For some reason when I was young, I just seemed to have lacked any significant amount of sex-drive which didn’t really start to kick in until this century which by that time felt like I left it a bit too late especially in my present condition.
Seriously? As an INTELLIGENT girl with COMMON SENSE, I can tell you this:
Sex= Possible Pregnancy.
Pregnancy at age 13= Dropping out of school and becoming HOMELESS.
At age 14= The same.
Age 15= The same.
16= The same.
17= The same.
18= The same.
19= The same.
20= The same.
21= The same.
22= The same.
23= The same.
24= The same.
25+ You might have a chance of getting a house later.
Oh, you can get pregnant if you practice abstinence. Tragically, sometimes sex ain’t up to you.
Kind of like how you can die from vehicular manslaughter. Which is what I kind of hope you were alluding to? Because, y’know, everyone dies, eventually. “Still possible death,” indeed.
What analogy? I only pointed out the false equivalency between sex and riding in a car. As you yourself pointed out, death comes to all, whether it’s in a car accident or an anyurism brought on by choosing to walk. Life’s a crapshoot that way.
As for pregnancy, though, barring artificial insemination, if you don’t have sex (consensual or forced) a baby just isn’t going to happen.
Skittles I have good news! Recently science has rediscovered the wonderful home saving devices commonly referred to as ‘contraceptives.’ Finally sex doesn’t = baby, which apparently = End of Your Life 4Eva.
With love,
Intelligent Girl with Actual Common Sense
In Billie’s case, her family has discovered “having shitloads of money,” so it’s not terribly likely she’d find herself on the street anyhow. Enough dough for a fleet of bastard grandchildren or the equivalent number of abortions.
Not many of the characters in Dumbing of Age would find themselves on the street were a baby to happen. If they’re able to afford college in this day and age, they can probably support a grandchild. If they kick their kid out onto the street for getting knocked up, that’s more of a “shitty parents” problem than a pregnancy one.
I like the mental image I get for a family discovering “having shitloads of money.” It’s like they’re cleaning an obscenely cluttered attic where they’ve been storing a bunch of worthless knickknacks, they open up a ratty cardboard box and happen to find thirty million dollars.
You do know that they make these things that prevent pregnancy and STDs when used correctly? Some of them you can even use together to decrease the likelihood you’ll have to deal with any of that? Yea… Just saying. I’m pretty sure that 17+ can be taught to use them properly.
When my first daughter was born I was 20, my (first) wife was 19. We both finished school. We both went on to have good careers. We both have houses. We’re both doing pretty well.
Are people honestly giving somebody I’m assuming is a teenage girl a hard time about choosing to abstain from sex? I’m not one to give people a hard time about premarital hanky panky, but saying that contraceptives prevent pregnancy instead of merely reducing the risk of pregnancy (even when used properly) is dangerous misinformation.
People are giving her a hard time because she was being condescending to other people about it(“an INTELLIGENT woman doesn’t have sex until they’re 25”), not to mention unrealistically alarmist.
There are 3 million unintended pregnancies per year in the united states. There are the same number of injuries due to car accidents. If having sex is too risky, then so is being in a car.
So, she focused on the worst case scenario and typed a couple of words in caps, so some grown-ass adults decided to virgin shame a teenage girl? No matter how obnoxious anybody thought she was being, that’s still not OK.
Those “couple words in caps” were about how other people were idiots, so, yeah, that’s totally open season. Hell, that’s a deletable post by the rules of this forum. It only stayed ‘cuz it was kind of over-the-top hilarious.
Folks do all sorts of dangerous shit every day. But sex has a religious stigma so we overreact like crazy people about it in embarrassingly disproportionate amounts.
Nobody’s even brought religion into it. She focused entirely on the wordly potential consequences. And if she was referring to other people as idiots, I certainly don’t see the names of anybody here in her post, or any names at all, for that matter.
God knows, it’s not as if nobody’s ever written a strong or potentially offensive opinion here before. I seem to recall a few walls of text about how people who believe in God are idiots that are certainly in no danger of being deleted. But one teenage girl figures out that sex makes babies and that she’d rather no take the risk and it’s “open season”?
You don’t have to be religious to be swayed by religious stigma, any more than you don’t gotta be an out right racist to do subtlely racist things. It’s a pervasive line of thought. It’s built into our culture, into what’s acceptable on TV. Killing is fine on television, but you can’t show a booby. That’s always going to be in the back of our heads whether we’re religious or not.
I have deleted several personal attacks on the religious in these comments.
And the more I think about it, the more I realize that everything was amazingly civil until you started. Folks refuted her, as they are able to do, and it wasn’t terribly personal. But as you combat me, you are choosing to use her as a human shield, designating her view, which you share, is beyond criticism, while confronting others. So this is ended.
I’m actually only BARELY teen. In 8 months.
YES I’M 12 DON’T GET ALL BULLCRAPPY ON ME like
“OOoh Nooo Therres A Kidd On the Siet Howd she Lern dis stuf!”
If anyone is THAT STUPID, the answer is I read REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY fast. Therefore I learn a lot. And NO I did NOT exaggerate the reallys.
And about the word “bullcrappy”, I just think it sounds cool.
PIE, PI, AND NINJAS!!!! 8D
-Skittles the pie ninja (@gmail.com)
I don’t think it’s shameful to choose not to have sex. I think to choose not to have sex because you might get pregnant and ruin your life is a pretty lame reason to not do a neat thing, akin to not having picnics because there might be spiders in the grass. It’s letting irrational fears decide for you how to live your life.
Not to mention trying to tell everyone else they shouldn’t have sex because of your irrational fears manufactured by an archaic moral authority in their attempt to decide for you how to live your life. That’s how you get bullshit like “teaching abstinence” that completely fails and drives teen pregnancy in the regions that try it up higher than everywhere else in the world because their theocratic governments won’t admit that telling people not to have sex is impossible.
@James Rye
If you’re thinking those are averages then that’s way off. I think the average age has actually gone up slightly since the 80’s (it was either 80’s or 90’s).
“[N]ow that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was in vain; I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams.” – Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
This seems to be the sort of situation you’re thinking of. Except that despite Walky’s newfound manly-sex-powers, I don’t think Billie’s going to be ‘disturbed by the wildest dreams’. Not about Walky, anyway.
Joyce and Walky sitting next to each other reminds me of how they kinda seem to have already moved from being antagonistic to each other to kind of being cool with each other.
OHH!! I thought Walky was saying that when he and Billie were fifteen they were like roughhousing or whatever under some covers, but now I get that he was just elaborating more on the previous evening.
“Okay, everyone who got the Kickstarter cameos, I’m gonna need you all to look directly at the camera and smile like you’re getting your driver’s license renewed. On my mark…”
“If you want me to be impressed, Walky, travel backwards in time and tell me this at age fifteen. Not because of your story or anything, but because you will have learned how to time travel, and that’s cool as shit.”
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So 15 is the new norm for losing that pesky virginity huh?
I hope not. I’d hate to find out I’m 5 years too late to the party.
Better late than never, I can tell you right now that 50+ is way too long to stay a virgin.
Unless you don’t want to have sex in the first place.
For some reason when I was young, I just seemed to have lacked any significant amount of sex-drive which didn’t really start to kick in until this century which by that time felt like I left it a bit too late especially in my present condition.
And that would be? What? Married to Lorena Bobbitt?
http://tinyurl.com/7lo3b7v
Not exactly, I already had my ‘1% off all baby boys’ soon after I was born.
I heard for girls its 13 and for guys 14/15 now. Losing virginity that is.
Not that i can tell of experience. Just what the news says.
Yeah, but “I heard” still means rumors and what they SAY happens. I’m just saying kids aren’t exactly reliable sources of information.
Seriously? As an INTELLIGENT girl with COMMON SENSE, I can tell you this:
Sex= Possible Pregnancy.
Pregnancy at age 13= Dropping out of school and becoming HOMELESS.
At age 14= The same.
Age 15= The same.
16= The same.
17= The same.
18= The same.
19= The same.
20= The same.
21= The same.
22= The same.
23= The same.
24= The same.
25+ You might have a chance of getting a house later.
Being in a car = possible death
But you have probably been in a car.
It all depends on how you manage risk.
Not being in a car = still possible death
Abstinence = 0% chance of pregnancy
Having sex with birth control = Small but still present chance of pregnancy.
The long and short is, unless you’re prepared for the possibility of having and raising a child, maybe you’re better off waiting on sex for a while.
Oh, you can get pregnant if you practice abstinence. Tragically, sometimes sex ain’t up to you.
Kind of like how you can die from vehicular manslaughter. Which is what I kind of hope you were alluding to? Because, y’know, everyone dies, eventually. “Still possible death,” indeed.
So, she may as well have sex and get it out of the way since she might get raped anyway? What a wonderful message for a teenage girl.
If I agree, can we get back to the holes I poked in your analogy?
What analogy? I only pointed out the false equivalency between sex and riding in a car. As you yourself pointed out, death comes to all, whether it’s in a car accident or an anyurism brought on by choosing to walk. Life’s a crapshoot that way.
As for pregnancy, though, barring artificial insemination, if you don’t have sex (consensual or forced) a baby just isn’t going to happen.
And if you don’t ride in a car, you won’t then die from a resulting car accident? I’m not seeing where this breaks down.
If you don’t interact with motor vehicles (consensual or forced) a car accident just isn’t going to happen.
Being in a car = #1 cause of death for ages 0-35. Not being in a car, but near one = still #1 cause of death for ages 0-35. Source CDC.
Skittles I have good news! Recently science has rediscovered the wonderful home saving devices commonly referred to as ‘contraceptives.’ Finally sex doesn’t = baby, which apparently = End of Your Life 4Eva.
With love,
Intelligent Girl with Actual Common Sense
In Billie’s case, her family has discovered “having shitloads of money,” so it’s not terribly likely she’d find herself on the street anyhow. Enough dough for a fleet of bastard grandchildren or the equivalent number of abortions.
Not many of the characters in Dumbing of Age would find themselves on the street were a baby to happen. If they’re able to afford college in this day and age, they can probably support a grandchild. If they kick their kid out onto the street for getting knocked up, that’s more of a “shitty parents” problem than a pregnancy one.
I wish I could +1 here, but I can’t, so I’ll just say it:
+1
I like the mental image I get for a family discovering “having shitloads of money.” It’s like they’re cleaning an obscenely cluttered attic where they’ve been storing a bunch of worthless knickknacks, they open up a ratty cardboard box and happen to find thirty million dollars.
Getting up from the bed = possibly slip followed by traumatic brain injury
Not getting up from bed = Possible thrombosis.
If you never do anything that have a risk of endangering your life, you’ll never do anything.
You do know that they make these things that prevent pregnancy and STDs when used correctly? Some of them you can even use together to decrease the likelihood you’ll have to deal with any of that? Yea… Just saying. I’m pretty sure that 17+ can be taught to use them properly.
SEVENTEEN PLUS. What about 13-16?
When my first daughter was born I was 20, my (first) wife was 19. We both finished school. We both went on to have good careers. We both have houses. We’re both doing pretty well.
Absolutes are almost always wrong.
Skittles, my girlfriend and I both lost our virginity at the age of 14 and we are still dating at 20 without any children.
So yeah…
Lucky you! You got away with fun! Without ruining your life! Way to go! =)
Are people honestly giving somebody I’m assuming is a teenage girl a hard time about choosing to abstain from sex? I’m not one to give people a hard time about premarital hanky panky, but saying that contraceptives prevent pregnancy instead of merely reducing the risk of pregnancy (even when used properly) is dangerous misinformation.
http://www.youngwomenshealth.org/summarychart.html
People are giving her a hard time because she was being condescending to other people about it(“an INTELLIGENT woman doesn’t have sex until they’re 25”), not to mention unrealistically alarmist.
There are 3 million unintended pregnancies per year in the united states. There are the same number of injuries due to car accidents. If having sex is too risky, then so is being in a car.
We should teach car abstinence.
So, she focused on the worst case scenario and typed a couple of words in caps, so some grown-ass adults decided to virgin shame a teenage girl? No matter how obnoxious anybody thought she was being, that’s still not OK.
Those “couple words in caps” were about how other people were idiots, so, yeah, that’s totally open season. Hell, that’s a deletable post by the rules of this forum. It only stayed ‘cuz it was kind of over-the-top hilarious.
Folks do all sorts of dangerous shit every day. But sex has a religious stigma so we overreact like crazy people about it in embarrassingly disproportionate amounts.
Nobody’s even brought religion into it. She focused entirely on the wordly potential consequences. And if she was referring to other people as idiots, I certainly don’t see the names of anybody here in her post, or any names at all, for that matter.
God knows, it’s not as if nobody’s ever written a strong or potentially offensive opinion here before. I seem to recall a few walls of text about how people who believe in God are idiots that are certainly in no danger of being deleted. But one teenage girl figures out that sex makes babies and that she’d rather no take the risk and it’s “open season”?
You don’t have to be religious to be swayed by religious stigma, any more than you don’t gotta be an out right racist to do subtlely racist things. It’s a pervasive line of thought. It’s built into our culture, into what’s acceptable on TV. Killing is fine on television, but you can’t show a booby. That’s always going to be in the back of our heads whether we’re religious or not.
I have deleted several personal attacks on the religious in these comments.
And the more I think about it, the more I realize that everything was amazingly civil until you started. Folks refuted her, as they are able to do, and it wasn’t terribly personal. But as you combat me, you are choosing to use her as a human shield, designating her view, which you share, is beyond criticism, while confronting others. So this is ended.
I’m actually only BARELY teen. In 8 months.
YES I’M 12 DON’T GET ALL BULLCRAPPY ON ME like
“OOoh Nooo Therres A Kidd On the Siet Howd she Lern dis stuf!”
If anyone is THAT STUPID, the answer is I read REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY fast. Therefore I learn a lot. And NO I did NOT exaggerate the reallys.
And about the word “bullcrappy”, I just think it sounds cool.
PIE, PI, AND NINJAS!!!! 8D
-Skittles the pie ninja (@gmail.com)
I’m not sure where you’re getting the assumption that the person who felt secure enough in her own position to judge 24-year-olds, is a teenager.
I don’t think it’s shameful to choose not to have sex. I think to choose not to have sex because you might get pregnant and ruin your life is a pretty lame reason to not do a neat thing, akin to not having picnics because there might be spiders in the grass. It’s letting irrational fears decide for you how to live your life.
Not to mention trying to tell everyone else they shouldn’t have sex because of your irrational fears manufactured by an archaic moral authority in their attempt to decide for you how to live your life. That’s how you get bullshit like “teaching abstinence” that completely fails and drives teen pregnancy in the regions that try it up higher than everywhere else in the world because their theocratic governments won’t admit that telling people not to have sex is impossible.
Abortion. Adoption. Non-traditional family. Lots of options even if one DOES manage to get unexpectedly pregnant.
@James Rye
If you’re thinking those are averages then that’s way off. I think the average age has actually gone up slightly since the 80’s (it was either 80’s or 90’s).
The best part is, that’s not even what he’s bragging about.
He lost his virginity to Dorothy in the same way that I lost mine to a teddy bear since i was 5. Don’t look any deeper into that than you have to.
I bet you never ‘felt’ that way before if you know what I mean.
It gave him that warm ‘fuzzy’ feeling if you catch my drift.
He ‘stuffed’ that teddy if you can understand what I am hinting at.
Watch yourselves. The Teddy Bear Liberation Front will have your heads for talk like that.
The teddy’s head or the one he gave it?
Did I push that too far?
I hear Abba’s “Fernando” in my head for some reason.
Well, there was something in the air, that night. The stars were bright…
Change your radio to another station.
Hold that radio underwater until it’s struggles cease.
Show mercy.
How sweet, he considers Billie his bro.
Billie looks weirdly jealous in panels three and four. As to whom she’s jealous of…
Walky, of course.
She wanted to tap that blonde ass first.
Mike?
WHAT A TWEEST!
Suddenly, I feel like M. Night Shyamalan.
Quick, if you feel tempted to make a movie of your kids’ favorite TV show, STOP.
So do I – know where we can get some?
Well, a dude like Walky managed to get into bed with a girl while Billie is constantly tormented….yeah, I’d be jealous too.
To me, she looks a little creeped out. Maybe mixed with a little bit of “Omigod, what have I created?”
Plus, she’s probably still dwelling on what just happened back at the dorm.
Billie, you should be impressed, because you thought this was an impossible event.
But how could anyone resist the caramel.
Must be a chocolate person.
Or a nougat fan.
Just hope she’s not a fan of reindeer chocolate.
She looks out on her creation and realized she has created a monster.
“[N]ow that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was in vain; I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams.” – Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
This seems to be the sort of situation you’re thinking of. Except that despite Walky’s newfound manly-sex-powers, I don’t think Billie’s going to be ‘disturbed by the wildest dreams’. Not about Walky, anyway.
She’s going to like those dreams…
Joyce and Walky sitting next to each other reminds me of how they kinda seem to have already moved from being antagonistic to each other to kind of being cool with each other.
Walky, don’t say you have sinned when Jesus is within earshot!
Jesus? Where?
Behind Walky.
Reading the professor’s words, I inductively reason that they are calculating a limit using inductive logic, not deductive logic.
I was going to go for Zeno’s paradox myself, or at a slight stretch, a basic introduction to why we can’t divide by zero.
I swore I saw the Eleventh Doctor in the background.
*looksandseesnothing*… So how many season’s did you burn through today?
None.
*looksandseesnothing* But I’m pretty sure Jesus is wearing 10’s coat.
Nope, just a corduroy blazer.
I see him! With the long hair and beard he occasionally has to indicate he’s been locked up for a long time.
Why is he saying that in the form of a question?
Because it’s an extension of his previous question.
He’s playing Jeopardy?
I’m sad that Mike’s face is all covered up. Mike is awesome. There should definitely be more Mike.
I’m happy that Mike can be identified just from 5 pen lines and a shade of yellow. He is an icon!
OHH!! I thought Walky was saying that when he and Billie were fifteen they were like roughhousing or whatever under some covers, but now I get that he was just elaborating more on the previous evening.
I do not dislike this mental image.
Billie’s face in panel 4 suits the conversation absolutely perfectly
“Okay, everyone who got the Kickstarter cameos, I’m gonna need you all to look directly at the camera and smile like you’re getting your driver’s license renewed. On my mark…”
The simple truth is, this strip needs topless panels (or quality fan art) of Billie.
why not? It’s had topless panels before.
See: Walky
Just out of random boredom, who do we think in DoA has done horzontial hula and who’s still C 10 CASE FRESH?
get to say 15 with a dude just sleeping did that. everything esle waited. a long time.
Is that Gordan Freeman in the back?
December 17, 2012: Discover “Dumbing of Age” — and there was much rejoicing.
December 18, 2012: begin wading my way through the archive — hilarity ensued.
December 19, 2012: complete review of archive and realize there are no more cartoons until tomorrow — and there was sadness throughout the land.
Nah it’s about 13-15
“If you want me to be impressed, Walky, travel backwards in time and tell me this at age fifteen. Not because of your story or anything, but because you will have learned how to time travel, and that’s cool as shit.”
Walky looks like he’s got a lamprey jaw in the last panel