christian, and western is not a standard of existence that the rest of us are deviating from; and C) She had no problem with the Korean ceremony having a label because itwas “different”. >_<
Two things that can result constantly living under mainstream assumptions are A) I must be out because I must make the political/social statement about GLBTs and B) you finally get so fed up with trying to hide it and always thinking about not offending the mainstream and being scared about what will happen that you throw it all aside and say, "F this! I am out! I am proud! And YOU WILL SEE ME! I AM NOT INVISIBLE! I HAVE AS MUCH OF A RIGHT TO EXIST AS EVERYONE ELSE!!"
This is beautiful and I agree with all of it. Especially on having to scream it out to be visible. So often unless we’re out with a giant queer banner, we’re just assumed to be another normative cog and this makes others who are queer around you afraid to come out.
And so seeing someone super out can be the thing that allows you to feel safe coming out. It’s why (among other things) it was important to me to be an out teacher, because it means the queer kids in my class don’t feel all alone with their attractions or identities and can feel safe to come out themselves.
Thanks. And I agree about part of the reason to be super out is to be there for queer kids or others who don’t feel safe to come out yet. Even if not directly, if we unknowingly help open the eyes of homophobic relatives of theirs, then maybe we can inadvertently make their overall environment safer for them. 🙂
I think it’s fantastic that you’re a teacher. It’s really important that there are more GLBT role models visible in society.
I’m just happy and grateful I found a place where I’m allowed to be a teacher. There’s not a terribly large amount of us around the country who have the freedom to be out in our jobs and I’ve known a lot of trans teachers who’ve faced a lot of discrimination for just trying to do their jobs.
“I just don’t understand why anyone would want to push their choice of sex into the public eye.”
No, that is not what you dont understand!
You think its perfectly acceptable and normal to do this.
You do this all the time. You do this everytime you mention you have or had a boyfriend. You dont even **have to** come out to people. You have the presumption from the world , that you have a sexual preference, and its straight.
Your confusion is actually that your are so buried in a sea of heterosexual privilege , heterosexism and heteronormativity , that you blame other people for the social awkwardness your own privilege — which you benefit from —imposes on people: like your ex boyfriends brother.
Even if you dont have any hate toward gay people , you have unconsciously soaked up this culture of prejudice, and are projecting it outward. Thats not nice. You need to learn whats actually neutral and whats biased and prejudice.
You have just enough sense on you, to know, that somehow this is all wrong. Thats good.
But rather then see that you are actively complicit in a culture of harm, and shame and bigotry, you think people will “hate on” you;
For you demanding to know why gay people are bringing up their sex life. ?They are NOT.
Thats isnt what happening.
There is No strap-ons on this page. There are no scissoring diagrams.
Nobody is talking cunninglingus techniques. Thats just you. There is no gay-sex discussion happening on the page.
( But what if there was? That would be awesome)
Well i dont hate you.
If it seems I am rough on you at all, you fail to see how rough, loaded and presumptuous , you phrased your question.
You basically came out and said:
‘i think the thing I do with no shame everywhere, is something shameful and ought to be private, when gay people do it. ‘
Thats how it came across.
A lot of gay people ( not me ) are squicked out by het sex.
Imagine if the moment you said “Im straight”, 1000x people turned you and said “Eeeew why do you have have to shove your penis+ vagina sexual escapades in our faces. Im trying to eat, wheres your shame?”
Notice how you are never in any physical danger of announcing you are straight. **No one** ever ,oppresses you for it.
Notice how you werent afraid at all to say you had a boyfriend.
You were not worried people might hate you for who you were, but because of something negative you were going to say about other people.
See, thats privilege at work.
The only way all that social-awkwardness will disappear; of mentioning everyday normal and healthy gay lives in public, is by brave people like Becky showing pride.
( or If You bravely support them and encourage them )
Someone like Becky gets to show pride in public unmolested for her sexual orientation , the same way all straight people do.
Its even more important as otherwise people like yourself will soak up the societies prejudice and think it ought to be buried. Shes doing a genuine social service and ought to get paid for it. Shes a public Lesbian.
Somebody , Hire Her already!
What you are missing is the entire society supports your sexual preference ALL THE TIME.
Its on every radio station right now. I can turn in the TV , its on every single channel. Its in every movie. Its in every book. ITs incessant and constant, and never , ever, stops.
Its a full time 24 Hour , 7 days a week, 365 Days a years Straight Pride Parade.
And never, not once, during this constant overcompensating , straight, socialization process; everywhere, does it even occur to you that it might be overbearing, obnoxious , and oppressive. because it never ever goes away?
Yet, the moment it changes slightly…. The very rare moment the channel changes, and its gay or bisexual normativity, Then, and only then, do you notice it. The other 20,000 times a day its invisible to you. The one time its gay, its a socially awkward, and ought to be private? BULLSHIT.
You have been socially conditioned to think this way. Its not your fault.
We all have. Gay people are just as conditioned ( brainwashed ) their entire lives to accept the constant Straight-Cis-Het-socialization machine. Its does seem normal.
Even your filthiest lusts are championed as the highest natural virtues and celebrated by nearly every single Organized religion. Even the most innocent of gay affection is treated as something shameful and even children are taught to hide it.
Your love is never questioned or treated as wrong, and as something mentally or morally disordered. You have never heard people on the news and in mainstream newspapers officially insult your sexual orientation or suggest you ought to be murdered for it. Yet, this is a daily occurrence for gay people. This is done in your name, and for your supposed benefit.
Thats why its not enough for you to just say'”i accept gay people in my life’. Not when people could be murdered!
*****************************
Now Here is My question to you:
If Hetereosexualty is so normal and natural and automatic, why do straight people have to to be taught it? Why dont you just know?
Why do they have to be constantly reminded over and over, all the time , to be straight? Why does heterosexuality have to be constantly socially reinforced at very turn?
YES this is serious question. I want to know.
What terrible thing will happen if heteronormativity is not reinforced one day?
What if there was a whole week off?
What if all the love sings on the radio one week were gay instead?
Is heterosexuality so fragile, that if its not constantly reinforced, it will completely collapse? Will it shatter?
Will het people everywhere get confused and forget how to be straight?
If het orientation was so natural and automatic, why does it need to be modelled, taught and reinforced every day over and over again?
Gay people dont forget how to be gay. Its indelible. Some people waste their entire life trying. It never works.
Gay people dont need 24-7 gay reinforcement conditioning to be gay. But its really shitty if straight people need this so bad , they exclude gay people from the whole culture.
Thing is, she mainly gives those the time of day because of her gf.
I mean, has she got any opinions or positions NOT predicated on that? I understand she’s meant to otherwise just be out of the box her fAmily kept her in, but so’s Joyce, and she has TONS of side-business going on.
Becky gets to to be a fulltime, Pride-Machine for 3 months.
Thats basically any teenager , with any new phase.
BUt its not a phase, its her whole life, and she gets to make up for lost time.
Becky is less Girl crazy than Joe.
Even Joyce was more boycrazy at the beginning of the comic. Becky gets at least 3 months before anybody has a right to even raise an eyebrow askance at her.
( with the Toe-dad situation the Clock doesnt even start before hes sentenced. )
And 3 months in Dumbing Time, short of a time jump , is basically 30 years; so you better get used it.
I am wondering if she is going to get into religious discussion/arguments with Joyce down the road.
Becky’s problems are all external. Being poor, homeless, rejected by family*, etc. She doesn’t seen to have any guilt or self-image problems or a crisis of faith. (Or is she covering them over with perkiness?)
Joyce’s problems are all internal. Reconciling her beliefs with her feelings and experiences, and deciding what to keep, what to modify, and what to reject. Of course, she might acquire some external problems this weekend/next year.
* Do we know if she has any living relatives besides her father?
Oh totes, it’s not like in the comics that took place TODAY she has been shown to be SELF-TEACHING herself biology in order to catch up to her peers and put herself on course to be a scientist when she grows up, showing empathy and care far beyond any of Joyce’s friends in trying to support her, and to be looking for work so she can not be homeless.
Fuck, I’m sorry if I sound exasperated, but I’m a little tired of this hackneyed shit where we pretend like someone having pride in their identity is some imposition on the poor straights out in the audience.
Gosh, I wonder why queerness is really big in her life? It’s not like she was taught to hate herself growing up. It’s not like she lost her family and her college simply because of her queerness. It’s not like she wasn’t just threatened with a firearm and kidnapped, dragged off to some horrible fate where she was to be “corrected” of her very nature, simply because of her queerness. It’s not like she is currently homeless because of this quality and the way society has reacted to it.
And it’s not like every other character hasn’t been shown to be horny little lust bunnies talking endlessly about the type of people they like to bone or are attracted to.
But nooooo, let us single out Becky for daring to be proud of who she is. Fuck, this really annoys me personally, because it’s the shit that was thrown at me by my shitlord parents. I was “throwing away my life” to be “supergay all the time” simply because I came out to them and because I donated one evening a week to helping trans and ace kids not kill themselves.
“And it’s not like every other character hasn’t been shown to be horny little lust bunnies talking endlessly about the type of people they like to bone or are attracted to.”
“And it’s not like every other character hasn’t been shown to be horny little lust bunnies talking endlessly about the type of people they like to bone or are attracted to.”
Boom. I was agreeing with Briny’s post and the I read yours and was like “Damn, cant believe I did that”.
If I am not annoyed at Joe (and I am not) then shdnt be annoyed at Becky for this.
Which is what happens. Queer and trans people often have delayed adolescences because they quite frankly are not allowed to have their adolescences when their straight peers are. When it is physically dangerous to sexually and emotionally explore in high school, then that has to happen in college instead. When it is physically dangerous to explore what outfits look best on you and what your personal style or presentation is, then you have to in adulthood.
Why do a lot of trans women go through an awful pink phase early on in transition? Because they didn’t have an opportunity to do so when they were kids. Why do a lot of queer people make a lot of mistakes with their first relationships in college? Because it’s their first relationships with people they are actually attracted to and they’re still in the midst of learning what all that means in a culture that has always kept almost completely mum on queer sexuality and romance.
Kind of hard to have anything else to discuss when you’ve had the rest of your thoughts dictated by someone else until now. She tried to discuss evolution with Joyce and sent Joyce off in a existential-rage, tried to assert some self-hood and got kidnapped by her dad at gun point, so she doesn’t have a lot of good experience talking with people about other things than being gay – which landed her a caring, understanding, and patient girlfriend.
As a gay guy I’d like to say that your thinking “gay” is one note is probably more about your prejudices about gays and not about how someone talks about/relates to their sexuality.
On todays’ strip she is discussing:
1) Making fun of her fundie Dad by sending a photo to him (a reference to her discussing her history of being forced by her father to take part in demonstrations at Chick-Fil-A in her youth).
2) If she should apply for a job and the ethical consequences off it.
3) The “concept” (idea) of trickle-down economics (in context of social effects).
So her talk today involves family relationship, politics, ethics, economy and social sciences. Really only one note, isn’t it?
It really is. I don’t quite know how to express it, but it’s been really healing to see this sort of character, presented in this way, given my recent past. Seeing a fictional character going through the same sort of forced resilience as I did really resonates and makes me feel like maybe I’m not as damaged and broken as I often feel from it all. It’s been really powerful.
Seeing as how we’re still feeling the after-effects of that particular “theory”, I don’t see how any of us young ‘uns could remain 100% ignorant of its effect on the world.
I’m well under thirty, and if I had a dollar from everyone who made a big deal about trickle down economics to me, or said the phrase “A rising tide lifts all boats” to me, I’d be rich enough to benefit from the economic policies these people support.
Welcome to the ultimate truth of business and economics, Becky. Even if someone totally hates everything you are and what you stand for, they are still usually willing to take your money and/or use you for labour. When Greed goes up against Prejudice, Greed still wins out.
Dear David Willis,
Since you read every comment before it’s posted, check this out. I’m sorry for every vile thing I’ve ever said while an on/off fan of your comic. Those outbursts were actually about me. I am a Trans Female. I was still fighting against that before. It’s been about a year now. I’d like to be back into the fold. I don’t blame you if you don’t welcome me back, but I do just wanna thank you for this post. Coming from a Queer, Non-Binary Trans Woman, who was forcing herself to be think she was actually a Straight Cis Man . . . I am sorry. So very sorry.
Furthermore, as a Queer Non-Binary Trans Woman stuck working at Walmart, I feel this strip is pretty damn rad.
My Walmart isn’t as cool as this Chic-Fil-A, but it’s cool enough. I’m stuck in Monroe Michigan, and it’s hell…but a closet Lesbian Manager is helping me with a Hardship Transfer, and there’s one or two employees “in the know” who get me. They can hardly ever say words of support, because it would out me. However, their looks of encouragement, and their hushed comments in private are enough.
I find Lana Wachowski to be inspiring.
But Im not trans, find your heros where ye may.
But still shes wicked awesome, and really helped me understand better.
Careful those jerks don’t sue you for having their logo. Ok they probably can’t but they sued some person in Vermont for making stickers that say “eat more kale”. Totally ridiculous. And that was before the other awful stuff came out.
Anyhow I don’t have to worry about resisting eating it because they don’t have any in Vermont anyway. I used to like it back in high school back In the day.
I know companies can sue for their logos being shown in media that they don’t approve of that don’t fall within certain parameters of documentary or satire, but I’m pretty sure that at the same time, some logos are so common as to be considered partially public domain because they’re literally everywhere and you can’t demand everyone everywhere censor them out for everything they may film or take a picture of, or write about, etc…
I think it’s also a matter of money. How much is Willis making off ad revenue for his free-access webcomic? Is it worth going after him for a cut of it?
I could see it being more of an issue with his strictly pay content, such as slipshine or the Joyce and Walky comic.
Wish they had Chik-A-Filla’s up north. That and Great American Steak and Potato. Best weekend junkfood outside of Norfolk, VA ever. That and Pete’s Sushi and Steak House.
Indeed! Kang has a friend who has worked at Chik-fell-ate for years and is now an assistant manager. Even in Texas, no one working at Chik-fuh-lay cares. Except the owning family, and to hell with them.
It pisses me off how many people claim to care about this stuff, then still eat there. You value food over people. Just admit that you don’t actually care.
People talk about the plight of workers in the far east making electronics under slave-shop conditions, but I don’t see anyone ditching their iPhones either. It’s true — for the most part, people DON’T care.
It’s a lot easier to find alternatives to Chick-Fil-A than to Chinese-made cell phones. And *I* don’t know anyone who loudly criticizes Chick but keeps eating there.
I’ve never eaten there… if I want a chicken sandwich, there’s an Arby’s by my work and a Wendy’s by my house. Both of them I know whose gut bombs taste pretty good and are worth the consequences.
Chik-Fil-A is neither convenient and some of what they make looks like it’d put me in a grave.
Just looking at the guy behind the counter; he’s wearing glasses — and at least five of the main characters (Dorothy, Billie, Amber, Ruth, and Jacob … plus Roz, Carla, and Marcie) also wear glasses.
I can’t remember which of the “meanwhile, back at the campus…” segments have rerun and which haven’t, so I just checked Billie’s character tag, and the last time we saw her she wasn’t wearing glasses. I’d forgotten that she switched back to contacts at the end of that bit, ’cause I think she’s wearing glasses again when she shows back up in the main IW! storyline.
In addition to free tuition at state universities like IU, we need free textbooks. What we call Open Education Resources. See, for example, , part of Creative Commons.
I write free textbooks and software manuals for and .
THEN, the texbooks themselves trickle back down until they’re battered and broken, and you’re like “I’ll take the cheap one please” and they’re like “Oh, that teacher wants you to get the current edition, and we don’t have any used versions of that” and you’re like “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGH!!!!!!”
Agreed. Even more intense for me is the strip two days earlier. Joyce trying to reconcile her faith with what she’s experiencing is just gut-wrenching.
Okay, research principles demanded that I experiment with my spouse. Tongues, maximum extension one inch each. So-so. Lips, obviously no extension but much more entertainment. Your mileage may vary.
…..soooooo,can we get back to the funny? And get rid of Becky? She’s just a bit too far out there. Kind of like a female, homosexual Joe. Speaking of people who are too far out there… (Yes, I know my icon is Joe. I didn’t pick it! >.<; )
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The primary driving force of Gayganomics is of course the Invisible Bisexual Hand.
ffffft
The proof of a good joke is that it makes David Willis fart quietly in the comments.
So do I get an Achievement Unlocked! trophy for this?
Bleep bloop!
So… this
*slow clap*
You just made my day.
And Brits should not underestimate the power of the Pink Pound.
And proof again of the Douglas Adams theory that space isn’t just curved, it’s completely BENT.
id said its female leaning
HAHAHAHAHA. true fast food style… nobody there really cares
“Nobody here cares” should have hung on a sign at every fast food job I ever worked.
“We’re not paid enough to”
“The food’s not that great.”
Blasphemy! The food is delicious!
Also the best dang job I ever had. Unlike my current workplace, Chickfila employees actually DID their jobs (aka had a work ethic). Nobody there really cared about the gay thing as we all knew it was just a political ploy to try to grab votes.
Seriously, I know it’s just played up for laughs and triggers some drama, but Christians aren’t like that.
Correction: but most Christians aren’t like that.
Well, err… mixed bag there. I mean most? Sure, they’re not. But is there a sizeable and vocal minority that are? Also yes. I mean I’m close friends (fellow combat vets) with some pretty intensely homophobic and xenophobic guys who are absolutely sign-carrying members of that group. There’s room for everybody, I figure.
So played up for laughs, but also effective humor because it accurately reflects a portrayal that is not made up.
ha ha ha “for laughs”
So the whole “Kill the gays” movement in Uganda doesn’t have a fair amount of backing from American Christian organisations after all, then?
And pretty much 99% of all the opposition to equal marriage rights in the USA hasn’t come from Christian organisations?
I’d like to live in your universe. It seems like a much better place.
Yeah, dude, Christians are totally like that. Not all of them, but you know what? Christians who AREN’T like that (like, I’m assuming, you) really need to start fucking acknowledging the existence of the ones that ARE like that. I’m not saying you’re responsible for what everyone calling themselves a Christian does, but you can at the very least not pretend that there aren’t bigoted assholes proudly flaunting your chosen title.
Well that happened.
In regards to one of the most well known of the offenders
“The Baptist World Alliance and the Southern Baptist Convention (the two largest Baptist denominations) have both denounced the (Westboro Baptist Church)WBC over the years.[11] In addition, other mainstream Christian denominations, such as the Methodist Church, Baptist Church, Reformed Church, and Evangelical Church have condemned the actions of the independent Westboro Baptist Church”
Thank you Google and Wikipedia
“You gonna order something or what.”
Yes, that dude needs a name.
I vote for um…… Trevor. no clue why it just came into my head
He looks like a Trevor
He looks…actually yeah, he looks a bit like my dad, whose name is Trevor. White, thinnish angular face, grey hair and beard, glasses. Yup, he’s Trevor. xD
Better than Chuck Phil Eigh.
Here I was going to seriously suggest Phil.
That Chuck Phil, eh?
Chuck Fellay?
… Here I was, constantly pronouncing it as “chick-fill-ahh” in my head. Only now I realize: “fill-a” –> “fillet”. Duh.
This comic is the first and only place I’ve ever heard of that restaurant chain in my life, by the way, so I hope to be forgiven. I’m a Canadian just around twenty, lived in three provinces in my most remembered part of my life, so I’m guessing it is tiny or nonexistent north of the US border.
Because he kind of looks like Trever, the gay best friend from Phantasmagoria 2, an obscure Adventure Horror Game from the 90s that nobody would even remember today if Spoony hadn’t done a funny Let’s Play of it?
I remember Phantasmagoria, the first one, and trying to get a glimpse of whatsername in the shower. Surely there had to be this secret combination of keys and whatever. I even wrote DOS interrupt handlers to capture it. Totally pathetic. Never figured it out. I would have done better to get a job at a fast-food place.
I heard that, Curtis!
Um, I know about it because of some people of my old Myst fan forum.
But first we need to take away his number
Chick-Fil-Gay
His full name would be Charles Phillip Gaye, but everyone calls him Chuck.
Wilfred sounds nice.
How about Nameless Fred?
I’m getting a strong “Rick” vibe offa this guy.
Does DoA already have a Rick?
Of course, we just haven’t seen him because of how good a ninja he is.
oh shit I forgot about that guy
…he’s good
hmm? I’ve seen him.
On a roll…
His name should be decided by a poll. Like Throw in some good suggestions Like:
John
Sam
Frito Pendejo
or Ricky
Phil A. Chick
…but he’s gay ?
Perhaps Phil A. Dick then? Though I fear that may be frot with puns…
Well, we have Leslie Bean so…
Wait. Leslie Bean is fraught?
* Uses all 8 brain cells. *
Wish I had more than 8…
leslie can be shortened to les. say les bean aloud.
Thank you, Void. Nobody will ever read this, but today I was continuing to read through the Shortpacked! backlog and came across the Les Bean episode. Definitely fraught. I put in an order for 3-4 more brain cells. Happy New Year, Void.
son of Philip K. Dick, clearly.
I vote for ‘Neil” because he’s a gay man.
And here I *just* got done reading some of Neil’s tweets, including a photo of a bookstore sign that says “Neil Gaiman is behind you.” XD Good one.
My vote goes to ____ Gaylord. Or Gaylord ____. Whichever.
i am for Captain Gaybeard, but i also like Leorale’s suggestion.
I vote for Ben.
He looks like a Will to me.
I shall call him George and hug him and love him and kiss him and squeeze him.
Steve! He looks like a Steve
HE SHALL HENCEFORTH BE KNOWN AS
HAROLD!
ALL HAIL HAROLD!
Ted, perhaps. Kinda bland, but beardy.
And Neil Patrick Harris somehow knows him and introduces him to guys at a gay bar by going “Haaaaaaave you met Ted?”
“Our father who art in heaven, Harold be thy name.”
http://imgur.com/gallery/KjtbV
I had no idea I needed this until it was here, and then I understood.
I lost it at the horse porn.
Harold is love Harold is life.
I can’t think of the name “Harold” without the phrase “On ‘is ‘horse, with ‘is ‘awk in ‘is ‘hand” … for which you need to read the best poem ever written about the Battle of Hastings: http://www.funnypoets.com/poetry/thebattleofhastings.htm
You win, sir, here is your internet. 😀
I met someone who worked at a chick fil a while at a con once. She was gay and there during the protests and she felt hated by both sides. The ones super pro would make snide/rude comments about gays and she had to smile because well its what the paycheck is for and the anti chick fil a people tried to tell her she wasn’t a true lesbian because she worked there. She was so happy when the protests/anti protests *depending on your view* were over.
Funny, at the Chickfila where I worked, we received no “hate comments” from either side. And it’s not like I hid in the back or anything. I was practically crowd surfing trying to get orders out. (Strangely, I find maneuvering through crowds of people fun, actually.) Any comments I did hear were about how it all started, why it was so ridiculous, and that was pretty much it.
The most we got out of anyone was how politicians were making power grabs and making (very empty) promises about hindering Chickfila’s growth. (Of which, by the way, denying a person their right to build a store Is Illegal here in America.)
All of the hate comments that I did find were purely online and most of them were against Chickfila, not gays.
I would much rather no one who is gay worked at Chik-fil-A, but to criticize someone for earning a basic income because that’s the job that’s available is a pure asshat move. Unless the critic is literally willing to pay the worker’s bills, they should just shut the fuck up, or better, commiserate about the situation.
Yeah, we all gotta make a living and that means some nasty moral compromises sometimes. It’s really shitty to shame someone for that.
I suggest that guy should be Doug Gaigan.
Just because
Of course he needs a name!
Personally I think he looks like a Tim.
Tim the enchanter!
Tim… Horton?
Please name him. I have suddenly formed a weird attachment to him. I think he might be my new favorite character. I don’t know why. Just…
I want to see more of this man.
I want to know his story.
His beard is oddly compelling.
Does he need a name for the sake of the shippers? Hope we don’t have the hit him with a bottle of champagne.
In the end, the one thing that will bring us together is deliciousness! ^_^
Like, totally lezzers
Sooo much lezzes
ALL THE LEZZERS.
ALL YOUR LEZZERS ARE BELONG TO US!
The best thing about textbooks is looking at the page count and finding out how much you’ve spent per page.
Don’t forget trying to sell them back! I got five whole dollars for a hundred dollar book.
I just kept most of mine. They’ve been worth more as reference books than the $10, $20, “hahahano we’re switching to a new edition next year” I would have gotten for selling them. The only ones that actually had a reasonable resale value were the ones that were really useful references.
I wish I could at least use mine for reference but I changed majors when I moved to a different state so now I got a crap ton of books that I can’t even use for reference.
Well, i don’t majored in anything and i still have many many books about pretty much anything like law, medicine, surgery, IT, electronics, algabra, biology, and a shit load of even more in the future for all kinds of career imaginable, then again, am a moth to a light when it comes to knownledge xD
Your bookshelf is the winner here.
I majored in English. A lot of my textbook lists was “Buy these seven novels and these three play scripts.”
I kept all of those. I still lost a ton of money on the useless, hundreds-of-dollars textbooks that couldn’t be sold back that I did buy.
I majored in electrical and computer engineering. Our English textbooks were a worthless paperback of excerpts and snippets, and a Russian novel that I literally could not read. I would turn the pages and my eyes would travel over them, but the words would just kind of slide off my brain without lodging. The bookstore wouldn’t take either of those back.
The calculus, physics, circuit analysis, and microprocessing textbook with the Z80 reference in the back have all been handy since, though. (The calc book they wouldn’t take back anyway. The author was head of the math department, and they had a new edition every single year.) And not necessarily for work! I have weird hobbies.
The best part about textbooks is walking into the book store at the end of the semester, having them offer you $20 for a book they are going to put back on the shelf with a $125 price tag, heading outside, saying “I got Linear Algebra 3, any takers?” and getting $100 while the people at the used counter ten feet away gnash their teeth.
Precious college memories.
I’d half expect them to call the (campus) cops on you.
(Not for that, of course. Some other reason. Definitely.)
I know nothing about what college is like these days, but this sounds like a job for a social media swap group. Or there could be an app for that, I suppose.
I’m sure that’s how they do it nowadays. Facebook was just becoming a thing when I was in college, so social networking wasn’t as prevalent.
As a student in University, I can definitely confirm that there are Facebook groups dedicated to buying/selling used books. Or at least, the canadian university I’m going to has a Facebook group for that.
To clarify, Textbooks. Blech. I need to proofread these before I hit submit.
Mind you, at most colleges I’ve seen, the people working at the bookstore were other students, who weren’t so much ‘grinding their teeth’ as ‘silently cheering’. The store manager? Grind city.
I rent off of chegg.com unless it is something the teacher wrote himself and noone outside of the course ever found.
I had a professor who wrote his own (terrible) book, because the ones on the market didn’t cover the material in the order he wanted.
It wasn’t math or some other additive subject, so we could’ve just… read chapters out of order from some preexisting textbook.
Which we did anyway, since apparently he had changed his mind regarding the proper order since writing it.
l didn’t even need to get textbooks, they just put some on the list for my course because the university required it. Unfortunately I found out after I started so I have 3 unused textbooks sat in my room at home
I hereby name you Beardie McBeardson.
But no job here! Becky want’s to work at Galasso’s.
Becky would name him that, given her wordy talents.
Nah, that’s Jay. He’s gay. He works at Chik-fil-a. He’s here to stay, and can’t live any other way.
OK, Jay can be his middle name.
I support the idea of Galasso’s for Becky’s place of employment. The potential for amusement is just so great.
Becky’s not really got the whole gay thing down yet, huh? Loads of enthusiasm, closet thermo-nuclear detonation, but she’s a few classes with Leslie shy on the philosophy
I know, seriously. Everyone knows that trickle-down jerk theory is completely discredited in the field of gayganomics.
(Realizes I’ve tried a serious response to what was intended to be a pun thread)
Ummmm smoke bomb!
(Throws down smoke bomb, forgets to run away).
I’m not very good at this.
Chick-Fil-A employees steal from the rich assholes, give to the gay poor…
… who give it back to the rich. That’s trickle down in a nutshell.
Well she’s new. She hasn’t even gone to her first Gay Meeting yet, much less graduated from Gay Agenda indoctrination boot camp.
…okay, making camp jokes about Becky is kinda… ^^;
Ouch. Good point.
Is that a WW2 reference about…dem camps?
no ?
I think they’re referring to one of those Pray Away The Gay camps that Toedad wanted to send Becky to.
I did not intend it so, but DN has a good point that there are some unintended nasty resonances to either the Holocaust or to the sort of place Ross may have planned to send Becky to “cure” her.
I took the Captain’s post to be satirical on the idea that there is a unanimous “gay agenda” conspiracy. Those who know a few dozen gay persons find this idea a real knee-slapper.
nowadays there are online LGBTQ+ certification courses, anyway. although if possible it’s best to go to local workshops on deck building and proper uhaul techniques, as of like 5 years ago those are electives rather than requirements for the Lesbian license. it gets a bit more complicated if you’re doing a cross-certification course, such as Lesbian and Transgender. honestly, it’s easier to just go with Q+ certification and choose your own online courses based on interests. i was halfway through both an L and T certification when i realized i already qualified for the Q+ license.
But can you get student loans for those?
I still thought it somewhat unfair that for the A certificate I had to completely ace my exams.
But unlike the normal LGBTQ+ certificate the A certificate comes with a bonus QUILTBAG!
I had no idea trading card games were such a big deal to lesbians.
What exactly is the philosophy of being gay? Isn’t it just having a sexual interest in people the same gender as your own? (Okay I may be oversimplifying some things there. But I’m not seeing where in this strip Becky doesn’t understand gayness)
You may be attempting to understand the commentary a bit too literally. 😉
Becky is like a modern-day Lewis Carroll with these funky words.
That Becky is just a doll, i hope she gets the job
I have a degree in gayganomics
Meh, in the vain of every literary character he’ll probably never come up again, and certainly not at a plot critical moment.
Chekhov’s
GunCashier.(Maybe that should be his name!)
Is this Act One? And is he hanging on the wall?
If so, I can hardly wait for Act Four.
Nooo, she has to join the evil empire that is Galasso’s Pizza (and subs)!!
I for one gleefully anticipate the bizarre love triangle between her, Dina, and Conquest.
why has no one before my last refresh mentioned their tongues out/touching/kissing/something picture for Ross though? Also how is she sending it to him?
She’s printing it out on a giant poster and mailing it to his cell.
Well someone else has mentioned it so I can move on to something else. And why has the only place I have seen a similar display (tongues out and touching) been in Japanese porn? Has Dina been reading hentai manga for her Nihongo practice? 😀
She’s going to print it as big as she can, hire one of those billboard trucks, and drive it back and forth in front of the jail. Or airdrop a thousand copies over the prison yard from a crop-duster.
He looks like a Brian to me. And Not Hiring would violate Anti-discrimination Laws. No assurance as tot eh work environment, but I’m sure they’d hire Becky.
It would be ironic.
Interestingly enough, Indiana doesn’t have that for queer folks. There’s an executive order prohibiting state level discrimination, but private businesses are totally allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_employment_discrimination_in_the_United_States
So, the only question is, would this Chik-fil-A be considered partially state property because it is on State University property, or would it still be considered a fully private institution because the school is only renting the space to a private company to use as they see fit?
That would entirely depend on the terms of their rental contract with the university. There probably is some non-discrimination clause in the contract to avoid there ever being any questionable middle grounds like that on their property, but I truly don’t know that for a fact.
Good point about the university possibly making this public sector. I hadn’t realised this was the one on campus.
But the University is in Bloomington and Bloomington does have local laws preventing employment discrimination against LGBTQ people.
OTOH, I’ve lost track of how the religious freedom law thing played out, so they might still be able to discriminate if they claimed it was for religious reasons. That was intended to override such local protections.
Bloomington and IU both have anti-discrimination protection for LGBT employees. however, we are a “right to work” state. what most often happens is that an employee is fired for “no reason” when an employer finds out they are LGBT. i know that most LGBT people in Bloomington who stay in the closet for just this reason, and to avoid the technically legal bullying and social exclusion that happens in the workplace.
the state of the religious freedom act is such that a shop owner can say “my religion doesn’t like your kind, so get out of my shop.” which is a really unnecessary law, since we already had a law saying that a shop owner can kick someone out of their shop for NO REASON. if i were a small business owner, i could kick someone out of my shop because their favorite doctor was Tom Baker and mine is David Tennant.
Technically, that’s not “right-to-work”, but “at-will” employment and applies nearly everywhere. Right-to-work deals with unions, not other employment issues.
But you’re basically right about how the anti-discrimination laws played out. It’s really hard to win a case, unless the employer is really blatant about it.
You really need to be able to show a pattern – which pretty much means a large employer and a class action suit.
The same applies to racial or gender discrimination.
That said, it does help, even if it’s not sufficient. There’s still a difference between having to hide your intentions and be careful about what reasons you give in the hiring and firing process and just being able to hang a “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish” sign on the door. It also gives more sympathetic employers in prejudiced areas an excuse: “Well, the law says I have to …”
As for the RFA, I wasn’t able to see why it wouldn’t apply to employment, but I haven’t heard of cases where it was used that way.
Oh yeah, hadn’t thought about local laws and the complexity of how they apply with the RFRA. And definitely hear you on the loopholes angle. It was really sad realizing that non-discrimination laws are about as much protection as tissue paper armor.
There’s actually no federal law preventing employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (or gender identity, for that matter), and *checks* Indiana’s law only covers the public sector. So without even getting into the difficulty of actually proving discrimination aside, it would be legal for them to refuse to hire Becky because she’s gay. *shrug*
Ugh, get rid of the aside. I changed my phrasing and missed a spot.
There is also this. Companies also have really codified ways to get around non-discrimination laws even when they do exist. My state has a non-discrimination policy that includes gender identity, but my company at the time still felt pretty comfortable discriminating against me so long as they never actually used the words “we’re firing you for being trans”.
On the nose. And Chick Fil A apparently doesn’t even bother trying to hide their discrimination sometimes:
“According to the lawsuit filed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Brenda Honeycutt began working at a Chick-fil-A in Duluth, Ga. 1991 and was promoted to a general manager in 1997. But Jeff Howard, the restaurant’s owner and operator, ‘routinely made comments to [Honeycutt] suggesting that as a mother she should stay home with her children.’
In April 2011, Howard hired a man named Bill Green as a general manager and began holding management meetings with him and two other male managers but excluded Honeycutt. In late June, Howard fired Honeycutt, telling her and other employees that he did so so she could be a stay-at-home mother.”
http://www.southernstudies.org/2012/08/chick-fil-as-history-of-workplace-discrimination.html
Which, i guess, shouldn’t be much of a surprise given the way the chain is run. Forbes has an article on Chick Fil A that’s downright chilling. They call it a cult and it’s easy to see why:
“‘We tell applicants, ‘If you don’t intend to be here for life, you needn’t apply,’’ says [the owner/founder of Chick Fil A, Samuel Truett Cathy], who opened his first restaurant in 1946.
That’s not the only company mandate. Chick-fil-A’s corporate mission, as stated on a plaque at company headquarters (and by Cathy), is to ‘glorify God.’…
The company might face more suits if it didn’t screen potential hires and operators so carefully. Many Chick-fil-A job candidates must endure a yearlong vetting process that includes dozens of interviews. Ty Yokum, the training manager for the chain, sat through 7 interviews and didn’t get the job. He reapplied in 1991 and was subjected to another 17 interviews–the final one lasted five hours–and was hired.”
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/0723/080.html
All that to work in a sodding fast food <_<
If they are hiring people for life, do they pay a living wage and decent fringe benefits?
Sure, if you own a franchise. Otherwise, no.
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Chick-Fil-A_Inc/Hourly_Rate
But they have found at least one way to keep some of their employees long term despite their low wages. Like the Forbes article says, they run group foster homes and funnel kids in their care into their restaurants as employees.
That’s basically never a thing. Walmart doesn’t have a blatant “lifer” policy, the way Chick-fil-A does (at least, they didn’t when I worked there back in 1998-2000), but they very much encourage the “lifer” mentality once you’re employed there. I left, in part because my managers repeatedly ‘suggested’ I quit college and work at Walmart for the rest of my life, and when I repeatedly told them no, that was not going to happen, they started scheduling my hours over days when I had made it known I needed off to study for exams, and when I started calling in, I finally got the “you need to be at work when you’re scheduled” talk. It was near the end of my shift, so I said, “Sure, no problem,” finished my shift, went home and typed a letter stating my two weeks’ notice (except, unfortunately, I would not be available for work for the next two weeks), took it right back to work and taped it to the time clock with the manager’s name on it. No regrets – I have no intent of ever working for them or any other Walmart again.
Me, my gay brother, all my cousins worked at Chickfila at one point or another. (we jokingly called it the right of passage to adulthood). We all received only one interview before being hired. Fact is Chickfila even had to let a few people go, not because of any political reason, but because they were very VERY bad at their jobs. (I mean yelling at their fellow employees in front of all the customers bad. Although even if it wasn’t in front of the customers, it’s bad, but you get the point.) My favorite manager’s wife worked there until she had her baby, then she decided to became a stay at home mom. She still brings her kids to visit their dad at Chickfila. Trust me, raising kids is not a cake walk. One of my cousins only has one child and she only officially works 3 days a week. She’s exhausted just from being a mother.
People can make claims like these all they want, but in the end it’s all just cherry picking. And if it’s not cherry picking it’s taking things way out of context.
Let’s take the “If you don’t intend to be here for life, you needn’t apply” thing you mentioned. Many of my fellow employees were only there for the summer. Chickfila still hired them. Some employees only work once a month. I personally had a part time job there for six years before deciding that it would be best if I left. While looking for a new job, I learned that there are Many Many people who apply for jobs with absolutely no intention of working as said jobs, let alone being hired. They do so in order to exploit legal loopholes. It’s gotten so bad in our country that most companies don’t hire on location anymore and use places like Simon to hire people instead. It Seriously Sucks.
There is so much to love here.
Panel 1: Becky’s ability to mine joy and emotional strength out of all the terrible inflicted upon her is beautiful. Her dad threatened to kill all her friends to drag her away and “fix” her and she’s finding the joy in it. She’s texting her dad selfies of her licky-styling with her girlfriend and showing no shame. She has won her life and now she is living that and that speaks so unbelievably powerfully.
And (ace?) Dina here, only half focusing on the tongue kiss and half-focusing on the wanted ad. It’s just so beautiful.
Panel 2 and 3: Becky here, that conflict of mind, that uncertainty about putting her economic survival first or her self-respect. And worrying realistically about the possibility of discrimination (fun fact, it’s 100% legal in the great state of Indiana to fire someone/ refuse to hire someone because they are gay). Also, “totally lezzers”. 😀
And Dina just being all, um, why would you want to work here. She’s just so principled in her quiet sort of way and you don’t fully notice it until someone attacks a value of hers or involves hatred of one of her identities. The way she was bothered by the group thinking she was too neuroatypical to be sexual, the way she growled at Joyce hating on evolution, and her statement here. She has thought about her beliefs for a long time and stands up for them when it comes up.
Panel 5: Oh Becky and her wonderful Beckyisms. When the series wraps up at the heat death of the universe, I totally want a neural-interface dictionary of them all.
Becky: Confronting very serious and real issues with industry level goof! And that’s why we love her so.
i thought Dina was demi?
Her label hasn’t been stated, it’s all speculation. And I believe demi is on the ace spectrum.
Yes. All of that.
Though I don’t know if Dina is ace or demi as much as preoccupied with dinosaurs, and inclined to rigorous scientific investigation more than – though not excluding of – lust or romance. I imagine in due time she’ll determine her exact level of enthusiasm for smooches and then maybe give it a label.
Amake and altalemur-
Yeah, nothing is official yet, so I put in the question mark because either of those possibilities is definitely on the table with the information we’ve seen so far.
“Aaaand, bam! This’ll be a fun comic panel to turn into a gravatar.”
Nathan
I vote for his name to be Chet.
First name that came to mind, though I was bound to think of something with a Ch-.
Chet Fellay?
The Gay Agenda(tm), revealed at last. Damn you, Willis, you exposed our most secret of operations: Project Working at Places Owned By Homophobic Assholes to Ensure Their Money Ends Up in Gay Hands!
(Or Project WaPOBHAtETMEUPiGH, for short.)
Can we get #projectWaPOBHAtETMEUPiGH trending please
I think the new guy should be named Heino, since I listened to a Heino song tonight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywAuNnsyK2Y
I can hear the righteous justice complaining from here, hahaha.
“Nobody here really cares” – the motto of gay acceptance in modern America!
Don’t underestimate the power of the phrase “well, what business is it of _mine_?”.
To paraphrase a famous quotation, it shouldn’t matter who loves whom so long as they don’t do it in public and startle the horses.
Good job alienating the entire scareahorseosexual community.
Bah. Kang’s horses are patrol-trained.
I think he should be named Greg. Not sure why but I think it works.
Gay Ray to go with Leslie Bean.
“You know, there’s more to my character than just liking dudes.”
“It was literally your first line in the comic…deal with it.”
Quincy Weir?
Homer Saxel?
Ahïm Gay!
Heywood Jablome?
Mike Hawkgoesupdudes.
Aw, that cashier looks like Rantasmo! I love him immediately.
Christopher
Well, yeah, if your one of those chumps that pays for em instead of just stealing them.
I dunno, he looks like a Bruce to me, just like all those professors at the University of Austrailia, but without the digger hat and the corks on threads.
But he would be in violation of Rules 1, 3, 5, and 7. And if he complies with rule 2 he might run afoul of Amazi-girl. Or worse, Ruth’s counterpart.
I think you mean rule 4, not rule 2. Rule 2 is about mistreating the aborigines, ‘if anybody’s watching’.
Yeah, you are right. The one “Now this term I don’t want to catch anyone not drinking after lights out.”
I like Bruce, and it sounds really manly for some reason.
Well it’s Batman’s real name. Can’t get more manly than breathing in space ~_~
Or be best at everything everything.
Batman and the Hulk! It is the official Superheroiest Name.
Also the name of the shark from Jaws!
Ok, but we’re ignoring the important part here.
What’s going into Dina’s sexuality experiment notebook for that first panel?
Send him like few more photos, like one with you guys just smooching then a nother where Dina is grouping Becky. Maybe he’ll flip out in court.
I was hoping she’d get a job at Galasso’s just so we could get more time with his family.
She’d probably get hired on the spot if this Galasso is anything like the one in Shortpacked. All he wants from his subordinates is loyalty and willingness to succumb to his will. Nothing else matters.
All Galasso would need is a a ninja, a robot, and a super hero to have his perfect team. The last he could get if Amber applied.
Becky’s girlfriend is a ninja dinosaur! That’s even better than just a regular ninja!
Remember, he needed a lesbian too, and Leslie already has a job as a teacher. Becky’d get it no problem!
Just watching Becky act and talk like this makes me miss pre-reboot Robin. Preboot if you would.
Preebootobin.
preebobin
Preboobin’ is a good phrase for Becky and Dina’s relationshit.
Neil Gaiman said that he likes to drop distinctive characters into his backgrounds, so that if he needs ’em later, they’re there. So yes, this dude definitely needs a name and a major. Also it’s nice to see a background character who is well-adjusted about being gay.
common & beardy: Alan, Charles, Richard, Ted (I once knew a mostly-gay beardy economist named Ted).
uncommon & beardy: Pietrov, Stephan, Fallon, Hunter. (Also Erikk Ironfoundersson but that’s a bit *too* beardy.)
He also has a minor in art history or jazz or something. ::shrug::
He’s only there because he’ll be useful to the plot later?
Let’s name him Chekhov.
Chekhov Gunn
Also uncommon and bearded: “Kang”.
Homer Seck Toole
Homer is totally a bearded gay guys name. Like the poet. Had a beard according to statues and was Greek (aka gay). And he’s majoring in classic Greek drama (gay and homery)
Well the lesbian was named Leslie,
so the gay guy should be named Gary.
Not Homer? Homer Saxwell?
It’s kinda interesting how one guy makes people think of markedly different names.
He looks like a Gary.
My vote is for Gay Steve
Okay at the risk of getting hated on I have a couple questions, sort of. I think.
I’m straight. My best friend’s brother was gay. My bf, her brother, myself and my brother hung around together from grade school thru HS.
We all knew he was gay since about age 13 or so. This was long enough ago that probably 95% of gays stayed in the closet.
Knowing him all those years and his preferences, was not a thing any of us dwelled on: we knew. We loved him. He was our friend.
I never had any problems with whatever sexual preference anyone has: it is so personal and no one should worry about anyone else’s choice of partner’s.
And I think that this is where the question comes in: as said, it is a very ‘personal’ choice. I just don’t understand why anyone would want to push their choice of sex into the public eye.
I don’t care if your gay/bi/trans or not. It is your choice. It’s not what I base life choices on. I like or don’t like people for actions not life style choices.
I know that, at one time or another, just about every group of people in this country (US) has been -or is-discriminated against for race, religion, gender, sex and whatever can be found to discriminate against.
Polling for change, protesting, writing Congress, boycotts and all that is the way to bring change. Sometimes it works.
I guess I just don’t like PDA of any type between any persons. So, while I love Becky, she is strong, intelligent, and brave. I don’t like that she keeps running around hollering ‘I’m Gay’. In real life I would avoid her for that.
I don’t like anyone running around hollering ‘I’m Gay”. It’s your business, keep it your business. Treat the discrimination as a project that needs to be addressed and keep your personal sex life out of my face.
I’m really good at pissing people off, and I’m not trying to do that.
I guess I’m just a very private person, who tries to live and let live, and sometimes doesn’t do a good job of it.
I like reading comments here, some have opened me up to new thoughts. I like Willis strip. Very well done.
Nah, I’m totally with you, and I’m bi. I generally keep to myself, I’m out, but hardly anyone i work with knows my sexuality. Not because I hide it, it’s just not relevant most of the time.
Becky is a total extrovert, it’s her character. Extroverts tend to do that kinda thing.
That being said, heterosexuality is rather hard to ignore in our culture (at least in the states). Commercials, billboards, hollywood films, cartoons, comics, are all predominantly straight. And straight sex is shoved in everyone’s faces.
If you’re not a fan of that as well, then you’re opinion is totally justified.
It’s when people single out gay people, where problems arise.
Caitlin Moran made a very useful comment about sexism: If it’s something that only one gender has to worry about, it’s likely sexism. The same idea could be applied to homophobia.
If straight people hold hands and kiss in public, people usually ignore them. If they’re really enthusiastic, someone might say “Get a room!”
if gay people do the same thing, depending on where they live, people might curse them, beat them up, or even kill them.
If you see a straight couple kissing and think “Why do they put their choice of sex into the public eye?” then go ahead and think it about gay couples too. But if your reaction is different, then consider that it may actually be fueled by homophobia you didn’t know you had.
This.
And it was really obvious how much the same actions were treated when I was assumed to be a cis dude on a date with a woman then when I was a trans woman on a date with a woman.
I’ve been berated with someone literally telling me “excuse me, there are children present” when I was simply putting my arm around the shoulder of my partner whereas when I presented as male, I could kiss and make out in public and I was more likely to get a chuckle and an “oh you kids” than any type of actual pushback.
And those can be best case scenarios. Another memorable situation of hugging my girlfriend and kissing the top of her head on a street corner while waiting for a light lead to an individual musing about whether or not to circle back and kill me because of this public display.
I mean, we can see it in your reply.
I mean, look at the comic. It’s a lesbian and her girlfriend doing a quick tongue kiss selfie while fully clothed.
Here’s how you read it: “personal sex life”
And that’s really telling. Because that’s how queer people just existing are viewed in society. We as a society automatically associate queer people with sex. No matter what they are doing. Holding hands with a partner? We call that sex. Buying a house together? Sex. Going on a date? Sexity sex. Just being out on the job and not lying and making up a fake differently gendered partner? OH MY BOB, WHY ARE YOU SHOVING YOUR SEXBITS IN MY FACE?
And that comes with real world consequences. It reinforces discrimination, it’s used as justification for violence, and it erases domesticity, love, connection, and all the rights that straight people take for granted*. And I mean that strongly. I’m pretty sure a good 50% of my discrimination as a trans teacher is because people automatically associate trans people with sex and so “sex+children=get rid of the monster” goes the bigoted calculus.
*It’s staggering how in our face straightness is at all times. At workplaces, all the straight people have pictures of their loved ones all over the place. They make constant comments about their boyfriends, husbands, wives, or girlfriends. They trade sexist assumptions about the behavior of men and women and expect everyone to nod their head and agree. They talk endlessly about kids or marriages or pregnancies or remark on how X or Y actor or actress is so attractive.
And that’s not a luxury queer people are afforded. If we try and talk about our partners, our lives, our loves, our plans for the future, this is often treated as a gross over-sharing of personal life and just inappropriate.
And that’s because we are used to being smothered in straight sexuality and heteronormative society and we’ve regarded the mere existence of anyone else as “inappropriate” and completely indistinguishable from “sex”.
***straight” Vs Bentness ****
I used it in my own comment, but I detest the word.
I think its about time we abolish the word “Straight” .
Its a buzzword like …”traditional values”, when people mean hate.
Heterosexual /= “Straightness”
“straight” is shorthand for “morally straight’
Whenever a hetersoexual calls themselves “straight” Its an implied insult and slur, to non het.
Its a declaration of Heterosexual -Sexual Orthodoxy; with an included appropriation of Morally-Correct sex.
People say they are “straight” when they are not doing something wrong, when they are not committing crimes , and when they are not doing hard drink and drugs.
When a person says “i’m straight” they are saying they are NOT a drunk thieving , scamming, slutty, junkie addict , gay person
Everytime a person says : “I’M straight” its an open declaration of sexual- orientation-supremacy. Most heterosexuals I know are not really “straight” anyways. They are Curvy, or kinky some are white bread, but save the pre pubescent virgins they are not actually ‘straight’ .
Heterosexuals, find another short word. This one is awful.
How about Syzygy? thats an awesome word? Oppos? Comps?
Lets look at Syzygy: a conjunction or opposition, especially of the moon with the sun.
“the planets were aligned in syzygy”
a pair of connected or corresponding things.
“animus and anima represent a supreme pair of opposites, the syzygy”
Its fucking perfect. Its the about the cosmic celebration of male and female.
Notice it it celebrates what special about heterosexuality without supremacy o hate, or claims of being the “normal one” .
Former, loveley “straight-people” ; tomorrow , please come out to your friends and loves ones , as ‘formerly straight’ yet hetereo. Explain you really are Syzygy -sexual : as it perfectly encapsulates the beauty of your sexual orientation, without hate.
and for Everyone else for whom Queerness was too ..Queer-Theory, Gayness too wedded to Camp Aesthetics, I offer you the wonder, the talent,the Flair, the knack of **Bentness** Be Bent! Get Bent!
Let see what the Dictionary says about “Bentness”?’
1.a natural talent or inclination.
“a man of religious bent”
synonyms: inclination, leaning, tendency;
That fits rather nicely.
Syn: inclination, leaning, tendency; talent, gift, flair, aptitude, facility, skill, capability, capacity; predisposition, disposition, instinct, orientation, predilection, proclivity, propensity
NOtice how its either neutral or straight-up praise. They all seem related too?
Whats your Bent? Bent Is My Bent
Do you have a Gift, flair, aptitude ,talent , inclination, oreientation for Homosexian? Then you are Bent.
We have more
3.BRITISH informal ( formerly derogatory: we are taking it back)
homosexual.
We Knew.
4.adj Bent
determined to do or have something.
“a missionary bent on saving souls”
synonyms: intent on, determined on, set on, insistent on, resolved on, hell-bent on; committed to, single-minded about, obsessed with, fanatical about, fixated on
Are you intent on Homosexian? Are you committed? Are you determined?
You are not just gay or queer, you a committed Knight of the Cock warriors , Determined to fight. You are Queen Raptor of the Terrible Lizbians, protecting your pride .
4.Verb
direct or devote (one’s attention or energies) to a task.
“Eric bent all his efforts to persuading them to donate some blankets”
Bent means management of ones self-mastery. Thats a perfect word for Homsexian. Thats what we do. We devote our energies to it and we do it right. Thats the kind of homosexian makes you proud. Its a job well done.
3.force or be forced to submit.
OK Def 3 implies some S&M. Not for everyone, but its here if you want it .
“they want to bend me to their will”
synonyms: mold, shape, manipulate, direct, force, press, influence, incline, sway
“they want to bend me to their will”
To some up:
***Bentness*** means Your Talent, your style , Your character , your aptitude, your determination, your will , your focus, the management of your selfmastery .
and out of all these positive affirming ways of being and doing Homosexian , Bentness only has 1 is negative:
2.
BRITISHinformal
dishonest; corrupt.
“a bent cop”
That definition is just straightness-supremacist Propaganda . We can toss it out, as hate-flawed.
We end “straightness” and Bentness is our alone.
They can be Syzygy, we have bentness and be double trouble .
“Bentness” is also an affirmed, determined challenge to CisHet privilege and normativity.
Its not just for gays. Its an open-ended label ( like queer ) which means : “Not straight”
Its a welcoming label open for hetero and Bisexuals, (& ace and trans ) , wishing to come out of the Sexual Orthodoxy closet
What they said.
First, let’s get this out of the way: neither sexual orientation nor gender identity are choices. You can do a quick Google search to confirm this, or I’ll be happy to provide you links to a few good resources. Moving on.
If you want a crystal clear picture of why coming out is so important, you need to watch Milk. (Warning: you’ll want a box of tissue.)
But the short version is this:
Coming out is powerful. By coming out, LGBT folks let the people around them know that the boogey-gay stories told by the religious right are lies. Coming out gives straight coworkers and friends and family members the chance to realize that gay people are just people, like anyone else.
And consider what you’re really asking when you say “keep [being gay] your business.” Every time you mention your wife or girlfriend (or your husband or boyfriend, if you’re a woman) you are coming out as straight. You are making your straightness other people’s business. And yet you are asking LGB people to keep those exact same public aspects of their personal lives (who they date, who they marry, who they have children with) a secret. You are reducing all of that into a “choice of sex.” You are reducing their families to a sex act.
Yes. When you don’t know any people in [category] it is easy to think they are all the same and that that their membership in that category is the central pole of their lives*. Which it almost never is.
ObDoA: Ethan. He doesn’t want being gay to be the most important thing about him, that colors every other aspect of his life. Instead of really important things like his taste in cartoons and Transformers.
* I don’t think it is a coincidence that I started becoming more enlightened about gay people right around the time I first knew some socially. Or rather that I first knew some who weren’t in the closet socially.
“By coming out, LGBT folks let the people around them know that the boogey-gay stories told by the religious right are lies. Coming out gives straight coworkers and friends and family members the chance to realize that gay people are just people, like anyone else.”
And this is the biggest thing.
Gay rights have gained leaps and bounds in the last 40-50 years, going from a time where being gay was literally illegal, resulting in jail time to a place where marriage at the least is legal in all 50 states. How did this happen?
People took the hard risk and came out. They came out to friends and family. To coworkers and employers. To society as a whole. And a lot were killed for it, were thrown out on the streets serving as a good chunk of our homeless population, were beaten and driven to suicide for it. But because they were out, because they were “inappropriate”, because they “shoved it in people’s faces” and made them realize that straight people are not the only people in the world and gay people are not monsters under the bed, but people who love and live just like 99% of anyone else (shout out to the aromantics).
This is what means a gay child in one of my classes is less likely than the last generations to be thrown out of their homes. To be forced into the streets. To be driven to suicide. To be beaten by their peers. To fear and hate their own attractions.
They get to be kids in love, who don’t have to think of themselves as less than their peers. They don’t have to fear as much or live in self-loathing and feelings of shame.
This matters. This matters more than anything else in the world.
And if you’ve never experienced this, maybe I can’t fully help you understand. But for many it’s the difference between cuddling cutely with their girlfriend on the couch and being found the next morning with a razor and a bathtub full of red.
For some people, not coming out publicly feels like lying by omission, especially if you’ve been trying to live straight for a long time. For others it’s the thing that lets you give yourself a definite label after months or years of not knowing what the hell you even are. Sometimes this kind of thing is very necessary to heal after a lifetime of feeling broken. It’s therapeutic, being able to sing it out, unafraid.
For me, the whole concept of coming out just feels gross. It’s something that shouldn’t matter, so I don’t pretend I should make a big deal out of it. I won’t lie if it comes up, and I’m not afraid to talk about it to strangers, but I’m not going to make a whoop-de-doo over it.
Of course, this has the unintended side-effect of never knowing what a friend/family member’s reaction will be when they learn. Actually Coming Out at least lays all the cards on the table, whereas the casual method just lengthens the conversation until you start to forget who knows and who doesn’t, and worrying about whether now’s a good time to clarify that yes your date is with another man, or no he is not just my friend.
(I totally feel you on PDA’s though. I used to have a BF who really liked to hold hands in public and it just always felt forced and weird. It turned into one of those Hundred Little Things that eventually all contribute to the breakup.)
PS–Most people who experience some brand of queerness don’t feel like it’s a choice or a lifestyle. In my experience, it’s about as ingrained as the color of my skin.
It can also be the thing that lets you stay alive.
Imagine, straight people, if you could never talk about your wife and instead, when everyone asked about relationships, you had to vaguely make noise about your boyfriend Miguel. How much that would make you feel alone and empty. How it would separate you from everyone else and leave you feeling disconnected and like you should be ashamed for having a wife. Like your love was worth less than what everyone else was having. This is what it’s like to be a lesbian who is forced to be closeted. And when that combines with society telling you that you are literal dog shit for being so (like say Becky has been), it often leads to bad places (queer teen suicide rates tend to be several times higher than their compatriots, largely because of social stigma around queer relationships).
And that’s before we get to subjects like being trans. I don’t know if I can adequately express the horror of being a closeted trans person, forced to present something you are not day in and day out. How that leaves you feeling suicidal every single day and like you are nothing. How it feels like if you could just take a cheese grater to your skin to get this horrible costume off, it would be necessary relief.
Let us just say that being able to be out in the world matters. Most of all because it forces cishets to grow the fuck up already and deal with a world where people other than them exist. Fully. As full human beings, equally allowed to participate with the world as anyone else.
I know it is not the same thing, but it works as a metaphor. I was not allowed to read comics. My father hated tham. I still read them and had to hide them outside where they were constantly ruined. No comic posters or t shirts either.
As soon as I moved out of home I became super comic guy. I read comics everywhere. Had special boxes built so I could store and acces them in shared areas. I wallpapered my room with posters and rarely talked to anyone about anything else. That phase lasted a couple of years.
Now multiply that by a thousand and you have Becky’s experience.
Allow me to present you with this complementary Internet.
Everyone knows there are no compliments on the Internet!
While I agree and find people who purposefully go around letting everyone know their sexual preference is extremely annoying (worked an office job with a guy like that, stereotypically flamboyant, like, made Big Gay Al from South Park seem subtle), I’d also like to clarify something to you: It’s not a “choice”. You do not choose who or what you are attracted to, your body just clicks to it. You don’t just suddenly decide “I’m gonna like big boobs now” and suddenly that’s what turns you on. Male or female, it’s just something your body naturally reacts to, hardwired inside of you.
But, it is their choice on how loud they are about their orientation and preferences. Nobody needed to know how fine you find that booty, random loud dude in the Burger King.
the best metaphor i’ve heard for comparing gay and straight PDA. straight PDA is like a bikini and gay PDA is underwear. they both cover the same area of skin (in fact, my underwear covers more skin than my bikini), but only the bikini is seen as appropriate attire for the public. gay PDA isn’t inferior to straight PDA. and maybe you really do find straight PDA just as disgusting. but more than likely as a product of the environment you grew up in, you subconsciously think of gay as “that thing we just don’t talk about in polite company.”
i don’t know you personally, so i don’t know if you really are anti-PDA or if you are kinda anti-PDA, but aren’t being self-critical about your own aversion to gay PDA. but if you really DID love your gay friend, you’d care more about HIS HAPPINESS than about your discomfort.
IDontcarenomore, I’ll try not to repeat what the other commentors have so eloquently stated, but I do have a question for you. You’ve been commenting on this comic for a while, right? Have you ever complained when any of the straight couples hold hands, kiss or do anything else in a space other than their dorm rooms? If you haven’t complained about that, I would ask that you re-examine your reaction to Becky and Dina.
Also, part of the reason (and this has been somewhat touched on by others) is that straightness is assumed by the general public unless you specifically state otherwise. As a bisexual, cisgendered woman, I find this especially true for me. I’m married, so *of course* I must be straight. I find I must be very open about the fact that I’m bi in order for people not to make false assumptions about me. You may think, “why does it matter?” But it can be extremely annoying to be constantly barraged by people’s unthinking false assumptions of you.
(Related note, false assumptions aren’t just limited to GLBT issues. Religion, politics, social mores, practically everything has a “mainstream default” that can put frustrating assumptions on you. When I met a new neighbor once, her question to me was, “Have you found a church [in the area], yet?” She didn’t ask if I was Christian. Christianity was assumed.)
As someone who’s not part of mainstream culture in many ways, my whole life I’ve been expected to be polite and cognizant of the fact that everyone is not like me, so therefore, I must be sensitive to the mainstream’s feelings and try not to offend them. This is incredibly frustrating to live with constantly. When I got married, I had a Korean ceremony and a Caucasian ceremony. A white friend took me aside and whisperingly asked me if maybe I shouldn’t use the term “Caucasian ceremony” because it might offend all the white people/Americans. I asked her what I should call it instead. She suggested that it was just a normal wedding ceremony, so it didn’t need a special term. ARgh! Well, A) the Koreans there were American, too; B) No it’s not just a “normal” wedding ceremony. It’s the wedding ceremony of a specific culture. White, heterosexual, Christian, and western is not a standard of existence that the rest of us are deviating from; and C) She had no problem with the Korean ceremony having a label because itwas “different”. >_<
Two things that can result constantly living under mainstream assumptions are A) I must be out because I must make the political/social statement about GLBTs and B) you finally get so fed up with trying to hide it and always thinking about not offending the mainstream and being scared about what will happen that you throw it all aside and say, "F this! I am out! I am proud! And YOU WILL SEE ME! I AM NOT INVISIBLE! I HAVE AS MUCH OF A RIGHT TO EXIST AS EVERYONE ELSE!!"
This is beautiful and I agree with all of it. Especially on having to scream it out to be visible. So often unless we’re out with a giant queer banner, we’re just assumed to be another normative cog and this makes others who are queer around you afraid to come out.
And so seeing someone super out can be the thing that allows you to feel safe coming out. It’s why (among other things) it was important to me to be an out teacher, because it means the queer kids in my class don’t feel all alone with their attractions or identities and can feel safe to come out themselves.
Thanks. And I agree about part of the reason to be super out is to be there for queer kids or others who don’t feel safe to come out yet. Even if not directly, if we unknowingly help open the eyes of homophobic relatives of theirs, then maybe we can inadvertently make their overall environment safer for them. 🙂
I think it’s fantastic that you’re a teacher. It’s really important that there are more GLBT role models visible in society.
I’m just happy and grateful I found a place where I’m allowed to be a teacher. There’s not a terribly large amount of us around the country who have the freedom to be out in our jobs and I’ve known a lot of trans teachers who’ve faced a lot of discrimination for just trying to do their jobs.
“I just don’t understand why anyone would want to push their choice of sex into the public eye.”
No, that is not what you dont understand!
You think its perfectly acceptable and normal to do this.
You do this all the time. You do this everytime you mention you have or had a boyfriend. You dont even **have to** come out to people. You have the presumption from the world , that you have a sexual preference, and its straight.
Your confusion is actually that your are so buried in a sea of heterosexual privilege , heterosexism and heteronormativity , that you blame other people for the social awkwardness your own privilege — which you benefit from —imposes on people: like your ex boyfriends brother.
Even if you dont have any hate toward gay people , you have unconsciously soaked up this culture of prejudice, and are projecting it outward. Thats not nice. You need to learn whats actually neutral and whats biased and prejudice.
You have just enough sense on you, to know, that somehow this is all wrong. Thats good.
But rather then see that you are actively complicit in a culture of harm, and shame and bigotry, you think people will “hate on” you;
For you demanding to know why gay people are bringing up their sex life. ?They are NOT.
Thats isnt what happening.
There is No strap-ons on this page. There are no scissoring diagrams.
Nobody is talking cunninglingus techniques. Thats just you. There is no gay-sex discussion happening on the page.
( But what if there was? That would be awesome)
Well i dont hate you.
If it seems I am rough on you at all, you fail to see how rough, loaded and presumptuous , you phrased your question.
You basically came out and said:
‘i think the thing I do with no shame everywhere, is something shameful and ought to be private, when gay people do it. ‘
Thats how it came across.
A lot of gay people ( not me ) are squicked out by het sex.
Imagine if the moment you said “Im straight”, 1000x people turned you and said “Eeeew why do you have have to shove your penis+ vagina sexual escapades in our faces. Im trying to eat, wheres your shame?”
Notice how you are never in any physical danger of announcing you are straight. **No one** ever ,oppresses you for it.
Notice how you werent afraid at all to say you had a boyfriend.
You were not worried people might hate you for who you were, but because of something negative you were going to say about other people.
See, thats privilege at work.
The only way all that social-awkwardness will disappear; of mentioning everyday normal and healthy gay lives in public, is by brave people like Becky showing pride.
( or If You bravely support them and encourage them )
Someone like Becky gets to show pride in public unmolested for her sexual orientation , the same way all straight people do.
Its even more important as otherwise people like yourself will soak up the societies prejudice and think it ought to be buried. Shes doing a genuine social service and ought to get paid for it. Shes a public Lesbian.
Somebody , Hire Her already!
What you are missing is the entire society supports your sexual preference ALL THE TIME.
Its on every radio station right now. I can turn in the TV , its on every single channel. Its in every movie. Its in every book. ITs incessant and constant, and never , ever, stops.
Its a full time 24 Hour , 7 days a week, 365 Days a years Straight Pride Parade.
And never, not once, during this constant overcompensating , straight, socialization process; everywhere, does it even occur to you that it might be overbearing, obnoxious , and oppressive. because it never ever goes away?
Yet, the moment it changes slightly…. The very rare moment the channel changes, and its gay or bisexual normativity, Then, and only then, do you notice it. The other 20,000 times a day its invisible to you. The one time its gay, its a socially awkward, and ought to be private? BULLSHIT.
You have been socially conditioned to think this way. Its not your fault.
We all have. Gay people are just as conditioned ( brainwashed ) their entire lives to accept the constant Straight-Cis-Het-socialization machine. Its does seem normal.
Even your filthiest lusts are championed as the highest natural virtues and celebrated by nearly every single Organized religion. Even the most innocent of gay affection is treated as something shameful and even children are taught to hide it.
Your love is never questioned or treated as wrong, and as something mentally or morally disordered. You have never heard people on the news and in mainstream newspapers officially insult your sexual orientation or suggest you ought to be murdered for it. Yet, this is a daily occurrence for gay people. This is done in your name, and for your supposed benefit.
Thats why its not enough for you to just say'”i accept gay people in my life’. Not when people could be murdered!
*****************************
Now Here is My question to you:
If Hetereosexualty is so normal and natural and automatic, why do straight people have to to be taught it? Why dont you just know?
Why do they have to be constantly reminded over and over, all the time , to be straight? Why does heterosexuality have to be constantly socially reinforced at very turn?
YES this is serious question. I want to know.
What terrible thing will happen if heteronormativity is not reinforced one day?
What if there was a whole week off?
What if all the love sings on the radio one week were gay instead?
Is heterosexuality so fragile, that if its not constantly reinforced, it will completely collapse? Will it shatter?
Will het people everywhere get confused and forget how to be straight?
If het orientation was so natural and automatic, why does it need to be modelled, taught and reinforced every day over and over again?
Gay people dont forget how to be gay. Its indelible. Some people waste their entire life trying. It never works.
Gay people dont need 24-7 gay reinforcement conditioning to be gay. But its really shitty if straight people need this so bad , they exclude gay people from the whole culture.
His name is now Steve. Steven Roberts.
I don’t get the “he looks like a…”
…people don’t look like their name. Life would be so boring.
It would make for an interesting story hook. Imagine a world where everyone looks like their name, but you’re the one aberration.
He can’t have a name because he is a Normal Gay Person which automatically makes him a Strawman/Ad Hominem/Non Sequitor and a dirty Larry Drew.
Maybe it is Cliff again.
I think, “nobody here really cares” is the saving grace of humanity
Good. Being Irish used to be Big Stigma in the USA. We’ve moved on. Let’s hope we keep moving on.
The Great Song Of Indifference – Bob Geldof
He looks like my dad. Since Bryan is taken, how about Moses? It’s cool and ironic!
Your dad looks like Moses? Lol, my father while he was in China, he got confused for George Clooney(true story) and people took pictures with him.
She’s kinda one-note, isn’t she?
Seriously, if she wasn’t gay, she’d have no topics of conversation atall.
now she has dinosaurs and evolution.
Thing is, she mainly gives those the time of day because of her gf.
I mean, has she got any opinions or positions NOT predicated on that? I understand she’s meant to otherwise just be out of the box her fAmily kept her in, but so’s Joyce, and she has TONS of side-business going on.
Rubbish, she got the girlfriend because she has a genuine interest in those things, not the other way round.
Becky gets to to be a fulltime, Pride-Machine for 3 months.
Thats basically any teenager , with any new phase.
BUt its not a phase, its her whole life, and she gets to make up for lost time.
Becky is less Girl crazy than Joe.
Even Joyce was more boycrazy at the beginning of the comic. Becky gets at least 3 months before anybody has a right to even raise an eyebrow askance at her.
( with the Toe-dad situation the Clock doesnt even start before hes sentenced. )
And 3 months in Dumbing Time, short of a time jump , is basically 30 years; so you better get used it.
I am wondering if she is going to get into religious discussion/arguments with Joyce down the road.
Becky’s problems are all external. Being poor, homeless, rejected by family*, etc. She doesn’t seen to have any guilt or self-image problems or a crisis of faith. (Or is she covering them over with perkiness?)
Joyce’s problems are all internal. Reconciling her beliefs with her feelings and experiences, and deciding what to keep, what to modify, and what to reject. Of course, she might acquire some external problems this weekend/next year.
* Do we know if she has any living relatives besides her father?
Ah, grok, I forgot the spam filter eats anything that’s all link.
Becky is explicitly hiding a whole lot of insecurity under her brash persona.
Ah good point. And I forgot the big one, her broken heart because Joyce doesn’t love her back, at least not that way.
Not true. She’d have her butthole dad and his fucked up raising.
Oh totes, it’s not like in the comics that took place TODAY she has been shown to be SELF-TEACHING herself biology in order to catch up to her peers and put herself on course to be a scientist when she grows up, showing empathy and care far beyond any of Joyce’s friends in trying to support her, and to be looking for work so she can not be homeless.
Fuck, I’m sorry if I sound exasperated, but I’m a little tired of this hackneyed shit where we pretend like someone having pride in their identity is some imposition on the poor straights out in the audience.
Gosh, I wonder why queerness is really big in her life? It’s not like she was taught to hate herself growing up. It’s not like she lost her family and her college simply because of her queerness. It’s not like she wasn’t just threatened with a firearm and kidnapped, dragged off to some horrible fate where she was to be “corrected” of her very nature, simply because of her queerness. It’s not like she is currently homeless because of this quality and the way society has reacted to it.
And it’s not like every other character hasn’t been shown to be horny little lust bunnies talking endlessly about the type of people they like to bone or are attracted to.
But nooooo, let us single out Becky for daring to be proud of who she is. Fuck, this really annoys me personally, because it’s the shit that was thrown at me by my shitlord parents. I was “throwing away my life” to be “supergay all the time” simply because I came out to them and because I donated one evening a week to helping trans and ace kids not kill themselves.
So yeah, fuck that noise.
Please tell me they actually used the phrase “supergay all the time,” though.
Yup, that’s actually a direct quote from my uncle.
“And it’s not like every other character hasn’t been shown to be horny little lust bunnies talking endlessly about the type of people they like to bone or are attracted to.”
that… that is just fantastic. thank you. <3
“And it’s not like every other character hasn’t been shown to be horny little lust bunnies talking endlessly about the type of people they like to bone or are attracted to.”
Boom. I was agreeing with Briny’s post and the I read yours and was like “Damn, cant believe I did that”.
If I am not annoyed at Joe (and I am not) then shdnt be annoyed at Becky for this.
In-fucking-deed
“Super-gay” huh?
With greay-t power, comes great homosexuality.
Well I hope you got the Tshirt, decoder ring, and the Xray Specs.
I miss the Xray specs
X-ray spex- Identity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqdeoxwyvKk
If you found a new note on your trumpet would you not practice until you were as good at playing it as any other in the instrument’s range?
So the thing here is that we are seeing 6+ years of adolescent sexuality all at once?
Which is what happens. Queer and trans people often have delayed adolescences because they quite frankly are not allowed to have their adolescences when their straight peers are. When it is physically dangerous to sexually and emotionally explore in high school, then that has to happen in college instead. When it is physically dangerous to explore what outfits look best on you and what your personal style or presentation is, then you have to in adulthood.
Why do a lot of trans women go through an awful pink phase early on in transition? Because they didn’t have an opportunity to do so when they were kids. Why do a lot of queer people make a lot of mistakes with their first relationships in college? Because it’s their first relationships with people they are actually attracted to and they’re still in the midst of learning what all that means in a culture that has always kept almost completely mum on queer sexuality and romance.
Kind of hard to have anything else to discuss when you’ve had the rest of your thoughts dictated by someone else until now. She tried to discuss evolution with Joyce and sent Joyce off in a existential-rage, tried to assert some self-hood and got kidnapped by her dad at gun point, so she doesn’t have a lot of good experience talking with people about other things than being gay – which landed her a caring, understanding, and patient girlfriend.
As a gay guy I’d like to say that your thinking “gay” is one note is probably more about your prejudices about gays and not about how someone talks about/relates to their sexuality.
On todays’ strip she is discussing:
1) Making fun of her fundie Dad by sending a photo to him (a reference to her discussing her history of being forced by her father to take part in demonstrations at Chick-Fil-A in her youth).
2) If she should apply for a job and the ethical consequences off it.
3) The “concept” (idea) of trickle-down economics (in context of social effects).
So her talk today involves family relationship, politics, ethics, economy and social sciences. Really only one note, isn’t it?
If she wasn’t gay, she’d still be ensconced at Anderson and we wouldn’t be seeing anything of what she was talking about.
I think Becky is a more interesting character because of how she reacts than the kinds of things she talks about. Her resilience is kind of inspiring.
It really is. I don’t quite know how to express it, but it’s been really healing to see this sort of character, presented in this way, given my recent past. Seeing a fictional character going through the same sort of forced resilience as I did really resonates and makes me feel like maybe I’m not as damaged and broken as I often feel from it all. It’s been really powerful.
Even though I’m a Homosexian, I flunked Gaygonomics in college.
I totally aced Advanced Blow Jobology, though.
I’m wondering how many readers get the joke in “trickles down” and “Gayganomics”. Thirty years is a long time.
It’s a real Laffer.
Fortunately, Gayganomics classes are always graded on a Curve.
Seeing as how we’re still feeling the after-effects of that particular “theory”, I don’t see how any of us young ‘uns could remain 100% ignorant of its effect on the world.
By not being American?
Between Osborne and post-crisis eurozone policies, the EU has been mainlining voodoo economics even harder than the US ever did.
I’m well under thirty, and if I had a dollar from everyone who made a big deal about trickle down economics to me, or said the phrase “A rising tide lifts all boats” to me, I’d be rich enough to benefit from the economic policies these people support.
“Who can afford a boat in this economy?”
or
“A rising tide lifts all yachts.”
I remember Gayganomics. Bush called it “caboodle economics”.
Becky better not work at a furniture store, the closets would explode on contact.
For people wanting to save the dough on textbooks there’s this thing. Wish it had been around when I was a student:
http://www.slugbooks.com/
Call him Bob!
Lets name him Micha
How about Mishka?
You know Mishka?
Welcome to the ultimate truth of business and economics, Becky. Even if someone totally hates everything you are and what you stand for, they are still usually willing to take your money and/or use you for labour. When Greed goes up against Prejudice, Greed still wins out.
This is all I have to say to this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO-msplukrw
Golf clap.
Give him some old school biblical name like Noah.
Or something like Ezekiel
Or a very obscure biblical name like Elohi or something.
Methuselah
Until and unless The Willis gives that guy an official name, I hereby dub him The Homosexian.
Then we would need Limited Series Willis Team-up comic, “Amazi-Girl and The Homosexian”.
The Homosexian sounds like it should be a story about a gunfighter in the Old West, who also happens to be gay.
Panel 1: Dina goofing it up. Becky has a good influence on her.
How on earth did Willis resist the temptation of calling this strip Gayganomics?
Call him Ronald Gay, for funsies, so Gayganomics can be a real thing.
Derek
He shall forever be called Derek!
(By me and only me.)
His name is Evan, short for Kthanaknisarigatankanshalaesi-tar
Dear David Willis,
Since you read every comment before it’s posted, check this out. I’m sorry for every vile thing I’ve ever said while an on/off fan of your comic. Those outbursts were actually about me. I am a Trans Female. I was still fighting against that before. It’s been about a year now. I’d like to be back into the fold. I don’t blame you if you don’t welcome me back, but I do just wanna thank you for this post. Coming from a Queer, Non-Binary Trans Woman, who was forcing herself to be think she was actually a Straight Cis Man . . . I am sorry. So very sorry.
Furthermore, as a Queer Non-Binary Trans Woman stuck working at Walmart, I feel this strip is pretty damn rad.
My Walmart isn’t as cool as this Chic-Fil-A, but it’s cool enough. I’m stuck in Monroe Michigan, and it’s hell…but a closet Lesbian Manager is helping me with a Hardship Transfer, and there’s one or two employees “in the know” who get me. They can hardly ever say words of support, because it would out me. However, their looks of encouragement, and their hushed comments in private are enough.
*hug*
You might also find some enjoyment from this: http://closetedtransgirlopinions.tumblr.com/
Not a bad tumblr. Thanks!
I find Lana Wachowski to be inspiring.
But Im not trans, find your heros where ye may.
But still shes wicked awesome, and really helped me understand better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crHHycz7T_c
Clever.
Careful those jerks don’t sue you for having their logo. Ok they probably can’t but they sued some person in Vermont for making stickers that say “eat more kale”. Totally ridiculous. And that was before the other awful stuff came out.
Anyhow I don’t have to worry about resisting eating it because they don’t have any in Vermont anyway. I used to like it back in high school back In the day.
I know companies can sue for their logos being shown in media that they don’t approve of that don’t fall within certain parameters of documentary or satire, but I’m pretty sure that at the same time, some logos are so common as to be considered partially public domain because they’re literally everywhere and you can’t demand everyone everywhere censor them out for everything they may film or take a picture of, or write about, etc…
I think it’s also a matter of money. How much is Willis making off ad revenue for his free-access webcomic? Is it worth going after him for a cut of it?
I could see it being more of an issue with his strictly pay content, such as slipshine or the Joyce and Walky comic.
Wish they had Chik-A-Filla’s up north. That and Great American Steak and Potato. Best weekend junkfood outside of Norfolk, VA ever. That and Pete’s Sushi and Steak House.
Obviously given the gayconomics discussion, his name should be John. John Millard Filet.
Bloomington Chick-Fil-A hired undergrads??? Our local ones won’t hire people without BAs these days…..
Indeed! Kang has a friend who has worked at Chik-fell-ate for years and is now an assistant manager. Even in Texas, no one working at Chik-fuh-lay cares. Except the owning family, and to hell with them.
Whatever this mystery fast food man’s name is, he should have an alter-ego hero personality, like AmaziGirl, called Nobody Cares Man.
His existence is mostly on the internet and primarily manifests in the form of rainbow spongebob memes.
It pisses me off how many people claim to care about this stuff, then still eat there. You value food over people. Just admit that you don’t actually care.
People talk about the plight of workers in the far east making electronics under slave-shop conditions, but I don’t see anyone ditching their iPhones either. It’s true — for the most part, people DON’T care.
It’s a lot easier to find alternatives to Chick-Fil-A than to Chinese-made cell phones. And *I* don’t know anyone who loudly criticizes Chick but keeps eating there.
I’ve never eaten there… if I want a chicken sandwich, there’s an Arby’s by my work and a Wendy’s by my house. Both of them I know whose gut bombs taste pretty good and are worth the consequences.
Chik-Fil-A is neither convenient and some of what they make looks like it’d put me in a grave.
Oh, and his name is Phil! That would make Becky a sort of… Chick-Phil, eh?
I’ll see myself out.
There’s only one Canadian in the strip so far, though, and she’s not given to terrible puns.
If you’re talking about Ruth Lessick, her entire family’s very identities are sacrifices on the altar of terrible puns.
Just looking at the guy behind the counter; he’s wearing glasses — and at least five of the main characters (Dorothy, Billie, Amber, Ruth, and Jacob … plus Roz, Carla, and Marcie) also wear glasses.
Willis must really like drawing eyeglasses.
Glasses are pretty common IRL…
I guess Walkyverse reruns haven’t gotten to the “Billie gets glasses” storyline yet.
Anyway, long story short, pretty sure he’s got a glasses fetish.
It’s actually well past that point.
Huh, I guess it is.
I can’t remember which of the “meanwhile, back at the campus…” segments have rerun and which haven’t, so I just checked Billie’s character tag, and the last time we saw her she wasn’t wearing glasses. I’d forgotten that she switched back to contacts at the end of that bit, ’cause I think she’s wearing glasses again when she shows back up in the main IW! storyline.
In addition to free tuition at state universities like IU, we need free textbooks. What we call Open Education Resources. See, for example, , part of Creative Commons.
I write free textbooks and software manuals for and .
THEN, the texbooks themselves trickle back down until they’re battered and broken, and you’re like “I’ll take the cheap one please” and they’re like “Oh, that teacher wants you to get the current edition, and we don’t have any used versions of that” and you’re like “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGH!!!!!!”
Especially when the professor’s name is on the cover as “author.”
I like you, random gay guy that works at Chick-Fil-A, you’re good at making jokes from stuff people tells you.
Daryl.
Dwight Van Der Vecken. The Vecken is optional but his first impression is definitely Dwight Van Der Something…
Holy cow I’ve read this strip three times and only just noticed that their tongues touch.
I think we need a name poll.
I vote for “Rufus”.
Fell into a DoA archive hole and came across this again. Damn, Joyce kills me in this strip:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/risk/
Agreed. Even more intense for me is the strip two days earlier. Joyce trying to reconcile her faith with what she’s experiencing is just gut-wrenching.
Okay, research principles demanded that I experiment with my spouse. Tongues, maximum extension one inch each. So-so. Lips, obviously no extension but much more entertainment. Your mileage may vary.
It ain’t the equipment, it’s the shipment.
I’d say ‘Baxter’, but ‘Albert’ and ‘Phineas’ are also on the table.
Please let Becky send that first panel photo as her Christmas card to all her parents’ friends…
I think its funny Chic-fil-a is closed on Sundays, except for that (usually Hispanic) on person doing the heavy cleaning.
…..soooooo,can we get back to the funny? And get rid of Becky? She’s just a bit too far out there. Kind of like a female, homosexual Joe. Speaking of people who are too far out there… (Yes, I know my icon is Joe. I didn’t pick it! >.<; )